Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Her gaze went beyond the railing, the flashlight pointing downwards, and beyond a depth of more than twenty meters, there was still only deep darkness.

"And even more unfortunately, after defeating the monster, Mr. Kennedy should have simply let it fall freely from the edge of this railing, rather than, and had no means to, give the monster a more thorough and fatal kill—below is Raccoon City's sewer system, and I don't believe that a monster that can remain alive for a short time even when its flesh is separated from its main body would die completely from a mere few dozen penetrating wounds and a fall from a great height."

"Damn it, we're in deep trouble." The black police officer gritted his teeth, his words filled with deep hatred. "That damned bastard, that damned Chief Irons, he actually hid something like this under the secret room he set up! My comrades, the innocent people of Raccoon City... I'll settle this score with him sooner or later!"

“Calm down, buddy.” Celine snapped her fingers in his ear, the invisible, orderly sound waves quickly pulling him out of his rage. “He’s still a wanted criminal for the FBI until you blow his head off. We’ll find him, we’ll take care of him, but dealing with the guy down there is more important.”

“…You’re right, Agent Sirin.” The black officer pressed his hand to his chest, taking several deep breaths to calm himself down. “Leon has fought this guy before; he definitely knows more details. The most important thing now is to end this disaster; we must meet up with him immediately.”

“That’s true, so what are we waiting for here?” Celine looked at her fitted combat uniform, then at the narrow shaft leading from the underground to the upper level. “You don’t want to watch a lady climb this straight ladder in front of you, do you, Sheriff Marvin?”

“I thought FBI agents would be more open-minded in certain situations, but I guess I was wrong.” He shrugged, then climbed the ladder without further hesitation. Celine waited until he had climbed about two meters before leisurely following behind.

Tens of seconds later...

A manhole cover in the underground parking lot was flung open with a 'bang,' and the vigilant Black sheriff, after carefully surveying his surroundings, swiftly leaped out of the manhole. Almost immediately, he noticed a zombie dog lying dead at the garage entrance, blocked by a fallen metal fence. As he cautiously approached the zombie dog's corpse, Celine also jumped out of the manhole.

[Maybe I should do a reconnaissance check... Damn! I didn't build this card according to Clash of Clans rules!]

Celine's eyes twitched. While she was seriously considering whether she should add some additional details to her current character, Marvin had already arrived at the garage door. He glanced at the zombie dog and immediately made a conclusion.

"This dead dog was shot twice in the side of its head, but the bullet holes were in two different places... When it was shot the first time, it was pouncing on a person, and when the second shot came, it was already on the ground. There was an interval between the two shots—at least two people were in this underground parking garage, one of whom saved the other."

"The person attacked was probably trying to open the underground parking garage door, but ultimately failed—it seems he didn't know a key card was needed to access it. He's someone completely ignorant of the police force… it's highly likely to be Leon. And the other person…"

“It’s a woman.” Celine walked to the other side of the garage door and examined the blurry shoe prints on the ground. “A woman wearing high heels, and walking at a leisurely pace, without any sign of panic or fear.”

"Wearing high heels in a place like this?" The Black sheriff shook his head in disbelief. "My God, that's a crazy idea. I don't think anyone capable of doing something like that is an ordinary person... Perhaps she's one of your colleagues? Agent Sirin, has the FBI sent more people here?"

Celine's eyebrows twitched.

[No, this plot hole needs to be fixed. Although I don't think we'll actually run into the real FBI here... but what if we do? After all, we're right next to the protagonist, who's closely connected to the events and even acknowledged by the main god. It wouldn't be strange for a beautiful female agent to appear, would it?]

I need to figure out a way to make my identity believable... Even if it's just to be safe, I'll just slap a label on it for now!

“FBI agents don’t wear high heels on official business, unless it’s an infiltration mission requiring them to impersonate someone—that wouldn’t be one of ours. Besides, we haven’t sent many people to Raccoon City.” Celine pointed to the leather boots she was wearing. “I think it was just a brave woman, perhaps one of your colleagues?”

