“They picked this place?
Not bad at all.” The Arklay Mountains, of all places.
At least the scenery was beautiful.
Not that Huo Xiu had time for sightseeing.
The virus should still have been spreading primarily through the sewer system, but compared with the larger zombies, it was the tiny carriers that were truly dangerous…
And then there were the man-made B.O.W.s still roaming the old facilities—Hunter Gammas among them.
With all of those factors combined, the infection in the sewers probably wouldn’t remain underground for long.
The T-Virus was unusual.
Even when people were infected by the same strain, differences in constitution and resistance produced wildly different incubation periods.
Some victims turned within an hour or two.
Most could resist for several hours.
People with exceptionally strong resistance might even last for days before the transformation took hold.
That only made the virus more unpredictable.
During the early stage of infection, most people experienced symptoms they could easily mistake for an ordinary cold.
By the time they progressed beyond that first stage, it was already too late.
Once the second stage began, the third and fourth followed rapidly.
Worse, most people would never notice something as insignificant as a bite from a rat or flea.
A collapse of the sewer system could create an even greater chain reaction: infected animals could move directly into Raccoon City’s interconnected water infrastructure and contaminate Victory Lake, the reservoir supplying the city.
If the water supply became infected, countless people could be exposed at once.
Which meant that even now, Raccoon City might already contain a terrifying number of people who were only waiting to become zombies.
“Come meet your teammates.
Their captain is an old friend of mine—Mikhail Victor.” A sharp, capable-looking older man stepped forward and shook Huo Xiu’s hand.
“Do your job properly.
Don’t become dead weight.” Huo Xiu nodded.
Mikhail might speak harshly, but he was a veteran soldier who genuinely cared about the people under his command.
In the end, he was even willing to use explosives and die taking Nemesis with him—a world apart from Nicholai.
That alone was enough to earn Huo Xiu’s respect.
Carlos and Nicholai came forward next and shook his hand in turn.
“Carlos Oliveira.” “Nicholai Ginovaef.” Several other members of the U.B.C.S.
Alpha Platoon were present as well, including a man named Bob whose easy humor left Huo Xiu with a good first impression.
The other platoons were also assembled nearby.
Predictably, not everyone welcomed the newcomer.
U.B.C.S.
casualty rates were notoriously high, and the unit had eventually been forced to recruit mercenaries and men with criminal backgrounds.
Now that those people held official positions of their own, some weren’t exactly eager to treat a new arrival with respect.
Huo Xiu solved that problem by demonstrating enough strength to make them shut their mouths.
As for Nicholai, Huo Xiu already knew exactly what kind of man he was.
His real assignment was that of a Supervisor.
Publicly, he operated alongside the U.B.C.S.; privately, his job was to use those same soldiers to test B.O.W.
combat performance, collect field data, and recover samples.
The position also paid better than ordinary U.B.C.S.
work.
The more teammates who died, the more bonus money a surviving Supervisor could keep for himself—which was why Nicholai so often went out of his way to arrange fatal “accidents” for his comrades.
Huo Xiu could only hope the old man had enough sense not to try anything stupid in front of him after seeing what he could do, much less attempt to set him up to die.
That concern was probably unnecessary.
Anyone capable of surviving the kind of situations that had earned HUNK the nickname Grim Reaper clearly possessed a functioning brain.
The difference was that HUNK kept encountering disasters by accident.
Nicholai preferred to manufacture them himself.
“Hyp Hoffman.
Call me Huo Xiu.
I’m the new guy—this operation is basically my entrance test, so I haven’t been issued a standard uniform yet.
Hope nobody minds.” Once the introductions were finished, Sergei began briefing the assembled units.
“This is a biohazard response mission.
An outbreak is expected here very soon.
Once it begins, your objective is to evacuate as many survivors from Raccoon City as possible.
Umbrella will provide temporary accommodation for the evacuees until the incident has been resolved and they can return home.
After completing the operation, report to Umbrella’s Raccoon City headquarters, fill out the necessary paperwork, and collect your compensation.
Understood?” The teams nodded.
Some were already whispering among themselves.
Most of these men had seen blood before; plenty had fought in actual wars.
To them, the assignment sounded almost laughably easy.
Rescue civilians and escort them out of Raccoon City?
They had studied the city’s maps, and it offered no shortage of possible evacuation routes.
The money practically sounded guaranteed.
“Huo Xiu.” Before deployment, Sergei motioned him aside.
“In addition to the rescue operation, Comrade Huo Xiu, I have a special assignment for you.
Complete either objective and I’ll consider your entrance examination passed.
Complete both, and I’ll personally do everything I can to secure you a higher position within the company.” Huo Xiu had to admit Sergei was going remarkably far for someone who had only just joined.
