October, 2026. 28 years after Raccoon City burned, the air still tasted wrong.

Leon stood at the edge of a dilapidated bridge and looked out at what used to be Raccoon City.

The government still called it a sterilized zone but there were still monsters lurking about in these skeleton walls. Beyond that perimeter, the land dipped into a bowl of ruin... concrete slabs collapsed into each other, skeletal high-rises clawing at a moon they would never touch again. The missile had erased the skyline, but it hadn't erased the memory.

Ash and cold metal. Wet rot buried under layers of scorched earth and the scent crawled into his nose and sat there like it belonged.

Leon adjusted the strap on his shoulder and stepped past the last sanctioned checkpoint. Twenty-eight years since he drove into this city with a hangover and a half-ironic dream of being a good cop.

"Hell of a first day," he muttered.

The wind skimmed over broken pavement and whispered through hollow buildings. His boots crunched across debris that had once been storefronts, apartments, people. His body remembered the turns. His muscles recognized the slope of the streets even when everything else lay flattened.

That familiarity hurt more than he expected.

He looked worse than he felt, and he felt like hell. A dark bruise spread along the side of his neck just visible above the collar of his jacket with faintly discolored veins. Even more of it remained under his gloves. Vascular stress from viral reactivation, just another reminder. He had no time to waste, something was going down in an underground facility somewhere in the heart of Raccoon City, and he had to get there before a bunch of bastards touch anything important.