Adult || All pronouns 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ Here be fandom content, my musings about the human condition and beyond. Safe space for urban hermits alike, make yourselves at home. Apeirophilia: Antonym of apeirophobia. Love of deep, deep eternity.
Dilation of the Mind (CH19) Resident Evil Fanfiction
Summary:
“Can you imagine a time where we don’t need guns to fight these guys?” Claire asked, almost wistfully. “Where people don’t have to risk their lives every day fighting bioweapons or corrupt governments, and we can just treat new viruses like we do the common cold?”
Rebecca sighed and leaned back on her hands as well. She followed the rays of light down to Claire’s face, whose smile grew wider just by looking into Rebecca’s eyes. They looked like sea glass glimmering under the sun.
“I can, actually.”
A.k.a. Chris and Rebecca are sellouts, Claire catches a glimpse of a fairer world, and Wesker mocks Achilles.
a/n: resident evil weekend sale + SGF announcement leaks are making me crash tf out.
September 23, ctd.
She knows I live.
There is, of course, the unlikely possibility that she has written what she has out of mere suspicion, or that she is referring to someone else entirely. I highly doubt it. The title she invokes is clearly mine, and yet, despite my death, or perhaps because of it, she appears to be respecting my prohibition on her using it.
—
They liked to be in the dojo late at night. The Spencer estate was much quieter then, as the corridors would finally be devoid of staff and prying eyes. From the farthest corner of the inner left wing, the grandeur of the house and their inhabitants appeared far away and distant, disappearing with the rest of the world behind the hum of distant generators and the ancient ticking clocks. They would practice for hours until dusk and dawn, in the light or in the dark, until they didn’t.
"I had," Alex trilled, drawing her gown back over her shoulders, "the most enlightening discussion earlier."
Albert reached over the pile of clothing and pulled his shirt back on. He looked at her with a flat, unimpressed expression, though she noticed in delight that his face and neck were still flushed. "I assume you don't mean the one we just had," he said, combing his hair back with his fingers and pressing it neatly down. "In which case, I am not interested."
“Perhaps you should be.” Her words came out slowly, and with the particular tonality she enjoyed using when she wanted to bait him. The corner of Albert’s lip twitched at her words. She wasn’t speaking in English.
“And why is that?” He responded, in English.
“I know who you are.” She tilted her head against the mat. “Who you really are. Spencer told me.”
“I’m sure he has.” He glanced at her. “And your pronunciation is abysmal.” He waited for her dry cackles to subside before he continued. “What have you done to extract that information from him?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t have done yourself. Brother.”
A second passed in silence, then another, then the next thing Alex registered was the hard impact of the mat against her back and the pressure around her hands. Albert had knocked her down and pinned her arms above her head, bracing his knees onto hers. His composure had completely dissolved and his eyes were wide, veins protruding from his neck. He was utterly enraged.
“I despise you,” he hissed at her. Flecks of spittle landed on her cheeks.
Alex chuckled, breathless. Her hair had fanned out around her like a ragged crown that saints had on medieval icons, or that in the motifs depicting the sun. She inspected Albert’s blown pupils and the way he was pressing into her.
“I noticed,” she sneered.
“If you ever refer to me by that name, I will kill you.”
“Mmm… Touching.”
“And, I will never speak to you again.” Wesker tilted his head, somewhat calmer and intrigued by her reaction. He squeezed her thighs towards her body, his mouth twitching to a smirk. “In this life, or any other.”
“You cannot mean that,” she grimaced, staring up at his cruel expression.
“Oh yes I can, Alexandra.” Her breath hitched at her throat when he said her name.
There was power in names, alright. Alex knew that already. She knew that the one of the few things that could rouse a human brain from unconsciousness the fastest, apart from mechanical intervention, was to call it by its name. A name could warn someone, delight them, traumatise them, save their life, or end it. Sometimes it was the mere utterance of the name that destroyed its bearer. It allowed faeries, demons and malevolent spirits to manipulate a body as the gateway into one’s spirit. Among the devout, the name of the Jewish G-d was written and spoken incompletely, so that any text carrying it could be discarded or altered without desecrating the Name, and so that anyone who came upon those texts by ill means would always know Him by a false name. She had been fascinated by the reverence of names in mythology and religion for as long as she could remember, but she had never genuinely understood their power because it was rarely used properly. Part of the reason she rarely used her full name was because she hated the way it sat in most people's mouths, stale and meaningless, and because its invocation never produced the effect she deserved. Albert, though, said her name exactly the way it was supposed to. He wrapped his tongue around it slowly, stretching and caressing it, and finally spat out. It felt like a spear being hurled in-between her eyes. She was sure her fascination showed on her face but she didn’t dare say it outright, because if she did, she knew he would never say it again.