With a superior showing this much faith in him, refusing outright would feel ungrateful—especially when Huo Xiu was still just a recruit while Sergei’s position inside Umbrella stood beneath virtually no one except Spencer himself.
“Go ahead, sir.” Sergei nodded.
“I want you to enter the Raccoon City sewers and recover Umbrella’s core supercomputer, U.M.F.-013.
It contains backups of company data accumulated since Umbrella’s founding.
With your help, this incident may be resolved quickly, but U.M.F.-013 still has to be relocated because it is vital to a top-secret company project.
Remember: if you encounter an unexpected problem underground—or an opponent you cannot handle alone—contact me over the radio I’m giving you.
I’ll send my bodyguard, Ivan, to assist.” U.M.F.-013 was, in fact, the Red Queen from the Resident Evil films.
The movies and games had little direct plot connection, but there was no denying that this A.I.
deserved to be called formidable.
As for the top-secret project Sergei mentioned, Huo Xiu knew exactly what he meant: the T-A.L.O.S.
Project—Tyrant-Armored Lethal Organic System.
The idea was to combine a Tyrant with artificial intelligence and armor, turning something suited mainly to guerrilla warfare into a B.O.W.
capable of confronting armored units head-on.
T-A.L.O.S.’s brain was controlled directly by U.M.F.-013—the Red Queen—giving it almost unimaginable intelligence.
Conceived from the beginning as Umbrella’s answer to the Nemesis Project, it was by no means inferior to the Nemesis-T Type.
If Hypnos was the strongest Tyrant in close combat, then calling T-A.L.O.S.
the strongest Tyrant at range would hardly be an exaggeration.
In the end, of course, it still lost to the protagonists’ plot armor.
“Understood.” Sergei nodded, patted Huo Xiu on the shoulder, then removed the handgun from his own belt and handed it over.
“Use this for now.
Take the spare magazines as well.
Once your own weapon is finished, you can return it to me.
Go carry out your mission.” After watching Huo Xiu leave, Sergei glanced at a message on his communicator.
It was from Spencer.
“Colonel, why do you think so highly of that young man?” Sergei merely looked into the distance with a faint smile before typing his reply.
“Because he and I are alike.
We are both men who believe in something.
Umbrella and the U.B.C.S.
need more people like that.
I had intended to disband the U.B.C.S.
after this operation, but now…
perhaps letting that boy inherit it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
I believe the U.B.C.S.
could be reborn under his leadership.” Few people understood military discipline better than Sergei, who had spent much of his life as a soldier.
The U.B.C.S., with its chaotic mixture of personalities and backgrounds, had always been a compromise at best.
Sergei knew that men like these could never form a truly formidable military force.
Real strength required soldiers with conviction—people who believed in something beyond the paycheck.
And men like that were extraordinarily difficult to find.
Better to dissolve a unit drifting toward decay and focus Umbrella’s resources on cultivating the U.S.S.
instead.
That had been Sergei’s conclusion—until he met Huo Xiu.
Here was someone with genuine conviction and enough ability to breathe new life into the U.B.C.S.
So Sergei intended to support him.
If he could shape Huo Xiu into a worthy successor, all the better.
“Shit…” Huo Xiu had known from the beginning that northern Raccoon City—the area closest to the Arklay Mountains and reservoir—would be among the first districts to collapse once the outbreak began.
Even so, the sheer density of zombies made his scalp crawl.
Worse, this damned road was the only practical route forward.
Several mercenaries who had been joking only minutes earlier about how the operation was “free money” didn’t even have time to react before disappearing beneath the infected.
At least these were all basic zombies.
No Lickers.
Which made sense.
With this many bodies packed together, the noise would have been sheer torture for a creature with hearing as sensitive as a Licker’s.
“Push through!” Mikhail hurled a grenade into the horde.
The blast tore open a gap, while concentrated gunfire dropped the infected still blocking the road.
The surviving U.B.C.S.
operatives recovered quickly, one of them throwing a flash grenade into the mass.
While the zombies reeled from the burst of light and sound, the mercenaries forced a bloody path straight through and entered Raccoon City proper.
“Carlos, Huo Xiu—split up and search for survivors.
We regroup at the subway station.” At Mikhail’s order, the three separated.
Huo Xiu headed directly for the Raccoon Police Department, partly because it was close to an entrance into the sewer system and partly because the R.P.D.
formed the backbone of the city’s civil defense.
He had barely arrived when he came across a brutal scene.
“These things only go down if you hit the head!” A police officer lay on the pavement as a zombie lunged for his throat.
Riot shields and batons were scattered nearby.
The officer tried to draw his sidearm, but he was already too late.
Huo Xiu didn’t waste time thinking—he raised Sergei’s handgun and shot the zombie dead.
“Thanks, man…
I’m with the S.P.F., the new unit the chief just put together.
Chief Irons told us this was riot control.
At first I believed him, too—but this is nothing like a riot!”