Behind the shattered blast door, Saddler's twisted silhouette looked even more monstrous in the flickering red light. The pink flesh on his right side churned like something at a boil, and a dozen bloodshot eyeballs locked onto Leon and the two girls all at once.
No wasted words. Sherry and Becky pulled their triggers in the same instant.
"Ding ding clang clang!"
A hail of rounds slammed into the Plaga chitin plating the left half of Saddler's body, throwing sparks, but only splitting open a little green pus. What was worse, when the high-velocity armor-piercing rounds punched through the pink flesh on his right side, those chunks of meat started writhing violently the moment they met air, swallowing and sealing the bullet holes, and actually forcing new, slime-dripping little eyeballs out of the wound sites!
"Roar!"
The pain only drove Saddler deeper into a frenzy. He swung his mutated, eye-covered right arm, dragging a reeking gust of wind with it.
"Move!"
Leon roared, grabbing Sherry by the shoulder and dragging her down flat.
"Crash!"
Saddler's bone claw sheared through several of the load-bearing pillars along the corridor as easily as snapping toothpicks. Stone rained down like a meteor shower, and most of the corridor's layout was obliterated in a heartbeat.
"His defense is all wrong! He doesn't care about being shot through, and he's actually evolving from the hits!" Becky ground out through clenched teeth as she rolled through the falling rubble, firing short bursts, trying to blind the new eyes as they sprouted on Saddler.
"Spread out! Keep it a running fight, don't let him corner anyone!"
Leon sprang up off the ground, reflexes maxed out, weaving through the gaps between Saddler's bone claw and whipping tendrils. He saw his opening and jammed the riot shotgun right up against the Plaga knee joint on Saddler's left side. Boom. The heavy buckshot blew off a chunk of chitin, but Saddler didn't even sway. He whipped a thick, muscular tendril back and snapped it straight into Leon's chest.
"Ghah!"
Leon took it like a lightning strike. The terrifying force flung him a good ten meters, slamming him hard into the heavy lab door. He could feel at least two ribs go, and a mouthful of blood came up before he could stop it.
"Uncle Leon!"
Sherry cried out. There was no time to run to him. Saddler was already plowing forward like a runaway freight train.
"Cover!"
Becky kicked off the wall and launched into the air, drawing her tactical recurve knife mid-leap, going for the tendrils from above. But the giant eyeballs on Saddler's right shoulder suddenly rolled in unison and locked onto her in midair. His mutated right claw lashed up at her!
"Look out!"
Sherry's electromagnetic rifle let loose a full burst. Armor-piercing rounds with enough kinetic energy behind them to knock anything off-course forced the claw's trajectory wide, but the wind pressure from the massive palm still caught Becky and slammed her into the wall. Her electromagnetic rifle flew out of her hands.
"Cough, cough..." Becky slid down the wall, blood at the corner of her mouth, feeling like everything inside her had been jumbled up.
Too strong.
This wasn't a fight on the same scale. All their traditional tactical coordination, all their high-tech weaponry, looked pale and useless in front of a Saddler who kept regrowing himself and felt no pain.
Leon clutched his chest and dragged himself upright. Looking at the thing in the corridor, the one with jointed chitin on the left and a mass of pink meat and eyeballs on the right, he felt cold sweat pushing up on his gun hand without his permission. Ammo was nearly out. The creature in front of him felt impossible to kill.
As someone who had lived through Raccoon City, this unchecked regeneration, these sickening pink growths, those giant eyeballs pushing through in no pattern at all...
"This isn't Las Plagas anymore..." Leon sucked in a sharp breath, unable to keep the shock and dread out of his voice. "That kind of vitality... that's G-Virus! Someone injected him with G-Virus!"
"What?!" Sherry went sheet-white.
She knew better than anyone what "G" stood for. The ultimate nightmare that never died, that only got stronger the more you hit it, and wouldn't stop until it had turned its host into a nameless lump of meat.
"Insects... you all die!"
Saddler strode in again. The Plagas parasites and the G-Virus inside him were locked in a vicious tug of war, and the extreme pain of it had pushed him completely over the edge.
He wasn't just swinging his arms anymore. From his back, more than a dozen barbed bone spears erupted all at once, storming outward at the three of them like a driving rain with no care for who got hit.
"Behind cover!"
Leon hauled Sherry and Becky with him, and all three of them crammed in tight behind a huge slab of collapsed stone.
"Bang bang bang bang!"
The bone spears hammered into the slab like a downpour, shaving the thick stone down piece by piece. At this rate, in less than ten seconds they'd be pinned like insects.
Just as their line was about to break...
The lab door was kicked open from the inside.
Luis came charging out, supporting Ashley on his shoulder. Sweat still glistened on his face, the cuff of his lab coat was streaked with blood, but his eyes were alarmingly bright. "Got it! Go, go, go! This way!"
He didn't even glance at the fight behind him. He turned and shoved open an inconspicuous iron door set into the side wall, stepping aside to let Ashley through first, then waved the three of them over.
"What are you standing around for? Move!"
In the instant Luis called out to them, Saddler's eye-covered mutated right arm lifted high again, dozens of bone spears charging up in the tumorous flesh, ready to nail that tottering stone slab shut for good.
"Farewell, heretics..." Saddler's voice grated like sandpaper from hell.
"Whoosh!"
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
A crossbow bolt glowing with deep red electronic light slashed through the smoke in the corridor, tracing a wickedly sharp arc, and embedded itself with pinpoint accuracy in the largest central eyeball on Saddler's right shoulder.
"BOOM!"
The arrowhead detonated inside the eye, thousand-degree heat and a violent shockwave setting the pink flesh on the right side of Saddler's body sizzling. Saddler let out a howl from the depths of hell, his massive frame snapping backward from the pain, and the bone spears meant for Leon and the others lost their aim, pinning themselves uselessly in the ceiling.
"Looks like your 'final exam' had a little hiccup at the end?"
A lazy, cool voice drifted down from above.
Every head snapped up. Ada was standing gracefully on a maintenance beam near the top of the corridor, crossbow balanced in one hand, the other calmly loading a fresh explosive bolt into it.
She spared a glance at the wrecked Leon, a playful curve tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Leon, get them out. I'll hold this one off. If Boss Ryan's paying me a 'babysitting fee,' I might as well earn it properly."
"Ada?!" Leon blanked for a second, then gritted his teeth and hauled Sherry and Becky up with him. "Thanks!"
Ada dropped down lightly, landing between them and Saddler, the crossbow in her hand already back on the creature's snarling head, her eyes cold. "Tell Ryan this thing's face is a genuine insult to my aesthetic sense. He's getting charged extra."
"Go!" Leon growled, and the group finally made it through the iron door Luis had shoved open.
Saddler roared and lunged again. Ada lifted her hand and put another explosive bolt straight into his face. In the moment he reeled back in pain, two blocks of explosive had already been flung against the last two load-bearing columns at either side of the corridor.
"BOOM!"
The ceiling came down all at once, debris and rebar burying both Saddler and the passageway together.
Through the dust, a flash of red flickered and vanished at the far end of the corridor.
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