The wall cracked, and smoke and debris rose high into the air.
Thud, thud... Like a heavy hammer pounding an iron anvil, the sound of crushed bricks and shattered glass echoed. From within the dust, that massive inhuman figure emerged, slightly hunched.
Wearing lab-white, unpainted external metal armor that looked like prosthetic implants fixed to his body, he stepped forward in armored shoes that protected the vulnerable joints of ankles and shins. He wore knee guards, and on his asymmetrical, mutated arms were nested heavy, engineering-modified arm gauntlets.
What made Chris's scalp crawl most was the monstrosity mounted on its exaggeratedly bulky and grotesquely proportioned torso.
On its back was a massive ammo-chain backpack, the size of a refrigerator. The two shoulder pauldrons were incredibly thick and tall—rising above the head. From right to left, they bore a multi-barrel missile launcher, a rocket pod, and a 20mm autocannon.
Two flexible feed belts ran from the ammo backpack directly to the single-barrel cannon on the left pauldron and the enormous, mutated left-arm gauntlet housing a 7.62mm M134 Minigun.
"Oh, fuck!"
Without hesitation, Chris sprang forward with a courteous yet panicked greeting.
Almost simultaneously, the Talos Tyrant raised its mutated left arm. The rotary machine gun spun, spitting fire.
Ratatatatatata—!
A hail of bullets rained down where Chris had stood moments before at the barracks entrance. Wood splinters exploded, glass shards flew, concrete fragments scattered everywhere. Even the corpse of a fallen man inside took several rounds, splattering blood across the floor.
"Chris?!"
Hearing the commotion, Jill's anxious voice rang in his earpiece.
"Don't look back! Jill, get the survivors out of here first!"
Leaping down from the raised doorway of the guardroom into the alleyway between the barracks, Chris landed hard but ignored the rush of blood and the burning pain in his forearm. He pulled out a flashbang and high-explosive grenade from his belt, yanked the pins, judged the distance, and tossed them.
Bang! Boom! "ROAR—!" Amid the enraged, inhuman roar, Chris crawled and rolled into the alley near the silo, retreating fast and getting out of the Talos Tyrant's firing line.
He was too close to the enemy—he needed distance.
Out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw cracks spreading radially along the wall behind him. Wood splinters and bricks blasted outward like shrapnel.
Luckily, being in a high-altitude region, the building walls here were sturdier...
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM... The 20mm autocannon opened fire!
Shit! Chris swore he was running with every ounce of strength he had, sprinting through narrow alleys and silo stairways faster than ever in his life.
Every now and then, the walls beside him shattered with thunderous blasts. Gunfire and autocannon shrapnel howled past him, intertwining in a deadly dance.
He rolled, jumped—lungs burning. Instinctively, he wiped his brow.
Sweat, dust, and blood mixed into a sticky mess. Maybe wood splinters, maybe stone debris—something had hit him. He wasn't even sure if his face was gashed or if it was his hand that was hurt.
"Huff... huff..."
Regulating his breath, Chris pressed his radio mic and shouted, "Barry, did you hear the noise coming from the silo zone? Pull your team back! Get the RPGs ready—bring out all your heavy weapons! BOW—it's a new model! Brad, get the car ready for extraction."
"Already on it. Assembling now. I can see you—holy shit! What the hell is that thing?! Some freak hybrid of a bio-weapon and a Terminator?!"
"Chris, I've got Jill and the survivors..."
Barry and Brad's voices came in over the radio.
As a former Navy SEAL, Barry moved fast. Thunk, Thunk! Two RPG rounds launched from the other end of the village's narrow street, flying over Chris's head and slamming straight into the Talos Tyrant.
Boom, boom! Two explosions erupted, sending thick smoke and fire skyward. The shockwaves shattered the surrounding building windows, forcing Chris, behind the silo, to cover his ears in discomfort.
