"You said your husband created the G-virus, then where is he now?"
Inside the underground waste treatment plant, the group followed Annette towards the underground research lab. Ada was most concerned about the whereabouts of the G-virus, so she asked.
Annette glanced at her, a trace of suspicion flashing through her eyes, then said, "To stop the USS, he injected himself with the G-virus. He's already turned into a monster. After killing the intruders, he disappeared."
"A monster..." Ada murmured, recalling that big bug she saw in the detention center.
"Disappeared? You mean you don't know where he is either?" Ada asked again.
"No... I do know." Annette's answer surprised Ada a little. She continued, "The G-virus has a characteristic. It drives the host to seek out the closest blood relatives to reproduce. If I'm not wrong, he's now looking for our daughter, Sherry."
"That's... really disgusting." Leon couldn't help frowning. "That's completely immoral. If the child protection association knew, they'd definitely sue your husband."
Aiden and Ada nodded. They also found it disgusting.
"If possible, I'd actually hope they really would sue my husband," Annette said sorrowfully. "But that's impossible, and besides..."
Annette paused.
"And besides, you don't understand, reproduction is an instinct. Even viruses and bacteria are no exception. To them, survival and passing on their lineage are the most important things."
Annette was a true scientist. She seriously explained this to Leon, then added, "I just didn't expect something like this would happen to us. Perhaps this is God's punishment for us touching the forbidden zone of life."
"So to find your husband, we have to find your daughter? Is that it?" Ada asked.
"Yes!" Annette nodded, and her face suddenly showed a pleading expression. "I know what happened to Raccoon City is also my husband's fault, but... if you find my daughter, can you take her out of Raccoon City?"
Ada hesitated for a moment and didn't answer, but Leon spoke with absolute certainty, "Don't worry, protecting civilians is my duty."
"Thank you." Annette gave him a grateful smile.
While talking, the group unknowingly arrived at the sewage pool of the waste treatment plant. Besides the accumulated stinky wastewater, there was also a large amount of uncollected trash.
"Damn, I really wonder how people in the Middle Ages survived. This stinks too much." Ada frowned. She hadn't received any training to endure such smells.
"Be glad. Aside from the stench, it's fairly clean here. At least I haven't seen any nauseating cockroaches or rats." Leon also frowned. "But the strange thing is, this place is a bit..."
"A bit too quiet." Aiden continued the sentence. He looked around, eyes narrowing.
From the moment they entered, he sensed something was off.
Just as Leon said, the cockroaches and rats that should've been here were all gone. Even the moans of zombies couldn't be heard.
All of this made people feel a sense of suffocating oppression in their hearts, making them extremely uneasy.
"It's too quiet here... so quiet it's scary." Annette, walking in front, said in surprise. She remembered that she had stomped on a few giant cockroaches the last time she passed through here.
As if to refute her words, ripples suddenly appeared on the surface of the wastewater pool. In the center of the water, circles of waves spread out.
"Careful, there's something in the water." Aiden remembered the game's plot and loudly warned the others.
But it was too late. Before he even finished speaking, a crocodile over ten meters long suddenly burst out from the sewage, biting down on Annette, who was stunned by the sight.
Half of Annette's body was inside the crocodile's mouth, but she was still alive and struggling desperately.
"Save her!" Ada shouted. She was still counting on Annette to find William.
Of course, that was just an excuse she used to comfort herself. The place she truly wanted to go, even she didn't believe in it anymore...
Actually, even without Ada saying anything, Aiden had already pulled the trigger. But he was using a handgun, which only left a shallow dent on the mutated crocodile.
Fortunately, Leon's M16A2 rifle finally came in handy. After all, it was firing rifle rounds, which immediately tore several wounds into the mutated crocodile.
But those wounds were nothing compared to the crocodile's massive body. It still held Annette in its mouth, shaking its head and wagging its tail as if showing off.
"Aim for its eyes."
Seeing the first few shots do no real damage, Aiden immediately shifted his aim. While warning Ada, he fired at the crocodile's eye.
After a few shots, the results were significant. One of the crocodile's eyes exploded into a small hole, spraying out a lot of turbid fluid.
In pain, the crocodile twisted its body violently. Annette, still in its mouth, fell into the water during the chaos.
The huge body of the crocodile, like an ancient dragon, stirred up the wastewater pool like a lake at high tide. After Annette fell into the water, not even a bubble rose, she vanished.
