Raccoon City's Incident (Part 2)

"Doctor, hand over the G-Virus." Deep within the Umbrella Corporation's underground research facility, inside a laboratory, five fully armed soldiers surrounded William Birkin, the original master of this lab.

"Impossible." Though guns were aimed at him, the moment he heard someone wanted to seize his life's work, William Birkin's first instinct was to protect it.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Before William Birkin's hand could touch the case containing the G-Virus, the five soldiers encircling him opened fire immediately. William only had time to let out a scream before collapsing backward onto the lab table, smashing the test tubes and equipment on it.

"Sorry, Doctor." The soldier standing at the front said this to William Birkin, who lay bleeding on the floor, then immediately began inspecting the silver-white alloy case on the lab table. Finding the contents matched the target, he locked the case securely and lifted it.

"Target acquired, retreat." With that, the five swiftly moved toward the laboratory door.

"I won't let you succeed." Just after the five left, William, who should have been dead, actually woke up. Having taken at least dozens of bullets, William was still alive—it was nothing short of incredible.

The revived William picked up a syringe containing the G-Virus. After a brief moment of hesitation, his eyes turned resolute, and he injected himself.

Roar.

As the G-Virus entered his body, William couldn't help but let out a loud roar, and his body began to swell.

"William, no!" Just as William was mutating from the G-Virus, Annette, who had rushed over from another part of the lab after hearing gunfire, saw this scene and cried out involuntarily.

"William." After a moment's hesitation, Annette immediately dashed toward another laboratory, where the antidote for the G-Virus was stored.

"Now head to the main control room immediately, activate the self-destruct system, and then evacuate." At this moment, the team carrying the G-Virus received new orders from above.

"Understood." The team leader nodded at once.

Bang bang bang.

But just then, the entire team felt the ground begin to tremble. They immediately turned to look behind them in alert, spotting a bizarre monster charging toward them.

"Open fire!" Before the team leader could finish his sentence, he was sent flying by the monster, slamming hard into the wall beside him and passing out, while the case in his hand flew off.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

The rest of the team opened fire on the monster without pause, but the bullets striking its body seemed to have no effect at all.

Though these men were renowned mercenaries, this was their first encounter with a monster immune to gunfire. In their panic, they were quickly taken down by the creature.

After dealing with them, the monster didn't even glance at the G-Virus case on the floor and headed off in one direction of the facility.

"Damn it, that William! Deploy the UBCS unit—I want that G-Virus brought back no matter what!" Watching this through the mercenaries' body cameras, a high-ranking Umbrella executive slammed his fist into the desk in fury and barked out orders.

Through the camera, the face on the monster was clearly visible—it was William Birkin.

"Yes."

"William, looks like you failed. But that works out perfectly." In a secret room, Wesker watched everything through the screen in front of him and let out a cold smirk.

"You can move now. The G-Virus is at..." With that, Wesker made a secret call, relaying the approximate location of the G-Virus to the person on the other end.

"Understood." A low female voice came from the other side of the line.

"You'd better hurry. The UBCS units are mobilizing in force, and on top of that, Sergei has botched everything. This city isn't safe anymore." Wesker warned the other party.

"Spencer, it seems even God wants you dead this time. I don't even need to lift a finger. All I have to do now is wait patiently, heh heh heh heh." In the darkness, Wesker, still wearing his signature sunglasses, had a red light reflecting off the lenses.

"Requesting backup, requesting backup." Despite their excellent equipment, the USS unit suffered heavy casualties when infiltrating the underground facility. On one hand, they had underestimated the strength of the mutated William.

On the other hand, the facility's automated defense systems, along with Lickers and Hunters, had been unleashed because the mutated William's rampage had freed these test subjects.

Additionally, Annette had activated the automated defenses and sealed off the labs, leaving the mercenaries no chance to escape.

To prevent the mutated William from escaping and finding Sherry, Annette knew all too well the properties of the G-Virus. So she used her authority to trap William in the lab. However, this came at the cost of sacrificing the many researchers and security personnel inside.

Annette's act of sealing the labs left Umbrella's high command temporarily unable to open the doors.

Even though they held higher clearance than she did.

This was originally a precautionary measure to prevent biochemical leaks. Since they were researching bioweapons, Umbrella naturally took the safety of such weapons seriously.

For one thing, every facility had a self-destruct system installed—partly to destroy evidence in case of an incident, and partly to ensure no bioweapon could escape.

Umbrella's high command weren't fools, nor were they madmen bent on destroying the world. Their goal in researching bioweapons was profit, along with personal agendas from Spencer and other executives.

But they had no intention of wiping out humanity.

Even in this operation to seize William's G-Virus, they had planned to activate the self-destruct system afterward to eliminate all traces. The one thing they hadn't accounted for was William's mutation.

In Umbrella's high command's plan, killing the traitor William, seizing the G-Virus, destroying the lab, and eliminating survivors like Chris from the mansion incident would have minimized the virus leak—making a big problem small and a small problem nothing. Umbrella could then relocate and rebuild.

