Rain came down in sheets.
The wrecked train burned fiercely in the black tunnel behind them, its fire turning the falling rain dark red.
Leon used the black-steel greatsword as a support and straightened from the mud.
He thumped the high-carbon-steel chest plate marked in white paint, producing a dull metallic knock.
Rebecca stood beside him with the Remington locked in both hands, her green tactical vest soaked through and plastered to her body.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly.
She looked once at the wreckage behind them, then toward the enormous building swallowed by the night.
Dark green vines climbed its walls, and two massive ornamented bronze doors were shut tight.
Leon crossed the flooded ground in heavy steel boots and walked straight toward them, black armor flashing coldly beneath the lightning.
He stopped at the entrance without reaching for a key or testing the rusted handles.
He planted the Doorstop beside himself, tightened his core, and raised one combat boot wrapped in high-carbon steel.
Thick thigh muscles locked as he drove several consecutive kicks into the center of the decorated bronze doors.
BANG—!!!
The deafening impact tore through the rain.
The heavy bronze doors, sealed for who knew how many years, did not even have time to groan.
The force ripped them bodily out of the wall together with their rusted hinges.
Both panels flew five or six meters into the building, smashed onto marble tile, and skidded before stopping in a cloud of dust.
Leon lowered his leg, shook stone chips from his boot, and strode over the shattered frame.
Rebecca stood behind him staring at the enormous opening, mouth slightly open.
“That’s destruction of a crime scene!” she finally shouted, hurrying after him.
“We’re investigating, not demolishing the building!
What kind of police officer removes the entire door just to enter?” Leon stopped and turned the iron skull toward her.
His voice came low through the mask.
“Against a fortified base occupied by heavily armed terrorists, knocking only announces our position.
A proper S.T.A.R.S.
breach creates immediate psychological shock and disrupts their defensive response.
That’s tactical professionalism, rookie.” Rebecca was momentarily speechless.
She rubbed the side of her ribs where the armor had dug into her during the jump from the train and carefully stepped around the rubble.
The explanation sounded ridiculous.
But as long as that tall wall of black steel stayed in front of her…
Her fingers loosened slightly around the gun.
At the same time, deep inside the enormous building— Rows of old CRT monitors cast dim blue light across an underground surveillance room.
Dozens of divided feeds watched every corner of the abandoned Umbrella Executive Training School.
Every camera facing the main hall had captured what just happened.
William Birkin stood in a coffee-stained lab coat, half of a nearly burned-out cigarette between his fingers.
He stared at the center CRT until one eye twitched.
Onscreen, the decorated doors flew into the hall like sheets of paper and crashed across the tile.
Then a near-two-meter monster wrapped entirely in heavy black bomb-resistant steel walked into frame.
The thing dragged a gigantic black metal slab in one hand.
Each step produced a muffled boom through the old surveillance microphones.
A young woman followed behind it.
William flicked ash from the cigarette and let the butt fall directly onto the dusty console.
He pointed at the shotgun-wielding girl on the monitor.
“I know that kid.
Rebecca Chambers—the genius medic your S.T.A.R.S.
Bravo Team just recruited and sent into the mountains to die today.” Then William’s voice shot upward and his finger snapped toward the black tower walking ahead of her.
“But who is that?!
Another S.T.A.R.S.
officer?
When did you visit the Chicago branch and recruit a mass-production Tyrant into your team?!” Albert Wesker stood in shadow on the opposite side of the console.
He still wore his black leather coat and the dark glasses balanced over the bridge of his nose.
But the permanent mask of icy composure finally cracked when the feed showed that figure kick half-ton bronze doors out of a wall.
Wesker’s hands were folded behind his back.
His interlocked fingers tightened slightly.
His gaze remained fixed on the black armor, the iron helmet, and the crude 25 KG painted across the chest.
“Leon Scott Kennedy,” Wesker said, his voice carrying the faintest unnatural distortion.
“The rookie officer I had released in Detroit before he formally joined the department.” William turned and frowned at him.
“You’re telling me that’s human?
A police officer?
He was dragging a steel plate that weighs at least a hundred kilos with one hand!
That’s your idea of a rookie cop?” Wesker turned and strode to the console, bracing one hand on the metal panel crowded with controls.
It was indeed the muscle-obsessed man in the file who had killed someone through excessive self-defense.
Wesker had made that satellite call specifically to lure Leon into the Arklay Mountains with the promise of employment, hoping to exploit his abnormal physical ability as a live combat subject for T-Virus field data—and then recover the body afterward.
“I told him there was a terrorist base here occupied by a large armed force…” Wesker watched the armored beast onscreen use the greatsword to sweep dust from the center of the hall and clenched his back teeth.
“What the hell is he wearing?
Did he interpret my order as a heavy counterterrorism assault?” William no longer mocked him.
Both hands seized the edge of the console.
“Whatever he’s wearing, that body is a perfect physical template.
If he encounters the defective specimen I raised deeper in the facility…
data.
We need combat data from him.” The view returned to the first-floor hall.
Dried brown stains covered the marble tiles.
The air smelled of old mold and faint blood.
A huge crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling and swayed in the wind entering through the ruined doorway, scattering broken shadows across the room.
Leon stopped before the staircase at the center of the hall.
A three-meter oil portrait dominated the wall opposite the two-story atrium.
It depicted a gray-haired old man in an immaculate suit.
His eyelids were lowered and his chin held slightly high, both hands folded over the head of a cane.
Rebecca moved around Leon with her weapon raised, looked up at the portrait, and pulled a notebook—already half soaked by rain—from a tactical pouch.
“Who is that?” She flipped through the pages quickly.
“I read the property records for this part of the mountains.
Years ago this building was registered as an employee training center for a multinational pharmaceutical company.” “Cover identity.” Leon rubbed the chin of his helmet with one steel glove.
“Terrorists love hiding bases under legitimate facilities.
That old man is probably their ideological leader—or some warlord financing them.” The instant he finished, several rusted speakers in the corners of the ceiling shrieked with electrical feedback.
Kzzzt—kzzzt— Then a low, mechanical male voice sounded over the public-address system.
“Obedience breeds discipline…
discipline breeds unity…
unity breeds power…” The emotionless slogan repeated over and over, echoing through the empty hall beneath the thunder outside.
Rebecca’s shoulders visibly jerked.
Her right hand tightened on the shotgun grip and she drew the stock closer to her chest.
Her eyes swept the black corridors opening from the second floor.
“Where is that coming from?
Is somebody in a control room?” She backed half a step until she nearly touched Leon’s heavy chest armor.
Leon did not move back.
He listened to the slogan and gave a cold laugh.
His right hand closed around the grip of the Doorstop.
He raised it one-handed across his chest, the broad black spine reflecting the hall’s dim light.
He pointed the tip toward the darkness upstairs.
“Listen to that wording.
Standard extremist brainwashing.
The louder an organization has to shout about ‘unity,’ the less of it they usually have.” Leon’s armored left fist flexed once.
“Time to work, medic.” His voice hardened and echoed through the hall behind the helmet’s filter.
“Check your ammunition.
Find any route upstairs or into the basement.
These showmen sent a few dogs out to welcome us.
Now we go knock on their door.” Rebecca swallowed, raised the shotgun, and began edging toward a half-open employee corridor on the left side of the hall.
Dragging the greatsword like a meat grinder waiting to start, Leon followed in long strides.