Northern Edonia — Just Off Route 11B, February 1991

The snow had melted only enough to turn the ground into sludge. Wesker stepped through it with the same indifferent precision he always moved with, even as the muck sucked at his boots and threatened to swallow them whole. The house ahead looked like it had lost the will to stand sometime around the fall of the Berlin Wall—maybe earlier. Rotting boards leaned like broken ribs. The roof was mostly collapsed, and the left side sagged inward, as if something inside had shifted, screamed, and tried to get out.

He didn’t like it.

Which meant it was probably the right place.

Wesker reached the porch in silence, his breath even, heart rate steady. He didn't breathe heavily in the cold—not out of bravado, but because he'd trained himself not to waste a goddamn ounce of energy. The air here wasn’t just cold, it was sterile. No birds. No dogs. No ambient wildlife. It was the kind of quiet that made the hair rise on the back of lesser men’s necks.

He only heard the sound once, a scrape of something shifting inside. Could’ve been a rat, could’ve been worse. He was trained to prepare for worse.

Wesker looked to his rifle, suppressed, checked the slide, and pushed the door inward with its nozzle.

Inside was dim, scattered with remnants of what may have once been furniture—a chair leg here, shattered glass there. It smelled of mold and rodent piss, the kind of scent that never really left clothing once it got in. His boots tapped against warped wood, boards bending under weight but holding, just barely.

There was no sound now. No breathing, no motion.

He swept the corners cleanly, light movement, muzzle tight to his line of sight. A nest of some kind sat in the fireplace—twigs, gnawed plastic, bits of fabric. He clocked it as natural, likely scavenged. Not a setup. But someone had been through here recently.

Wesker moved to the back hallway. The floor here was worse. Water damage. Wall paper peeling like dead skin. One door stood partially open, the other shut tight. He stepped into the first. Empty. Torn mattress, scattered pills. Soviet-issue painkillers, expired a decade ago. He paused by the window—a shard of broken glass lay angled perfectly against the sill. Too clean.

Someone had used this room to watch the road.

He turned, pivoted back into the hall—and stopped. The other door... still closed. He stared at it for a moment, reading its surface. Faint drag marks on the ground—light scuffing from someone opening it recently. But there was no dust on the handle. It had been wiped.

He raised the weapon again. No sound from within. Not a whisper. But every part of his instinct screamed at him that something was there.

He reached out and placed his gloved fingers on the knob—slowly.