Central Asia, Afghanistan.
Gardez Mountains.
The light was fading. Under the slanting rays of sunset, the mountains and rocky desert glowed a bare, dusty yellow-brown.
Whoosh…
Yellow sand, smoke, gravel, spent shells, scattered corpses, burning vehicles, shattered stone houses… The thin, dry wind keened through the ruins. After bursts of dull gunfire came faint human shouts somewhere in the mountain village.
"Shit, Sam's squad is done for."
In a high-set, narrow mud-brick house, dim inside, several U.S. SOF (Special Operations Forces) soldiers in desert camouflage and Kevlar vests—packs bulging—peered out through a low window, eyes wary.
Automatic weapons rattled somewhere in the nearby alleys.
The noise was loud enough to provoke a chilling, guttural growl… followed by a few bone-shaking roars.
"It's still in the village. Fuck!"
"Keep it down, Mike."
Exchanging glances, the soldiers could see each other's camo-painted faces pale in the last rays of sun, lips cracked and bloodless.
"That thing… a B.O.W. Tyrant, right? Damn, I saw it in the biohazard protection manual they issued back during the '98 Raccoon City crisis. Thought they destroyed all of them. Can't imagine how the BSAA lives with this day-to-day…"
"That Redfield guy says it all, doesn't he? Half man, half machine—basically RoboCop now…"
Leaning against the wall, they slid down to sit, gasping for breath, trading gallows humor to ease the tension while making last checks on gear and wrapping any exposed skin.
"Sergeant, we should use this chance to pull out."
"Yeah. Everyone, positions—"
"Joe? Damn it, Joe's going down!"
The call snapped every head around.
Slumped against the far wall, Joe suddenly doubled over in violent coughing, spattering thick, bloody saliva onto the floor. "Sarge… kill me. I'm changing…"
His gaunt, sunken-eyed face lifted, pleading.
"Shit, Joe, didn't you get Militech's virus vaccine?"
"Cough… Maybe the virus mutated… or the dose wore off. Guess I should've had a few more shots… ugh—"
He forced a weak joke before lurching forward, retching uncontrollably, stomach heaving up a mess of bile and blood.
"Joe needs a suppressant—we have to get out of here. Otherwise we're all dead! What the hell is Bagram doing? Negligence! Where's our backup?!"
Outside, the gunfire, shouts, and wall-shaking impacts were fading.
"Shhh…"
The lookout's face tightened. He gestured frantically for silence.
Thump.
A heavy sound outside—and there it was. The size of a sidecar motorbike, the deformed creature crouched like a beast over fresh prey, barbed jaws working as it clung to a mangled corpse on a nearby rooftop.
It looked like a skinned giant clam, all corded muscle, skull gone, swollen brain fully exposed.
Chhhk chhhk—its hypertrophied claws sheared through the body's Kevlar and camo in an instant. Blood and gristle sprayed; the gore was stomach-turning.
Everyone in the house froze, breathing shallow, trading hand signals as they edged toward the back door.
The monster suddenly lifted its head as if sniffing, those eyeless sockets turning… toward them.
Shit.
ROAR!
The monster suddenly pivoted, its thick hind legs propelling it like a spring. In a heartbeat it was airborne, wind whistling, bounding between the cramped stone houses like a gecko. In the blink of an eye it was at the door—crash!—splintering the wood as it lunged at the SOF soldiers inside.
They were elite troops—reflexes sharp. The sergeant leading the squad snapped his Militech D5A1 Copperhead to his shoulder, 5.56mm full-auto, and squeezed the trigger. The others joined in almost simultaneously, shredding the eyeless B.O.W.'s exposed brain to pulp.
It collapsed, head still spurting thick gore.
But no one looked relieved.
This was just one.
ROAR—!
Thud… thud…
Heavy, accelerating impacts from all sides, closing in. The guttural growls multiplied, tangled with the uneven, stomping footfalls.
First came a pack of hulking, upright lizardmen—no tails, torsos grotesquely broadened, hides armored in reptilian scales, forelimbs thick and tipped with lethal claws.
