ɴᴏ ʀᴇꜱᴛ

𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴 𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙮𝙚𝙙.

[viralweaponry]

#ABIGAIL : EVERY STEP THAT I TAKE TAKES ME FURTHER FROM HEAVEN / IS THERE A HEAVEN? / I LIKE TO THINK SO.

a low - activity multimuse blog for canon & original characters from the resident evil franchise, written by rain. sideblog to lovestender. headcanon - based, not spoiler free. RULES & MUSE LIST. weaponized with . . . bioweaponry.

[spirestar]

Josie has had a few years to get used to the stares and double takes. It's kind of her worst nightmare, being left in big glass boxes so everyone who wants to can get a glance, and maybe it's fitting that that dream has come true an innumerable amount of times now. It could be a good thing--Stuff can't get worse, right? It's probably the exact opposite. Unblinking eyes stare back at Wyatt as they enter the room. The pale fluorescent lights above make the taupe brown of their sclera shimmer a bit. An iridescent mirage. She's wearing a hospital gown with snap closures instead of ties and her jaggedly cut hair hangs limply from her head after so many days of being unwashed. Kind of a last priority for quarantine officers and holding cell staff. It makes them feel disgusting.

"Hi." They mean to just say it but it comes out sharp. It probably doesn't matter, they remind themself. She tries to smile anyway and she's the only person in the world who doesn't find her fingertips cold to the touch when she reflexively moves them to push up glasses that she no longer wears. "Uh. I mean, hello."

Gummy bears sound really fucking good. When was the last time they actually ate normal food? Josie slowly shifts her hand to tug up the collar of the gown so it billows out a bit and covers her neck, the collar sticking on her chin. They pinch the fabric between their fingernails and try not to look as anxious as they feel--People used to say their smile was killer. Well, Amy did. Hopefully it's still a little true.

"I mean, I wouldn' be opposed, but um--" She clears her throat and tries not to move otherwise, Southern accent slipping in just before she does. Sometimes if they move around too fast or anything else like that, people freak out. It's bad enough they don't have any other clothes to hide in. Nobody would poison gummy bears right? Or use them for some kind of test later? "What's SOU? I just--" There's a bandaged gash over their forehead where most people would have a left eyebrow. Some bruises on their arms, bandaids, scrapes over their small nose. The van crash was maybe a little worse than her file documented. "I know the, uh. Umbrella department names a bit better. But--s'nice to meet you." Wyatt. They can remember that. It's easier to pretend they can be two people talking normally when she knows people's names.

[viralweaponry]

They can smell every single one of her wounds / they can almost feel them, if they focus, the bruise on their arm, the scrape over their nose. They can almost hear her body stitching itself together, slow, slow. A near - silent wheeze through the gills on the side of her throat. They feel an old and familiar not - quite - empathy thing, and it's not hate anymore, but it is a cold, precise anger. The fuckers that killed their brother and made them a monstrous freak to possess and use and test are damn near the same people that made Josie into —— well, not particularly monstrous. If you can see every pore and every hair, it becomes apparent that even the hottest humans are kinda gross. Being shimmery is not particularly upsetting.

"Hell yeah, gummy bear buddies." They pull the oversized bag of bears out of their normal - size bag of bears - and - other - things, popping an oversized handful into their mouth and sliding it towards the center of the table so Josie can have some, too. Someone is clicking a pen outside the room. They can hear the blood in Josie's fingers, moving so very slow and so very thin. They try to answer the follow - up question but, due to their mouth being full of gummy bears, it ends up being mostly nonsense. They smile sheepishly, raise a finger in a 'give me a second' sort of way and swallow hard. Two of the people watching them through the one - way mirror laugh too softly for Josie to hear, and someone else's heart rate picks up in a way that indicates he's not loving the casual tone here. Their taste and smell senses are completely overwhelmed by gummy candy for a moment, which is a relief. "Sorry, that was bad. SOU stands for Special Operations Unit. We do —— well, pretty much what the name implies. Special ops, in units. You probably met my usual Captain, Imani Washington, earlier."

Imani is watching —— her heart ticks up at the sound of her name —— and Wyatt does NOT shoot a thumbs up at the mirror, thanks very much. "With any luck, you won't have to know Umbrella anything anymore. They've hurt a lot of people here. We want to make sure they never get to hurt you again." The words feel rehearsed in their mouth; not untrue, but too polished - clean. It's the kind of shit they'd said to Wyatt, when they'd first taken them in. It was true that BSAA had protected them from the Connections and the remnants of Umbrella therein. It's also true that that protection came with offers they quite literally couldn't refuse and a hell of a lot of experimentation and hurt.

