Sherry yanked the fighter into a near-vertical climb through the clouds, engines screaming past redline, tearing a shrill wail through the air.
"Uncle Ryan, we're punching through! Hold on!" Her eyes were locked on the sky-blotting black fortress ahead, her voice carrying the resolve of someone who'd already burned every bridge behind her.
Ouroboros No. 1's tail-mounted defense batteries instantly wove a solid net of red tracer fire, shredding the surrounding cumulonimbus clouds to ribbons.
Ryan unbuckled his harness and pressed his right hand flat against the canopy's emergency release valve, expression utterly still.
"This is far enough. The rest of the way, I go alone."
Before the words had fully left his mouth, the canopy blew off with a deafening bang. Violent wind flooded the cockpit, and Ryan rode the surge out into open air.
He shot toward Ouroboros No. 1's bio-skinned dorsal hull like a precision-guided missile.
The instant his feet hit, the heavy composite plating groaned under the impact.
Ryan drove his fingers into the seams of the outer armor.
A grinding crack, then a massive bang.
Bio-composite armor that could shrug off direct cannon fire was ripped wide open, exposing the dark-gold muscle tissue pulsing beneath the breach.
He dropped through the gap. Air screamed in behind him as the pressure differential sucked the atmosphere through the opening in a shrieking gale.
The moment his boots hit the floor, the open sky vanished. In its place: suffocating cold and claustrophobic dark.
The fortress's interior had long since ceased to be cold mechanical structure. It was a grotesque factory, half-machine, half-organism.
Translucent blood-feed tubes hung from the ceiling by the hundreds, dark-red fluid throbbing through them in waves, synchronized with the deep bass vibration that ran through the entire fortress like the breathing of some colossal beast.
Both sides of the corridor were lined with rows upon rows of semi-transparent culture tanks. Inside, suspended in pale-green nutrient solution, floated twisted New Human specimens. Some still held a rough human outline. Others had sprouted extra limbs, their spines sheathed in thick dark-gold chitin.
"Alert. Intruder detected in Sector B3. Initiating defense protocol."
The cold female system voice echoed down the corridor. The next second, several culture tanks at the far end of the hall exploded outward. Three Headsmen, each over three meters tall, smashed free from their tanks and hit the floor, still dripping with nutrient fluid.
The creatures were wrapped in virus tendrils that coiled like golden serpents. Their right arms had fully mutated into massive organic warhammers.
Ryan didn't slow down. He sprinted through the ankle-deep slurry of nutrient fluid, and in the instant before the lead creature's hammer came down, he ghosted past its swing.
He reached out, pressed his palm casually against the thing's chest, and unleashed a torrent of force.
The Headsman's upper body blew apart in a shower of dark-gold pulp. It didn't even have time to scream.
Still moving at full speed, Ryan grabbed a liquid nitrogen coolant pipe from the ceiling overhead and ripped it free.
A wave of freezing white mist engulfed the corridor. The remaining two creatures froze solid on the spot, then shattered into a carpet of ice fragments under the shockwave of his charge.
"Ryan. Welcome to the temple of evolution. I have to say, an entrance this crude is very much your style." The fortress's PA system crackled to life. Albert Wesker's signature voice, dripping with arrogance, echoed through the enclosed corridor. "Look at these perfect creations. They are shedding the frail skin of common men, welcoming the great new era. An era with no room for the weak."
Ryan passed a virus distribution hub and glanced at the nozzle spraying dark-gold aerosol into the air.
He swatted it with a casual backhand. The multi-ton metal pump assembly crumpled and collapsed like wet cardboard under his palm.
"Wesker, I didn't come here to listen to your sermon." Ryan's reply was flat. His boot ground through the layer of biological slime coating the floor.
"This world has been rotting for too long, Ryan. I was never trying to destroy it. I'm simply conducting a necessary... selection."
Wesker's voice carried a fraudulent mercy, the kind of man who believed himself a god. As though what he was doing wasn't genocide, but universal salvation.
"Only those who survive the baptism of Ouroboros spores earn the right to become God-Citizens of the new world. The rest are defective. Nothing but ash on the road of evolution."
"And you, Ryan. You and I are the same."
A low chuckle came through the PA. The sick pleasure of someone who believed he'd found a kindred spirit.
"You possess a power that even I cannot fully comprehend. You were meant to rule this divine kingdom, not play guard dog for the old world."
Ryan tore through corridor after corridor without pause. Automated turret fire, mutant ambushes, none of it slowed him for a single step.
"So you're saying I'm not human either? Spencer said the same thing. You know better than anyone how that ended for him."
Ryan finally reached the last bulkhead door before the command tower's core. Twelve elite guards in full black heavy armor stood before it.
Their rifles spat blue muzzle flash instantly, specialized rounds screaming toward Ryan. Every single one punched through empty air. What they'd been shooting at was an afterimage.
The twelve guards never even saw him move. His voice, barely above a whisper, came from behind them.
"You're in my way."
Before any of them could turn, an incomprehensible force slammed them off their feet. They hit the bulkhead walls hard enough to rupture every organ on impact.
Ryan stopped in front of the alloy blast door. He could feel the massive life signature pulsing on the other side. He raised his right fist.
One punch.
Half a meter of composite alloy blew inward without warning. The door panel, overloaded with kinetic energy, friction-heated against the air mid-flight until it glowed an angry red.
It smashed through the command center's tactical terminals like a red-hot battering ram.
Inside, Wesker stood with his back to the destroyed entrance, facing the massive floor-to-ceiling observation window.
Outside: roiling clouds and blinding daylight. Inside: dim dark-gold tones. The stark contrast between light and shadow made the air feel crushing.
Wesker turned slowly. Those signature orange-red pupils had shifted to pure gold. A thin smile sat on his lips, the composure of a man who believed he'd already won.
"At last we meet again, Ryan."
Wesker spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the entire sea of clouds. His leather coat caught the cold light, throwing off an unsettling metallic sheen.
Ryan stepped over the wreckage. The swirling dust settled silently beneath his boots. Less than ten meters separated them.
"You still talk too much." Ryan swept a glance over the twitching flesh and the precision instruments woven through it, open disgust in his eyes. "And the interior decorating in this place is genuinely terrible."
"Your selection is over. You picked a tomb ten thousand meters in the sky, so I'll do you the favor of putting you in it."
"No, Ryan."
Wesker slowly removed his sunglasses, revealing eyes that had shed every trace of humanity. Vertical serpentine pupils.
"This is no tomb. It's an altar. And you will be the last sacrifice upon it."
The instant those words left his lips, the entirety of Ouroboros No. 1 let out a deafening roar, as though an ancient beast that had slumbered for eons had finally, fully, awakened.
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]