Red warning lights flashed violently inside the underground surveillance room.
Onscreen, the man who looked like a black bulldozer had just reduced two mutant baboons to pulp.
William Birkin clawed irritably at his tangled hair, still wearing the lab coat stained with unidentifiable substances.
“Lunatic.
He’s an unreasonable lunatic!
I am not letting an uncontrollable variable destroy my G-Virus research.” Wesker stood at the console and finally moved his finger away from the self-destruct button.
He turned toward his partner.
“James Marcus is already dead.
Whatever that thing on the screen was, this facility has no remaining value.” Wesker pressed a countdown control beside him.
“I’m going to the mansion.
Alpha Team still has an entertaining performance waiting there in the Arklay Mountains.
Destroy this place and bury the truth that’s leaked out, William.
Come with me, old friend.” William gave a cold laugh and turned toward an elevator descending deeper into the underground laboratory.
“Do whatever you want.
I’m taking my data.
The G-Virus is the endpoint of evolution—not some brainless defective Tyrant.” The elevator doors closed slowly, separating the former friends onto two completely different paths.
Red digits on the console began counting down in silence.
Meanwhile, not far from the control room on Basement Level Two, Leon and Rebecca crossed a bloodstained corridor and entered a circular chamber.
There were no monsters inside.
Instead, six lifelike stone animals stood in a ring: wolf, tiger, snake, deer, bird, and fish.
A dust-covered brazier stood before each statue.
Rebecca approached the wall and illuminated a line of brass engraving with her flashlight.
“‘The weak are meat for the strong; the victor reigns…
light the flames along the ladder of life.'” She read the inscription aloud and looked back at the braziers.
“It says we have to light them in food-chain order, weakest to strongest, to trigger the mechanism.” Leon stood beside the tiger and pulled a windproof lighter from his tactical belt.
The lid snapped open and produced a blue flame.
He studied the six animals for a while, turned the heavy helmet toward Rebecca, and said without a trace of embarrassment, “They don’t teach this at the police academy.” Leon tossed her the lighter.
“All I know is these terrorists definitely put ‘police officer’ at the top of the food chain.” Rebecca caught it and rolled her eyes.
Whatever awe she had developed toward the man was instantly reset by his proudly uneducated thug routine.
She walked to the deer statue and lit its brazier.
“Deer eat plants.
Wolves eat deer.” She moved from statue to statue while explaining with obvious annoyance.
“Tiger at the top, snake eats bird…” Leon guarded the doorway with the greatsword in one hand, periodically checking the corridor.
“So Umbrella runs a bioweapons lab and a wildlife park on the side.” He spoke casually.
“Once I get to Raccoon City, I’m writing an official complaint to the animal-protection people.” When the sixth brazier flared, heavy mechanisms turned inside the wall.
The stone panel behind the tiger statue sank inward and slid right, revealing a hidden office.
Old mold filled the air inside.
They entered, and Rebecca’s flashlight swept across the desk.
A chessboard sat on top.
She noticed an unnatural seam in its base and pried at it until a concealed panel came loose.
Several thick dust-covered notebooks bound in leather and a few sealed document packets were hidden inside.
Rebecca opened the first notebook.
It contained Marcus’s research notes, untouched for ten years.
The brittle yellow pages were crowded with writing about the development of the T-Virus and his resentment toward Spencer, another of Umbrella’s founders.
“December 4.
At last, I’ve succeeded…
a new virus.
We call it the ‘Progenitor.’ I want to bring it back and begin investigation immediately.” Rebecca read softly.
“March 23.
Spencer says he intends to found a company.
I don’t care, as long as I can continue studying the ‘Progenitor’…” The farther she read, the worse her expression became.
“September 19.
At last…
I have found a method to construct a new virus using the Progenitor as its foundation.
Fusing it with leech DNA may provide the breakthrough I need…
I call this new virus ‘t,’ for ‘tyrant.'” Leon set down the greatsword and approached the desk, armor scraping loudly in the quiet office.
“Leeches?
So that’s why those disgusting black things swarmed us on the train.” He looked over the notes.
Rebecca opened another envelope labeled B.O.W.
TEST REPORT and read its conclusions.
“Insects: ancient genetic structures are excessively stable.
Viral infection produces only gigantism and heightened aggression; unsuitable for weaponization.
Amphibians: infected frogs develop extreme jumping ability and tongue growth but attack indiscriminately; minimal practical use.
Mammals: monkeys lose vision and operate primarily through hearing…” Rebecca’s voice stopped.
Her hands began to shake as she stared at the final line.
“Conclusion: it appears no meaningful progress can be achieved without using a human as the base organism.” She looked up, biting her lip.
“James Marcus—the man on the screen declaring revenge against Umbrella—wasn’t some innocent victim.
He created all the monsters covering this place.” The files completely exposed the madness Umbrella had carried out inside the facility.
There had never been any Middle Eastern terrorist cell.
Everything here was a crime concealed by a giant pharmaceutical company in pursuit of catastrophic biological weapons.
The careless look disappeared from Leon’s face.
“Human experimentation…” His black-steel glove closed into a fist.
“Looks like this stopped being something you can solve with a citation.” He looked at the bloodstained reports and spoke in a low voice.
“This virus could genuinely threaten the world.
Those lunatics in white coats need to be destroyed completely.” Rebecca covered her forehead and sighed deeply.
“You should have understood that hours ago.
There is no such thing as ‘standard riot-control procedure’ for this place.” At last she had convinced the man who treated monsters like drunken suspects.
She felt along the bookcase and pulled a concealed metal lever.
The floor rumbled.
A seam opened in one corner.
