Part of him—the ghost of the man who had died in the incident, the lonely somebody who had spent months in his old life staring at the hospital ceiling—wanted to say yes. That old version of himself would have been desperate for this. He would have wanted to run upstairs, drink the wine, bury himself in her warmth, and pretend for just a few hours that the world wasn't teetering on the edge of extinction.
But as he looked at Veronica—objectively attractive, kind, willing—he felt... quiet.
There was no spark. No pull. No feral instinct kicking in.
'What is wrong with me?' he wondered, a frown touching his internal thoughts. 'She is objectively attractive. She is willing. The old me would be slurping all over her his own words to agree. I should be dragging her upstairs right now. Why does this feel so... monochrome?'
But the attraction was hollow. It felt like looking at a well-painted background texture in the world. Pretty, but ultimately non-interactive.
His mind drifted, unbidden, to a different face. Alice.
He had barely interacted with her, yet the memory of her presence sent a jolt of electricity through his nervous system that Veronica simply couldn't replicate. And it wasn't just Alice. When he thought of the names etched into the lore of this world—Ada Wong, Jill Valentine—he felt a phantom gravity pulling him toward them, a curiosity that bordered on obsession.
'Is this some kind of side effect? Is this the curse of the Transmigrator?' Atlas mused, feeling a strange disconnect from his own desires. 'Maybe I've contracted "Protagonist Illness." Is it possible I have "Destined Character Bias"?'
He analyzed the feeling, unsure if it was arrogance or something metaphysical.
It was a terrifying, arrogant realization. It seemed his standards hadn't just risen; they had shot through the stratosphere.
'Maybe my standards didn't just rise; maybe they were rewritten. It feels as if my soul refuses to resonate with anyone who doesn't have "weight" in this world. I could go with her. I could have sex with every other woman in the world... but would it matter? Or would it just be the pleasure of flesh, fading the moment it was over?'
... it feels boring. Empty. Like playing a game on the easiest difficulty setting.
He looked at Veronica, feeling a pang of confusion.
'Maybe I'm just chasing the narrative,' he thought, questioning his own sanity. 'Maybe I can't settle for the background anymore because I know what the foreground looks like. Alice is a storm. Ada is a riddle. Veronica is... safe. And maybe "safe" just doesn't work for me anymore.'
He looked at Veronica's hopeful eyes and realized the cruel truth. He didn't just want sex. He wanted significance. He wanted the challenge, the danger, and the narrative weight that only the "Heroines" could offer.
This complex metaphysical debate raged in his mind.
It was a strange, isolating realization—that he might be becoming a creature who only found reality in the extraordinary.
'Have I become a snob,' he questioned himself. 'Have I become a narrative predator.'
While this complex metaphysical debate swirled in his mind, his face remained a mask of polite calm. He was the Apex, but right now, he was just an Undead trying to understand his own emotions and feelings.
"Veronica," Atlas said, his voice dropping an octave, gentle but firm. "That sounds amazing."
He stepped back a single half-inch. It was a microscopic movement, but it created a chasm between them. A polite, insurmountable boundary.
"But I have errands to run. Night errands."
He met her eyes, stripping away the romance and leaving only a serious, almost commanding intensity to ensure she stayed safe.
"You need to get inside. Lock your door. And keep it locked."
Veronica's face fell slightly, rejection mingling with confusion and self doubt, but she masked it quickly. She was a professional, after all.
"Right," she said, forcing a smile. "Errands. At 8:30 at night. Must be important."
"Life and death," Atlas said, not joking.
She looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. She stepped forward suddenly, closing the gap.
She wrapped her arms around his waist.
It was a sudden, impulsive hug. She pressed her face against his leather jacket.
"Thank you for walking me home, Atlas," she muffled into his chest. "You're a good guy. Even if you are a mysterious weirdo."
Atlas stood stiffly for a split second. He felt her warmth seeping through his clothes. He felt her heartbeat—fast, fragile, biological.
He carefully wrapped one arm around her shoulders, returning the hug. He was terrified he might crush her. His Strength could snap her spine like a twig if he wasn't careful. His body felt hard to her touch—unyieldingly dense, like hugging a statue.
"Stay safe, Veronica," Atlas whispered.
"Seriously. Stay inside this weekend."
She pulled back, looking up at him one last time. She sensed the finality in his tone.
"Goodnight, Atlas."
"Goodnight."
She unlocked the gate and slipped inside. She paused at the glass door to wave, then disappeared into the safety of her building.
Atlas stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching the empty lobby.
"A good guy card," he muttered to himself, the words tasting bitter. "We'll see about that."
He turned away from the warmth of the apartment.
The smile vanished from his face.
He scanned the street.
"Pharmacy, then the pet shop" Atlas said, his voice cold. "I need needles. I need supplements. And I need to prep for the experiments."
He adjusted his backpack and walked into the darkness, leaving the light behind.
---
Location: The Hive – Underground Laboratory Complex.
Time: 02:00 PM (Same Day).
(U.B.C.S. Cleanup Operations / Dr. White).
The silence of the Hive was not empty. It was heavy, pressurized, and suffocating.
