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Spencer Mansion - Hive Entrance
Umbrella sent another team to retake the underground facility. The moment they unsealed the air locks, Kane watched the security feeds with mounting tension. The advance troops—twelve men in full combat gear—moved cautiously into the darkness.
They made it twenty meters. Maybe thirty.
Then the screaming started.
Hundreds of zombies poured from the shadows, a tide of rotting flesh and snapping jaws. The Lickers dropped from the ceiling—dozens of them, their eyeless faces split wide as they shrieked. And somewhere deeper in the facility, something bigger moved. The Hunter.
The feed went to static.
"Team One, report!" Kane barked into the radio. Nothing but wet sounds and dying screams. "Team One!"
Silence.
Kane slammed his fist on the console. "Pull back any survivors. Seal the Hive. We're not recovering that facility."
The facility was lost. Permanently.
With the outbreak uncontained and spreading through Raccoon City like wildfire, Kane made the call to senior management. The conversation was brief. Brutal. Practical.
Use the city as a live testing ground for biochemical weapons. Seal it completely. Priority extraction for Umbrella personnel and their families only. General population? Irrelevant. They were test subjects now, whether they knew it or not.
Dr. Charles Ashford was top of the extraction list—the T-virus developer, the genius behind it all. Kane sent armed guards immediately. Ashford's daughter Angela was supposed to be picked up from school at the same time.
But the transport crashed near Raccoon City Junior High. When the extraction team radioed in, they reported the girl had fled the scene. Terrified, probably. Lost somewhere in an infected city.
When Ashford arrived at the base without his daughter, he refused to cooperate. Demanded they send someone to find her.
Kane didn't bother. Every available unit was deployed—armed guards blocking the exits, mercenaries hunting Alice's group, containment teams trying to manage the spread. One little girl wasn't worth diverting resources.
Acceptable collateral damage.
Ten Hours Later - Northern Checkpoint
The exit from Raccoon City had become a killing field.
Thousands of people packed the highway approach, pressed against the barricades like cattle. The checkpoint's processing system—background checks, medical screening, decontamination protocols—was designed for maybe fifty people an hour. They had thousands.
It wasn't working. The crowd was getting violent.
Worse, the infected had mixed in with the healthy. Kane watched through the security monitors as one man in the crowd started convulsing, then lunged at the woman next to him. Screaming erupted. The virus spread through the packed mass of humanity like a lit fuse.
"Close the checkpoint," Kane ordered. "Immediately."
"Sir, there are still—"
"Close it. Now."
The massive steel gates began grinding shut. The crowd realized what was happening—that they were being sealed inside the city to die—and surged forward in desperate panic. Hands reached through the narrowing gap. Voices begged. Pleaded.
"Anyone who breaches the perimeter," Kane said flatly, "open fire."
The gunfire started. Sharp cracks echoing across the highway. Bodies falling. The crowd broke and scattered, some running back toward the city, others trying to find cover. A few kept pushing forward in suicidal desperation until bullets cut them down.
Among the fleeing masses, RCPD officer Jill Valentine stood frozen, staring at the massacre with horror carved into her face. She'd come to the checkpoint to help with evacuation. Instead, she'd watched Umbrella gun down civilians like dogs.
She turned and ran with the retreating crowd, disappearing back into Raccoon City's streets. Trapped like everyone else.
Forward Base Alpha
Dr. Charles Ashford sat in his temporary quarters, staring at his computer screen. The moment his guards left him alone, he went to work.
Idiots hadn't revoked his security clearance. Within minutes, he'd hacked through Umbrella's firewalls and into Raccoon City's surveillance network. The whole city was wired—traffic cameras, security feeds, ATM monitors. Everything.
He pulled up accident reports first. There—near Raccoon City Junior High. Transport vehicle rolled. Personnel injured. One juvenile female fled the scene.
Angela. His daughter was out there, alone, in that infected hellscape.
And Umbrella had written her off.
Fine. If they wouldn't help, he'd find someone who would.
Ashford began cycling through camera feeds, searching for survivors with the skills to reach her. Most of what he saw was death—empty streets, shambling infected, fires burning unchecked. The city was dying.
