After a day of high-intensity defense preparations, Lear led the R.P.D. personnel in transforming the entire Police Station into a sealed and fortified armed stronghold. Doors and windows were all blocked and reinforced; original weapons from the armory and ammunition provided by Kendo were quickly distributed among the squads, drastically increasing everyone's firepower.
Because Lear provided early warnings, the officers remained on high alert. When encountering zombies, they were able to decisively suppress or even kill them on sight, effectively reducing ambushes and infections while preserving their fighting force.
Every door and window was nailed shut with thick, sturdy planks, and the glass was completely covered. Even if zombies broke the glass, they wouldn't be able to smash through the wood to enter the Police Station. Looking at these layers of reinforced defenses, Lear couldn't help but inwardly mock Leon—at this rate, he wouldn't even have to bother boarding up the windows later, though this did technically lighten the burden for the eventual evacuation.
Lear knew very well that he had to finalize the evacuation plan before Leon and Claire arrived. At this moment, the Police Station was already overcrowded, with several hundred officers and sheltering civilians combined—a much larger group than the scattered handful of survivors in the original storyline. Precisely because there were so many people, he absolutely could not risk waiting until the originally scheduled date of September 28th to evacuate.
He had already reached a private consensus with Raymond, Marvin, and the other core officers: tonight, they would concentrate their strength to safely relocate most of the civilians, leaving only a skeleton crew of elite officers to stay behind and continue receiving any stragglers from the perimeter.
According to his memory of events, the situation in Raccoon City would spiral completely out of control after nightfall tomorrow. Zombies would launch a full-scale siege on the Police Station, causing sectors to fall one after another. More dangerously, enhanced Bio Organic Weapons like Lickers and Hunters would be officially deployed to the battlefield. Trying to organize a large-scale evacuation then would turn into nothing but a one-sided massacre.
Rather than waiting for the defense line to collapse and sitting around for death to arrive, it was better to take the initiative and get the most vulnerable citizens out first.
Lear knew better than anyone that he wasn't working this hard out of simple overflowing compassion or a sense of duty as a cop. Everything he did served both to save lives and to pave his own way, quietly accumulating capital in a world where biohazard incidents would be constant in the future.
He already knew the ending of Raccoon City: sanitized by a nuclear strike, everything turned to ash. At that time, the hundreds of survivors he pulled out of hell today would be the ladder he used to climb from a low-level beat cop into the sight of major powers. These people would remember who saved their lives. This debt of gratitude would be worth more than anything else once Raccoon City was destroyed.
As for the White House, in order to cover up the Umbrella Corporation biohazard scandal and to polish the lie that "the government never abandoned its people," they would certainly move to frantically publicize the heroic deeds of the surviving Raccoon City officers. When that time came, his story of leading the evacuation and holding the line would likely be held up as the gold standard—a positive image used by officials to appease the public and whitewash their own responsibility. Whether it was to soothe the public or to shut them up, the big shots in the Oval Office would have to make some kind of gesture. With this reputation and the recognition of the survivors, his future path would be much easier to navigate.
Whether he later joined Chris and Jill in forming the BSAA or decided to strike out on his own, he would finally have a seat at the table in this world torn apart by biological disasters; he would no longer be a minor character to be sacrificed at a whim.
Speaking of Leon, Lear subconsciously glanced toward the office area. Marvin and the other colleagues had prepared a welcome banner for the newcomer long ago, planning a ceremony and an induction quiz, just waiting for him to report for duty. His gaze fell upon Leon's desk, silently hoping that "Leon S. Kennedy" would arrive at the Police Station as soon as possible.
After all, thanks to his advance preparations, many of the Infected along the route had been cleared beforehand. Citizens who would have been fleeing in scattered panic, fighting individual battles, were instead undergoing an organized evacuation around the Police Station and the Orphanage. Although the scope was limited, it had substantially reduced the potential number of zombies, making the safety factor far higher than the original chaotic mess.
The rescued citizens were housed in the Police Station's meeting rooms and standby rooms to centralize management and minimize confusion. This evacuation had been handled with extreme caution, ensuring almost no Infected were mixed in and brought inside the Police Station, effectively eliminating the risk of the defensive line being breached from within.
Most of the wounded—whether suffering from ordinary trauma or suspected zombie bites and scratches—had been placed separately in the Police Station garage area following Lear's repeated warnings. Completely isolated from the internal secure zone, they were kept under guard for individual observation. Those confirmed to be uninfected were temporarily moved to the Police Station holding cells. This approach ensured security while maximizing the number of lives saved, reducing the danger of latent infection to the greatest possible extent.