—— It might be worse to open with that. They let their elbows rest on the table. "I joined the BSAA under...less than stellar circumstances. Not exactly like yours, but...adjacent, maybe. So I get that that probably sounds like bullshit. But we're gonna do our damndest. I'm gonna do my damnest."

[viralweaponry]

leon's parents did die when he was young —— not dramatically, not to mob bosses or anything. it was very mundane. he grew up in small town, USA, not much to do there...his parents took him to visit a river with a steep cliff beside it, mostly dirt and roots. his dad was showing him how to cast a fishing line, his mom was getting something out of the tackle box, it had rained recently. the ground was soft, and it gave, and his parents dropped. they would have died instantly, the coroner said. they didn't suffer. he was ten.

after that, he lived with an aunt and uncle —— who lived in a different small down, USA, closer to raccoon city —— who were kind to him but who never really felt like his family the way his parents did, and he got into a lot of trouble growing up, felt pretty unmoored. nothing enormous, but...petty theft, that sort of thing. he joined the force both because it was a way to get out of his small towns and into the city and because he was trying really hard to get his head on straight and figured that being a cop was just the kind of by - the - book stick - in - the - mud identity he needed for that. we all know how that worked out.

[viralweaponry]

prior to being taken in by green, abigail had several friends in the orphanage; she was particular close to four of them. leo, daniel, hannah and olivia.

leo was probably the most important of them. he was a few months younger than abigail, and her very best friend. she loved him more than anyone or anything in the world; she thought she did, anyway. the reason she discovered what was being done with the children in her orphanage was because one night he was taken from his room in the night and she followed him — she managed to sneak after the workers into the labs beneath the orphanage, where she was caught by green. by then, she'd seen just enough to understand the edges of what was happening beneath her home and, rather than plead for leo's life or fight, she bargained.  she offered to help the atrocities, if only they'd let her live. she never saw leo again. she asked what happened to him, a few weeks later. green didn't like that she did.

daniel was two years older than abigail, and very close to both her and leo; they formed a sort of trio. losing leo was very difficult for him —— he lost a close friend ( he and the others were told he'd been adopted ) entirely, and abigail was almost as unreachable. he could also see that abigail was getting worse mentally —— she disconnected from him and the others, was quieter and more tired, spent more time downstairs than with them, seemed guilty. despite her attempts at building distance between them, daniel continued to worry about her for years, and when she was eleven he caught self - harm scars on her. not longer after, he was caught trying to sneak into green's office to figure out what was going on with her; abigail and he were both punished. he was used in a later experiment —— green did not make abigail help, and it was not a kindness. she was smart enough not to ask what happened to him.

hannah and olivia were biological sisters; hannah was a year older than abigail, and olivia was two years youngers. they didn't like boys, so they didn't spend much time with the leo - daniel - abigail grouping, but they both liked abigail individually, so they'd both spend time with her. after being taken in by green, distance bloomed for all the obvious reasons —— and some less obvious ones. olivia was sharper than most children, and while she never realized the depth of it, she slowly began to understand the shape of something like betrayal; she figured out by the age of thirteen that abigail was working against them. she started to hate her. hannah didn't get it. abigail was terrified. if green or the others found out that one of the others so much as suspected, they'd be on a fast-track to disposal, to experimentation. she begged hannah to get olivia to back off, to convince her, but that just made it worse. eventually, olivia was getting too close and abigail —— turned her in. she remembered how bad it had been with daniel; she told herself that, at least this way, olivia might suffer less. and she did suffer less.

hannah knew abigail was part of the reason her sister got "sick" and "moved to another facility with better doctors" and came to hate abigail just as much as olivia had. more, probably. abigail managed to convince green that erasing both sisters would be more suspicious than one. eventually, hannah aged out of the system. abigail doesn't know where she is now, and it feels cruel to attempt to find out.

[viralweaponry]

@spirestar liked! / josie & wyatt!

What a fucking mess.

A victim of Umbrella / The Connections / et fucking cetera winds up in BSAA custody. It's probably better than the alternative ( umbrella / the connections / et fucking cetera ), but the victim is still functionally in a cage. The victim gets used and experimented on and passed around, and the victim is still so fucking compliant because they know what happens when they aren't, and ——

Stop it. You're personalizing. The aborted career in psychology saves the day again.