Then he found them.
An armored Humvee, military grade, weaving through the chaos with purpose. Six people inside, all armed, moving with tactical precision. The feed showed them engaging Umbrella mercenaries—three separate encounters, three teams eliminated. Decisively. Professionally.
One man stood out. Asian, late twenties, moving with fluid confidence. Every shot he fired was a headshot. No panic. No wasted motion. Just cold, mechanical efficiency.
The camera angle shifted. The man stood guard while the others scavenged supplies. Thirty zombies shambled toward him. He fired thirty times. Thirty corpses hit the pavement.
Then the man paused. Looked up. Directly at the camera.
Ashford's breath caught. The man's expression was... knowing. Like he was aware of being watched. Like he could sense the camera hidden in the traffic signal. That shouldn't be possible.
But the man smiled slightly—a small, knowing smile—then returned to his work.
Exceptional situational awareness, Ashford thought. Or something more.
This group could reach Angela. They had the skills, the firepower, the determination. He just needed to contact them. Offer them something they wanted.
Ashford began plotting their route through the city, cross-referencing with public phone locations. There—three blocks from their position. If they maintained their current heading...
He picked up his phone and started dialing.
Downtown Raccoon City
"Clear!" Marcus's rifle cracked once. The zombie crumpled, a neat hole in its forehead.
He'd felt someone watching through the street camera. After a moment's thought, he knew who it had to be. Ashford. Right on schedule.
"You all right in there?" Marcus called toward the convenience store.
"Almost done, be right back!"
Alice emerged first, arms loaded with bottled water. Matt followed with canned goods. Ryan and J.D. carried first aid supplies and protein bars.
"Twelve hours," J.D. muttered as she loaded supplies into the Humvee. "Feels like twelve years."
"Tell me about it," Ryan agreed.
In the time since escaping the Hive, they'd fought wave after wave of Umbrella mercenaries. Four separate engagements. Every one ended with Marcus methodically eliminating every threat. The team had unconsciously started regarding him as their leader. His marksmanship wasn't just miraculous—it was impossible.
Everyone piled into the Humvee. Marcus took the driver's seat, Alice rode shotgun with an actual shotgun across her lap.
The engine rumbled to life. Marcus navigated the maze of abandoned vehicles and debris with uncanny precision, finding paths that shouldn't exist.
His telekinetic awareness painted a mental picture of everything within a quarter-mile radius. But he couldn't tell the others that, so he just drove.
"Marcus, are you familiar with Raccoon City?" Alice asked.
Marcus smiled vaguely. "Pretty familiar."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the best you're getting."
Thud. Another zombie bounced off the reinforced bumper. The front end was painted red with dried blood. Marcus had stopped trying to avoid them hours ago.
"Where are we going?" Alice asked.
"Looking for a place to leave the city. Or at least rest for a few hours."
"The exits are sealed," Matt said from the back. "Umbrella's got them locked down tight."
"I know. We'll figure something out."
They drove in tired silence. Then Marcus felt it—multiple life signs ahead. Trapped. Surrounded by infected.
"Hold on," he said, slowing down. "We've got survivors."
The church appeared around the corner. Gothic architecture, heavy wooden doors. But the entrance was surrounded—dozens of zombies clawing at the doors, drawn by whatever living people were trapped inside.
Worse, three Lickers crawled along the building's exterior, defying gravity, heading toward a broken second-floor window.
Alice leaned forward. "There are people in there."
"At least eight," Marcus confirmed.
"We have to help them."
Marcus sensed one of the signatures inside—smaller, younger, radiating terror. Angela Ashford. And another near the altar with a combat stance. Jill Valentine.
He looked at Alice. She was staring at the church with that expression—the one that said she was going to do the right thing regardless of the cost.
Marcus smiled. "Of course. I'm a caring person. No one's more caring than me."
He turned the steering wheel hard and gunned the engine.
The Humvee roared forward, accelerating toward the church entrance. Zombies scattered. The heavy doors loomed ahead.
"Everyone hold on!" Marcus shouted.
The vehicle crashed toward salvation and chaos in equal measure.
End of Chapter 51