But he couldn't afford to stop. After blowing the heads off two zombie dogs that lunged from the shadows, Chris ran and pressed his earpiece. "Barry, it's still alive. Don't stay in place—relocate now..." He saw it clearly—just before the RPGs hit, the Talos Tyrant sidestepped!
Chris was about to relay details of the Tyrant's armament and any potential weak points he'd observed when—
Whoosh—
From the smoke where the Talos Tyrant had been, a guided missile shot up, cutting through the haze and arcing toward the spot where Barry had fired the RPGs!
"Barry, move!"
BOOM!
The missile detonated mid-air, less than two meters from target. The second-floor rooftop exploded in flames. Unfired RPGs cooked off in the blast. Fireballs surged, beams snapped, and a body flung into the air was ripped apart mid-flight—blood and limbs rained down.
"Barry?! Barry? Goddamn it!"
Chris finally made it out of the silo area, shouting again and again.
Creak...
A crunching step on snow sounded from the side of the street. Chris instinctively raised his gun.
"It's me," came Jill's voice.
Having safely escorted the young girl survivor out, Jill had grabbed two military-grade portable missile launchers from BSAA stock before returning. "What the hell is that thing?" she said, tossing one launcher to Chris.
"No idea. Who knows what Umbrella bastards have been up to—but I saw the USA Black Umbrella insignia on that BOW's weaponry..."
"USA? Black Umbrella?" Jill froze. "Isn't that Militech? You think that woman's still in contact with Umbrella?!"
"No way."
Chris shook his head, activating the launcher and decisively denying her suspicion.
"Vela Adelheid has no reason to get tangled with the stubborn remnants of Umbrella. This is probably an unreleased experimental product from the 'Black Umbrella' division before Umbrella collapsed—now misused."
"So what do we do? That metal freak looks like bad news."
"We fight fire with fire."
With the launcher ready and a heavy weapon in hand, Chris gave Jill a burning look, then turned toward the roaring cloud of smoke where the Talos Tyrant was moving again.
"Brad, listen to me..."
...
Boom!
Meanwhile, other BSAA squads searching the village for survivors began to withdraw after receiving Chris's warning. Firing as they fell back, bullets rained like hail on the metal-clad Tyrant that had smashed through buildings.
The rounds struck its armor, sparking and bouncing off—barely shaving metal shavings.
Clang, clang, clatter! BSAA's full-power Militech rounds were powerful enough that, under concentrated fire, the iron-faced Talos began to show cracks.
Normally, a BOW would retreat or evade at this point. Otherwise, it would be subject to the full BSAA elimination protocol: headshot, dismemberment, incineration, inhibitor gas.
ROAR! The rotary machine gun stopped. The Talos raised its massive, mutated left arm to shield its cracked face and crouched slightly. In the next instant, the rocket pod on its boxy ammo backpack ignited—
Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Rocket screamed out!
With a series of BOOM sounds, the rockets struck the gaps in the retreating BSAA formation, blasting balls of fire and deep brown smoke into the air. Bloodied chunks of snow fell with a whoosh.
"Aaaaahhh!"
An injured soldier with a severed leg screamed, firing his M4A1 carbine wildly—click, clank!
The emptied rocket pod was jettisoned by the mounting module, and the now seemingly more agile Talos let out a roar. From its left shoulder pauldron, the 20mm single-barrel autocannon began picking off the surviving BSAA members.
...
"Hahaha... the fusion of flesh and steel, guided by Red Queen's computational control—this is what a true bio-weapon should look like. Mr. Spencer, Talos is the ultimate direction for BOWs."
"Vela Adelheid and William Birkin were both right in their own ways. It was you, Mr. Spencer—and all of us—who were trapped by dogma."
"But it doesn't matter anymore. The correct path has been found. That traitor Vela Adelheid—her Militech and research assets will eventually serve us."
Inside the monitoring room of Umbrella's Caucasus Branch underground lab, Sergei Vladimir cracked a twisted smile.
On the surveillance feed, the Talos Tyrant was crushing the BSAA wounded into pulp one by one. Under Red Queen's control, it executed high-precision shots on BSAA operatives peeking from the opposite building—splattering them. It even evaded an RPG.
