The fires of Edonia still burned, but in this moment, the roles of hunter and prey had quietly reversed.
Becky raised her sniper rifle, the pale blue arc at its muzzle already locked onto the Ustanak's core.
Jake stared blankly at the two girls who'd just appeared, then glanced at the gleaming Star Fire insignia on their gear. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Hey, I don't remember paying for a security detail. Who's your boss."
"You'll meet him." Sherry blurred forward, and the electric glow on her long blade lit up the pitch-black ruins.
Inside the apartment block, the frozen air was ripped apart by a blinding lance of blue light.
Becky's fingertip squeezed the trigger. The heavy electromagnetic sniper rifle spat a crackling ball of arc energy, and a custom tungsten alloy armor-piercing round crossed dozens of meters in an instant at several times the speed of sound.
A dull metallic detonation rang out. The Ustanak's prized hydraulic-driven right arm was punched clean through.
The electromagnetic pulse didn't just shred the outer composite armor; it obliterated the internal power core. Sparks and scorched lubricant sprayed across the floor.
The creature let out a furious growl. This sudden crippling blow had clearly fallen outside what its predictive logic could account for. Its left hand snatched a miniature missile from the ammo rack on its hip and aimed it at the shattered ceiling.
"Split up." Sherry's voice cut through the tactical channel.
The explosion bloomed. Three figures leapt in three directions as the smoke billowed upward. Jake Muller spun the instant he landed, shielding the civilians in the corner who hadn't evacuated yet.
Fast as he was, the blast wave drove a jagged slab of concrete deep into his back. Blood soaked through his shirt instantly.
"Hey, you two princesses, maybe try aiming better." Jake bit down through the pain and shoved the civilians hard toward the emergency exit.
The Ustanak didn't back off just because it had lost a mechanical arm. The combat logic pumped into its body only made it more berserk. Its stitched-together head snapped toward Becky, the red glow in its single eye flaring bright, its remaining left hand ripping away broken pillars in a frenzy.
"It's locked onto you, Becky." Sherry's silhouette streaked like a black flash along the shattered walls.
"Let it come." Becky calmly worked the bolt and ejected the spent casing.
The second round was already chambered. She didn't stay put but slid backward on momentum, her muzzle tracking the monster's movement the entire time.
Sherry cut in from the flank. Her long blade hummed with high-frequency vibration at full speed. This weapon, hand-forged by Heisenberg himself, had a cutting power against bioweapons that bordered on terrifying.
Becky's long-range suppressive fire pinned the Ustanak down, every shot landing precisely on the joints connecting its torso.
Sherry moved like an uncatchable ghost, weaving through the furious swipes of the monster's fists, each pass leaving a charred gash in its thick hide.
Jake fought through the searing pain in his back, grabbed a discarded submachine gun off the ground, and opened fire on the creature's single eye.
He knew full well he couldn't physically overpower this thing the way those two girls could, but years of fighting on the razor's edge had given him a combat instinct that made him the perfect flanking distraction.
"Hey, big guy, over here." Jake's rounds hammered precisely against the Ustanak's face guard, pulling the monster's attention for half a second.
That half-second was all it took.
Becky seized the opening. She didn't go for the headshot. Instead she put her crosshairs on the Ustanak's one remaining thick left knee.
The electromagnetic beam flashed again.
A sharp crack. The Ustanak's kneecap shattered under the kinetic impact, and its massive frame pitched forward.
"Now."
Sherry completed a near-perfect spin in midair. The high-voltage arc on her long blade blazed to its peak.
She dropped from above and drove the blade through the weakest gap in the armor at the back of the monster's neck, punching it deep into the central spine.
Blue-white current flooded the Ustanak's nervous system. The creature let out an agonized shriek, every muscle seizing violently from the shock.
But this apex hunter built by Neo-Umbrella wasn't done yet.
On the edge of death, the Ustanak's emergency viral failsafe activated.
