Iraq — Baghdad, Balad Air Base.
At the arrival site.
"Chris 'Blackhand,' it's an honor to finally et you," Leon said as he approached and extended his hand.
Chris's face darkened. Who the hell started spreading that nickna?
Forget it. Not worth the trouble.
"Just call Chris." He extended his precision-engineered cybernetic hand while sizing up the young man with the stylish swept hair before him.
Militech Security Division—that much was obvious.
He looks familiar, Chris thought to himself.
"Leon Scott Kennedy. Just call Leon," the young man replied with a faint smile. One hand tal, one flesh—they shook firmly.
"Leon?"
Behind Chris, Jill—who was directing the team to unload the customized EXO exoskeleton cases—froze for a mont. Peeking over, she blinked, then suddenly exclaid, "Leon... you're that rookie cop from '98, the one who was late on his first day?"
Leon's confident smirk instantly crumbled. "Do we really have to rember that, Miss Valentine?"
After all, Jill was the one who had saved his life—the night before Raccoon City's destruction, she had led Militech's M.S.F. (Militech Security Force) unit under the Black Umbrella division to rescue the survivors holed up in the RPD building.
"So it is you. Huh, from rookie to veteran now." Rubbing her chin thoughtfully, Jill studied his face.
Compared to the naive, wide-eyed rookie from five and a half years ago—the one with those clear, slightly bewildered eyes—this Leon looked entirely different. His gaze was sharp now, his features chiseled, a faint stubble accentuating a colder, mature charm. There was even a touch of lancholy to his aura. Indeed, ti changed people.
Thanks to Jill's teasing, Chris finally rembered as well.
After the Raccoon City Incident, the newly founded BSAA needed personnel with anti-B.O.W. experience. Naturally, surviving RPD officers were high on the recruitnt list. Chris had seen Leon's na, even reached out once. He'd always rembered the rookie who'd managed to be late on his first day—only to walk straight into a bioterror nightmare.
Now, seeing Leon again brought a strange sense of nostalgia.
As his embarrassing story resurfaced, and as Chris, Jill, and the others gave him amused looks, Leon sighed, expression souring. "Hey, not my fault my first day on the job had to be that special..."
Clap, clap.
"You all know each other already, huh? Good."
The voice drew everyone's attention.
A round-faced middle-aged man with a friendly smile, stubble connecting his sideburns, dressed in a green military jacket and tie, clapped his hands lightly. "Welco to Iraq, Chris," he said warmly.
"It's been a while, O'Brian." Chris grinned and pulled the man into a firm embrace.
"Whoa there... easy, easy! These old bones aren't built to handle that cybernetic arm of yours," the man—Clive R. O'Brian—laughed, rubbing his shoulder.
The ID badge on his chest confird it: Clive R. O'Brian, BSAA Middle East Division Director.
Thanks to the butterfly effect caused by Vela and Militech, the BSAA had been established far earlier than in the original tiline—as early as October 1998—imdiately receiving funding from the U.S. Federal Governnt and massive donations from the Global Pharmaceutical Alliance, Militech among them. With headquarters set in North Arica, it soon gained global montum as nations either joined or modeled after it.
Even though the Permanent Five later founded their own anti-bioterror divisions, the BSAA remained the largest, most internationally recognized organization of its kind—the spearhead of global biohazard response and now a permanent institution under the United Nations.
Due to these shifts, O'Brian had lost the position of BSAA Founder and Commander that he would have held in another tiline—though he neither knew nor would likely have cared.
After brief introductions and a short welcoming speech, O'Brian gestured for the newly arrived BSAA team to follow. The fifty or so operatives were soon led toward their assigned quarters.
Along the way, the U.S. Air Force soldiers barely gave them a second glance.
It was the usual multinational coalition scene—NATO units, allied forces, and various NGOs and international organizations milling about. So were here for profit, others for publicity or political clout. The base was used to the chaos.
Chris instinctively observed his surroundings as they walked.
The base periter was lined with fences of varying height and thickness. The barracks were neatly arranged. Soldiers and drones patrolled both the periter and interior. The control tower and hangar areas were heavily fortified—layered security everywhere.
The base was well-equipped—basketball courts, inflatable swimming pools, pull-up bars, and other sports and recreation facilities for the grunts.
Then, Chris spotted sothing that stood out oddly among the military infrastructure.
"A departnt store?"
It wasn't strange for a base to have a store—that was an old military tradition. But this one bore the Militech logo and was the size of a full-scale supermarket, bustling with people.
"Militech's in the retail business now?" Chris asked.
"They've been in it for a while," Leon explained, acting as Militech Security's liaison. "But it's not their main business. These stores were originally set up for Militech employees and their families—plus local governnt workers where the stores operate. It's more of a welfare thing, not sothing they advertise to the public."
