A five-meter-high wall, reinforced with scrapped truck chassis and steel plates, stood seamlessly. A giant red and white Umbrella Corporation logo towered on the wall, looking exceptionally striking amidst the rusty iron ruins.
Below the icon was a sensor door also reinforced with scrapped truck chassis. It was equipped with fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, and infrared monitoring; the security level was frighteningly high.
When the Dodge Viper in front drove up to the gate, the heavy steel door slowly slid open to both sides, making a dull sound of metal friction.
And the scene inside the gate made the three assassins, who had spent half their lives crawling through gunfire and bullets, instantly catch their breath.
Outside was the dilapidated dismantling yard, but inside was a spotless, cool-toned modern building.
Sleek epoxy floors, LED strips as bright as day, neatly arranged production equipment, and ubiquitous surveillance cameras and infrared sensors.
This extreme contrast was like stepping from hell into heaven with one foot, causing these three assassins, who had just come out of smoke and blood, to feel an intense sense of unreality.
Wesley even subconsciously rubbed his eyes, wondering if he had taken too much sedative and was hallucinating.
"Welcome to Umbrella Plant 2."
Alice jumped out of the Dodge Viper, casually closed the car door, and strode toward the main entrance of the building.
She took off her black combat jacket, revealing a simple white T-shirt and jeans underneath. Stripped of the sharpness and murderous aura of the battlefield, she looked like an ordinary girl next door.
Yet the light in those eyes still carried an aura of total control.
Cross steadily parked the truck at the building's entrance, pulled the handbrake, and unbuckled his seatbelt.
Pushing open the car door, his gaze was like a scanner, quickly sweeping over the entire factory layout. Security points, surveillance angles, escape routes, and fire coverage ranges instantly formed a complete blueprint in his mind.
The more he looked, the heavier the vigilance in his heart became.
The security layout of this factory was even more professional and tighter than The Fraternity's textile mill headquarters.
The surveillance on the surface was just the tip of the iceberg; there were definitely more countermeasures in the shadows.
These various arrangements were far too exaggerated for a teenage girl.
"Where does that thing go?"
Wesley also jumped out of the car, pointing at the loom of fate in the back of the truck, which was tightly covered with canvas, his tone carrying a bit of nervousness.
That machine was the source of all his nightmares in this life.
"Send it to the computing room on the second basement floor." Alice made a gesture, and two staff members in security uniforms immediately walked over, their movements professional and efficient. "Be careful, handle it with care, don't damage any parts."
The staff responded and began to carefully move the loom.
Alice turned around and walked toward the interior of the building, gesturing with her chin to the three people behind her: "Follow me, I'll show you my Umbrella Biotech."
The three looked at each other and eventually followed.
After walking along a wide, bright metal corridor for about ten minutes and passing through several strict identity verification checkpoints, they truly entered the core area.
When passing through the outermost production workshop, Wesley was completely stunned.
Dozens of workers in clean uniforms were working in front of the assembly line.
On the conveyor belt, white tubes with simple packaging were continuously coming out of the machine, passing through quality inspection, sealing, and boxing. The entire process was orderly, quiet, and efficient.
The workers in the workshop were mostly single mothers from nearby, unemployed middle-aged workers, and a few disabled people with mobility issues.
There was no numbness on their faces, only the steadiness of working hard. Seeing Alice walk in, they all smiled and greeted her, their tones full of respect and closeness.
"Good morning, Miss Alice."
"Morning. Today's production progress is going smoothly; thirty percent of the daily output has already been completed."
Alice nodded in response with a smile, her tone gentle without any pretension.
She pointed to the white tubes on the conveyor belt and introduced them to the three people behind her: "Umbrella Soothing Hand Cream, twenty dollars a tube. It has basic cell-repair ingredients added and works wonders for eczema, cracking, and skin damage. It's currently the cash cow of Umbrella Biotech."
She paused, her gaze sweeping over the workers in the workshop, her tone carrying a hint of pride: "The workers here are all ordinary people who couldn't find jobs nearby. Sloan used the loom and guns to create countless deaths and broken families. But we, with these small tubes of hand cream, give these broken families a hope to survive."
Wesley stood in place, looking at the scene before him, his throat suddenly tightening.
In his life, what he had seen most was death and slaughter.
He had never thought about using such a method to change other people's lives.
