When I returned to my control area, it only took me a few seconds to confirm that time had indeed remained frozen during my absence. The various screens displayed almost exactly the same situation as when I'd left, as though my excursion into that other version of Resident Evil had lasted no more than a heartbeat here.
My S.T.A.R.S. were therefore still busy with their respective tasks in the world of Middle-earth. On one of the screens, Chris and Joseph were continuing their journey through the heart of Mordor and had just encountered another group of Orcs, which they were eliminating with almost routine efficiency.
For the time being, I'd configured the System to automatically send all ordinary Orcs into my grinder. Their numbers seemed practically limitless in Mordor, so I preferred converting them into usable resources to generate my own creatures rather than unnecessarily cluttering my Factory with thousands of identical individuals.
Obviously, I intended to make exceptions whenever my men encountered lieutenants, captains, or any Orc holding a sufficiently important position. Those would be isolated so I could recover their knowledge of Mordor, its armies, and its hierarchy, but ordinary soldiers could serve as raw material.
"Keep it up, Chris. No need to make things complicated when you're dealing with ordinary groups."
"Copy that."
On another screen, Wesker, Kevin, and Ada were still riding on the backs of my Aquilas as they continued westward. From the air, they were discreetly following a large column of Orcs moving across the land while remaining high enough to avoid attracting their attention.
I activated communications with Wesker, whose face appeared in the corner of my screen. Behind him, I could make out the Aquila's feathers and the landscape slowly passing several hundred meters below.
"Wesker, keep following the column without being noticed. They're bound to lead us somewhere interesting eventually."
"That was my intention."
"If you see them attacking Men, Elves, or Dwarves, intervene and help them. We're complete strangers to this world, and saving a few people is probably the best way to make a good first impression."
Wesker nodded without argument.
It wasn't purely a matter of generosity. Grateful survivors could provide us with information, tell us about the surrounding territories, and, most importantly, allow us to establish first contact with the local peoples without immediately looking like yet another army that had come to invade their lands.
"Understood. We'll remain discreet until an interesting opportunity presents itself."
"Perfect. Let me know if anything important happens."
I ended the communication and then called one of the members of my logistics team. I asked him to monitor the various screens while I was away and, most importantly, to keep an eye on any communications coming from the team I'd sent to Middle-earth.
"If they ask to speak with me or anything unusual shows up, call me directly on my Kingphone."
"No problem, boss."
Now that someone was monitoring the situation, I could finally take some time away.
After all, I'd only just returned from another reality, and several new people still needed to adjust to their surroundings, which gave me a good reason to join Grace, Marie, Emily, and Leon at the café.
When I entered the establishment, I immediately noticed that Claire was already there.
She was sitting with Grace at a table slightly off to the side, and the two of them were talking with surprising familiarity, as though they'd already managed to find enough common ground to move well beyond simple introductions.
Grace also seemed different from the woman I'd met at Rhodes Hill. She obviously hadn't forgotten what she'd just been through, but she seemed much more confident now that she knew Emily and Marie were safe and no longer had Gideon or The Connections hanging over her head.
I then turned my attention toward Leon and had to hold back a laugh.
He was standing with both arms stretched out while Emily and Marie hung from them, each girl clinging to one of his arms like a playground bar, their feet regularly leaving the ground whenever he lifted them slightly.
Given Leon's physical strength, the two girls obviously weighed practically nothing to him. So they shamelessly took advantage of it, swinging from his arms while laughing as he wore the resigned expression of a man who had just realized he'd lost all authority only a few minutes after gaining two little sisters.
I approached with a laugh before gently patting Emily and Marie on the head one after the other.
"I see big brother Leon is already completely at the mercy of his little sisters."
Both girls burst out laughing without making the slightest effort to deny it.
Leon slowly turned his head toward me and gave me a pleading look, though the smile at the corner of his lips made it perfectly obvious that the situation wasn't really bothering him.
"Gerald, how am I supposed to learn how to handle these two little tornadoes?"
There was enough affection in his voice to make my smile widen.
With the older Leon's memories in his head, he'd experienced knowledge of countless things he'd never personally lived through, but this relationship with Emily and Marie belonged entirely to him, and he already seemed perfectly comfortable with it.
I looked at the two girls, who were still happily swinging from his arms.
After being created as experiments, locked away, and forced to live with mutations that had destroyed any possibility of a normal childhood, they'd more than earned the right to simply behave like children for a while.
"Just let them enjoy their childhood for a bit. It's probably the first time they've actually been allowed to be themselves without someone treating them like experiments or biological weapons."
Leon looked at Emily, then Marie, and his expression softened even further.
"When you put it that way, I guess I can survive."
"With eight Plagas and your G-Virus, I certainly hope so."
Emily immediately looked up at him.
"Again!"
Marie enthusiastically agreed.
"Higher!"
Leon gave me another look.
"See what you just started?"
"I have absolutely no regrets."
I smiled before looking at the two girls.
Our Raccoon City had been rebuilt a long time ago, and unlike anything they'd experienced until now, it had plenty of places where they could discover what a normal life was actually like.
