Free Resident Evil. Retribution by John Shirley Page B

suppose you want to tell me what these are for?” Luther said, nodding toward the explosives.
    Barry finished pushing a wire into the block, then turned to stare quizzically at him.
    Luther shrugged apologetically—not feeling it, though.
    “I know, I know… I’m just an advisor.” He grinned.
    The faintest flicker of a smile showed at the corners of Barry’s mouth.
    “Listen, don’t get Leon wrong,” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s not that he doesn’t like you. He just doesn’t know you.”
    Luther nodded.
    “And what about you?”
    “Me?” Barry considered for a moment. “I just don’t like you.” He stood up, and walked away from the towers, moving toward the bunkers, leaving Luther to wonder if he’d been joking or not.
    Giving up, he sighed and followed Barry over to the bunkers, where they joined Tony. Through a warped, yellowed window in a discolored steel door he could just make out rusted Soviet-era equipment that lay inside. There were hulking machines, some with huge pulleys, and he couldn’t tell what any of it was for.
    Sergei unplugged his laptop, and he looked pleased.
    “We’re in!” he announced.
    Meaning what? Luther wondered. The door was still shut, and looked rusted into place. How are we getting in?
    The answer came a moment later, when the snow that had drifted between two of the concrete bunkers began to move from below. Before his eyes the ground was opening up, as huge panels yawned wide to reveal a deep, silo-shaped shaft extending straight down into the ground, hundreds of yards into the shadows. There were four open-air elevator platforms attached to the shaft’s walls.
    Luther sighed—quietly enough that the others wouldn’t hear.
    “Elevators… I hate elevators.” He stared down the shaft. It was relatively new; the platforms weren’t rusty. “The Soviets didn’t build this,” he said.
    “Umbrella built it,” Barry replied. “The old Soviet shell is just more masking.”
    “Come on,” Leon said. He led the way onto the nearest elevator platform—it was large, enough so to carry supplies, even vehicles. Luther stepped gingerly onto it, wondering what had happened to the concept of walls.
    The rest of the team studied the bottom of the platform, and he heard a series of clicks as they attached something to the metal. Then they joined him on the platform, standing close to the curved wall. Luther could feel warm air rising from below. Leon pressed a button on a control pedestal.
    The elevator shuddered, causing every muscle in Luther’s body to tense. It grumbled mechanically, and began to move slowly downward. He patted the machine gun pistol he had under his coat. He had a strong feeling he’d be using it.
    Hope I brought enough ammo.
    As they sank into the shaft, the bright Arctic sky— lit by the midnight sun—receded until it was a distant circle of light, far above. And still they descended.
    “Synchronize watches,” Leon said. “Two hours exactly in three, two, one…”
    Two hours till the explosives went off.
    One hour, fifty-nine minutes, fifty seconds. Forty-nine seconds… Forty eight seconds…
    “Why don’t we just trigger the explosives remotely?” Luther asked. When we’re safely out of the damn place.
    “Can’t risk them jamming the signal,” Leon countered as he checked that his combat rifle was loaded.
    Luther shook his head. These guys were professional badasses, working for people he didn’t know—and they liked to play with timed explosives.
    What the hell have I got myself into?
    He sure would like to see Alice again, though. Now there was a woman. “Amazing” didn’t even begin to cover it. So he glanced at his watch again.
    “And what if we take longer than two hours?”
    “Then,” Barry said, a little too matter-of-factly, “I hope you’re good at holding your breath.”
    Just then they reached the bottom of the silo, where the elevator entered a much smaller vertical tube, hardly big enough for the