Wyatt can hear Josie's ( the subject, the man passing them her file had said, and Wyatt had hissed back, she has a name, jackass —— ) heartbeat, however warped it may be, through the door. Everything about her sounds different, smells different. It's overwhelming, but not unbearably. Wyatt's heart aches; the intensity is unexpected, not the reaction itself. The BSAA are supposed to be to the good guys, and yet...

They push the door open and smile, head tilting, warm and sincere. They really are happy to meet them. "Hi there. Josie, right? My name's Wyatt." The close the door behind them. They try to keep their voice steady, to keep from talking too fast. Josie's already putting out enough stress hormones; no need to make it worse. "I'm with the SOU division. I asked the team if I could come meet you. I brought some gummy bears, if you want any."

[viralweaponry]

@opherative liked! / ada & mia!

Mia's first thought is that the woman is here to kill her, which is why she's just tried to put a bullet through the agent's skull.

The Connections don't particularly appreciate loose ends; were it not for BSAA and Blue Umbrella, Mia knows that she and Ethan would have been dead a long time ago. That Connections agents are still hunting them and still get through anyway isn't all that surprising. She'd threatened to kill Chris when he'd told her she shouldn't have a gun, and she's reminded that that was smart, now. She just wishes it packed more of a punch.

She can't die. She promised Ethan she'd do her best not to. Promises to Ethan are about all she has left, and now —— don't think about it. Don't think about. Her stomach twists, and she can't tell if it's nausea or the baby / parasite / monster.

"Stop hiding," Mia hisses, discharging another round through the shelf that Ada had ducked around.

[viralweaponry]

while wyatt was still under medical observation by the BSAA —— which is to say, while the BSAA was experimenting on them —— wyatt didn't have much to do when they weren't being tested. they eventually jockeyed for access to reading materials, and eventually managed to convince folks to give them access to internal files. "i'm either gonna end up a field agent, in which case i'm gonna get to read this stuff later anyway, or you are going to dissect me, in which case i'll be dead and it won't matter what i read in my final months." give 'em an inch and they took a mile, and eventually they did end up accessing files they shouldn't have been given access to.

this is all to say that wyatt has read the personal files on a lot of the higher - ranked BSAA members. they've read sheva's and developed a frankly parasocial hero - worship thing going on with her, despite having never met her in their life. they think she's the coolest person maybe on the entire planet.

[viralweaponry]

mia has a fairly basic but nevertheless more than average knowledge of various other Horror Game Bad Shit — murkoff corporation, the stem incident, etc. through her work with the connections.  it pays, after all, to be aware of the competition.  all this means for threads is that if others describe their experiences and the timeframe to her, she might be able to guess what’s happened.

[viralweaponry]

i do interact with the bible a fair amount and occasionally i'll read a verse that's the kinda shit that i know gaily would fixate on and annotate. usually i write 'em down and i really wanna share this one truly devastating one:

Matthew 18:3 — And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Note: children are compliant. reduced resistance — easier instruction. that’s not what it means.

[viralweaponry]

some wyatts

[viralweaponry]

She won’t remember how old she was, when she looks back on this memory.  Most of the details will get lost in the haze that softens everything but the worst of it, blurring edges, clouding parts.  Parts that would not be survivable if they had to live in her head at all times — which is to say, most parts.  She’ll know that it was after she betrayed the others, but not long after.

She’s ten years old when it happens, two months out from eleven.  She’s in Father’s library, hiding without hiding.  He knows she’s here, of course.  It’s a reward, to be allowed to go into the little room and sit by herself.  She’d done well today.  She’d done well whispering soothing lies to another little girl so she’d stay still until she didn’t have a choice.  Abigail hadn’t winced or cried like last time, the time that got her into trouble.  Abigail had taken good notes.

Father has a separate study with the books he reads more regularly and finds more useful.  Some of the works in this library don’t seem like they’ve been opened more than once or twice, and she’s never seen him in here aside from once, when he came to collect her.  She likes books because they’re different from what she’s used to; they’re not forms and reports and lists of names.  She likes the library because it’s quiet and dark and there’s no one to perform for.  She likes it because there’s carpet instead of tile, dark wood with a fine layer of dust instead of perfectly sterilized white walls.  Father says that someday he’ll take her to a much grander facility, under what was once an orphanage much like their own, called ARK.

She won’t learn about the ARK's namesake for weeks yet.  But this is the first time she finds the Bible, perusing the shelves, looking for something heavy and dense and complicated, something she’ll have to strain to understand.  If she’s trying too hard to decipher difficult prose, she can’t remember doing bad things.  Mostly, she goes with encyclopedias or scientific theory.  Today she doesn’t.