BOOM! Thirty-plus meters down the alley, a mud-brick house disintegrated under the pounding. Two massive shapes strode out.
Sickly blue-black skin stretched over swelling, raw muscle; flesh squirming as it repaired itself. Gigantic bone scythes for arms dripped blood and shredded meat.
Tyrants—unshackled.
Dread rippled through every man present.
"Fuck…"
The sergeant kept pumping rounds into the Licker's ruined head to make sure it stayed dead. Only when his mag clicked dry did he curse under his breath, swap mags, and glance at the approaching tide of B.O.W.s. Sweat beaded on his brow.
"Boys… we might not walk away from this one."
He leveled the Copperhead, tracking the forward-leaning Tyrant as it broke into a run. The rifle's ergonomic balance and Militech's fine craftsmanship were evident—but the 5.56mm rounds sparked uselessly off layered green scales.
In his head, he swore at the Pentagon's short-sightedness.
You regret small calibers when the shooting starts.
The original D5 had been perfect—larger bore, new propellant, modern loads. But…
The brass, in all their penny-pinching glory, had ordered Militech to neuter it into the D5A1 to match 5.56 NATO and 7.62 NATO stockpiles.
Sure, even cut down, it outperformed the M16s and M4s in service—ergos, accuracy, weight, reliability, modularity. But still…
If I live through this, I'm quitting and joining Militech outright.
Shoving the anger aside, he saw what trailed behind the Tyrants through the breach in the wall—villagers, shambling as zombies… and mangled figures in camo.
I'll be damned if I end up like them.
Jaw tightening, he raised the underbarrel 40mm launcher toward the charging Tyrant. His other hand slipped into the grenade pouch at his waist—high explosive, thermite.
The glint of madness flashed in his eyes—
Vrrrm…
The roar of engines, closing fast.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
In the slanting light, guided rockets curved down with a howl.
"Cover!"
Realization hit; the sergeant shouted and dove for the sturdiest corner post in the building.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Thick smoke rose skyward, roiling with searing orange fireballs as the blast wave engulfed the narrow street before the stone and mud houses.
At the edges, dozens of zombies, Lickers, and Hunters were hurled into the air—some literally blown apart mid-flight.
Clatter clatter clatter.
Chunks of rock and debris rained down like hail.
After a long moment—"Pfft!"
The sergeant brushed grit from his gear, drew a lungful of hot, acrid air, and coughed as he scanned the devastation. The house walls lay cracked and caved in, the alley warped and twisted.
Moments ago, the Tyrant had strutted like a god of war. Now only charred vertebrae and carbonized scraps of lower limb remained.
Vrrrrr—
He looked up.
Barely a hundred meters overhead, a blocky, rotorless heavy attack helicopter swept in low, flanked by several flat-profiled, high-speed multi-role gunships.
Black-and-yellow MILITECH logos and the BSAA globe were stenciled bold on their hulls.
An instant later, a storm of fire erupted.
The belly-mounted cannons lashed the ground with whips of flame, molten streams of metal chewing through the village, scarring stone walls and detonating flesh and bone in wet bursts.
Whoosh!
The sergeant caught the sound—at the far end of the village, near the valley. Four fire trails arced upward, trailing white smoke.
"RPG!" he bellowed toward the BSAA craft.
But—clack-clack-clack!
On the heavy chopper's upper fuselage, an automated missile pod rotated into position—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!—loosing micro-guided interceptors. Each found its mark midair, bursting the incoming RPGs into spirals of shrapnel. Three detonated instantly; the fourth met the blaze of a nose-mounted micro–CIWS, vanishing in a fireball.
Then—flash!—a flare of light from the side door, BOOM! The RPG team's position at the village's edge erupted in white-hot fire.
Recoilless rifle? He had no time to dwell on it. The heavy gunship roared past—and a black-armored figure dropped from it.
Dropped?
No fast-rope, no rappel—he just jumped.
The sergeant's eyes went wide.
Could it be… that man?
"Hey, buddy, Brad from BSAA North America here—bet you love me right now."
