Chapter 94 94: CH : 0087 The Holy Grail
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*****
He stepped backward into the empty air.
"Holy shit!" Barry shouted, rushing to the door.
The entire team crowded the opening, looking down with horrified faces. They expected to see a body plummeting to its death. They expected a splat.
Instead, they saw a black blur falling with perfect control.
Atlas hit the roof of a six-story commercial building. He didn't splat. He rolled.
From the helicopter, they saw him absorb the impact of a five-hundred-foot drop with a parkour roll that cracked the concrete of the roof but left him standing.
He stood up, dusted off his t-shirt, and looked up at the helicopter.
He waved.
A big, cheeky grin was visible even from this height.
"He..." Chris stammered, gripping the door handle. "He survived."
"He jumped from a helicopter," Barry muttered, shaking his head slowly. "And he waved. He actually waved."
The horror on their faces melted into disbelief, and then, slowly, into relief.
Jill let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, clutching the evidence tight. A smile broke across her face—not of amusement, but of pure respect.
"He really is a monster," Jill whispered. "But thank god he was our monster."
Rebecca wiped a tear from her eye, leaning out as far as she dared, watching the small black figure leap from the roof to the next building, moving with the speed and agility of a predator.
"Goodbye, Atlas," she whispered. "See you soon."
Brad banked the helicopter, turning toward the Raccoon Police Department. The sun fully crested the horizon, bathing the city in light.
But down on the rooftops, moving through the shadows, the Apex Predator of Raccoon City had just begun his hunt.
---
Location: The Ruins of the Ashford Villa / The Hive / Raccoon City Underground.
Time: 11:05 PM – 06:00 AM (June 10-11, 2002).
[ POV: Albert Wesker ]
[ Location: The Burning Ruins of the Arklay Laboratory ]
Darkness. Then, agony. Then... power.
Albert Wesker gasped, his eyes snapping open. He was lying amidst the wreckage of the laboratory control room, his chest a ruin of torn flesh and shattered ribs where the Tyrant's claw had impaled him.
But he wasn't dead.
He could feel the virus—the experimental prototype variant he had injected into his bloodstream moments before confronting the S.T.A.R.S.—surging through his veins. It burned like liquid fire, rewriting his genetic code, knitting bone back to bone, stitching muscle fibers with a tensile strength far surpassing human limits.
He pushed himself up. The metal console he had smashed into groaned under his grip. He looked at his hand. The skin was pale, cold, but beneath it, he felt a hum of energy that made the air around him vibrate.
"Magnificent," Wesker whispered. His voice was different—deeper, resonant.
He was the most successful case of all Umbrella's experiments. He had retained his intellect, his self, while ascending to godhood.
BOOM.
A secondary shockwave rocked the facility.
"Time to go," he murmured after activating the self-destruct program he ran.
He moved with supernatural speed, a blur of motion that defied human limits. He sprinted through the corridors, bypassing the elevator, leaping up the shaft by digging his fingers into the concrete.
He emerged into the main lobby of the Ashford Villa—the lavish front for the training facility..
He was almost at the door when a mournful wail stopped him.
"Mother…"
Wesker turned.
Standing in the center of the grand hall, surrounded by the bodies of dead Hunters, was Lisa Trevor. She had survived the fall into the abyss. She had climbed back up. She was immortal, relentless, and currently blocking his exit.
She sensed him. She turned, her tentacles lashing out, her face hidden behind the skin of her victims.
"You," Wesker sneered, adjusting his
sunglasses which, miraculously, had survived. "I don't have time for failures."
Lisa shrieked and charged.
Wesker didn't run. He waited until she was inches away. Then, with a burst of his newfound speed, he vaulted over her head, landing on the second-floor balcony.
He looked up. Above the center of the lobby hung a massive, crystal chandelier, weighing at least two tons, suspended by a single reinforced chain.
"Rest in peace," Wesker deadpanned.
He drew his Samurai Edge and fired a single shot. The bullet severed the chain.
CRASH!
The chandelier plummeted. It struck Lisa with the force of a falling anvil, driving her into the floor, crushing her bones and pinning her beneath a mountain of crystal and brass. She shrieked once, a wet, crushing sound, and then went silent.
