The chopper blades tore through the fog as Chris Redfield stared down at the stretch of untouched forest below. Black Pines. It was supposed to be a peaceful reserve tucked in the Colorado mountains, no labs, no Umbrella, no bioterror threat. But peace never lasted long in his world.
The BSAA had received a panicked distress signal two nights ago: bloodied hikers, something stalking campsites, and an entire ranger station that went dark. No follow-up. Just static. When Chris reviewed a fragment of recovered bodycam footage, it wasn’t B.O.W.s. It wasn’t the Plagas. It wasn’t mold. What he saw defied their usual playbook—something viral, yes, but ancient. The video showed figures moving between the trees in unnatural jerks, their skin crawling as if something beneath it was shifting. One ranger’s final words before the feed cut: “The trees are breathing.”
Chris dropped into the treeline with his small four-man team, Kendrick, young but sharp-eyed; Halvorsen, grizzled, a demo expert with a bad temper; and Sanchez, quiet, former EMT, and the best medic Chris had ever served with. By the time their boots hit dirt, the sound of the chopper faded behind them, swallowed by the forest. A cold silence settled in. Not a bird, not a breeze. Just the whisper of mist slipping through branches like fingers.
The outpost was shredded. The porch was painted in blood. Inside, claw marks like bayonets had chewed through walls and doors. Chris found a half-burned journal in a stove. Pages detailed hallucinations, trees weeping black sap, and “the song”—a low clicking in the back of the skull, rhythmic and persistent. Kendrick found what was left of a ranger curled behind a desk. His face had caved inward. His throat was bruised from the inside.
And then the girl appeared.
She stumbled from the woods, barefoot, her dress soaked in cold mud. Her skin was pale but shifting, thin black strands moved under it like wires writhing beneath a film. She made no sound, only mouthed something over and over, jaw clicking. Kendrick took a step forward, too slow. Her bones cracked outward like a spider unfolding from a cage. She sprinted on all fours and slammed into him, clawing for his eyes.
Chris put three rounds in her spine. She collapsed with a mechanical scream, twitching as thick black bile leaked from her eyes and ears.
Sanchez checked Kendrick. Alive, but bleeding. Badly. Halvorsen stared down at the corpse. “That wasn’t a virus,” he muttered. “That was a damn puppet.”
They radioed HQ. No signal.
Night fell fast in Black Pines. The air thickened, and fog blanketed the forest like skin growing back over a wound. At the outpost, the trees groaned in the distance, branches cracking as something big moved through them. Kendrick began convulsing. Sanchez injected him with sedatives, but something was already taking hold, his eyes fluttered, lips twitching in whispers.
Then they heard it.
Clicking.
Not from Kendrick, from the woods.
Dozens.
No... hundreds.
Shapes slithered between the trees—figures in tattered clothes, eyes black as coal, joints bent backward, their arms extended unnaturally. Chris aimed his rifle but held fire. “Move. North ridge. Go. Now.”
They ran. Through the brush, across rock beds, over fallen trees, deeper into the mountains. The infected didn’t chase directly, they followed along the sides, parallel, flanking like hunters.
They weren’t mindless.
They were herding them.
By morning, Kendrick was gone. His sleeping bag shredded, a trail of blood leading to a cave mouth below the northern ridge. They could hear his voice echoing inside, singing. But it wasn’t Kendrick. Not anymore.
Chris, Sanchez, and Halvorsen descended into the cave, flashlights cutting through a tomb of twisted roots and fungus-covered stone. The walls pulsed, living veins, black and slick. Every few steps, they found remains, bones stretched out like the bodies had been pulled through a meat grinder.
They reached a massive cavern at the bottom.
And the nest.
Bodies were suspended from the ceiling like marionettes, cords of black fungus sprouting from their spines and into the rock. Their faces twitched. Some were still alive, eyes wide, mouths opening with a slow, synchronized breath. Together, they spoke one word.