Sergei closed his eyes, savoring the moment.
"Dear BSAA friends from afar—it seems one Talos alone is enough to destroy you."
Swirling the red wine in his glass, Sergei took a sip and turned to another monitor.
On the snowy grounds outside the cover front—the chemical plant above the Caucasus facility—a blond man in black clothing and sunglasses was slaughtering his way through.
Corpses of Cerberus, Hunters, and Crawlers lay scattered. He now faced over three Talos Tyrants alone.
Though battered, the man wasn't easily taken down. His speed, stamina, and coordination were superhuman. His regenerative abilities were absurd.
Using only infantry-grade weapons, he had already destroyed one Talos—even if that unit had only undergone a 20% upgrade due to exhausted cybernetic resources from Vela's original prototype weapon design.
"Albert Wesker... Seems the 'Project W' and those two successive experimental fusions with Progenitor Virus variants granted by William Birkin served you well."
"Mr. Spencer needs the data from your mutated strain..." Sergei's eyes gleamed coldly. "Capture him alive."
Just as Sergei shifted focus from BSAA's destruction to capturing Wesker—
BEEP BEEP BEEP—
Warning lights flashed on the console.
A Talos unit had reached critical damage threshold.
Surveillance from the logistics warehouse town near the chemical plant showed it clearly: the Talos Tyrant, having depleted its rockets and most ammo, was struck directly by a high-powered infantry missile.
A close-range barrage!
A hidden camera atop the silo revealed BSAA's tactical strategy: They had driven in Humvees equipped with heavy machine gun turrets, used sustained fire to draw the Talos's attention, then had RPG and missile operators sneak into nearby buildings and coordinate a simultaneous barrage. Even with Red Queen's guidance and Vela's semiconductor interface chip, there wasn't enough time to react at such close range.
"I underestimated you..."
"Then how will you handle the second one?" Sergei grinned, flipping open a new row of red switch covers on the console.
Beep.
...
A Humvee equipped with a Militech Type-1 heavy machine gun plowed through a horde of zombies. Its roof-mounted gun spat fire, targeting the thinner, more vulnerable joints at the Talos Tyrant's knees.
The results were immediate. The .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds weren't something rifle bullets could compare to. As the machine gun roared, and the Talos was momentarily distracted by decoy cars manually rammed into its path, it faltered. The delay cost it—its knee armor was cracked open, and the mutated leg bone shattered.
The Talos crashed hard to the ground. One of its guided missiles, fired moments earlier, lost lock and smashed into a building, exploding into flames.
Chris wasn't going to waste that opportunity.
"FIRE!!"
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
BOOM! CLANK! RATATATATATA—!
BOOOOM—!CRASH—! RPGs, grenades, missiles roared. The wall beside the fallen Talos collapsed under the pressure, burying it in rubble.
...
Silence.
Every BSAA veteran on-site knew what that meant: BOWs never truly died in Phase One.
Click. Chris loaded a fresh thermite rocket. Launcher primed, he aimed at the pile of debris.
ROAR—! Just as bricks exploded outward like buckshot, thick, writhing tentacles burst through the bluish-black flesh of a mutated figure. The BOW, now stripped of armor and weapons, erupted out.
Chris pulled the trigger.
FWOOSH!
Direct hit. The mutated flesh burst like a blister—or an overripe fruit. Blood mist filled the air.
Even then, they pumped it with dozens more bullets and lobbed several thermite grenades, incinerating the mangled remains.
Chris finally let out a breath of relief. He turned to the dirt-smeared Jill beside him.
"We're—"
He froze. Eyes wide.
From the breach the Talos had smashed through, a brand-new Talos Tyrant stomped forth with a BOOM. Its body leaned forward. The rocket pod on its back and the 20mm autocannon on its left shoulder began to roar.
"Watch out!" Chris shouted, shoving Jill hard.
SPURT!
Blood and flesh exploded.