A rusted iron stairway slowly rose.
Cold air carrying storm moisture blew down from an open exit to the outside.
Faintly, Leon thought he could hear a mechanical female voice repeating an announcement somewhere deep within the facility.
He could not make out the words, but the accelerating warning beeps and flashing lights made him quicken his pace.
They ran up the stairs, nearly clear of the main Executive Training School building.
A heavy double safety door blocked the far end of the corridor.
Five tall zombies in security uniforms stood before it.
Worse, two mutant spiders clung to the ceiling, green fluid swelling through their huge abdomens as they spun web across the route behind.
Rebecca started raising the shotgun, but Leon stopped her with one hand.
“No time to waste ammunition.
Stay close.” He lowered his center of gravity slightly and aimed the solid iron helmet directly at the horde.
The human tank started moving.
His boots struck sparks from the metal grating as he accelerated.
Heavy black armor drove a gale through the narrow passage, turning Leon into an unstoppable battering ram.
BANG!
He crashed bodily into the security zombies.
Bones broke in broad clusters.
High-carbon steel instantly smashed the breastbones of the first two, but Leon’s momentum did not fade.
He drove forward with three or four ruined bodies piled against him.
With a deafening metal crash, Leon hit the double safety door through the cushion of mangled flesh.
The rusted lock burst and both heavy doors flew outward in a spray of fragments.
The two spiders overhead had only extruded half a strand of web when broken sections of door swept across them like guillotine blades.
Green fluid exploded.
One spider lost half its body, dropped twitching to the floor, and became paste beneath Leon’s boot.
Rain immediately poured over them.
Rebecca ran through after him and was soaked to the skin in seconds, her green ballistic vest clinging tightly.
She splashed through green fluid and shouted at the broad black figure marching ahead.
“Leon!
Can you warn me before you breach a door next time?” He wiped rain from his helmet and kept walking without turning.
“Special assault is about surprise.
Also, if I stop moving, the armor might rust.” They crossed a pine path bending beneath the storm.
Rain hammered Leon’s black plates, washing away some blood and exposing scratched white paint below.
Soon, a sinister church appeared at the cliff’s edge.
Its pointed tower looked especially vicious under the lightning.
The church stood on the only route to the cable-car transfer station linking the training school to the underground factory.
Leon reached the heavy carved wooden doors and pushed hard.
The hinges shrieked.
Darkness waited inside, with several long rows of solid-wood pews arranged neatly across the nave.
They had barely stepped onto the stone floor to search for the cable-car control room when a piercing shriek thundered from the vaulted ceiling.
SCREEE—!
It was not a single monster.
Hundreds upon hundreds of small black mutant bats poured from the shadows of the roof like a tornado.
Leather wings beat together into a horrifying black tide that surrounded them, sharp beaks striking for their eyes.
“Fire!” Rebecca shouted and fired the Remington repeatedly.
BOOM!
BOOM!
Muzzle flashes burst in the dark.
Buckshot knocked more than a dozen bats from the air, but that meant nothing to the swarm.
More shrieking shapes rushed her face.
Leon stepped in front and seized Rebecca’s ballistic vest with his broad right hand, dragging her roughly behind himself.
He raised his left arm across his chest.
The broad high-carbon-steel bracer became an unbreakable tower shield as bats hammered into it, claws and teeth scraping sparks across the plate.
The real danger had only begun.
The circling swarm suddenly divided in perfect unison, opening an aerial corridor.
Lightning tore across the sky and the enormous stained-glass cross window at the top of the church exploded inward.
Glass poured down like rain.
An enormous infected bat with a wingspan over five meters dove through the opening on a blast of wind.
Twisted tumors covered its body.
Thick rear claws flashed beneath the lightning, aimed directly at Rebecca behind Leon.
The pressure of its approach was so strong Rebecca could barely keep her eyes open.
“Leon!
Get down!” she shouted from behind him as the monster closed at terrifying speed.
Leon did not retreat or even draw the oversized knife.
Through the viewing slit, he watched the charging creature.
When its claws were less than two meters from his helmet, both legs exploded against the floor.
The hard stone cracked into a web beneath his boots.
He jumped straight upward into the diving bat.
In midair, Leon ignored the gale from its wings and reached with both steel-gauntleted hands to seize its thick ankles.
For one instant, the air seemed to freeze.
The giant wings beat upward, trying to carry its prey into the air and tear him apart.
The former ruler of the sky had made one fatal mistake.
It had no idea what weight class it had grabbed.
The bat’s tremendous lift struggled briefly and hopelessly against Leon’s 150-kilogram armor and his own extraordinary mass.
“Get down here!” Leon roared in midair.
Raw strength overwhelmed biological lift.
The bat screamed.
Wing joints tore under the load and its body lost control, dropping like an airliner with both wings broken.
Leon used monstrous abdominal strength to force his position around as they fell.
Treating the creature like a giant rag, he powered through a shoulder-throw motion and dragged it bodily out of the sky.
BOOOOM—!
The black beast struck several front pews back-first.
A crater opened in the stone floor, benches exploding into splinters as dust blasted through the church.
The impact knocked Rebecca to the floor and sent her coughing.
She kept hold of the shotgun and forced her eyes open through the wreckage and dust.
Then she saw the scene ahead.
As the cloud thinned, the iron-helmeted man stood with one boot planted on the giant bat’s shattered chest.
Both hands locked around the wing joints.
With a wet tearing sound and a roar from Leon, his arms ripped the enormous creature bodily into two halves.
Hot, foul blood poured like another storm over the black armor.
The smaller bats, leaderless, had already scattered through the shattered window into the rainy night.