"Boom! Crash!"
After slipping the silver-rod-like Neuralyzer into his pocket, Sui Bian gave the toilet a perfunctory flush, then turned and opened the door to leave the stall.
When he stepped out, he saw four Omicron agents in black suits waiting in the brightly lit hallway. Among them was the Lieutenant in charge of the Omicron agents.
Sui Bian and the four men headed to the central hall on this floor, then took a private elevator down to the Research Center.
Before long, they arrived at the Research Center's third underground level.
They stepped out of the elevator into a corridor much like the Hive's, passing several production workshops equipped with huge tanks.
Inside the tanks floated countless "children," suspended in the nutrient solution.
On closer inspection, these human-shaped "children" had dark green scales covering their skin, and claws were beginning to emerge from their hands and feet.
They were Hunter Alphas, one of Umbrella's mass-produced biological weapons.
They had been developed as a low-cost B.O.W. by combining cloned human embryos with the T-Virus and reptilian DNA.
Hunter Alphas were fast and highly agile. Their claws could easily tear through light armor, while the scales covering their bodies could withstand small-caliber armor-piercing rounds.
Even more valuable for mass production was the fact that Hunter Alphas, developed from human embryos, possessed enough intelligence to follow simple commands.
They understood human speech, had a short growth cycle, and were both effective and inexpensive. This made Hunter Alphas popular in Africa and the Middle East.
After passing through the Hunter Alpha production area, Sui Bian and his group arrived at the third floor's Living Specimen Detention Area—in other words, the prison.
It contained numerous cell units, holding more than three hundred people secretly captured by Umbrella. The vast majority were homeless people whose visas had expired and who had refused to work illegally.
Before Sui Bian took control, the prisoners had mainly been used for live experiments by researchers, as well as cannon fodder to demonstrate the Hunter Alpha's power to representatives of potential business partners.
After taking control, Sui Bian hadn't had a fit of saintly compassion and released them. Instead, he planned to send them to Africa or the Middle East to serve as cheap labor for the company.
After all, these people already knew about Umbrella's Dark Side, and brainwashing surgery was complicated and time-consuming. There was no need to waste it on these lazy freeloaders.
But now that he had obtained a Neuralyzer from the Men in Black, he could just zap these people and set them free. Otherwise, if he sent them to Africa or the Middle East, they'd still have to feed and house them.
09:01.
The five of them entered the prison area and walked into an observation room with a huge one-way window.
Several researchers in white lab coats were inside, along with sixteen fully armed Alpha members. Hunk, his helmet and mask removed, was also in the room.
The four Omicron agents assigned to E Team had rejoined their unit.
"Mr. Sui." As the observation room's automatic door opened, everyone stopped what they were doing.
"Mm." Sui Bian merely nodded in response, then lightly waved his left hand to signal them to carry on as usual.
He then went over to Hunk, who was staring through the glass. In a rare note of confusion, the taciturn Hunk asked,
"Sir, is this the threat you mentioned?"
Following Hunk's gaze, Sui Bian saw that on the other side of the one-way window was an interrogation room with white floor tiles, white walls, a metal table, and metal chairs.
Seated in one of the metal chairs was the Plague Doctor, dressed in a black robe.
The Plague Doctor sat alone, his right hand resting on a notebook on the metal table and a pen in his left as he wrote something down.
Before he had been moved into the interrogation room, technicians had conducted a full-body examination. The Plague Doctor had cooperated throughout and shown no signs of resistance.
The examination confirmed that the black gloves, robe, and beaked mask he wore were connected to his body.
However, X-rays showed that beneath those outer layers, the Plague Doctor still had a human skeletal structure.
That wasn't enough to confuse Hunk. What baffled the Grim Reaper was that after entering the interrogation room, the Plague Doctor had pulled a small black bag from a side pocket of his robe in full view of everyone—a bag larger than the pocket itself.
The notebook and pen the Plague Doctor was using now had come from that mysterious black bag.
Where had he gotten the bag??
The Plague Doctor's actions had stunned every researcher present. Most of them had the same question running through their minds.
Before he entered the interrogation room, every measurement had shown that the Plague Doctor had nowhere to hide that little black bag. Yet they had watched him pull it from his pocket with their own eyes.
As rigorous scientists, the researchers naturally refused to believe in sleight of hand or magic tricks, so they could only explain the phenomenon as "something they couldn't understand yet."
Watching the Plague Doctor appear to take notes in the interrogation room, Sui Bian remained silent for a moment before replying to Hunk, "That's right. This strange doctor is only the tip of the iceberg.
"In the future... you, your Alphas, and the company's other units will encounter phenomena even more bizarre, strange, and incomprehensible than this doctor."
"Yes, sir." Hunk's voice remained flat.
Hunk and the Alphas didn't need encouragement. They only needed to know what kind of enemy they were facing.
"Mr. Sui." Just then, a researcher in his forties or fifties approached Sui Bian and handed him a paper file. "This contains the lists of victims and survivors, compiled from information provided by the person in charge of Charland Apartment No. 26 and the local government."
"Mm, thank you." Sui Bian reached out and took the file.
He skimmed through it, but found no common thread among the victims. Their incomes and working environments varied widely.
But based on what he knew about the Plague Doctor, the man probably only killed people and performed his so-called surgeries once he had determined that they were infected with the "Plague."
However, he did notice something the survivors had in common: the Plague Doctor hadn't killed any of the six children under the age of sixteen, including the ten-year-old Middle Eastern girl.
Of course, when Hunk and the Alphas stormed the site, they had also done their best to avoid harming the children, so they had all survived.
What exactly is the "Plague"? Sui Bian furrowed his brow as he finished reading the file.
He returned the file to the researcher, then issued a quiet order. "Prepare to interrogate the Plague Doctor."
"Yes, sir."
Before you continue