He pointed toward several structural seams visible along the heavy outer walls. "On bases like this, it's never just a supermarket. These complexes include a cyberware clinic, a Militech weapons showroom for corporate clients, a trauma response base for wealthy locals, and finally, the retail division—basically filler."
Since Vela had chosen North Arica as Militech's primary operational hub, adapting to local habits was inevitable. War profiteering, foreign expansion, and asset acquisition—such ventures were Militech's bread and butter.
Leon shrugged. "Still, the company store's prices are great. Quality too."
Chris nodded, curiosity piqued, and stopped to peek through the glass doors.
At the checkout area, along with human clerks, he spotted self-service machines and even half-bodied service robots. Soldiers moved through the aisles paying with cash, cards, or—surprisingly—mobile QR paynts. The latter were mostly Militech employees.
"QR codes?" Chris raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah," Leon said. "Invented by Masahiro Hara at Denso in Japan. Our boss loves new tech—she's licensed several patents and built in extra functionality."
He grinned. "Wanna take a look inside?"
Chris exchanged a glance with Jill, then nodded.
Over the past year, his field missions had been relentless—from biohazard relief operations in Central Asia and the Republic of Panemstan, to intercepting Umbrella remnants' virus trades in Mali, to the cleanup of a hidden Umbrella bio-processing facility beneath an unnad Atlantic island. He'd been running nonstop, barely in touch with civilian life.
Unlike Brad, Chris wasn't much into consur tech or pop culture. His job was killing monsters, not following market trends.
Damn it. If he could, he'd dig up Spencer's corpse just to scream in his face. Umbrella really ran the dirtiest business model possible—digging holes and dumping biohazards across the planet! Half the black-market B.O.W.s out there trace back to their damned legacy!
So now he was cleaning up their ss—Umbrella's global janitor.
Fuck!
The silent curse slipped through his mind. He exhaled, cald down, and followed Leon inside.
Before long, he picked up a few small items—a shaver, a handheld console, gum—and grabbed so perfu and sunscreen for Jill. After trying out the self-checkout system, he left the store with a plastic bag in hand.
There was a small interruption—a few soldiers recognized him and insisted on autographs. Many of them wore prosthetic limbs.
Militech was changing lives. That was his strongest impression.
He decided then—once this mission was over, he'd head back to North Arica. Back to California. Take a break. See the world a little.
...
Temporary Operations Room.
"Have a seat." O'Brian opened the door and gestured toward the modular field table, welcoming Chris—a veteran BSAA operative.
The prefabricated room, built with lightweight composite panels, was spacious and functional.
At the far end hung a projection screen showing maps of the combat zone and recorded sightings of bioweapon activity. Along the walls sat rows of computers and fax machines, their cables tidy and organized. A large investigation board, plastered with photos, maps, and docunts pinned together with red strings, ford a web of connected intel.
On the center table rested several stainless-steel al trays stacked with burgers, sandwiches, hot dogs, fish and chips, salads, and a few beverages—tea, coffee, cocoa, and several cans of alcoholic drinks.
The boxed fish and chips were still steaming hot—clearly tid for their arrival.
Chris didn't stand on ceremony. Setting down his plastic bag, he grabbed a cup of coffee, gave the investigation board a quick once-over, then pulled a folding chair from under the table and sat down.
"O'Brian, how's the anti-biohazard situation in the Middle East?" he asked between sips.
"Not good," O'Brian replied, his smile fading. He shook his head gravely.
"When the war first began, it was conventional. But by 2004, as things dragged on, the warlords started to lose everything—and that's when the bioweapon attacks began multiplying exponentially across Iraq. It's been escalating ever since."
"So that confirms the allegations—that they've been developing illegal biological WMDs?" Chris asked.
O'Brian sighed and rubbed his forehead, looking frustrated. It wasn't clear whether his frustration was aid at the Iraqi warlords and extremists—or at the Pentagon generals and Capitol Hill politicians.
After all, the entire war had begun under the pretext of Iraq possessing such weapons.
Now that biohazard incidents were breaking out across the region, the justification for intervention had written itself. Without any need for the UN's authorization, the coalition had all the "legal" grounds it needed to stay indefinitely.
Deep down, O'Brian suspected that even if no weapons had been found, Washington's elites would have manufactured a crisis—a bioterror one, if necessary—to turn illegality into legitimacy, to anchor their so-called righteousness in blood and fire.
The only question was whether Iraq's hand in the matter had been deliberate—or forced.
Unfortunately, based on reconnaissance reports, the current outbreak appeared to be the forr.
Creaaak. Pulling up a chair, O'Brian sighed, his expression heavy. "War breeds death. Death breeds hatred. Hatred breeds madness," he said quietly. "And madness is dangerous. Unfortunately, this region is overflowing with it."
Then ca the virus rchants of the international black market—the pushers who sold bioweapons like narcotics. A little nudge from them, and the whole country spiraled out of control. The more extre the insurgency grew, the harsher the suppression—a vicious cycle, feeding itself. By now, Iraq's chaos was a perfect closed loop.
