The twin mutant spiders hiss in unison, mandibles flaring as their bodies press low against the stained concrete.
Their fangs snap forward like a cobra striking, and twin jets of thick, yellow fluid erupt from the tips, cutting through the air in a straight line toward the three figures in the corridor.
Havel flinches hard, instincts kicking in before his brain catches up.
He yanks the rag on his Molotov to the lighter's flame and hurls the filthy bottle in a single, panicked motion, glass spinning end over end through the dim basement air.
"Poison spit? What are you, knockoff Pokémon?"
"Fine. Eat my version of Flamethrower…"
The grime-slick bottle arcs over the cracked floor, dropping toward the spiders' clustered bodies.
Just before it hits, Havel's wrist twists; the Desert Eagle comes up, silver frame locked into his grip.
He squeezes the trigger.
"Click."
"Bang… BOOM!"
The Magnum round leaves the barrel with a thunderclap, a 0.50 caliber slug punching into the Molotov midair.
The impact blows the glass apart, shards spraying out as the hollow-point shock tears into the gasoline, forcing it outward in a violent burst.
The fuel slams into the already burning rag.
"Chh—"
Flame, accelerant, air, and the shockwave from the Magnum round all collide.
The cheap Molotov stops being a street thug's toy and blooms into a compact incendiary bomb.
Fire blossoms in front of the spiders like an opening flower of orange and white, the sudden heat washing over the corridor as the blast-front rolls straight into them.
For a few heartbeats, the world is only roaring flame and the stench of burning chitin.
Then silence.
When the fire gutters out, only two charred black husks lie twitchless on the concrete.
No movement, no lingering hiss, nothing.
Havel stares at the corpses and lets out a low whistle.
So much for Poison Spit.
Bug-type really is weak to Fire, huh?
You really thought you were some kind of anti-meta matchup king?
The acid they had launched never reaches them.
The airburst flipped its trajectory, splattering the yellow venom across the floor instead.
Where it lands, the concrete begins to smoke and bubble, eating down into the slab until pits form in the "solid" ground.
Havel drags a sleeve across his forehead, feeling the cold sweat.
On second thought, maybe skip the superhero audition.
With corrosive power like that, this isn't "radioactive spider makes you Spider-Man."
That stuff in a human bloodstream? Forget powers—there wouldn't even be a corpse left.
"What was that just now…?"
"Spiders? How can they even get that big…?"
Rebecca's voice comes out thin and shaken.
Even with her eyes wide from Havel's improvised flamethrower stunt, she can't stop herself from staring at the twisted remains on the ground.
From Plague Crawlers to the Centurion and now these giant spiders, this place feels less like a research facility and more like a menagerie of nightmares.
Who knows what's waiting for them deeper in.
"Yeah, spiders," Billy says grimly.
"Pretty sure they're Umbrella's B.O.W. experiments. Thing is, they're completely out of control. I don't see what the point is—I mean, why make weapons you can't command?"
For an ex-Marine who's seen his share of ugliness, the logic still doesn't track.
If Umbrella wants bio-weapons, why not design something with brains—something that can follow orders—instead of unleashing rabid, brainless beasts?
All these things can do is lash out at anything that moves.
"There is no point," Havel cuts in, waving a hand as if brushing off a bad idea.
"Don't use normal human logic on self-proclaimed geniuses. They love putting 'human evolution' and 'eternal life' on banners so they can feel good about chasing their own twisted impulses."
"Virus research doesn't 'save' anyone. It just lets them pretend they're sitting next to God, that they're some kind of creator. Beyond inflating their egos? Useless."
Seeing Rebecca and Billy both drifting toward that familiar trap—trying to rationalize Umbrella—Havel shuts it down fast.
Letting them spiral into moral theorycrafting inside a monster-infested dungeon is how people get killed.
Once he has their focus back, he sweeps the tunnel, checking every shadow, every overhead gap.
No more spiders skittering along the ceiling, no more glinting eyes in the dark.
Only when he's sure the nest is clear do they move on.
Three sets of footsteps echo through the underground passage.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
What waits at the end of the tunnel is not the gleaming lab buried in Billy's expectations—no rows of stainless-steel benches, no antiseptic reek of alcohol, no banks of machines humming under white lights.
