I Write Stuff Sometimes

Horror Lover | Ancient Being 18+ Only

[wil-o-wispy]

Wil-O-Wispy Fic Master List

This will be a living post since this will be updated with all of my writing for the time being:

Resident Evil:

Chris Redfield x FEM!Reader

The Wife, the Lover, and the Bastard Son

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

Part 7

Zeno (RE9) x FEM!Reader

Stolen Time, Borrowed Life - Read Here

Miscellaneous Interests:

Blue Prince: A Crown for the Unseen (Simon/His Mom tribute)

a/n 7/9/2024: Really appreciating all the love for my writing so far! I didn't expect to get nearly as much love on the Bastard series as it has. Know that your comments and reblogs with all your kind words make me twirl my hair and kick my feet and the likes warm my heart.

[wil-o-wispy]

big fan of the bastard series you have going on I can't wait for next chapter!!

but I have to ask.. will you ever write a separate series/fic about the relationship between reader and wesker pre re5? or give us some flashbacks of the earlier stages of this relationship cuz o.m.g I'm obsessed with how you write it 🥹 it has my mind thinking non stop about every moment between them and what could've happen I can't get it out of my head, I might be enjoying this relationship more than the x chris one... #guilty

This is the plan! You are not the only ask in my inbox asking for more Wesker (I understand, I enjoy writing that dynamic too much to let it sit as is).

I've already cut out a lot of flashback things that would have messed with the flow of Bastard, but those are going to be reworked into an eventual prequel.

Any prequel will expand beyond RE5. I'm thinking it'll stretch back to Wesker's STARS days in RE1, flow into RE3 and have some scenes leading into RE5.

The above is bound to change though. I'm deep in the weeds with Bastard and Borrowed Life right now and I'm bound to veer into another direction if I workshop a more interesting plot line.

Thanks for reading!

[wil-o-wispy]

So is the Zeno x Reader fic "Stolen Time, Borrowed Life" will become a series or is this just a oneshot?👀

Based on the court of public opinion, I'm drafting more parts. Trust!

It'll probably be out after Part 8 of the Bastard series! Gotta make sure the Chris lovers are fed.

[wil-o-wispy]

Stolen Time, Borrowed Life - Part 1

Pairing: Zeno x FEM!Reader

Summary: At long last, Zeno has finally acquired Wesker's widow. Unfortunately for him, nothing could have prepared him for how sweet you are when concussed.

Content: Reader has a concussion, fluff/angst wombo combo but mostly angst, mistaken identity, pretty sure this counts as dubious consent? Spolier for RE9 if you haven't already played it.

w/c: 4.3k

Ao3 Link

In the grandeur of his home office, Zeno leans patiently on the window by his desk nursing a cigarette between his fingertips with a smirk on his face. Further back in the room, you lay unconscious on the leather couch; your head bandaged and your breaths shallow.

Your kidnapping had proved to be easier than expected when an early opportunity presented itself. His hired goons were efficient and eager for payment, which Zeno handsomely rewarded. He didn’t even mind that you’d accidentally taken a hit to the head during extraction. You held precious information he’d been dying to get a hold of for years. Physical wounds would heal after all. He had access to any doctor in the world and enough money to get any one of them to make a house call. All he had to do now was wait for you to wake up.

He can wait.

Zeno is a patient man when he wants to be.

The Connections had been forthright with information regarding the infamous Albert Wesker in the years he’d worked through their ranks; his intelligence, his cunning, his ruthlessness, but not so much with matters regarding more exclusive, personal details. Zeno is not the type to live without knowing exclusive details.

Zeno is the type of man to act when he wants something. And for years, he’s wanted every bit of information on the man he begrudgingly shares a face with. For years he’d been looking for you.

And now he has you on his couch. 

And you’re beginning to stir into consciousness.

Zeno’s lip curls, and he pushes himself off of the window, snuffing out his cigarette in the crystal bowl on his desk as he leisurely saunters closer to you.

“Mrs. Wesker, do you know where you are?” Zeno drawls.

He kneels next to the couch, his gaze never leaving your face as your eyes finally flutter open. Zeno smirks. “Or who I am?”

Your eyes finally come into focus on Zeno for a long moment, then you smile. “Honey, you’re back.” You coo sluggishly, your voice dripping in a sweetness that Zeno doesn’t expect. He stares at you, momentarily dumbfounded, only coming to his senses when he feels the heat of your palm moving to caress his cheek.

He uses his superhuman reflexes to catch your wrist before your hand makes contact, grip firm but not bone-crushing, 

“Honey?” He parrots back, his voice low. “Who do you think I am?

“I know who you are, Albert.” You say sweetly, blinking slowly. With your wrist still in Zeno’s grip, you tilt your hand forward and run a finger gently over the T-Virus mark that mars Zeno’s face, causing him to stiffen. “You’ve been taking more viruses. You promised you’d tell me if you were going to take another one.” You utter slowly in a soft reprimand.

Zeno feels one of his eyes twitch and his jaw clench so tightly his teeth ache. You’re talking nonsense. You think he’s Wesker. 

“You are delusional, woman.” Zeno grits out, jaw set in a barely contained rage. He’s been compared to a ghost his whole existence and your concussed brain mistaking him for your dead husband is doing nothing to curb his short temper. 

You only smile back in a daze, completely unaware of Zeno’s anger. “I have eyes, darling. You didn’t have that before you left the manor. It’s okay. I still think you’re handsome.” 

The way you smile is pissing Zeno off. This isn’t the way he thought this would go in the slightest. He’d expected shock. He’d prepared for anger. He expected fear and wariness. He was prepared to brush off empty threats. He was prepared for any number of insults to be hurled at him like in past interrogations with far more dangerous targets. Not flirting. Not loving touches meant for a man long dead.

“Woman-” Zeno spits, forcing himself to take a deep breath so he doesn’t blow his top on a deluded captive of all things. “You are confused. I’m not Albert. You need treatment.”

His words don’t breach the haze of affection on your face. “Your eyes are different.” You drawl brainlessly, looking at Zeno’s golden eyes through his sunglasses.

Zeno’s scowl disappears, a realization hitting him.

He could still get some of what he wants with you sweet and pliable like this. More ammunition to have at his disposal when you finally come to your senses.

“Different?” Zeno drawls, leaning closer to you to examine every micro-expression that crosses your face. A snakeskin gloved hand removes his sunglasses, meticulously picked among hundreds to highlight his bone structure, to reveal his otherworldly eyes to you more clearly while his other hand still grips your wrist with a less punishing grip. The glasses are discarded on a nearby table. “How so?”

“They were red like rubies when you left.” You continue, still gazing up at Zeno with a soft smile on your face. “Now they’re golden like amber, sunlight, turmeric…” You trail off, sighing up at him wistfully. “... still beautiful.”

Zeno stiffens. Your words are so genuine and unguarded that it’s stirring up warm feelings he’s unwilling to acknowledge. He’s used to attention, both negative and performatively positive. He’s used to empty praise from higher ups. He’s used to admiration from people always expecting something in return. He’s used to hollow flirting from people only interesting enough to spend a night with.

But your freely given affection gives him pause, cracking his cold expression into something more vulnerable, before quickly being covered in ice once again. “You’re delirious.” He utters, but the sharpness in his tone is weaker than before.

“-ly in love with you.” You coo, finishing a sentence that you’ve obviously said countless times with your real husband. Your dead husband, Zeno reminds himself. The husband that he looks so eerily like. Zeno clenches and unclenches his jaw. This softness he feels towards you is a byproduct of trace memories embedded in his borrowed DNA. Nothing more. Yet, he can’t bring himself to pull away from your gentle touch on his cheek.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Zeno mutters, unable to look away from the loving expression on your face.

You blink. “You got a haircut.” You continue, seemingly having tunnel vision on “your husband’s” different physicalities.

The edge of Zeno’s mouth twitches, fighting off amusement. Such a selectively observant thing you are when concussed. “I did.” Zeno lies, indulging your false reality for the time being.

“It’s shorter on the sides. Lighter too. Very modern. ” You compliment, that dazed smile still on your face. Your free hand fumbles into Zeno’s hair before he can protest, and the feeling of your fingertips brushing against his scalp has his breath hitching. 

A better man would swat your hand away.

A better man would call for the doctor to sedate you until this fever dream of yours passes and Zeno can interrogate you properly, but he can’t bring himself to shatter your illusion just yet.

Zeno is a strong, powerful man in the eyes of others, but with you in this moment he feels utterly weak to your sweetness. Even the strongest steel can bend with enough patience, time, and force. And the sheer force of your affection on his guarded, lonely heart wasn’t something he was prepared to fend off.

Perhaps a small indulgence is in order. To keep you talking so freely, of course.

Zeno finds himself leaning into your touch, eyes fluttering closed from your gentle fingers sifting through his hair.

“There we go.” You whisper, flattening your hand against his face idly rubbing your thumb on his cheekbone. “You’re always so tense when you come back after a long trip.”

Your voice, the way you're speaking, and the warmth underlying your affections are helplessly addicting. Zeno doesn’t remember the last time he felt cherished like this and he can feel his shoulders sag and jaw relax under your careful touches.

“The suit’s new too. What’s the occasion?” You ask softly, your fingertips softly tracing the T-Virus marks snaking down his jaw.

The suit. Right. It is different from anything Wesker ever wore.  

”It’s-”  Zeno leans back slightly and clears his throat, adjusting his tie. A nervous tick he’d picked up and never managed to kick. A clear signal to others he’s rich, powerful and worthy of respect? Zeno’s carefully calculated attempt to be the most stylish man in the room to distract from his stolen genetics? 

“-business. Nothing you need to trouble yourself over.” He says easily, slipping back into a more familiar (and comfortable) role as the suave, charming businessman. It’s not too different from a charming husband, he rationalizes in his mind.

“It’s really nice. White, three-piece. You’re not worried about stains?” You ask slowly with concern in your voice.

It’s astonishing how much you’re noticing about him while still missing the obvious. Zeno doesn’t bother to curb his smirk this time.

“It’s a special fabric. Stain resistant. Nothing to worry over, darling.” He replies. The pet name slips out before he can stop himself and he momentarily curses himself for it, but it’s quickly forgotten when you smile so warmly up at him. His answer seems to satisfy your worry and your hands start to wander once again. Zeno lets out a pleased hum as he leans into your touch.

He lets himself sink further into your touch when the hands on his cheek and head trace over his skin to rub the exposed sides of his neck and his clothed shoulders. He lets out a displeased grunt when you suddenly stop.

“Your ear’s pierced.” You sluggishly say with surprise, staring at the dagger dangling from his left ear.

That statement grounds him in an instant, his eyes snapping back open. A new suit is easy to explain away as wanting to try something new or needing one for an event. A piercing is a more challenging choice. For Zeno, he was seventeen and sick of everything being decided for him. He wanted to do something permanent for himself even if it was as small as a piece of metal in his ear. He’d stubbornly kept repiercing the same spot over the years whenever he’d accidentally left the jewelry out for too long and the hole closed up thanks to the menagerie of viruses running through his veins. He never minded the pain of it. It was a constant reminder of his own autonomy.

But Wesker had no such rebellion as far as he knew. Too out of character for even your hazy mind to rationalize. So Zeno opts for a simple approach. 

“Yes.” Zeno finally answers, flexing and unflexing his fingers like he’s itching to reach out and touch you but stubbornly holding himself back. “It’s new.”

You stare, and for a frightening moment Zeno believes you may have come to your senses. He lets out a relieved sigh when your confusion morphs back into quiet affection, gently resuming your gentle touches on Zeno’s neck. “Well, now I know who to give those single earrings too. I feel bad for losing so many. You spent good money on those for me.”

“Don’t worry. I can always buy you more pairs.” Zeno utters, a sudden lump forming in his throat when you give him another hazy smile. He’s surprised at how easy it is for him to slip into the role of doting husband. 

“Always so sweet to me.” You coo, the love in your eyes so earnest that it makes Zeno’s chest feel tight and his body to sink into your touch again.

It’s not for you. Stop indulging her whims. You’re better than this.

“Are you working in the next hour?” You ask sweetly, still caressing Zeno’s cheek.

The answer is always yes; Zeno has meetings to plan, notes to review, projects to check in on, angry calls to make. But with you like this, touching him, saying sweet things, he can’t bring himself to pull away from it just yet.

“No.” He utters reluctantly. “I have an hour free.”

“Care for a cuddle?”

Zeno is silent. He knows he shouldn’t give in more than he already has, but he finds himself torn between his common sense and his growing desire to keep entertaining your little fantasy. He’s painfully aware this whole situation is a byproduct of your concussed brain and that it’s not him you actually want, but with the way you’re looking at him, with that sweet, hopeful anticipation in your features, he finds it impossible for the word “no” to leave his lips.

“Alright.” He finally says lowly, a hesitance in his voice that betrays how suddenly nervous he is when he swallows. “A cuddle.”

Zeno finally sits on the leather couch, guiding you to sit across his lap. He leans back until he’s supported by the cushion, pulling you carefully with him. He’s acutely aware of every point of contact between you two; your plush thighs across his lap, his gloved hand on your hip, your hair tickling his chin from the height difference between you two. He unconsciously finds himself tilting his head to breathe in the scent of your hair. He can’t even think straight enough to decipher words to describe it; only indescribably good. Relaxing. Addicting.

This is ridiculous. He’s acting ridiculous. The sensible part of his brain is screaming that he’s a fool for indulging your delusions, but the affection-starved part that he had long convinced himself didn’t exist easily drowns out any remaining common sense. 

You lazily snake a hand over his shoulders and tuck your head into Zeno’s neck, your other palm slipping itself onto his dress shirt below his waistcoat as you hum, content and comfortable. “I miss this when you’re gone.” You sigh into his neck.

Your words only make the unfamiliar ache that’s settled in his chest more pronounced. He struggles to identify the emotion, his analytical brain running through every possibility before it lands on longing. He doesn’t even think to feel ashamed. Your hands feel chilled against his furnace of a body from the viruses living in his blood. Your careful touch and sweet words have made him feel more alive than anything he’s injected into his veins, but Zeno would rather die than admit that to himself.

He only breathes you in deeper and holds onto you tighter, his nose burying itself in your hair.

You notice his tightened grip. Of course you do with Zeno’s hands dimpling your skin through your clothes. You only chuckle. “It’s alright, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”

Zeno can feel how fast his heart has started beating. He’s certain you can feel it too under your hypnotizing touch. 

His body betrays him and does the stupidest thing possible before he can stop it.

He feels his lips pressing a kiss into the crown of your head.

“... I know.” He breathes. 

You giggle and lift your head to look up at Zeno, that hazy affection still painfully prevalent on your face, now made even more irresistible by the flush on your cheeks. “You missed.”

“Did I?” Zeno utters in a low, dangerously hungry tone. You only nod and try to tilt your head up to Zeno’s lips, but the angle you’re sitting at makes it impossible for you to close the distance on your own.

