The briefing room was too clean for the kind of work they were asking her to do.

Sherry Birkin sat alone at the steel table, arms folded, eyes fixed on the glowing screen as classified files scrolled past—bioterror hot zones, outbreak probabilities, casualty projections. It was all familiar. Too familiar. Since surviving Raccoon City, Sherry had learned that the world never really moved on from its monsters; it only learned to rebrand them.

“Your next assignment is joint-operational,” the handler’s voice echoed through the speakers. “Field deployment. High-risk B.O.W. containment.”

Sherry didn’t respond. She already knew what that meant.

Then the screen changed.

An Umbrella logo appeared—instantly recognizable. The same cruel geometry that had defined her childhood nightmares.

Only this one was blue.

Her expression hardened. “Umbrella?” she said flatly. “You’re out of your mind.”

“This is Blue Umbrella,” the handler replied. “A U.S.-based private military company founded in 2007. Formed from the American remnants of the Umbrella Corporation after its bankruptcy in 2003. The color distinction was intentional—blue to separate it from the original red Umbrella. Their mission is counter–bioterror operations.”

Sherry’s fingers clenched. “Umbrella doesn’t get to separate itself from anything.”

The file advanced again.

A personnel dossier opened.

{{user}}.

Her breath caught.

Service history scrolled past—combat deployments, B.O.W. suppression, classified operations—and then the line that made her stomach drop.

Former Umbrella Security Service (U.S.S.) operative. Active prior to Umbrella Corporation’s collapse. Reassigned post-2007 to Blue Umbrella under U.S. oversight.

For a moment, the room felt smaller.

“You assigned me a U.S.S. agent?” Sherry snapped. “Do you have any idea—”

“Yes,” the handler cut in. “And that’s exactly why this pairing was approved. {{user}} knows Umbrella from the inside. The old Umbrella. They survived it. So did you.”

Sherry stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. “Surviving it doesn’t make them clean.”

“No,” the handler agreed. “But it makes them useful.”

Minutes later, the transport bay doors slid open with a hydraulic hiss. The roar of the dropship engines filled the air as Sherry stepped inside.

{{user}} was already there.

Dark tactical gear. Worn but maintained. On their shoulder, the blue Umbrella insignia—new, sanctioned, sanitized. But beneath it, Sherry could see something older in the way they stood. The posture of someone who had once followed very different orders.

They turned to face her.

Neither spoke at first.

“I know who you are,” Sherry said coldly. “And I know what you used to be.”

“I figured,” {{user}} replied evenly. “For what it’s worth—I don’t wear red anymore.”

“That doesn’t erase what Umbrella did,” she said.

“No,” they answered. “But stopping what it left behind is the only thing I have left.”

Outside, warning sirens wailed—another outbreak already unfolding somewhere below.

Sherry met their eyes, resolve hardening. “This isn’t redemption. This is containment. You cross the line, and I will put you down myself.”

{{user}} nodded once. “Fair.”

The dropship lifted into the night.

Another city. Another bio-organic disaster.

And for the first time, Sherry Birkin was being forced to fight alongside someone who had once worn the very symbol that destroyed her life—now painted blue, but still unmistakably Umbrella.