"Besides, we have a park and a zoo. If you want, we can all go together sometime. Lisa and Sherry can come with us too, so you'll have a chance to get to know each other."
Emily finally released Leon's arm and dropped back to the floor.
"There are animals?"
"Lots of them."
Marie immediately climbed down as well and approached me with shining eyes.
"Real ones?"
I gently stroked her hair.
"Real ones. Some of them are even perfectly normal, which is almost exceptional around here."
Leon burst out laughing while the two girls immediately began talking to each other about what they wanted to see first.
I watched them for a few seconds with a smile before glancing toward Grace, who had stopped talking with Claire to watch her two daughters getting excited.
After sorting out the housing situation with Claire and Leon, we'd found a particularly simple solution for Grace and the girls.
A large enough apartment was available right next to theirs, one floor below mine, allowing them to remain close to the two people they already knew while gradually adjusting to their new life.
That proximity also had the advantage of placing them only a few minutes away from Lisa and Sherry.
I had no doubt that my two daughters would quickly want to meet Emily and Marie, especially after I explained the rather unusual circumstances that had brought the two girls into our world.
Once I was certain Grace had everything she needed and that Claire would help her get settled, I said goodbye to them before heading toward my scientific team's laboratories.
I wanted to know what they thought about the research we'd recovered from Rhodes Hill and the Ark, although I already had some doubts regarding the quality of Gideon's work.
When I entered the main laboratory, I was greeted by a scene that immediately answered my question.
Gideon was on his knees in front of Marcus and William while the two scientists were verbally tearing him apart so viciously that even I preferred to remain by the entrance for a few seconds just to enjoy the show.
"You seriously call this an experimental protocol? You modified your subjects without even properly stabilizing the previous stages!"
William threw several files onto the table in front of Gideon.
"And your results are almost impossible to reproduce properly. You compensate for your mistakes by throwing more and more subjects at the problem until something happens to work by sheer chance."
Marcus crossed his arms with an expression of utter contempt.
"You have absolutely no place among us. Consider yourself lucky if we even agree to keep you as an assistant to the Jordan triplets. Maybe by watching them work, you'll finally learn how to conduct an experiment properly."
I had to suppress a smile at Gideon's expression.
The man who had run Rhodes Hill and considered himself a particularly brilliant scientist had just discovered that, in my world, he was practically at the bottom of the scientific hierarchy.
Zeno, meanwhile, was standing in a corner of the laboratory, silently watching his former colleague's humiliation.
I caught his eye and simply motioned toward the door before pointing down the hallway.
"Wait for me outside."
He looked as though he wanted to protest, but thought better of it and eventually left the room.
I then approached Marcus and William while Gideon remained silent, clearly having no desire to provoke another round of criticism.
"So, Marcus, is it as bad as I thought? His work isn't worth much?"
Marcus gave a contemptuous snort.
"Even taking into account that he was working on mass production with resources inferior to ours, his methods are still mediocre. We can reproduce most of his results more cleanly, more quickly, and with far fewer losses."
William immediately nodded.
"I haven't met anyone this incompetent while being so convinced of his own genius since Spencer. And at least Spencer knew how to surround himself with genuinely talented people."
Gideon slightly raised his head.
"My research still managed to produce—"
"Silence," Marcus and William snapped simultaneously.
I let out a small laugh before shaking my head.
Gideon might have been impressive in his original environment, but putting him beside Marcus, William, Alexia, and the others was apparently like comparing an especially arrogant student to several of the greatest bioweapons experts of their generation.
"Do what you suggested and use him as an assistant. He can help the Jordan triplets with secondary tasks and learn how things are done around here in the process."
Marcus immediately agreed, while Gideon seemed considerably less enthusiastic about going from head scientist to laboratory assistant.
It wasn't really negotiable, however, and at the very least, he would gain access to scientific knowledge far beyond anything he'd ever been able to accumulate in his former world.
"We'll be getting new species soon, so prepare for the studies. I also want all the necessary cloning tanks operational as quickly as possible so we don't waste any of the newcomers' pure genetic material."
I gestured toward the laboratory's various facilities.
"The original specimens should be preserved whenever possible. Once their genetic material has been recorded, all invasive or potentially dangerous testing will be performed on clones."
Marcus immediately smiled.
"Understood, boss. We've already prepared twenty additional cloning chambers."
He turned toward a screen and brought up the plans for a facility considerably larger than the others.
I stared at the displayed dimensions for several seconds before realizing why they'd planned something so enormous.
"This one is five hundred meters long, two hundred meters wide, and just as tall. It's specifically designed for the dragon your team is supposed to recover."
I nodded with satisfaction.
"Good to be prepared. If we actually manage to capture Smaug alive, I'd rather have you ready to start immediately instead of improvising a facility after he arrives."
I spent a few seconds considering the difficulty of dealing with an intelligent, extremely powerful, and probably highly uncooperative dragon.
Keeping him contained was possible, but being able to make him willingly obey would simplify things considerably.
"Maybe I should implant him with a modified Plaga to ensure his obedience. You can isolate that factor during the studies anyway."
William nodded.