Leon sat silently, sipping his drink.
Jill, Brad, and the other BSAA veterans listened in grim silence.
The solution wasn't complicated—coalition withdrawal, lifting sanctions, restoring aid, rebuilding the nation.
But that was the hardest thing of all.
The coalition might withdraw soday—but not today.
After a long pause, O'Brian finally concluded his report.
"When do joint operations begin?" Leon asked first.
As a Militech Security specialist, he knew about certain classified plans discussed at Militech headquarters in San Francisco—particularly those concerning postwar reconstruction contracts.
Leon was an idealist—but a pragmatic one. If he couldn't stop the machine, he would at least make sure it moved cleanly. Eliminate the deranged warlords and extremist leaders, clear the field, and pave the way for Militech to partner with the Pentagon and the Iraqi Interim Authority. Then the reconstruction could begin.
Everything else could wait.
"The warlords in Fallujah..." Chris murmured, flipping through a stack of drone-captured aerial photos. "But these new B.O.W.s—who's supplying them, O'Brian? Any leads?"
Zombies and B.O.W.s were revolting as ever, but these... these were different. Their grotesque petal-like maws, the hybridized carapace and flesh, the chitinous limbs fused with organic tissue—it was sothing new, sothing unlike any virus he'd seen before.
"There's no way Iraq has the technology for this—not after a decade of sanctions. This has to be another leftover fragnt of Umbrella."
"Who?" Leon asked quietly.
...
Baghdad—the war-torn city center. Within an International Humanitarian Aid Zone.
A heavily guarded, fully equipped encampnt flew a tricolor banner—deep green, erald, and azure—bearing the corporate insignia of TRICELL Inc.
Just like Militech, Iraq was a feeding ground for countless multinational giants—vultures circling the sa carcass.
At the center stood a reinforced concrete hospital built under TRICELL's humanitarian initiative. Arab won in headscarves and children moved in and out, smiling faintly, as if this were any other charitable clinic.
No one paid attention to the restricted wing—sealed behind multiple layers of reinforced doors.
Inside, dim blue light flickered from several monitors, casting shadows over the tall, black-clad man standing silently before them.
His golden slicked-back hair was immaculate, each strand combed with precision. His face, sharp as if carved from stone, revealed nothing beneath his dark sunglasses. Behind the lenses, serpent-like orange-red pupils glimred faintly in the dark.
Albert Wesker.
Expressionless, he browsed through encrypted data transmitted from the field—viral experint logs, genetic fusion results, and combat paraters of the new hybrid B.O.W.
"BSAA... Chris 'Blackhand'..." Wesker scoffed quietly. "A man blessed by dumb luck. No matter. I hope you'll continue to provide with better, cleaner data for my research."
His cold murmur faded as he scrolled further, pulling up another report—a news feed about Militech's Jurassic Park.
"Resurrecting dinosaurs through genetic engineering, hmm? How did she manage that? Where did she get the genes? Fossilized DNA should have completely degraded long ago—extraction of full genetic sequences should be impossible... No matter."
Wesker had long since accepted a harsh truth—that his talent could not match Vela's. Reality had beaten that arrogance out of him.
Now, she stood in the light, while he thrived in the shadows. His only path forward was to exploit her hubris—to overtake her from the dark.
"Still... dinosaur DNA. That's interesting," he muttered. "If it can be fused with the Progenitor Virus, it might yield new, superior strains."
The dinosaurs themselves didn't matter. What mattered was their genetic material—potential carriers for viral fusion, sources for powerful new sequences.
"But San Francisco's North Bay..." he murmured.
The image on the screen showed Vela—surrounded by black-clad cybernetic bodyguards, exuding charisma and dominance in every motion. Wesker's jaw tightened. Go to San Francisco? The world's technological fortress? The safest city in Arica, where the Skynet surveillance program was fully operational?
Not a chance.
He knew better than to underestimate her. The Red Queen supercomputer had undoubtedly fallen into her hands—and with it, Umbrella's core archives. She had to know about the Wesker Project and its genetic experints.
He had no illusions—if he ever set foot in Northern California and the Red Queen detected his presence, Militech would hunt him to the ends of the earth.
Even his sister, Alex Wesker, had vanished off the grid, likely in hiding to escape Vela's reach.
So.
He picked up his phone and dialed a number.
Contact: Ada Wong.
"Ada," he said flatly.
...
anwhile — California, Bay Area.
After enduring a grueling congressional antitrust hearing and signing a mountain of contracts, Vela Adelheid Russell returned to San Francisco.
She made her way straight to Militech's Center for Disease Control and Prevention Research Institute, ready to discuss vaccine production with her bright, hardworking junior researcher—a rising talent in the fields of virology and pharmacology.
—
—
29 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon/DaoOfHeaven
User Comments
0 comments from readers