The root cause of all this was the Ecliptic Express Incident, which all began with Marcus's attack. If he hadn't manipulated the Leech Virus to attack the train and the Training Facility, Umbrella's actions might have remained top secret, and Raccoon City would still be the happy Raccoon City it once was.

The earlier incidents of zombies and Zombie Dogs attacking people around Raccoon City weren't what Umbrella wanted—those were also Marcus's doing.

Marcus sought revenge against Umbrella, and in doing so, dragged Raccoon City into the abyss.

Speaking of Marcus, he was one of Umbrella's founders, but over a decade ago, he was assassinated by his colleague Spencer and his two disciples, Wesker and William Birkin.

The reason was simple: Marcus had been conducting virus experiments on Umbrella's own researchers and staff. Spencer, Wesker, and William Birkin weren't good people either—they experimented on humans too—but they weren't as deranged as Marcus, who directly targeted company insiders.

This was extremely dangerous. After all, Umbrella employees had families and loved ones. Occasional lab accidents causing casualties could be covered up with Umbrella's power and wealth, but mass deaths weren't so easy to sweep under the rug.

From its inception, Umbrella had been conducting experiments on the Progenitor Virus, and human trials were naturally part of that. The reason they'd never been discovered was Umbrella's extreme caution.

There were plenty of test subjects: the homeless, illegal immigrants, orphans—all groups that drew little attention. Even if they went missing, few cared.

What's more, Umbrella collaborated with the government, giving them access to plenty of prisoners and death row inmates for experiments. There was no need to take such huge risks by using normal people.

Billy, as a death row inmate, ended up in Raccoon City because he was sent there as a test subject—and he was also an elite soldier.

Unfortunately, everything was ruined by Marcus. In a way, Marcus actually saved Billy's life, but then he ended up dying at the hands of Billy and Rebecca himself—a case of evil begetting evil.

The wheel of fortune turns. Now it's William's turn to be betrayed by Umbrella Corporation, except this one dragged the entire Raccoon City down with him as his grave.

"Bastards, damn it, every last one of them deserves to die, cough cough." Inside a rarely visited ancient castle, Spencer, sitting in a wheelchair with an IV drip, heard the latest intelligence report from his subordinates and nearly spat out a mouthful of blood in rage.

Umbrella Corporation had struggled to grow to this scale, with numerous branches and secret bases worldwide. The plan was almost complete, and now this disaster struck—how could Spencer not be furious? Because his time was running out.

The Umbrella Corporation in this world was vastly different from the Original Work. When the three who discovered the Progenitor Virus—Spencer and the others—found it, they immediately took it to the most brilliant scientist of the time, Dr. Abraham Erskine.

It must be said that Dr. Abraham Erskine was incredibly talented. Through his research on the Progenitor Virus, he developed the Super Soldier Serum, creating both the Red Skull and Captain America—two enhanced humans.

Originally, the plan was to use this Super Soldier Serum to mass-produce enhanced warriors, in order to defeat the Red Skull, a fascist who possessed weapons far beyond the era's technology.

Unfortunately, right after Captain America's enhancement was complete, the doctor was assassinated. He left behind no formula, only a single vial of serum.

After that, countless scientists tried to reverse-engineer the serum's formula using that vial, but all failed—and they ended up wasting the entire serum.

Of course, not all of those scientists were idiots. They did achieve something: a weakened version of the serum. Though it was far inferior to what Captain America had injected, it was the limit of their abilities.

And the injection still carried great risks.

While many were striving to replicate Dr. Abraham Erskine's Super Soldier Serum, Spencer and his group set their sights on the Progenitor Virus, knowing the doctor had developed the serum through its study.

Thus, Umbrella Corporation was founded. But despite paying countless costs, Spencer ultimately failed to develop any enhancement agent as free of Side Effects as the serum.

The massive investment of manpower, resources, and energy into studying the Progenitor Virus—researching bioweapons to sell for profit—was all just a side venture.

Spencer's true goal was to use this virus research to achieve immortality, and then become the god ruling over humanity.

Unfortunately, as time passed, the research on the Progenitor Virus made little significant progress. This made Spencer extremely anxious, because he was growing older and older. Though Umbrella's powerful scientific capabilities kept him alive, it was merely a band-aid solution.

Under these circumstances, if Umbrella ran into trouble—bankruptcy or the like—Spencer wouldn't care. But if the research stopped, that was something he couldn't ignore.

Beyond Umbrella's troubles, what angered Spencer even more was the doctor's secrecy about the Super Soldier Serum back then. After the Red Skull's successful enhancement, Spencer had gone to see the doctor, but the doctor completely ignored him.

Still, Spencer was Spencer. After his rage subsided and he calmed down, he quickly thought of a remedy, hoping to minimize the impact of this incident on Umbrella Corporation.

ps: Regarding typos, please point them out as much as possible. If you just mention them, it's hard for me to find them—reading my own work makes it hard to spot the flaws.