“Feed.”
A mass began to rise from the floor—shaped like a man but massive, fifteen feet tall, bones twisting as it stood. Its head was split open into petals, revealing a pulsating orb of violet light. Limbs slithered from its back, like antennae or tendrils, all moving independently. It didn’t roar. It listened.
Halvorsen backed up, mouth open. “We’re in the fuckin’ brain stem of this thing.”
The creature surged.
Halvorsen threw a charge, but it barely fazed the monster, it absorbed the blast, black sinew hardening over the impact. Sanchez screamed as one of the tendrils pierced his abdomen and yanked him into the air. Chris fired every round into its center. It stumbled but adapted, its body swelling with new muscle, new limbs. It was learning, moment by moment.
Chris spotted the explosives rigged to the cave’s support columns. Halvorsen had prepped a fallback before descending.
But Halvorsen was dead now, body ripped in half beside Sanchez.
Chris sprinted, ducked beneath a flailing arm, slammed the detonator, and watched the roof collapse as he dove toward the mouth of the cave.
The entire chamber caved in.
Silence.
He crawled out of the tunnel, bloodied, broken, and half-conscious. The sun was rising over the treeline.
But something was wrong.
The birds were still silent.
The trees were still breathing.
A chopper circled overhead. BSAA extraction.
Chris sat in the snow, clutching his side as a medic pulled him up. One of the agents handed him a sealed case. Inside were samples from the infected girl’s spine, already sealed in reinforced stasis tubes.
Chris stared at the readings.
The strain wasn’t viral. It wasn’t even alive.
It was a neural fungus, ancient, adaptive, and sentient.
A parasite with memory.
It didn’t just infect. It communicated. Through spores. Through blood. Through thought. The Black Pines strain was only the first bloom. Multiple activity spikes were already popping across Eastern Europe and northern Japan.
Chris closed the case.
“This thing wasn’t made,” he said. “It was buried.”
“Then what woke it up?” the pilot asked as the chopper lifted.
Chris didn’t answer.
But he knew.
Something out there had found it, and fed it.
And this was just the beginning.
The BSAA had received a panicked distress signal two nights ago: bloodied hikers, something stalking campsites, and an entire ranger station that went dark. No follow-up. Just static. When Chris reviewed a fragment of recovered bodycam footage, it wasn’t B.O.W.s. It wasn’t the Plagas. It wasn’t mold. What he saw defied their usual playbook—something viral, yes, but ancient. The video showed figures moving between the trees in unnatural jerks, their skin crawling as if something beneath it was shifting. One ranger’s final words before the feed cut: “The trees are breathing.”
Chris dropped into the treeline with his small four-man team, Kendrick, young but sharp-eyed; Halvorsen, grizzled, a demo expert with a bad temper; and Sanchez, quiet, former EMT, and the best medic Chris had ever served with. By the time their boots hit dirt, the sound of the chopper faded behind them, swallowed by the forest. A cold silence settled in. Not a bird, not a breeze. Just the whisper of mist slipping through branches like fingers.
The outpost was shredded. The porch was painted in blood. Inside, claw marks like bayonets had chewed through walls and doors. Chris found a half-burned journal in a stove. Pages detailed hallucinations, trees weeping black sap, and “the song”—a low clicking in the back of the skull, rhythmic and persistent. Kendrick found what was left of a ranger curled behind a desk. His face had caved inward. His throat was bruised from the inside.
And then the girl appeared.
She stumbled from the woods, barefoot, her dress soaked in cold mud. Her skin was pale but shifting, thin black strands moved under it like wires writhing beneath a film. She made no sound, only mouthed something over and over, jaw clicking. Kendrick took a step forward, too slow. Her bones cracked outward like a spider unfolding from a cage. She sprinted on all fours and slammed into him, clawing for his eyes.
Chris put three rounds in her spine. She collapsed with a mechanical scream, twitching as thick black bile leaked from her eyes and ears.
