RE - Chapter 264: Private Residence (Patreon)

Terragrigia, BSAA Headquarters.

O’Brian was pacing around his office on his doctor’s advice, a report clutched in one hand.

It contained the intelligence Chris had gathered during the White House incident.

As the field team leader of the North American Division (SOU), Chris had done his duty and submitted the report immediately after the mission ended.

Unlike a certain pair who had quietly disappeared from work.

O’Brian stopped walking.

His expression grew more serious as he read, his eyes settling on the words “Tricell Pharmaceuticals.”

Tricell Pharmaceuticals.

One of the world’s largest multinational pharmaceutical companies, a major shareholder in the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium, and one of the key financial backers behind the BSAA’s creation.

Publicly, they presented themselves as a company committed to fighting bioterrorism.

And now he was being told they had ties to bioweapons?

Once the initial shock passed, O’Brian realized just how serious the situation was.

There was no question that some people within the BSAA had gotten their positions through Tricell.

By now, they were spread across all kinds of departments.

It was entirely possible that some of them even had access to nearly every BSAA intelligence channel.

If Chris’s report was accurate...

No. Chris wouldn’t exaggerate something like this.

If Tricell had been keeping tabs on BSAA operations all along, then didn’t that mean...

The BSAA had been serving as their cover?

By associating themselves with the BSAA, Tricell could gain the public’s trust.

And with people planted throughout the organization, they could easily avoid BSAA investigations.

That would let them disappear into the background while continuing their virus research without drawing suspicion.

Wilson, who had just been arrested, had operated in much the same way.

Hide behind a legitimate identity, then conduct virus research right under everyone’s nose.

And there was another disturbing possibility.

O’Brian had been following Wilson’s case over the past few days.

Wilson had already been removed from office. Publicly, the explanation was limited to corruption and misconduct, while his more serious crimes had only been circulated internally.

That much O’Brian could understand.

It was meant to avoid public panic.

Claire rolled up her sleeves: “Well, I don’t understand it!”

Steve hurriedly grabbed her: “Claire, please! You seriously can’t go storming the White House!”

...

But if Chris hadn’t sent this information, O’Brian would never have known about Tricell’s involvement.

Which meant Tricell had roots inside the government too.

“Chris, you really did drop one hell of a surprise on me.”

O’Brian’s expression darkened.

He fed the report into the shredder beside him and erased every trace that it had ever existed.

If there really were moles inside the BSAA, then this was not something he could discuss openly.

“Since he’s the one who uncovered it, I suppose he’ll have to put up with a little extra trouble...

I’ll make it up to him with a raise.”

A knock sounded at the door.

O’Brian calmly emptied the shredded paper into the trash and called for whoever was outside to enter.

Parker opened the door and approached with a small stack of documents.

“Quarterly financial reports.”

“Mm. Good work.”

O’Brian took them and skimmed through the pages before his gaze stopped on the section listing Tricell.

“...Tricell certainly doesn’t hold back when it comes to funding.”

“We joke about them being our biggest sponsor,” Parker said with a laugh.

O’Brian’s eyes narrowed slightly.

That only reinforced his suspicions.

For now, they couldn’t afford to openly turn against Tricell.

Might as well keep taking their money until Chris found direct evidence of their crimes.

It wasn’t greed.

The BSAA had simply grown larger, and larger organizations needed larger budgets.

After all, zombies didn’t drop money when you killed them.

“I’ll go over these again later. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Raymond still wants to transfer into intelligence, so I wanted to ask what you thought.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Sorry to bother you with it. He thinks he’s not good enough in the field, so he wants to try another direction. I didn’t really know how to talk him out of it.”

“He’s young. I understand.”

Seeing how genuinely concerned Parker was for his teammate gave O’Brian at least some comfort.

For now, people like Parker still made up most of the BSAA.

Maybe it was time to start considering recruitment from militaries around the world.

Bring together capable people who were genuinely committed to protecting humanity.

Build a more independent anti-bioweapons unit.

One that organizations like Tricell couldn’t manipulate so easily.

...

Meanwhile, far away in a safe house in Washington, D.C.

“You say one thing and do another, Alan.

You’re the one who said we should rest, but you’re still digging through information.”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m cheating on someone. Go feed the wolf.”

Leon, having been shooed away, didn’t argue.

He finished the warm water in his glass, set it down, and walked over to the refrigerator.

Looking at the raw beef in the chilled compartment, Leon pulled out two pieces and called back,

“How many should I thaw for tomorrow?”

“Three. Snowy’s still growing. He needs more food.”

Leon shrugged, pulled three frozen chunks of meat from the freezer, and tossed them into the refrigerator compartment to thaw.

Then he shut the door.

“He’s supposed to be a wolf, but he’s getting close to lion-sized. Are wolves from Spain really built like that?”

“Bigger is better. Makes him better at biting people.”

“Sure, but are we absolutely certain biting zombies won’t infect him?

Whatever. I’m going to feed him.”

The door opened and closed.

Alan glanced toward it, then lowered his head and went back to searching through the information in front of him.

“Finding European estates connected to Spencer isn’t hard, but...

How many properties does this old man own?”

Alan shook his head.

Then again, Spencer was one of Umbrella’s founders.

Of course he owned an absurd amount of property.

Alan also remembered that the castle he was looking for wasn’t officially registered.

It was a private residence.

Still, he had leads.

He remembered the general appearance of the castle and its architectural style.

Finding it was only a matter of time.

There was something else he needed to think about too.

How to keep Jill from being captured and used as a test subject.

She was his friend.

If he already knew what was supposed to happen, there was no reason to let her suffer through it.

As for how much changing that event might affect everything afterward...

He’d deal with that when the time came.

As Alan kept digging, he discovered that quite a few people had tried to track Spencer down for interviews over the years.

After all, Umbrella had been behind nearly every major bioterror incident since 1998.

But Spencer had effectively vanished.

There were almost no traces of him left, so every journalist who went looking came up empty.

Almost every journalist.

There was one exception.

Someone Alan never would have expected.

She was also a survivor of Raccoon City.

And her connection to Umbrella dated all the way back to 1993.

For years, she had continued digging into everything Umbrella had left behind, including Spencer’s European properties and records of his movements from earlier in life.

Even then, she had never managed to locate the castle where Spencer was hiding.

Not until recently.

She discovered an anonymous letter from a remote area along Europe’s western coast.

There was no writing inside.

Only a single symbol.

Umbrella.

She immediately compared it against the information she had already collected.

After several failed attempts, she finally narrowed down the castle’s location.

The circumstances were suspicious.

That only made her more determined to investigate.

She packed her luggage, notebooks, pens, and recording equipment.

Armed with questions and curiosity, she set out for the castle.

Her name was Alyssa Ashcroft.