Genesis

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

About the Author

To Danelle, for paving the way . . .

Special thanks to editor Marco Palmieri, who dragged me into this; agent Lucienne Diver, who kept me in it; author S.D. Perry, who did all the other books; writer/ director Paul W. S. Anderson, who provided the source material; the game developers at Capcom, who provided Paul's source material; to Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, Martin Crewes, Colin Salmon, and the rest of the cast of the first
Resident Evil
film, who gave me voices to work with; GraceAnne Andreassi DeCandido, who kept my writing sound; and my super-duper wonder sweetie Terri Osborne, who keeps me going.

AARON VRICELLA REGARDED THE YOUNGER man sitting opposite him with a combination of awe and outrage.

He took a sip of Chianti before speaking. “You know, Matthew, I
did
warn you when I recruited you that this was an endeavor that might claim your sanity. I must confess, however, that I did not expect the fall to happen so soon.” He set the wine glass down on one of the few clear spots on his massive oak desk. The Tuscan vintage went down a bit too smoothly. Aaron preferred the harsher red wines from northern Italy—the type of wine you need to punch a hole through the wall to get down.

In the guest chair, Matthew Addison sat staring down at the desk. An overburdened wire-frame inbox took up
one corner, Aaron's flatscreen monitor and keyboard, both products of the Umbrella Corporation, another. The irony of his equipment being of Umbrella manufacture was not lost on Aaron, given that a goodly portion of the machine's computing power was given over to trying to expose that corporation's illegal activities.

The rest of the desk's wooden surface was laden with random assortments of books, CDs, Zip disks, floppy disks, Post-its, printouts, spiral-bound reports, envelopes, folders, and quite possibly the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa. Aaron had been meaning to clean the desk in his office since the Carter administration.

Once you got past the desk, the office—located in the western corner of Aaron's large suburban home—was quite orderly. Bookshelves lined one wall, contents arranged neatly. A wet bar—from whence he had taken the Chianti—and several landscape paintings adorned the opposite wall, and behind him was the picture window looking out on his acres of property. A cleaning service came in twice a week to vacuum, dust, and make sure everything was in order, but the cleaners were not allowed to touch Aaron's desk. Any attempt to disturb his chaotic jumble would, he was sure, destroy the consulting business that paid for the house and the cleaning service. The sloppiness worked for him.

Matt finally looked up at Aaron and stared at him. “It's the only way this'll work.”

“It's insane. Matthew, we cannot involve a civilian in this.”

“Civilian?
Listen to yourself, Aaron. We're
all
civilians. The whole point of this organization was that it was as outside the system as Umbrella is above it.”

Aaron grabbed his glass of wine. “Yes, but at least we all know the risks. And yes, we're all civilians
now,
but most of us at least have the experience necessary for this kind of work. Your sister—”

“Can
do
this.” Matt leaned back in his chair. Only then did Aaron notice that he was fiddling with a paperweight that Aaron had been trying to find for the last two months. “Look, if we try to send anyone else in undercover, it won't work.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“No, it isn't. If I go in, or Marcus, or Dora, or Zara, or Ripley, they'll make us. And you know why?”

Sighing, Aaron said, “No, but I assume you'll tell me.”

“Because we'll all have cover stories.”

“Of course you will.” Aaron finished his wine in one gulp. It was definitely too smooth. “That's what the ‘cover' in undercover
means.”

“And that's why it won't work. Umbrella's got their fingers in everything—no matter how good a cover we come up with, they'll find some way to plow through it, and we'll not only be back where we started, we run the risk of exposing the whole operation. That's why we need Lisa.”

“So you're saying that the only person who can possibly successfully infiltrate the Umbrella Corporation in order to obtain the information we need to bring them
down is someone who has absolutely no experience in infiltration or information retrieval.”

“Yes and no.”

Aaron rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger in a futile attempt to stave off a headache. “Matthew—”

“Yes, she has no experience in infiltration, except what she may have picked from me by osmosis.”

Chuckling, Aaron said, “Talked about your work in the Federal Marshal's office around the dinner table, did you?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Matthew, this is ridiculous. It's too dangerous—”

To Aaron's surprise, Matt slammed his hand on the oak desk, sending several pieces of paper, two CDs, and a Post-it with Aaron's daughter's cell phone number onto the floor.

