October 7, 2025 · Restricted Airfield Hangar, France · 08:00 (Local Time)
The rain had not stopped. It was not going to stop today. The weather broadcast Trinity had pulled said two more days of it, which would have been a problem for a different kind of operation, but for flying into the Black Forest at night under low cloud cover it was more useful than not.
Alen was at the desk in the corner of the hangar, laptop open, the screen throwing blue light up under his jaw. He had been working for ninety minutes. The black turtleneck and suit jacket were back on — he had not slept again after Rebecca's hypothesis and the blood sample, which she had taken and was presumably analysing somewhere in the Night-Wing's compact medical bay. He could hear her moving around in there occasionally. He had decided not to think too carefully about what she might be finding.
The Yoko Suzuki packet was spread across three encrypted windows. He had been picking it apart since five in the morning — the location data, the facility schematics, the guard rotation Yoko had somehow mapped in three weeks of captivity with no apparent access to recording equipment. The fact that she had done it in the time available said something specific about Yoko Suzuki that the BSAA file had noted as 'persistent' and that he would have described, more accurately, as exactly the right person to have in a facility you needed intelligence on.
Rebecca came out of the medical bay holding two cups of tea. She set one beside his laptop without being asked and sat in the second chair, pulling her legs up under her and looking at the screen with the unhurried morning attention of someone who had been awake for several hours and had made peace with it.
"Almost done," he said.
"Where is it?"
"Germany. Black Forest." He typed something. "Trinity has the coordinates locked. I'm running the site against the Umbrella Europe archive from the vault — there's a match."
He removed his sunglasses and set them on the desk. The ocean-blue looked across at her with the specific quality of a man who has found something and knows it and is deciding how to present it. Then he looked at her properly and stopped.
He smiled. Not the operational half-smile. The actual one, small and rare, that appeared only when nobody was watching or when Rebecca was watching and he had decided he didn't mind. She had seen it maybe forty times in six years.
"What," she said.
"Your stomach," he said. "You can see it now. Through the shirt."
She looked down. She made a sound. "I genuinely did not notice that this morning."
"I noticed." He was already looking back at the screen, but the smile was still there in the corner of his mouth. "You should ease the lab hours. For the baby, not for me. I know you can take care of yourself."
"This is coming from the person who slept three hours last night and whose CIED battery I replaced two mornings ago."
"I'm aware of my status."
"You always say that." She wrapped both hands around the cup. "I'm not angry. I'm worried, which is different. You came back from the dead again six months ago. You're still not fully healed and you've been running since Switzerland without stopping. I can see it, Alen. I know what your baseline looks like."
"I know you worry. I can't make you stop. I also can't stop."
"I know." She looked at the screen. "Show me what you found."
He put the sunglasses back on. He turned the laptop toward her and began.
∗ ∗ ∗
TRINITY INTELLIGENCE PACKAGE — DECODED
SOURCE: Yoko Suzuki encrypted transmission
RECEIVED: 05 October 2025 | PROCESSED: 07 October 2025
TARGET FACILITY: Connections Black-Site
LOCATION: Northern Schwarzwald (Black Forest), Germany
APPROX. 12 km SW of Baden-Baden, Baden-Württemberg
PRIMARY COORDINATES: 48.712°N, 8.312°E
SECONDARY (Vent Shaft): 48.709°N, 8.308°E
EXTRACTION POINT (Helipad): 48.715°N, 8.319°E
ENVIRONMENT: Dense old-growth Douglas fir / Norway
spruce canopy. 40–60m height, daylight minimal at
ground level. Constant rainfall. Heavy fog at dawn/
dusk. No public roads, no cell service. Restricted
no-fly zone (falsified forestry permits). Locals
call the area: "die toten Wälder" — the dead woods.
SITE HISTORY (CROSS-REFERENCED: Umbrella EU Archive)
1930s-45: Nazi-era anti-aircraft bunker complex.
1950s-70s: NATO fallback comms node. Decommissioned.
Late 1980s-2003: Umbrella Europe Class-C research
annex. T-Virus stabilisation trials. T-Veronica
cross-referencing. 4-level underground complex.
Went dark after Raccoon City incident.
2005-present: Connections black-site. Fully
retrofitted for long-term host stabilisation,
bioweapon refinement, C-Virus derivative work.
CONFIRMED ASSETS (per Suzuki intelligence):
Level 2 — Cryo Chamber Wing: Yoko Suzuki (hostage)
Level 3 — Medical/Research Wing: Manuela Hidalgo
GUARD COMPOSITION (Night Shift, 22:00–06:00):
Total: 18 guards (6 per shift + 2-3 supervisors)
Night shift: 2 static (Level 1), 4 mobile teams
(2-man), 2 supervisors (1 x Level 1 security room,
1 x floating Levels 2-3). Standard loadout: AR,
sidearm, flashlight, radio, keycard.
OPTIMAL INFILTRATION WINDOW: 02:00–02:40
Patrol Team 2 (Cryo) completing sweep. Team 3
(Medical) on far side of Level 3. Level 1 mobile
team in mess hall. Only static posts active.
Rain glitches external motion sensors every 8-12
minutes during heavy downpour. Black Forest rain:
continuous. Use sensor glitch windows for perimeter
crossing (300m open approach, pine cover after).
SHIFT CHANGE WINDOW: 05:45–06:15
All teams Level 1 for handover. Levels 2-4 almost
completely unmanned for 20-25 minutes.
ENTRY RECOMMENDATION: Secondary vent shaft
48.709°N, 8.308°E (400m deeper in pines from
main entrance, minimal sensor coverage)
EXTRACTION: Night-Wing, helipad coordinates above.
"Umbrella's European reach," Alen said. "A Nazi bunker turned NATO facility turned Umbrella Class-C annex turned Connections black-site. The infrastructure goes back ninety years and every organisation that used it believed it was discreet. They were all correct and it made them all comfortable and comfortable is what we need."
"Eighteen guards is not nothing," Rebecca said.
"Eighteen guards running three shifts in a facility they have been staffing without incident for twenty years in the middle of a forest where nothing has ever found them. Alert discipline decays. Yoko mapped their patrol routes in three weeks of captivity without any recording equipment. She did it from memory and timing. That tells me the guards are predictable." He closed two of the data windows and left the patrol map on screen. "The rain is also ours. Motion sensors glitch every eight to twelve minutes in heavy rainfall. The Black Forest rain is continuous. It will not stop tonight."
"What about Manuela's medical status?" Rebecca said. "If she needs active organ support—"
"Yoko is her caretaker. Yoko will have whatever is needed prepared for transport. I'll ask her directly when I reach her." He paused. "The medical bay on the Night-Wing needs to be configured for a T-Veronica long-term carrier in transit. Temperature-controlled. You know the Darkside Chronicles file."
"I helped write the post-2002 viral stability assessment," Rebecca said. "I know exactly what she needs." She looked at the coordinates. Then at him. "You're going tonight."
"Departure at 21:00. Mission window opens at 02:00. The vent shaft at the secondary coordinates — four hundred metres deeper into the trees than the main entrance, minimal sensor coverage. In quiet, out quiet. Both of them home."
"I'll fly air support from the Night-Wing."
"I know you will." He looked at her. "Stay high. Don't drop below the weather ceiling unless I call for it."
"I know how to fly support, Alen."
"I know you do."
She looked at the patrol map one more time. The four levels of underground facility, the guard routes, the eighteen-minute window between patrols on Level 2 where Yoko was being held.
"Two assets," she said. "Yoko and Manuela. Both out."
"Both out," he confirmed. "The mission is on."
— END OF CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE —