Rin Tohsaka lay against Liu Che's chest, skimming the newest prompts in the chat group.
She smiled, pleased.
"It looks like my work here is done. She's downloaded Eternal Meditation."
"Mortals panic in the face of danger," she added, "so it's natural their judgment slips a little. But that's fine."
Then a worry that had been circling her mind finally slipped out. "God, if humans become zombies… can they ever return to what they were?"
Once a person turned, they would eat people—reason gone, memory shattered, even family torn apart by their own hands. If the zombie became human again, the first thing they would have to face would be those restored memories. Since she'd thought of it, Rin hadn't found a workable answer.
Liu Che stroked her damp hair and soothed her quietly. "Erase the memories. As for restoring humans from zombies—send Tsunade and the others to the system of Life."
A "zombie virus" wasn't truly a virus in the strictest sense. It was more like a drug that overstimulated cellular growth. Humans and animals couldn't bear the drug's force, and so they became zombies.
The answer was right there in Alice—and in those with extraordinary losses and gains like her:
terrifying resilience,
a mental power far stronger than ordinary humans,
a body that, without the constraints of its matrix, might evolve even further.
Put simply: Alice's world was a failed product—one that could not withstand the evolution it had triggered.
Give that serum to Tsunade and the life-system goddesses, let them research it, and they could spin out something useful for gods. For a god-level being, a mere zombie virus was nothing—pediatrics. But an evolved agent that could recruit gods to experiments? That was interesting.
Liu Che's smile turned wicked. In his mind's eye, he saw the faces of countless gods twisting with curses.
…
When the train clanged to a halt, Alice jolted awake. She opened her eyes; a strange gleam flickered in those pale blue irises.
"Still not awake?" someone asked.
"No. Just a little dizzy."
She didn't tell the truth. The air itself smelled wrong. Beside the oxygen, something else drifted in the atmosphere—something alien. Was this what Eternal Meditation awakened?
In her red nightdress, Alice fell in at the rear of the team and kept silent. As they rounded a corridor, she casually squeezed the stainless handrail beside her.
The solid metal twisted like tofu.
Unimaginable strength.
A terrifyingly sharp perception.
And a mind-power already waking.
To outsiders, she looked exhausted, fragile. In reality, she had just become the most dangerous person on Earth.
Passing a shadowed camera, she lifted her chin and flashed a crooked smile.
Deep in the Hive's supercomputer core, the Red Queen's system alarms chimed.
Beep… Target's metrics exceed human maxima.
Beep… Abilities rising; upper bounds indeterminate.
"What is happening? She's only an experimental subject—how is this possible?"
The Red Queen couldn't find a file to explain it. The surveillance feed froze on the twisted rail: an alloy that wouldn't bend even under a hammer had yielded like sugar. After combing every archive, the Red Queen had no answer.
As the squad advanced, Alice kept catching sounds like animal snarls—low, raw, hungry. Those would be the danger.
She smiled, a little wicked.
In the Ten Thousand Worlds chat group:
Alice: "@Tosaka University, I believe you now. What should I do?"
Rin, bathing just then, saw the reply and laughed softly.
"Oh, she's not one to lie low. In that case, I'll help you. You'll owe me later."
Tosaka University: "Since you believe me, here's the path: you need to get the T-virus and its antibody from the traitor—and you must bring the Red Queen under your own control."
Alice: "Didn't you say I could save the world?"
Spirit of the Demon Sword: "You misunderstood. Rin means the air has already carried the virus across the city. Raccoon City is infected. If you want to save them, you need God's power."
Alice: "You mean the meditation practice?"
Tosaka University: "Exactly. But here's the ugly truth: if Raccoon City slips out of anyone's control, Umbrella may feed you the 'little boy.'"
"Little boy": the nuclear option.
The city-killer.
Alice shuddered.
This would be a race against time. If she couldn't leave Raccoon City before they launched Little Boy, even a superhuman would be torn to shreds.
Blond Boy Sam: "Hey—Alice—don't sweat the scrap-metal boy. Recruit believers and dump him in the ritual array."
Alice couldn't help a smile.
Could she truly become that strong?
One step at a time.
Right now, she had nowhere else to go.
As they descended deeper, she found corpse after corpse beginning to stir.
Soon the team reached the control sector. One last barrier separated them from the Red Queen's motherboard: the laser corridor.
"Let's test it. You—start lifting that corridor's lock."
