“They’re moving faster than projected.” Another conference was underway at Umbrella’s Raccoon City headquarters.
This time, the screens showed live reports from the U.B.C.S.
operation.
“The U.B.C.S.
has demonstrated considerably better adaptability than expected.
Even when confronted with unanticipated threats, the units responded quickly.
The initial zombie attacks eliminated a large number of unsuitable personnel, but the number of survivors among our operatives is still substantially higher than in previous deployments.
This particular intake may be worth retaining.” Curiously, the person presenting the data wasn’t the director of Umbrella’s Raccoon City facilities.
It was Christine, head of Laboratory Six in Paris and the Loire research complex.
“According to Laboratory Six’s estimates, if this rate continues—even accounting for complications such as a power failure—the remaining civilian population could be evacuated within two or three days at most.
If progress accelerates, one to two days is possible.
Either result would be far better than our previous projections.” Umbrella had deployed the U.B.C.S.
with two intentions in mind.
Rescuing survivors was genuinely one of them.
If civilians could be removed before the military fully intervened, that was ideal.
If outside forces moved into the city first, however, Umbrella would have to eliminate whoever remained before company secrets could be discovered.
Fortunately, such an extreme measure no longer seemed necessary.
Most of Umbrella’s leadership preferred that outcome.
The more unnecessary interference they introduced, the more opportunities they created for mistakes.
Sometimes the smartest move was simply to let an operation that was already working continue.
If the outbreak was contained quickly enough and adequate compensation offered afterward, neither the government nor the military would possess much leverage against Umbrella.
Christine, however, wasn’t particularly interested in that part.
“Once the civilians have been evacuated, the city will primarily contain S.T.A.R.S.
personnel, infected hosts, police, military forces, and other heavily armed combatants.
At that stage, we’ll deploy the Nemesis-T Type with the surviving S.T.A.R.S.
members designated as targets.
The engagement will provide field data for identifying and correcting weaknesses in the Nemesis Project.
Against the police and military, we’ll deploy multiple T-103s to evaluate their combat performance.
We’ll also release Tyrant R from the Umbrella R&D Center and compare its performance against the T-103 under controlled operating parameters.” Tyrant R was another Umbrella development project.
It had received nowhere near the funding poured into T-A.L.O.S.
or Nemesis, but its comparatively low production cost offered something those programs did not: realistic mass production.
Controlling Tyrant R through MO Discs and layered command decoding was cumbersome, but the method was secure.
Different disc combinations could unlock or restrict different functions.
With enough useful data, perhaps Umbrella could even design a command configuration that let Tyrant R access Super Tyrant-level combat output while its restraint systems remained intact.
Electromagnetic shielding and anti-interference measures would also be added, minimizing parameter drift and reducing the chance of uncontrolled mutation.
“And what are we doing about the traitor’s Thanatos?” The room cooled noticeably.
The “traitor” was Greg Mueller.
From Umbrella’s perspective, the Tyrant he had created was an excellent product.
Thanatos combined many advantages of both the T-103 and T-002, remained violently aggressive while obeying its creator’s commands, and—most importantly—was potentially reproducible.
If Umbrella could mass-produce it, the result would be an extremely marketable B.O.W.
Unfortunately, Mueller refused to cooperate.
He insisted that a Tyrant was a work of art, not a commodity, and therefore ought to be unique.
The man had to be out of his mind.
Worse, he had mocked Umbrella for barely being able to handle its own problems.
For a defector, he seemed remarkably unclear on his position.
Thanatos was still Mueller’s creation and obeyed his orders.
That made simply killing the professor under its protection extremely difficult.
If Umbrella could at least obtain a blood sample from Thanatos, its researchers might identify what separated it from conventional Tyrants.
Capturing it alive would be preferable, but that was far more difficult than killing it.
The anesthetic mist developed by the French branch specifically targeted the nervous system of the NE-α parasite.
A Tyrant’s own nervous system was another problem entirely.
“Why not give our busy new recruit one more job?” The instant the suggestion was made, everyone physically present—and everyone attending by screen—stared at the speaker as though he had suffered catastrophic brain damage.
Morpheus was the first to answer, with all the tact anyone expected from him.
“Are you stupid?
Recruit or not, strong or not, he’s U.B.C.S.
personnel.
