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wasn’t recycled.
    Lisa had heard through the grapevine that there had been a fight over that interval among the powers-that-be of Umbrella. Some hardliners didn’t want to let anyone out at all, citing the delicate nature of the work they did as reason not to risk any kind of security breach. Others pointed out that the people they were doing that delicate work for would probably not be terrifically appreciative if the people doing that work went stark raving mad, which they would if they were forbidden from leaving the Hive for five years running—or even one month running.
    Two weeks had apparently been a compromise. Lisa’s two weeks were indeed coming up on Thursday, but she was surprised to hear that Alice knew that.
    Then again, Alice was the head of security for the Hive, and one of the top brass in Security Division generally.
    â€œSure,” Lisa said. Maybe then she could get the truth about her and Spence’s “day-long project” out of her.
    â€œGreat. We’ll meet at the train station at eleven on Thursday.”
    â€œOkay,” Lisa said.
    The “train station” was the terminus of the train that went from the secret entrance under the mansion to the Hive’s topmost floor. That was the access point to the Hive for most people, as well as the tube that went straight up to the basement of Umbrella’s corporateheadquarters in Raccoon City. The latter, however, was only for emergencies and for the higher-ups in the company. Lesser mortals like Lisa had to take the train to the mansion, get cleared by the “happy couple” in the mansion—at present, Alice and Spence—and then depart. On the off-chance that they were seen, they would simply be friends visiting the reclusive couple in the mansion, but that rarely happened. The mansion’s reputation—and very real threat of the law being called on trespassers—generally kept prying eyes away.
    Sometimes reputation was the best security.
    Lisa removed the headset and hit the END button on her phone. Then she stared at the monitor for several seconds.
    â€œIs something wrong?”
    â€œNo,” Lisa lied to the AI. “I think we’ve nailed this down.”
    â€œAgreed. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.”
    With that, the face of a ten-year-old-child-cum-Frankenstein-monster winked out from the upper-left-hand corner of Lisa’s flatscreen.
    Lisa had to resist the urge to stick out her tongue at the faded image.
    Instead, she sat back in her vinyl chair—a product of PosturePerfect, a subsidiary of the Umbrella Corporation, designed to be ergonomically correct and damned comfortable—and thought about what she had seen on Alice’s monitor.
    It had contained two graphics and a huge block of text. She hadn’t caught all the text, but several wordsjumped out at her: “T-virus,” “anti-virus,” and “fatalities.” All three words showed up several times, in fact.
    The graphics, however, were of more immediate concern. One showed a white rabbit being injected with some kind of blue substance.
    As for the other one . . .
    The more Lisa thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed, and the more she thought that perhaps she had been imagining things.
    But that, she feared, was wishful thinking. The graphic had taken up about a third of the available space in the window.
    It was like something out of a nightmare. Or one of those old monster comic books Matt had collected when they were kids.
    Nominally, it had a human shape: two arms, two legs, though its spine was bent in such a way that it could move on all fours—which it appeared to be doing in the graphic. It had skin like a rhinoceros’s, plated and faceted, only it was more brown and red than the gray of a rhino. Lisa wasn’t sure, but it looked like there were bones sticking out amidst the corded skin. The thing’s fingers and toes ended in