The core control room at the very bottom of the offshore heavy aircraft carrier.
The multi-ton super-alloy blast door let out a tortured groan as a brutally overwhelming force kicked it clean off its hinges from the outside.
The massive door panel tumbled through the air and slammed into the tactical holographic table at the center of the control room, throwing off a shower of sparks.
The dust cleared. Chris stepped into the chamber that should have served as the nerve center for the entire Lanshiang bioterror attack, his face utterly blank.
Piers followed close behind, sweeping his muzzle across every corner.
The control room was trashed. Smashed keyboards and shattered screens littered the floor.
In front of the largest main display, a woman in a dark blue dress sat slumped on the ground. The screen behind her flashed an angry ACCESS DENIED.
She turned her head slowly at the sound of the door being blown in.
It was a face identical to Ada Wong's, but twisted now into something that made the skin crawl.
Her hair was a mess. Her eye makeup had run into dark smears. That carefully imitated elegance and cool detachment had evaporated the moment the missile launch codes were locked out.
"Chris Redfield..." Carla braced herself against the console and stood, the corner of her mouth pulling into a vicious arc as she grasped for one last shred of psychological advantage. "What, you brought your little sidekick to get revenge on the 'Ada Wong' who got your whole squad killed? Seeing me now, are your hands shaking too hard to even hold that gun?"
She expected Chris to be the same as he'd been in Edonia. Blinded by rage and hatred, reduced to a mindless animal.
But Chris just looked at her. Quiet. Those eyes held no fury, no madness. Only the cold pity of a man watching a sewer rat.
"Drop the act, Carla Radames."
Chris's low voice echoed through the empty control room like a sledgehammer blow to her chest.
Carla's smile froze on her face. Her pupils contracted violently. "You... what did you call me?"
"I said drop the act." Chris advanced slowly, radiating a pressure that was almost physical. "Your cheap imitation might have fooled the old me. But now? You're full of holes. You're not Ada. You're just the pathetic knockoff that sick politician Simmons stitched together from scraps."
"Shut up! Shut up! I am Ada! I'm the god who created all of this!" Carla shrieked like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, her once-pretty face twisting beyond recognition.
"You're not even worthy of being her shadow." Chris stopped ten paces away. "I'm standing here not for some 'Ada Wong,' but for the brothers who died at the hands of a fake in Edonia. Today, we settle that debt."
"You think you can kill me? You?!"
Before the words had left her mouth, she pushed off the ground and shot forward like a ghost, a short blade laced with the cold gleam of C-Virus sliding from her sleeve straight at Chris's heart.
Chris's eyes went sharp. He sidestepped the blade and drove his iron fist into Carla's ribs with crushing force.
A wet crack. Carla flew backward like a ragdoll, slammed into the wall, and a gush of blood sprayed from her mouth, staining the blue dress across her chest.
She staggered upright against the wall, the madness in her eyes undiminished, and lunged with the blade again.
But every punch, every block Chris threw carried overwhelming power.
Her technique was child's play against him. Within a handful of exchanges she was completely shut down: arm wrenched out of its socket, blade knocked away, a brutal knee driven into her chest. She collapsed to her knees, blood dripping steadily from her chin.
Carla let out a desperate, deranged laugh. She jammed her hand into her pocket and pulled out a syringe filled with a deep-red liquid of extreme purity.
Her final trump card. Undiluted, enhanced C-Virus source fluid.
"If none of you will accept who I am... if Simmons ruined me, then I'll ruin every last one of you! I'll become a nightmare no one can stop!"
Without hesitation, she plunged the syringe into her own neck and pushed every drop of that deep-red liquid into her body.
"Captain!" Piers snapped his rifle up and fired.
But the bullets hit Carla's body like they were sinking into mud. Her body began to dissolve and swell in a way that was nothing short of horrifying.
Grayish-white gelatinous flesh erupted from inside her like a dam breaking, flooding outward in every direction. It swallowed the control console almost instantly and solidified into a massive flesh mountain that consumed half the chamber.
At the center of that writhing mass of meat, a pale face three meters tall surfaced. Ada's face.
"Die, Chris!"
The enormous pale face split open its abyssal maw. Thick tentacles condensed from high-density flesh launched from the mountain like battering rams, hurtling straight at Chris and Piers.
"Piers, get back and find cover!"
Chris roared. He didn't reach for the electromagnetic rifle. Instead he slung it behind his back.
His legs exploded with force and he charged headlong at the tentacles like a predator closing distance.
A thick tentacle cratered the metal floor where Chris had been standing a heartbeat before.
Mid-air, Chris torqued his body to the limit, dodged a second lashing strike, and seized the tentacle as it whipped past him with his left arm.
"Get down here!"
Every muscle in Chris's arms bulged. The inhuman strength granted by Dawn Type III detonated in full.
He caught that multi-ton tentacle with raw force alone and wrenched it backward in a massive arc.