“This whole fucking thing is dangerous, Aaron! If it wasn't dangerous, it wouldn't need to get done! But the longer we sit on our asses worrying about what risks we might want to take, Umbrella keeps getting closer and closer to doing something they
can't
cover up without getting a lot of people killed! Now either we do this, or I'm out.”

At that, Aaron laughed. “An action which will have repercussions from one end of your head to the other. Honestly, Matthew, do you truly think yourself so mighty a cog in our wheel that we will do something insanely stupid just to appease you?” He leaned forward. “I helped found this organization, and I've been one of
its primary financiers. Believe me,
no one
wants to bring Umbrella down more than me. One of the reasons why Umbrella doesn't know about us is because we're well spread out, well organized, and because we haven't taken stupid risks.”

“Yeah, and Umbrella's still going strong without any sign of being actually brought down by this organization dedicated to doing so because you're not taking
any
risks, stupid or otherwise.”

Aaron got up. “I need another drink. You want anything?”

Ignoring the question as Aaron went over to the wet bar, Matt instead sat bolt upright in the guest chair. “Besides, if I quit, it just means I'll go off on my own. One nice, big loose cannon asshole of an ex-Marshal who'll stumble around like an idiot trying to expose Umbrella, and probably get captured along the way. That wouldn't bode too well for your precious fucking organization.”

Rolling his eyes, Aaron said, “Really, Matthew, if you were the sort to do something like that, I never would have recruited you in the first place.”

Matt deflated, now slumping. “Yeah, I know, but it was the only card I had.” He looked up at Aaron. “Can you pour me one of those?”

Smiling, Aaron removed another wine glass from the cabinet, pouring the last of the too-smooth Chianti into it.

As he poured, Matt said, “Look, Lisa's got something none of the rest of us have.”

“Besides a lack of experience?” Aaron handed the glass to Matt.

“Actually, yes. You assumed that she had no experience retrieving information. But in fact, what she does for a living is work in computer and internet security. She's one of the top people in that field. Before she went freelance, she put in some good years at a lot of the top firms—KPMG, Bear Stearns, Citibank. She's got a killer rÈsumÈ. Not only that, but Umbrella headhunted her a few years back.”

Aaron blinked. “She turned them down?”

Matt nodded as he sipped his wine. Aaron was stunned. If Umbrella set their sights on a potential employee, they rarely stopped until that person was an actual employee.

“Why?”

“She was living in New York at the time, and didn't want to relocate to Raccoon. Couldn't, really. She and Nick were still married, and that was when Nick's mother was getting sick. No way they were gonna leave town with all the care her mother-in-law needed.”

“Umbrella has an office in New York.”

“Yeah, but they wanted someone for the home office.”

Snorting at the euphemism, Aaron said, “You mean the Hive?”

Matt nodded. Most of Umbrella's private sector work was done at their various locations around the globe: technology and equipment relating to computers and health care. The Hive was the underground complex under Raccoon City where the company conducted business relating to its government contracts.
Officially, the Hive existed in order to preserve the classified nature of some of those contracts. Unofficially, that was an excuse to do work—both for the government and the private sector—that was not necessarily legal or ethical.

“But she's divorced now, yes?” Aaron retook his seat.

Matt nodded again. “And even if she wasn't, the mother-in-law in question is dead. Lisa went freelance a couple years back, right after she and Nick split. With the economy in the shape it's in, though, I don't think she'll have any trouble convincing the recruiters at Umbrella that she'd like something more secure—if they're still interested. And, given the premium they place on security, I'm willing to bet real money they'll still be interested in taking her on, especially since she's got much more varied experience now.”

Aaron snorted. “You're living on a Federal Marshal's pension, and quite a meagre iteration of same, at that, Matthew—you don't
have
any real money to bet.” He sighed. “But what if they find out who she is?”

“They'll
know
who she is—a top-notch computer geek, who'll be working directly with the company's security people. You've met her, she can charm the socks off anyone. She'll be able to get us the info we need.”

“What happens when they run the background check and find out that her brother is a retired Federal Marshal?”

Matt shrugged his deceptively small shoulders. “We've lived on opposite sides of the country for most of our adult lives; we don't see each other that often. If
I
tried to get a job with Umbrella, they'd probably dig deep enough to find out what kinds of things I've been doing since I retired, but as the brother of a prospective employee, my”—he grinned—“veneer of respectability should hold up.”

Swiveling his chair slightly so he could glance out the picture window, Aaron took a thoughtful sip of his wine. It could work. His reservations notwithstanding, it was actually a better plan than anything else they had attempted.