Location: The Lemanissier Ranch, Outside Amarillo, Texas
Date: June 15, 2013; 23:45 Hours
The Texas heat was unrelenting. Even at midnight, the earth radiated the day's fury, baking the small ranch house in a dry, dusty kiln.
Inside, the air conditioning rattled and wheezed, fighting a losing battle. Alen sat at his desk in the dark. The blue glow of his laptop screen carved deep shadows into his face. His hands, calloused and scarred from months of fencing and farming, moved across the keyboard with the delicate precision of a concert pianist.
By day, he was Nicolas Lemanissier, the quiet neighbor who helped fix tractors and listened to the wind. By night, he was Ghost, a digital wraith tearing through the firewalls of the world's most dangerous dead corporation.
He had not left Blue Umbrella empty-handed. During his infiltration of the Edonia facility, while others saw a briefing room, Alen had seen a data port. He had deployed a sub-routine—a "logic bomb"—that silently siphoned terabytes of encrypted data during the chaos of his extraction.
Now, he was mining it.
"Come on," he whispered, his eyes scanning streams of hexadecimal code. "Talk to me."
The folder he was decrypting was simply labeled: PROJECT W.
It was a broken puzzle of a monster's mind. The files were heavily corrupted, sanitized by the BSAA and the DSO before being archived. But Alen was relentless. He pieced together fragments of the nightmare: schematics for the Uroboros missile delivery system, analyses of the Las Plagas parasite, and cold clinical notes on the P30 mind-control device used on Jill Valentine.
It was a history of horrors. But Alen wasn't looking for weapons. He was looking for the man.
He combed through offshore financial records, shell company ledgers, and audio logs. He found nothing but dead ends and blacked-out lines. Yet, a pattern emerged. Scattered throughout the metadata, buried in the timestamps of transaction logs, were single, isolated numbers.
12. 47. 88. 23. 05.
They showed up too often to be random.
Alen leaned back and rubbed his tired eyes. "Not dates," he muttered. "Not account numbers."
He started running permutations. He cross-referenced them with viral strain serial numbers. Nothing. He tried aligning them with the Gregorian calendar. Nothing.
Then, he overlaid them on a geographical grid.
He typed rapidly. Latitude. Longitude.
The screen flickered. A map appeared, zooming in from the globe to the continent, to the state, to a specific, rugged patch of land.
29.4248° N, 98.4936° W.
The Texas Hill Country. North of San Antonio.
Alen stared at the blinking red dot. It was less than six hours away. A cold thrill, sharp and electric, shot through his spine. It wasn't just a coordinate; it was a beckoning.
He closed the laptop. The quiet rancher was gone. The operative was back.
June 16, 2013; 05:30 Hours
The Dojo
The sun was just beginning to bleed purple across the horizon when Alen walked to the neighboring farm. He carried a heavy duffel bag over one shoulder.
Master Shi Yan Xing was already awake, kneeling in his vegetable garden and carefully pruning a tomato plant. He didn't look up as Alen approached. The old man's presence was grounding, like the earth he tended.
"You are going on a journey," Shi stated, not asking.
Alen dropped the bag near the fence. "I found something. Or it found me."
Shi stopped pruning and stood up slowly, wiping the dirt from his hands on his robes. He looked at Alen—really looked at him—seeing past the disguise, past the physical strength, into the turmoil of his spirit.
"The past is a country we must sometimes visit, Nicolas," Shi said softly. "But we must not build our home there."
"I have to know," Alen said, his voice tight. "I have to know what he left behind."
"Knowledge is heavy," Shi warned. "It can anchor you or drown you." He walked to the fence and placed a hand on Alen's shoulder. The grip was firm. "Remember your breathing. When the darkness offers you power, remember the peace of this sunrise. Do not let what you find rule the man you are here."
Alen nodded, a lump forming in his throat. "I'll be back."
Shi smiled mysteriously. "The farm will be here. I will be here. Go."
June 16, 2013; 14:00 Hours
The Texas Hill Country
The drive south was a blur of highway and heat haze. By early afternoon, the flat plains gave way to the rolling, rugged terrain of the Hill Country. The air grew heavier, thick with the scent of cedar and live oak.
Alen parked his truck off an old logging road, hidden beneath the canopy of trees. He continued on foot, moving deeper into the wilderness. The coordinates pointed to a remote sector, miles from civilization, where the limestone cliffs jutted out of the earth like jagged teeth.
As the sky darkened with impending rain, Alen located the target: a steep limestone bluff, its face choked with moss and thorny brush.
To a hiker, it was just a rock face. To Alen, it was a facade.