 Zeno stares, staring intently at your lips.

He’s not that much of a glutton for punishment. 

“You’ve got a head injury.” Zeno grits out, his restraint being held on by a thread of decency and the last shreds of his self-control. “I’m not taking advantage of you in this condition.”

You hazily chuckle, nuzzling back into his neck. “Always such a gentleman when I’m hurt.” Your hand is still rubbing Zeno’s chest. Your thumb catches just below a shirt button, guiding your thumb to brush against a pectoral muscle. The skin on skin contact makes Zeno shiver involuntarily and his breath hitch and a heat to kindle in his gut.

He is not going to get a hard-on from you touching his chest. God damn it, he won’t.

“Don’t get used to it.” He grits out, clearing his throat and trying to act as composed as possible and not like he’s moments away from kissing that grin right off of your beautiful face. 

You only giggle and take a deep breath to relax into Zeno, but you pause. You breathe in again. “You smell different.” Your voice sounds almost hurt when you say that.

Fuck.

Zeno has no idea what expensive soaps or cologne Wesker used to douse himself in, or why you sounded so vulnerable when you pointed out his unique smell. His fingers flex from where they’re grasping your hip and shoulder, scrambling to come up with a reasonable response that won’t make you want to get out of his lap. 

“Different how?” His voice comes out softer than intended, not wanting to upset you

“Did you change your cologne?” You ask slowly, blinking up at him with those mesmerizing eyes of yours.

An awkwardly long pause stretches between you two. “Maybe.”

“You didn’t like what I got you?” You ask softly with a frown.

“I…” Zeno utters, having no clue how to respond. He tries in vain to bring any kind of memory to surface from Wesker’s life from his borrowed blood that will help keep this fantasy alive, but any kind of trace memory he’s inherited is vague and more of a feeling or general emotion at the best of times. He has nothing. He’ll have to improvise.

What do you want to hear? No, you might see right through that and make this situation worse. 

Tell you the truth? Out of the question.

“... I wanted something different.” Zeno finally finishes, carefully watching your reaction.

“I wish you would have told me. I never want to get you things you don’t like. Did it aggravate your nose too much?” You ask with painfully genuine concern in your voice.

Your expression is nothing but sincere and it makes Zeno’s chest ache even more. Is this what  loving someone is like? Fretting over a stupid present that shouldn’t even matter? To care about their happiness with small gestures and sweet words?

Zeno forces out a bitter chuckle, trying to remain the illusion of composedness even as he swallows down a painful lump in his throat. “It was a bit strong. Too strong.” He rasps.

You frown and for a moment Zeno has a heartstopping fear that you’ll pull away, which is quickly overwhelmed by a much stronger feeling of possessiveness when he feels you nuzzle into him again and plant a chaste kiss on his neck. “I’m sorry. Do you not like cedar anymore?” 

How can you expect him to respond after that? Zeno, embarrassingly, can’t even muster enough composure to form words, so he simply shakes his head.

“What do you like nowadays?” You ask, subtly resuming your gentle rubbing on Zeno’s chest.

Breathe you fool. Answer her.

“Pine.” Zeno finally grits out. He clears his throat again to compose himself.  “I like pine.” He says, softer.

Another sweet smile from you. “I’ll remember that for next time. Promise.”

There’s a simultaneous warmth that Zeno feels around his heart, and a twist in his gut at the unwavering certainty in your voice that there will be a next time. 

He can't let you say any more things like that. It will only hurt him more when you stop saying them after you come to your senses at some point. He logically knows this won’t last forever, but that doesn’t stop the soft, raw part of him to yearn hopelessly for more.

“Don’t. I might not deserve it.” Zeno breathes softly, frozen in place and not trusting himself to move or even look at you as he stares at the bookshelf stuffed to the brim with leather bound books.

You raise your head again, still sporting that disarming smile. “Doesn’t matter. I’m giving it anyway.” You say just as soft, gazing up at Zeno like he’s the center of your universe. 

And that’s what finally makes him break.

He suddenly lunges forward with all of his earlier restraint a forgotten memory, his lips molding with yours in a borderline desperate eagerness and his hand on your back raising to cup the junction of your head and neck so he doesn’t accidentally aggravate your head injury further. He pulls you tightly to his chest so there’s no remaining space between the two of you; his hand digs into the flesh of your hip, your hand has once again finds itself cupping Zeno’s cheek, and Zeno’s chest feels as if it’s about to burst from the sheer amount of longing to have you in his arms until the end of time. 

But you’re both still human for the most part and need oxygen, so at some point he pulls away to let you breathe. You’re flushed and panting and so beautiful with your eyes half-lidded. 

Zeno takes a shuddering breath against your lips, fingers tangling into the hair at your nape while he gazes at you like a man starved. His whole being aches with a mixture of hunger and guilt because you looked at him like he meant everything to you and it’s not meant for him. Not really. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting to keep that addictive look on your face. 

It’s not on your face now, though.

Your eyes are half-lidded and confused, he realizes.

“Honey, did something happen?” You pant with genuine concern, your hand still cupping his cheek. Your thumb rubs that damned T-Virus mark on his face like before, but instead of freezing up, Zeno leans into it, his eyes closing. 

He can’t keep doing this. 

Entertaining this delusion further is just setting up more emotional fallout down the line. 

Damn that soft, worried expression on your face. That breathtaking, wide-eyed expression. That single-minded worry and devotion. It grips his heart so tightly that it unravels any rational thought he has left. Damn him for being too embarrassingly weak to reject your affections. Damn Albert Wesker for making his wife so head-over-heels in love with him that Zeno will never stand a chance at having it from you himself. 

“No, nothing happened.” Zeno grits out, barely a whisper. The lie sits bitter on his tongue, unlike his easy excuses from before.

“You kiss different.” You say with concern.

“Different.” Zeno echoes, with fresh anxiety ripping through him. Of course he kisses differently. He kissed you like you were going to slip through his fingers any moment. Like this would be the first and only time he could get his mouth on yours. 

“Bad different?” Zeno rasps, suddenly second guessing every kiss he’s had in his life

“No! No, not at all.” You reassure, your expression painfully tender. Zeno can tell you mean it, and it immediately cuts through the haze of his spiraling thoughts. His desperate grip on you loosens as he searches your face for a lie, or worse, pity. All he finds is softness. That unwavering affection and devotion that sparked this whole mess in the first place that makes him ache with a longing and greed for more.

“Then what kind?” Zeno utters reluctantly, like he’s nervous about the answer.

“It’s just… it’s less certain. Like you’re kissing me for the last time or something. Don’t get me wrong, I love the enthusiasm, but is everything okay?” You ask, concerned and still achingly sweet as you keep caressing Zeno’s cheek.

Zeno’s grip goes slack, then tightens again. He can’t deny that he never wants to let you go, even though this whole arrangement is something fleeting and doomed. Zeno only grunts and leans his forehead against yours, savoring the proximity and rubbing your skin through your clothes for a moment before he utters, “No.”

A long pause.

“I don’t know if I can give it back.” His words are barely audible. 

“Give what back?” You whisper lovingly.

There are a hundred answers to that question that wouldn’t begin to cover what you deserve. The unwavering devotion? A loving look that could disarm a vengeful god? Tender care that makes you feel like a queen? You’re so soft and Zeno is anything but soft. Would you still look at him with such adoration if you knew he was only a broken copy of the man you fell in love with? 

“... nothing. It’s nothing.” Zeno says, finally answering after a prolonged silence. 

“Honey?” You whisper with worry and affection, lifting your other hand to cradle his face, and Zeno immediately melts into your touch despite his busy mind. He feels that same unfamiliar twist of guilt in his gut from earlier, stronger this time. He’s not the one you’re supposed to fuss over or care about. 

But he’ll be damned if he gives it up now. He turns his face slightly to leave a light kiss on your palm. Your skin is comparatively cool against his lips and it only makes him want to sink into your affections further.

You smile at the kiss. “You don’t have to tell me now, but just know I’ll be right here if you want to talk. I’ll just listen.”

Zeno remains silent for a long time, simply allowing himself to indulge in your softness.Your emotional safety. His voice is rough when he finally speaks. “Why?”

“Because I love you. You’re stuck with me for a long ass time.” You say, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world, and with such earnest affection.

Zeno lets out a hoarse laugh. “That’s a dangerous promise to make, sweetheart.”

“Maybe I love danger.” You respond, once again, with an answer you’ve told your real husband countless times.

Silence. 

Instead of trying to distance himself from the sweet response, Zeno’s face melts into a handsome smirk. “Even if the danger is me?” 

“Especially if the danger is you.” You coo, giving his lips a light peck. Zeno’s lips chase yours again before you even have the chance to pull away. 

Damn the future. He has you now.

And Zeno is not one to let go of things that he considers his.

a/n: I don't know what it is, but this man has me in a chokehold. Thanks for reading!

[wil-o-wispy]

please tell me your gonna continue the bastard

I have great news for you. Part 7 is out.

[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover, and the Bastard Son - Part 7

Pairing: Chris Redfield x FEM!Reader

Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (you are here)

Summary: Everything comes to a crescendo.

Content: Canon typical violence/swearing, descriptions of blood, references/spoilers for RE5, spoilers for RE6, descriptions of Uroboros infection/mutation, possessive behavior, canon typical escape tactics plus some unusual ones. Typical boss fight shenanigans. Lots of Guns. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

w/c: 8.6k

“JAKE?!” You screech, eyes bulging out of your head at Jake’s reckless choice of action. Jake pushes the plunger down all the way until there’s nothing left, then forcibly tosses the empty Uroboros vial to the side and spits out the needle cap with a shit eating grin on his face.

For a moment, nothing happens. 

For a moment, you believe Jake may be the only person on Earth immune to Uroboros.

For a moment, even Jake believes that he’s alright from the victorious smirk on his face.

But then pain shoots across his features. To his credit, Jake doesn’t collapse immediately. He sways on his feet and tries to keep himself upright on some rubble for a few agonizing moments with labored breath, and then he crumbles to the ground, clutching his neck and breathing even more heavily.

 Despite the reckless display of defiance, Albert only raises an eyebrow, seemingly only annoyed at the fact that Jake just disposed of his easy leverage over you.

“You have nerve, I’ll give you that. Commendable, but reckless.” Albert utters with condescension laced in every word as he saunters towards Jake on the ground with you still in hand.

Albert uses the heel of his boot to nudge Jake’s shoulder to roll him over onto his back. When Albert catches a glimpse of Jake’s face, his face morphs from annoyance to intrigue. You can’t tell from this angle, but you know there’s something glimmering in Albert’s eyes. You don’t know everything about Uroboros, but you know from the expression on Albert’s face that Jake’s reaction isn’t a failure to bond to the virus.

“My, my, what an interesting turn of events.” Albert looms above where Jake is writhing on the ground and smirks. “Let’s see if you’re really my flesh and blood. Hm?”

Albert doesn’t take his eyes off of Jake when he roughly sets you to your feet, the tendrils around your neck finally retracting so you can get some oxygen back in your system. He speaks while still taking in every detail of Jake’s expression.

“My darling, find a computer that’s functional. We have data to record.”

You don’t move, frozen in horror. All you can do is stare at Jake; the look of pain on his face, the sweat on his brow, the desperate attempt to disguise the uncertainty in his eyes as he stares defiantly up at his father. Jake’s eyes flicker behind Albert towards the grated ceiling, then he looks back at Albert with a toothy grin.

“I ain’t no lab rat old man, but I'm not a half bad distraction.” The wry smile on his face tells you everything you need to know: his little stunt may have been unplanned, but Jake didn’t come alone.

Jake’s words give you half a mind to look up, then move a few steps away so you’re not in the line of fire.

A crack of gunfire that might as well have been a thunder bolt shatters the air and a bullet embeds itself in Albert’s side, which causes him to hiss from the pain. Albert’s muscles tense and ripple from the unexpected intrusion, and he looks up with blazing eyes to look for whoever dared to shoot him.  

Aiming a sniper rifle through a piece of grating that’s been removed from the ceiling-floor above is the one and only Jill Valentine. 

Apart from a few self-defence training sessions, you hadn’t interacted with her much since Africa from Jill’s own silent insistence. You didn’t blame her. You didn’t exactly hold good connotations in Jill’s mind. You have a feeling that being brainwashed by your husband and forced to carry out acts of biological terror as well as babysit you on the Africa tanker would do that to anyone. However, you were under the impression that she was off active duty due to the trauma. You mentally thank whatever medic cleared her to come back just in the nick of time. You know she won’t show Albert any mercy.

Albert recognizes who it is, and lets out a nearly manic chuckle.

“Ah! Jill! Tell me, how was the healing process of having that little device of mine removed? It’s not pleasant I’d imagine.” Albert mocks, his perceived superiority over Jill still very much present in his manner of speech.

Jill fires another shot, hitting Albert in the shoulder. “Why don’t you get your ass up here and find out?” Jill grits though her teeth, eyes blazing with determination. Behind her, a familiar, muscular figure that makes your heart beat faster emerges from the shadows and smoke, and immediately causes Albert’s face to morph from smug to furious.

“Chris.” Albert spits through his teeth, his demon eyes glowing with simmering rage as he shakes out his shoulder from the sting of the high caliber gun. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to have you both back in the field, but that would be a lie.” 

Chris only looks back at Albert with a steely, determined look, his Magnum revolver poised and at the ready. “Stand down, Wesker! Or did you forget how this ended last time?”

Albert lets out a crazed laugh at his words. “Oh Chris, not to worry. My memory is perfectly intact!”

As soon as Albert finishes his sentence, he flings a piece of burning debris at the grated floor of the lab above towards Chris and Jill. You barely catch a glimpse of them diving for cover before embers and molten metal burst like a firework against the grating, leaving a sizable hole in the process.

While the dynamic duo is distracted, Albert turns his blazing gaze to you. He quickly snatches you with his Uroboros arm again and shoves you into the remaining spare glass chamber, then seals it with you trapped inside. His voice, along with the symphony of burning debris, sounds slightly muffled through the glass.

“You just sit back, relax, and take mental note of our boy, my dear. We can play happy family after I deal with a little pest problem.”

Albert uses his Uroboros arm and haphazardly drags Jake over to the glass chamber by the ankle and deposits him where you have a clear view of his writhing body. Then, he takes advantage of his mutated biology to jump towards the newly made hole in the grating and his Uroboros arm to pull himself through the rest of the way.

You waste no time kneeling down and thumping your palms on the glass to get Jake’s attention.

“Jake? Look at me. How are you feeling?” You do your best to keep your tone calm and even, but on the inside you’re worried sick and expecting Jake to drop dead any second.

“Not gonna sugarcoat it-” Jake winces and curls in on himself, clutching the injection site. “-this one’s got a kick to it.”

