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Leon quickly stepped forward, first glancing at the 'dog tag' hanging around the other person's neck, then checking his breathing, while gently shaking him and asking loudly:
"Captain Decant, tell me, who did this?"
"Something...something attacked us..."
Captain Dan Decant, who had regained some consciousness, said with a pained and terrified expression: "You two are too late. Ricardo Elvin has already escaped."
"This place...this place is a trap."
"A trap? How could this be...?"
Leon and Sheva Alomar's faces were filled with disbelief upon hearing this.
However, Captain Dan Decant, who had entered the stage of a final burst of energy before death, did not choose to explain why this place was a trap. Instead, he used the last of his strength to pull out a USB drive from his pocket, and as he handed it to Leon, he instructed:
"Take this. It contains some information about the transaction..."
"I downloaded this from their computer when I had the chance. You...you must hand it over to headquarters. I think it should help headquarters find out what exactly happened here..."
With that, his neck slumped, his head drooped limply, and he breathed his last.
"Damn it, if it wasn't for that strange large infected, we should have made it in time for the capture operation, and this situation wouldn't have happened..."
Looking at her comrades who had died tragically before her, Sheva Alomar clenched her fists in self-reproach, but had nowhere to vent the anger in her heart.
Leon was much calmer than her; after all, he had seen many comrades sacrifice themselves during every mission he had undertaken, so he had long grown accustomed to it.
"Kirk, this is Leon, do you read? We successfully obtained the data, but Alpha Team has been completely wiped out, and Ricardo Elvin is confirmed to have escaped."
A moment later, Kirk's voice came through the communicator, "Received, Leon. You and Sheva immediately find Alpha Team's car parked outside the warehouse, then use its storage device to upload that data to the headquarters' cloud."
"Understood."
After ending the communication, Leon and Sheva Alomar followed the passage, searching for the door leading to the outside of the warehouse.
However, just as they found the door, following the bodies of Alpha Team members scattered everywhere, a strange noise came from the ceiling behind them.
"Damn it, Leon, look up there, what the hell is that?"
Sheva Alomar pointed her gun at a mass on the ceiling not far away, which looked like hundreds of black tentacles intertwined and coiled together, her face filled with terror.
Splat—
The mass on the ceiling suddenly dropped, and then countless dark tentacles twisted like agile snakes, lunging towards Leon and Sheva Alomar.
Along the way, upon touching the bodies of Alpha Team members, those tentacles absorbed them completely at a visible speed.
Roar—
The puddle of material that had first fallen slowly stood up from the ground, gradually revealing a rough human-like outline.
If one observed closely, they would find that there was indeed a human inside, but the person's entire body was constantly shedding and differentiating into a large number of black tentacles.
This bizarre scene looked incredibly terrifying.
"I think... this thing must be the culprit who wiped out the entire Alpha Team, right?"
Leon quickly said, then while having Sheva Alomar search for the key to open the main warehouse door, he used his pistol to attack the bizarre humanoid creature.
Bang bang bang—
Bullets hit the black tentacles, immediately splashing yellowish-green liquid, but they couldn't harm it in the slightest.
And the humanoid monster opposite did not sit idly by, but swung its arm fiercely in Leon's direction.
The arm, formed by dozens of black tentacles intertwined, stretched bizarrely like a rubber band, almost hitting Leon.
"Sheva, I'll deal with it, you figure out how to open the door."
Leon seemed to have a plan, continuously firing while retreating towards the passage they came from.
Seeing that the monster covered in black tentacles had successfully been distracted by him, Leon immediately quickened his pace, leading it away from the area where Sheva Alomar was.
Then, Leon stopped after a corner, pulled out two grenades from behind him, pulled the pins, and then threw them both at the feet of the monster that was following him... if it had feet!
Boom boom—rumble!!!
Flames shot up, and the huge explosion and high temperature directly engulfed the monster's body, emitting non-human screams, finally turning into a nauseating pool of black water...
"Leon, are you okay?"
Sheva Alomar looked at Leon, who had returned, and asked with concern, "Where's that monster?"
"I destroyed it with grenades."
Leon said with a solemn expression, "It can be confirmed that the thing just now was the real culprit behind the Alpha Team's annihilation. This must be a new biological weapon. We must report this important situation to headquarters!"
The door opened, and the two walked out, guns at the ready, and saw two military Humvees parked nearby.
"Found it."
Leon leaned into the passenger seat of one of the military Humvees and saw a satellite transmission device that looked like a briefcase.
When the case was opened, its internal structure looked like a laptop embedded within the case.
Successfully starting the computer, Leon quickly inserted the USB drive that Captain Dan Decant had just given him and remotely uploaded the encrypted data inside to the BSAA Organization Headquarters' cloud server.
"Leon, do you know what kind of monster that was just now?"
Sheva Alomar asked, still shaken, while keeping watch.
Leon replied without looking up, "It should be a new type of biological weapon that Ricardo Elvin deliberately left behind to deal with rescuers, right?"
"Compared to Alpha Team, you... cough cough, we're already lucky to be alive right now."
For Leon, in past missions, he had experienced situations far more dangerous than today, and he had always successfully completed them.
So his mindset had long been tempered to be as steady as an old dog through countless life-and-death missions.
However, whether due to some curse or not, except for a few teammates like Chris, Jill, and Rebecca, all other teammates who had accompanied him on missions had ended up dead...