“Go on,” Albert whispered in her ear, almost gently. “Do it.” Then his face twisted in rage once more, and he slammed his hands down on the mat. The sound cracked through the room as he leaned in, close enough that their foreheads were nearly touching.
“Now.”
Alex opened her mouth and her lower lip quivered, but no sound came out. Her eyes glistened with fear, rage, and loyalty. Albert relished in her wounded gaze, brushed back her hair from her forehead, and rocked his body away from hers.
—
If we are to assume that Fisher informed her of where he was held captive, then my identity as well as our location would be undoubtedly compromised. However, he was never made aware of where he actually was, and his transports were always conducted while he was either unconscious or blindfolded. The surveillance footage from the prison facility also confirms that between the assault and the subsequent power outage there was a window of approximately ten minutes, which means that if any verbal exchange did occur between them, he would have had to convey whatever he knew within that timeframe. He was discovered in his cell at the east corridor, and forensic analysis places his time of death within the first four minutes of that window. That leaves very little time for anything beyond the most rudimentary exchange of information, if any at all. There was also the time elapsed for the preparation of his body in the manner it was discovered. The procedure seems to have been uncomplicated, yet it still must have required some margin for the risk of discovery. I recognised the handwriting on the note to be a match with Alex', and though I cannot confirm with certainty whether she was physically present, I am inclined to believe she was. She would have wanted to deal with Fisher up close and personal.
I had initially considered the possibility that she may have injected him with t-Phobos or a comparable compound to exacerbate his suffering before death. Either she could not accomplish this due to the time constraints, or she simply chose not to, most likely out of concern for the risk of uncontrolled exposure to the latest iteration of the virus. As to why she didn’t use something else or opted for an approach that would create the most amount of collateral damage, it may be due to the fact that, as Rebecca noted, she could not be certain I was not somewhere within the facility, and did not wish for me to be contaminated.
Claire and Chris have raised the concern that if Alex knows I am alive, she may make that information public, and that the resulting chaos would be difficult to contain. I doubt she would do so, and Rebecca is of the same opinion, because Alex’ intent, following her extraction of information from Fisher, is to retrieve me rather than expose me and subject me to greater danger at the hands of allies and adversaries alike. I suggested that her surveillance efforts will likely concentrate around Kijuju, since that is where I was last confirmed to be alive. However, knowing that militaries worldwide would be on high alert, and that she would need to travel to the African peninsula via indirect routes to avoid detection, she would space her approach over the coming weeks. We can afford to wait and prepare, but we must maintain strict discretion in the meantime. Chris, Rebecca, and Claire will each need to establish a trace of their presence being elsewhere. This can be managed without much difficulty through cover documentation, though that is contingent on Alex not having already planted any informants in their immediate circle to verify their whereabouts in person.
Alex has a peculiar way of managing her contacts. She appears to operate them in such a way that even those with unruly or self-serving motivations continue to act in ways she can accommodate, and she is able to address them quickly enough if they should deviate from the parameters she had set out for them. Her informants behave organically and adhere to her willingly, and hence do not present the same terse rigidity as a typical agent. Alex takes care to identify the desires of her drones and encourages them to indulge in those desires, so that from the outside they appear unchanged. When I attempted to manoeuvre subordinates at a distance, the effect has often been the opposite, as the further they were from my direct control, the more stilted, mechanical, and neurotic their behaviour became. They feared me, and I saw no reason to flatter their ambitions, particularly where common rabble were concerned. Excella was an exception, in that our partnership was mutually advantageous, and I would not be inclined to cultivate that kind of confidence with just anyone. Alex is invested in earning the right to be worshipped. I, however, have never seen merit in the demand for worship. Why appease rabble when they have nothing meaningful to offer, and when divinity is a state that could only be attained through the mutilation of one’s own flesh?