Your mouth drops open and you’re speechless for a few seconds. “You’re an S-Tier idiot, you know that? A kick? Do you make a fucking habit out of injecting yourself with random viruses?”

“Only when the situation calls for it Doc.”

If Jake weren’t possibly dying in front of you and you weren’t currently trapped behind a wall of glass, you would have slapped him upside the head for that response. You take a deep breath to calm yourself.

“After I fix you, we’re having a long chat about your lack of self-preservation skills!”

Metal whines and machinery crashes against concrete above you and Jake, causing both of you to look up. Albert and B.S.A.A.’s finest are in the middle of an all out brawl. Unsurprisingly, Albert can’t resist the opportunity to monologue.

“You see Chris, I’ve had plenty of time to mull over my past shortcomings when you and your partner blasted me into oblivion.” You hear Albert’s voice float down from above, even inside the pod.

You turn your attention back to Jake. “We don’t have a lot of time! How’d you get out of this thing?”

“Knife in the seal… then push.” Jake pants, eyes starting to become unfocused. You have nothing at your disposal inside the pod. Jake is going to have to get you out. He abandoned his knife when he plunged it into Albert’s back, so you’ll have to help him improvise.  He’s looking more and more out of it by the minute though. You quickly look around Jake for something sharp in his vicinity, and there’s a few pieces of metal that were shattered off of a piece of equipment close to Jake.

“Okay, there’s some metal a few feet from your head on your right. Use that!”

As Jake struggles to get his limbs to cooperate with him, you continue to hear Albert’s sardonic voice, even above the near constant gunfire.

“I’ve thought it through a hundred times over, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I was too sentimental.”

Jake uses the tips of his fingers to slide a piece of metal close enough to grab it, then awkwardly uses his body weight to push it into the seal at the bottom of the glass door. He breathes heavily with the strain of trying to wedge it in there, but you’re quick to encourage him to keep going, as well as try and keep him lucid enough to get you out.

“You can do it! Come on! Just do this one thing, and you can rest.” Your hand resting on the glass as your eyes periodically dart to the grating above. When Jake finally has the metal decently wedged in, he flops his arm on top of it and rolls over it to try and break the seal with his body weight. As Jake struggles and you push against the glass from the inside to help him, Albert continues to speak with venom in his voice from above.

“I wanted to put a bullet in your skull on the bomber, but first I wanted you to know that all of your heroics were inconsequential. To witness the world as it should be before seeing the fight leave your eyes with my S.T.A.R.S. issued pistol, Chris. Ending our story with what it began with.”

You finally hear the hiss of a seal being broken and you’re able to wedge the door open using your shoulder and squeeze out. You immediately kneel down on the ground to hold Jake’s face with him being in a fetal position. You look at his pupils, pushing up an eyelid with your thumb: dilated but no black veins. Good. You put your fore and middle fingers on his pulse by his jaw: extremely quick heart rate. Bad.

“Where’s the case?” You ask, struggling to remain calm and collected for Jake’s sake.

“Case?” Jake slurs.

“The attaché case you got the virus from! Did you see where Wesker tossed it?”

Jake forces himself out of the fetal position long enough to point to your left and then returns to his original position on the ground. A thick sheen of sweat covers his grimacing face.

You scamper over to where Jake pointed, looking through rubble in a frenzy as you hear Albert continue to speak from above.

“At the time I thought it a poetic end to our constant struggle, but now I realize it was performative pomp and circumstance. An apex predator toying with its food and letting it slip away in the process.”

After an agonizingly long search that only lasts a few seconds, you find the case face down in some rubble. You grab the case, then a random metal shard close by and start trying to pry open the casing inside. Contrary to what a lot of scientists thought after Africa happened, a dose of Uroboros doesn’t just contain the virus. It’s mostly suppressant with a small percentage of the virus mixed in. 

However, since Albert had so many cases on hand to stay on top of his dosage, sometimes the syringes needed to be recalibrated. If left in storage too long, the Uroboros virus would adapt and start to make up a larger percentage of the vial than originally intended, as indicated by a color strip on the inside of the vial. To not waste a dose, Excella and her scientists came up with a solution: keep extra supplies in the case so one could quickly recalibrate the dosage and not waste a shot.

You’re looking for one thing: a suppressant kit. 

Jake hasn’t become a pile of worms, so that means his DNA is somewhat compatible with the virus. He’s also writhing on the ground in pain and becoming delirious from a dose left in storage for years, so he needs help right now.

You finally get the casing off and you’re relieved to see exactly what you’re looking for: an empty syringe with a small vial of suppressant.

It might not be enough but it’s better than nothing.

You quickly take out the syringe, uncap it, then plunge the needle through the lid and fill up the syringe as much as you can. You scurry back over to where Jake is on the ground with the needle and vial. His body shakes uncontrollably, his breathing shallow and eyes screwed shut.

“Shh shhh shhhh you’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.” You soothe, setting the remaining suppressant in the vial on the ground and turning Jake over onto his back with one arm while the other is poised to give him the shot. Jake’s muscles are too tense though. You don’t want to risk the needle accidentally breaking from an improper injection. Who knows if the other cases have their backup suppressant kits intact? You can’t rush this. You have to inject him where he injected himself for this to work quick enough.

“Jake, I need you to relax your neck, okay? I’m gonna give you a shot.”

Jake doesn’t respond in any way that’s appropriate to your request. He’s mumbling something under his breath, his hand reaching for something invisible away from you as he tries in vain to accomplish something only known to him.

“Jake?” You try again, less gentle this time.

Jake doesn’t seem to hear you, he just keeps breathing heavily with out of focus eyes reaching for something that isn’t there and mumbling more insistently. 

You’re running out of time!

“Jake Muller, look at me right now!” You snap.

It works. Jake’s eyes dart over to yours.

“Mom?” His voice is thick and slightly slurred.

 Your face falls and your heart breaks for him. He looks so scared that you don’t bother to correct him. He looks like he needs his mother right now.

“I’m giving you a shot, okay? It’s going to hurt, but it’ll help you. But I need you to relax your neck.”

You make sure to emphasize those last words, needing your request to pierce through the fog of Jake’s mind. Jake blinks slowly, then nods, his head flopping to the side as he continues to breathe heavily.

“Three, two-” You count down, threading the needle into Jake's neck on an unsaid “one.” Jake hisses out a pained breath from the injection, but he does a good job of staying still for you.

When the syringe is empty, you fill it up to the brim again, listening to Albert continue to monologue above you as you inject the second dose a little further away from the original injection site further down his shoulder.

“And now, since I was so crudely awoken by this new Umbrella’s finest idiots, I can rectify that oversight. I think tearing you limb from limb will be a much more satisfying way to kill you.”

You inject the third dose slightly above the original injection near Jake’s ear. “You’re doing really good, just keep still like that. We didn’t get to talk too much about you earlier. Where in Edonia did you grow up?” You keep your voice soothing and placating.

“N-n-n-nah vah...” Jake mumbles, breathing heavily and looking exhausted. However, his eyes look slightly more focused. You keep encouraging him.

“It’s okay, try again. What city did you grow up in Jake?” 

“N-Narva. We lived nearby.” Jake finally chokes out. He’s slowly becoming less disoriented as you get more suppressant into his system. Albert continues to speak above you both.

“And for Jill? I’m sure there’s a suitable device around here somewhere that can fix that defiant attitude of hers. After all, all Gods need a loyal dog at their feet. And it’s so difficult to come by ones already well-trained.”

You extract the last bit of suppressant from the vial and slowly inject it into the back of his shoulder. 

“Can you lift up your arm for me?” You ask, doing a good job of keeping your composure.

You see Jake flex his fingers and move his arm upwards, but it begins shaking uncontrollably when it’s lifted about six inches and Jake lets out a huff as he lets it fall back on the ground. 

Fuck. He needs more.

“Okay. That’s okay…” You mutter, trying to convince yourself more than you’re trying to convince Jake. An ear-grating metallic whine resounds around the chamber from above and causes the room to shake and some debris to fall from above. Some metal grating narrowly misses Jake by inches. You toss your syringe to the side and grab the underside of Jake’s shoulders, half-lifting half-dragging him into the glass chamber you and Albert had used to get down here.

“God… if you have any strength in your legs, help would be appreciated!” You pant.

“Trying my best here!” Jake rasps, clumsily putting his feet under him as you deposit him in your temporary haven. As you sit Jake up on the glass wall, you look around the room for the refrigerated cabinet that Albert had gotten the original syringe from.

The doors are blocked by some debris, but surprisingly undamaged otherwise. 

“I’ll be back, stay awake.” You utter to Jake, hands squeezing his shoulders and then darting across the room. You clear enough shattered metal and computer parts from the refrigerated cabinet to throw open one of the doors, staring at the cases inside and having trouble concentrating on which of the rusted cases are “good” and “bad” based on Albert’s earlier scrutiny.

Another rumble and light sprinkling of debris from above makes you throw caution to the wind and pick up as many cases as you can; attache handles hang precariously from nearly all of your fingers resembling a dark parody of a grocery run as you dart back across the chamber, losing one case in the process but paying it no mind in order to return to Jake as soon as possible.

You spend the longest minute of your life ripping off the interior covers of the cases, tossing one away immediately like it’s diseased (because it is) due to the Uroboros vial inside being ruptured, another from the suppressant vial being compromised due to the glass having been cracked and leaking and a broken syringe, and yet another from the suppressant being a sickly yellow when it should run clear. On the fourth case, you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding when you finally find another suitable vial but a broken syringe. You grab the intact syringe from the last case and quickly inject more into Jake’s neck, keeping two fingers on his racing pulse.

“More drugs? At least get me the fun stuff.” Jake quips, letting his neck loll to the side to give you better access.

“Shut up. It’s helping you.” You counter, trying to sound annoyed but relieved that Jake is already more like himself despite his still dangerously quick heartrate.

More debris rains from the ceiling and you ignore it until you hear a heavy thunk and slide of metal on tile. A magnum has fallen from the firefight above and landed near the glass chamber.

You don’t know exactly how much firepower Jill and Chris managed to lug into the inner sanctum, but you know that having a magnum out of commission is a waste of resources and a potential edge over Albert any way you look at it.

“Oh for fucks sake.” You mutter to yourself, snatching up the magnum and looking around the lab for a quicker and quieter way up other than the glass chamber you and Albert used to get down here. 

Then you get an idea.

You look at all of the discarded cases around you. You have three intact syringes full of concentrated Uroboros injections.

Then you remember how Jake got down: there’s a ladder. You glance over to the wall of the chamber.

The ladder is intact.

You turn the safety on, stuff the magnum into the back of your pants and give Jake one more once over. He seems stable enough to leave alone. You gather up the three Uroboros vials and plop them in your breast pocket.

“Stay here, I know how to help them.”

“I’m coming too-” Jake mutters, trying and failing to sit up. It doesn’t take much force to press down on Jake’s chest to make sure he stays perched on the wall.

“No, you’re not. You’re staying here and counting your beats per minute.” You scold, handing Jake the last pristine suppressant vial. 

“You didn’t turn into a pile of worms, which is great. But you’re still at risk for cardiac arrest.”

You explain, filling the vial slowly and making sure Jake is paying attention.

“We don’t know how much virus was in that shot, so you need to keep giving yourself suppressant until your heart rate is consistently below 120 a minute. Start with your other shoulder, then arms, then thighs if you have to. Your whole system has to be saturated with that stuff, understand?”

Jake gives you a half-hearted glare, then lets out a weak, sardonic laugh.

“You’re not my mom, you know.” Jake mutters with a sly smile. 

You roll your eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to be too mad given the circumstances. “With how you’ve been acting, someone’s got to be. Take your damn medicine or I’m finding a way to ground you.” 

“Yes ma’am.” Jake says, giving a mock-salute.

Another metallic groan from above is accompanied by a snarl from Albert and a cry of pain from Jill, followed by yelling from Chris.

You waste no more time and dash across the room and start climbing.

The smoke from the smoldering remains of the computers and lab equipment below you burns your eyes as you ascend the ladder, but you only blink the discomfort away and keep going. You don’t think about looking down. You don’t think about your grip slipping from the rungs due to sweat on your palms. You have a singular goal in mind that makes everything else fall away: prevent Albert from wiping out your only chance at rescue.

You’ve  never been a good shot. Not for lack of trying, but simply because you can’t be a genius at everything. 

Violence and science come naturally to Albert as breathing, but to you? You’d much rather talk your way out of danger. But that won’t serve you well with the machinery being flung toward you.

You dive out of the way and you feel the heat of the smoldering metal at the back of your neck as some kind of DNA synthesizer narrowly misses you right after you reach the top of the ladder.

The upper chamber is even worse for wear than downstairs; lights hang precariously from the ceiling, sparking like the decimated machinery littering the room in large uncoordinated piles. Metal panels on the walls peel like old wallpaper in some sections revealing the concrete underneath, while others are crumpled like soda cans. A thin layer of smoke from below permeates the grated floor and makes the air difficult to breathe.

You hear a soft curse from the other side of your pile of debris and you immediately know who it is. You quickly crawl around the pile and see Jill hurriedly trying to unjam her sniper rifle. She’s covered in cuts and scuffs but her fingers never waver as she expertly gets the rifle back in working order with an intense look of concentration. She hears you approaching and instinctively lifts her pistol from her side to aim at you. You hold up your hands.

“Hey! Hey! It’s just me! Jesus fuck.” You exclaim quickly.

Jill exhales a tense breath and lowers the gun. “Sorry. I-”

“-I know. He’s got us all on edge. But I have a plan.” You take the Uroboros syringes out of your breast pocket and hold them out to Jill. Several emotions race across Jill’s face before finally landing on determination. You both know too much Uroboros would weaken Albert enough to put him down.

“I have to get close to him.”

“Trust me, I have a plan. Take them. Just stay out of sight behind him. You’ll know when.” You insist, shaking the three syringes and waiting for Jill to take them.

Jill studies your face. This is the closest and longest interaction you’ve had with her that wasn’t related to her training you for self defense. You get the sense she’s searching your face for any hesitancy on your part. When she sees none, her lips set in a straight line as she nods, taking the syringes and disappearing into the rubble.

Another loud metallic crash and a masculine sound of pain makes you peek out around your pile of debris. Your heart drops to your stomach when you see Chris half buried underneath a large filing cabinet and Albert slowly approaching; his Uroboros arm quivering with barely contained anticipation as he raises it menacingly over his head.

“All those years chasing me, and you still haven’t learned your lesson from all your dead comrades. Now you can join them.”

You scramble to your feet, whip out the magnum, turn off the safety and fire without thinking at Albert’s back. 

“Get away from him!” You shout.

You were aiming for the middle of Albert’s back, but the recoil from the powerful magnum makes the shot veer into his shoulder, causing Albert to snarl and face you. 

“What must I do to have you follow directions, dearest?” Albert snarls, stalking towards you with alarming speed.

