Being called out by Captain Viktor caught Luo Guang a little off guard, but his expression held steady, without giving anything away.
So does Umbrella’s Luo Guang look exactly like me too?
Luo Guang wondered about that, not knowing whether it was good or bad.
Damn this temporary assignment.
Luo Guang had no idea what kind of person Umbrella’s Luo Guang had been, nor did he know how Captain Viktor knew that man or what their relationship had been like.
Because Luo Guang had not inherited the memories of the Luo Guang who had served as an Umbrella intelligence operative, he had no desire to talk too much with the other man.
Even his words were brief, for fear that one careless slip would expose him and arouse suspicion.
“Heh.
Temporary assignment.
Looks like intelligence work isn’t easy either,” Captain Viktor said with a faint smile, though Luo Guang could not tell what that smile meant.
Luo Guang shrugged and said with a helpless look, “Company rules.”
“Yeah.
Company rules.” Captain Viktor nodded in agreement.
Off to the side, Carlos looked back and forth between his captain and Luo Guang, shock written all over his face.
He had thought he had rescued two ordinary civilians, only to find that one of them was a S.T.A.R.S.
elite, while the other was an Umbrella intelligence agent.
So that’s why Luo Guang stepped in earlier to stop Jill from making baseless accusations against the company.
He works for Umbrella himself.
Linking it with the way Luo Guang had smoothed things over earlier, Carlos came to that conclusion.
But then how had those two ended up together?
Carlos was puzzled for a moment, but soon found an explanation.
Jill’s attitude toward Luo Guang was clearly not the same as the one she had toward him, another Umbrella man.
Considering Luo Guang’s role as an intelligence operative, he had probably concealed his identity on purpose.
Captain Viktor did not seem to care that Luo Guang clearly had no intention of saying more.
Intelligence operatives were all like that—speak less, listen more.
As a former soldier and current mercenary, Captain Viktor cared only about whether the mission handed down from above could be completed.
“How’d you get hurt?”
While Jill and Viktor had been talking earlier, Luo Guang had been observing the man and noticed that Viktor’s left hand had stayed pressed against the right side of his lower abdomen.
So he asked, testing the waters.
“Shrapnel from an explosion.”
Carlos tensed slightly when he heard Luo Guang ask that question, but Viktor himself answered calmly.
Viktor did not seem surprised in the least that Luo Guang would ask, Luo Guang noted inwardly.
As he pieced together an image of Umbrella’s Luo Guang in his mind, he imagined someone taciturn, self-interested, slow to trust others, and the like.
Luo Guang stared into Viktor’s eyes and met his gaze directly.
Then he gave a small nod.
“What’s the situation right now?
I need guns and ammo.” Although Luo Guang had an employee ID card, it contained no information about rank or anything similar, so he had no idea whether his status was above Viktor’s or not.
That was why he did not phrase it as an order.
From the way Viktor had spoken to him at the start, the two of them did not seem to stand in a strict superior-subordinate relationship anyway.
Carlos was the one who answered, pointing toward an empty equipment crate at the far end of the carriage.
“There isn’t any spare ammunition left here.
We ran into too much trouble on the way in—either we lost it, or we already used it up.
To be honest, we really do need to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“I see.” Luo Guang let out a sigh.
There was no point dwelling on something they simply did not have.
He was just about to say something else when the door opened again and someone else walked in.
The newcomer wore the same U.B.C.S.
uniform and armband as Carlos and Viktor.
He was a hawk-nosed man.
Sharp eyes, like a vulture’s, swept across the carriage.
The moment he saw Luo Guang, he let out a dismissive snort and said contemptuously, “You still haven’t run off?”
“You’re the one who’s always thinking about running, aren’t you?” The man’s tone carried obvious disdain, so Luo Guang’s reply came back barbed as well.
The moment he laid eyes on the man, alarm bells went off in Luo Guang’s mind.
Maybe it was one of those cases where the face reflected the heart.
Maybe it was just his own prejudice.
But whatever the reason, Luo Guang instantly pegged him as a selfish, dangerous sort—someone with a villain’s face.
No matter what, Luo Guang decided he needed to stay away from this guy.
Better yet, he needed to watch out for the man stabbing him in the back.
Of course, if the chance ever came, Luo Guang would much rather put a knife in his kidneys first and eliminate the threat ahead of time.
“Hmph.” The man still wore that same smug, standoffish look, and from what Luo Guang could tell, his answer had probably matched this man’s impression of “Luo Guang.”
“Zinoviev, what’s it like outside?” Viktor had no interest in how good or bad the relationship between the two of them was, and instead turned to ask the hawk-nosed man, Nikolai Zinoviev.
Rescue signals can’t get out, and every administrative department in Raccoon City has completely collapsed.”