That being said, our operation targeting Sein Island has become more complicated, as expected. And the complication does not arise directly from Alex.
—
“So, what now?” Claire asked.
“Fisher’s body has already been sent over to HQ for processing,” Chris said. Fatigue was beginning to show in the corners of his eyes this late in the night. “They’re going over everything they have on him right now. Naturally, they’re going to look into what any of it means, and they’re going to start speculating about who she’s referring to.”
“It is clear she means me, and I am reported to be dead,” Wesker said evenly. “There is no reason you cannot be unambiguous in your speculations.”
“Yeah, but since you’re dead, people are going to wonder who else she might be referring to,” Chris countered. “Is it someone related to you? Someone you or Alex set up to continue your work? A sleeper agent inside one of the organisations who was just waiting for her message to activate?” He exhaled. “We’ll try to deal with the murder investigation as discreetly as possible, but we can’t risk introducing any person of interest who might alarm the military or, in your case, give them a reason to find out who you really are.”
“In short,” he went on, “you can’t come with us to Sein Island. At least not for this first operation.”
Silence settled between them as his words hung in the air. There was the distant drip of water from somewhere down the corridor.
“How does her implicating a dead name bear on my inability to accompany you?” Wesker asked at last, lacing his fingers together tightly.
“The thing is, you’re no longer recognised as Albert Wesker,” Rebecca said. “You’re classified under a codename in our database. That means you’re both in the clear and highly implicated. You’re the last high-priority Umbrella executive we’ve had in our custody in years, but in terms of your true identity, you no longer exist. The world doesn’t know who you are anymore, and so the people in it can’t trust you.”
Wesker lowered his gaze. He didn't look angry, disturbed or disappointed, but seemed rather to be weighing possibilities. Rebecca recognised the look on his face. He was up to something. She sighed softly and shook her head, which made one of his eyebrows quirk upward. Receptive bastard. He probably knew that she knew. She chose not to say anything, yet.
“And you’re not coming with us either, Claire,” Chris added.
“What?!” Her head snapped toward him so fast a few strands of hair whipped across her face. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“And whose bright idea was this?”
“Mine.” He jerked his chin toward Rebecca. “And hers.”
“You must consider that Alex was able to reach Fisher in a secure facility,” Rebecca crossed her arms. Her voice was gentle but equally as firm. “And while this one still seems secure, we have to be extra careful. You testified against Fisher in court and you worked with us to find Wesker earlier in July. She may target you directly, so it’s not safe for you to be out there.”
“So you’ve just been deciding everything without us, is that it?” Claire’s eyes flashed, and Wesker’s brows quirked up for a brief second. He seemed somewhat surprised that she even considered him.
“This is still a matter that concerns the BSAA,” Chris said warily. “The chain of command doesn’t make the same demands on you as it does with us.”
“Do not bring politics into this, Chris. Especially when it was you and Jill that created this organisation in the first place.” Claire sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. She knew as much as everybody else that Chris had little say about how to operate against an international threat, and the last thing she wanted was to make her brother feel guiltier than he already was.
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna let you go to her alone,” she muttered. There was a nasally, slightly lighthearted quality to her voice, which formed a soft smile on Chris' face.
“I’ll have Rebecca,” he said, nodding toward her, who flashed him a thumbs up in response. “And Sebastian, and the rest of the team. I’m not going in alone, ’Laire.”
“Goddammit.” She looked away, jaw clenched. “This isn’t over.”
“Sure,” Chris said, taking a step toward her. “You’ve got seven days to overrule the BSAA’s decision and probably the UN’s, once they’re done drafting whatever it is they’re drafting.”
She shrugged in defiance. “I’ve done more in less time.”
“Yes, you have.” He slung an arm around his sister’s shoulders and pulled her into a sideways hug. Claire made a face of defiance, bitter and vulnerable, but let him. After a moment, she hugged him back from the waist.
