Billy and Rebecca both wore the exact same grin as Ivan.
Rebecca clasped her hands behind her back, walked up to Ivan, then pulled one out and bumped her fist against his.
Her eyes shimmered with moisture.
Every other image had faded away; only Ivan’s reflection remained, and it would never fade.
Billy pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, came around to Ivan’s right, and knocked his fist against the other two.
In the underground monitoring room, the white-robed man had already risen from his chair and begun to sing out loud.
He was overjoyed.
Every word Ivan spoke, every gesture he made, struck straight at the man’s heart.
So much so that the white-robed man wanted to call off the so-called “trial” entirely, appear before the three of them in person, and then…
He thought of the three bumping fists, and of that line: “The road is winding, but the future is bright.” The white-robed man felt it in his bones.
Wasn’t that phrase the perfect expression of everything he had prepared and set in motion to destroy Umbrella?
The finest interpretation of it, surely?
The more he turned the words over, the more certain he became that they had been tailor-made for him.
His blood surged, and his singing rose higher and sweeter.
“Ahh~ a~ ahh~” After leaving the hidden chamber and returning to the main hall, Ivan’s squad moved into the second-floor area on the right-hand side of the front entrance.
As for the area beyond the front door, they had already looked out at it from a second-floor window.
It was a wide courtyard.
The problem was that it swarmed with B.O.W.s, and even if they cleared out every last one, the three of them would still be facing an endless expanse of forest.
A rainy night, a forest, and B.O.W.s that could come tearing out of any dark corner at any moment.
After weighing it up, the conclusion was obvious.
That escape route simply wouldn’t work.
Up on the second floor, Ivan’s squad moved in and out of the rooms without any pressure at all, coasting on the territory Bravo Team had already conquered for them.
Persistence paid off.
Behind a Knight’s Door, they finally found their real turning point.
Before they went through the Knight’s Door, the three of them spotted an enormous centipede lying in a water basin.
Judging by its stiffened hundred legs, it had clearly been dead for some time.
Ivan took out his camera and snapped two photos of the centipede’s “sleeping pose.” Comparing them, he realized this thing was even bigger than the giant scorpion they’d run into on the Ecliptic Express.
At least ten to eleven meters long.
Ivan caught himself sticking out a hand and measuring the corpse against the air.
Rebecca leaned on the railing with her arms folded, remembering the same boyish habits he’d shown aboard the train, and a faint smile touched her lovely face.
Billy stood at Ivan’s side, studying the carnage inflicted on the giant centipede.
His understanding of Bravo Team’s firepower deepened considerably.
Creeeak.
With that tooth-grating groan of hinges, the Knight’s Door welcomed its third set of visitors in ten years.
Inside, the center of the room held the same familiar circular structure, and at its very heart sat a control platform.
To reach it and start it up, you had to climb down a ladder.
Ivan’s squad didn’t waste much time deliberating.
They circled the perimeter once, found a door that refused to open no matter what they tried, and chose not to force the issue.
Instead they retraced their steps, took hold of the ladder one by one, and descended to the console.
“Another USS operative?!” Rebecca crouched down and examined this dead USS operative.
“Gunshot through the mouth.
Bullet hole in the skull.
Tearing wounds from sharp teeth on the body,” she said, straightening up to report her findings to the other two.
“My guess is the giant centipede bit him.
His teammates pulled him free, and then he ate his own gun.” “To keep him from turning, Bravo Team put a round in his head.” Billy thought of the poor bastard they’d found earlier, riddled with holes alongside an Eliminator, and let out a quiet sigh.
“Same old style.” Ivan stepped past Billy to stand beside Rebecca and studied the console in front of him.
There were no buttons, no levers, nothing resembling a switch.
In their place sat three rectangular slots.
(Huh?) Something caught his eye.
Ivan looked toward the corner on the right side of the operating platform, then crouched and reached out.
Rebecca and Billy turned to watch him.
With each sweep of his hand, another stone tablet came out and went down on the floor.
When the dust settled and they counted them up, there were exactly three.
No more, no less.
Ivan slotted the tablets into place as he laid out his theory.
“Looks like after Bravo Team set these in, somebody came through here, pulled them back out, and dumped them beside the platform.” Billy picked up the thread.
“Who, though?
The singing guy in the white robe?
Or somebody Bravo Team split off?” “Or is there someone else entirely?” Ivan, having just seated the second tablet, shook his head at the question.
“Hard to say.
But I’d put my money on the man in white.” “The attack on the train was probably his handiwork too.” Rebecca, standing at the far left, took the last tablet from Ivan’s hands.
“So he’s got a serious grudge against Umbrella itself?” Her words sent Billy back through everything they’d been through.
“If that’s the case, what exactly did Umbrella do to him?” “Don’t tell me he’s a product of their bio-experiments too, infected with the leech virus James Marcus developed?” “Very possible.” x2 Rebecca and Ivan said it in perfect unison.
Both froze for a beat, then looked at each other and smiled.
Nothing more needed saying.
Watching them, Billy shoved all the talk of experiments and viruses to the back of his mind.
He was genuinely glad to see the way those two clicked.
And quietly, he wished them both well.
The moment Rebecca dropped in the last tablet, the floor lurched beneath their feet.
Seen from outside, the structure was a watchtower built out over the water.
As the control platform came to life, the tower began retracting down into the lake, sending waves rolling outward.
Once it had sunk to a certain height, a door inside the tower lined up with a stone bridge.
Then the tower’s movement stopped.
Inside, Ivan’s squad watched the waterline climbing past their feet.
The tower had changed its original elevation.
That much was clear.
The three of them pulled back from the console and returned to the other door, the one that had refused to budge no matter what they’d tried.
Creeeak.
A sound like an old branch snapping.
Just as expected, the door swung open.
They stepped out of the tower onto the stone bridge, exchanged a few words, then held formation and advanced toward the building at the far end.
Before long they reached their destination.
Ivan took in the structure before him.
It was a church.
A black spire stabbed up into the storm clouds.
Rain slid down a shattered rose window.
Drip.
Water struck the uneven stonework of the ground.
Crack!— Lightning woke from its slumber, throwing the church’s dark silhouette into stark relief.
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