“Stop your bullshit!” You spit back, firing again. It veers too far left.

Your third lands somewhere around his clavicle and you have to start backing up when Albert flinches from the shot but doesn’t stop. Meanwhile, Chris is struggling under the cabinet with renewed fervor and watching the scene with an angered, helpless look.

“Stay away from her! Stay the hell away from her, Wesker!”

Albert ignores him and slaps the magnum out of your hands with his Uroboros arm, once again causing the powerful revolver to clatter across the grated floor. It lands somewhere near the glass chamber where you can’t see. You turn to run, but Albert once again has you within his slimy grasp. You struggle in the Uroboros tendrils as he lifts you to his face with a mix of anger and amusement. 

“Still so full of fire. I’ll have to find a way to ensure that stays after your transformation.”

“Over my dead body you bastard!” Chris roars from under the cabinet, looking equally enraged and fearful for your safety.

Albert senses something more than a desire to save you in Chris’ words, his expression melting into something cold and murderous. “You’ve grown very protective over my wife, Redfield."

Albert starts to stalk over to Chris. You see Jill start to emerge from a pile of debris close to Chris but you quickly shake your head and try to get Albert’s attention again.

“Don’t you want the answer?” You say with as much confidence you can muster while being ensnared.

When Albert pauses for a moment, stopping in his tracks and mulling over your words, his glowing red eyes flicking to yours without facing away from Chris.

You see Jill’s stealthy movements over Albert’s shoulder but you don’t dare look away from his face. “You asked me why I betrayed you earlier. Don’t you want to know the answer?” You say again, trying to buy Chris and Jill more time. You know he’s going to do what you want. If there’s one thing he hates more than being controlled, it’s not knowing something of importance. He’ll keep you alive long enough to hear the answer at least.

All is still for a moment that lasts an eternity, until Albert finally lets out a sharp breath from his nose and turns his face to yours.

“Proceed.” Albert mutters lowly.

“Come closer. This is just for you.”

Another pause. Your heart pounds in your ears.

After a long moment, Albert finally lifts you closer.

Here’s hoping Albert has enough parasite left for this to work.

As soon as Albert’s face is within range, your head lunges forward and you capture his lips in as heated of a kiss as you can while keeping your eyes open to watch how Albert’s affected. For a moment, Albert freezes. You would have been happy with just that. Even something as small as a second’s hesitation can make all the difference in a firefight like this. However, to your surprise, you see Albert’s red eyes start to dilate as he begins to kiss you back. 

His eyes immediately shrink into slits when Jill’s hand plunges the Uroboros syringes into his shoulder.

“You wretch!” Albert roars.

You don’t know if his words are directed at you or Jill, but either way the shock of the Uroboros entering his system makes him fling you away from him onto the grated flooring. The fall hurts, but with all the adrenaline pumping through you it barely registers.

Albert backs away, staring you down like you’re the key to his undoing because you are. He clutches his head, his groans from the pain morphing into a frustrated yell from being bested once again. The glowing orange organ that was once only present on his back swells and throbs to the front of his chest directly over his heart. Strings of the Nemesis parasite cover this side as well in a spider web of nerve endings. At the same time, more Uroboros tendrils breach through Albert's skin, marring the flesh on his face, neck and scarred chest even more as Jill unloads every bullet she has in her sniper rifle into Albert. 

You have enough sense to get to your feet and beeline to Chris. You immediately put your hands on the cabinet, trying to use what little strength you possess to move it. It doesn’t budge, even with Chris helping you.

“So… we’re talking about that later, right?”Chris jokes lightly.

“Not the time! What’s this thing caught on?”

“Not sure. Something on the other side I think.” Chris grunts. 

You circle around the cabinet and Chris is correct. A large beam has most of its weight pinned on the cabinet. You curse under your breath and push on it with your whole body weight. It barely budges. Meanwhile, Jill has unloaded all of her rifle ammo into Albert and has switched to her pistol. Albert has clearly been significantly weakened, but that doesn’t stop him from displaying an extinction burst of strength by sluggishly swinging his Uroboros arm at Jill with all of his might, each missed strike shaking the room like an earthquake when it hits the wall or floor.

You’ve made a pathetic amount of progress in moving the beam when Albert corners Jill next to you and Chris. Jill keeps firing shots from her pistol until the trigger clicks, signaling an empty magazine. She reaches for her side and realizes she has no more bullets. She sheathes her pistol and brings out her knife, already strategizing her next move even though she’s clearly outmatched in strength.

Breathing heavily, Albert chuckles darkly, knowing victory is near.

“I won’t lose to you two. Not again! She’s mine!” Albert bellows, his voice sounding warped and garbled as he raises his bubbling and writhing Uroboros arm above his head in preparation for a deadly blow that’s never completed before a familiar crackling gunshot is heard from the direction of the glass chamber. 

The shot hits Albert square in the temple, stunning and causing him to stumble to the side and have his arm come crashing down on the other side of the beam, taking weight off the cabinet Chris is trapped under. 

Jake emerges from the glass chamber, leaning heavily on some machinery with a smoking magnum in his hand as he shakily lines up another shot. 

“You won’t have to, old man.” He quips darkly, landing another deafening shot straight into Albert’s glowing weak point on his back. 

You quickly help Chris lift the cabinet off of him until there’s just enough space for him to squeeze out. Chris immediately gets back in the action, tossing Jill his shotgun and using his pistol to fire every remaining round he has into Albert. Jill follows suit. Jake drags himself closer.

Albert doesn’t roar. He doesn’t cry out. His body only jerks with each shot that lands in him as he’s slowly surrounded by the surviving members of S.T.A.R.S. and his only son.

A final magnum shot from Jake causes the orange glowing weak point on Albert’s back to pop with a wet squelch. You see the pain overtake Albert’s features, his jaw clenching and opening and closing in a final attempt to mask any weakness. His head lolls to the side, staring directly at you, his eyes once again dilated by the remaining memory of the parasite inside him now that his consciousness isn’t actively suppressing it. Albert’s non-mutated hand weakly raises towards you.

“Dear… heart…” He softly rasps.

Chris notices and steps in front of Albert’s line of sight with an unreadable expression, aiming his pistol directly between his eyes. Before Chris can pull the trigger, Albert’s eyes lose focus, his hand plops onto the grated floor, and his body becomes unnaturally still. The remaining orange organ on his chest throbs slower, loses its vibrant color to a sickly yellow, then finally twitches to a stop like a failing heart.

For a long moment, the only sounds in the chamber are sparking from broken electrical lines and faint crackling from residual fires from Albert’s destruction. Jake lets out a disbelieving laugh.

“Well that’s one way to take care of the bastard.” Jake utters, chuckling sardonically then swaying much too unsteady on his feet and breathing too heavily. You’re quick to grab his arm before he has the chance to topple over.

“You were supposed to be resting!” You gently chastise, helping Jake rest on the overturned cabinet and taking his pulse on his neck again. To your relief, it’s much slower than before.

“A ‘thanks’ would suffice. And Umbrella has shitty security but solid elevators. I saw a chance and I took it.” Jake pants.

“Thanks.” 

You and Jake turn your heads to Jill. “Both of you. We were in a pretty bad bind. We owe you one.”

You’re staring at Jill, gobsmacked for a good few seconds, then smile. “Take it off my tab. I owe you two years of favors.”

 “Uh…Doc?” Jake says with concern.

“Hm?” You turn to Jake. He’s staring behind Chris. You follow his gaze and your blood runs cold. Albert’s skin is rippling like gelatin, mutated strands of Uroboros and NE-Parasite pulling the dead scientists from Albert’s initial escape into their grasp and disappearing into a slowly forming pile of bubbling flesh.

“Persistent bastard, ain’t he?” Jake quips humorlessly.

“You’re telling me.” Jill adds, already reloading her shotgun.

“Guys, it’s time to go!” You squeak, eyes wide and trying to lift Jake to his feet. 

Chris is quick to hand off his remaining weapons to Jill and lift Jake in a fireman’s carry.

“You better run faster than that thing grows, Redfield!” Jake groans, looking at the mutating Albert with disgust.

“Shut it. We gotta move!” Chris barks, hauling ass out of the observation chamber and out into the halls with you and Jill right on his tail.

Jill keeps slowing down periodically to fire behind you, her aim steady. Her voice betrays some worry as she speaks. “Doc? What am I looking at?” 

“Nemesis and Uroboros cocktail! The parasite makes things mutate unpredictably!” You say quickly, daring to look over your shoulder for a second. A nauseating concoction of Uroboros and mutated pale flesh snakes down the hall like mold at an alarming speed.

“Of course. Why am I not fucking surprised? ” Jill grumbles sarcastically, firing behind the group at the tendrils that get too close for comfort as all of you make a break for the exit. 

“Where the hell is that army, Chris?” You pant, already running out of breath.

“Just a little further!” Chris rasps, the shiny and blood soaked walls of the refurbished lab giving way to the dated one, then the old military section. The whole way, you can hear the squelching from the Uroboros and mutated biomatter slowly getting closer, pushed back by Jill’s suppressing fire, then gain on you again.

Then, for the first time in a day and a half, you’re outside. Rocky cliffs and pebbled beach meet you as Chris leads the charge back to a speed boat that’s parked on the shore. You don’t see any B.S.A.A. reinforcements. Chris deposits Jake in the boat as you and Jill hop in. Chris grabs the front of the boat, grunting as he pushes it off the rocky shore into the water while Jill starts the engine. Jake looks behind Chris and his face freezes.

“Oh fuck that’s a big boy.” 

You look as well and feel lightheaded at the sight. “Big” doesn’t do the creature justice. What once could be described as worms, are now thick cords of diseased flesh and Uroboros that burst from every crevice of the cliff face and rocky terrain above it like geysers. More and more of the terrain falls away to reveal a towering colossus of a bioweapon. Glowing pustules expand all over the creature. Two fleshy towers move aside in what you realize are the creature’s arms to unveil a terrifying combination of a Stage 3 Nemesis, tentacles of Uroboros not too dissimilar to Excella’s final transformation that you’ve seen from security footage, and the barest hints of Albert’s enraged face as it snarls animalistically.

“Chris?” You breathe nervously.

“I know!” Chris answers, finally getting the boat far enough into the water. He hauls himself into the boat and Jill immediately puts the engine into overdrive to get as much distance between the boat and the shore as possible. Chris holds his finger to his ear, radioing someone.

“Level it! Now!” Chris commands into his radio.

Not a second later, you hear the unmistakable whirr of fighter jets. The mutated Albert reaches for the boat with a deafening roar.

“Get down!” Jill shouts, crouching low enough in the boat so she’s more protected, but still steering the vessel away from the island. Jake hits the floor and covers his head. Chris’ arms wrap around you and secure the back of your head before he follows suit. Chris curls around you, using himself as a human shield. Despite everything, it makes heat rise to your cheeks.

You don’t see the fighter jets, but you feel them. A rush of air and roaring engines pass over you and fire several missiles into the gargantuan creature. The roars slowly dissipate behind you, echoing off the rocky terrain even as Jill steers the speed boat further away.

“All clear.” Jill sighs with relief.

Chris holds you for a moment longer, then sits himself upright, dragging you up with him. “You okay?” He asks softly, that soothing timbre still working its magic on you even after being apart for so long. You don’t trust your voice so you just nod and give a thumbs up.

“We’re not taking this hunk of junk all the way to the mainland, are we? Gas mileage on these things aren’t great.” Jake rasps. 

Jill directs the speed boat a little further, rounding another rocky cliff face. “Nope. We’re taking that.” She says, pointing to the biggest military grade tanker you’ve ever seen. Even from this distance, you can see the hundreds of B.S.A.A. soldiers preparing all manners of weaponry and offensive measures.

“Now we’re talkin’.” Jake drawls with a smirk.

You’ve never been so happy to see a tanker in your life. 

Jill wastes no time directing the boat to it, hooking the boat to a pulley system, and ensuring you and Jake are safely boarded on the tanker and ushered to a secure spot on deck.

A masked soldier immediately approaches Chris once you’re settled. “Everyone’s in position, captain.” 

Chris nods. “Good. On my signal. Everyone stand by!” The soldier nods and runs down the side of the deck, and after a brief look around, you realize that soldiers are lining up along the cliffside facing side with large artillery cases. You recognize the shape immediately: rocket launchers.

“You really know how to throw a welcome party, Redfield.” Jake says with a smirk, moving to lift one. 

“You sure you can handle that?” You ask, still worried about his balance. Jake tries to lift it, but is still too weakened, breathing heavily.

“Help me end this?” He asks.

You’d always preferred to talk your way out of danger. But words won’t serve you here, so you nod and help Jake lift his rocket launcher, resting the base of it on the deck’s side railing with your assistance. You put your hand on the opposite side of the trigger from his. “He ever stay dead?” Jake asks.

“Dying isn’t his strong suit.” Chris responds, aiming his own launcher at the cliffs.

“Let’s make sure it sticks this time then.” Jill says lowly with determination, following suit.

“Ready!” Chris shouts, and the whole line of soldiers lift their rocket launchers to the cliff face, waiting for the mutated Albert to become visible when the tanker rounds the side of the island. For a long moment, everything is still. Then, the monster becomes visible and a distant roar is heard that you swear sounds suspiciously like your name.

“FIRE!” Chris commands. Jill, Jake, you and the rest of the B.S.A.A. personnel lined on the side of the deck fire their rocket launchers in an orchestra of clicks and whistles. It takes a solid few seconds for the rockets to reach their destination, but when they do you see a blinding kaleidoscope of light and smoke, then the echoes of impact reach your ears. 

The fighter jets make another round of fire for good measure. You hold your breath waiting for the smoke to clear. When it does, all you can see from this distance is marred rocky landscape and a mixture of black and flesh colored biomatter littering the area where the mutated Albert once stood.

It’s over.

This whole situation mirrors Africa a little too closely for your comfort. The rocket launchers, defeating Albert, even being on a tanker again is making you feel on edge in a way you can’t quite shake.

Everything after that feels like a blur. You’d just survived one of the most chaotic two days of your life and your body hasn’t quite caught up to your brain. You sense there’s cheering around you. You’re vaguely aware of someone taking the rocket launcher from you. You feel yourself being led into a shaded area and sat on a bench. A blanket put over your shoulders.

“Doc? Dooooc? You in there? Hello?” 

You snap back to your senses when you hear Jake’s voice. You shake your head to clear the sudden fogginess. “What? Sorry?”

“You good? You have Golden Boy worried.” Jake says with barely disguised concern.

“Yeah. Never better. A good night’s sleep and I’ll be right as rain.” You reassure, putting on a smile.

Jake examines you a bit too long. “Alright then.” Jake shrugs, still looking at you with an analyzing expression. 

“I’m fine, really. You’re the one who needs to get looked at. You’ve got your burns, your blood-”

You stop and your eyes widen at suddenly remembering why Jake was at the island in the first place.