—
(continued)
Certainly, I will have to leave this facility and follow them on the day of the operation. I am uncertain how to do this without being detected, but there are options available to me. I will provide them with everything I know and any details they require in order to confront Alex. It will not be sufficient by any means, but it will allow me to scrutinise the information they have gathered on her and their preliminary external findings, which should be enough to form a workable expectation of what lies ahead. If the scouts they send to Sein Island are not intercepted, and I suspect they will be, then perhaps the agents they have who once lived there can be consulted regarding the extent of Alex’ influence over the island’s infrastructure and her hold over the population. I will have to consider this further in the morning.
It was to be expected that my status as being both dead and alive would create complications. The confrontation with Alex will be my first opportunity to see firsthand how this haunting condition of mine has begun to affect the world. If I were anyone else, I might be persuaded that it is the world that has been doing the haunting instead, although, being who I am and where I am, I doubt there is much the world wants from me. I am not certain it possesses the capacity to want anything at all, and yet it crystallises before our searching eyes and acts as a mirror for our desires. It presents us with the reflection of our ravenous, despicable faces, allows us to spit upon it, and then moves on.
A. Wesker
“My name is someone and anyone. I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”
————
(4 days before the operation to Sein Island)
It was a cool, hazy afternoon. The air outside was bright but slightly overcast with clouds. Everything appeared somewhat softer and rounder around them. It had been several days since their meeting about Sein Island, and Chris and Rebecca were busy arranging procedures for how to maintain the facility in their absence. More personnel had been rotating in and out for preparations. Calderon and Chris spent most of the day going in and out of the control room as they went over possible strategies, and occasionally Wesker joined, tailing behind them with his hands clasped behind his back.
Meanwhile, Rebecca and Claire were sitting together in Rebecca’s room. She had brought over her keyboard and happily showed Claire how to play some accompaniment with one hand while Rebecca played the main melody. Claire had obliged, somewhat self‑conscious but glad that she could join in. It had been a welcome, and worthwhile distraction.
“You think we’ll ever catch a break?” Claire huffed, letting herself flop down at the edge of Rebecca’s bed.
“I think,” Rebecca said, folding her arms over her knees and resting her chin on them, “it’s gonna land on us, flutter its wings in our faces, and then leave the moment we try to catch it.”
Claire barked out a laugh. “Is it okay if it perches on my shoulder or something? I hate having anything on my face.”
Rebecca pretended to think, tapping her finger on her chin with great seriousness, then shrugged at Claire’s sardonic look.
“Sure,” she chirped.
Claire rolled her eyes and looked down at her boots, flexing her feet upwards and downwards in a lazy rhythm. There was some sunlight coming into Rebecca’s room, which Claire was pleasantly surprised about. Hers might have been the only room in the facility that got any natural light for more than a few minutes a day, but she was not about to ask Wesker whether his room had a scenic view of the hills or not. She tilted her head toward Rebecca, squinting slightly from the sun.
“How have you been, Rebecca? Long time no talk. Even before this Wesker trouble.”
“I’ve been okay.” Rebecca nodded. “It’s been, what, nearly a year since I began to officially advise for the BSAA. Before that I was doing trainings here and there, but nothing major.”
“So you haven’t been on the field for a while.”
“Nope. Apart from the operation in July.” Rebecca drew in a deep breath. “That was my first one in a few years. I’m just glad I didn’t get reprimanded for it, because I definitely didn’t prepare as well as I could have.”
“You did the right thing, Rebecca,” Claire assured her. “You had a very short window to move.”
“Yeah, but still. I might have made a mistake because it’s just been so long.” Rebecca’s mouth tightened. “But I am glad I was there.”
“I still don’t understand how you and Chris can be so tolerant of him,” Claire admitted, shaking her head. “He was cordial enough around us back in S.T.A.R.S. but he still gave me the creeps, and I could see how a man like that could’ve had less than pleasant intentions. And the things he did to you, to my brother, to so many others… Either you two have the patience of a saint or he’s had a massive change of heart.”
Rebecca chuckled at her wording. “I think it may be a bit of both. Wesker is…” She searched for the term. It felt as though Wesker could indeed be summed up with a single word or a single phrase, but she felt as if she didn’t have the right vocabulary or the right depth to see the answer. Or maybe it really was just as simple as evoking a term that could encompass the dense cloud of vitality that surrounded him, which was…
“Complicated.”
