The air carried the bitter almond scent of evaporated suppressant mixed with the tang of scorched metal.
When Ryan walked back into the dome hall dragging the unconscious Downing like a sack of trash, the fight here was already over.
Curtis had collapsed into a puddle of self-dissolving flesh. The G-V1 suppressant had worked even more aggressively than expected. It cut off the G-virus's near-infinite proliferation logic at the root, reducing a creature that should have evolved without limit to the most basic biological sludge in the span of minutes.
"Cough... you're finally back."
Leon knelt on one knee at the edge of the rubble, his assault rifle long since dry. He glanced at Downing hanging from Ryan's hand and the corner of his eye twitched.
"That noise earlier, I thought WilPharma had self-destructed. Didn't realize it was just you."
"Door was tight. Had to put a little muscle into it." Ryan tossed Downing on the floor and turned to look at Angela, who sat to the side with her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably, and Claire, whose expression was hard to read.
Claire walked over. Her eyes passed across Ryan, and her voice held a sliver of relief at being alive, but more than that, a deep weariness. "Curtis is dead... I know he brought this on himself, but watching him turn into that thing, and then dissolve away like sludge at the end..."
"That was his choice, Claire." Ryan cut her off, his eyes dark and still as a pool of dead water. "In this era, a sense of justice that isn't backed by equal violence just becomes fertile soil for tragedy. He wanted revenge on the world, but he picked the stupidest way to do it and turned himself into the same kind of monster as the devils he hated."
He tilted his head toward Jill. "Data transfer finished?"
"One hundred percent." Jill gave the specialized terminal in her hand a little shake, a victor's curve at the corner of her mouth. "Not just WilPharma's years of improvements on the T and G, but everything else too. It's all sitting on our servers now, every last drop."
"Nice work." Ryan gave a slight nod and shifted his gaze to the entrance of the hall.
There, Senator Ron Davis, who had been hiding outside and only now dared to show his face once the situation had stabilized, came hurrying in with a handful of surviving security personnel.
"Downing! Where is that traitorous bastard?" Davis shrieked, his reedy voice as grating as ever. "I'm a United States Senator! I'm taking over all the data here immediately! This is a matter of national security!"
What greeted him was the cold barrel of a rifle.
Several operatives in full black tactical gear with the dark red Star Fire emblem on their chests, who had been holding the perimeter of the hall, materialized like ghosts and disarmed Davis's bodyguards in an instant.
Carlos flipped up the visor of his tactical helmet, flashed a grin full of white teeth, and smiled at Davis. "Senator, this area is under Star Fire's temporary control. Per the special authorization Secretary Stewart signed half an hour ago, any unauthorized approach will be treated as a threat to national strategic assets."
"You... you people!" Davis was so furious his Mediterranean hairline was trembling. "This is robbery! This is private property!"
Ryan didn't so much as lift an eyelid. He took the files Jill handed him and spoke without hurry.
"Davis, unless you want the little black-money transfers you sent to WilPharma's labs in India under the label of 'charitable donations' sitting on Graham's desk tomorrow morning, you'd better shut your mouth right now and go find yourself a comfortable spot outside to sit down."
Davis went dead white, as if he'd been knifed in the heart. His mouth hung half open and he couldn't get a single word out.
"Leon, the cleanup's yours." Ryan turned to face the exhausted man. "As for Downing, he'll be heading to one of Star Fire's premium sanatoriums. I'm sure Luis and Dr. Annette will give him some very... in-depth humanitarian care."
Leon gave a bitter smile. He knew the "sanatorium" in Ryan's mouth was probably a place worse than hell, but he chose to stay quiet. For a capitalist like Downing who played games with human lives, this kind of ending was probably some form of cosmic justice.
As the Shadow Force moved in, crate after crate of expensive lab equipment and virus samples were hauled out in orderly fashion.
The night deepened. The dome structure looked especially desolate in the open country.
"Where to next?" Jill came to stand beside Ryan, looking out at the distant glow of downtown Harvardville. "Sherry and the others just messaged. They said Ashley bought a whole car's worth of pretty dresses and they're waiting for us to come pick them up."
Ryan smiled and tilted his head up to the brilliant sky full of stars. In the back of his mind, though, an image surfaced: Wesker, the one he'd shaved bald back on the Island, probably crouched in some dark corner right now grinding his teeth.
"Let's take the little princess shopping first." Ryan stretched out his arms.
---
Harvardville, the ruins of WilPharma's R&D center.
After everyone else had pulled out, several tiltrotor aircraft painted in ultra-stealth coatings and bearing no markings hovered above the wreckage. Dozens of elite mercenaries in TriCell uniforms combed frantically through the debris.
"Report! Center of the hall... Curtis's remains are fully dissolved. Genetic chain is completely destroyed. Nothing worth extracting."
"Report! Blast door to the underground garage has been smashed through. All core hard drives and the raw virus stocks are gone, cleaned out!"
TriCell's operation commander surveyed the empty scene, his face dark as iron. According to the original plan, they were supposed to "recover" these precious spoils of war in the chaos, but now the place was as clean as a wasteland after a swarm of locusts.
"Pull out. The mission's failed." Excella Gionne's voice came over the comms, thick with anger. "That man from 'Star Fire,' Ryan, had no intention of leaving so much as a scrap of bone for his competitors."
As the mercenaries prepared to withdraw, a cold, mocking voice cut into TriCell's internal channel without warning. "If you have to rely on scavengers of this caliber, TriCell will always be trailing behind Star Fire eating their dust."
The commander's head snapped up. On a broken beam at the top of the ruins stood a figure.
A man in pitch-black sunglasses. The most striking thing about him was the bald head that caught the light with a cold sheen. A "lifelong souvenir" Ryan had left him back on the Island.
"Albert Wesker?" Excella's voice came through the comms, edged with wariness and urgency. "You actually dare to show yourself? And your... your hair!"
Wesker ran a hand over the cold skin of his scalp. A nearly uncontainable flash of murderous rage crossed the back of his eyes, but his voice stayed terrifyingly level. "Excella, spare me the pointless pleasantries. What you want is right here."
Wesker flicked his wrist, and a sealed test tube landed squarely in front of the commander. The dark green liquid sloshing inside seemed to radiate a mesmerizing vitality even in the dark.
"G-virus raw serum?" Excella's breath caught.
"That's just a gift to open the door."
Wesker's voice was flat and cold. "WilPharma's rejected-batch data, you can forget about it. Ryan likes collecting samples. Then I'll prepare the biggest surprise of his life, down in Africa."
He looked down at the ruins beneath his feet, Ryan's serene, punchable face rising in his mind. "The Stairway to the Sun down there is the origin point of all life, and it's going to be Star Fire's endpoint. Partners, Excella?"
After a brief silence, Excella's seductive, unhinged laugh came through the comms. "Of course, Wesker. Since Star Fire wants to play god, we'll just tear the altar down."