So much so that he now looked at Sheva Alomar as if she were a dead person.
And at this moment, Sheva Alomar, unaware that she had been invisibly cursed with a 'Death Buff,' nodded noncommittally, but still said with some self-reproach:
"If we had arrived here a little earlier, maybe..."
"Sheva, stop overthinking things." Leon couldn't help but remind her, "If we had arrived earlier, maybe we would be dead here like Alpha Team."
With that, he opened his communicator, "Leon calling headquarters, data upload complete, please respond."
Soon, a reply came through the communicator, "This is headquarters, data received, Leon. You and Sheva did well. We will immediately send personnel to decrypt and analyze the uploaded data!"
Facing the praise from headquarters, Leon's face showed no trace of a smile. Before the other party ended the call, he reported urgently:
"The residents throughout the town seem to have fallen into a state of madness, especially those terrorists. Their behavior and details are all extremely similar to the Los Ganados (i.e., the host group controlled by the Plaga Parasite, usually referred to as livestock or Majini) I discovered in Spain before..."
"But there are still some special individuals whom I have never encountered in previous missions, so I suspect it is very likely that the real buyer behind Ricardo Elvin has upgraded the Plaga Parasite!"
"Received, thank you, Leon. This intelligence is very crucial."
"Wait a minute, headquarters."
At this moment, Sheva Alomar suddenly said over the communicator, "Ricardo Elvin has now escaped. Has our next mission changed?"
Headquarters quickly replied, "Mission content unchanged. Arresting Ricardo Elvin is still your primary mission..."
"Just now, the West Africa branch, through satellite image analysis, believes that Ricardo Elvin has likely escaped to the mining area on the other side of the train station."
"What?"
Sheva Alomar's eyes widened, and she exclaimed in disbelief, "Headquarters, did I hear that right? Now there are only two of us left, and you still want us to go deep alone? How is that any different from sending us to our deaths?"
Leon, beside her, calmly glanced at the somewhat overreacting Sheva Alomar. Clearly, he had no objection to the order issued by headquarters.
After all, in most of his previous missions, when had he not gone deep alone?
He had long been accustomed to it.
Actually, he really wanted to say to Sheva Alomar, 'How about you drop me off at the mining area, and then you can go back first?'
You just get in the way by being there.
"Don't worry, Sheva, Delta Team has already been dispatched there. They will fully assist you in confirming the location and arresting Ricardo Elvin."
Sheva Alomar tried to argue something upon hearing this, "Wait a minute, we can't take such a huge risk, even Alpha Team..."
But then the emotionless command from headquarters came through the communicator, "Repeating, mission content unchanged. We absolutely cannot let Ricardo Elvin escape this time. You two are to cross the train station and proceed to the mining area now, over!!"
Sheva Alomar exclaimed with agitation, "Damn it, such an order is simply ridiculous! Those old bureaucrats at headquarters don't even treat us like humans."
Leon, meanwhile, checked his weapons and ammunition, and said in a calm tone, "Do you feel like you're being used as cannon fodder by the higher-ups right now?"
"What I want to tell you is, this is normal. After all, BSAA is not like Hyperspace Group, which values employee safety and rights."
Sheva Alomar gave Leon a somewhat resentful glance, clearly having caught the teasing tone in his words, but still asked curiously:
"Hyperspace Group? Is that the Hyperspace Group that has saved Earth multiple times?"
"That's right."
Leon nodded noncommittally, and continued with a slightly wistful tone, "I have a friend who joined there a while ago, and she said that Hyperspace Group's employee benefits are simply amazing..."
"I really regret now that I didn't join Hyperspace Group with her back then."
Clearly, the friend Leon referred to was none other than Rebecca Chambers, who had now become a senior researcher at Hyperspace Group!
In fact, two years ago, shortly after Rebecca joined Hyperspace Group, she felt the generous humanistic care and material rewards from Hyperspace Group, and wanted to 'give a hand' to her comrades who were fighting on the front lines of anti-biochemical terrorism, living dangerous lives every day.
This naturally included Leon.
However, in the eyes of Leon and most others, the then-unknown Hyperspace Group was just a private enterprise, not enough to bear the heavy banner of resisting global biochemical terrorism.
So, neither Leon nor the other friends close to Rebecca chose to refuse.
But as Hyperspace Group gradually rose to prominence and demonstrated its powerful military strength in saving the World from 'planet-level crises' repeatedly, Leon felt somewhat regretful about his decision to refuse back then.
Although BSAA has now become a legitimate organization under the United Nations.
However, after being incorporated, the BSAA, controlled by the United Nations, did not see any improvement in employee welfare.
It could only be said to be barely passable, nowhere near as generous as Hyperspace Group.
Previously, without a comparison, Leon and others didn't feel there was any problem, after all, their original intention for voluntarily joining BSAA was to prevent those biochemical terrorists from creating panic and disaster.
But now, with Rebecca as the best example, it would be self-deception to say they had no thoughts on the matter.
After all, everyone was doing the same job. On Hyperspace Group's side, they provided money, personnel, and equipment, and their corporate culture was absolutely top-notch.
But when it came to BSAA, they could only risk their lives for the lowest 'subsistence allowance.' Who would be willing to accept that?
Could it be that a dignified organization directly under the United Nations was inferior to a private enterprise?