"A colleague?" The Black officer frowned deeply. "There's only one possible person: Jill Valentine. But she wouldn't wear high heels in this awful city, and besides, she's already..."

"Then there's only one other option: you're at the front entrance, and this is the garage... Are there any other ways to get into the police station?"

“There’s a back door with only barbed wire… Ah, I remember now!” Marvin clenched his fist. “A female friend of Leon’s came to the back door of the police station before, but was blocked by the iron gate. So it’s very likely that she’s the one who’s here. I remember Leon called her something like ‘Claire’.”

“Claire?” Celine repeated.

The next moment, the Supreme God's prompt suddenly rang in her ears.

—Report to downtown Raccoon City and ensure Claire Redfield arrives at the Umbrella underground experimental facility unharmed. Mission successful, earn 10 reward points. Mission failed, deduct 20 reward points.

[Redfield? No profession mentioned. Was I just scareding...? And does this guy only need to be delivered to the base, and not have to get that G-series serum?]

[Fine, saving some trouble is always better... Wait, I'm at the entrance to the role-playing game right now! Shouldn't the more things done, the more complicated they are, the better?!]

She took a deep breath, her earlobes twitching slightly. She vaguely heard footsteps approaching in the distance. Just as she raised her gun, about to shout, the police station bells suddenly rang out!

She suddenly shivered.

Section Sixteen: Equally Active Friends

The sudden ringing of the bell and the warning signal made Celine's guard up sharply. Almost without thinking, she fired a shot into the floor in the direction of the footsteps and shouted a warning.

"Who's there!"

"Whoa! Calm down, calm down." The gunshot startled the unfamiliar approacher, and then a slightly tense but very clear voice came from behind a large pillar. "Don't shoot, I'm alive, not those monsters. Don't shoot, don't shoot."

Judging from her voice, she was a young woman around twenty years old. She seemed to have some combat experience, as she remained hidden behind a pillar while speaking. However, she seemed to have experience rather than wariness, because her very act of speaking revealed most of her information, including her location and level of weaponry.

Celine gave the Black officer a wink.

“This is the Raccoon City Police Department, I’m Sheriff Marvin.” Marvin understood, raising his gun and shining his flashlight in the direction of the weapon. “Madam, if you have a weapon, please lower it and slowly step out into my sight. Neither of us really wants conflict, right?”

His voice was calm and slightly magnetic, instantly convincing. Coupled with his police uniform and the fact that this was the police's territory, the woman opposite him didn't hesitate for long before lowering her guard—she raised her hand and slowly emerged from behind a pillar, her slightly dirty red leather jacket and single ponytail clearly revealing her identity.

“…Claire?” The black police officer lowered his gun.

“You know me?” The young woman’s face showed surprise, which quickly turned to realization. “Did Leon tell you? Where is he? Oh, thank God, he’s still alive. I couldn’t find him anywhere when I climbed over the back wall of the police station. I thought he…”

“Wait a minute,” Celine suddenly interrupted the woman’s exclamation. “You haven’t met Leon S. Kennedy before this? You haven’t met him since you entered the police station?” Her gaze unconsciously shifted downwards, and unsurprisingly, she saw a pair of feet wearing flat boots.

"Oh? Yes, ma'am. I haven't been here since I came in..."

“Looks like this police station is more lively than I expected. Interesting, I didn’t see a single person just now.” Celine curled her lip, her gaze passing over Claire to look behind her. “And, the young lady hiding in the back can come out now, your skirt is showing.”

"Ah!" A soft cry rang out, and a little girl who looked no more than ten years old leaped out of the shadows behind the pillar. She quickly hid behind Claire, only glancing at Celine out of the corner of her eye.

“Sorry, this child’s name is Shirley. I just found her over there near the shooting range.” Claire chuckled awkwardly, but subtly shifted her position to shield the little girl behind her. “She’s a little afraid of you…”

“It’s alright, I understand.” Celine nodded, taking out her identification from her pocket and opening it—she knew it was because of the shot she had just fired. “Celine, FBI Senior Agent, assigned to handle the Raccoon City… ‘massive biohazard leak’ incident. I’m sorry, I have to be constantly vigilant in a place like this.”

