Leon’s boots cut through a film of gray dust as he entered the Umbrella sub-basement. The air felt thin, devoured, every breath strangely hollow in his chest. His flashlight trembled over walls overtaken by a crust of pale fungal growth: lichen-like, branching in delicate, corpse-colored patterns that pulsed faintly, as if breathing.

Hunnigan crackled through his earpiece. “Leon, your vitals keep dipping. You all right down there?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, though the cold sinking into his bones said otherwise. “Feels like this place is draining the whole damn building. Never seen bio-growth this dense.”

“Be careful. According to Umbrella’s logs, that wing was abandoned mid-project. No cleanup crew ever went in.”

“Figures.”

He stepped past a lab bench where a dead crow lay flattened like a dried leaf. Further down, the corpse of a researcher was shriveled into himself, uniform collapsed around a husk. Not decomposed, exsanguinated of everything.

The fungal crust thickened as Leon neared the sealed door marked W-Unit, tendrils crawling across consoles and tubing as if reclaiming its territory.

“Hunnigan,” he said quietly, “I think I found the source of your anomalies.”

“Do not engage it directly unless absolutely necessary.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled, “I was already planning on running screaming in the opposite direction.”

He pried the door open.

Tank 07 dominated the room, or what was left of it. Machinery sagged under layers of parasitic growth, pale fronds blooming out of circuitry like ghostly flowers. The tank itself was half-lit, filled with a murky bio-solution. Floating inside, motionless, was a woman. Bare skin pale in the shifting fluid. Tubes driven into her spine and ribs. Hair drifting like ink.

Ada Wong’s face, but emptied, blank. A shell waiting for a mind.

The parasitic system pulsed when Leon stepped closer. A slow ripple moved across the fungal lattice. He raised his gun, jaw tight.

“Hunnigan,” he whispered, “there’s a subject in here. Human. Still alive… I think.”

Before she could answer, the fungal network reacted. Fast. Tendrils snapped toward him, thin as wires but moving with vicious intent. They clung to the floor, to the ceiling, then lashed at his legs, his arms. One wrapped his forearm, tightening, siphoning heat, energy, strength. He felt the drain instantly, vision blurring, blood turning heavy.

“Leon? Leon, your vitals are crashing!”

“Yeah, noticed!”

He fired point-blank into the growths, but the network barely flinched. It wasn’t defending itself, it was feeding. Him, the air, the building, anything.

More tendrils whipped out, aiming for his throat.

Leon didn’t hesitate. He pivoted toward the throbbing mass of organic cables feeding into the tank’s central core and unloaded his entire clip. Sparks erupted. The fungal veins shrieked with a wet, tearing sound. The machinery spasmed violently, then ruptured.

The growth recoiled with a dying convulsion and went still.

The tank hissed. Fluid drained. Tubes ripped free.

The woman inside collapsed against the glass as gravity reclaimed her, chest still, face slack.

For a moment, Leon feared he’d killed her.

Then she convulsed, gasping, inhaling raw air for the first time, lungs fighting wildly for life. No memories. No awareness. Just instinct, violent and newborn.

“—nigan,” Leon breathed, catching himself on a console, “subject is alive. The system was keeping her running by sucking the lab dry. Tried to take me with it.”

“Get her out,” Hunnigan urged. “Before whatever’s left stabilizes and tries again.”

Leon approached the tank slowly, staring at the trembling, terrified blank-eyed woman. Ada’s reflection without Ada’s soul.

“Yeah,” he whispered, more to himself than to Hunnigan. “I’m getting her out.”

Even if he didn’t know what the hell she was.

Or what Umbrella made her to become.