Its severed mechanical arm forced out a burst of hydraulic steam, and with its last reserve of strength, swung wildly backward.
Sherry hadn't expected a counter like that.
Even with her enhanced reaction speed, at point-blank range the sheer force caught her full-on, launching her through several wooden partition walls before she crashed hard into the rubble. She pushed herself up and rolled her numbed shoulder.
"Sherry." Becky's eyes went cold.
The Ustanak lurched to its feet. It didn't pursue Sherry. Instead it turned its virus-crazed single eye back onto Jake Muller. For this creature, completing the mission overrode everything.
The monster dragged its broken leg and charged at Jake like something possessed.
Becky was in the brief window of swapping her power cell.
Jake watched the massive shadow bearing down on him. Something inside him ignited. He tossed aside the empty gun, reached into the rubble, and ripped out a bloodied length of rebar.
He exploded forward like a charging lion.
"Get the hell back."
Jake vaulted onto the Ustanak's back, channeled every ounce of strength into his arms, and drove the rebar straight into the wound Sherry had cut in the back of its neck, pinning it deep.
The rebar punched clean through the monster's neck and skewered its massive body to a shattered load-bearing column. The Ustanak thrashed violently, corrosive body fluid splattering all over Jake.
Becky's sniper rifle lit up again.
"Goodbye."
A streak of light brighter than any before punched through the Ustanak's skull.
The monster's head burst apart in an electromagnetic detonation, spraying a fine mist of blood in every direction. The enormous steel frame finally stopped twitching, sank to its knees, and went still.
...
The fight was over.
Jake Muller sat on the ground, spent. A large patch of skin on his right arm had been eaten away by the Ustanak's corrosive fluid, the epidermis peeling back to expose raw red muscle.
But under the gaze of Becky and Sherry, who had just crawled out of the rubble, those ugly wounds were visibly smoking and closing, new flesh knitting together at a speed the naked eye could track.
Becky watched silently for a moment, then tossed him a canister of Star Fire's custom regeneration spray.
"Thanks." Jake caught the spray but didn't use it on himself right away. He went to check on the civilians he'd been shielding first.
Once he'd confirmed they were unharmed, two BSAA search-and-rescue helicopters finally showed up late to the party and airlifted the survivors out.
Sherry straightened her slightly disheveled clothes. She walked up to Jake, her expression calm again.
"Jake Muller. Now that you've seen what that thing was, you should understand what you're dealing with. Star Fire can offer you protection."
Jake let out a self-deprecating laugh. He looked at his right hand, already nearly finished healing, and his eyes carried a weariness that didn't match his age.
"Protection? The kind where you lock me in a lab and drain three liters of blood a day? I've seen plenty of outfits like yours."
"Uncle Ryan made a promise. At Star Fire, you're not a test subject, you're a partner." Sherry relayed Ryan's orders. "What we want is an antibody sample from your blood. In exchange, Star Fire will clear every problem you've got in Edonia and pay you a commission you couldn't spend in a lifetime."
The word "commission" put a spark back in Jake's dulled eyes.
"Commission? How much? And just so we're clear, drawing that ugly bastard away back there costs extra." Jake stood up and dusted off his pants.
Becky slowly raised her left hand, all five fingers extended.
"Fifty million?" Jake blinked, his breathing picking up.
"Five hundred million. US dollars." Becky said evenly.
"Lead the way. Let's go. I wanna meet the kind of guy who raises girls like you two." Jake spun around and started walking, like he was afraid they'd change their minds.
...
The three of them picked their way through the ruins toward the temporary extraction point outside the city.
Sherry walked behind Jake. She watched his stubborn back and thought about the terrifying regeneration speed he'd just displayed. As one of Ryan's closest, she knew exactly where that ability came from.
The bloodline of Albert Wesker.
But she didn't say a word. Uncle Ryan had told her: some truths needed to be revealed at the right time, and by him personally.
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]