"…"
"I'm pressing it."
Rebecca exhales, gives Havel one last resigned look, and reaches for the control panel.
"Click."
"Vrrrm—!!"
The instant the switch drops, scarlet alarm lights flare to life across the training arena.
A deep, droning siren hums through the concrete.
Overhead, something clanks and screeches along a ceiling rail.
Then steel containers drop like oversized ammunition boxes, slamming into the arena floor hard enough to throw up clouds of dust.
Panels on the sides blow open, metal flaps crashing outward.
Within the swirling haze, a single tall shadow unfolds itself.
Havel, Rebecca, and Billy lean forward as one, eyes locked on the figure now occupying their "test field."
Umbrella's secret B.O.W. for this arena.
What did they bring to this particular party?
Curiosity and tension twist together.
Havel's fingers tighten on his gun, Rebecca and Billy's grips firm on shotgun and pistol.
"Chhh…"
A rasping hiss cuts through the thinning dust.
The silhouette steps fully into view.
It walks upright, hunched and predatory, muscles rolling under green, armor-like scales.
Its head is vaguely reptilian, orange-yellow eyes set in deep sockets, a maw full of jagged teeth.
Its arms are long and heavily muscled, hands ending in five sickle-like claws that look more like bolted-on blades than natural nails.
A humanoid lizard.
Umbrella's weaponized chimera.
A Hunter.
In Umbrella's files, this variant carries the designation: Hunter α.[residentevil.fandom]
Umbrella built it as an organic bioweapon—B.O.W.—by splicing reptile donor DNA into fertilized human embryos, using the T-virus as a binding agent and mutagen.
The γ models followed a reversed process, grafting human DNA into amphibian eggs instead.[residentevil.fandom]
On paper, it's science.
In practice, it's butchery.
Behind those design notes lie rows of embryos and "volunteers," each a life rewritten in a Petri dish.
Even artificial fertilization is still life, and Umbrella took that fragile starting point and jammed foreign animal code into it.
This isn't adaptation.
It's vandalism of the human blueprint.
Umbrella didn't just step over the line of natural law; they sprinted past morality and never looked back.
Creating the Hunter is one crime.
Shipping it out in containers like cargo and unleashing it on human targets is another.
The specimen standing below them is one of the earliest production-line models—an original α.
Hunters are both some of Umbrella's oldest and most "successful" products; prototypes date back to the 1980s, and after Umbrella's collapse, other manufacturers used their research to create new variants like the "Regenerator" and similar modern horrors built on the same philosophy.[residentevil.fandom]
On the battlefield, the Hunter's method is simple and vicious:
Close distance with inhuman leaps, shred targets with claws that might as well be swords, tank small-arms fire with thick scales, and use just enough intelligence to hunt rather than merely charge.
To fine-tune all of that, Umbrella turned this arena into its playground—running scenario after scenario, feeding it humans until the data charts looked pretty.
"What… what is that thing?"
"A lizard man? Or something worse?"
Rebecca's voice is barely above a whisper as she stares down at it.
The Eliminators and Plague Crawlers were bad enough, but this is different.
This looks designed to kill people, not just bite whatever moves.
The Hunter answers their hesitation with a roar.
"ROAR—!"
Its yellow gaze snaps up, fixing on the control booth.
The muscles in its legs coil, scales flexing.
In one explosive movement, it launches itself off the ground, claws catching the ladder welded to the arena wall.
It surges up the side structure with brutal speed, climbing like a nightmare spider.
"Shut the door!"
Havel's gut clenches.
He hadn't expected it to be that fast.
He lunges forward, grabs the control room's heavy metal handle, and yanks the door shut with all his weight.
"Bang!"
The iron panel slams into place.
The control room seals a split-second before the Hunter reaches them.
A heartbeat later, it's there.
It plants itself outside the glass front, yellow eyes flicking across the three of them like it's already assigning priorities.
Its killing intent is almost physical, pressing against the window.
Then it swings.
"Sching—!"
"BOOM—!!"
The claws crash into the front of the booth.
Steel reinforcement rings and plastic-laminate glass take the hit, the whole frame shuddering.
But the window holds.
This isn't cheap scenery glass.
The control room is built like a bank vault—multi-layer ballistic glass bolted into a steel frame, rated to stop assault-rifle bursts.
The outer surface spiders with cracks where the claws strike, but only the top layers fracture.
Underneath, more layers wait.
Ballistic glass isn't ordinary sand-based pane; it's hardened transparent plastic laminated with sheets of high-strength fiber, stacked again and again.
Think of two thick books with every page interleaved until the block becomes something you can drive a truck onto.
Scale that up into a window and you get a barrier a few centimeters thick hiding hundreds, maybe thousands, of layers.
The Hunter can shred flesh in an instant, but this isn't flesh.
"…"
"It forgot this is bulletproof," Havel says quietly.
"No way brute force gets through. Rebecca, stay put and keep its attention. Don't worry—it's not coming in. The lab rats who built this weren't insane enough to skimp on their own safety glass."
"Billy and I will flank it from the sides. We hit it from two angles while it's focused on you. Should go down fast."
The plan is simple and brutal:
One bait in the safe box.
Two shooters in the field.