“Oh my God, your sample!” You exclaim, standing up and quickly looking around for a B.S.A.A. agent to flag down, your mind already running through probabilities of a glass vial surviving the lab being caved in.

“Way ahead of ya Doc.” Jake utters with an easy smile, chuckling and reaching into his jacket to produce a vial with a familiar sickly pink substance inside. It looks just like the picture Jake had shown you in the sample room.

“When did you-”

“Had to take a detour after you blew me up.” Jake quips with a smirk.

This damn boy.

“That is not funny. And would you have rather been worm food?” Despite your cross tone, you can’t help but smile a little. 

“Well. In that case, I’ll take trial by fire any day.” A medic approaches you and Jake, already taking out supplies for treatment. He tries to put a blood pressure cuff on you, but you’re quick to brush him off.

“I’m fine! Help him. Please.” You say, pointing to Jake. They shrug and start taking his vitals. You never take your eyes off of Jake, half expecting him to have a delayed reaction from Uroboros. When the medic shines a light in Jake’s eyes, you can’t help but notice how similar Jake’s grimace is to Albert’s.

Jake blinks away the light, then smirks at you. “Careful there. I’ve been told that if you stare hard enough at someone, you’ll go cross eyed.”

You snap your head away, embarrassed.

“Sorry you-” You stopped yourself. You didn’t know a lot about Jake but based on his behavior in the holding chamber by Youju, he didn’t seem too keen on being compared to Albert. “Never mind.”

“Do I look like him?”

You turn back to him. It surprises you how genuine he sounds. You relax. 

“Yeah. You have his old eyes. His face in general, but it’s the eyes that stick out to me the most.”

Jake nods, thinking, then looking up at you with an earnest expression. “Am I like him in any other ways?”

“Fuck no.” You answer without thinking.

Jake smiles, then points over your shoulder. “You got company.”

You turn around and see Chris waving you down with one hand and a bundle of clothes in the other. Jill stands next to him with an ease you haven’t seen on her in years. You turn back to Jake, contemplating keeping an eye on him, but he waves you away.

“I’m alright. Just make sure this gets to Golden Boy.” He says, holding out the vial to you. You take it with a nod, pocketing it, and walk over to Chris and Jill.

“One of these days, we’ll actually meet up for pleasant reasons and not because I got kidnapped. Again.” You say dryly.

“Don’t set expectations you can’t keep.” Jill quips with a relaxed smile. You roll your eyes, suppressing a smile. “I can dream, can’t I?”

Chris interjects. “You two are getting along well.” At first you think Chris is referring to you and Jill, but Chris’ stare at Jake over your shoulder refutes that thought.

“Yeah, well… he’s a good kid. Hard headed, but I know all about that.”

“Think he’ll be alright?” Jill asks. 

“I’ll need to keep an eye on him in Tokyo, but given his current state, I’m fairly confident he’ll remain his human, hard-headed, sarcastic self for years to come.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Jill says dryly.

“Well it got you your sample, so I’d say yes.” You say, pulling the sickly pink G-Virus vial from your pocket and holding it out to Jill. Jill’s easy attitude shifts back into work mode, taking the vial.

“I’ll get this to the transport team. The last thing we need is another biohazard breach.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more.” You say, but Jill is already walking away. “Jill!” You call out to her. She stops in her tracks, letting out a long breath before turning back to you. You give her a genuine smile. “It’s good to see you back. It suits you.”

Her serious expression softens. “It’s good to be back.” Jill gives you and Chris a final nod, then makes her way through the bustling deck with the sample in hand. 

You and Chris are left standing together in silence for long enough that it becomes awkward. You stare at him not knowing what to say. He stands there unsure of where to start.

“Are you okay-” 

“So about-”

You both start speaking at the same time. You motion for him to go first with a sheepish expression. Chris chuckles, the tension leaving his shoulders. “I snagged you that flightsuit.”

“Oh! Right! You remembered. Thanks.” You say with relief and take the clothes from him. You start up at Chris, your stomach doing a little flip at the smile he’s giving you. You can’t help but notice the small changes in his face. Chris raises an eyebrow playfully.

“What?”

“You look a bit different than when I saw you last. Trying a new uh-” You make a motion over your mouth with your pointer finger and thumb, “-mustache-goatee combo?”

“Yeah I’ve been growing it out. What do you think?” 

“It’s definitely a look.”

“You hate it.” Chris says, smiling.

“I didn’t say that.” You reply, a smile creeping up on your face.

“But that’s what you meant.” Chris rebuts.

“Oh shut up. Just do what you want with your face.” You say, unable to suppress a chuckle and just how easy it is to talk to Chris even with all of the history between you two.

“Well can you blame me for wanting feedback? I need a woman like you to set me straight when I need it.”

You tilt your head. “And what kind of woman am I?”

“Hardheaded, intelligent, strong.” Chris pauses, then utters his next word so softly only you can hear. “Beautiful.”

Your smile fades and you look out into the ocean. “You forgot ‘bad for you.’” You say softly.

Chris gives you a warm smile. “You know I’m not one to shy away from danger.”

Before you can answer, a soldier calls for Chris’ attention. He looks torn, wanting to do his duty as well as wanting to stay near you. You make the decision for him.

“Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Promise?” Chris says playfully, but you can see the pain behind his eyes. Like the year without you has been excruciating for him.

You give him a sincere smile. “Promise. Now go be a hero.”

Chris senses the sincerity in your tone, giving you one last smile and nod before walking to the soldier to see what he needs. 

You take a deep, calming breath.

It’s over. For now.

You look out into the ocean, thumbing the clean flight suit while the island behind you smolders into nothing. 

Tomorrow is a new day that will deal with the new G-Virus Jake acquired, endless interviews about what happened over the past few days, and probably a few probing questions about your choice of strategy in taking down Wesker.

But for now the sun is setting on today’s nightmare, and you’ll take peace in whatever way you can before a new one takes form tomorrow.

AO3 link

a/n: Thanks for sticking around! Future parts will be more Chris heavy so we will finally get to the romancing. Also, happy RE9 everyone! Capcom is once again popping off with memorable villains with Zeno and Dr. Gideon.

Tag list: @killerwendigo @appreciativemediaconsumer @kaymarnun @chucklefak @batsiz @eclipsedseraphim

[monsieurphantom]

Zeno in Resident Evil Requiem (2026) | dev. Capcom

[wil-o-wispy]

RE9 - Requiem SPOILERS Ramble

Okay it's 3:00 AM and I just finished Requiem and it's everything I wanted and more in a new Resident Evil installment, but there is a glaring character resemblance that I think everyone noticed and need to discuss my thoughts/theories on below the cut.

Spoliers for Requiem below - read at your own risk!

Forgive any slight innacuracies these are the ramblings of a sleep deprived nerd and I've only just finished my first playthrough.

Based on context clues, Zeno is an Albert Wesker clone/tube baby.

The game NEVER explicity says this but there are a lot of arrows pointing me to that conclusion.

Blood Lore

With the files we pick up around the game, we see Umbrella scientists explain there are trace amounts of memory stored in blood cells and that attempts to make individuals with the previous host's memories have so far been unsuccessful.

Throughout the course of Requiem, we find out that Umbrella was attempting to "recreate" Grace and we get a horrifying glimpse into what really happened behind closed doors at the Racoon City Orphanage. Umbrella was bioengineering handpicked DNA into children, mostly girls but you can see some boys in the group photo with Oswald Spencer, by essentially making test tube babies. The child we play as in this terrifying section looks exactly like Emily, the blind girl that Grace tries to rescue from the cell, and she is being pursued by a bunch of bald giggling girls who look eerily similar to her save for their shaved heads.

Zeno explains to Grace at the RPD that Emily is just one of many bioengineered children that Umbrella tried and failed to recreate according to Spencer's writings so they can use the child to "unlock" Elpis. Grace flips through multiple pages of girls with the exact same face.

They have laid the foundation for similar but different "clones" grown from scratch to exist within the RE universe. I see no reason to think Umbrella would stop at making children trying to get to Elpis. Umbrella (or The Connections more than likely since that's who Zeno works for) could have also wanted to have their own personal copy of one of the most brilliant minds to come from Oswell Spencer's projects.

2. Design

I literally screamed, "IS THAT WESKER?!" at my screen when Zeno popped up, but then everyone kept referring to him as Zeno and even Leon and Sherry didn't recognize him as such so I had to accept this was a "new" character even though my Wesker Senses were tingling.

Zeno is dressed to impress to an almost comical degree. At first, I thought it was an over the top Wesker fit; three piece suit, gloves, black leather jacket (RE5 fit anyone?) over the shoulders as a cape, nice dress shoes.

But then looking closer at the design, there are things that OG Wesker would never wear. An earring, a tie, decorative chains around the tie/collar, a gold belt, a low taper fade-type haircut. OG Wesker dresses classy but practical.

When Zeno pulls out that fancy gun with the long barrel on Leon in the Elpis chamber, I immediately thought back to one of Wesker's guns for one of his RE5 Mercenaries loadout. Specifically, the Midnight outfit with the S&W M500:

It's much less gilded than Zeno's gun, but Wesker as a character is, unbelievably, less over the top than Zeno is how he dresses and picks his weapons.

Also, from a design perspective, why would Capcom make another blonde haired man with slicked back hair who wears sunglasses everywhere and has obvious physical differences from one virus or other and NOT want us to compare them to Albert Wesker, the most beloved villain of the franchise?

3. Voice Actor

Zeno's voice actor is the same as Wesker's voice actor in the RE4 remake. This needs no further explanation.

4. Mechanics and Speech

Dapper style that Wesker could easily pull off aside, there are way too many similarities to just brush off between Zeno and Wesker.

When Leon shoots at Zeno in the RPD, he's unbelieveably fast and dodges Leon's bullets just like Wesker can in RE5.

Additionally, he also does the same Cobra Strike move that Wesker does in the Mercenaries in RE5:

He has a throwaway line where he says something along the lines of "I don't have time to spare" to Leon which felt like an antithesis to the famous "Seven minutes" Wesker line.

Also in the RPD, Zeno is talking to Grace and she's freaking out about being "responsible" for so much pain and suffering, and Zeno is telling her to forget the past to focus on the future.

The manner of speech is also very similar to how Wesker talks at the end of RE4 remake and in RE5 about bringing in the dawn of a new age with Uroboros:

I mean come on it's like Capcom is giving us breadcrumbs at this point.

5. Dr. Gideon's Jab

We're in the lab, it's moments before the final showdown and Grace has unleashed Elpis one way or another. Zeno grabs a vial and injects it, and it doesn't work how he wants.

I don't know what happens yet when you choose not to release Elpis, but in my playthrough I chose to trust Grace's judgement and release Elpis. Zeno immediately pushes Grace aside and injects himself with it, then all of his powers fade since it's an anti-viral and not a powerful virus like he thought.

Zeno is agruing with Gideon about how butthurt he is about wasting all the time, money and resources on finding a useless virus and Gideon yells out:

"You are nothing but an imitation." - Dr. Victor Gideon

This is the line that sealed the deal on Zeno being a Wesker clone for me. Especially because Zeno looked genuinely insulted after he said it.

The excessive dress suddenly makes a lot more sense. Is Zeno compensating trying to live up to his DNA predecessor? Is he not as much of a genius like Wesker and needs to be flashy to distract from it? Or do the Connections have a dress code requiring a minimum of 5 unnecessary accessories?

Are sassy dramatics inherited through DNA as well? Did Zeno watch security footage of Wesker and practice his grimace and one liners in the mirror? Did he think he was going to end the world and wanted to wear his World Domination outfit? Did he intentionally dress like a noir gangster to outshine Wesker in the one way he could easily achieve with bioterrorism money and a stylist?

Either Zeno is some kind of genetic clone of Wesker, or he was part of some offshoot of Project W and is a part of the Wesker children. There are just too many similarities for this to be a coincidence.

RIP Zeno it would have been so funny to see you scream at Chris Redfield.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[wil-o-wispy]

A Crown for the Unseen (Blue Prince)

Summary: A heartfelt tribute to Mary, who risked and gave up so much in order for her son to open his eyes.

Content: Spoliers for room 46, references/spoilers to Simon's mom's lore, spoliers for how the gems got in the mansion.

w/c - 750

a/n - I finally got to Room 46 after 50 hours of gameplay and was brought to tears by the cutscene, and then I wrote this right after.

AO3 Link

There was once a Red Prince who sat on a red throne.

He had a red crown made of rubies, and a red castle made of stone. 

The traitorous red flags flew over the crowd, even as the guards and Orindia’s citizens threw punches and rowed. The pop of a rifle, the crack of a bone, but none of it able to break the battalion’s hearts of stone.

A young woman watched as her home was destroyed, as more and more soldiers and guns were deployed. Brother turns on brother and sister on sister, but the woman reborned to a fiery resistor.

The prince had a love for all things red. 

“It’s the only true color” the prince often said.

Crimson’s the lifeblood of mortals and tyrants, as well as little boys who know not that it’s violent. He sees it around and hears all its praise, but never glances back to his mother’s downtrodden gaze.

She couldn’t let him forget a history barely said, so she brought it to life in a book wrapped in red. But the tyrants were watching and rejected her tale; without serious revisions her story would fail.

He could not stand the sight of a canary or a crow.

He could not stand the white of a swan in the snow.

She could not stand the sight of her pride being swayed, and so she sought out to strategize in a game she’d never played. A clever allusion, a barely hidden critique, the buried down thoughts that no one dared to speak.

A story for a son who was washed in a haze, a tale to analyze with each turn of phrase. An innocent gift from a silent resistor, a lifeline for a boy who couldn’t tell his mother he missed her.

And he never looked up for fear of the view.

He had heard that the sky was not a red hue.

A feigned death for the safety of her and her pride, it killed her to think that her son thought she’d died. She thought of him often in the dark of the night, and wondered if and when he’d see she was right.

Another new alias and passport to boot, and a false monarchy to no longer salute. She knew in her heart her motives were just, but her blood being alone made her chest near combust.

He didn’t see the birds or the changing of the leaves.

And he never saw the sights of life’s many symphonies.

Her mind reeled with glimpses and echoes of the past, she’d be filled with joy when he’d hear the uncensored story at last. A tale of a boy all encompassed in red, a tale of a boy deliberately misled.

The ruby red crown she’d taken and liberated, a victimless crime that left her exhilarated. A small gesture that felt so much better than satire, the crown looked much more stately with gems made of sapphire.

He couldn’t see beyond the red shade he was aware

He never caught a glimpse of the world I had to share.

A tale of a boy getting lost in a mansion, searching for treasures and blueprints with each expansion. The crack of a safe, the ting of a ruby, and all the while unaware of an awaiting duty.

Red letters revealed for a riveting conspiracy; some of them serious, some of them cheerily. All of them together a tapestry made; a bloodline revealed, a tyranny played.

But one day the prince saw something new.

