The outer wall of the bell tower, the highest point of Salazar Castle.
Cold wind lashed remnants of rain against the crumbling gargoyles. Ada stood at the edge, hundreds of meters above the ground, a scarlet figure holding a miniature comms terminal tuned to an Umbrella encrypted channel.
The screen lit up in a pale green glow, and the holographic projection of Albert Wesker materialized, sunglasses on, expression carved from stone.
"Ada. Your progress is too slow."
Wesker's voice carried its usual detached superiority, not a single inflection of emotion. "Satellite imaging shows severe structural damage at the main gate of Salazar's castle. The metal portcullis is gone, not even wreckage left. What exactly is going on over there?"
Ada pushed a strand of wind-tossed hair from her face. "Relax, Wesker. Leon brought some backup with firepower that borders on unreasonable. They seem to have had a disagreement with the castle's load-bearing walls. I've just been watching from the shadows."
"Those helpers wouldn't happen to be from that organization called 'Star Fire,' would they?" Wesker let out a cold snort, something dark flickering behind his sunglasses. "Don't forget your mission. I want the Amber that Luis is holding. Saddler and Salazar are nothing but clowns. I won't allow anyone to disrupt my plans."
"Understood." Ada's expression didn't change. "One thing you should know. That El Gigante guarding the quarry had a little accident. Seems it dropped dead in the mud from a Plaga-induced cardiac arrest. Such a shame."
"Cardiac arrest?" Wesker obviously didn't buy a word of it, but he didn't press. His tone went colder, delivering an ultimatum. "Jack Krauser is already en route. He'll eliminate the American agent and every pest in his way. All you need to do is bring back the Amber. Don't disappoint me."
The connection cut. The hologram winked out.
Ada stowed the terminal and let out a long breath that misted white in the cold air.
"'Cardiac arrest.' Only Wesker's deadpan face could hear that without laughing. Anyone else would've lost it. The man has zero sense of humor."
A low voice, laced with amusement, came from the gargoyle above her head without any warning.
Ada snapped her gaze upward.
Ryan was already sitting on top of the bell tower's highest gargoyle. Black coat, one knee drawn up, the other leg dangling over the edge, the Amber Luis had given him spinning idly between his fingers.
"Do you ever go away?" Ada rolled her eyes, though the tension left her body.
Ryan scoffed, dropped from the gargoyle, and landed steady beside her.
He turned, pulled something from inside his coat with a grin that promised trouble, and held it out to her. "Here. High-quality replica Amber, just had it made. Turn that in to Wesker. With his brain, it'll take him a good decade before he figures out it's a fake."
Ada laughed. "Pleasure doing business, you crook."
Ryan didn't waste another word. He turned toward the edge of the bell tower.
"The castle cleanup's Leon's problem. I'm heading to the Island. See you around, Auntie Wong."
Before the last syllable faded, his silhouette dissolved into the night like a phantom, vanishing into the darkness below. He'd never had any intention of involving himself in Leon's fight.
Inside the castle's great hall, gunsmoke hung heavy in the air.
"Cover me! I'm going upstairs to clear the crossbowmen!"
Leon S. Kennedy, in that moment, showed exactly why the United States considered him a top-tier agent.
Facing a tight wall of tower shields and crossbow fire raining down from the second-floor gallery, he didn't try to power through the shield line head-on. He threw himself into a tactical slide, two bolts screaming past his face, and surged toward a demon-shaped stone sculpture along the flank like a leopard breaking from cover.
Two shots rang out. Leon drew his pistol mid-sprint and put a bullet through the eye slit of each of the two heavy-armored shieldbearers on the ground floor. The instant their formation buckled, he planted one boot hard on the rim of a tower shield, launched himself skyward, executed a full backflip in midair, and landed clean on the second-floor balcony.
"Go to hell."
He came out of the landing already drawing the riot shotgun from his hip, the muzzle pressed flush against a red-robed cultist's chest.
The blast cleared the left side of the gallery in one shot. Without a beat of hesitation, his combat knife reversed into the throat of the next cultist.
"Nice work! Becky, clear them out!"
