Resident Evil: Underworld by S. D. Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

himself.
    “Son of a bitch,” John spat, and it didn’t matter, because they were in Utah. Trent or no Trent, they had arrived—and because it was after midnight, they had less than a day to get ready.

FIVE
    Jay Reston was pleased. In fact, he was as happy as he’d been in a long time, and if he’d known it would feel so good to be back in the field, he would have done it years ago.
    Managing employees, the kind who actually get their hands dirty. Making things happen and seeing the results unfold, being a part of the process. Being more than just a shadow, more than some nameless darkness to be feared…
    Thinking these things made him feel strong and vital again; he was barely fifty, he hadn’t yet come to see himself as even middle-aged, but working in the trenches again made him realize how much he’d lost over the years.
    Reston sat in the control room, the pulse of the Planet, his hands behind his head and his attention fixed on the wall of screens in front of him. On one screen, a man in coveralls was working on a series of trees in Phase One, adding another coat of green to a row of faux evergreens. The man was Tom Something-or-other, from construction, but the name wasn’t important. What was important was that Tom was painting the trees because Reston had told him to, face-to-face at the morning briefing.
    On another screen, Kelly McMalus was recalibrating the desert temp control, also at Reston’s request. McMalus was the Scorps lead handler, at least until the permanent staff came in; everyone in the Planet was temporary, one of White’s newer policies to avoid sabotage. Once everything was up and running, the nine technical people and half-dozen “preliminary” researchers—actually glorified specimen handlers, although he’d never call them that directly—would be relocated.
    The Planet. The facility was actually “B.O.W. Envirotest A,” but Reston thought that Planet was a much better name. He wasn’t sure who had come up with it, just that it had cropped up at one of the morning briefings and stuck. Referring to the test site as the Planet in his updates to the home team made him feel even more a part of the process.
    “The video feeds were connected today, although there’s some problem with the mikes, so the audio hasn’t been hooked up yet; I’ll have that taken care of ASAP. The last of the Ma3Ks came in, no damage to any of the specimens. In all, things are going very well, we expect to have the Planet ready days ahead of schedule…”
    Reston smiled, thinking of his last conversation with Sidney; had he heard just a touch of jealousy in Sidney’s voice, a thread of wistfulness? He was part of a “we” now, a we that called Envirotest A by a nickname. After thirty years of delegation, having to oversee the finishing touches on their most innovative and expensive facility to date had been a blessing in disguise. And to think that he’d been irritated when he’d first heard about Lewis’s car going off a cliff; the man’s accident was probably the best work he’d ever done for Umbrella, because it meant that he would be overseeing the Planet’s birth.
    Another tech was walking across one of the screens, carrying a tool box and a coil of rope. Cole, Henry Cole, the electrician who’d been working on the intercom and video systems; he was in the main corridor that ran between the faculty quarters and the testing area, leading toward the elevator. Reston had noticed the day before that several of the surface cameras were malfunctioning; none of the cameras in the Planet had been wired for sound as of yet, but the screens for the upper compound would intermittently spew static for minutes at a time, and he had asked Cole to see to it—
    —but after he’d finished with the ’com system, not before. How am I supposed to stay in contact with these people if I don’t have a working intercom system?
    Even the flush of irritation he felt for the tech was exhilarating; instead of