RE - Chapter 311: Come On, Let’s Spar (Patreon)

The chainsaw shrieked as it ground against the metal gate, the point of contact quickly glowing red-hot.

Sparks sprayed everywhere as Alan leaned harder into it and sawed straight through the lock.

He kicked the gate open and entered the inner section with the chainsaw still in hand.

His flashlight illuminated a curtain obstructing the way. Alan turned toward a closed door and looked at the sign mounted on it.

Examination Room.

“...Why does this feel so familiar?”

Alan pushed the door open and stared at the lone hospital bed inside, his brow furrowing deeply.

“Have I been here before?”

As the seconds passed, long-buried memories came rushing back with a vengeance.

His expression went from serious, to enlightened, and finally to thoroughly pissed off.

“You son of a bitch, it really was you?! Does your conscience not bother you at all?!”

Alan started cursing on the spot.

Upstairs, Victor was preparing to slip away when the sudden shouting startled him. His foot accidentally struck a nearby vase.

The porcelain shattered against the floor.

In the deathly silence of the care center, the noise was deafening.

Victor hurriedly looked in both directions before realizing the sound had come from his own floor.

Clutching his suitcase, he stared blankly at the shards by his feet.

His lips trembled as he silently mouthed three letters.

OMG.

Alan slowly raised his head and stared at the ceiling without saying a word.

Then he started the chainsaw and headed for the second floor.

The roar of the chain drowned out his footsteps, yet every step seemed to pound directly inside Victor’s skull.

Victor quickly backed away from the broken vase, turned around, and tried to escape down the stairs on the opposite side.

He had barely made it halfway when a sinister voice came from behind him.

“Where do you think you’re going, Victor? We’re old friends. Don’t tell me you’re getting shy.”

The moment Alan’s voice reached him, Victor ran even faster.

Watching him flee in a panic, Alan’s gaze held three parts regret, one part admiration, four parts pity, and two parts mercy.

The other ninety parts were all in the chainsaw.

“Goddamn it, Victor! I’m gonna carve you up! Thunder Slash!!!”

With a roar, Alan raised the chainsaw and charged after him at full sprint.

The blade tore through picture frames, models, cups, and anything else sitting on the tables along the way, sending debris crashing across the floor.

The deafening noise drew closer and closer.

Victor felt as though his soul had already reached the helicopter and escaped, while his body had somehow been left behind.

A researcher simply couldn’t outrun a fully recovered agent.

Just as Victor tried to turn toward another staircase, the chainsaw swept horizontally toward his eyes.

At the last second, however, Alan deliberately changed the angle of the chain.

It ripped through the front of Victor’s clothes instead.

The instant the teeth touched the skin of his chest, unbearable pain tore through his entire body.

Before Victor could even scream, blood sprayed out.

Alan immediately dropped the chainsaw, grabbed him by the collar, and hurled him toward a nearby window.

Glass exploded outward.

Victor crashed through the frame along with the shards, rolled down the edge of the roof, and finally slammed into the ground below.

The instant he landed, a shard of glass sliced across his cheek, leaving a bloody gash running across his face.

“Urgh...”

Still writhing and groaning, Victor suddenly flinched at another tremendous crash.

Through the shower of broken glass, he caught sight of the chainsaw hitting the ground beside him.

A broken piece of the chain whipped past his neck.

The adrenaline that had already burned itself out surged through his body all over again.

Then Alan jumped down from above.

At that point, even adrenaline couldn’t do anything about the chill in Victor’s heart.

“A-Alan...”

“Dr. Gideon. Been a while.”

Alan looked down at the battered Victor, kicked him back to the ground when he tried to stand, then planted his boot directly on the wound across his chest.

“Hrk...”

“Hmm. Haven’t seen you in ages, but you’re still shining as brightly as ever.”

Alan narrowed his eyes at Victor’s bald forehead gleaming in the sunlight.

Victor sucked in a sharp breath and tried to grab Alan’s leg to push it away.

Alan merely twisted his boot.

The pain immediately robbed Victor of the strength to move, leaving him howling on the ground.

“Was it fun playing with someone’s trust?”

“Ha... hahaha. I was simply making the best use of what I had.”

“Oh? So you’re saying I had it coming?”

Alan drew the handgun from his waist and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The gunshot exploded from the barrel.

Before the echo had even faded, Victor’s terrified scream drowned it out.

Faced with the possibility of death, Victor had completely lost his nerve.

Good thing he didn’t drink much water, or he probably would have pissed himself by now.

“What are you screaming for? I was just checking whether the gun worked.”

Seeing how badly Victor had been frightened, Alan aimed the pistol at his face again.

“Don’t shoot! I can’t die here!!”

“Oh? Where would you rather die?”

“I... No, I mean I can’t die!”

“Did I ask?”

Victor coughed up several mouthfuls of blood and started choking.

Alan lifted his foot, then helpfully used the top of his boot to clear Victor’s airway.

The blood came out.

Victor also took several more kicks in the process.

Alan scanned the area to make sure no one was waiting in ambush, then looked down at Victor as he continued coughing up blood.

“I can tell you really want to live.”

“Yes... yes! As long as you let me live, I’m willing to do anything!”

“Whoa, stop right there. Whether you’re willing or not, I’m not willing, so stop telling me you’re willing. I’m not agreeing to anything.”

Even Victor, a researcher, found his thoughts tangled by that mess of words.

