The air in the mansion's main hall pressed down like a physical weight, thick and suffocating.
In the corner, the figure Wesker had dropped with a rifle butt lay crumpled on the floor. Still twitching. Faint, involuntary spasms that said the body hadn't fully shut down.
Only now, with the immediate danger past and his pulse beginning to slow, did Ryan let himself actually look at the face.
One glance was all it took. His stomach dropped.
Memory rushed back in a jagged flood.
Derek.
His hiking buddy. The one who'd been bitten in the forest.
The change had already started. The virus was working through him, but it was early still, half-transformed at best. Not fully gone. That was the only reason the blow had knocked him out instead of putting him down for good. Somewhere under the gray, mottled skin, a trace of human physiology still clung on.
Ryan crushed the thought before it could settle. He dropped his gaze, kept his breathing ragged, and held the mask of a terrified civilian firmly in place.
Since arriving in this world, his cheat had announced itself twice. Two soft chimes in his head and nothing else. No interface. No tutorial. No glowing quest log. Just... silence.
But he knew, with a gut-level certainty, that there was more. Other abilities, locked behind triggers he hadn't found yet.
Fear of death wasn't the problem. His nerves were steady enough for that.
What terrified him was something else entirely. If anyone here figured out he was different, figured out he had abilities that couldn't be explained, he'd end up strapped to a table in some underground lab. That was a fate worse than dying.
Especially with the man standing ten feet away.
Because Ryan knew exactly who Wesker was. Calm, controlled, perpetually unreadable. Not a good man now. A monster later. The final boss, wearing a captain's uniform.
Wesker's gaze rested on him, placid on the surface. Beneath it, something weighed and measured.
The quiet held for barely a moment before Jill swept her eyes across the hall and went rigid.
"Captain, Chris is gone!"
Her hand found her holster and she was already moving toward the door. "I'm going out to find him."
"Stop."
Wesker's arm came up, blocking her path. His voice carried no heat, but it left zero room for argument. "It's pitch black out there. Unknown threats everywhere. Going alone is suicide."
"But Chris..."
"We secure the mansion first, then search as a unit." He cut her off cleanly. "Breaking formation only makes things worse."
Jill bit down on her lower lip. The tension in her shoulders screamed defiance, but she wrestled it into a stiff nod.
Then, from deep in the corridor to the left of the hall, a sound drifted out.
Footsteps. Slow. Dragging. Stiff as rusted machinery.
Faint, but in the dead silence of the mansion, every scrape and shuffle carried like a scream. Something heavy being hauled across stone.
Barry's gun snapped up. Jill coiled tight beside him.
Wesker's eyes narrowed a fraction. Before speaking, he stole a quick glance toward the corner where Derek lay unconscious. No movement. Still down. Only then did he issue orders.
"Barry, Jill, go check it out. I'll hold position here and cover the hall."
A brief pause. His gaze drifted to Ryan, tone casual, almost an afterthought.
"Take him with you. He's less exposed on the move than sitting here."
Relief flooded through Ryan's chest. He could have kissed the man.
The excuse was transparent, of course. Nobody with half a brain believed Wesker was worried about a civilian's safety. He wanted Ryan observed. Wanted Barry and Jill's eyes on him while they moved.
But whatever game Wesker was playing, the end result was the same: distance from the most dangerous person in the building. Ryan would take that deal every time.
He gave a small nod. Said nothing. Fell in behind them.
At his back, Wesker's gaze lingered for one extra beat, and the suspicion behind those sunglasses deepened by another degree.
They'd barely entered the corridor when a fresh trail of blood caught the light. Dark, still wet, the smear ran along the floor and curved off into a branching passage.
Barry halted. His voice dropped low.
"You two keep going straight. I'll follow the blood trail. Could be Chris."
Jill opened her mouth to argue, but he'd already turned the corner and vanished into the shadows of the side passage.
Ryan watched him go, expression neutral.
He knew the truth. Barry wasn't acting of his own free will. Wesker had the man's family. Every step Barry took was on a leash.
Quietly, Ryan activated his X-ray vision. His perception punched through the darkness ahead.
A wall of stench hit him first. Rot so concentrated it was almost solid, clawing at the back of his throat. His stomach heaved, bile surging upward. His scalp prickled.
What waited in the dark was not human.
The shape shuffled forward out of the blackness, inch by agonizing inch. Skin the color of wet ash, sloughing off in patches to reveal blackened, necrotic flesh underneath, caked with dust and crusted brown stains that had long since dried. Shredded clothing hung loose from the frame, and every inch of visible limb was stiff, crooked, wrong in a way that radiated cold decay.
Its head lolled to one side. The eyes were clouded, milky white, glazed over like fogged glass. Blank. Staring at nothing and everything. Its arms dangled limp, swinging with each mechanical lurch, dark reddish residue still smeared across the fingertips.
The legs barely bent. Each step was a raw scrape across the floor, a dull grinding that echoed down the corridor. From deep in its throat came a low, wet rattling, like a punctured bellows wheezing in the dark.
Childhood nightmares, carved into bone.
Just looking at it was enough to turn his stomach inside out.
Ryan's composure held, but his body betrayed him. The color drained from his face before he could stop it.
Cheats or no cheats, he was still human. Still made of flesh and nerve endings and a brain that screamed at the sight of walking death.
Fear was fear. Revulsion was revulsion. No power changed that.
Ahead of him, Jill tightened her grip on her pistol and crept forward. She thought it might be a survivor. Someone injured, disoriented, stumbling through the dark.
She had no idea what was about to step into the light.
From the deep shadows of the corridor, the rotting figure finally emerged in full. It crossed the threshold into the dim glow of the hallway and stopped.
Those clouded, empty eyes turned slowly toward them.
The air itself seemed to freeze solid.