He reports to Sergei, and Sergei personally thinks highly of him.
So your brilliant idea is to bypass his commanding officer and start issuing orders directly to one of Sergei Vladimir’s men?
Genius.
Absolutely genius.
I guarantee you, offend the head of company security and he’ll really open your mind for you.” If one asked who truly wielded the most immediate power inside Umbrella, the answer wasn’t necessarily Spencer, who spent much of his time hidden away observing events from behind the curtain.
In practical terms, Sergei controlled the corporation’s security apparatus, understood military law, and had once been a colonel in the Soviet Army.
If Sergei wanted to, he could probably replace almost anyone in the meeting.
He possessed both the ability and personal charisma to do it.
He simply had no interest in their positions.
Even Morpheus, perhaps the most openly rebellious executive in the company, treated Sergei with a degree of wary respect.
At Umbrella, offending another department might mean retaliation came a little later.
Anger the B.O.W.
department and a B.O.W.
might conveniently “go berserk” outside your front door.
Anger sales and you could forget about seeing your bonus.
Anger pharmaceuticals and you might mysteriously turn into a zombie at home one day.
But anger security and you might not even make it home before a U.S.S.
team riddled you with bullets on the way.
Even the young Ashford heir on Rockfort Island had to submit proper requests before directing security personnel.
Sergei was a professional soldier.
Follow procedure and he was perfectly reasonable.
Skip the chain of command and start ordering his people around as though they belonged to you, and everyone would reasonably assume you were tired of being alive.
At that point Sergei himself probably wouldn’t even need to appear.
Two bald giants in white military coats with yellow-blue analysis visors might simply arrive and put you to sleep permanently.
The executive who had spoken realized he had made a fool of himself and simply stopped talking.
The executive in charge of Raccoon City then gave the final verdict.
“I’ll contact Nicholai when the time comes and have him recover Thanatos from Raccoon University.
If he can’t bring the specimen back, a blood sample will do.
That leaves one other problem.
What are we doing with that thing?
It’s a time bomb.” It wasn’t as though Umbrella had never tried reproducing the G-Virus independently.
William Birkin’s research process existed in company records.
But Lisa Trevor—the uniquely compatible test subject from which the discovery had emerged—was confirmed dead.
There was no practical way to recreate the original experimental conditions.
Out of desperation, Umbrella’s Raccoon researchers had selected an ordinary T-Virus zombie as a host and injected it with a grotesque cocktail: Progenitor Virus material, a β-mutant Progenitor strain, multiple T-Virus variants, and even NE-α parasite material.
Their hope was to force the emergence of a primitive G-like agent and then isolate and refine it into something closer to the actual G-Virus.
The experiment failed spectacularly.
The instant the mixture entered the zombie, its body collapsed.
Under the combined viral influence, the remains became…
something.
Yes—”thing” was really the only word for it.
It behaved almost like living fluid.
Researchers eventually immobilized it with cryogenic gas and sealed it inside a containment chamber.
As a weapon, it possessed potential.
As a controllable B.O.W., it was useless.
Keeping it indefinitely only transformed the laboratory into a warehouse for a ticking bomb.
The researchers had nevertheless given the organism a divine name: Nyx, goddess of the night.
Now Umbrella had reached the awkward point where releasing it was dangerous and keeping it was dangerous too.
“Use it in the field trial.
Deploy Nyx either near Nemesis or around the police station with the T-103s.
We may as well find out what it becomes.” Even Umbrella couldn’t determine whether the accidental organism retained anything comparable to the G-Virus’s adaptive mutation.
Its potential might even exceed a Tyrant’s.
Hopefully the test wouldn’t become impossible to clean up afterward.
Nyx might not qualify as a controllable B.O.W., but that didn’t mean it lacked commercial value.
As a disposable biological weapon for one-way attacks, it could still have a market.
“Then it’s settled.
Once all civilians have been evacuated from Raccoon City, the tests begin.” The gods were about to gather: Hypnos, Thanatos, Nemesis, and Nyx.
A war between monsters bearing divine names would erupt in a Raccoon City left to the dead.
Tyrant R would be there too.
Even Umbrella’s famous T-103s and its Hunter α, β, and γ models would amount to little more than supporting pieces beside them.
Raccoon City was about to become a battlefield for Tyrants—and a hunting ground for B.O.W.s.