“That he is.” Claire huffed out a laugh. “I can’t believe he’s being nice to me. I had to pinch my arm to check I wasn’t hallucinating.”
“He’s nice to you?” Rebecca blinked.
This time, Claire laughed loud and brightly. “So even you are baffled by this! Good. Then I’m not going insane.”
“No, no, it’s just…” Rebecca rubbed the back of her neck. “Wesker is complicated, and he knows you’d be uncomfortable seeing him. It’s interesting that he took the first step.” She paused to think to herself. Maybe Wesker had noticed something about Claire that made him believe she was the one who actually took the first step to acquiescence. He wasn’t the type to initiate contact, wanting people to come to him first instead by following the traces he set out for them.
“I am uncomfortable with him,” Claire said. “But I can see what you guys meant in your reports. He seems different, although I didn’t know him that well before. Whether that’s in a good way or a permanent way, I don’t know. But… I know you’re being careful.” She gave Rebecca a warm smile, who returned it.
“We’re trying our best.”
“You know,” she leaned in closer to her, lowering her voice, “I never thought he’d have a sister.”
“He technically doesn’t.” Rebecca mirrored her whispering. “Alex isn’t his real sister. I can send you some of the files we found in the other facility, but they only lived in the same house for about a year before they both got recruited into Umbrella.”
“And, you’d said they were very young?”
She nodded, lips pressed together.
“Damn.” Claire leaned back, hands splayed over the forest green blanket. “I can’t imagine growing up like that. Having your life cut out for you before you can even think about what you really want.”
“I can’t, either.” Rebecca drew circles on her knee with her thumb. “I think he’s aware of how bizarre it really is.”
There was a brief, gentle silence before Claire spoke again.
“By the way, how’s the antiviral going? You think it’s really gonna do something? Most of the projects we’ve seen only work against specific strains and don’t really help when it comes to new mutations.”
“We have good reason to think it will.” Rebecca said. “It’s more substantive than the other compounds that have been manufactured so far, at least compared to the antiviral agents meant purely to control outbreaks as they happen. If we’re right, this is going to show us what we need to target to induce immunity in every patient, and how often the dose may need to be repeated in case of new mutations.”
Claire’s gaze grew hazy as she suddenly got lost in the lull of her memories. She found herself thinking of her parents and their summer vacations together, how her mother used to be annoyed when she got sand all over her bedsheets and joining her father, as well as Chris, for afternoon naps on the couch. She recalled the gentle heat of the sun, and the ease of playing and making friends and frolicking around in the sea, and compared it with the relentless intensity of her adulthood. Everything was moving too fast and too hard, and life was hitting her in the face and the gut, again and again, before she had a chance to properly recover. It always seemed like she was playing a losing game from where she was laying down, but she would always find it in her to get back up and do it all over again.
“Can you imagine a time where we don’t need guns to fight these guys?” she asked, almost wistfully. “Where people don’t have to risk their lives every day fighting bioweapons or corrupt governments, and we can just treat new viruses like we do the common cold?”
Rebecca sighed and leaned back on her hands as well. She followed the rays of light down to Claire’s face, whose smile grew wider just by looking into Rebecca’s eyes. They looked like sea glass glimmering under the sun.
“I can, actually.”
————
(2 days before the operation to Sein Island)
It was a long, overcast day. The metal walls of the facility was filled with the echoes of rain overhead, and the block of storm and rain was visible at the distance, getting larger as it closed the distance towards them. Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, with the small support team sent over to oversee preparations for the operation, the blacksite had been busier than Rebecca had ever seen it. Operatives had been checking radio traffic and satellite feeds, especially around Sein Island, as well as the Umbrella facility where Fisher had abducted Wesker and the Kijuju excavation zone. Beyond those sites, there were landing points and warehouses Wesker had marked as locations of interest, based on his knowledge that Alex’ intermediaries had passed through them for intelligence and transport purposes. By noon, almost all the corridors smelled faintly of acrid printer ink, machine oil, and the distinct scent of coffee mixed with cardboard that rose from the filtered brew cooling in a dozen paper cups.