She knows what the Bible is, in some nebulous way she can’t recall learning.  Maybe one of the workers upstairs was or is Christian.  She knows the Bible is a book that Christians read, and she knows Christianity is a major religion, though there’s nothing in her mind about the book or the faith beyond that.  She doesn’t know its tenets.  She’s never read the Bible, and it’s thick and soft, even without being worn, and she likes the gilt on the text on the side against the dark, thin leather of the binding.  She pulls the heavy book from the shelf.  She sits on the floor and leans it against her bent, knobby knees.  She opens it.  Not carefully — not reverently.  Curiously.  She hasn’t yet had curiosity burned out of her.

She finds Psalms first.  Not intentionally — just turning pages until something feels less foreign than the rest.  The language is still strange in the way she likes, and not technical or corrective in the way she’s familiar with.  Not like the adults who only spoke when something needed fixing or someone needed harming.

This is something separate from that.  Something that stays in one place long enough to repeat itself.  The repetition is the part she notices first, the part she likes immediately.  The same phrases, even when the tenor is different, when the need they express shifts in intensity.  Not instructions, not assignments.  Just the same words, again and again.  About God.  About pleading.  About needing.

The hallway outside shifts occasionally — footsteps, distant doors, the soft rhythm of institutional life and the people who uphold it and then go home and feel nothing at all.  But no one is looking for her.  They know she’ll come back when it’s time to come back.  They trust her, the way that any good doctor trusts a scalpel.  They trust her, or they trust her Father to keep his tool in check.

She reads slowly.  To make sure it doesn’t change when she isn’t looking.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

She reads it twice in her head, then a third time out loud, a quiet whisper.  “Why are thou cast down, oh…my soul.”  Testing the words as if the thought might disappear if she doesn’t cling hard enough.  It doesn’t.  The thought stays.  Abigail keeps reading.

She doesn’t understand most of it, rereading every sentence two, three, four times, trying to unravel meaning.  But the tone comes easily, almost immediately, the grief and the guilt and the beauty.  The absense of directive.  The text is…describing something that is already happening, not commanding, simply documenting .

“Why dost thou cast me off…?” She reads softly.  “Why go I…why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

Observation.  That’s nice.  The book is heavy and solid in her lap.  She turns a few pages backwards.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?  Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

“Oh, my God, I cry…in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in — in the night season, and am not silent…”

She stops there.  Reads it again.  Longer this time, slower, each syllable stretching in her mind and mouth.  Her legs are starting to go numb.  Crying out and not being heard.  Outside, someone laughs softly, quietly, like the world and their body is real.  

“Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help…”

Something is already happening, something she can’t or isn’t brave enough to articulate, and the book is simply describing it accurately.  It’s — strange.  A settling.  Not emotionally.  Structurally.  A map when she doesn’t know where she is; it offers no guidance, but it still affirms that she exists in a place, that this has been felt and mapped before.  There is none to help.  It is a relief, to see that another has realized that already.

The pages flip again.  She’s looking for something incorrect, something to offset the familiarity, something to make the words less.  

Something about being in darkness.

Something about a voice that won’t stop speaking even when no one answers.

She presses her fingers lightly against the words without thinking.  She doesn’t realize she’s crying until the thin pages wrinkle under her tears.

—

After a while, she closes the book.  Not because she’s done — because she doesn’t want it taken away from her before she can finish understanding it.  That’s another rule she’s learning quickly: good things do not remain accessible indefinitely.

The child slides it under her shirt when she stands; it’s too big to hide properly, but she’s small enough and no one looks at her long enough to notice unusual shapes.  The doctors and scientists and workers had all adjusted to her presence quickly once Father had brought her down into the depths, and none found it strange for a little girl to be here, doing this work.  No one needs to see her.

She takes the Bible back to her bedroom, next to Father’s bedroom, and she hides it carefully under her bed.  If Father finds out, he will…she isn’t sure.  It’s still early into her adoption, after all.  Mostly, when she disobeys or falters, he has no need to hit her; cruel words, or forcing her to have a more active hand in the next experiment, or threatening to put her under the knife are all typically sufficient.  More elegant, and he detests inelegence.  Sometimes he strikes her, which can be elegant but often isn’t.  He’s threatened worse, and he’ll do worse, in the months and years to come.  For now, she isn’t sure what he might do to her if he finds out that she’s stolen his book.  But she can’t stop herself.  She tells herself he won’t notice.  She reminds herself that he doesn’t see her, either. 