Whatever he had been about to say died in his throat.

Alan planted his boot on the wound again.

“All right. Tell me this. Why did you knock me out?”

“It was an accident... Ah!! It really was! It was an accident!”

Alan looked at him in surprise.

Victor drew a deep breath through the pain and was just about to continue when Alan’s phone rang.

“Hold on.”

“...”

Victor could only endure the pain while Alan answered the call with one hand and kept the gun pointed at him with the other.

To make matters worse, Alan’s foot refused to stay still.

Every now and then, he shifted it slightly, making Victor howl in pain.

Hearing the miserable noises through the phone, Leon’s initial concern immediately eased.

“Uh... am I interrupting something?”

“No. What’s up?”

“My mission just ended. I’m heading back by helicopter now, and I just got Hunnigan’s message. I can’t believe that bastard Victor was behind it!”

“You’re already on your way?”

“Yeah. Wait until I get there... and don’t kill him.

“I need to vent a little too.”

Victor listened to the conversation from beneath Alan’s boot.

Combined with the mocking look in Alan’s eyes, whatever hope remained in him died completely.

At that point, he seemed to stop caring.

Even though Alan was still on the phone, Victor began speaking as though his discovery about Alan were the final research achievement of his life.

“Cough... Alan, you really are a miracle.”

“I think so too.”

“...When I first met you, I was on my way to see my mentor, Spencer. Then one disaster after another happened, and later I learned that he had died.”

Anger appeared on Victor’s pain-stricken face.

“His dream had yet to be realized. How could he just...! No. Perhaps his death back then had something to do with all of you?”

Victor had no idea that his desperate speculation had actually hit the truth.

Alan knew perfectly well what had happened, but said nothing.

“...Then I encountered you. You... you were actually kind enough to think about taking me back to the city.

“But that’s simply human nature. People can accept kindness without ever feeling grateful for it.

“I already knew who you were. Since that was the case, I decided I might as well get close to you and use you as cover.

“I never expected you to eventually ask to visit my care center yourself. Hahahaha... cough, cough... Fate really does have a sense of humor, doesn’t it?”

Alan noticed that the man beneath his boot seemed to be getting used to the pain.

So, out of kindness, he pressed down harder.

Victor’s face twisted in agony, but he kept talking.

“You have no idea. You’re a treasure.

“I used your blood in a memory cloning experiment by chance, and I never imagined that you would become the gift Professor Spencer’s death left behind!

“The ability of your cellular structure to retain memories defies everything I’ve learned in my entire life.

“You showed me hope. Hope that Professor Spencer’s unfinished dream could begin again!”

Victor gave a bitter laugh.

“But there’s only one of you... Your cellular structure can’t be replicated. It can only be extracted directly from your body.”

Alan fell silent.

Since when did he have some ridiculous special ability like that?

Oh, he got it.

This was his late-arriving system. His overdue superpower.

Hell no. He didn’t want it!

Leon had gone silent on the other end of the call too.

He hadn’t expected that his well-intentioned advice back then had indirectly landed his partner in such a nightmare.

He wanted to apologize.

The timing just didn’t feel right.

For a moment, all three of them were silent.

“I never expected you to survive... The virus I injected into you before I left was an unstable experimental agent.

“I wanted you to remain a stable source of blood, and I also wanted to see whether the virus could force the structure of your blood to mutate again.

“...Clearly, I failed.”

Victor stared at the silent Alan, then suddenly burst out laughing.

He shoved a hand into his pants, pulled out a syringe, and tried to stab it into Alan’s foot.

Before he could even mock him, a gunshot rang through the entire courtyard.

“Argh!!!”

Victor stared at the bullet hole in his wrist as blood poured from it.

The syringe slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.

Alan glanced down at it.

“Hmph. You’re not stupid. Shame you use your brain for the wrong things.”

“Alan?!”

Leon’s worried voice came through the phone.

Alan stared at the pale red liquid inside the syringe and the parasite floating within it.

“I’m fine, Leon.”

Leon let out a breath of relief.

“So what are you going to do with Victor?”

“...Kill him.”

“No!”

“Feels like a waste.”

“...”

“Maybe I won’t kill him.”

“Spare me!”

“But I’d feel terrible letting him go.”

Victor nearly lost his mind as Alan toyed with him.

Alan smiled and aimed the gun at him.

“Maybe I should just do what makes me happy.”

“!? You can’t kill me!! Wait! I have information! I know something!

“Aren’t you people trying to save the world? Someone’s planning something. You’ll want to know about it!”

Oh?

So he really did know something.

Looks like those interrogation techniques Alan had picked up from Krauser, or torture techniques if one wanted to be accurate, had actually paid off.

Leon perked up as well.

Neither of them had expected a casual bluff to actually produce something useful.

“Talk. If it’s genuinely useful, I won’t kill you. I’ll even give you a five-minute head start afterward. Pretty generous, right?”

Victor nodded frantically.

“That man’s name is Ze...!”

Before Victor could finish, the sound of helicopter rotors approached from the distance.

Alan looked up.

A helicopter was coming toward them, complete with rocket pods and machine guns.

What kind of mission had Leon been on to come back armed like that?

“Leon, you’re here already?”

“...What are you talking about? I’ve still got about ten minutes before I arrive.”

Alan went silent.

He looked back up at the helicopter and its weapons, then muttered under his breath.

“Oh, great. The big one showed up.”