The colossal flesh mountain lurched violently from the pull. Carla let out an agonized howl, and the pale face's mouth instantly sprayed a torrent of highly corrosive acid that rained down over Chris's position like a downpour.
"Captain!" Piers shouted from behind cover.
The acid hissed and smoked where it hit the Star Fire combat suit, but couldn't penetrate the armor.
Chris pushed through the acid rain, stomped through the metal grating underfoot, and used the recoil to launch himself skyward like a shell from a cannon, straight at Carla's enormous face.
"You insect!"
Carla lost it completely. Countless small bone spikes peeled from the bulkheads around the flesh mountain and fired at Chris in mid-air like a hail of machine-gun rounds.
Simultaneously, two massive hands of flesh and blood congealed from either side of the mountain, closing in to crush him into paste mid-flight.
Chris had no leverage in the air. The giant palms were about to slam shut on him.
At the last possible instant, his right hand ripped the high-frequency vibration blade from his hip and slashed deep into the incoming left palm.
Blue-white electric light accompanied the high-frequency oscillation, cutting through the flesh hand like a hot knife through butter and carving a massive gash.
Chris used the resistance from the cut to fold his body at an impossible angle mid-air, threading through the gap between the closing palms by the thinnest of margins, and landed solidly on the main body of the flesh mountain.
The grayish-white meat beneath his feet squirmed violently, trying to swallow him.
Chris snorted. He stomped down hard, and the sheer kinetic force necrotized a wide swath of flesh beneath his boot.
He crossed the distance to Carla's enormous pale face in a few strides, ducked the snapping jaws, cocked his right fist, torqued his hips, and channeled every ounce of force into a single point.
"Say hello to my brothers who died in Edonia!"
His fist connected dead center on the bridge of that pale, massive nose.
The savage force caved the giant face inward. Viscous fluid sprayed in every direction.
Carla let out a shriek so piercing it could shatter glass. The entire flesh mountain began to roll and convulse, trying to throw Chris off.
Chris locked his grip on a jutting bone spur at the mountain's edge. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the carrier's main power cable, now exposed where the control room's structure had been torn apart.
The cable, thick as a man's thigh, crackled and arced with high-voltage sparks.
"Nowhere left to run!"
A vicious gleam crossed Chris's eyes. He let go and slid down the flesh mountain. The instant he hit the ground, he wrapped both arms around the high-voltage main cable and let out a roar that shook the room.
With inhuman brute force, he ripped the cable straight out of the floor where it was buried.
"It's over, fake!"
Chris charged with the severed cable end dancing with terrifying blue-white high-voltage arcs, legs driving off the ground, his entire body streaking forward like a bolt of blue lightning.
He leapt again and rammed the live cable deep into Carla's abyssal maw, which had split open in agony.
The carrier reactor-grade high voltage surged through the entire flesh mountain in an instant.
The grayish-white gelatinous flesh seized violently under tens of thousands of volts, blackening and charring, pouring out thick plumes of acrid black smoke.
Carla couldn't even scream. Her massive body carbonized and shrank rapidly under the extreme electrocution.
Chris released the cable and dropped lightly back to the ground. He stared at the collapsing, charred mound before him and let out a long, heavy breath.
Piers emerged from behind cover. He looked at the carnage spread across the floor and at the Captain's broad back, chest still rising and falling slightly, and swallowed hard.
Just then, the sharp click of high heels echoed through the control room. Not from anyone present, but broadcast through the speaker system.
"A little rough, but efficient. Thanks, big guy. You cleaned up the trash that was ruining my reputation."
Ada's voice drifted from the speakers, carrying that familiar hint of lazy amusement. "But you two should get out of there. Fast."
Thousands of meters above, aboard the Star Fire command ship, Ryan stood holding a cup of tea, watching the scene through Chris's tactical visor feed. He pressed the comms switch.
"Because in ten minutes, I'm having Star Fire's electromagnetic railgun erase this big tin can full of C-Virus from the surface of the ocean." Ryan's tone was flat, matter-of-fact. "Pull out, Chris. The cleanup from here doesn't need you."
Chris nodded and turned to Piers. "Let's go. Off this ship."
The two moved quickly back through the corridors toward the flight deck.
But the moment they stepped onto the carrier deck and started toward a waiting Star Fire extraction helicopter, the BSAA encrypted communicator on Chris's wrist, long neglected, suddenly flashed an urgent red.
Chris frowned and hit the answer key.
"...calling Alpha Team... calling Captain Chris! This is BSAA HQ!" The operator's voice on the other end was frantic. "We finally got through to you! Emergency situation!"
"Go ahead." Chris's gaze hardened.
"A senior United Nations official with knowledge of classified bioweapon intelligence has just been abducted by an unidentified armed force! Satellite tracking shows they're transporting the target to an abandoned offshore oil rig facility in Asia!"
Chris glanced at Piers. Piers immediately understood and checked his weapon and ammunition.
"Send me the coordinates." Chris drew in a deep breath of cold rain, pressed the communicator, and spoke. "BSAA Alpha Team. Moving out."
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]