She goes back out and climbs the stairs to the orphanage, to the other children who don’t know she's priming them for slaughter, numbing rapidly, mind whirring.  Father says she is most effective at calming them when they know her, when she spends time with them.  She keeps thinking about the words, her heart beating against her ribs in time to the syllables beating against her skull.  The words are good.  The words sound like someone trying to describe pain without being able to resolve it.  She spends time with the others, and she smiles, and she holds the others’ hands when they ask, and she does not vomit at the sensation like she did the first time, and she thinks about the book, and the steady words inside it.

Later, there will be nights when there’s screaming outside her room, and the words will help; the words will give the sobs something to match, to fit against.  Later, there will be notes in the margins, things she wants to remember, questions about strange and foreign concepts like grace and being - loved.  Later, there will be a woman with a rifle and a dead father, and the rifle and the Bible will be the only thing she takes from the scene.  

For now, there is — for the first time in months — something in her head that feels halfway steady.

[viralweaponry]

starter call, baby! you know the drill; specify muse if you want somebody particular. if you don't i'll inflict somebody on ya!

[viralweaponry]

The room was too white.  Not metaphorically, either, or in a way that had much to do with The Overwhelming Whiteness Of The Medical Field Due To Various Institutional- And Systems-Level Bigotries.  No, the room was actually just white.  White walls. White lights.  White tile reflecting white light hard enough to hurt.  Wyatt ( ha ha, white, Wyatt, the thought was funny enough to be distracting for a millisecond ) could see microscopic scratches in the surface coating on the cabinets.  Dust trapped beneath one corner of the overhead fixture.  Tiny imperfections in the paint where somebody had touched up damage without matching the original finish properly a few years ago.

Everything vibrated.  The fluorescent lights hummed at slightly different frequencies.  One was higher than the others, pitched like a bird screaming.  Wrong.  Wrongwrongwrong.

“Agent Harrow?”

The doctor’s voice —— Keller, they were pretty sure —— hit Wyatt like physical pressure.  Their pulse jumped immediately —— they heard it happen, like they felt everything happen, like they could feel their blood sprinting desperate through their throat and arms and their organs working overtime.  Agent was still new as far as titles went.  They thought it was sort of funny to call them agent right now, given the circumstances.  There were several screens around them, almost surrounding, screens currently black, probably not for long.  They sat in the examination chair with electrodes against their temples and wrists and sternum.

Not restraints, technicallytechninallytechnically.  Monitoring equipment.  The leather bands still dug into their skin the same way.  They asked for no restraints because the interview with the restraints made them want to fucking kill somebody.  They'd asked very nicely, even.

“We’re going to begin the next stimulus cycle.”

Somebody adjusted a machine behind them.  Fabric movement.  Rubber soles against tile. Plastic clicking softly together.  One researcher had a damaged cuticle on his thumb and kept rubbing it unconsciously against the edge of his clipboard.  Scratchscratchscratch.

Wyatt wanted to scream.  They smiled weakly instead.  “Quick question.  Have you guys considered simply fucking not doing that.”

Nervous laughter from one of the younger technicians.  Heart rate spike.  Male. Twenty-something, younger side or older with an insanely good skincare routine, but probably not, no smell of any particularly fancy incredients.  Anxious disposition.  Too much caffeine.  Artificial citrus shampoo.

The older scientist ignored the joke.

“Stimulus cycle beginning in three.”

The monitor beside them beeped —— high frequency —— sharp.  It almost aligned with the screaming bird light for a second.

“Two.”

Wyatt’s breathing accelerated automatically.  Stupid and useless.  Every inhale dragged in antiseptic and printer toner and latex gloves and stale coffee and human sweat buried beneath detergent and the metallic smell of the electrodes attached to their skin and

“One.”

The screens lit up.  Not bright, then bright, pulsing in uneven intervals.  They flinched violently before they could stop themself.  The machine forced rapid visual patterns across the monitors surrounding them, shapes flickering too quickly for normal eyes to track.  Faces and places and scenes and colours and a Rothko which should have been funny, all too fast for a normal person to process, faster than the last round but still too easy for Wyatt to turn it off, if they could turn it off which they probably couldn’t.  They got the point of this test, on paper.  Test the limits of the cognition, trace how their brain and heart behaves when they see the twitch, et cetera et cetera.  It still fucking hurt.

