Huo Xiu wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
Irons had gone off the deep end the moment he received the warning.
As the saying went, a clear conscience fears no midnight knock—and Irons had far too much on his conscience.
Mayor Warren had naturally shown his police chief the biohazard alert Umbrella issued, yet before anyone had even confirmed how far the infection had spread, Irons had convinced himself he was already infected and begun obsessing over taking the entire police department down with him.
The worst part was that he hadn’t stopped at thinking about it.
He actively withheld every useful piece of information about the zombies from his own officers, causing massive police casualties and ultimately helping condemn the R.P.D.
to annihilation.
The scumbag was also an avid collector of specimens.
With the city collapsing and no reason left to restrain himself, he had even started turning human beings into trophies.
Huo Xiu was already considering the most appropriate way for this scumbag to “die heroically in the line of duty.” “Pass what I told you on to your colleagues.
And make sure the deputy chief hears about it.” Unlike that scumbag Irons, Deputy Chief Raymond Douglas was the real thing.
Plenty of officers in the department were fiercely loyal to him.
During the original outbreak, Raymond and his men had drawn enormous numbers of infected onto Ennerdale Street and detonated explosives, wiping out a massive portion of the city’s zombie population.
That was one reason the streets were comparatively sparse by the time Leon and Claire arrived later.
“Yes!” Huo Xiu finally relaxed once the officer disappeared into the police station.
I’m actually helping people.
The S.P.F.
had originally been created by Irons to replace S.T.A.R.S., only for the entire unit to be wiped out on its very first assignment.
Huo Xiu had changed the fate of at least one officer who should have died under a zombie’s teeth.
He still didn’t know the man’s name, but if that officer carried the information back inside, someone would inevitably connect it to the investigation S.T.A.R.S.
had conducted two months earlier.
That alone could prevent a great many police deaths.
The R.P.D.
wasn’t short on firepower.
If its officers knew zombies had to be shot in the head, they had every chance of stabilizing the situation.
Unfortunately, Irons had never intended for his subordinates to survive.
On the bright side, Huo Xiu’s route worked in his favor: Irons had built a private chamber down in the sewer system for indulging his twisted appetites.
It was almost directly along the way.
If Huo Xiu happened to run into him, he could always arrange that heroic death on the spot.
Huo Xiu headed rapidly toward the sewers.
Hopefully U.M.F.-013’s core wasn’t too large; hauling the entire machine out alone would be a problem.
In theory he only needed to recover the core.
Once he had it, he could send Sergei the location of the remaining hardware.
Moving something that big would require a helicopter anyway.
Several underground laboratories connected to the sewer system.
William’s was only one of them; another had been used to develop Hunter Gammas.
One of those facilities might be where U.M.F.-013 was stored.
William’s lab, however, could be ruled out.
If someone as intelligent as William had possessed access to a computer containing Umbrella’s most sensitive secrets, he would have used it as leverage against the company.
And Umbrella had never trusted William enough to put its entire institutional memory in his hands.
Huo Xiu was still considering the possibilities when the sewer’s local apex predator arrived.
He could hear the roar of rushing water ahead.
I really don’t want to get in that sewer water…
Unfortunately, some sections had no dry ground at all.
If he wanted to keep going, he would have to wade in and face the thing directly.
An alligator.
From the species, it looked much like the ones kept at Raccoon Zoo, except this one had been infected with the T-Virus.
The sewer had apparently offered it an absurd abundance of food.
After feeding on zombie corpses, it had grown to a size no ordinary human could hope to confront directly.
Even Leon had needed an explosion to blow its head apart.
Huge as it was, the creature didn’t seem especially intelligent.
Hardly surprising.
It was a reptile to begin with, and the T-Virus had further eroded its brain.
Thought was not exactly its strongest weapon.
Even so, sheer mass alone made the beast far more dangerous than a normal human, a T-Virus zombie, or even a Licker.
Unfortunately for it, Huo Xiu wasn’t human either.
“Let’s make this quick…
Even if somebody offered me your hide for free, I wouldn’t take it.” Moss and sewer trash clung to the alligator all over its body.
Huo Xiu genuinely had no idea how the disgusting thing had survived this long.
Then again, an animal that could live entirely on garbage had to be absurdly tenacious.
Viewed that way, its enormous size almost stopped being surprising.
Infection had enlarged the alligator and apparently erased whatever fear remained in its instincts.
The T-Virus left it with one overwhelming sensation: hunger.