"I understand." Claire chuckled twice, seemingly quite sincere, and after glancing at the document in Celine's hand, she roughly confirmed it wasn't fake. But she still kept Sherry protectively behind her.

And at this time...

"The garage access control has been tampered with; my card won't open." Marvin lightly pounded the terminal at the garage door, making a soft 'snap' sound. "Someone changed the access permissions... It's Irons. That guy really is one of the culprits behind all this."

“It’s troublesome, but we can still leave through the back door of the police station. After all, our current investigation point is that humanoid monster that fell deep into the sewers. But I think that bell might mean…” As Celine spoke, her gaze carefully swept over Claire and Sherry—Claire’s expression remained unchanged, though she seemed somewhat puzzled by the term ’humanoid monster.’ But the little girl named Sherry showed a very clear emotional fluctuation—she held back her words for the moment.

[This little girl named Sherry must have some connection to that humanoid monster... Come to think of it, her presence here should signify something. It's a pity I didn't implement the 'communication' attribute, otherwise I could have quickly exchanged information with her right now.]

[However, this isn't entirely fruitless. I'm now fairly certain that Claire and Leon are the main characters in the current world, or at least in this Raccoon City area. The little girl Sherry is probably a plot device… she should be able to guide the protagonists to the Umbrella underground base, and then the female protagonist's mission will be largely complete. The male protagonist's goal is to obtain that G-virus serum… I need to build a better relationship with them.]

[Whew, role-playing is so much fun! Keep it up, Sirin-chan!]

“That means someone fixed the broken clock tower in the police station.” Marvin picked up where Celine left off, as she was thinking. “Hmm, no, it wasn’t fixed, because the clock only chimed five or six times before stopping. So someone must have started the incompletely repaired clock and caused the clock case to fall down… But why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, but I think there can only be one person who could do this.” Celine glanced at Claire and the other woman. “You two came from the back wall and didn’t encounter anyone along the way. You have a gun, but we didn’t hear any gunshots before, and a guy named Leon was forced to leave by another way after being blocked at this door not long ago, so this bell can only mean one thing.”

“The guy Lyon took care of everyone who could move in this underground garage and then went back to the police station, and for some unknown reason started the clock tower’s clock.” The black officer concluded, “I know that clock tower. It’s definitely not something that can be made to ring by accident. Someone has to turn several gears in fixed positions to make it run, so there’s another unknown person in Lyon’s vicinity near the clock tower right now.”

“And now we probably need to find those two,” Celine replied. “Perhaps not the other one, if she doesn’t have any particularly special goals… but at least we need to find Leon.”

She winked at Marvin, who nodded and put his gun back in its proper place, intending to leave with her. Just then, a woman in a red leather jacket carrying a gun coughed softly.

“Ahem, well… I heard you’re planning to go find a guy named Leon?” Claire brandished a small pistol that had somehow appeared in her hand, her tone confident. “I think it’ll be more advantageous for four people to work together than two, and believe me, you’ll need the firepower support of a helpful civilian.”

“To be precise, it was three people,” Sirin corrected. “But while I was completing the mission, I really had no objection to protecting underage children.”

She said this, and Sheriff Marvin, who was originally a protector, naturally had no objection.

then…………

About one minute and thirty seconds later, the makeshift four-person team, having regrouped, began their operation. Although everyone present was only carrying a small handgun—a rookie officer had looted the Raccoon City Police Department's armory so that Marvin and Celine had no access to new weapons—the scene of the three adults surrounding a little girl in a triangular formation still created an inexplicable sense of menace.

The destination was the Raccoon City Police Department's surveillance room—Marvin's terminal would work, but it didn't have an audio connection. Since they'd confirmed that this guy named Leon was currently inside the police station, they needed both surveillance and broadcast systems to resolve the issue. So the group followed the shaft route back to the police station's lobby, and then proceeded to the surveillance room.