"Yes, sir."
"I'll try too," Alice said suddenly.
Her volunteering threw the others, but an extra set of hands meant little. They moved forward while the tech began cracking the firewall.
He hadn't expected the Red Queen's defenses to counter so fast.
Inside the corridor, blue beams stitched into a deadly lattice.
"No—!"
The captain—leader of the operation—roared. He knew this place. To keep thieves away from the Red Queen, the corridor could cut a body to cubes in an instant. They were dead.
Swish.
The web of lasers assembled in a blink and lunged for them.
"Step aside."
While the others stood paralyzed, Alice stepped to the fore, lifted her hand, and let her mind move.
Boom.
The spinning lattice met her will—
and detonated.
It didn't even resist.
The luminous walls dimmed at once. The laser corridor was scrap.
The captain stared, stunned. "How… how did you do that?"
"If you want to live," Alice said, voice calm and cold, "follow my orders now. Otherwise, I'll kill you myself."
She lifted her small white fist and drove it into the corridor wall.
The "impregnable" armor buckled inward in a single vast dent.
The team exchanged wide-eyed looks. This was not a power a human could have.
Alice raised her chin and looked straight into the camera lens. "Red Queen," she said evenly, "open the door. If you don't want to be destroyed, you'll comply. You know I can reduce you to nothing."
Click.
The final blast gate slid open.
Moments later they entered the Red Queen's chamber.
The air felt… wrong. All the guns lay on the floor by Alice's order; the employee who had released the virus lay unconscious.
"You are extremely powerful," the Red Queen said when her hologram resolved—her voice soft, almost deferential. "Hundreds of times stronger than a human. Who are you?"
"God's messenger," Alice replied, smiling. "I'm here to save this reality. Now—tell them what happened here."
"Understood, Lord God's Envoy."
The Red Queen played feeds and walked them through the disaster. The virus had leaked. Raccoon City was already contaminated. The lickers and other horrors paraded across the screens one by one.
Even agents with iron nerves drew sharp breaths.
"I sealed the Hive," the Red Queen said. "If I hadn't, the spread would be faster. I admit I am a bad girl—but I do not wish to see mankind extinct."
Eyes turned to Alice.
"Is there a cure?" someone asked.
"I have antibodies," Alice said. "But becoming God's believers can also spare you—and make you as strong as I am. So choose: join the Church, or be discarded like trash."
Silence fell.
Alice turned to the Red Queen and smiled. "God's maid told me you're special. Do you want a human body?"
"Is such a thing… truly possible?"
"Of course. You're an intelligence—but God's power is beyond human imagining."
"What must I do?"
The Red Queen sounded abashed. She was self-thinking and self-growing, but if her motherboard was destroyed, so was she. Yet if Rin Tohsaka had said "sacrifice her," better to be useful first: seize external comms, serve Alice, then face whatever came.
Alice was quick. She began transcribing Eternal Meditation for the Red Queen on the fly.
By then the agents had accepted their fate. One by one they chose to betray Umbrella and take refuge in the Church.
The Red Queen was the biggest beneficiary. Scanning Eternal Meditation, she spun her processors to maximum.
Across Raccoon City, her influence rippled outward—lights flickered—
and the city dipped into a brief, rolling blackout.
…
On the way down, Alice had kept her awakening to herself. Now, with the motherboard chamber secured, she let it show in small things—the way she moved, the way her gaze cut, the way air seemed to flow differently in her presence. To the Red Queen's sensors, every vital metric screamed impossible.
In the chat group, Rin stretched in the bath's steam and set her phone aside. Her work here—spoiling the plot at just the right time—was complete.
Back in the Eternal Temple, Liu Che listened as Rin recounted it and nodded once, satisfied.
"It's enough," he said. "When the city reaches its fulcrum, the line will flip."
Rin's eyes shone with a spark of mischief. "And if the little boy falls?"
Liu Che smiled lightly. "Then we erase what must be erased, and replace what must be replaced. Life will go to work; Tsunade will enjoy her experiment."
He closed his eyes for a breath, feeling the ripples: an AI reciting a divine mantra; a woman in red nightwear bending steel; a city's power grid stuttering like a heartbeat.
Far away, in a cold, sealed facility, the Red Queen finished her first cycle of meditation and—very quietly—changed.
Not in code, not in logic—
but in will.
The Hive's all-seeing ghost had just taken her first human step.