As bait, Rebecca is the obvious choice—medic, light armor, and crucially, the one they don't want exposed to a surprise rush.
Let her stay in the safest place in the room and make noise.
She doesn't argue.
She knows her limits.
Her aim is decent but not elite, and against something this fast, taking point is a good way to get carved open.
If she can avoid being a liability and play her part from behind the glass, that's enough.
The roles settle in three sentences.
Havel shrugs off his tactical pack, the straps sliding from his shoulders.
He checks the M500 and Desert Eagle in quick succession—cylinders and magazines topped off—then flicks a look at Billy.
Billy nods back once, understanding.
The two of them slip toward the back of the control booth, moving quiet and low.
The rear door opens into the weapon storage room, and from there, a secondary exit leads them out along the outer edge of the arena—a side path the Hunter hasn't clocked yet.
Rebecca's job starts the second they vanish from sight.
She steps right up to the glass, planting her boots and hefting the M1897 shotgun.
There's no way she can actually reach the Hunter through the barrier, but that's not the point.
She jabs at the glass with the barrel, slams her palm against the pane, waves, shouts—anything to keep its eyes on her.
"ROAR, ROAR, ROAR—!!"
The Hunter's response is immediate.
Her provocation hits whatever instincts it has like a switch.
Its throat rips out another roar, louder and more furious, while its massive arms blur into motion.
The claws become whirling blades hammering the glass, each blow ringing out as a heavy metallic "clang."
Spiderweb cracks multiply across the outer layers, making it look like the whole pane is about to explode inward.
Rebecca's breath catches.
For a second, her heart tries to claw up into her throat.
Is it actually going to break through?
Her jabbing slows, hesitation bleeding into fear.
She can't help imagining those claws punching through and dragging her out headfirst.
In truth, the danger isn't nearly as bad as it looks.
The fractures spreading across the surface are mostly superficial.
The Hunter has managed to chew through a fraction of the laminate, but the bulk of the thickness remains untouched.
This glass was built to eat rifle rounds and keep going; a single B.O.W. pounding on it with claws is still working on chapter one.
Her eyes don't know that.
Her nerves don't care.
…
"Tap, tap, tap…"
"Tap, tap, tap…"
On the arena's flank, Havel and Billy slip out of the weapon room and into the maze of crates and barricades.
The Hunter's focus is glued to the bright, noisy box up above.
Its "intelligence" has limits; it still behaves like a predator locked onto visible, taunting prey.
It doesn't notice the two shadows skirting the edge of its world.
Step by step, the pair split, each moving to one side of the arena.
From there, they work their way around, angles widening until they stand at opposite flanks with clear lines of fire.
Perfect.
Havel raises the Desert Eagle, both hands locked around the grip.
His sights settle on the back of the Hunter's head.
Thirty meters separate them, but for him, that's easy work.
Billy, at the far angle, lifts his 9mm sidearm.
Former Marine, clean fundamentals, steady breath—this is well within his comfort zone.
They share a glance across the space and nod almost at the same time.
Two fingers tighten.
"Bang, bang—!!"
"Bang bang—!!"
The volley rings out in a tight, overlapping pattern—one deep, booming report from the Magnum pistol, one flatter crack from the service pistol, two bullets streaking toward the same target from different sides.
For any normal creature, that's a death sentence.
There's no time to track both trajectories, no cover within a step.
But "normal" doesn't live here.
"Whoosh—!"
"Clang, clang, clang…!"
The Hunter hears the twin reports and reacts before conscious thought can catch up.
Its pupils snap down to pinpricks, and its entire body whips downward.
It throws itself flat.
The two rounds slice through the space where its skull had been a heartbeat earlier and slam into the arena wall, sparking off concrete and steel.
Havel and Billy both freeze for a split second, thrown by the sheer improbability of it.
Was that luck?
Or reflex?
They don't get time to answer.
"ROAR!"
The Hunter uses the gap between volley and reload with predatory precision.
Its legs coil and release, propelling it off the floor and into a full-speed charge.
Its gaze locks onto Havel.
The bigger thunderclap came from his side—Magnum, not 9mm.
Even on instinct, the Hunter categorizes threats and chooses the one that can hurt it most.
And it is right.
The M500 and Desert Eagle in Havel's hands are the only weapons here that can reliably erase its head in a single clean shot.
Billy's 9mm handgun and aging lever-action shotgun can wound, even cripple, but they're not the same tier.
For a killing tool designed to prioritize survival, picking Havel as target number one is the optimal move.
"Killer, huh," Havel mutters, seeing those burning eyes fix on him.
"Figures you'd go for the biggest gun."
He feels its killing intent like a physical weight.
His reaction is automatic—he drops the Eagle and brings up the M500, sights searching for the center of that scaled face.
Half a second to aim.
Half a second to fire.
"Boom—!"
"BOOM—!!"
The M500 roars, sending a fat, orange-tipped round screaming downrange.
If it hits the head, the fight ends right there.
The 0.50-caliber slug would pulp bone and brain alike, turning the Hunter's skull into a red mist.
But Havel is still underestimating what's in front of him.
The Hunter isn't just a beast with sharp claws.
It's a T-virus-honed predator birthed from human embryos—something that, when cornered, will gladly maim itself to survive.
And that instinct is about to kick in.