The various BSAA operatives, Chris, and Wesker had spent most of the day going over the findings together. They were trying to connect the clues they had found at an airstrip on the outskirts of West Africa, some falsified cargo records, and a moderately used smuggling route disguised as a medical front. They were all somewhat close to the blacksite which was somewhat troubling, yet the pattern seen from these locations resembled less a straight trail leading to any one location than a circle wrapping around the old Umbrella facility, the blacksite, and the detention site where Fisher had been held. On the map, it created a cross-like figure, which had reminded Claire of the diagrams people used to draw over the sites of the Jack the Ripper murders which certain investigators had assumed were voluntary on The Ripper's part. The question remained why those points had been arranged in that way at all, and whether this was an organic trail Alex had followed spontaneously or whether she was opening a path towards something. If so, what would be the order of her approach? Would she move from Africa to Sein, and then across to America, or would the reverse pattern be the case? Or perhaps she would do neither.
There was also the problem of the airstrip, which had been flagged as the point from which several planes had departed for America, making it a known, if unfavourable, last-resort route in the black market. Wesker’s view was that the pattern ran clockwise, and that Alex intended to move through Sein Island first, create confusion, capture or kill BSAA operatives present on-site, and then immediately move towards America for reasons unknown. There were already people in the United States trying to follow the trace of any larger plan developing around the Arklay region and the ruins of Raccoon City. In order to reduce the chances for her escape, they would need to corner her first. That, of course, depended on Wesker being correct, and on whether the militaries involved would heed the warnings he would relay to them through the BSAA quickly enough to trap her.
Rebecca had spent most of the evening at the small training bay outside the facility, right on the way to regional headquarters. Her warm-ups consisted of drills for employing assistance protocol and the close-quarters exercises she had been doing with Chris. By the end of the hour her arms were trembling with fatigue, but it was still better than sitting still and thinking about whether she had done everything possible to make sure she was in the best condition to keep people alive, herself included. A whole lot depended on her own condition, however much she disliked admitting it.
Wesker had been present for part of her training. He was no longer fitted with a tracking device, as the blacksite’s location and constant surveillance were considered sufficient to impede any real attempt at escape. Besides, he had little reason to leave the premises at this point. One time, she had noticed him leaning against the wall with his arms folded, concentrating on her technique with narrowed eyes. Every so often he would nod or tilt his head in response to the critique and comments of the BSAA instructor, and would later offer his own brief comments whenever she came over and asked what he thought. After one of the joint drills, Chris had turned to Wesker with a questioning look, unsure about something he had said to Rebecca during the exercise. Wesker had replied that only Chris could know, in that place and at that moment beside her on the field, what they needed to do together and how exactly to do it. Chris had nodded, more certain of himself, and followed after Rebecca towards the start of the track with a few extra remarks. It was obvious that Wesker was intentionally distancing himself from the operation to allow for a smoother coordination between her and Chris. It was only reasonable, which made Rebecca suspicious.
At around eleven that night she finally had a moment to seek Wesker out, and found him on the balcony exactly as predicted. The embers of his cigarette flared and dimmed between his fingers with the ebb and flow of the wind. He was leaning against the metal railing, one hip angled slightly towards the entrance, and when he noticed Rebecca step out, he tipped his coffee cup towards her direction in greeting. Was he not planning to sleep tonight?
”There you are!” She put her balcony slippers on and padded towards him.
”Here I am.” He nodded to her once she was leaning on the railing. She didn't usually like to be so close to the edge of the balcony, but she still enjoyed it here despite that. She felt safe enough to press some of her weight onto it even with the wind moving around them in great, forceful gusts, and perhaps even because of it. There was nothing malevolent in the way it pushed at them. The exhales of nature were powerful and beautifully indifferent. Rebecca sighed and looked at the sky above.
“We don’t have much time till we move out, do we?”
“You don’t.”
“I know you don’t like that we’re going in without you.”
“It is not entirely your decision,” Wesker said. “And you do not wish to introduce variables that might compromise your effectiveness. I understand.”
She folded her arms against the cool railing, which was slick with the fine mist of the incoming storm. “So… What do you intend to do?”
He glanced at her, really very briefly. “What do you mean?”