It had been roughly eight hours since the initial containment breach, since Alice woke up on the shower floor, and since Atlas tore his way out of the facility. In that time, the Hive had transformed from a state-of-the-art research facility into a subterranean necropolis.
02:15 PM.
The sound of heavy machinery broke the silence at the top of the freight elevator shaft. Sparks showered down into the darkness as thermal lances cut through the emergency locking bolts.
"Breach confirmed. Dropping the platform."
The heavy industrial elevator groaned, descending slowly into the abyss. Standing upon it were two platoons of the U.B.C.S.
(Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service).
This was not the ragtag security detail that had accompanied Alice. These were the cleaners.
Alpha Team and Bravo Team. More than forty men, clad in heavy grey urban camouflage, sealed bio-hazard suits, and black tactical vests.
Their faces were hidden behind full-face S10 gas masks, connected to rebreather units on their backs. The air in the Hive was toxic—a cocktail of halon gas, rotting flesh, and stagnant water—and they weren't taking chances.
They were armed for war. SIG 556 assault rifles with under-barrel grenade launchers. M4A1 carbines with laser sights. Flamethrowers. Cryo-rounds.
"Check your corners," Captain "Wolf" Henderson, leader of Alpha Team, barked through the comms. His voice was a distorted, robotic growl. "Rules of engagement are simple: If it moves, burn it. If it doesn't move, double-tap it anyway."
The platform hit the bottom level—the Train Station.
The floodlights mounted on their shoulders cut through the gloom.
"Contact," a soldier yelled.
The platform wasn't empty. It was a slaughterhouse.
The bodies of the Umbrella staff who had tried to escape hours ago were still there. But they weren't resting. As the lights hit them, a dozen shambling figures turned. Their skin was grey, their eyes milky white, their mouths smeared with dried blood.
"Open fire."
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
The sound of suppressed rifle fire filled the cavern. The U.B.C.S. moved with surgical precision. They didn't panic. They formed a firing line, dropping the zombies with controlled headshots. Brain matter sprayed against the pristine Umbrella logos on the walls.
"Sector Clear," Wolf reported, kicking a corpse aside to ensure it didn't grab his ankle. "Moving to the inner sanctum."
[The Interior]
As the teams pushed deeper into the facility, splitting up to cover the vast square footage, the true scale of the disaster became apparent.
To the soldiers, who were used to clean, sterile labs, the Hive looked like it had been shaken by an earthquake.
The Red Queen's defense measures had caused catastrophic structural damage. The Halon gas systems had blown out ventilation grates. The fire suppression sprinklers had been running for hours before the water pressure failed, leaving inches of stagnant water on every floor.
Corridor B – Research Wing.
Bravo Team waded through ankle-deep water that was pink with diluted blood.
"Look at this mess," a soldier named Griggs muttered, his flashlight sweeping the walls.
The hallway was a kaleidoscope of destruction.
Computer monitors were smashed, sparking intermittently. Glass doors were shattered, crunching under their heavy boots.
Papers—confidential research worth millions—floated in the muck like trash.
They passed a restroom. The door was hanging off its hinges. Inside, the toilets had backed up, spewing sewage that mixed with the floodwater. A zombie in a lab coat was wedged head-first into a stall, drowned in the filth, yet its legs were still twitching, trying to walk.
"Disgusting," Griggs spat.
"Keep moving," the Squad Leader ordered.
"We need to secure the Zoological Sector. Dr. White wants a headcount on the assets."
The air quality was abysmal. The facility's CO2 scrubbers were offline. Without the oxygen tanks, the soldiers would have passed out from the carbon dioxide buildup within minutes. The smell—even through the filters—was a heavy, sweet rot that coated the back of the throat.
"Grid status?"
"Offline," the Tech Specialist replied, his face bathed in the red glow of a backup diagnostic tablet. He tapped the screen, frowning at the readouts. "But the Main Reactor isn't dead. It's fully operational... she just won't let us use it."
"Explain."
"It's a safety override," the Tech said, gesturing to the humidity warnings flashing across the board. "We have massive hydro-structural breaches. Multiple sectors on the lower floors are completely submerged, and the water has risen into the primary conduits. If the Red Queen engages the main power grid now, the current will arc through that water."
He looked up, his expression grim.
"It would trigger a facility-wide cascade failure. A massive short circuit that would fry every system in the Hive—including her."
It was a cold, calculated decision. The Red Queen, usually an omnipresent eye, had voluntarily blinded herself to the hallways to save her brain. She had severed the connection to the lights, the locks, and the cameras, redirecting every scrap of juice from the emergency generators solely to her Mainframe core.
She was hoarding power, processing data in the crushing dark, ignoring the soldiers stumbling through her corridors as if they were inconsequential bacteria. She would rather leave them blind than risk burning out her own circuits and the whole facility and she seems to be very busy.
[The Zoological Sector]
Bravo Team reached the high-security animal testing wing. This was where Umbrella kept the nightmares they didn't put on the brochures.
The heavy blast doors had been forced open—bent outward from the inside.
"Something strong did that," Griggs noted, raising his weapon.
They entered the containment area.
It was a scene of carnage.
The cages for the MA-39 Cerberus were empty. The wire mesh had been chewed through.