The Turmoil

The woods were quiet, but there was something eerie about that silence.

Another helicopter carrying Beta Team had gone to the site of the other plane crash. The members of Alpha Team had no way of knowing whether they had come under attack.

Piers radioed the police providing backup and reported the situation. Once he confirmed they had received the message, he led Alpha Team deeper into the forest.

They were Raccoon City police officers. This was exactly the kind of situation they were supposed to risk their lives to handle.

Jill felt a faint unease. They had confirmed this was a planned attack, and the attackers were still at the scene.

They didn't know how much firepower the enemy had. By venturing in recklessly, they could be walking into an ambush.

In the forest not far from Alpha Team, a group of ten armed men were rummaging through the helicopter wreckage.

They were an international mercenary outfit made up of freelancers. Two months earlier, they had landed a huge contract!

Kill Umbrella Corporation's current leader, Duncan Aremus, and bring back either his corpse or five hundred grams of his body tissue.

The client had offered a price no one could refuse. They had tried to assassinate Duncan several times, but whenever he left Raccoon City, he brought a large armed security detail and had people scout ahead. His security was so tight that it was almost impossible to get to him. Then, today, their informant had given them a golden opportunity.

Duncan would be taking a helicopter to inspect construction at the industrial park!

The mercenary unit's Captain had acted decisively. He had successfully shot down all three helicopters with rocket launchers. Now all they had to do was take the target's body back and collect their payment.

"Have you found it yet?"

The Captain beside the wreckage was growing impatient. Their firepower was formidable, but it was no match for the Raccoon City Police Department, with its hundred-plus officers. What was more, Umbrella had a thousand private soldiers in Raccoon City. Their thirty men couldn't win against them, no matter what weapons they had.

Umbrella might not have realized what was happening yet. But the threat of rocket launchers could keep them from using helicopters, and if they approached by car, it wouldn't be long before the Security Force surrounded them.

At his urging, the men picked up the pace, putting out the fire and searching the helicopter they had pried open for the target's body.

The client had offered them a fortune to kill the head of a massive corporation. Breaking the unspoken rules like this risked drawing the collective wrath of the capitalists. They had agonized over the decision before taking the job, but once it was done, they'd be set for life. None of them wanted to mess it up.

"Captain, we couldn't find the body!" After searching through the wreckage, several mercenaries gave him the bad news.

The Captain pressed his earpiece and asked, "Leopard, Eagle, did you find it on your end?"

"Nothing here!"

"Shit, same here!"

The replies came quickly over the radio, and every answer was the same.

Was the intel wrong?

As soon as the Captain had the thought, a hail of bullets erupted from the woods to their flank.

Rat-tat-tat!

Two mercenaries who had taken poor positions went down. At the first sound of gunfire, the others ducked behind trees. Seconds later, the mercenaries returned fire in the direction the bullets had come from.

In an instant, bullets and wood splinters flew through the forest!

Alpha Team had crept up carefully, hoping to catch them off guard. But once the fighting began, they realized their opponents were well trained. Even after being ambushed, they didn't lose their composure. They had clearly received professional training, and might even have seen combat.

"Motherfucker!" After changing the magazine in his rifle, the mercenary Captain signaled to several men beside him to retreat. They had no desire to fight the Raccoon City police.

The mercenaries planted booby traps nearby and obscured the battlefield with smoke grenades. Using the dense forest to cover their escape, they vanished from the scene.

With their vision blocked by smoke, Alpha Team tried to pursue.

Peyton was near the front and paid no attention to the ground. As he passed a patch of grass, his sharp hearing caught the sound of a grenade pin dropping. His face went pale, and he yelled, "Grenade!"

He threw himself to one side.

Boom!

Shrapnel burst from the grenade. Peyton had hit the ground in time and escaped injury. The others had been warned and dropped down as well. None of them were caught by the booby trap, but they didn't dare keep chasing.

"Cough, cough, cough!" Jill waved the smoke away from her face, watching her footing as she helped the prone Captain, Piers, to his feet.

They were about to say something when the sound of helicopter rotors reached them from above.

They looked up through the gaps in the branches. A large number of armed helicopters bearing Umbrella's logo were flying overhead.

Among them were several aircraft resembling Ospreys, with side-mounted rotors. As they passed over the forest, they released a large number of flares, then aimed at the woods in the distance and fired a volley of rockets.

The members of Alpha Team stared in stunned silence. The Umbrella logo on the sides of the aircraft was impossible to miss. These were military-grade models, weren't they?

Even the police didn't have that kind of firepower. Did a private company's security team really need such an absurd arsenal?

In any case, Umbrella's people soon took charge of all three crash sites. The police were left to maintain order and, above all, keep reporters away.

The internationally renowned mercenary team suffered heavy casualties in the bombing. Only seven men escaped through a tunnel they had dug in advance.

Perhaps someone had deliberately spread the news. Over the next two days, the story of Umbrella Corporation CEO Duncan Aremus being attacked quickly made headlines around the world. The intense discussion showed clear signs of human manipulation.

Susan, Duncan's second-in-command secretary, was forced to give an interview. She looked uneasy on camera and stuck to the claim that Duncan was merely missing. She was mostly led along by the questions, making her answers seem like a clumsy cover-up.

The online crowd didn't believe her. The discussion gradually shifted from the attack on Umbrella's CEO to whether the company should be broken up—and whether its private armed forces were far too powerful.

The company was surrounded by predators from the outside, while inside, everyone was equally on edge.

Susan sat haggardly in the secretary's office, mechanically processing documents under Red Queen's guidance. Anything she couldn't handle, she set aside for the time being.

She was at a loss. Having seen Duncan travel between worlds, she couldn't believe he would die so easily. But she hadn't seen her boss for two days, and she still couldn't bring herself to believe he was gone.

The overwhelming, complicated workload made her feel as if she had aged several years overnight.

Susan had always been little more than a pretty face. She had no experience handling major emergencies like this. After only two days, she was already longing for the old days, when she could lie around and throw money wherever she pleased.

"Miss Susan, another one just came in..."

The office door opened. A brown-haired secretary from the team stepped in, looking conflicted, and placed a newly received letter on Susan's desk.

Susan stared at the white eagle on the envelope for a long while, then rubbed her temples and waved the brown-haired secretary away.

She ruffled her hair and surveyed the simply furnished yet luxurious office. The place felt suffocating, and the pressure was now so great that she was starting to think about quitting.

Even after entering the workforce, some people weren't necessarily truly independent.