Every pulse of light fractured across every reflective surface in the room simultaneously.  Motionmotionmotionmotion ——

The machine emitted another tone. Someone shifted weight six feet behind them.  Heartbeat to the left accelerating.  Pen clicking.  Pen clicking.  Pen clicking.

“Subject stress response elevated.”

“I can hear you,” Wyatt snapped.

The doctor’s pulse sped up slightly.  Fear.  Not of Wyatt exactly, and if it was of Wyatt then they could fuck off and die because Wyatt was the one getting tortured here.  Fear of losing control of the situation.

“We need you to remain still.”

“I am still.”

“You’re trembling.”

“Well observed, Sherlock.”

Another light pulse.  The screens were brighter now.  Wyatt’s eyes watered.  Too much information.  The room refused to stop existing.  The outside rooms, too, four people outside the observation window that looked like a mirror from inside, one at least slightly sedated based on the heart rate.

Every tiny sensory detail arrived at once without hierarchy.  No filter.  No volume control.  Skin against chair.  Electricity humming through the wall conduits.  Somebody’s stomach digesting lunch.  Dust moving through the ventilation system.

There was a water stain above the third ceiling tile to the left

There was a crack in the doctor’s wedding ring.

There was blood beneath the cuticle of the technician scratching his thumb.

There was a fly trapped somewhere inside the fluorescent fixture.

There was a pulse in every throat.

Heartbeatheartbeatheartbeatheartbeat ——

“Increase cognitive load.”

“No,” Wyatt said immediately.

The doctor didn’t answer.  The images changed frequency, and now there were sounds, too, fucking awesome.  Wyatt gasped.  Pain flashed behind their eyes so sharply it bent the room sideways.

“Oh my God,” they heard themself laugh weakly.  “Oh my God, I hate you people.”

“Document verbal response.”

“Document my fucking dick.”

Another pulse.  Another tone. Unbearable detail. The older scientist leaned forward slightly. Wyatt saw sweat beginning beneath his collar before it surfaced. Saw the exact instant concern overtook professional detachment.  Couldn’t stop seeing anything.  Wanted to kill the doctor for just a second, worse to be concerned and not do anything not to be concerned and not do anything.

Their wrists strained hard enough against the leather straps to burn skin.

Not restraints.  Monitoring equipment.  Not restraints.  Not restraints. Not restraints not restraints notrestraintsnotrestraints.

The thought looped wrong in their head.  If they weren’t restraints then why couldn’t they leave?  Why couldn’t they move?  Why did everybody keep saying hold still?

The tones accelerated.

Wyatt made a sound they didn’t mean to make —— small.  Animal.  Humiliating and pathetic and that was fine, that was fine, they could feel exactly how their throat moved to make it, it had probably never done that before or maybe right after Julian died maybemaybe.

The younger technician looked away. Guilt response.  Nice person, probably — good person probably not.  Wrong building if so.  Maybe good person in a Sacrifice The Few For The Many sort of way.  Useless either way.

“Subject entering acute overload.”

“No shit,” Wyatt hissed.

Their vision sharpened further instead of blurring.  Nothing softened under stress.  They could see individual pores in the doctor’s skin.  Tiny contractions in facial muscles.  Electrical flicker in the monitors reflected through their own dilated pupils.

They were crying.  Didn’t remember starting.  The tears distorted light patterns but just made them fucked in different ways instead of more tolerable.  Worse.  Worseworseworse.

“Heart rate nearing two - hundred.”

“Cortisol spike confirmed.”

“Continue observation.”

Wyatt laughed again, too sharp.  The sound and the way their chest made it both hurt.  “You people hear yourselves, right?”

Nobody answered.  Of course nobody answered.  They weren’t cruel —— that was the fucked up part.  Nobody here was a monster.  It wasn’t like these were Connections or Umbrella scientists delighting in carving their subjects up and up and up and seeing how far they could push before they broke.  These people were just learning.  They were just managing risk.  They were just speaking gently and calmly and clinically while they tortured them without restraints because they asked so politely.

The younger technician stepped closer carefully.  His hands shook.

“Agent Harrow,” he said quietly, “try to breathe slowly.”

Wyatt stared at him —— could smell the exact second he regretted approaching a moment before it showed on his face.  Not fear because Wyatt moved.  Fear because their expression did.  Something ugly and blank flashed there before they could stop it.  Panic twisted into anger twisted into the raw instinct to escape at any cost.  They could feel every muscle moving, knew the flat cavernous anger and the heat and the hunting and the ——

The technician froze.  His heartbeat exploded.  Fear scent immediate and acidic in the air.  Wyatt hated themself instantly for causing it.