He ran his hands over the stone, feeling for the unnatural smoothness he knew had to be there. His fingers found a depression behind a cluster of ivy—a rock that was too cool, too perfectly set.
He pressed it.
Click.
A low, hydraulic hum vibrated through the ground. Dust fell from the ivy as a massive section of the cliff face—ten feet tall and five feet wide—recessed into the mountain and slid smoothly to the left.
It revealed a tunnel. Not of rough stone but of polished, reinforced steel.
Alen drew his pistol, clicking the safety off. He stepped inside. The rock door sealed shut behind him with a heavy, final thud, plunging him into complete darkness.
He clicked on his tactical light. The beam cut through the gloom, illuminating a pristine corridor. The air here was cool, filtered, and smelled of ozone. He found a breaker panel on the wall and threw the master switch.
KA-CHUNK.
Overhead LED strips flickered to life, bathing the tunnel in sterile, clinical white light.
Alen holstered his weapon and walked. The corridor sloped downward, deep into the earth. At the end of the hall lay a heavy blast door. It had no handle, only a biometric scanner and a keypad.
ENTER PASSCODE.
Alen stared at the glowing blue screen. He didn't have a code. He had the coordinates, but not the key.
He closed his eyes. Think. How did he think?
Wesker was arrogant. He believed himself a god. But he was also sentimental in his twisted way. He valued his origins.
Alen typed in the date of the Spencer Mansion incident.
ACCESS DENIED.
He typed in the date of the Raccoon City destruction.
ACCESS DENIED.
He paused, thinking about the files he had read. The beginning of everything. The origin of the Progenitor Virus.
He typed: 1966-12-04 (The discovery of the Stairway to the Sun flower).
The screen flashed green. ACCESS GRANTED.
The blast doors hissed and parted.
Alen stepped through—and stopped dead.
It wasn't just a bunker; it was a cathedral to megalomania.
The cavern was massive, reinforced with steel and glass. To his left, sitting on a hydraulic lift, was a sleek, black VTOL aircraft—the same model Wesker had used in Kijuju. To his right, a glass-walled armory displayed rows of custom firearms, including a pristine Samurai Edge with a custom extended mag and laser sight.
In the center of the room sat a massive supercomputer, its banks of servers humming with dormant power.
Suddenly, the speakers crackled.
"Identity confirmed."
The voice was unmistakable. It was smooth, aristocratic, and full of superiority.
Alen froze.
"If you are hearing this," the voice of Albert Wesker echoed from the grave, "then you have successfully deciphered the encryption. Congratulations are in order. You have displayed a level of persistence that is commendable."
A large monitor above the main console flickered to life. The audio waveform pulsed with the voice.
"There are two possibilities," the recording continued, the tone shifting to cold amusement. "One: You are a rival—perhaps Spencer's lapdogs or the incompetence of the BSAA. In which case, this message is a final mockery. The self-destruct sequence you triggered upon entry will detonate in five seconds."
Alen's muscles locked. He braced for the fire.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Nothing happened. Only the hum of the ventilation.
"The second possibility," Wesker's voice returned, darker now, more intimate, "is that you are of my blood. Alen. If that is the case, then welcome."
Alen exhaled, a mixture of relief and nausea washing over him. He walked slowly toward the main console.
"I have always believed in planning for every contingency, including my own demise. The right to be a god is earned, not given. This facility is a redundancy. A cache."
The waveform on the screen shifted into a map of the world, red dots pulsing in various locations.
"It contains resources. Weapons. Technology. And the data from the Uroboros project that the world believes was destroyed. The central server is linked to a ghost satellite network I established to monitor the globe's pulse. It is now yours."
The voice paused. It lacked warmth. There was no fatherly love, only a cold, calculated transaction of power.
"Do not squander this opportunity. The world is evolving, Alen. The weak will perish. The strong will reshape the ashes. Do not be sentimental. Power is the only currency that matters."
"Use this place wisely. And tell no one."
The recording clicked off. SYSTEM STANDBY.
Alen stood alone in the center of the command deck. The silence was deafening. He looked at the jet. He looked at the weapons. He looked at the map of the world, glowing with secrets that could topple governments.
He had come looking for a father. He had found a warlord's arsenal.
He walked to the glass case containing the custom Samurai Edge. He opened it, the smell of gun oil hitting him. He picked up the heavy pistol. It fit his hand perfectly. Too perfectly.
"Master Shi told me not to build a home in the past," Alen whispered to the empty room.
He racked the slide of the pistol.
"But he didn't say I couldn't use the tools I found there."
Mission Update:
New Base of Operations Acquired: The Hill Country Silo.
Asset Acquired: Wesker's Data & Armory.
Current Objective: Survive the Legacy.