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CHAPTER 02, In another life.
▬▬▬▬ Mark Trotsky loved his Job.He'd just started working for the Umbrella Corporation, and today was his first day in the Hive, Umbrella's state-of-the-art underground facility. True, he had to live in a big hole in the ground. On the other hand, he had a five-year guaranteed contract and was working in his dream job. The research and development he'd be doing in Pharmaceuticals put him on the cutting edge of his field.
The best part, though, was the five-year contract.
Through high school and college, Mark had formed several close friendships, primary among them being Gary Rhee, James Black, and Aurora Potter.
The awesome foursome they called themselves, and they'd been inseparable throughout their teen years, attended each others' major life events— including Gary's wedding to his on-again-off-again girlfriend, and James and Aurora's wedding to each other— and still got together once a month for their Bad Movie Night.
Unfortunately, Bad Movie Night had been getting to be somewhat depressing of late. After making big bucks during the dot-com boom doing Quality Assurance for companies who thought that acquiring a cool-sounding URL was the ticket to fame and fortune, Vince soon lost first his job, then his wife.
Two years later, he was struggling to find freelance work, and seriously considering taking a job driving a cab. James, after moving from computer programming to management, found himself out of work, and his programming skills too out of date to make him employable in a depressed economy. Just last week, Auroa was downsized when the accounting firm she worked for decided to cut costs.
Meanwhile, Mark was living in fear of his own employment prospects by the growing instability of his own company. Profits were down, and it looked very likely that the company was going to go under.
Instead, the company was bought by its primary competitor: the Umbrella Corporation.
Shortly thereafter, they dissolved the company and laid off all of the employees. But some were offered new positions within Umbrella. Mark was flattered to be one of them, especially since they offered more security, more money, and more interesting work.
Given what his closest friends were going through, having to live in a hole in the ground seemed a small price to pay.
He wasn't sure if he'd be able to attend Bad Movie Night for a while, but that was looking more and more like it was a good thing. Gary was getting increasingly depressed, and Aurora's ability to stay employed was the only thing keeping her and James going.