“Oh,” they said weakly, voice breaking. “No, no, sorry.  Sorry.  I’m not gonna hurt you.”

The room had gone very still.  Wyatt’s breathing came too fast now.  Their own pulse deafened them.  Everything hurt.  The lights.  The sound.  The straps.  The endless awareness.  They wanted it to stop.  They wanted one second of silence.  One second without everybody’s bodies screaming information at them constantly.  One second without being watched.

They wanted not to be a weapon at all.  They wanted not to be frightening.  They wanted not to be in pain a little more, probably.

The doctor said something quietly to another researcher.  Wyatt caught it anyway, almost laughed at the idea that whispering could possibly fucking matter with them in the room.

“Sedative?”

“No. Continue baseline collection.”

Continue.

Continue.

Continue.

Wyatt laughed again because if they didn’t laugh they were genuinely going to start screaming.

“Hey,” they said breathlessly, staring at the ceiling lights hard enough to make their eyes burn, still seeing and taking in and processing the screens from their periphery and the sounds and the heartbeats.  “You know the funniest part?”

Nobody answered.

“The virus probably hurt less than this.”

[viralweaponry]

@bioweaponry / grace & wyatt!

Wyatt knows an anxiety disorder when they hear ( and smell, Jesus Christ the stress hormones this woman is putting off, holy fuck ) one, which is almost kind of helpful. They know they're supposed to be meeting with one Grace Ashcroft and they know that Grace Ashcroft is anxious almost as a hobby. They'd gotten lost in this fuckass building ( too many people, too many lights, too much old carpet and stale coffee smell and and andandand ) until Wyatt had caught their heartbeat a floor above them and been able to navigate towards it. They burst into the meeting room ( comparatively quiet, fewer people on this floor but the vents go up two floor and some guy is fighting with his girlfriend on the phone about whether they can afford more pets ) with a cheerful, "SORRY I'M LATE I am insanely bad at navigating buildings."

They can process more now that they see them —— fragile wrists, click of bones when they move, easy to break, thin neck, nothing protecting any major arteries, stop —— and the eye contact only lasts a second because they longer they look straight at them the more they're going to do the processing - their - body - in - the - context - of - killing - them thing. Not their fault! Still yucky. They slide to sit, left leg of their chair makes a soft ticking sound only they can hear. Their hand extends. "I'm Wyatt! Happy to meet you, I know it was supposed to be Torres meeting with you today but she is sick as HELL. So I'm your BSAA check - in for now." Oh, they're making her even more anxious if her pulse is to be believed. Awesome. They try to smooth their voice and smile into something gentler. "Sorry to interrupt your workday."

[viralweaponry]

chatting about wyatt's ability below :

wyatt calls their talent "seeing the twitch" —— in official BSAA documents, it's usually called "hypercognitive response capabilities." either way, the short version is that it allows their body to take in additional sensory input and, maybe more important, process basically all of what they take in, and to do so consciously. it often looks like hyper - senses to people on the outside, and it isn't...not that. they truly can see and hear and smell and sense shit that nobody else can. they can tell you how many people are in the room —— and nearby rooms —— based on how many heartbeats they can hear. they can see microscopic scratches on the surface of a wall and the slightly change in your pulse from your throat. they can "smell" stress or fear hormones that all humans take in from their surroundings but don't consciously process. they can feel their own blood moving through every part of their body and are aware of their organs working. they process all of this in real time, which is insanely overwhelming and can overload them very quickly if they're not careful.

it's insanely useful in combat —— people's bodies give away all sort of things, like when they're going to reach for a gun or when they're scared or when they're drugged. it has utilities outside of just reading people, too; they can often tell where a building's weak points are by sound alone. people often assume it makes them basically a mind-reader in civilian contexts, too, but it doesn't —— they can tell if someone is stressed or afraid ( elevated heart rate, cortisol and adrenaline spike, pupil dilating, etc. ) but can't automatically know why, and basically all of the "this person looked to the left for three micro - seconds which means they're lying" is bullshit. that being said, it is still useful; being able to tell that someone gets stressed when a certain name is mentioned, or see their pulse jumping in their carotid artery every time they say something can at least give wyatt a start in interpreting what someone's going through.