He thought of his own mother, who worked as a supermarket cashier, worked hard all her life but couldn't even afford rent, and finally died of illness in poverty and depression.
If back then, there had been a factory like this, a person like this, would his mother not have died so early?
In the following twenty minutes, Alice ignored his emotional fluctuations and led the three of them roughly through several different production lines before finally entering a heavy security door at the end of the corridor that required iris recognition to open.
Behind the door was the core laboratory of Umbrella Corporation.
[System: Loading Ai Haibara Character Card.]
The moment the cold system prompt sounded in her mind, the liveliness and gentleness in Alice's eyes instantly faded.
In its place was a calmness and arrogance akin to an abyss, as well as an extreme focus and rigor for scientific research carved into her very bones.
AI Model: gemini-3.1-flash-lite
Her eyes became sharp as knives, as if she could pierce through the test tubes and see the molecules and cells in the microscopic World.
As the only core researcher at Umbrella Biotech currently, with the character card of Ai Haibara, her research efficiency was enough to rival an entire top-tier biological research team.
She walked to the changing room on the side, nimbly changed into a pristine white lab coat, neatly tied up her long golden hair with a hairnet, and put on sterile gloves and protective goggles.
Her entire person instantly exuded a powerful aura of scientific research that warned mediocrities to stay away.
Cross's pupils constricted slightly.
As a top-tier assassin, he was extremely sensitive to changes in a person's aura.
A second ago, she was a gentle and free-spirited girl; this second, she had transformed into a calm, rational, and even slightly detached researcher.
This extreme contrast caused his internal vigilance to deepen by a few notches.
Alice did not rush into action, but instead spent a few minutes skillfully performing a set of extremely rigorous sterile disinfection procedures.
Afterward, she walked to the workbench and stopped, pulled open the refrigerated cabinet, and took out a small cobalt-blue bottle, only the size of a finger and as deep in color as the deep sea.
The bottle had no labels, only a small Umbrella Corporation logo, and inside was a snow-white paste that shimmered with a delicate luster under the cold light.
"t-1 essence, unit price 500 dollars."
Alice walked out holding the bottle and explained indifferently, her voice devoid of its previous lightness, leaving only the calmness and objectivity characteristic of a researcher.
"This is the signature product of Umbrella Biotech and the stepping stone for Umbrella Corporation to open the doors to New York's powerful and wealthy. Limited by the production of the core raw extract, the current monthly output is less than one hundred bottles; even the top billionaires in New York have to queue up to pre-order."
Her gaze fell on Fox's face.
The wound on Fox's left cheek, caused by bullet fragments, was in the stage of scabbing and swelling.
"Come here."
Alice spoke, her tone unquestionable, as if issuing the simplest of orders.
Fox was stunned for a moment.
In her life, she had heard countless orders.
Every order meant slaughter, meant death, and meant she had to push her life one step further into hell.
She subconsciously touched the wound on her cheek; that slight stinging pain was not even worth mentioning compared to scratching an itch for her.
The injuries she had suffered in her life, a hundred times worse than this, were countless.
Every time, it was hastily treated with The Fraternity's repair wax, and then she was immediately thrown into the next battle, the next slaughter.
To her, wounds were nothing more than medals of battle and the price of killing.
But in the end, she stepped forward and walked toward the workbench.
Her steps were steady but stiff, like a captive Beast approaching a human offering food for the first time—both vigilant and harboring a secret expectation.
Alice watched her approach, opened the cobalt-blue bottle, and used a specially made sterile glass rod to dip out a tiny bit of the snow-white paste.
Her movements were extremely precise; the amount of paste she dipped was neither too much nor too little, just enough to cover the entire wound.
"Don't move."
Alice said softly, then leaned over slightly, raised her hand to gently support Fox's chin, and turned her face to the side to facilitate treating the wound.
Fox's body instantly tensed up.
In her life, apart from the necessary physical contact while executing missions, she had never been this close to anyone.
The girl's fingertips carried a cool temperature, and through the thin sterile gloves, they touched her jawline like a faint electric current, instantly coursing through her entire body.
She subconsciously held her breath, and for the first time, a slight panic appeared in her azure blue pupils.
Alice, however, seemed not to notice her tension; with gentle yet steady movements, she lightly applied that bit of t-1 essence onto the wound on her cheek.
A coolness instantly swept across Fox's cheek, suppressing the burning and stinging sensation of the wound.
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