Yet even with everything proceeding according to plan, Lear still felt a faint creeping dread.
The Police Station was eerily quiet—not a literal silence, but an unnerving, unnatural level of stability. At a time when the station should have been rife with conflict and morale should have been crumbling, it was instead exceptionally united and orderly, even peaceful—an English-style calm that, in a zombie-besieged Raccoon City, felt like a thin, fragile facade waiting to be punctured.
What bothered him most was that Chief Irons and his inner circle seemed to have vanished into thin air since the outbreak began.
According to the truth as he knew it, Irons should have long since emerged to stir up trouble, either to cover up the crimes of Umbrella or to purge dissent and create chaos within the Police Station. Yet from the start of the Resident Evil outbreak until now, the man had never shown his face, issued a single order, or even stepped out to cause a nuisance. It was as if he had completely disappeared into the depths of the Police Station.
This abnormal silence put him more on edge than the howling of zombies.
Lear suppressed his doubts and walked quickly to the door of the Chief's office, raising a hand to knock. The sound echoed softly down the empty corridor.
However, there was deathly silence inside. No response, not even a faint rustle of movement.
"Chief, are you in there?"
Lear knocked again and gave the door a gentle push, but it was firmly locked from the inside and wouldn't budge. He reacted immediately—he remembered initial details of the private passage in Irons' office perfectly. Behind the hidden door lay the Chief's private collection room, which housed a dedicated elevator. It bypassed every corridor, descending straight to the underground Parking lot. Claire had once gone to great lengths, decoding puzzles and searching for tools just to open this path, yet Irons himself could slip from his office into the Parking lot and vanish through the Police Station's back door whenever he pleased.
There was no need to guess; the man was certainly huddled in that dark, perverted collection room right now, playing deaf and dumb to the catastrophe outside.
At the thought, a cold sneer twitched at the corner of Lear's mouth, and an idea took shape in his mind.
"Chief, there's a surviving citizen down at the Parking lot claiming to know the root cause of this crisis. We haven't dared to question them deeply yet; would you like to go down and confirm for yourself?"
Lear spoke toward the door of the Chief's office in a low voice, his tone laced with a deliberate touch of deference and gravity.
Before long, a faint mechanical hum resonated from within the walls; Irons had indeed entered the private elevator via the secret passage. Once he confirmed the elevator was making its steady descent, Lear turned immediately and hurried toward the underground Parking lot, prepared to personally see this insidious corporate dog off.
Just as Lear arrived at the underground Parking lot, the private elevator Irons was riding gave a soft chime, and the metal doors slid open. The Chief who stepped out was a far cry from his usual suit-clad, majestic, and arrogant self. His shirt collar was twisted, his tie hung loosely around his neck, and fine beads of cold sweat broke out across his forehead. His small, normally shrewd eyes were filled with frantic anxiety and ill-concealed terror; he looked utterly pathetic and guilty. The moment he stepped out, he looked around wildly, his voice shrill and impatient. "Where is the person? Where is this knowledgeable citizen you mentioned? Take me to them at once!"
Lear took a step forward, blocking his path, his gaze icy. "Chief, drop the act. From the moment the disaster broke out until now, you've been hiding in your office, indifferent to everything. You've been taking Umbrella's blood money, suppressing reports of bio-incidents for years, and deliberately covering up the truth of the virus leak. What, are you still trying to protect your masters? They abandoned you long ago."
Irons' face turned deathly pale before flushing a dark, liverish purple. In a fit of humiliated rage, he raised a hand to bark an order, even reaching for the useless service pistol at his waist.
Lear was prepared. He grabbed Irons' wrist and forcefully dragged him toward a pre-sealed temporary quarantine zone. The enclosure was eerily quiet; several wounded people confirmed to have been bitten by zombies leaned silently against the walls. Their faces were ashen and their breathing weak; they hadn't fully mutated yet, but their bodies already radiated the deathly silence of those about to be consumed by the virus. Their eyes were hollow and their limbs twitched slightly; they were only one step away from turning into zombies.
Irons trembled with terror, his voice cracking. "Lear! You're insane! Let me out! I am the Chief! You can't do this to me!"
Lear looked down at him, his tone mocking. "Chief, you took Umbrella's money, and a man's got to work for his pay. These are confirmed Infected. Why don't you have a chat with them and see if they're willing to... help you out?"
With that, he slammed the iron door shut and decisively turned the lock. From behind him came Irons' terrified screams as he pounded desperately on the iron door, howling threats and pleas for mercy. Lear didn't look back; he walked straight away, letting the door swallow the sound.
(Translated by yourtl.app)