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The heavy silence of the Ghost Stage was broken only by the frantic scrubbing of a mop. Jean-Pierre worked like a man possessed, washing away the "incantations" of the three intruders, his mind a whirlwind of superstition and terror. He didn't see a puzzle; he saw a ritual.
"Please don't come out again," he whimpered, fleeing with his cart as the Operations Manager approached. To the manager, it was just another day of dealing with the eccentricities of Umbrella's guests. To Jean-Pierre, it was a narrow escape from the supernatural.
Inside the white alloy corridor of the Paris Hive, the air didn't just smell of blood—it tasted of it.
The first Licker never had a chance to process the threat. It was hunched over a shredded arm, its long tongue tasting the copper in the air, when Noah arrived.
BOOM!
The sound was sickeningly organic. Noah's metal-clad fist, propelled by the raw, hybridized strength of the G-Virus and the focused "Qi" of Xingyi Quan, didn't just punch the creature. It detonated its head. Gray brain matter and shards of skull sprayed across the pristine white walls like a macabre Rorschach test.
The second Licker hissed, spinning its flayed body toward the source of the noise. It barely had time to coil its tongue before Noah's leg lashed out in a Whip Kick.
Squelch—!
The force was "unreasonable." Noah had intended to knock it back; instead, he kicked the bio-weapon completely in half. The upper torso, trailing a grisly ribbon of intestines, flew seven meters before plastering against the reinforced glass of the cable car window. The lower half remained standing for a heartbeat, twitching in a pool of its own fluids.
The third Licker, witness to the instantaneous erasure of its pack, did something no Umbrella researcher would have predicted.
It felt fear.
It let out a whimper—a sound more like a kicked dog than a predator—and scrambled up the walls. It vanished through the jagged hole in the ceiling, fleeing into the ventilation shafts above.
The battle had lasted less than ten seconds.
Noah stood amidst the carnage, shaking the red-and-white viscosity from his brass knuckles. He looked at his hands, feeling the hum of power still vibrating in his bone marrow. Beside him, Claire leaned against the wall, her expression neutral. She had seen what he was becoming, and she accepted it.
Etienne, however, was broken.
He knelt in a puddle of his own vomit, dry heaving until his throat burned. The bland cafeteria lunch was long gone; now he was just bringing up bitter bile.
"You... you guys go first," Etienne rasped, his face ashen. "I can't... I can't walk."
"Are you sure?" Noah asked, a small, dark smile playing on his lips. "The one that escaped? It's a tracker. It'll wait until we leave, follow the scent of your fear back here, and have a nice, warm dessert."
The color left Etienne's face entirely. The image of the eyeless monster descending from the dark ceiling was enough to override his physical collapse. He scrambled to his feet, trembling, his hands slick with cold sweat.
"Please..." he sobbed. "Take me with you."
Just as they turned toward the blood-soaked cable car, a sound echoed from the corridor behind them.
"Ding."
It was the unmistakable notification of an incoming email from the IBM ThinkPad Noah had left at the bar.
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