Numbers don't scream when the procedure begins. They don't look at you with wet eyes and ask if it will hurt. They sit quietly on a monitor and confirm what you already believe, that the work is progressing exactly as it should.
You built a world where those words were enough.
Because numbers never ask why a child waits in another room while her parents work through the night. They don't question why exhaustion becomes irritation, or why irritation becomes distance. They never ask when you last spoke to your daughter without glancing at a clock.
Numbers don't notice the moment a husband stops being a partner and becomes a colleague.
A man standing between you and the next step forward.
So you buried yourself deeper in them. In cultures and samples and formulas that promised something greater than the fragile lives outside the laboratory doors.
You told yourself it was worth it.
All great discoveries demand sacrifice.
But history does not show you the quiet moments.
The late nights when William's ambition burned hotter than yours, when you realized the work was no longer simply science but obsession. The moment you saw the look in his eyes, not curiosity, not brilliance, but hunger.
Because it lived in you too.
You told yourself you were different. That someone had to maintain control. Someone had to ensure the research didn't spiral into recklessness.
And yet the virus grew all the same.
It spread in petri dishes, in locked chambers, in whispered conversations about military applications and funding streams. You told yourself you were studying it. Containing it.
But the truth was simpler.
Just as surely as William did.
And when the world began to collapse under the weight of what you had created, you clung to the one thing you could still call logical.
Even if it meant leaving pieces of yourself behind.
Even if it meant a little girl wandering through a nightmare you helped build.
You would say you did what was necessary.
That someone had to be strong enough to make the difficult decisions.
But strength is a curious thing, Annette Birkin.
You had the strength to continue the experiment.
You had the strength to stand in a laboratory while your husband transformed into something unrecognizable.
You had the strength to chase the results to the very end.
And yet, there were moments when something in you hesitated.
A flicker of doubt when Sherry's name crossed your mind. A quiet awareness that the work had grown far larger, far uglier, than anything you once intended.
You buried those moments quickly.
They interfered with the data.
They linger in the spaces between your justifications, in the silence after the alarms stop blaring and the facility grows cold.
Because beneath the scientist, beneath the discipline and the calculation.
And she knows the question the numbers will never answer.
When the experiment finally ends.
What remains of the family you sacrificed to complete it?"
She's quiet for a long time as she considers the words. Numbers, yes. Numbers were easy. They came naturally to her, more naturally than people did, than perhaps anyone ever had except for William... And in the end, she had lost him too, hadn't she? In the end, only the numbers made sense. Only the numbers hadn't hurt her, hadn't left her for dead in the wake of blaring alarms and broken glass. Numbers didn't make her feel like a failure. Numbers didn't remind her of a little girl, left to fend for herself, or of the marriage that had grown cold, distant, had simmered into something tepid that she would have once given anything to save.... And yet when it had all come down to it, had she done that? Had she really saved anything?
She had hesitated. When she should have pulled the trigger, to end William's life before he mutated, she had hesitated. She hadn't been able to do it, even with the loaded gun in her hand, even knowing there was only one possible outcome... Something inside her had stopped her. Something she had tried to bury, had tried to hide away from almost everyone in her life.... Something she had hated once, until the day she held a tiny bundle of blankets with blue eyes and blonde hair that cooed and smiled back up at her as if nothing else in the world could ever matter....
She had failed, she knew. On two fronts. As a scientist. As a mother. By attempting to straddle both, to bridge the gap, she had succeeded in maintaining her footing in neither. The love in her heart had stopped her from being the heartless thing Umbrella wanted, but her desire to prove herself to the scientific community had stopped her from ever truly being the mother she could have been, should have been, for poor Sherry.
She suffered because of this. Because of me. She almost died.
She leans back, takes a breath, closes her eyes... Another breath. Another. It's clear she's processing, trying to choose words carefully.
"I know," she says finally. "I know I made mistakes. That I can't fix them. I just... Don't know what to do about that now."