And if you look closely you might see it too.

The elusive call of a room in disguise, a room that is said to be holding his prize. A puzzle made for the sharpest of minds, a room for an inheritance of a different kind.

Each pull of a lever and draft of a room, the boy grows closer to the answers exhumed. A rush from a puzzle, a smiling breath in the calm, the blood of a royal still missing his mom.

The skies parted and the clouds withdrew

The prince had a new favorite color. The color, blue.

Turquoise and cyan and sapphire teal, there are simply too many hues to reveal. A dip in the sea, a bold butterfly, the color of a world no longer living a lie. 

There are so many beautiful things to behold, the azure of the ocean no longer controlled. The coat of a bird, the hue of the sky, the heartwarming whisper of an absent mother’s eyes.

______________________________________

A/N: I'm a bit peeved at Tumblr for not letting me do my color gradient how I want but imagine it's a smooth transition from red to blue. Thanks for reading!

[wil-o-wispy]

Hiiiii! Just dropping by to say that I love love loveeeee your fic The Wife, the Lover and the Bastard Son and you write so well! Found it on ao3 and then went here to follow you. There should be more kudos!

While the pairing is Chris Redfield x Reader, am very very curious of Doc and Wesker’s past, and how would he react when they finally meet again but with him no longer under the parasite’s control. How would he also act when he discovers Jake’s his son. Wondering as well how will Chris protect Doc from her resurrected husband who I think may not kill her but will make sure she regrets betraying him and may finally force her to become like him. Sorry got carried away because your writing is just sooooo good!!!

Hope you’re doing well and may you have wonderful days ahead!!

OMG thanks for the love! It's always awesome to see people invested in the story!

Part 6 of the Bastard Series just went up that goes a little bit into this, but there's definitely going to be more subtle references to what that kind of relationship was like in future parts.

I'm particularly fascinated with what the fallout of this kind of relationship would be like. Wesker is arrogant, narcissistic, proud, and stubborn to a fault which makes it very fun to write as well as delve deeper into the more unexplored aspects of how his character in canon would respond to something like this.

My personal takes and Wesker character motivation rambles below the cut.

What does his spouse betraying him do to his ego? How does he react afterward? Would he try to "correct" that behavior or punish the behavior in some way? Would he use both? What would the methods be?

Obviously, I read a lot of RE fanfic that also explores these themes and in my mind, Wesker is driven by a need for people to recognize that he is above everyone else. Knowing/thinking he is "better" than the rest of the human race isn't enough otherwise he would have killed off Chris/Jill much earlier in the franchise (plot armor for future games notwithstanding).

In RE0, we learn that Wesker essentially grew up in a strict military training facility for Umbrella. The motto of that facility is: Obedience breeds discipline, discipline breeds unity, unity breeds power, power is life.

Power is life.

Wesker's whole motivation throughout the series can be boiled down to the pursuit of power and we as an audience witness how it drives Wesker to do morally damning things in the pursuit of godhood.

RE1: Wesker views knowledge as the power to create the ultimate lifeform with some financial/resource backing from Umbrella. Sure he has extensive military training is captain of S.T.A.R.S. but based on his threats to Barry and lack of concern with Birkin in RE0 about potentially leaving Umbrella, I think he views his brain as a bigger asset than his brawn (he isn't too physically imposing so he uses a gun to threaten Chris/Jill for example).

The power to become God by creating the ultimate lifeform is the pinnacle of knowledge. He gets "killed" by his own creation in front of Chris/Jill so it makes sense how he wouldn't further explore that and instead choose to focus on genetically enhancing himself to be physically stronger for future installments. He resurrects before the Mansion is set to explode thanks to the progenitor virus and/or a prototype virus given to him by William Birkin the day of the Mansion incident and then shoots his way out al a Umbrella Chonicles. (With a new vendetta against Chris for laughing at his science project.)

Code Veronica: Wesker is some kind of independent contractor for a bio-terror group and encounters Alexia Ashford in an attempt to acquire the T-Veronica Virus from her blood and he is pitifully outmatched because his progenitor virus only makes him super-human and not supernatural or god-like. I.E. he immediately recognizes that this fight could potentially end very badly for him so he leaves Chris to deal with her.

"You're responsible for the creation of the T-Veronica Virus. And now the only existing sample is in your body. And I want it, NOW!" - Albert Wesker in Code: Veronica.

Even this early in the franchise, he feels entitled to have anything he wants because he has the power; he throws Claire and Chris around like ragdolls in previous cutscenes without breaking a sweat and seems to revel in knowing he's the strongest/smartest person in the room. It's only when he gets knocked around by Alexia that he shows anything other than arrogance. And then Wesker gives Chris the WWE Smackdown treatment in the end cutscenes to try and satisfy his need for revenge on Chris since he could only make off with the T-Alexia virus from Steve's blood.

(And Wesker nearly beats Chris to a pulp which I'm CONVINCED is the reason Chris gets super buff in RE5 so he can hold his own when he inevitably meets Wesker again in the future.)

OG RE4: Sometime between Rockfort Island and Spain, Wesker moves up in the ranks and seems to be the head of some kind of Umbrella-adjacent shadow organization.

Wesker views himself as the puppeteer behind the scenes who's using hired muscle and brains to further his goals. He views himself as above the grunt work that Krauser and Ada have to do, so he doesn't interfere; he only gives commands as the mission plays out. He even refers to Krauser as "another expendable grunt" when Ada informs him he's dead in the helicopter. All that matters is obtaining the sample so he can continue on with his own goals of global domination by culling out the weak with what we'll later learn is Uroboros. Yes, he's strong enough to do the mission himself, but why would he leave his fancy computer room when he has other people to do it for him?

"Whatever happens, don't forget who's running the show." - Wesker to Ada in Assignment Ada.

RE4 Remake: Even though Wesker is more physically present while Ada carries out her mission for the sample in the remake, he's still an imposing background presence that exudes authority. He is the boss man that views the field work Ada's doing as beneath him, so he wants a capable agent to do the grunt work he can't be bothered to do himself because he has other important Global Saturation plans to attend to. Keep in mind that this was supposed to be a simple fetch quest/escort mission for Ada to grab the sample from Luis and provide him an escape from Lord Saddler. He shows up to occasionally help Ada because she's necessary is keeping attention off him while he snoops around, as well as an asset in carrying out more dangerous aspects of the mission later when he instructs her to rig the island to blow.

When the Luis arrangement doesn't work out, he leaves Ada to draw attention away from him and, similar to Code Veronica, he quietly sneaks in and grabs Krauser's body when the protagonists are keeping the BBEG and their minions busy. Whether he does so to have an extra sample or as a contingency plan in case Ada doesn't work out, the result is the same: he has what he wants.

Even when Ada chooses to coerce the pilot to take her somewhere else, Wesker merely treats her getting away with the sample as an inconsequential event. He has what he wants, the dominant plaga strain via Krauser's dead body, so why bother wasting resources on a mercenary who only knows the concept of his world ending plan? Wesker isn't a paranoid character. He's proud. He's cocky. He always thinks he's the smartest person in the room. Ada doesn't know anything substantial that could interfere with his Uroboros plan so why would he worry about one mercenary?

"Her [Ada's] little act of defiance changes nothing... We have all we need." - Wesker in Separate Ways.

RE5: There is so much going on with Wesker in this game. A mid-life identity crisis for being artificially molded by Spencer and everyone else involved in Project W into who he is. Full on pompous, arrogant, condescending attitude with everything and anyone. He believes he's a god. He's killed Spencer at this point, who essentially created the man he is in the game, who also viewed himself as someone worthy of godhood. Like a king from a warring kingdom annexing a crown, he takes the god title for himself.

We don't see much of how this affects Wesker directly in the cut scenes we see in RE5, but overall he's much more angry and acts on emotion which we have never seen from him before; ripping out Spencer's heart, hitting the wall of the bomber when Chris and Sheva board, punching a hole in an Uroboros warhead in an angry attempt to kill Chris and Sheva. One thing that is a constant with Wesker in the prior games and even in the RE4 remake is that when things don't go exactly his way, he's still collected. Whether that's with a calm threat, a biting remark or a cool dismissal, he doesn't show raging anger. Wesker is a man all about control, and that includes control of himself.

He hates not having control, and after finding out his whole life was a consequence of Spencer's plans, Wesker feels the pull to do something big in order to get his power back: Start the world from scratch with beings who are worthy of having this power like him.

In prior games, he's more understated because he has to be or he just doesn't see a need for it. Now that he has Uroboros and he's hellbent on unleashing it on the world, he needs things to be symbolic or flashy and he needs people to see and understand that. A prime example of this is the STARS pistol that Wesker pulls out of his coat during the fight on the bomber:

Chris has been there since the beginning (since S.T.A.R.S.), and I think Wesker wants Chris to be there in his New World after all is said and done. He needs Chris to know that despite all of his efforts with the B.S.A.A., he lost. Wesker relishes seeing Chris in distress. He was so theatrical about revealing the minion in the plague mask was Jill in the temple. He could have left Jill for dead when she tackled him out the window in Spencer's mansion, but instead as an emotional atom bomb to use against Chris (personal) and then when he tests Jill's blood later he sees she has potent T-Virus antibodies and uses her to help create Uroboros (practical). I would imagine he'd want to keep Chris alive to see the aftermath of his failure and keep him as lapdog to do his bidding similar to how he used Jill.

He can influence Chris' emotions.

He can control whether Chris lives or dies.

Power is everything.

Not only does he change hands to pull out the S.T.A.R.S. pistol from his coat, he doesn't shoot Chris right away.

He feels a need to toy with his food. The bomber is already flying to the optimal altitude to release the virus, Wesker still doesn't see Chris as a threat. A nuisance? Yes. Skilled because he was his 'best man' in S.T.A.R.S.? Yes. Capable of stopping him? Absolutely not. Wesker is faster, stronger, and smarter than Chris. He doesn't view him as someone capable of defeating him. Why would he?

Up until this point, Wesker has easily been able to outsmart and overpower Chris with every encounter they've had. Before Spencer Mansion in RE5, their last face to face encounter was in Code Veronica where Wesker gave Chris a beatdown. Even at the mansion when Wesker kills Spencer, Chris and Jill are still barely able to keep up with him in a 2 vs 1 fight.

"I can't lose! Not to you!" - Wesker to Chris when he's about to be defeated in the volcano in Resident Evil 5.

Because of that power imbalance (perceived and otherwise), Wesker is pissed and in disbelief when Chris and Sheva defeat him in the volcano. This mere mortal defeated Wesker at his most powerful.

In regards to the Bastard Series, a secondary motivator I think is practicality and usefulness. Doc as a character is implied to be very useful, intelligent, and above all an intellectual equal to Wesker. I.E. someone that isn't afraid to challenge him, someone who isn't a "yes man," someone who he has formed an emotional relationship with which would be difficult, if not impossible, to find again. I would consider his frenemy relationship with William Birkin to be the platonic version of this, except there's more of an emotional investment with Doc (even if he would take that information to his grave).

Since the Bastard Series is ultimately a Chris endgame story, I don't think I'll be able to organically work in everything I want with the above referenced. Buuut there's a lot of Wesker lovers out there (myself included) so I can see myself writing a prequel with Doc x Wesker detailing the events of their relationship leading up to RE5.

As always, thanks for reading!

[wil-o-wispy]

Are you going to continue your fic?

Yes I am! The writing was just slow going over the past several months!

I fully intend on finishing this fic from start to finish even if it takes a while, so if I don't update for a few months don't give up on me lol. I'm either making sure I'm satisfied with the chaper or life is lifing and I'll get to it eventually.

Part 6 for the Bastard Series is up!

[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover and the Bastard Son - Part 6

Pairing: Chris Redfield x FEM!Reader

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 (you are here)

Summary: You're out of time.

Content: Canon typical violence/swearing, descriptions of blood, references/spoilers for RE5, spoilers for RE6, descriptive parasite body horror, descriptions of Uroboros infection, possessive behavior. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

a/n: Oh look my love of horror is finally shining through. Also, I kept changing my mind on how to split everything up and this chapter ran much longer than I intended but I don't think I'll hear any complaints about that. Enjoy!

w/c: 11k

You feel like you’re being stretched thin.

Between redirecting Albert to other parts of the lab through the announcement system, answering Chris’ questions on the computer system, keeping an eye on Jake’s progress through the lab searching for the G-Virus, weapons and Youju’s office, as well as keeping nervous vigil on the poor soul that got infected by Uroboros in the hallway Jake explored, your attention is scattered to say the least.

And what’s worse, you’re growing tired. 

It’s a preposterous problem on the surface; monsters are mulling about, you’re counting down the minutes until Chris’ team arrives and you’re on high alert for any potential danger for you or Jake. How could you possibly have the capacity to doze off?

The problem and answer are one and the same: you’re human.

You’ve been awake and in survival mode for the better part of a day and a half.

Your tongue becomes stubbornly slow.

Your words to Jake on the walkie are sluggish and you have to make a conscious effort to articulate your words so they don’t run together.

Your eyes grow heavy.

You lean your head on your fist and blink longer than you should, only bolting upright when Jake’s voice comes through on the walkie or Chris’ voice emanates from the computer system with an updated ETA. Flipping through the cameras to redirect Albert or check on the creature keeps you awake for a few minutes, until you start drifting off again just as quickly. 

Your mind is exhausted.

You start to make small mistakes directing Jake to parts of the lab he hasn’t explored. The numbers blur together and you say them out of order. Your directions become jumbled. The momentary respite from responsibility from closing your eyes for too long becomes irresistibly inviting. 

“You doin’ okay Doc? You sound distracted.” Jake questions through the walkie nestled in your hand. You jerk upright once again, frown, then unsuccessfully try to rub the sleep out of your eyes. Despite the soulless white LED lights illuminating the room, the darkness that envelops you behind your eyelids in this moment is more inviting than any bed or embrace. The buzzing from the same lights would normally grate on your ears, but now serve as infuriatingly soothing white noise. You pick up the walkie and put it to your lips.

“Fine. You haven’t found any energy drinks have you? Coffee? Epinephrine?” You mumble into the walkie, only half joking about the last one. The last thing you need to do is fall asleep while so many things are relying on your eyes and ears. To your relief you hear Jake chuckle. 

“Can’t say I have, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled. 805 through 820 are also bust. A lot of offices, but not with the one we’re looking for.” Jake says through the walkie. You fumble picking up your pen and haphazardly cross out those rooms. Your purposeful marks have devolved into barely thought out scribbles. 

“Ridger that.” You reply, not even noticing the small mistake in your speech as you flick the pen across the paper.

“You wanna try saying that again Doc?” Jake says, the shit eating grin evident in his voice.

You huff and put the walkie back to your lips, making a conscious effort to enunciate your words. “Rodger that. Find anything remotely useful?”

“Old matchbook. Flimsy, but it’ll do. Could be useful if there’s a can of gas laying around to keep our friend in the hallway warm.” 