The amplified voice jolted him back.
Thump!
A searchlight painted his position in stark white.
A matte-black flat-profile helicopter hovered overhead, slowly descending.
Swish, swish.
Three operatives jumped down—combat uniforms in the same cut as U.S. SOF, but with a sharper camo pattern. Over their suits, powered exoskeleton frames bristled with pistons, micro-motors, and hydraulic supports. In their hands—full-power Militech D5 Copperhead assault rifles, uncut.
Exoskeletons.
The sergeant's gaze lingered on that brutal, metallic elegance.
"Anyone clawed or bitten?"
As they hauled him into the bird, one BSAA trooper casually finished off a twitching B.O.W. nearby.
"Joe—Joe's been bitten!" the sergeant blurted.
Within minutes, other SOF survivors were pulled from a half-collapsed house—mostly intact.
Only Joe looked truly bad, gaze glassy. A BSAA medic knelt to check him, then asked gravely:
"He get the vaccine? You know what I mean—not second-line. Militech's."
After the 1998 Raccoon City biohazard was exposed, public fear surged. The specialized serum vaccine Vela had inherited from the old Umbrella team—originally meant for senior officials—naturally had to be released for public use.
The market was enormous. At the time, there was no way Vela could claim it all. Certain lawmakers and their backers wanted a slice, pressing Militech to open the tech. Vela refused, citing the risk of reverse-engineering leading to more dangerous viruses. With the help of allies like Simmons, and through endless bureaucratic stalling, they reached a compromise: a "Coca-Cola concentrate" model. Militech would supply core materials and partial tech; shady, licensed shell factories would handle production.
Whether their products worked was… questionable. The BSAA—well-funded by Vela—never cared for them.
If you had first-line, why use second-line? Upset the rich lady and see who pays the price.
"It's Militech's," the sergeant said quickly.
"Good. No wonder he's lasted this long. We've already given him a booster suppressant. He's stable for now, but he'll need proper hospital equipment for full checks. Here—just to be safe, everyone gets a shot."
The BSAA medic pulled disposable micro-dose pneumatic injectors from a biohazard-marked case, handing them out to the surviving soldiers.
As they injected the T-virus serum, the chopper climbed. Rejoining the BSAA formation, the sergeant had a clear view of where that black-armored figure had landed—strewn with corpses.
Zombies, Lickers… and a headless Tyrant still bound in its restraint suit. Clearly it hadn't even gotten the limiter off before its skull was blown apart.
ROAR—
The bellow came from something taller, broader than a Tyrant—an abomination shouldering a multi-tube rocket launcher. The same thing that had fired those RPGs earlier.
It was in bad shape now.
Its heavy coat was in tatters, body slick with gore and blackened chunks of flesh, bone gleaming through in places.
The sergeant and the other survivors felt grim satisfaction. This semi-intelligent B.O.W., capable of handling human weapons, had cost them dearly in a surprise attack—destroying their Humvees, APCs, and Chinook.
The black-armored figure stood before it, wielding an absurdly massive black shotgun.
The sergeant recognized it.
He'd seen it in promos for the upcoming Militech Strategic Expo—"Carnage," a beast of a weapon that could dislocate your shoulder with recoil. Only certain people—those confident in their own strength—could even handle it.
He frowned in thought.
The giant abomination lashed out, tentacles sprouting from torn limbs to wrap around the shotgun. Its muscles bulged, grotesque as bloody thorns.
Just as the sergeant wondered how this anti-biohazard hero would turn the tables, the black figure moved.
Instead of retreating, he surged forward—releasing the shotgun with his right hand to seize the monster's lower jaw. With a single, smooth, brutally powerful motion, he swung up onto its back. His thick, matte-metallic arms locked across its neck.
"Huah!"
Crack!
Spine and all, he wrenched the monster's head clean off. A geyser of blood fountained from the stump.
"Holy shit!!"
The sergeant's jaw dropped. "Th-this is—"
Beside him, the BSAA marksman providing overwatch said calmly:
"That's Chris Redfield."