Not that it matters if I can smell them, my hair and clothes have absorbed the goddamn smell; when they start to go bad, it seems to happen with a bang…

She wished she'd bothered to learn more on the science end; she knew what the T-Virus was used for, but hadn't thought it necessary to research the physio– chemical effects. Why bother, when she had no reason to think that Umbrella had been planning to spill a shitload of it in their hometown? She was getting plenty of firsthand information about how well it worked, but it would have been nice to know exactly what happened in the infected party's body and mind, what turned them from a person into a mindless flesh– eater. Instead, she could only file away her observa– tions and make guesses at the truth. From what she'd seen, it took less than an hour for someone infected to turn zombie. Sometimes the victim went into a kind of fever-coma first, which presumably burnt out parts of the brain and only added to the impression that they were waking from the dead when they stood up and started looking for fresh meat. The symptoms of the virus were the same for everyone, but not the progression rate; she'd seen at least three cases where the victim had turned bloodthirsty within a couple of moments of being infected, the stage she'd started to think of as "going cataract." One of the few constants was that their eyes clouded with a thin film of eggy white mucous when they turned and although the physical deterioration always started immediately, some fell to pieces much faster than others…

… and why are you thinking about it? Your job doesn't include finding a cure, does it?

She sighed, bending over to rub her toes. True enough. Still, it was something to think about. Focus– ing on staying alive was tiring and all-encompassing work; she didn't have a chance to consider the subtle-ties of the circumstances while clearing out corridors. She was on break, and she needed to let her brain run around a bit, ponder a few of the job's more puzzling aspects.

And there are about a thousand to mull over… Trent, what Bertolucci should or shouldn't know… and the S.T.A.R.S. – what the hell had happened to that merry crew?

From the articles that Trent had included in the info packet, she knew about the S.T.A.R.S.'s suspen– sion – and considering what they'd been investigat– ing, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they'd been railroaded by Umbrella for uncovering part if not all of the bioweapon operations. Umbrella had probably offed them by now, if they hadn't gone into hiding and she had to wonder if Trent had played any part in the S.T.A.R.S.'s little misadventure, or if he'd tried to contact them before or after. Not that he would've told her; Trent was an enigma, to be sure. She'd only had one actual meeting with him, although he'd contacted her several times prior to her leaving for Raccoon, mostly by phone and although she'd always prided herself on her ability to read people, she knew absolutely nothing about where his interests lay, why he wanted the G-Virus or what his gripe with Umbrella was about. It was obvious that he had some inside connection, he knew too much about the company's workings, but if that was the case, why not just pick up his own goddamn sample and then quit? Hiring an outside agent was the act of someone trying to avoid implication, but implication of what?

Ours is not to question why…

A good principle to live by; she also wasn't getting paid to figure out Trent. She doubted she'd be able to even if she was getting paid for it; she'd never met such a supremely self-controlled man as Mr. Trent. In every interaction they'd had, she'd gotten the feeling that he had been smiling inside, as if he knew some intensely pleasurable secret that no one else was privy to and yet somehow, he hadn't come across as arrogant or overblown. He was a cool one, his genial-ity so natural that she'd been vaguely intimidated; she might not have been able to pick up on his motives, but she'd seen that calm humor before it was the real face of true power, of a man with a plan and the means to implement it.

So has the spill upset his plans, whatever they are? Or was he prepared for this contingency…? He may not have planned it, but I can't imagine that "caught unawares" is anywhere in Trent's vocabulary…

Ada leaned back, rolling her head tiredly before pushing herself off the desk and stepping back into her uncomfortable shoes. Enough down time, she couldn't spare her aches and pains more than a few minutes and didn't expect to figure out much of anything until she was well away from Raccoon. She still had a couple of areas to check for Bertolucci before heading into the sewers, and she'd noticed that some of the first-floor window barricades weren't as solid as she might have hoped; she didn't want to end up blocked out of a path by a new group of carriers from outside. There were the "secret" passages on the east side, and the holding cells downstairs past the parking garage. If she couldn't find him in either of those places, she'd have to assume he'd left the station and concentrate her efforts on obtaining the sample. She decided to try the basement first; it seemed unlikely that he'd stumbled across the hidden corn– dors. From what she'd read of his work, he wasn't a good enough reporter to find his own ass. And if he was hiding in or near the holding cells, she wouldn't have to spend any more time roaming the station, facing the inevitable invasion; the entrance into the subbasement was downstairs, so barring any compli– cations, she could head straight for the lab. Ada walked out of the office, wrinkling her nose at the fresh burst of rotting smell pushed at her by the lazily spinning ceiling fans. There had to be seven or eight bodies in the desk-filled room, all of them cops, and at least the three that she'd shot had been fairly rank…

… and didn't I leave five carriers still walking around in here when I came through before?

Ada paused just outside the large and open room, looking back in from the narrow connecting corridor that led to the back stairs. Had there been five? She knew she'd capped a couple on her first visit; the rest had been too slow to hassle with, and she thought there'd been five of them. And yet she'd only had to knock off three when she had returned for her im– promptu break.

There were five. I may not be at peak, but I can still count.

She wasn't in the habit of doubting her ability to keep track of such things, and the fact that she'd only just noticed was a sign of how tired she was; two days ago, she would have made the observation immedi– ately. There was no way to tell if the additional corpses had been shot or had simply disintegrated on their own without exposing herself to contact – they were too messed up; but it would be wisest to assume that there were still a few survivors wandering around.

Not for long, one way or another…

Whether or not the zombies managed to break through, Umbrella would act soon, if they hadn't already. What had happened in Raccoon was a share– holder's worst nightmare, and Umbrella certainly wasn't going to ignore the problem; they'd probably already worked up a fail-safe disaster and prepared their own spin to feed to the press. And it was a foregone conclusion that they'd try to salvage Birkin's synthesis before putting their fail-safe into effect, which meant that she'd have to be very careful. Birkin had apparently been somewhat secretive about his work, and Trent had relayed that Umbrella would eventually send in a retrieval team… with Raccoon in ashes, that eventuality had probably been moved forward a few notches.

A team of human beings, hopefully. I can handle that. A Tyrant, though… I don't need that kind of pain.

Ada turned away from the room, walking toward the closed door that would lead her to the basement steps. Tyrant was the code name for a particular series in Umbrella's organic weapons research, a series that embodied the most destructive applications of the T-Virus. According to Trent, the White Umbrella scien– Tists – the ones working in the secret labs – had just started tests on a kind of humanoid bloodhound, designed to hunt down any assigned scent or sub– stance it had been encoded for with relentless and inhuman capabilities. A Tyrant retriever, a nearly indestructible construct of infected flesh and surgi-cally implanted wiring – just the kind of thing that they might send in to find, say, a sample of the G-Virus… Once she collected Trent's sample, she was history, paid and drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere. And anything she might or might not feel about it, about how many innocents had died or what Trent wanted the G-Virus for – it was just one more thing to put on her list of things the job didn't call for. Her defenses safely in place, Ada started for the basement to see if she could find the troublesome reporter.