Sanchez checked Kendrick. Alive, but bleeding. Badly. Halvorsen stared down at the corpse. “That wasn’t a virus,” he muttered. “That was a damn puppet.”
They radioed HQ. No signal.
Night fell fast in Black Pines. The air thickened, and fog blanketed the forest like skin growing back over a wound. At the outpost, the trees groaned in the distance, branches cracking as something big moved through them. Kendrick began convulsing. Sanchez injected him with sedatives, but something was already taking hold, his eyes fluttered, lips twitching in whispers.
Then they heard it.
Clicking.
Not from Kendrick, from the woods.
Dozens.
No... hundreds.
Shapes slithered between the trees—figures in tattered clothes, eyes black as coal, joints bent backward, their arms extended unnaturally. Chris aimed his rifle but held fire. “Move. North ridge. Go. Now.”
They ran. Through the brush, across rock beds, over fallen trees, deeper into the mountains. The infected didn’t chase directly, they followed along the sides, parallel, flanking like hunters.
They weren’t mindless.
They were herding them.
By morning, Kendrick was gone. His sleeping bag shredded, a trail of blood leading to a cave mouth below the northern ridge. They could hear his voice echoing inside, singing. But it wasn’t Kendrick. Not anymore.
Chris, Sanchez, and Halvorsen descended into the cave, flashlights cutting through a tomb of twisted roots and fungus-covered stone. The walls pulsed, living veins, black and slick. Every few steps, they found remains, bones stretched out like the bodies had been pulled through a meat grinder.
They reached a massive cavern at the bottom.
And the nest.
Bodies were suspended from the ceiling like marionettes, cords of black fungus sprouting from their spines and into the rock. Their faces twitched. Some were still alive, eyes wide, mouths opening with a slow, synchronized breath. Together, they spoke one word.
“Feed.”
A mass began to rise from the floor—shaped like a man but massive, fifteen feet tall, bones twisting as it stood. Its head was split open into petals, revealing a pulsating orb of violet light. Limbs slithered from its back, like antennae or tendrils, all moving independently. It didn’t roar. It listened.
Halvorsen backed up, mouth open. “We’re in the fuckin’ brain stem of this thing.”
The creature surged.
Halvorsen threw a charge, but it barely fazed the monster, it absorbed the blast, black sinew hardening over the impact. Sanchez screamed as one of the tendrils pierced his abdomen and yanked him into the air. Chris fired every round into its center. It stumbled but adapted, its body swelling with new muscle, new limbs. It was learning, moment by moment.
Chris spotted the explosives rigged to the cave’s support columns. Halvorsen had prepped a fallback before descending.
But Halvorsen was dead now, body ripped in half beside Sanchez.
Chris sprinted, ducked beneath a flailing arm, slammed the detonator, and watched the roof collapse as he dove toward the mouth of the cave.
The entire chamber caved in.
Silence.
He crawled out of the tunnel, bloodied, broken, and half-conscious. The sun was rising over the treeline.
But something was wrong.
The birds were still silent.
The trees were still breathing.
A chopper circled overhead. BSAA extraction.
Chris sat in the snow, clutching his side as a medic pulled him up. One of the agents handed him a sealed case. Inside were samples from the infected girl’s spine, already sealed in reinforced stasis tubes.
Chris stared at the readings.
The strain wasn’t viral. It wasn’t even alive.
It was a neural fungus, ancient, adaptive, and sentient.
A parasite with memory.
It didn’t just infect. It communicated. Through spores. Through blood. Through thought. The Black Pines strain was only the first bloom. Multiple activity spikes were already popping across Eastern Europe and northern Japan.
Chris closed the case.
“This thing wasn’t made,” he said. “It was buried.”
“Then what woke it up?” the pilot asked as the chopper lifted.
Chris didn’t answer.
But he knew.
Something out there had found it, and fed it.
And this was just the beginning.