“Wesker…”
Eventually, a faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Are you implying that I will join you without your knowledge and proceed to make myself a nuisance throughout the operation?”
“Maybe.” She paused for a moment. “Yes,” she clarified.
Wesker gave a low chuckle, gently rolling his cigarette between his fingers. Smoke curled in thin waves around and outwards from his hand.
“But I know I can’t stop you if you don’t wish to be stopped,” Rebecca went on. “I don’t like that you’re not supposed to come with us either, but I still think it’s a sound decision.”
“A sound decision is not guaranteed to be the right one.”
“And what is the right decision here?”
“There is none,” he said. “At best, one approximates it and tries to reduce the harm done to those involved.”
Rebecca watched him for a moment. “So whatever you want to do is going to help us do that? Or will you just kill her, like you said earlier?”
His expression shifted, losing some of its irony. “I will try not to. You were right to say that we should seek another way. But if none presents itself, then there will be no other choice.”
“How do you know, even?” This time her words didn’t sound rhetorical. “How do we know what the right thing is, and when it is the right time to do it?”
“You don’t.” Wesker took another drag, then lowered the cigarette from his mouth. “You may imagine and plan for years ahead, but in the end you have little besides conviction, your instinct, and whatever criteria for righteousness you have devised for yourself. It is when one mistakes one’s own misguided instincts for truth that is problematic, and when you equate that truth with what the universe is obliged to achieve.”
Rebecca’s eyes flicked up to him. “Which means you would be making the universe into yourself, because you can’t make yourself into the universe.”
“That is because there is nothing about the tribe of humanity, in and of itself, that makes it worth saving or belonging to. What it is able to achieve is its one redeeming grace.”
“It also sees beauty, though,” Rebecca said softly. “It has the very important job of seeing.”
“And of doing,” Wesker countered. He looked out into the dark for a moment before continuing. “Nevertheless, it is impossible to live up to one’s own impossible standards, and it is hardly sensible to expect the world to do so. One can only hope not to delude oneself when it comes to deciding whether one has done the right thing.”
Rebecca tilted her head. “Delude oneself?”
Wesker’s voice was quiet. “To avoid guilt. To spare yourself the knowledge that you may have made the objectively, or subjectively, wrong choice. And to avoid the realisation that you will never be able to undo it.”
“But we do make mistakes,” Rebecca said. “Terrible ones. And then we live with them until we die. Sometimes we forget them for a while or rationalise them, and those are very valid ways of surviving guilt. Otherwise it paralyses you. That is just part of being human.”
“That should not become an excuse to forgive your mistakes.”
“It isn’t an excuse to do anything,” she replied. “There can be no excuse for forgiveness, Wesker, but there is still the choice for it. You must decide when or if you are ready to forgive someone.” She held his gaze. “You might believe yourself unworthy of it, but you can still be forgiven. And you will be.”
“How do you know?”
Rebecca smiled, but didn’t answer.
The wind shifted around them, bringing with it the metallic scent of rain and the far-off groan of thunder gathering over the sea.
Eventually, Wesker said, “I will not interfere with your operation. Unless I see an urgent reason to do so.”
Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “And what could possibly count as such a reason?”
“I do not know,” he said. “I will know it when I see it.”
“That’s reassuring, I guess.”
A brief silence passed between them, which was eagerly filled by the restless rumbling of the storm approaching from beyond the cliff.
Before they went back inside, Wesker said something. Rebecca raised a brow and looked around them to see what provoked him to say it, because it didn’t make any sense. She did try to recall her history knowledge to the best of her ability, though.
“Which one?” She eventually asked.
“Neither. It’s my name.”
Rebecca looked at him with her mouth ajar. Among the BSAA and those familiar with Umbrella’s records, it was hardly a secret that Albert Wesker was not his real name, but the histories of the Project W children had been erased thoroughly after their “graduation”. The archivists theorised that should the project see significant success, Umbrella would not want their prodigious superhumans associated with a past, and a name, that had nothing to do with the perfect human beings they were supposed to have become. In effect, they wanted the world, and the children themselves, to forget that they had ever been merely human. Rebecca had given up hope that she would ever be able to discover it, but it had never occurred to her that he might offer it willingly. She didn’t even think he remembered his real name, but seeing as it was one of the few things he had left from his old life, it definitely made sense. She was speechless.
