Ecliptic Express – Tunnel
The train screamed into the tunnel, its wheels shrieking against the rails. Sparks showered the walls as the cars rattled and swayed, threatening to tear themselves apart.
Jack and Rebecca staggered into the forward car, fighting against the violent sway of the machine. Rebecca's knuckles were white on her pistol, but her eyes locked onto the control panel.
"There!" she shouted, pointing at the brake system.
Jack slammed his hand down on the levers, Rebecca grabbing another. Together, they pulled with everything they had.
The metal groaned, gears grinding—but nothing happened.
"No, no, no… come on!" Rebecca cried, jerking the lever again. Warning lights flashed across the panel, bathing them in crimson: BRAKE FAILURE.
Jack's jaw tightened. "It's dead."
Rebecca looked at him, panic rising in her throat. "Then we'll—"
The car jolted so hard it nearly threw them both to the floor. The tunnel roared around them, sparks streaking outside the shattered windows.
Jack didn't hesitate. He wrapped an arm around Rebecca and forced her down, covering her with his body.
"Jack!" she protested, trying to shove him off.
"Don't argue—hold on!"
The world came apart.
The train smashed into the tunnel wall with a deafening crash. Metal folded like paper, seats ripped free of their mounts, and glass shattered in a storm of shards. The impact hurled Jack across the cabin, his back slamming against twisted steel. Rebecca screamed as the shockwave knocked the breath from her lungs.
Then—silence.
Rebecca blinked through the haze of dust and smoke. Fires burned in the wreckage, the air thick with the reek of fuel and scorched metal. Her ears rang, every sound muffled and distant.
"Jack…" she croaked, crawling through debris.
She found him pinned against the wall, his tan jumpsuit torn open at the shoulder. Blood soaked the fabric, dark and heavy—but even as she watched, the wound closed, flesh knitting together far faster than it should.
Rebecca's breath caught. "What the…?"
She pressed trembling fingers to his neck. His pulse was steady, strong, even though he was unconscious.
Her eyes lingered on the wound. No human body should have healed that way—not in seconds, not like this.
Rebecca swallowed hard, her hand hovering over him. "Jack… what happened to you?" she whispered.
From outside the wreckage, a low groan echoed through the tunnel. Then another. The sound of the dead, waking.
Rebecca's head snapped up. She tightened her grip on her pistol, her other hand resting protectively on Jack's chest.
Whatever secrets he carried, she would find out later.
Umbrella Control Room – Isaacs's POV
The monitors buzzed with static, then snapped back to life, showing the collapsed wreckage of the Ecliptic Express in the tunnel. Emergency lights flickered across twisted steel. Heat signatures glowed faintly on the feed.
Dr. Alexander Isaacs leaned forward, his gloved fingers steepled beneath his chin. "Well… what do we have here?"
Beside him, Dr. William Birkin adjusted his glasses, his face pale with disbelief. "That's the train. It was supposed to arrive intact. How the hell did it derail in the tunnel?"
Albert Wesker stood behind them, arms folded, expression unreadable as his mirrored shades caught the glow of the screen.
Isaacs tapped a control, zooming the feed closer. Amid the smoke and ruin, two figures were visible: a young woman struggling to drag an unconscious man from the wreckage.
Isaacs's eyes narrowed. Blond hair. Blue eyes. The torn prisoner jumpsuit.
"Impossible…" Isaacs whispered. "Hale?"
Birkin frowned. "Jack Hale? He was supposed to be in custody—en route to this facility for processing."
Wesker tilted his head slightly. "And yet here he is. Not in your facility, Isaacs. Not under your control. Curious."
Before Isaacs could retort, a comms officer rushed in, headset pressed tight. "Dr. Isaacs! We've located the convoy wreckage. Route 17. Completely overrun. MPs dead. No survivors."
Wesker's lips curved faintly. "Resourceful."
"Alive," Isaacs snapped, his voice cold. "And valuable. He cannot be allowed to vanish into the forest. Dispatch a retrieval team. Bring him in alive—"
The lights flickered.
The screens went black.
"What the hell?" Birkin barked, slamming a hand against the console. "Did we lose power?"
Emergency generators whirred to life, restoring the feed. But the monitors no longer showed the tunnel wreckage.
Instead, a single face stared back at them.
Pale, waxen skin. Eyes sharp with malice. Features shifting, crawling, as if something writhed beneath them. Behind him, leeches pulsed and twisted, creeping across the walls.
James Marcus.
The Queen Leech hissed through the speakers, its voice layered and inhuman:
"You desecrate my work…"
Isaacs stiffened. "Marcus."
"You steal my children. Twist them into your soldiers," the voice grew louder, vibrating through every monitor in the room. "And now you dare feed my legacy into your corruption."
The facility shuddered as containment doors across the sublevels opened one by one. The feeds flickered, showing cages bursting open, locks disengaging, alarms shrieking.
Cerberus packs poured into corridors. Insectoid swarms crawled from cracked tanks. Human test subjects slumped forward, their bodies twisting as viral strands consumed them.
B.O.W.s flooded the halls in a storm of claws and teeth.
Marcus's face warped into a sneer. "You wanted soldiers. You'll have monsters."
"Shut it down!" Birkin barked at the technicians. "Cut power to containment!"
"It's not responding!" one shouted. "He's overriding everything!"
On the screen, Marcus leaned closer, his grin stretching unnaturally.
"The T-Aegis Tyrant… I'll leave that abomination in its cage. For now. But everything else is mine."
The feed cut to static as the facility shook under the weight of its own unleashed horrors.
Isaacs's reflection stared back at him in the black glass of the monitor. For the first time, his composure slipped.
"Order every Umbrella soldier and B.O.W. in the field back to the facility. Now!" he barked.
His fist clenched as the alarms blared, leeches skittering unseen through the darkness.
"This… complicates things."
Umbrella Executive Training Facility – Sub-Level Containment
The floors thrummed with the stampede of unleashed B.O.W.s, claws scraping against steel, howls reverberating through the dark.
In the deepest chamber, James Marcus stood alone, his figure shifting subtly as the Queen Leech inside him writhed with anticipation. The air smelled of stagnant water and rot.
Before him, through reinforced glass, loomed a monstrous silhouette.
The Proto-Tyrant.
Its frame was massive, nearly filling the chamber, a grotesque mockery of Isaacs's vision of the perfect soldier. Tubes pumped black fluid into its pallid skin, each breath rattling like a furnace on the brink of collapse. Its chest was scarred with failed grafts, the ribcage barely holding in the swollen muscle beneath.
The beast's single red eye opened, glowing faintly in the dark. It stared at Marcus, as if sensing the power shift, as if aware its time was near.
Marcus's lips curled. "It's about time… You will hunt down the corruption in my work. You will hunt down what Umbrella wants the most… Jack Hale."