Chapter 15
A huge growth tank dominated the lab room. The front side was made of durable transparent plastic to reveal its contents. A seven-foot-tall albino behemoth, one hand deformed into a massive club, floated in the suspension liquid, which was clear as water. A Tyrant, trapped in suspended animation. Harmless, at least for the moment.
After a long, strenuous personal debate, Wesker realized that he had no real loyalties. He was merely loyal to those who offered him the most, and when those offers shriveled up, so did his loyalty. His work with Umbrella was based on loyalty to the corporation, but Wesker came to the decision that he could care less what happened to Umbrella if it conflicted with his own strong sense of self-preservation. And he was not alone, as Spencer’s hasty retreat pointed out. Wesker was loyal only to himself, and with that fact he formulated his plan to get out of here with everything he wanted.
It was not a perfect plan, not by a long shot. For it to work, he would have to put himself in some considerable danger. He would be at risk, and the slightest misstep would cost him his life’s work, his freedom, and probably his life. But there was no other way.
At this point, the only way to prevent the virus from spreading would be to stage a full-scale military operation against the treatment plant, where the infection began. Since that would incriminate him and demonstrate his part in the whole disaster, that was out of the question. So the virus was doomed to spread at least to the Arklay labs and Spencer’s mansion. Evacuating the labs was also out of the question, because each of the fifty-some people working there would be a liability. Any one of them could blab to the police or the press, and that would ruin everything. Some of them might even try to switch sides and join one of Umbrella’s competitors, limiting Wesker’s chances of selling his research profitably elsewhere.
And that was his main goal. All he had left was to gather up as much information about the projects and samples of the viruses as he could, and begin employment at another corporation where he could start the projects fresh and continue his research. He had already packed four cases full of samples of the numerous strains of the Progenitor and the T-virus, as well as a whole series of samples from their very own Typhoid Mary.
Lisa had been set free, and she was currently prowling through the lab like a wild animal exploring its new surroundings. Wesker wasn’t sure if releasing her was a good idea or not. Probably not. It hadn’t even been easy to do without getting killed. But in Wesker’s more humane moments, he pitied the poor woman. Setting her free had been an act of kindness, so to speak. The odds of her making it out of the lab complex were infinitesimally small, so its not like she could do any real damage. The odds were considerably higher that Lisa would accidentally find Wesker’s private lab and tear his face off to add to her collection, but he didn’t think that was very likely either. But in retrospect, setting her free was just one more thing he had to keep track of. Maybe it would have been safer just to leave her chained up. Too late to worry about it now.
There were so many projects running at the labs, Wesker sometimes had trouble keeping track of them all. He had to get samples of everything. All of the main biological constructs: the Tyrants, hunters, lickers, stingers, and others. Plus side projects like Plant-42 at Theta lab, the aquatic experiments from Delta lab, and the newly-created N-virus they just started experimentation with not more than a month ago. Wesker even had some secret personal projects that Spencer didn’t even know about. Mostly little ideas he worked on in his spare time, but some of them could be quite useful in the days to come. He had to make sure he packed everything.
In the meantime, he had lots of other work to do. He needed to contain the infection without letting anyone know it even existed, and call on someone to fight off the zombies without them knowing what they were up against. That part was easy. He had the perfect people in mind.
He needed to stall for time until he was done in the labs. He needed what military commanders might call a diversionary tactic. And he had to do it quick, because the longer he waited, the more likely the ghost at the treatment plant would set off a mass infection somewhere else and get the authorities involved before he was ready.
So Wesker did it. Right now it was six-thirty-two in the evening according to his watch. He released the Progenitor into the Arklay labs himself, over six hours ago.
Phase One was now over. Time for Phase Two.