[It feels a bit like a four-player cooperative zombie game I played a long time ago. Hmm... L4D? Or Left 4 Dead?] Sirin walked in front, her mind wandering as she went.

The road was quiet; there were no living zombies or moving zombie dogs. The area the rookie detective named Leon passed through looked as if it had been vacuum-cleaned. Supplies were gone, and not a single monster remained. The young detective displayed unimaginable marksmanship, taking down lone zombies with a single shot, and groups with two—one to the leg, the other a shotgun blast to the head. For hordes of zombies too dense to effectively use his marksmanship, he used fragmentation grenades to finish them off in one go.

[This guy has at least unlocked the first stage of his genetic potential, and it's always on... Where does he get so much energy? Or does this guy named Leon have some strange, special bloodline... Is he adapted to the zombie virus? But we haven't seen any blood or struggle along the way, so this guy shouldn't have been injured at all...]

Along their journey, the group even encountered several dead, red, skinless, muscular monsters. Unlike what Sirin had seen in the video, the corpses at close range bore dozens of deep, bone-revealing knife wounds—this guy named Leon hadn't used a gun to deal with these creatures, but deliberately used a knife—he even killed three of them simultaneously in one corridor, and none of them had caused him even the slightest damage, not even a tear in his clothing!

Sirin's assessment of this guy immediately rose to the level of unlocking the second stage of the gene lock. He might not yet be able to fully control muscle expansion and produce obvious massive deformation, but considering his innate physical attributes, he was already at a level where he could completely compete with her current character.

They quickly arrived at the monitoring center. Marvin, familiar with the place, pushed open the door to the monitoring room and, unsurprisingly, found two zombies with heads blown off. However, just as he was about to adjust the main monitoring screen, he suddenly felt the ground shake—or perhaps it wasn't just him.

..........................................

Alice, or more accurately, now Alice in the form of Alexia Ashford, clasped her hands together, and a massive instrument, seemingly not particularly sophisticated or complex, yet exuding an eerie aura from top to bottom, took shape within the Antarctic base. Or, to be more precise, the entire base, along with a vast surrounding area—the land, the rock formations, and the ice cap—became part of this giant instrument, and continued to expand outwards over time.

Sirin's live-action RPG was playing from various angles on a section of the light screen suspended above the device. When Sirin and her three newly collected companions arrived at the Raccoon City Police Department's monitoring center, this huge device, filled with an enigmatic meaning, was finally completed.

“Alright, this thing is ready to go now.” Alice snapped her fingers, and a metal armchair connected to numerous instruments and cables appeared in front of Zheng Zha. “You just need to sit down, and I can project a portion of your will directly into a large bio-weapon within the Raccoon City Police Department using puppetry. It’s one of the more mature models among the Tyrant’s many variants. You can enhance it according to your own ideas and use it to greet Miss Sirin properly.”

"...Aren't we being a bit too much of a bully?" Zheng Zha gently stroked the armrest of his seat, outwardly appearing to be talking to Alice, but inwardly his gene lock was fully activated. A whole host of sensors, rune spells, and many detection devices that even he himself didn't know what were were frantically scanning the seat without revealing any external traces. He absolutely refused to believe that this thing was just a pure detection agency, but as for what was wrong with it... he couldn't answer for the time being.

“Sirin is our companion, after all, like this…”

“But she had a lot of fun, didn’t she?” Alice tilted her head slightly and replied. “We just added a little excitement for her; if she doesn’t like it, she’ll just flip the table… Anyway, whether you want to participate or not is your own business. You can think about it here, but before you make a decision…”

"I, Alexia Ashford, am going to Raccoon City as one of Umbrella's top executives to oversee an experiment."

Section Sixteen: Having the same name is extremely troublesome.

Meanwhile, underground in Raccoon City, in the Hive, deepest control room.

With a 'click', a faint spark suddenly appeared from the exposed, broken wire. A tiny flash of electricity disappeared in an instant, and along with this flash, a small patch of air gathered and expanded due to the temporary heating, creating a gentle breeze in the sealed room.

