Next is the hospital…
The problem was that Huo Xiu did not actually know anyone there.
Mailing the vaccine to the hospital might be enough.
That would solve the immediate problem.
One day remained.
In another twenty-four hours, the biohazard would begin.
It was not even evening yet, but Huo Xiu was surprised to find that finishing his errands had already consumed most of the afternoon.
Fortunately, he had bought a city map and used taxis; Raccoon was large enough that crossing it on foot would have wasted enormous amounts of time.
He decided to find a Chinese restaurant, eat properly, and get some rest.
Once the crisis began, genuine downtime would become rare.
Over the next several days, every hour could change the situation completely.
After resting at the Apple Inn, Huo Xiu headed out again.
He ought to give Umbrella something in return for all the expenses he was charging to their account.
Conveniently, he knew of an infected individual who might prove extraordinarily valuable to their research—and he felt absolutely no guilt about exploiting the man.
Huo Xiu left the city and entered the Arklay Mountains.
Few people had ventured into the region since the Mansion Incident two months earlier.
His destination was not the Spencer Mansion, however, but another building hidden among the mountains.
On the way, he bought a lighter.
He did not smoke.
The lighter was for what came next.
A ruined structure eventually appeared ahead.
Despite the decay and the moss crawling across its white walls, enough remained to recognize what it had once been: a hospital.
“This is the place.” Huo Xiu glanced at the lighter in his hand.
Compared with synthesizing or searching for the chemical used to wither the infected plant, fire was much simpler.
The thing was not some supernatural undead spirit.
It was only a plant infected by the T-Virus.
And it was time to give the man trapped here—someone who could no longer distinguish reality from delusion—an ending.
Just as Huo Xiu expected, the moment he entered through the main doors, a hooded figure carrying an axe smashed through a doorway and swung at him.
Huo Xiu calmly removed one glove, tucked it into his coat pocket, and raised his bare hand to meet the blade.
The axe struck his palm without breaking the skin.
When the Axeman tried to pull back, Huo Xiu pinched the blade between his fingers and applied a fraction of his strength, flinging the entire man away.
Albert Lester might have been altered by the T-Virus and achieved a degree of symbiosis with it, but compared with Huo Xiu, his strength simply did not amount to much.
The Axeman was Albert Lester, former director of the abandoned hospital.
In exchange for enormous funding from Umbrella, Lester had agreed to use cancer patients in illegal trials involving experimental T-Virus-based treatment.
The “treatment” eliminated the cancer by eliminating the patient along with it.
Lester even administered it to his own wife, Dorothy, who also had cancer.
In the end, she too became infected.
The experiments were eventually exposed.
Chief Irons helped seal and abandon the hospital while keeping its full truth from reaching the public.
What remained of the facility was now being held together by the enormous infected plant that had absorbed Dorothy’s remains.
Once that plant died, the structure would collapse with it.
For a man as thoroughly broken as Lester, Huo Xiu believed release was kinder than leaving him to continue like this.
“Don’t worry.
It’ll all be over soon.” Huo Xiu made a small cut in Lester’s body, inserted one of the syringes scattered around the hospital, and drew a tube of blood.
In theory, Lester represented something very close to what Umbrella had always wanted from the T-Virus: he had not degenerated into a conventional zombie, had formed a stable relationship with the virus, and retained his sanity.
His blood might contain unusual antibodies—or perhaps a comparatively benign mutant strain.
Huo Xiu did not understand the underlying biology, but that hardly mattered.
He could leave the sample by a sewer entrance, where HUNK—the Grim Reaper—was bound to notice it; if no opportunity presented itself, he could simply carry it himself.
He had no doubt Umbrella would turn useful research into medicine.
Publicly, the company was still the leading force in the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium.
Without worthwhile drugs of its own, it might have been displaced long ago by Tricell, the successor to Travis Trading.
Perhaps the virus in Lester’s body—or the mechanism that allowed him to coexist with it—might even produce a genuine breakthrough against cancer.
The line between a bioweapon and a medicine could be terrifyingly thin.
