Zeno (Resident Evil Requiem)

The ruins of Raccoon City stood exactly as they had thirty years ago—frozen in the moment of annihilation. The explosion that erased half the city had left behind a graveyard of concrete and steel, and even time itself seemed reluctant to touch it. No vines crawled across the buildings. No trees split the pavement. Nature had not reclaimed this place; it had abandoned it. The streets were still scarred by blast waves, storefront windows still shattered, vehicles still overturned where the shockwave had tossed them like toys. It was as if the city had died yesterday and the world had simply stepped around the body.

Your BSAA squad had established a temporary base inside a half-collapsed apartment complex overlooking a narrow street. Every man in the unit knew the mission parameters by memory: retrieve something codenamed Elpis. No one knew what it was. A weapon? Data? A sample? Command had offered nothing but urgency and silence. That alone made it dangerous.

One of your men had stepped outside to scan the road near the entrance of the base, rifle raised, posture tight but controlled. The rest of you were still inside, checking, adjusting comms, running through final confirmations. Then a sharp crack split the air—clean, distant, precise. You stepped into the doorway just in time to see it.

His head erupted.

There was no dramatic fall, no scream. Just a violent bloom of red mist and bone fragments scattering across the asphalt. His body remained upright for half a second, almost confused, before collapsing forward onto the road a few meters from the building.

No second shot. No visible shooter.

Then instinct took over.

Men rushed for cover outside the apartment, rifles snapping toward rooftops, shattered windows, broken overpasses. Someone shouted coordinates. Someone else demanded visual confirmation. There was none. The street was empty—dead quiet beneath the pale sky.

Another crack.

A second man jerked backward, throat torn open, collapsing against the apartment wall. Gunfire erupted in response—wild, desperate bursts tearing through windows, punching holes into abandoned cars, chewing chunks from concrete facades. The echoes overlapped and distorted until it sounded like the city itself was screaming. But there was still no target.

You moved into the street with two others, covering angles, trying to triangulate the shooter’s position. The sound had come from somewhere elevated. Or far. Or both. It was impossible to tell—the acoustics of the ruined city twisted every echo into something deceptive.

A third shot.

One of the men beside you spun and fell without a word, half his face gone. His body skidded across the asphalt and stopped near the first corpse, blood pooling together in the cracks of the road. Panic spread like infection. The remaining men fired in every direction now, controlled tactics dissolving into survival instinct. Bullets sparked against metal. Glass shattered again where nothing remained to break.

Then something struck your leg.

The impact felt like a hammer blow followed by fire. You dropped instantly, breath punched from your lungs. When you tried to stand, your thigh refused. Blood soaked through your pant leg, warm and heavy.

You dragged yourself across the street, hands slipping on dust and blood, and pulled yourself behind a destroyed vehicle—a rusted sedan overturned by the blast decades ago. Its doors hung twisted; its windows were long gone. It was barely cover, but it was something.

You pressed your back against the cold metal and fought to steady your breathing. Around you, the gunfire thinned—less frequent, less coordinated.

Another shot.

Silence.

No return fire this time.

You forced yourself to peek. All you saw were boots. Your squad’s boots. Motionless. Scattered across the open road like discarded equipment.

Every man was down.

The city returned to stillness, swallowing the violence as if it had never happened. Dust drifted lazily through the air. The only sound left was your own breathing and the faint ringing in your ears. Then you heard it.

Footsteps.

Slow. Unhurried. Approaching from somewhere beyond the vehicle.

They stopped on the other side of the car—so close you could hear fabric shift with a subtle movement. You tightened your grip on your rifle, though you knew you wouldn’t win a direct exchange. Whoever had done this hadn’t missed a single shot.

A shadow stretched along the pavement beside you. Then a gloved hand appeared, resting casually on the dented frame of the car above your head. Calm. Controlled. The posture of someone who had never once felt threatened. He moved deliberately, stepping around the rear of the vehicle. First you saw polished shoes against cracked asphalt. Then the hem of a long coat brushing dust aside. Finally, he came fully into view.

A man. Tall. Composed. Immaculately still amid the devastation.

His face was unreadable, almost detached, as though the bodies scattered behind him were merely part of a completed task. In his hand rested a magnum—large, heavy, held with effortless precision. Not shaking. Not rushed.

You had never seen him before.

He studied you for a moment, eyes steady, measuring. There was no anger in them. No excitement. Only calculation. The wind moved faintly through the empty street, lifting dust around his boots.

You realized then that this had never been an ambush meant to delay you. It had been an execution. And you were the last unfinished detail.

Behind him, the ruins of Raccoon City loomed unchanged—untouched by nature, untouched by mercy—just as they had been for thirty years.

The man, Zeno, raised the magnum and pointed it at your forehead.