Instead, they step into a dungeon.
Dust hangs in the air, thick with the iron tang of old blood.
The lighting is weak and jaundiced, casting long bars of shadow over damp stone walls and rotting wood.
It looks less like a modern research wing and more like someone imported a medieval torture chamber and bolted it beneath an Umbrella facility.
On a decaying wooden table, a single document lies open.
"Detention Facility Inmate List.
Name: Matthews K. Status: Deceased, remains discarded.
Name: Mitch D. Status: Deceased, remains discarded.
Name: Keith W. Status: Preserved as anatomical specimen.
Name: Savage C. Status: Transferred to primary research facility…"
Line after line of cramped handwriting runs down the page, a roster of James Marcus's experimental fodder.
Some names probably belonged to staff, others to death-row inmates or "disappeared" nobodies, but the result was the same.
While they were alive, these people had rotted in this underground cage and endured whatever sadism Marcus felt like testing that day.
"…"
"It's a list of test subjects," Rebecca murmurs, her voice tight.
"This is a prison. They were locked down here and tortured before being sent to the main lab. The smell alone… I don't even want to guess how many died in here. Umbrella… they're no different than demons."
She sets the list down with trembling fingers.
Havel pushes open the adjoining door from the guard room, stepping into the chamber beyond.
Rebecca and Billy exchange a heavy look, faces dark, then follow.
The rotted wood groans as the door swings inward.
Click—
Creak…
The interrogation room beyond is lined with devices that don't belong in any sane facility.
Rows of rusted instruments loom out of the gloom: saws with jagged, blackened teeth, guillotine-like blades, hooked spikes, heavy chains dangling from ceiling mounts, restraint chairs bolted to the floor.
Thick black stains mar the metal, too old to tell if it's dried blood or something worse.
In one corner, a human-sized iron shell stands open like the husk of some predatory insect—the infamous Iron Maiden.
A coffin-shaped cage lined with inward-pointing spikes, meant to be closed inch by inch on a living body until the weight and pressure push those spikes through flesh, muscle, even bone.
In the suffocating dark, victims would scream themselves hoarse long before they ever lost consciousness.
If Marcus thought this belonged in a "training facility," his head was farther gone than any of his test subjects.
"How many… how many inhuman experiments did they do here…?"
Rebecca's eyes move from the Iron Maiden to the chains, then to the floor, where brown-black patches mark where blood soaked and dried.
Her shoulders give a small, involuntary shiver.
She's seen corpses, monsters, even that giant centipede.
But seeing the tools built for slowly breaking human beings feels worse than any B.O.W. charging down a hall.
For the first time, she lets herself picture the faces of the people who were dragged in here.
What they must have screamed.
How long it took them to stop.
Whatever lingering benefit-of-the-doubt Umbrella had in her mind dissolves completely.
In this place, there's no difference between the company and Hell's own contractors.
While Rebecca drowns in that wave of horror and anger, Havel and Billy are already moving.
They fan out through the cell block, checking doors, grids, and blind corners.
Several iron gates line the interior, each one thick, heavy, and locked tight.
None of them can be forced.
Judging from the wiring and control boxes, they're all tied into a central power system.
After a long, frustrating sweep, Havel finds the problem.
The electrical controls are on the far side of a barred section, hidden behind a locked cage.
The only access is a rusted ventilation duct midway up the wall, its mouth just big enough for a single person to squeeze through.
It's also annoyingly high.
They'll need a makeshift boost to reach it.
"Billy, give me a lift," Havel says, already shrugging off his tactical pack.
"I'll crawl in from there. Looks like this is the only way forward. Once I pop the locks, we can move on."
He drops the backpack to avoid getting wedged in the opening.
The duct is barely wide enough for his shoulders, the metal ring cold and flaking under his fingers.
With Rebecca and Billy bracing beneath him, he gets a firm push, boots scraping against the wall as he kicks for leverage.
After an undignified amount of kicking and elbowing, he manages to jam himself through.
A heartbeat later—"Thud!"