You think for a moment too long, flicking through the cameras to quadruple check the pile of Uroboros is still in the same hallway before answering into the walkie and yawning. “As long as everything is burned away, then it’ll work. I could try directing you to the hangar to look for one if you need a change of scenery?”

“I’ll take you up on that once I finish here.”    

The buzzing from the fluorescent lights overhead and the whirring from the computer systems are the only sounds in the room for a long moment until you hear Jake’s voice through the walkie again.

“Hey Doc?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s going on with you and Redfield?”

You frown and let out a breath through your nose, hating that your pulse sped up at his question. You’re silent for a moment. There was no way in hell you were digging into that can of worms now. You especially aren’t going to voluntarily divulge having an intimate encounter with Jake’s father’s killer.

“Difference of opinion.” It wasn’t a lie, but it was vague enough of an answer that you hoped Jake would get the hint and drop it.

“On what?” Jake asks through the walkie. You can hear a grin in his voice.

“Nothing important.” You quip shortly, fighting back a yawn.

“Sounds important to me.”

You roll your eyes and bring the walkie to your lips again. “I will answer any questions you have about your father with full honesty. But anything about me outside that? Case by case basis. Difference of opinion.”

There’s silence on the walkie and you think that Jake’s finally gotten the hint, but then his voice comes through again. “Alright then. How’d you meet him?” Jake says casually.

You pause. 

“Wesker?” You utter.

“Yeah. Umbrella?”

You nod, even though Jake can’t see it. “Yeah.” 

Another pause. “That all you got for me?”

You shrug. “It’s not terribly interesting.”

“Then bore me.” You can hear Jake rummaging through something on the other side of the walkie for a moment before the frequency cuts out.

You think for a moment, then figure why not? If Jake wants to know more about his father from your perspective, then so be it. “On my first day the scientist training me was out sick, and Wesker was the only person not stuck in a meeting who knew how to run all of the equipment that I needed to use.”

You watch Jake walk out of a room and back into the hallway on the cameras. You see him nodding his head. “So you two got to talking and got together a while later?”

You snort. “I thought he was an ass actually, so no.”

You see Jake do something like a snort or a chuckle on the cameras. “Is that so?” 

“Yeah he wasn’t happy about ‘wasting his time’ showing me around. He had an attitude so I gave it right back to him.”

You lean back in your chair, thinking back to those simpler times.

“First he thought I was a pain in the ass, then I started moving up in the department and we were rivals, then we started being placed on overlapping projects. That rivalry eventually turned into something more and he put a ring on it.”

There were more salacious details in between those events; lots of late nights in the labs and office rendezvous that would have gotten both you and Albert in a lot of trouble with management if you’d been less discreet about it. 

“You work on bioweapons together?” You see Jake disappear into another room.

“No. I worked in vaccines. He was in special projects. Occasionally those two things overlapped.”

“You know about the viruses or monsters or anything?”

You lean forward in your chair, flipping through the cameras while answering. Albert is still wandering and the corpse infected with Uroboros is still where it should be. You have to consciously remind yourself to open your eyes after blinking. 

Focus.

“I knew it was top secret and government funded. I thought he was working on combat enhancing drugs or something related to it.”

Chris’ voice emanates from the computer system in the corner of the room. “Redfield for Doc. You read me?” His voice sounds clearer than before. A sure sign that rescue is close. You put the walkie to your lips.

“Chris is calling, I’ll be back.”

“You two play nice.” You can hear the singsong grin in Jake’s voice and you have to bite back saying something defensive.

“And you do your part while I try to keep you alive, yeah?” You quip, tossing the walkie next to a security monitor. You roll yourself over to the computer system while sitting in your wheely chair and unmute yourself.

“You’ve got Doc. Any updates?”

Even though his voice is laced with determination and professionalism, Chris’ voice sounds much too soothing as it flows out of the computer system. “I’m happy to inform you I have a tanker about 100 miles out with supporting aircraft on standby”

“Thank God. And you’ve got weapons? Good ones?” 

“Affirmative. With all the bells and whistles and then some.”

“Good…good…” You start to trail off, deciding to rest your eyes for a moment in the chair.

“Has he broken character?”

Not on camera.

Not having the security cameras glare into your eyes is doing wonders on your ability to stay conscious. The chair feels much cozier than it did a few hours ago. 

“Doc? You read me? What’s the status on Wesker?” Chris’ worried voice breaks through the fog of sleep.

Your head shoots back up. You shake your head and rub your eyes. You have to stay awake. People are depending on you. Your voice comes out in a tired mumble. “Yeah! Yeah I’m here. Still holding down the fort. Not on camera, but I think he did in one of the blind spots about an hour ago. He had more blood on his face than he did before.”

“So that’s twice?” Chris asks, his voice a soothing balm to your nerves, bringing you dangerously close to relaxing a little too much. You force yourself to focus, lightly slapping your fingers on your cheeks to will the tempting blanket of sleep to dissipate. It doesn’t work.

“Correct. He’s still responding to my voice though.”

You can almost imagine Chris nodding his head on the other side of the call, mentally categorizing the information for later. His next words come out softer.

“And are you doing okay? Do you need anything when we get there? Water, food, medical attention?”

You look down at the dried blood on your clothes, thinking back to Albert mowing down the Neo Umbrella scientists back in the chamber. You wrinkle your nose in discomfort. “Change of clothes would be nice? I’ll take literally anything you have.”

“I’m sure we’ve got some extra flight suits around here somewhere.” You can hear a fond smile creeping into Chris’ voice.

“Those can be pretty cute jumpsuits with the right accessories.” You tiredly joke, unable to resist the comforting familiarity in his voice and not even realizing your mind is starting to drift.

Chris responds in an easy, low tone. “I’ll make sure to get you a couple options then. Can’t have our resident scientist not looking her best.” 

You let out a quiet, tired laugh at his light teasing, the sound barely escaping your lips as you lean your head back on the roller chair again. You can almost imagine leaning on Chris’ shoulder and falling asleep like that in his comforting arms. Your head feels so heavy. You need to stay alert, but sleep calls to you from the darkness behind your eyelids like a siren’s song.

“Doc?” Chris questions after your continued silence.

“Hm?” You mumble, barely conscious.

“Doc... Stay with me,” Chris’s voice cuts through, still warm but firmer now. “We’re getting close, but I need you sharp. Just hang tight till we get there, alright?”

“I’m awake… I’m awake…” You mumble to yourself, forcing yourself to open your eyes.

“Good. I need your capable eyes and ears at full throttle, alright? We-” Chris is interrupted by another soldier talking to him on the other end. In either your haze of exhaustion or radio static, you can’t hear what needs Chris’ attention. You know by the murmuring under his breath that it can’t be anything good.

“Doc, I’ve gotta take care of something really quick but I’ll be back, okay? Don’t hang up, but do a few laps around the room you’re in. Get your blood pumping.” Every word Chris speaks is like honey in your ears, seeping slowly into your bones and making your current situation a distant, dangerous memory.

“Hm.” You utter, blinking slowly. “That’s a good idea.”

Chris’ heavy footsteps are the last thing you hear before your body finally gives way, and your consciousness drifts into darkness.

You jolt awake when you hear gunshots, frantically looking around the room to see where the source is.

You fell asleep you damn idiot.

They’re coming from the security cameras. You roll your chair over with so much force you have to stop your body from being clotheslined by the end of the table. Your eyes quickly find the correct camera angle, and they widen when you see Jake shooting at a monstrous amalgamation of Uroboros. You smack your hand over the walkie talkie, struggling to hold down the correct button in your panic. You finally find it.

“Jake you need to run!” You bark into the walkie, eyes glued to the screen.

Despite your order, Jake stands his ground and continues to unload the clip into the writhing mass of bio-matter. He can’t hear you over the gunshots.

You slam your hand onto the security panel to speak into the announcement system.

“You’re wasting ammo you need literal fire to stand a chance against that thing! Run!”

You see Jake’s lips move on the screen saying some kind of curse before he darts down the hall, the writhing creature just barely keeping up with him.

For a moment you sit there just watching the chase unfold as you try to formulate a plan. Jake can’t run forever. The creature will easily outlast Jake in terms of stamina. 

You frantically look around the security panel, trying to find the controls for the security doors to try and trap the creature in a hallway that Jake isn’t going to need later to at least give him some time to get away. You find the controls and try to get your bearings on where Jake is running, and you realize he’s running back towards the hallway you two got separated at. You look down at the panel; GAS is clearly marked under a button close to the hallway security door locks.

Your mind goes back to the knockout gas. The matches that Jake found. You have a plan.

“Run two halls down, turn right and run all the way to the end! Prepare to light some matches and throw them when I say so!”

You command into the walkie, turning up the gas release all the way, then having your finger and thumb hovering over one of the security door buttons and the other over the knockout gas. You don’t know the exact type of gas this mechanism uses, but a lot of gas canisters you’ve seen over the years have the KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAME warning in bold letters on it. You’re hoping this one is something remotely flammable and you can saturate the hallway enough for it to ignite.

You watch with bated breath as Jake sprints into view on the security monitor, sliding and almost falling over on the sharp turn but quickly regaining his balance by pushing his upper body from the floor with one hand and beelining down towards the opposite end of the hallway. The creature writhes into view a few seconds after. As soon as it crosses the threshold of the hallway you close the security door behind it and turn on the gas, finger poised to close the other door.

Thick white plumes of gas creep from the middle of the floor grating as Jake’s feet glide over it, following even closer on his heels than the pursuing creature.

You see Jake make it to the end of the hallway and expertly strike one of the matches, then light up the rest of the matchbook for good measure as he keeps sprinting.

“Light it up and run like hell!” You bark into the walkie, and Jake wastes no time tossing the whole flaming matchbook into the hallway behind him like he’s throwing a frisbee and high tailing it in the opposite direction over the threshold of the security door. At the same time you slam your hand on the other security door button.

Everything that happens next happens in an instant.

The matchbook doesn’t even make it to the ground before you see the gas ignite on the camera in the hallway. You see the creature slam up against the security door when the flames hit it. It writhes and shivers from the unbearable heat before the hallway feed is overtaken by white and replaced with static, along with a dozen or so other camera feeds that were displayed on the security panel.

You can feel your heart beating in your ears as you try to find a camera that’s still operational so you can make sure the creature will no longer be a problem. After another moment, you finally find one in a connecting hallway that gives you a glimpse into the now decimated one. The gas appears to have been connected to some of the neighboring halls, causing a chain reaction of explosions as a result. You can see bits of grate, security door and wall paneling scattered like shrapnel in the unaffected areas that you can still see. Piping from below the grated floor that you couldn’t see before the chase faintly glows red like dying embers.

To your relief, a pile of bio matter lies in lifeless black ropes, gradually melting away into the grating below with small flames clinging to it on all sides.

You sigh, shoulders relaxing as you let yourself melt into the wheeled office chair you’re sitting in. You speak into the walkie. “Jake, I think you got it.”

No answer.

“Jake? Do you copy?”

You’re frozen, waiting for a proof of life that doesn’t come, then your eyes flick back up to the security panel, your mind quickly putting together the general location of the cameras that went out after the explosion. A numbness comes over you. The cameras that are now static are located where Jake was running to.

“Jake!” You shout into the walkie, assuming the worst and shaking the walkie in your hand as if it will help you get an answer more quickly.

Suffocating silence.

You’re about to call into the walkie again, but you hear something to your right and you stiffen. You slowly move your eyes over to the door without moving your head, your heartbeat already speeding up again and dread creeping into your bones. The sound is faint, but the familiar walking cadence of your husband that you’ve been observing for the past few hours on the security system is unmistakable. 

Thump and drag. Thump and drag.

With your eyes still on the door, you slowly reach down to the volume knob on your walkie and turn the dial all the way down.

A shadow creeps along the bottom side of the communications room door, larger than a normal man. You already know with dreaded clarity the danger you’re in. You don’t move. You barely breathe.

Albert heard you. Stay quiet. Stay calm.

Maybe if you’re quiet enough he’ll get bored and go away. Even though you know your husband is more receptive to your wishes with the Nemesis parasite piloting his body, the brief moments of clarity and rage from the real Albert are enough to make calling out to him a risk you’re unwilling to make.

It feels like he’s standing outside the door for an eternity. You can hear the heavy breathing, the wet drag of the Uroboros arm on the wall neighboring the communications room that’s been your safe haven for the past few hours. 

Chris’ voice pierces the air like a death toll.

“Doc? You there?”

You feel your heart drop to your stomach. A sound similar to a growl emanates from the other side of the door followed by a single hard rap on the door that rings through the room so loudly that it makes you jump in your seat and you pray to whatever deity may be listening that Chris gets the message that you’re busy and can’t talk right now.

For a moment you’re frozen in your seat, the stillness in the air hanging over you like an oppressive fog. Then, the inevitable happens. Chris’ voice shatters the silence.

“I know you’re busy with Jake over there, but we’re about an hour out from your current location…”

The more Chris talks, the angrier the sounds on the outside of the room become, the more frequent the banging on the door rattles the wall, and the faster your heart beats as you scramble out of your rolling chair and frantically try to silence Chris’ voice.

Where the hell is the off switch?

You fumble trying to find the button to terminate the frequency, but the panic short circuiting your rational thinking and making it impossible to read the labels on any of the buttons. You do the next best thing and smash every button you see, but you press them in the exact wrong order because you unmute yourself and raise the volume unintentionally.

Chris finally hears the commotion on your end, and speaks in a low serious tone.

“Doc is everything alrigh-”

“SHUT UP!” You screech, on the verge of tears still trying in vain to turn off the communications device. At the same time, you hear the sounds of wailing, crumbling metal at the entrance to the room. You look over your shoulder just in time to see a coil of writhing biomatter piercing through the metal door, and Albert pulling it right out of its resting place and discarding it without a thought of where it will land.

With a feral sound that can only be described as an incensed roar, Albert bounds across the room towards you. Survival instinct takes over and you dive out of the way just as Albert takes a swing at you with his Uroboros arm. 

No.

Not at you.

At the computer system. 

At the source of Chris’ voice.

Albert swings at the computer system and nearly bends the whole thing in half on the diagonal, breaking the screen but not the audio system. Chris’ voice warbles though like a bad record, his worry for you evident in the tone of voice even if the words themselves are unintelligible, and it only incenses Albert more. Albert rips and tears and pierces the system with manic movements, as if picturing his nemesis dying by his hand and not a piece of machinery long after Chris’ voice is no longer heard.

For good measure, he wraps his Uroboros arm around it and rips the whole system from the wall, with sparks flying and the sounds of protesting metal not ceasing until he flings it across the room and the whole thing resembles a crushed and hole ridden crushed soda can rather than a high tech piece of equipment.