“You told me that day, in the meeting room, that I had no name.” Wesker glanced at her. There was a gentle, but bitter expression on his face. “One that belonged to anyone alive, at the very least. That is incorrect.” He looked back towards the abyss ahead of him. “I do have a name. I do not acknowledge it, and I will never use it, but even if I lost everything, and were doomed to walk this earth without a history until the end of time, I will always have that name.”
He looked out at the unfurling storm clouds ahead of them. The sky was so dark it was nearly pitch black, and the clouds were noticeable only due to the subtle shift in air pressure around them and the sound of the storm rushing towards the facility in the shape of a vast, groaning mass. Wesker watched it calmly, lifting the cigarette to his mouth. A strange, austere pride sat symmetrical and sincere across his face, unlike the sharper, wrathful pride that used to come more easily to him. Rebecca definitely preferred the former over the latter.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He replied. “I wanted you to know.”
“It means a lot to me. Truly.”
Wesker took a few steps closer to Rebecca and, once he saw that she didn’t inch away, he reached up towards her. His neck tensed briefly when he made contact with her soft skin, grazing his fingers down her face. The tenderness of his touch reminded Rebecca of someone petting the fresh petals of a flower, or someone trying to caress the surface of water without breaking it, although the act of touching necessarily required some sort of exchange between the two surfaces. If all things were truly made up of atoms, then what was in question was not mere tangential contact, but a visceral one that had the two objects encroaching upon each other, fighting and burying its particles into one another. A kiss and a knife in the throat were both made of the same kind of violence.
Wesker’s fingers curled under her chin, and they held there for a long moment, before he tapped at the tip of her nose with his thumb, lightly and playfully, much to Rebecca’s surprise. She scrunched up her nose, making Wesker smile. It brought crow’s feet around his eyes. Eventually, he retracted his hand and looked on at her reddened face. She cleared her throat before she spoke.
“I’m thinking you don’t want me to refer to you like that.”
“No,” he said quickly, but his refusal was good-natured.
She gave him a small, lopsided smile. “I still think it suits you.”
He groaned, adjusting the arm of his glasses. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it never has and it never will. I am too self-indulgent and too impatient to do it justice.”
Rebecca looked at him in incredulous wonder. Did this man even hear what he just said? If he did, then even he would have to acknowledge that despite his proclamations otherwise, at least in that moment, he sounded exactly like someone who deserved that name.
“Inside?”
Wesker drew her from her thoughts. He was standing by the door and gazing down at her quietly, and a small part of Rebecca’s mind noted how different his eyes appeared when he was looking at her. She blinked her haziness away and nodded at him. Wesker waited for her to step through the door first before following after her and sliding it shut, leaving the storm to hurl itself against the walls behind them.
—
Later that night, Wesker had his terminal running while he worked through a series of possible routes. The room was filled with classical music and the rapid rhythm of his typing. He moved back and forth between the maps and the surveillance feeds in quick succession to memorise each possible variation. His eyes strained in their sockets as he drank from his coffee without looking away from the screens. He also took notes by hand, alternating between loose sheets of paper and the smaller tablet beside him.
After enough time with the material, his thoughts no longer carried its content so much as they started to resemble its shape and form, and if he had tried to speak aloud and explain what he had absorbed at that moment, he was certain no one would have understood him. When he closed his eyes he saw access codes, passwords, coastlines, corridors, and contingency checklists moving through the reddish dark. Paths branched and folded back in on themselves and bled into the veins that branched from the corners of his vision when he pressed his hands hard against his skull. The timing he imagined in his mind to advance on the pressure points around the facility’s perimeter pulsed in rhythm with the music still playing in the room. The plan he created was alive inside him. He had become the island.
By the time he was done, it was nearly five in the morning. When he finally sat down on the edge of his bed, he opened his notebook and, at the very bottom of the page just above the lower margin, drew a king butterfly. He used his red and black pens to indicate the orange hue of its wings and the dark brown of the body. Its right wing had been crushed from the side, leaving it scaly and jagged, but the rest of it was intact, magnificent and graceful even in death. He wrote a few words beside it.