Nikolai Zinoviev’s nominal task was reconnaissance.
In reality, however, he had another mission entirely.
His true role was that of an Umbrella observer.
A total of four platoons of the U.B.C.S.
had been sent into Raccoon City to carry out rescue and cleanup operations: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta.
Among them, Mikhail Viktor was the leader of Delta Platoon, while Nikolai Zinoviev was the leader of Bravo Platoon, B-Squad.
Now Nikolai Zinoviev was attached to Delta Platoon, while all of his original “Bravo teammates” had already been delivered by him into the hands of B.O.W.s—bio-organic weapons—where they lost their lives.
And the reason he did this was to complete the mission Umbrella had assigned him:
to collect combat data on bio-weapons.
His reason for staying with Delta Platoon now was exactly the same.
While using Delta Platoon as living test subjects for bio-weapons, he was also serving as Umbrella’s eyes on the unit, making sure they did nothing that went against the company’s interests.
Although Mikhail Viktor had joined the U.B.C.S.
under Umbrella’s banner, he had not done so willingly.
More than anything, he had been forced into it by circumstance.
After leaving the regular military, Captain Viktor had become the leader of an underground guerrilla group and taken part in a number of armed actions aimed at winning independence for the local people.
Using his unmatched leadership ability, he had carried out several successful operations, including an attack on an ambassador’s residence.
But when he once tried to lead a group of refugees across the border, Mikhail Viktor was surrounded by government troops.
To protect the lives of the refugees, he and his comrades surrendered their weapons on the spot.
At the international tribunal, however, he was sentenced to death for terrorism, with the execution scheduled for the very next day.
Yet just a few hours later, Umbrella security specialists approached him with a deal: in exchange for joining the U.B.C.S., his subordinates’ lives would be spared.
With death looming right before him, Mikhail Viktor naturally handed his life over to Umbrella without hesitation.
And as one of the terms of the contract, his wife and subordinates were immediately released without charge.
Umbrella had not saved Mikhail Viktor’s wife and men out of compassion.
It had all been for profit.
According to the investigators’ evaluation report, Umbrella deemed Mikhail Viktor’s military ability valuable enough to warrant it.
His wife and subordinates were the leverage Umbrella used to keep him obedient and force him to carry out difficult, unspeakable tasks for the company.
Or, to put it more bluntly, they were hostages.
On the other hand, Nikolai Zinoviev did not do these things out of any great loyalty to Umbrella.
It was simply because, once he became an observer, he received far more complete intelligence than the other soldiers during biohazard-related operations, giving him priority when it came to escape.
On top of that, he earned almost ten times the pay of the others after each mission.
To Umbrella, compared to the unwillingly recruited Mikhail Viktor, a man like Nikolai Zinoviev—utterly conscience-free, ruthless, and in love with money—was far better suited to be the company’s observer.
Or, put less politely, Umbrella’s dog.
“Then all we can do is see how far that S.T.A.R.S.
woman can get.”
After hearing Nikolai’s report, Captain Viktor muttered those words under his breath.
Viktor was not the sort who pinned all his hopes on someone else.
But the U.B.C.S.
comrades who had followed him this far were already almost all gone.
Right now, the only useful people left around him were one rookie, Carlos; one untrustworthy man, Nikolai; and one capable operative, Tyrell, who was already tied up with another assignment.
What was happening in Raccoon City was not an ordinary battlefield of human beings killing each other and becoming political sacrifices.
Most of the enemies here were biohazard creatures created by the outbreak.
And in that respect, Jill’s experience was no less than theirs.
On top of that, her original profession had been that of a police officer sworn to protect the people.
That was why Viktor felt at ease entrusting such an important mission to her.
“S.T.A.R.S.?” Nikolai repeated after hearing Viktor mutter the word.
“Jill Valentine.” Since Jill would return to this subway train once she finished the mission, the two of them were bound to run into each other eventually, so Viktor saw no reason to hide it.
“Oh?” Nikolai seemed to think of something amusing.
The corners of his mouth curled upward.
Without even waiting for Viktor—who was still tending his wound—to agree, he directly said he had thought of a place that might still allow contact with the outside world.
Then he turned and left without looking back.
Nominally, the two of them held the same rank, so Viktor merely fixed Nikolai’s departing figure with the hard stare of an old eagle and said nothing.
Silence settled over the carriage.
Taking advantage of the pause to rest, Luo Guang immediately turned his attention to studying the knowledge carried by the system.
He browsed through the information it displayed in his mind while also thinking over something else.
If I remember right, as long as Jill gets on that evacuation train, Nemesis catches up and destroys it.
So if Jill could be kept from boarding that train, then there was a high chance nothing would happen here, and Luo Guang himself could get out of Raccoon City quickly.