"Without any difficulty. We know your Plagas well enough by now to distinguish their modifications from a subject's original genome. As long as we obtain a sample before implantation, we'll also retain a perfectly pure reference."
Alexia then looked up from her workstation.
She was carefully handling a seed produced by the Megamycete and seemed to have been listening to our conversation while continuing her experiment.
"Don't forget the plants, Gerald."
I turned toward her.
"The plants?"
"You're exploring a world completely different from ours. I want seeds, roots, mushrooms, medicinal plants, and anything else you find that's unusual. Even something that looks ordinary could possess properties that don't exist here."
"Good point. I'll pass along the instructions."
Heisenberg, who was working nearby on a metal structure connected to several devices, joined the conversation without even interrupting what he was doing.
"And bring back metals. If that world has Dwarves capable of forging the weapons you told us about, there's a good chance they're working with ores or alloys we don't have here."
"Of course. Once we've established proper contact with another race, I'll bring Alfred and Delphine in to handle the commercial side of things."
I greatly preferred buying or trading for what we needed rather than beginning our presence in this world by stealing everything that interested us.
Once first contact had been properly established, Alfred and Delphine could determine what the local populations needed and organize trades that benefited both sides.
"We'll obtain whatever we can legally through trade and figure out the rest afterward. Just prepare a list of everything you're interested in so I can pass it along to the teams."
After giving a few final instructions, I left the laboratory and found Zeno waiting in the hallway.
He was standing exactly where I'd told him to wait, although his posture and expression made it perfectly clear that he wasn't particularly happy about his new position.
"Come on. I've got something else planned for you."
I led him toward one of our training facilities and explained what I expected from him along the way.
Unlike Gideon, whose usefulness was primarily limited to the laboratories, Zeno's abilities could be perfectly suited to the exploration missions carried out by the S.T.A.R.S.
"Once you've been optimized and properly equipped, you'll join the S.T.A.R.S. Your job will mainly involve taking part in the exploration of other worlds, recovering resources, and supporting the teams deployed there."
Zeno adjusted his sunglasses with his usual arrogance.
"You seem to be taking it for granted that I'll accept your orders."
I stopped.
"Yes."
He gave me an almost mocking smile.
"You only captured me because of an ability I didn't know existed. Don't mistake that for a victory."
I silently stared at him for a few seconds before smiling.
His mistake was understandable.
He'd met me while the affliction was still considerably suppressing my abilities, meaning he'd never actually seen what I was truly capable of.
"All right."
I walked a few steps toward the center of the training area.
"Come see for yourself."
Zeno disappeared from my sight almost immediately, using his speed to try to circle around me before striking.
This time, however, my body was functioning at full capacity again, and I could follow his movements perfectly.
I intercepted his attack, grabbed his arm, and violently slammed him into the ground before he even understood what had happened.
He immediately tried to get back up, but I struck him again and sent him flying several meters away without even needing to use any of my more dangerous mutations.
Zeno charged at me several more times.
The result remained exactly the same.
His speed was genuinely impressive, but it was no longer enough to compensate for the difference in power between us now that Elpis had restored my abilities and applied all the improvements I'd accumulated throughout my numerous regenerations.
After a few minutes, I finally let him get back to his feet.
His clothes were damaged, and his sunglasses had disappeared somewhere during the fight, but more importantly, his expression had lost much of the arrogance he'd displayed when he arrived.
"Do you understand better now?"
Zeno wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
"Yes."
"Perfect. That'll save us some time."
I then approached him to begin his actual optimization.
His original infection was unstable and far too imperfect for my liking, so I removed it before properly rebuilding the enhancements I wanted to keep.
I then implanted him with a modified Plaga to stabilize and complete his new abilities.
Once the process was finished, his overall level was now close to Wesker's, although the two men remained specialized in fairly different areas.
In Zeno's case, the enhancements primarily reinforced what had already been his greatest advantage: speed.
His movements had become so fast that I could probably consider him the fastest man among my current teams.
In exchange, his raw strength remained below that of most of my heavy hitters.
He could strike extremely quickly and unleash multiple attacks before an ordinary opponent even had time to react, but I wasn't counting on him to physically compete with my true powerhouses.
That weakness didn't concern me much, however.
A sufficiently powerful weapon could easily compensate for slightly lower strength, especially in the hands of a fighter capable of crossing an entire battlefield before most of his enemies even had time to aim at him.
I watched Zeno cautiously test his new speed at the far end of the training ground.
"Not bad."
He stopped and stared at his own hands, clearly surprised by the extent of the improvement.
"You actually made me stronger after capturing me."
"Of course. If you're going to work for me, I'd rather have you be effective."
For the first time since his arrival, Zeno seemed to seriously consider his new situation instead of simply looking for a way to prove his superiority.
It wasn't loyalty yet, but that didn't really matter. The Plaga was already doing its work, and without even realizing it, he would gradually come to recognize me as his leader.
All that remained now was to train him properly, find equipment suited to his abilities, and determine which team he would work best with.
(Author's note: For the next few chapters, I'll probably switch to Wesker and Chris's POVs for the Middle-earth exploration sections, although I'll still include a few transitions to show what's happening back in Raccoon City.)