Location: Outskirts of the Raccoon City Ruins, Arklay Mountains (Abandoned Sector 7 Bypass)
Date: October 12, 2027
Time: 23:47
The night clung to the Arklay Mountains like a damp shroud, heavy with an unrelenting rain that hammered against the cracked asphalt. This was the forsaken perimeter road—a jagged vein leading to the skeletal remains of Raccoon City. Three decades ago, this had been a bustling artery of the American Midwest. Now, it was a graveyard of twisted rebar and concrete Jersey walls, enforced by a quarantine that the world had tried to forget.
But Alen Wesker didn't forget. He was a creature of memory and shadows.
Cutting through the deluge was a matte-black Audi R8 (Type 4S). Its naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10 was a guttural beast, its 600-horsepower roar muffled only by the torrential downpour. Modified for the ruins, the R8's mid-engine weight distribution allowed it to hug the uneven, mud-slicked terrain with predatory grace. Across the top of the windshield, the "CARS21" branding flickered under the rhythmic pulse of the windshield wipers.
Inside the cockpit, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to the chaos outside. The HUD display, synced directly to Alen's Reality-Lens ocular implants, projected ghostly wireframes onto the glass. Thermal scans pierced the storm, mapping the overgrown service paths where kudzu and radiation-resistant weeds had reclaimed the earth.
Alen's gloved hands were steady on the leather-wrapped wheel. At 44, the years had etched him into a more complex version of Albert Wesker: the same sharp jawline and high cheekbones, but with eyes that told a different story. They were a piercing, crystalline blue—a genetic gift from Alex Wesker—now tempered by the haunted depth of a man who had spent four years fighting the ghosts of his own blood.
"The Sun Child doesn't burn alone," he thought, the words a lifeline from Rebecca Chambers during his dark years in the Rockies.
The HUD flashed a violent crimson. INCOMING FIRE.
Tracer rounds from a pursuing black SUV—likely an FBI wetwork team—chewed into the asphalt behind him. Alen didn't flinch. He didn't even reach for the Pit Viper holstered at his side.
"Amateurs," he muttered.
He punched the R8's adaptive dynamics into a custom "Phantom" mode. The V10 screamed as he feathered the throttle, sending the supercar into a controlled power-slide onto a concealed off-ramp. As the pursuers overshot the turn, Alen triggered a command on his gauntlet. From the R8's rear deck, a swarm of nano-drones deployed, releasing a focused EMP burst. The SUV behind him erupted in electrical sparks, flipping into a ditch like a discarded toy.
His comms implant buzzed. Rebecca's voice cut through the static, calm but laced with a familiar, unyielding concern.
Rebecca: "Alen, thermal shows three neutralized. But be careful—Wrenwood is 'hot.' The vitals I'm seeing inside are... erratic. The necrotic patterns match the Elpis leaks: black-veined flesh, rapid liquefaction. It's not the Mold, Alen. It's something deeper. Something surgical."
Alen pulled the hood of his mid-length black leather trench coat lower, the red interior lining flashing like arterial blood in the dim cabin light. "Copy that, Doc. I'm on site. If this 'Elpis' strain is what I think it is, someone is digging up Umbrella's old bones."
Rebecca: "Promise me—no A-Virus flares. You've been off the grid too long. We rebuilt you to be a protector, not a martyr."
"The Phantom doesn't have the luxury of being a martyr, Rebecca," Alen replied. "I'm just the janitor."
The Ghost of Ashcroft
He killed the engine 200 meters from the Wrenwood Hotel. The R8's stealth coating allowed it to vanish into the darkness. Once a ritzy 1920s retreat, the hotel was now a Gothic monolith half-swallowed by fallout haze.
Alen moved like smoke, his Spatial-Phantom shift blurring his form as he crossed the perimeter. This place was a nexus of tragedies. Alyssa Ashcroft, the reporter who had survived the 1998 outbreak, had been silenced here in 2018 while chasing the shadows of the Connections. Her exposés on the Dulvey incident had nearly cracked the world open. Alen had finished her work in Moldova, but the ghosts remained. Now, seven years later, the Elpis homicides were circling back to this exact spot.
He slipped through a shattered pane in the porte-cochère. The lobby was a tomb of velvet and rot. A figure lurched from the shadows of the concierge desk—a hotel staffer, his skin marbled with obsidian veins that pulsed with a faint, bioluminescent light.
An Elpis zombie.
It didn't shamble; it moved with a violent, twitching speed, its claws etched with glowing, ritualistic runes. Alen didn't fire. He drew a carbon-fiber Ka-Bar with a monomolecular edge. In one fluid motion—a blur of black leather—he severed the creature's spine before it could scream.
He knelt, collecting a sample of the black ichor. "Pure airborne vector," he whispered. "Gideon isn't just making bio-weapons. He's writing a requiem."
Deeper in the hotel, the grand staircase creaked. His HUD overlaid structural blueprints hacked from his days at Blue Umbrella.
Rebecca: "Alen, my drones are picking up a 'clean' signature in the penthouse. A human. Fortified."
"Probably Gideon's puppet," Alen said, melting into the gloom of the staircase. "I'm moving to engage. Tell the world I was never here."
The Phantom of the Arklays began his ascent. Raccoon City's ghosts whispered a welcome; the Requiem had just begun.