Used for the wrong purpose, the same technology became a weapon.
Used correctly, it could become a miracle drug.
Huo Xiu descended into the hospital basement and finally saw the enormous plant lashing its tendrils through the structure.
He found a naturally mutated T-Virus plant genuinely fascinating.
Plant 42 had been deliberately cultivated, while the Veronica Plant belonged to a different biological lineage.
This specimen was something else entirely.
Unfortunately, curiosity could wait.
“Time to get rid of this thing.” The T-Virus was not magic.
Organisms infected by it still had to obey fundamental biological limits.
In zombies, dramatically accelerated metabolism and regeneration consumed immense quantities of energy.
That was why infected humans attacked people and animals—and why they sometimes resorted to cannibalism even against other infected organisms.
Infected animals faced the same demand.
So did infected plants.
Plant 42 could create mobile plant-based infected organisms to act as extensions of itself and acquire nutrients its stationary body could not reach.
The plant beneath this hospital clearly lacked that ability.
So where had its energy come from?
Photosynthesis alone could never sustain something this enormous.
The answer was obvious.
Without Lester continually supplying it with living nourishment, the plant could not have survived this long.
Few people had entered the Arklay Mountains since the cannibal-disease reports began.
After the local wildlife had largely been caught or driven away, how many human beings had been fed to it?
No one could know.
“It’s time to end all of this.” Huo Xiu removed his other glove and tore open the plant’s thick outer tissue.
To him, it was easier than peeling an ear of corn.
The heavy rind split apart like fruit skin, exposing the core beneath.
He held the opening apart with one hand, flicked the lighter alive with the other, and tossed it directly into the exposed center.
Only after flames took hold did he release the plant.
It was finished.
Whatever mutation the T-Virus produced, plants still feared fire—even Plant 42 did.
As if by some final stroke of fate, the burning core convulsed and expelled Dorothy’s remains.
“…Ah.” Huo Xiu sighed.
He could not simply leave the remains exposed in the ruins.
Perhaps, in the end, husband and wife dying together was the least cruel conclusion available.
The ground had already begun to tremble.
With the plant dying, the building could not remain standing much longer.
Once the infected mass burned away, the hospital would collapse completely.
Lester lay near the entrance.
He understood what had happened.
It was over.
The plant he had come to regard as his wife was dying, and he had no strength to avenge it.
The being responsible was plainly not human, but Lester could not understand his motive.
Power?
Money?
Why would something that strong care about a disgraced director and an abandoned hospital?
With power like that, Huo Xiu could have taken far more profitable work from Umbrella.
Lester would never receive an answer.
“…Go see your wife one last time.” Perhaps disappearing into the fire together was the best ending left for them.
Lester himself carried the T-Virus.
If Huo Xiu buried his body beside Dorothy’s, another plant might eventually absorb infected material and repeat the same tragedy.
He could not allow that.
Lester stared at Huo Xiu for a long moment.
He had removed the hood, and the emotion in his eyes was impossible to reduce to a single word.
Finally, he lowered the axe and forced himself upright.
From a pocket he drew a silver ring—the wedding ring from his engagement to Dorothy.
He straightened his clothes, then walked toward the burning ward.
His silhouette disappeared into the flames.
“Time to go.” When the final vine vanished beneath the fire, the abandoned hospital collapsed in a roar of dust and broken masonry.
The crimes committed there—and the warped love that had survived among them—turned to ash together.
Only then did Huo Xiu finally understand what he wanted to do with his second life.
The answer was not to reject biotechnology itself, but to put its achievements to legitimate use instead of turning them into weapons.
He would oppose the people who profited from bioweapons and harmed others with them.
If destroying Umbrella outright would simply create a market for a dozen successor companies, then he would build a new Umbrella from within the old one—use Umbrella’s own resources to create a truly powerful anti-bioterror organization.
If every corporation had the potential to become the next Umbrella, then Umbrella itself could be forced to police them.
Huo Xiu’s own strength had been born from biological experimentation, after all.
Who says a Tyrant can’t fight bioterrorism?