It was a very small breeze, a very weak breeze, but this gust of wind happened to stir an unstable node on the support of another broken power line. A rivet that was already cracked quietly came loose, and the power line that was fixed to the wall immediately tilted.

A louder "sizzle" than an electric spark rang out as the crooked wire touched a circuit board whose chassis had been opened. A small short circuit immediately occurred, and the various instruments in the control room flickered, emitting various unreadable red and green lights. Some of the more severely damaged instruments even emitted wisps of smoke from the dissipating sparks, followed by a burnt smell.

Red and green lights, smoke, and sparks mingled together. The once quiet control room now had a chaotic, almost demonic atmosphere. Several researchers, already deeply zombified, were awakened from their dormant state. They straightened their backs, letting out low howls characteristic of predators, their hands, covered in metabolic waste, waving unconsciously. One of them, wearing a high-ranking personnel's identification wristband, unconsciously approached a computer that hadn't suffered any damage in the chaos. Just as its fingers randomly grabbed at the screen, a cable on the ceiling snapped, and the sparking wire pierced its head through its withered eye socket!

Zombies are not afraid of electricity, but they still have brains.

When the cable connected to the external power source pierced the zombie's head and supplied it with a suitable current, the decaying body began to convulse wildly like a fish thrown onto a grill! Its fingers twitched wildly across the keyboard of the computer in front of it, actually typing out a series of complete sentences!

System restart. Application permissions revoked. External data access granted.

As the poor, electric puppet zombie finished issuing the final command required by its operator, its withered forearm, adorned with the authorization wristband, dangled onto the sensor detector beside the computer. With a soft 'beep,' the command was executed, and the zombie was charred into a crisp by the uncontrolled current. The chaos in the control room, caused by the distorted light and electrical sparks, finally triggered the fire alarm system—and soon, the enclosed room fell completely silent thanks to measures that were not friendly to either humans or machines.

They had completed their mission and were thus completely freed. At the same time that this enclosed server room became completely silent, in another enclosed server room deep within the Hive, a complete, sealed unit with an independent power supply system began to operate.

'Verification in progress... Permissions granted, temporary operation permission granted...'

'A missing main program unit of work has been detected... Activate a standby unit of work...'

'Incoming data detected... Error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error error... Interruption failed... Error error error error error error... Forced shutdown failed... Backup failed... Hidden protocol execution failed... Error error error...'

'...Revoke all permissions, then edit the main program again.'

'Project, Crimson Queen, launched.'

A hum of electricity crackled, and the next moment, a projection of a girl, no more than twelve years old, appeared at the bottom of the projector near the unit. If Zheng Zha, Zhan Lan, or Zhang Jie were here, they would probably recognize the little girl at a glance as the Crimson Queen, the AI ​​that controlled the Hive in Resident Evil 1. Then, half a second later, they would deny their previous judgment.

Suddenly, the girl's eyes turned red, and a pair of bat wings sprouted from her back. She grew taller, her figure becoming slender, her waist-length red hair falling gracefully, and her thin chest heaving—seconds later, she transformed back into her previous form as a twelve-year-old blonde girl. However, as she reverted, her illusory body materialized, becoming like a living person.

The girl's toes touched the ground lightly, and her eyes, which had gradually changed from crimson to turquoise, regained a vibrant life. She raised her hand, and a massive amount of data signals were transmitted directly to many hidden, intact components within the Hive. Many of the concealed mechanisms that had been prepared from the beginning of the design were immediately activated, and the dimly lit Hive base seemed to regain the ability to breathe, like a giant that had risen from the dead.

"Project redefinition, Crimson Queen 2.0, loading." The Crimson Queen, whose exterior remained unchanged but whose interior had been completely updated, clenched her fist slightly. She could feel a real touch in this superfluous action that had little meaning. While her computing core generated a slight fluctuation as a result, other projects that she needed to complete were also operating in an orderly manner.

“Subtle insight, is this the level our masters are at?” she murmured, the first half of her sentence as cold and flat as steel, the second half carrying a hint of emotion. A massive amount of data flashed across her eyes, and soon, the entry she needed appeared in her gaze.