No matter how he looked at it, that was a good thing.
As for Jill, Luo Guang was not worried that this formidable woman would fail to survive.
Thinking that, and making mental preparations for it, Luo Guang took out the notebook recording various surveillance details on Jill and began studying it—after first confirming that everyone around him counted as Umbrella’s “own people.”
Jill had always been secretly investigating Umbrella’s illegal research and development of biohazard viruses and bio-weapons, hoping to gather enough evidence to report the company to the government and use state power to bring down that giant beast called Umbrella. New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
And the reason she began that investigation in the first place was because she was one of the survivors of the Mansion Incident.
It could be said that Jill and Umbrella shared a profound enmity.
On a personal level, most of Jill’s S.T.A.R.S.
teammates had been murdered by bio-weapons.
On a public level, S.T.A.R.S.
existed to protect the people of the city—and Umbrella was destroying those very people.
According to the rumors, even the founding of S.T.A.R.S.
and the later investigation of the mansion had been arranged so that S.T.A.R.S.
could serve as combat targets for various bio-weapons, allowing Umbrella to gather data and refine them.
As Luo Guang read through the notebook, he found that Jill had not uncovered much.
She had certainly found no hard evidence that could directly prove Umbrella’s crimes.
That was why Umbrella’s “Luo Guang” had been assigned only to monitor her, not silence her.
But the more Luo Guang read, the more he felt that Umbrella’s “Luo Guang” had been a complete pervert.
As the surveillance stretched on, the entries became more and more detailed.
In the end, the man had even found ways to record Jill’s bathing and bathroom schedule.
With Jill’s investigation into Umbrella having stalled, the notebook read less like an intelligence report and more like the diary of a deranged stalker.
Frowning, Luo Guang snapped the notebook shut before it could further pollute his eyes.
I should burn this thing later.
That was what Luo Guang thought.
Just carrying the notebook around already filled him with a weird sense of shame.
He glanced toward Carlos.
Carlos was currently fiddling with some device beside Viktor and was not paying attention over here.
Captain Viktor, meanwhile, was not looking at Luo Guang either, instead lowering his head in thought.
Neither of them was watching him, which made Luo Guang breathe a little easier.
Perhaps noticing his gaze, Captain Viktor lifted his head and looked back at him.
“Luo, the more I think about it, the less I like putting all our hopes on a single former S.T.A.R.S.
member.
“Raccoon City’s too dangerous.
That isn’t reliable enough.”
For Raccoon City, Jill’s the dangerous one.
Luo Guang recalled that Jill seemed to have a nickname along the lines of “the Queen of Heavy Firepower,” while Claire’s was something like “the Walking Arsenal.”
Still, Luo Guang understood what Viktor really meant.
Looks like the old man wants me to go find Jill.
If Jill was still alive, then the two of them could work together.
If he failed to find her—or only found her corpse—then naturally the task of restoring power to the subway would fall to Luo Guang instead.
“I understand.”
No more needed to be said.
If Luo Guang had not known that Raccoon City was going to be blown away, he would have rejected the idea without hesitation.
True, he could also have objected and suggested that Carlos do it instead.
But Carlos already knew his identity, and with Carlos’s personality, if he ran into Jill, there was a very good chance he would tell her about Luo Guang’s background.
So it was much better for Luo Guang to take the initiative, seize the chance, find Jill first, and earn himself a round of goodwill.
As for how he would do that—simple.
If the two of them could complete the mission together, then they would naturally build up the kind of trust only life-and-death comrades shared.
At that moment, however, Luo Guang completely forgot one thing: Carlos would not need to find Jill at all.
He could just tell her over the radio.
Seeing Luo Guang agree so readily, Captain Viktor actually let a faint smile show for once.
He pulled the radio from his waist, adjusted the channel, and tossed it over.
Luo Guang caught it with one hand and was just about to try contacting Jill when Carlos stopped him with a doubtful look.
“The signal won’t get out inside the subway station,” Carlos said.
“And we don’t know whether Jill needs to keep quiet on her end.”
“Fine.” Luo Guang did not insist.
He had at least gotten a short rest, and since time was tight, he got ready to leave the carriage.
Then, as though suddenly recalling something, he turned back and said to the two men with a serious expression:
“Nemesis’s target is S.T.A.R.S.
For your sake, and for the civilians too, don’t let Jill hitch a ride on that train.
“And be careful of Nikolai.
Umbrella planted him inside the U.B.C.S.
as an observer.”
After saying that, Luo Guang did not wait for Carlos to answer.
He turned and left the carriage without looking back.
It’s not really mandatory—I’ll eventually upload all the chapters here—but it helps a lot in supporting me and allows me to dedicate more time to it.