He hits the floor on the other side hard enough to see stars.
Still, he's inside.
Dusting off his pants with one hand and his pride with the other, Havel jogs to the electrical panel mounted on the wall.
Below the gauge, several chunky buttons sit in a row.
On the dial itself, a single red mark stands at 70.
No puzzles this time.
Set the power to 70, and the locks should disengage.
"Click… click…"
He doesn't hesitate.
His fingers dance over the controls, nudging the pointer up until it settles neatly on the 70 mark.
"Vrrrm—"
A low hum vibrates through the concrete as the machinery comes alive.
Somewhere in the block, motors whir and heavy mechanisms shift.
The main gate to the dungeon slides open with a grinding groan.
Havel smirks.
No riddle, no chessboard, just a glorified breaker box.
He was right: the power meter is the cell block's key.
Far above, in a hidden surveillance room, someone else watches the cell doors unlock.
A tall, slender silhouette stands before a wall of flickering monitors, gaze locked on the three figures moving across the screens.
The white lab coat and pale hair are not Wesker's or Birkin's.
This man is younger, sharper in feature, yet there is something off in the stillness of his face.
James Marcus is dead.
What lingers here is the Queen Leech wrapped around his stolen memories and flesh.
When it discovered Wesker and Birkin's hideout earlier, it had come to this room intending an ambush.
But by the time it arrived, its "disciples" had already fled.
All that remained were the humming monitors and the scurrying, unwelcome guests onscreen.
Rats.
For the thing that thinks with Marcus's arrogance, any intruder in this facility is vermin to be culled.
Wesker and Birkin are large rats—traitors that demand a careful, deliberate execution.
Havel's trio, in comparison, are just small, noisy pests that can be swatted aside at leisure.
"Heh…"
"I told you already," the Marcus-shell murmurs, lips curling.
"This is my domain. It doesn't matter how you struggle. It's meaningless. Now then… three little mice. You're first."
The Queen Leech raises both hands.
Nerves and viral colonies shiver through the network of infected organisms below; it can feel every B.O.W. birthed under its influence.
Here, in its own hive, it is absolute.
This is not an uncontrollable plague.
Not to it.
To the Queen, the virus is a leash, and every host is a dog that will bare its fangs at a single thought.
Humans, huddling behind their moral terror and "containment protocols," will never understand this power.
Divinity is a feeling, and it has tasted it.
…
Back in the underground prison, Havel is just starting to relax his shoulders.
The doors are unlocked.
The way ahead is finally—
"ROAR!!"
The sound rips down from above, a bestial bellow that vibrates in his chest.
A white blur drops out of the darkness overhead.
Not a blur.
A body.
It slams onto Havel's back, driving him half a step forward.
Rebecca and Billy, trapped on the far side of the bars, see the shape clearly as it clings to him.
A white-furred ape, skin ruptured in patches to reveal raw red tissue beneath, eyes burning a feral crimson.
Its fangs and claws are longer, sharper, more predatory than any normal monkey's, built for rending, not climbing.
An Eliminator—one of Umbrella's early primate-based B.O.W.s.
Fast, vicious, and notorious for striking from cover, they usually give their targets no time to react at all.
"Shhh—!"
"ROAR!!"
Its weight crushes down across Havel's shoulders.
Without a heartbeat's pause, the creature yanks its lips back and drops its jaws toward his exposed neck, teeth flashing toward skin.
The virus riding its blood is weaker at this point in the timeline, but a bite is still a coin toss between infection and a slow, ugly death.
"Havel, look out! On your back!"
"It's infected—some kind of monkey! Get it off you, now!"
Rebecca's scream rips through the bars, Billy's shout riding over hers.
Neither can get to him in time; steel and distance turn them into helpless spectators as the Eliminator clamps down harder with its limbs, using him like a living perch.
"Stupid monkey, get off!"
Adrenaline spikes through Havel's veins.
He bucks and twists, trying to slam the creature into the wall, but the Eliminator hangs on with iron grip, claws digging for purchase.
Frustration flares, and his hand shoots to the Desert Eagle, fingers closing around the grip as he yanks it free, muscles coiling to fire blind over his own shoulder.