@noonegetsleftbehind didn't ask for this, but is getting it anyway
It had been... A number of years, at this point, since Jonathan Crane had last seen a patient. He had left Raccoon City before the city had fallen into shambles-- oh, how he had wanted to stay, to see the terror in the eyes of the common man as they fought for their lives, to join the fray with his mask and a canister or two of gas, to cause panic, to see if these inhuman creatures that Umbrella had created could feel fear the same way the men they had once been could... But alas. He had been.... Strategically redeployed. Yes, that was the word they used when they had shipped him out.
It wasn't as though he didn't know why, really-- his work was not their primary focus. William Birkin and that hideous Golgotha virus were being given the spotlight, while his own work was met with nods, vague murmurs... Swept under the rug. They had never taken him as seriously as they should have, and the employees at his new laboratory had learned that quickly enough, when terror drove them to a mass casualty event.
He had laid low for a while after that, made sure everything blew over. The variant of his toxin he had used was chemically unlike anything similar he had ever made, easy to trace back to Umbrella given the markings on the canisters, but difficult to link specifically to him, as he had left no notes or traces of his presence in the lab when he had exited.
And now, years later, he opened a small private practice, still pretending Umbrella had never happened, that he had nothing but scholarly articles to his name since his departure from his last asylum work, and he had secured a contract with some international paramilitary organization he hadn't quite bothered to read up on yet. Why would he, when he could instead focus on his research?
Today's patient would be interesting, though, from what he had seen in the file. A police veteran, turned soldier, with an extensive trauma background... He wondered what little delights he might unlock in the man's mind.