as you can probably image, this is all really, really overwhelming! the constant barrage of sensory input is insanely difficult to deal with, and was even harder when it was new. nowadays they can usually blur the edges out enough that it's a dull roar rather than a screaming, but not always. it also means they're at least a little dissociated most of the time. it helps if they can focus on a single thing —— the same way being a crowded room full of talking people becomes more tolerable if you can focus on one conversation and tune the others out. building a hierarchy. still, their cognition doesn't always let them.

it doesn't help that they were twitchy before, and it extra doesn't help that when the BSAA picked them up they were subjected to months of tests that ran a little too close to being experiments. none of it was designed to harm, but it was designed to test the cognition's limits in ways that were often very painful. the informed consent theater was funny, if nothing else; it's not like they could actually have said no to any of it. anyway, that trauma and the fact that their life after was them being turned into a badass secret agent doing a lot of murder didn't make it easier to turn the cognition off, because now they're conditioned to see and expect danger all the time, which naturally causes higher levels of wariness / watchfulness / attention. rough combination!

in line with all of this, about the only time they don't feel completely overwhelmed is during combat, particularly intense combat; everything just narrows beautifully. the hierarchy comes easy, they can narrow their processing, etc. this makes them really good at killing, and they love doing it, despite not being sadistic or enjoying causing suffering. violence clarifies everything. the impossible rush of perfect control over motion and outcome. it can make them unsettling to teammates, because they're cheery and relaxed and they have a hard time not smiling too wide. they're not allowed to go on solo missions for the most part; officially, it's concern for them, a ( correct ) sense that without someone there to anchor them socially they can put themself into a headspace that later harms them. unofficially, wyatt knows it's also because of a fear that either wyatt or the mutation could go off the rails and need putting down.

cooking also helps for a similar reason ( clear hierarchy of inputs ) but isn't as effective.

another frustrating thing that's arrived from the combo of 'fucked up superpower' and 'trauma that worsens hypervigilance' and 'combat training that assumes everything and everyone is a potential threat' is that, despite how much they hate it and despite how much they'd love for it to stop, they tend to process the cascade from other bodies through the lens of how they can be murdered. they can't turn this off with people they like, either — someone they care about laughs and their mind supplies to exact fragility of their trachea. they're constantly aware of vulnerable joins, thin bones, fractures that healed wrong. opens the ribs slightly after a strike, could exploit that with a knife. they know it's pretty common for combatants to start automatically cataloguing the easiest ways to kill people around them, the hyperawareness of bodies just makes it worse. one of the many reasons they don't visit their parents often enough is that being around them and processing them that way is nigh unbearable. human beings are really fragile, if you understand the architecture. and does wyatt ever understand the architecture.

as a sort of necessary secondary ability, their metabolism is extremely high; processing all of that requires enormous amounts of energy, so their body burns through calories insanely fast. it means they got badly underweight early on, and still struggle to keep up enough weight to support the muscle mass they needed to build as part of now being in a combat role. this is also why they can't reliably use drugs to soften the cognition; taking enough to have a meaningful effect runs the risk of overdosing. putting them under for surgery is nightmarish, since the docs are constantly walking a very fine line between "just enough to actually make them unconscious or at least unaware, not enough to kill them" when the difference between those states is very small. they steal morphine from medical ( several of the doctors are aware and pity them too much to push it ) and, when it gets real bad, will try to walk that line, though usually not more than once every few months. despite it all, they don't want to die ( or dramatically shorten their lifespan ) and they know using more regularly would make that risk higher. some of the doctors that like wyatt are working on potential work - arounds for them, but nobody's super confident anything will come of it.

[the--firevenus]

Belated mother's day

Resident evil be creating a character that is so intertwined with the concept of motherhood that sometimes its raw and real but then they decide to never ever mention her again

this whole section of RE8 is practically for her as much as it is about her.

[viralweaponry]

i see a lot of people who believe mia never told ethan about her work with the connections —— i get where this belief comes from in the text, and i don't even think it's out of character or anything. but it isn't my personal read, and so my mia has told ethan about what she was doing before dulvey. post resident evil 7, she was deeply self-hating and believed that she deserved to be left by him; keeping her sins a secret would have been antithetical to her goal, which was, at least on some level, "convince ethan to leave me." that he never did is something she finds genuinely difficult to understand.

i do want to add, as an aside —— mia was not a scientist with the connections. she did not develop the E - series, or any series. she was an operative, and she was damn good at it, and she knew that she was assisting with genuine evil. i don't make this distinction to absolve her, just to clarify what her role was with the organization. she was much closer to ada, in her role, than with someone like birkin.