Read Online Resident Evil: Underworld by S. D. Perry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: S. D. Perry
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anger. The fugitive S.T.A.R.S., surely…
It didn’t matter. Even if they found the entrance, they didn’t have the codes—and whoever they were, they would pay for causing him even a second of distress.
Reston slid the phone back into its slot, folded his arms, and watched the strangers move silently across the screen, wondering if they had any idea that they’d be dead within half an hour.
SEVEN
The building was cold and dark, but there was the soft hum of working machinery to break the silence, to listen to over the pounding of her heart. It wasn’t too big, maybe thirty feet by twenty, but it was a single room, big enough to feel unsafe, vulnerable. Small lights blinked randomly all around it, like dozens of eyes watching them from the shadows.
Man, I hate this.
Rebecca trailed the tight beam from her flashlight over the west wall of the building, looking for anything out of the ordinary and trying not to feel sick at the same time. In movies, private detectives and cops who had just crashed someone’s house were always strolling calmly around, looking for evidence, as if they owned the place; in real life, breaking in somewhere you were absolutely not supposed to be was terrifying. She knew they were in the right, that they were the good guys, but still her palms were damp, her heart hammering, and she wished desperately there were a bathroom she could get to. Her bladder had apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut.
And it’ll have to wait, unless I want to go wet the dirt in enemy territory… Rebecca didn’t.
She leaned in to take a closer look at the machine in front of her, a stand-up device the size of a refrigerator and covered with buttons; the label on the front read, “OGO Relay,” whatever that was. As far as she could tell, the room was full of big, clunky machines awash in switches; if all of the other buildings were similarly equipped, finding Trent’s hidden code panel was going to be an all-night operation.
Each of them had taken a wall, and John was going over the tables in the middle of the room. There was probably a surveillance camera set up somewhere in the building, which made the need to hurry even greater—although they were all hoping that the minimal staff meant no one would be watching. If they were very lucky, the security system wouldn’t even be hooked up yet.
No, that would be a miracle. Lucky will be if we get in and out of this alive and unhurt, with or without that book…
Since they’d walked away from the van, Rebecca’s internal alarms had been ticking down to a full-blown case of the nerves. From her short time with the S.T.A.R.S. she’d learned that trusting her gut feelings was important, maybe even more important than having a weapon; instinct told people to duck bullets, to hide when the enemy was near, to know when to wait and when to act.
The problem is, how do you know if it’s instinct or if you’re just scared shitless? She didn’t know. What she knew was that she wasn’t feeling good about their late-night raid; she was cold and jumpy, her stomach hurt, and she couldn’t shake the belief that something bad was going to happen.
On the other hand, she should be scared—they all should be; what they were doing was dangerous. Something bad might actually happen, acknowledging it wasn’t paranoid, it was realistic—
— hello. What’s that?
Just to the right of the OGO machine was something that looked like a water heater, a tall, rounded device with a window in the front. Behind the small square of glass was a spool of graph paper, covered with thready black lines, nothing she recognized—what had caught her eye was the dust on the glass. It was the same finely powdered dirt that seemed to be on everything in the room… except it wasn’t. There was a smudge across the dirt, a damp streak that may have been caused by someone’s finger.
A smudge on dirt?
If someone had run their hand over the dusty glass, they would have cleared a
It didn’t matter. Even if they found the entrance, they didn’t have the codes—and whoever they were, they would pay for causing him even a second of distress.
Reston slid the phone back into its slot, folded his arms, and watched the strangers move silently across the screen, wondering if they had any idea that they’d be dead within half an hour.
SEVEN
The building was cold and dark, but there was the soft hum of working machinery to break the silence, to listen to over the pounding of her heart. It wasn’t too big, maybe thirty feet by twenty, but it was a single room, big enough to feel unsafe, vulnerable. Small lights blinked randomly all around it, like dozens of eyes watching them from the shadows.
Man, I hate this.
Rebecca trailed the tight beam from her flashlight over the west wall of the building, looking for anything out of the ordinary and trying not to feel sick at the same time. In movies, private detectives and cops who had just crashed someone’s house were always strolling calmly around, looking for evidence, as if they owned the place; in real life, breaking in somewhere you were absolutely not supposed to be was terrifying. She knew they were in the right, that they were the good guys, but still her palms were damp, her heart hammering, and she wished desperately there were a bathroom she could get to. Her bladder had apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut.
And it’ll have to wait, unless I want to go wet the dirt in enemy territory… Rebecca didn’t.
She leaned in to take a closer look at the machine in front of her, a stand-up device the size of a refrigerator and covered with buttons; the label on the front read, “OGO Relay,” whatever that was. As far as she could tell, the room was full of big, clunky machines awash in switches; if all of the other buildings were similarly equipped, finding Trent’s hidden code panel was going to be an all-night operation.
Each of them had taken a wall, and John was going over the tables in the middle of the room. There was probably a surveillance camera set up somewhere in the building, which made the need to hurry even greater—although they were all hoping that the minimal staff meant no one would be watching. If they were very lucky, the security system wouldn’t even be hooked up yet.
No, that would be a miracle. Lucky will be if we get in and out of this alive and unhurt, with or without that book…
Since they’d walked away from the van, Rebecca’s internal alarms had been ticking down to a full-blown case of the nerves. From her short time with the S.T.A.R.S. she’d learned that trusting her gut feelings was important, maybe even more important than having a weapon; instinct told people to duck bullets, to hide when the enemy was near, to know when to wait and when to act.
The problem is, how do you know if it’s instinct or if you’re just scared shitless? She didn’t know. What she knew was that she wasn’t feeling good about their late-night raid; she was cold and jumpy, her stomach hurt, and she couldn’t shake the belief that something bad was going to happen.
On the other hand, she should be scared—they all should be; what they were doing was dangerous. Something bad might actually happen, acknowledging it wasn’t paranoid, it was realistic—
— hello. What’s that?
Just to the right of the OGO machine was something that looked like a water heater, a tall, rounded device with a window in the front. Behind the small square of glass was a spool of graph paper, covered with thready black lines, nothing she recognized—what had caught her eye was the dust on the glass. It was the same finely powdered dirt that seemed to be on everything in the room… except it wasn’t. There was a smudge across the dirt, a damp streak that may have been caused by someone’s finger.
A smudge on dirt?
If someone had run their hand over the dusty glass, they would have cleared a
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