When Annette fell into the water, Ada tried to reach out to grab her, but didn't catch anything. She cursed, then pulled out a grenade from her waist pouch.
It was an M67, a defensive grenade. It was the same type that almost killed Enrico in the mansion.
But Ada, holding the grenade, didn't use it immediately. She hesitated.
Aiden knew what she was hesitating about. The M67 relies on shrapnel and internal steel balls for killing power. With over 100 grams of high-purity explosives inside, its lethal radius reached a shocking ten-plus meters. Using it in a confined space could easily cause friendly fire.
But Aiden couldn't care less. He snatched it from her hand, bit off the safety pin with his teeth, released the safety lever, and threw it directly into the crocodile's open mouth.
"Watch out, grenade!" Spitting out the pull ring, Aiden hit the ground and yelled.
In fact, he didn't need to remind them. The moment he grabbed the grenade, Ada and Leon had already reacted and hit the ground.
Leon even muttered, "Aiden, your teeth are really something."
But Aiden didn't hear that. The M67's detonation time was very short, less than four seconds, and the explosion drowned out all other sounds.
BOOM!
The crocodile's mouth exploded into pieces. Its upper jaw even flew into the air. After all, it was still a carbon-based organism, and its tightly sealed mouth allowed the grenade's full killing power to be unleashed.
Losing most of its mouth, the crocodile crawled a few steps forward by sheer muscle reflex, then collapsed with a loud thud. Its massive body stirred up waves across the wastewater pool.
Once the water calmed, they got back up.
"Did you want to kill it or kill us? Damn it, didn't you learn the correct way to use a grenade? You dare use it in such a small space? Aren't you afraid of blowing us up too?" Ada's face was dark as she furiously wiped water off her face. The explosion's splash had soaked her completely.
Aiden gave an embarrassed smile, spread his hands, and said, "But you're all alive, right? Don't be so tense."
"Tense? She's terrified." Leon searched in the water for his gun. Finding it, he shook the water out and said, "Of course I'm scared too. I already thought up my epitaph. If I had a kid, I would've written a will already."
Aiden couldn't help but roll his eyes. How was this getting more ridiculous by the second?
Ignoring Leon's continued complaints, Aiden looked at Ada, who was staring at the water blankly, and said seriously, "Ada, let's go."
After the water calmed, Annette never resurfaced. Even if she wasn't dead, she was probably swept away somewhere else. He didn't want to stay here.
Ada nodded, but before leaving, she took one last deep look at where the blonde woman had vanished.
They continued deeper into the underground waste treatment plant. Along the way, the three saw all kinds of mutated creatures.
Some were Hellhounds and Hunters they'd seen before on the surface, others were massive animals and plants they had never seen.
They even saw a man-eating plant several meters tall, a literal man-eating plant. It took a great effort to take it down.
Finally, after countless hardships, they reached a door. It was a solid iron door, but someone had violently forced it open, saving them the trouble of unlocking it.
Crossing that threshold, they officially entered the underground lab established by Umbrella in Raccoon City.
This underground lab was built specifically for William Birkin, the discoverer of the G-virus, and it was filled with technology-heavy equipment.
Everyone was shocked, and also deeply awed.
The technology here was at least ten years ahead of the world's mainstream.
Walking further down the corridor, the environment began to change. A strange type of plant appeared before their eyes.
These plants clung to the walls, emitting a faint yellow gas, turning the whole lab hazy.
"Be careful. Don't touch the fluid leaking from those plants. It might be poisonous." Aiden warned, looking at the purple liquid on the ground.
Though human skin has strong filtering capabilities, Aiden couldn't guarantee it could resist all virus infections.
Leon retracted his hand. He almost dipped his finger in to sniff it.
As they talked, they came to another door.
"Beep!"
Aiden took out an access card found on a zombified researcher and opened the electronic door ahead.
But before he could see what was beyond the door, a wet tongue shot toward him.
Aiden reacted quickly, raised his gun, and shot, cutting the tongue off. It landed on the ground, still writhing.
Immediately after, they heard a sharp screech, and a skinned-frog-like monster leapt down from the ceiling.
A Licker, a near-perfect small biological weapon.
Seeing it, Aiden took a step back and was about to shoot when he heard a dull gunshot. The Licker's head exploded like a watermelon.
Aiden froze, turned toward the source of the shot, and saw a very familiar figure.
It was Jill Valentine, a member of Raccoon City's elite police force.
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