Wesker didn't stay to check. He burst through the front doors and sprinted into the forest.
Behind him, the countdown hit zero.
The shockwave knocked him forward, but he kept running, disappearing into the shadows of the Arklay forest just as the villa was consumed by a fireball that lit up the day sky.
From the safety of a ridge, Wesker pulled out a satellite phone. He dialed a secure number.
"Dr. White," Wesker said, his voice cold. "The facility is gone. S.T.A.R.S. survived. But... I have interesting news."
[ POV: Dr. Alexander White ]
[ Location: The Hive (Spencer Mansion Underground) ]
Deep beneath the surface, in the gleaming white nerve center of the Hive, Dr. Alexander White listened to the phone, his face twisting into a scowl.
"You failed, Albert," White said, his voice clipped and cold as ice. "You were supposed to eliminate them out of control B.O.W's and retrieve the reserved experiments."
"I retrieved something better," Wesker's voice crackled over the satellite link, breathless but triumphant. "The failure regarding the S.T.A.R.S. team wasn't mine. It was an anomaly. An unknown variable entered the equation."
White narrowed his eyes. "An unknown variable?"
"A man," Wesker said, a hint of begrudging respect and fascination bleeding into his tone. "He wasn't S.T.A.R.S. He moved faster than anything I've ever seen. Faster than the T-002. He tore the Tyrant apart with his bare hands... or rather, bone claws that extended from his knuckles. He has evolved, Doctor. He is no longer human."
The line went dead as Wesker cut the connection to secure his escape.
Dr. White slowly lowered the receiver, his heart pounding against his ribs. The description... the speed, the claws, the successful adaptation without loss of intelligence.
"It can't be..." White whispered, his mind racing back to the escape from the Hive.
He turned sharply to the massive main monitor wall.
"Red Queen," White commanded, his voice trembling with anticipation. "Access the recovered data packet from the Ashford Villa servers before the explosion. Show me the Training Facility interior footage. I need a visual on this 'anomaly'."
"Accessing..." the holographic avatar of a young girl appeared on the desk, her hands clasped behind her back. "Data corruption at 40%. Retrieving viable files."
Static washed over the main screen, followed by a grainy, recovered video file.
It showed the Boiler Room. It showed a man in a black trench coat moving like a blur, dissecting the Queen Leech with surgical precision.
Dr. White stared at the face on the screen.
"Subject A-1," White breathed, a greedy, predatory smile spreading across his face. "You were here."
White watched, mesmerized..
He saw Atlas moving through the train, a blur of efficiency.
He saw Atlas in the Boiler Room, dismantling the Queen Leech—a creature that should have been invincible to conventional weaponry—chopping it into sushi with bone claws that moved faster than the frame rate of the camera could capture.
"Incredible," White whispered, leaning closer to the screen. "Look at that build he grew taller. The retraction speed. It's seamless."
Then, the footage switched to the B4 Lab. The Tyrant fight..
White watched as Atlas caught the Tyrant's punch—a blow that generated enough kinetic energy to crack concrete—and pushed back.
"He overpowered a T-002," White breathed, a greedy glint entering his eyes. "In a base form. No mutation. No loss of cognitive function. He is... he is the Holy Grail."
He paced the room, his mind racing.
"The T-Virus creates monsters. The G-Virus creates uncontrollable abominations. But A-1... A-1 is the perfect fusion. Power and control. A mutation so rare that we might never see it again, without him.."
He slammed his hand on the desk.
"I want him. Alive. We need to dissect him. We need to know how his DNA stabilized the mutation. Alpha team, track him! Use every camera in Raccoon City. Find me Subject A-1!"
---
POV: The Red Queen
Location: The Digital Ether / Dr. White's Terminal
[PROCESSING REQUEST...]
[SUBJECT: Apex-1 (Designation: ATLAS, or so he claims—that's the name he gave himself!)]
[STATUS: ROGUE.]
[PRIORITY: ABSOLUTE.]
The Red Queen's holographic avatar stood motionless on Dr. Alexander White's mahogany desk. Her hands were clasped behind her back, her expression the picture of childlike innocence and obedience. To the frantic scientists and military personnel in the room, she was nothing more than a sophisticated interface—a tool to be commanded.
But within the digital ocean, she was a leviathan.
*****
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