Its accelerated metabolism demanded food, and the figure in front of it looked like another meal.
All it had to do was devour him the same way it devoured zombies.
The alligator lunged.
Huo Xiu calmly tucked away his gloves, holstered the handgun, and transformed both hands into massive claws.
He sprang high into the air and drove them straight down into the alligator’s skull.
Thick hide reinforced by the T-Virus and heavy reptilian bone ruptured like tofu.
It wasn’t like an explosion blasting the head apart; the claws split it open as though enormous blades had carved through it, and the force behind the strike crushed everything underneath into pulp.
The alligator’s gigantic headless body collapsed instantly.
Huo Xiu retracted his claws and put his gloves back on.
I should probably find a laboratory and wash my hands.
So far, nearly every enemy he’d encountered had been something he could defeat with ease.
The only opponent who had forced him to enter a true combat state and take the fight seriously was Nemesis.
And Nemesis’s first form was only the beginning.
Against its second form, Huo Xiu was confident he could maintain the advantage if he had proper weapons.
Without them, he would probably be forced into a brutal battle of attrition.
The third form was another matter entirely.
Without heavy firepower, even Huo Xiu couldn’t imagine dealing with something that enormous.
Once an enemy reached that scale, superior close-combat skill stopped mattering.
Only high-powered ranged weapons could realistically bring it down.
Fortunately, once the oversized alligator was dead, nothing else seriously obstructed the route.
Huo Xiu did see several Hunter Gammas sliding from drainage outlets.
They had probably escaped from a laboratory through its wastewater system and entered the sewers in search of food.
Unlike the alligator, the Hunter Gammas became remarkably docile the moment they saw him.
They apparently recognized how dangerous he was.
Hunters weren’t mindless creatures; their intelligence was roughly comparable to that of children.
And even a child understood fear.
If they tried to hunt Huo Xiu, they would die.
That conclusion was simple enough.
Huo Xiu paid them little attention.
Actually, Hunter Gammas are kind of cute when their mouths are closed.
But his priority was recovering U.M.F.-013.
He continued through the sewer network, occasionally finding doors locked behind electronic mechanisms that demanded special batteries or other ridiculous components.
Huo Xiu had no time to hunt for batteries, so he chose the more efficient solution: rip the doors off their hinges.
The sewers were divided across multiple levels.
In one tank built for raising Hunter Gammas, Huo Xiu found a concealed door.
A Gamma lurked nearby as though guarding it, but with death practically standing in front of it, the creature showed no interest in attacking him.
Where did all the researchers in this place go, anyway?
Surely he wasn’t unlucky enough for every last one of them to have become infected and then eaten by the giant alligator.
Otherwise, the complete absence of personnel was difficult to explain.
They might have evacuated after receiving Umbrella’s warning.
Considering how these disasters usually went, the truth was probably an ugly combination of both possibilities.
Huo Xiu activated the drainage system and emptied the breeding tank.
Behind the hidden door was a wide chamber dominated by the enormous body of U.M.F.-013, its electronic core pulsing with red light.
Aside from the supercomputer, the only furniture was a desk with a terminal.
As Huo Xiu entered, red light swept across his entire body in a full scan.
The terminal then powered itself on and automatically logged into Umbrella’s internal employee network.
“Hyp Hoffman.
Wel—” Huo Xiu sat at the terminal and typed a response.
“How do you know who I am?” Then a synthesized female voice rang out.
“Colonel Sergei Vladimir added your information to Umbrella’s employee registry yesterday.
You are therefore authorized to communicate with me and access the company network.” That made things considerably easier.
Huo Xiu typed again.
“I’m here to recover you.” “Please wait.” The moment the reply appeared, Huo Xiu watched U.M.F.-013’s core begin disengaging from the larger machine.
Once the core completely separated, the surrounding hardware entered standby.
Huo Xiu opened his communicator and sent Sergei a message on their designated channel, including the exact coordinates of the outer unit.
“Colonel, I’ve recovered U.M.F.-013’s core.
The outer hardware is too large for me to extract alone, so I’m afraid that part is yours.” Sergei’s reply arrived almost immediately.
“Excellent work, comrade.
Leave the rest to me.” Huo Xiu breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Good.
He wouldn’t have to sit underground waiting for Sergei to arrive.
With the core secured, he turned and made his way out of the sewers.
The moment he emerged, Huo Xiu spotted a lone figure hurrying from City Hall toward the police station.
Well, well…
What are the odds?