Down below, Sherry's eyes lit up. She and Becky didn't need Leon looking after them. Their two electromagnetic rifles locked into a crossfire pattern and shredded the shieldbearers the second they lost their overhead cover.
In under two minutes, Leon's impossible agility and the sisters' overwhelming firepower tore the encirclement apart.
"Move through, fast! Don't let reinforcements pin us down!" Leon vaulted from the second floor, stuck the landing, and racked a fresh shell into the shotgun in one clean motion.
Sherry and Becky exchanged a glance. Their firepower was on another level entirely, sure, but the way Leon worked complex terrain, drawing attention, threading gaps at the absolute limit of human reflexes, that was the real deal. They had to give him that.
Past the great hall, Luis led them down a narrow stone staircase descending into the castle's lower levels in search of a passage deeper in.
The air turned bone-cold instantly. Rusted chains hung from the walls, and the floor was caked with old, blackened bloodstains.
The castle dungeon.
"Careful, everyone. The smell of blood down here is way too strong." Leon dropped his voice and signed for the group to slow their pace, backs to the wall.
Luis's boot caught a skull lying loose on the ground, sending it clattering across the stone.
A blood-curdling shriek erupted from the far end of the dungeon, and the iron grate exploded outward, torn apart by monstrous force.
A hulking creature burst through, bare from the waist up, its body a roadmap of scars. Its eyes had been sewn shut with coarse twine. Welded onto both hands were six steel claws, each half a meter long, gleaming with a cold, killing light.
The thing locked onto the sound of the rolling bone and charged without hesitation, six claws whirling like an out-of-control meat grinder, barreling straight for Luis. Wooden barrels and stone pillars in its path were sliced to pieces like they were made of paper.
"Open fire!" Becky raised her electromagnetic rifle on instinct.
"Don't shoot! Hold fire!" Leon hissed, clamping his hand down on Becky's barrel. "The space is too tight, you'll get ricochets, and heavy ordnance will bring this whole dungeon down on top of us!"
"Then how do we fight it? Its front is nothing but muscle and iron chain!" Sherry pulled Ashley into the shadows.
"It's blind. Tracks entirely by sound."
Leon's gaze went ice-water calm, the kind of absolute clarity that only a true ace reaches under pressure. He slung the riot shotgun onto his back, reached behind his hip, and drew the tactical combat knife, its edge catching a dull gleam.
"Watch closely, girls. When you face something with armor this heavy but only one way to sense you, don't waste ammunition." His voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Let me show you what a stealth kill looks like."
He took a slow breath and fished a spent shell casing from his tactical pouch.
A flick of his wrist sent the casing arcing through the air, and it landed with precision on a copper bell at the far end of the dungeon.
The ring echoed off the stone walls.
The iron-clawed creature went berserk, whipping around and charging the bell like a maddened bull.
Its claws slammed into the thick stone wall with a shower of sparks, and the force buried both sets deep into the cracks between the blocks. Stuck fast. Its entire back left wide open.
Leon moved.
Not a single footstep. He ghosted along the ground's shadow, slid in behind the creature, and locked his eyes on the target: the massive Plaga core squirming at the base of the thing's spine.
No wasted motion. His left hand seized the creature's shoulder for leverage, his right reversed the knife, and he drove every ounce of explosive force upward through a single point, burying the blade into the parasite's core with brutal precision.
The knife sank through flesh and severed the parasite's central nerve cluster. Leon twisted. Green ichor erupted in a gush.
The creature's body locked rigid, let out one short, choked grunt, and collapsed to its knees as if every string holding it up had been cut at once. Dead.
Knife out. Blood flicked clean. Sheathed.
Five seconds, start to finish. Not a single bullet spent, not a sound out of place.
Leon turned and looked at Sherry and Becky huddled in the corner, eyes wide, and let one corner of his mouth lift as he raised an eyebrow.
"How's that? That little bait-and-switch, did your Uncle Ryan ever teach you that one?"
Sherry swallowed and traded a look with Becky. They both silently gave him a thumbs-up.
"I'll admit it..." Sherry muttered under her breath. "Experience counts for something."
Of course, both sisters also silently agreed on one thing: Uncle Ryan's way of handling that kind of enemy would've been a lot more direct.