The whole time this is happening, you can’t even take the opportunity to escape. Albert’s large body has effectively cornered you into the area with all of the storage boxes. You can’t get around him without having your body touch his in some way. That’s not the only thing that stops you though.

You can tell Albert is lucid.

His eyes are glowing red slits when he stares at the destroyed machine. He breathes heavily with beads of sweat dripping down his face, brown from dried blood leftover from hitting his head against the wall some hours ago. Or is it the remnants of blood splashback from all the scientists he killed? 

Leaning on the wall for support, Albert takes advantage of his momentary lucidity to reach behind his ribcage with his more human arm towards the regulator. His fingers fumble against the device, unable to get a good grip from the smoothness of the outer shell and the black secretions from Uroboros which causes him to growl in frustration. You see his eyes start to dilate once more as the Nemesis parasite attempts to regain control, but Albert realizes it early and is quick to act before that happens.

He doesn’t try reaching for the regulator like before. He doesn’t slam his head against the wall. Instead, he uses nothing but his fingernails on his non-Uroboros covered arm to dig at the flesh at the base of his hairline on the back of neck. Albert grimaces and shakes from the pain and the struggle to stay in control, but continues to force his fingernails into his skin, blood leaking around the intrusions until he has some purchase in his grip on the layer of skin. 

His hand closes in on itself and he slowly rips the sensitive skin downwards with a breathless cry and the skin tears away from the muscle underneath in one jagged flap. Blood spurts down the length of what you can see of his spine underneath the writhing worms of Uroboros. Albert wastes no time digging his fingers into the knots of revealed muscle to grasp strings of something decidedly alien with a shaking fist. Albert only wastes a few seconds to mentally prepare himself before you see him ball his hand into a fist and yank the strange strings violently to the side until the muscles of his good arm grow taught and he lets out a blood curdling cry of agony.

Knowing how powerful he was all those years ago, seeing Albert locked in a battle of wills for control of his own body is a harrowing experience.

You’d become fairly desensitized to the blood and gore that accompanies your profession over the years as a consequence of simply witnessing it; blood and the pallid flesh of the freshly dead, the decomposing death masks of the undead and the aftermath of the gnashing teeth from any number of genetically engineered monsters hardly made you bat an eye anymore. 

But this? 

This horrifies you.

Scientifically you could attempt to imagine the unsurmountable pain Albert was experiencing. The Nemesis parasite attached itself to the individual nerve endings on its host along the spine with extra tendrils eventually migrating to the hosts limbs, as well as a handful attaching themselves to the brain stem outright so the subject could be given orders without question.

As a result, the scene before you is gruesome. Albert’s ear piercing scream as he wrestles a fistful of the parasite at the base of his skull inch by painful inch is nothing short of stomach churning as you can almost hear the individual nerves around the bone of his neck snap and tear one by one as Albert continues the arduous feat of ripping his true jailor out of his body with nothing but his enhanced strength and his will to never be at the mercy of another ever again. The tendrils not exposed to the air grow taut under the layer of skin between his shoulder blades and cause it to tent away from his spine more and more as Albert keeps pulling with a trembling fist. Any other person in his position would have passed out from the pain and at least released the tendrils of the most sensitive attachment site. Instead, Albert only grits his teeth, the pain apparently aiding his fight to stay lucid, and pulls even harder.

You can only imagine the feeling would be something similar to acid burning over the whole expanse of his nerve endings. A dull knife twisting into the skin and attempting to cut away skin from flesh over and over. Burning from the inside out as if forced to swallow lava and boiling oneself alive.

The parasite tendrils aren’t indestructible by any means. Flesh is flesh no matter the creature. But the parasite has the advantage of not experiencing the pain of being ripped apart from the inside out. Having not to tear into itself in a desperate scramble for free will. Having to rip out an intelligent new body part that insists it belongs there. Having a prefrontal cortex that would remember every excruciating second of self-mutilation and partial dismemberment. Albert has the unfortunate character trait of never backing down even when it’s to his detriment in the face of insurmountable pain if it means he’ll once again be in control of himself in the end.

With a final yell that makes you understand the definition of a war cry, Albert makes a final yank on the handful of alien bonds and they finally break with a sickening, fleshy snap.

Albert collapses against the wall of the communications room, breathing heavily and groaning in pain, as well as blocking the only exit. His chest heaves for oxygen, and his fist finally relaxes and drops to his side. His face falls into something that resembles relief and subdued rage. 

You watch him like prey analyzes a predator, heart in your throat and frozen in hopes that he’ll forget you’re even here if you stay still enough.

You’re not so lucky.

His snake eyes open, red and faintly glowing with a mixture of emotions when they perceive who you are; anger, annoyance, intrigue, then finally they land on something not even you can definitively describe. 

For a moment that seems to stretch into eternity, the room is silent except for his shaky breathing and the fluorescent lights overhead. Then Albert finally pushes himself up off the wall to stand at his full height over you.

“You’ve been very naughty dearest.” Even when Albert is panting for breath, his commanding presence can’t be understated. He’s still just as intimidating as he was on the day he supposedly died, except his piercing gaze isn’t focused on the destroyed computer system Chris was speaking from anymore. They’re focused on you. Albert was in a vulnerable state and you took advantage of it for your own gain, and you know very well from your years being married to him that he doesn’t take kindly to people who seek to control him.

But you know when he looks murderous, and that’s not the unreadable expression on his face at the moment.

Albert catches his breath and leans in closer to you. Your back is already to the corner, so you can only watch as his face leans away a few inches from yours to stare you down.

“But I suppose given the unique nature of the circumstances, I can give you the luxury of earning my forgiveness.” His words hold no trace of warmth, only an unsaid warning: come willingly or else.

You quickly weigh your options. You’re cornered. You have no weapons to defend yourself with. Your only contact with the outside world has been smashed to bits. Jake is MIA. Even in Albert’s weaker state, it wouldn’t do you any favors to make him angrier or risk him being able to catch you before you even cross the threshold of the door out of the communications room.

So you do the only sensible thing and nod in agreement.

“Good.” Albert replies in that same cold tone.

Before you can even blink, tendrils of Uroboros wrap themselves around your torso and armpits, lifting you up from the ground and carrying you as Albert exits the room.

“Your assistance is required in the lab, dearheart.”

You and Albert don’t speak on the way back to the inner sanctum.

Of all things to be on your mind, your focus is on the worms of Uroboros holding you tightly to Albert’s side. You can’t decide whether or not Albert has full control over his Uroboros mutation. The tendrils writhe like serpents in a way that indicates they’re doing it on their own, yet they’ll bend to Albert’s command when he wants them to. The black fluid dripping off of them seeps through your clothes and makes a chill run down your spine; the feeling of your wet clothes sticking to your skin only makes the feeling of Albert’s presence all the more suffocating.

He carries you through the desolate halls, your feet dangling in the air, and you both finally arrive at the inner sanctum. Albert’s foot catches slightly on a guard’s body that he’d mutilated back when he first woke up. He scowls from the intrusion, then kicks the corpse to the side.

Before you can even consider a path to escape once you're out of his grip, a few tendrils on Albert’s Uroboros arm unravel from your arms and whip a fallen metal cabinet in front of the main sliding doors. You know it won’t prevent them from opening, but you have a feeling the measure is more to keep you in than to keep others out. The tendrils return to their original position binding your arms to your sides.

To your surprise, there are no indications that Albert wants to put you down yet. He keeps carrying you when he steps over the threshold of the broken observation window and into the observation chamber, then towards the cylindrical tank where he breached containment. Without a word, he steps back into the tank and pulls you to his chest. Your face is only a few inches from his. Instead of having butterflies, your stomach churns with the uncertainty of what Albert has planned in that diabolical mind of his. 

He pauses to stare at you, his eyes roaming over your messy hair, your bloody clothes, and finally your face like he’s trying to reacquaint himself with your features. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but you swear you see his slitted pupils inflate slightly when he looks down at you. 

Then just as quickly as it started, you observe his head twitch subtly and the pupils return to normal.

Albert makes a soft, “hmph,” and tilts his chin to the outside of the tank. A tendril immediately slithers out and presses something on the outside, then retracts. A metallic clunk resounds through the chamber and the tank lowers itself into the grate flooring below. 

The room below is much more cavernous than expected. The tank descends about two stories below the original chamber, finally stopping at the bottom in the middle of another room filled with more equipment. You notice storage cabinets, more observational equipment, some spare tanks like the one Albert was confined in, and an unusual assortment of large speakers lining the perimeter of the room. Youju’s words echo in your head: We’ve tried snippets of your voice and they’ve yielded positive results. It’s clear Youju and his team invested a lot of funds into setting them up. If it weren’t for the lab equipment and the emergency ladder jutting from the wall on the side of the room, the space could easily pass as an immersive rock concert space.

When the tank is finally on ground level, Albert steps out with you in hand and makes his way over to a section of the lab with a metal table and a console of some sort behind it. An intimidating contraption resembling a laser gun straight out of a sci-fi blockbuster hangs over the table. Your heart is in your throat, your mind immediately jumping to the worst conclusion, but to your relief Albert drags himself right by the metal table and sets you down in the chair behind the console.

His firm grip on your shoulder and downward pressure are a silent command: stay seated.

Albert makes his way over to a specific set of refrigerated cabinets, the door hissing out mist as an Uroboros worm opens it. There are several rusted cases with handles on them, similar to a briefcase roughly the size of a laptop bag. They look out of place in the pristine whiteness of the metal chamber. Everything else is modern and sleek like the equipment was upstairs before Albert destroyed everything. Several tendrils pick up different cases. Albert examines each one closely, scowling when it doesn’t meet whatever standard he has in mind, then places it back before moving on to another. Then another. Then another.

He’s looking for something.

It takes you longer than you’d like to gather yourself. “Why am I here?” Your voice resonates through the metal chamber and up to the grating above with no effort.

“You are going to be a good wife and assist me in eradicating this damned parasite from my body.” Albert answers pragmatically, like you assisting him whenever he requested is still the norm now like it was back at Umbrella. He lifts another case up to eye level and examines it. Albert doesn’t scowl, so this one appears to be satisfactory.

You can’t help but scoff at his answer. “And why would I do that?” You utter with revulsion. 

Albert’s head snaps toward you and you freeze. His eyes glow like embers, signifying his lack of patience with your attitude as he makes his way back over to you. He stares you down for a menacing few seconds, then gently places the case next to you on its side.

He clicks open the case and you can’t stop your eyes from going wide and your breath being stolen from your lungs. The case is rusted and dated because it’s an Uroboros syringe holding case from the Africa tanker. The syringe glints menacingly in the low light of the lab, similar to Albert’s cold anger underlying his next words.

“Disobey me, and that’s going in your arm whether you want it to or not. Understood?”

Despite your fear of Albert injecting you, there was always the protection of you not giving consent. Albert wanted you to want to take Uroboros all those years ago. As frustrating as your continued resistance was, in his mind, the eventual prospect of you submitting to his will of your own accord was too irresistible a possibility to abandon all together for something as trivial as his impatience.

Based on the burning embers of malintent in Albert’s demon eyes, you don’t have that luxury anymore.

What else can you do besides agree when your head is in the maw of the beast?

You nod, and steel yourself before you flick your gaze back up to him as you slip into a mask of neutrality. “What do I need to do first?”

Albert gives you an approving hum and turns his attention to the monitor, reaching over your shoulder and typing in specific parameters for whatever he’s about to have you do next.

“Targeted radiation on the parasite. I’ll handle the regulation device.” Albert replies shortly, not taking his eyes off of the computer system and typing away with surprising accuracy. After a moment, he’s finished typing and logs the data into the machine. You hear the sound of machinery whirring to life as he walks around the computer system and lies face down on the examination table. He looks somewhat comical with his disproportionately large Uroboros arm hanging over the side of it, with more than half flopping to the side to rest on the floor.

You briefly consider “missing” the parasite to radiate the back of his skull, but you decide against it. You and Albert know the Nemesis parasite doesn’t go that far up into the brain. Radiation isn’t painful in unaffected areas anyway.

“How did you know all of this was here?” You ask, moving the joystick so the radiation gun is directly over Albert’s spine between his shoulder blades, but due to the Uroboros overtaking the expanse of Albert’s upper back and the placement of the regulation device, it’s proving difficult to get direct access to his spine. His neck is no better. The flap of skin he ripped away has already started healing, but the skin is still red and angry from the stress of the injury and the blood that has trickled down against his pale skin. You keep having to adjust the placement of the radiation device due to the constant movement of the Uroboros on his body.

“I heard everything those degenerates were planning in my slumber. This new Umbrella will take any warm body into their ranks it seems. ” Albert replies bitterly.

You only nod and keep trying to maneuver the radiation device. After yet another adjustment, Albert snaps at you in annoyance.

“Pray tell, what is causing your hesitation?” 

You frown. “There’s biomatter in the way of your spine-”

“Irrelevant. Proceed.” 

You let out a sharp breath through your nose. You know this is going to be painful, but then again Albert isn’t one to shy away from pain. You turn your attention to the monitor. Albert had set it to measure heat, and it’s clear why. There’s a clear separation between the Nemesis parasite and Uroboros. The Nemesis parasite runs through Albert’s spine with smaller strands running through his limbs like burning crimson highways. The Uroboros strands run through the entirety of Albert’s torso and left arm like individual lazy rivers that intertwine into one unnatural, nauseating ocean.

You take a breath to steady your hand and begin with the left arm.

At first, Albert seems relatively unbothered from the Nemesis parasite disintegrating in his palm and fingertips. The Uroboros covering the afflicted areas only shiver and vibrate as the radiation passes through them. Occasionally, a strand will wither significantly, but most bounce back within a few minutes after the initial shock of the radiation passes. The weaker ones wither off and fall to the floor, melting away into a puddle. None of this seems to bother Albert. A necessary sacrifice. You see the muscles in Albert’s back contract when you guide the implement up the forearm and through the bicep.

When you finally make it to his spine you can hear Albert breathing heavily, no doubt with a gritted jaw trying and failing to look unaffected by the pain. He only starts to lose his composure when the radiation meets the angry skin at the base of his neck. His body shakes with Herculean effort to stay still, but it seems like Albert is reaching his limit. You frown. With how much he’s unintentionally moving, you can’t quite get all of the Nemesis parasite burnt away.

You pause the radiation to give Albert some time to regain his composure “Hold still. You’re going to make me fry your brain stem if you keep squirming.” You say coldly, still focusing completely on the monitor.

He sits up to glare at you with significant effort, breathing heavily from the lingering pain with a few tufts of blonde hair sticking to his forehead. “Do I get not an ounce of understanding from my own spouse?” He utters lowly, clearly losing patience.

You let out a disbelieving chuckle. “And why should you? It’s your own damn fault you're like this.” Your face drops into something less amused. “What was that thing you said about Birkin after Antarctica? He was a victim of his own hubris and deserved no sympathy?”

Albert slams his Uroboros arm on the ground with so much force that it cracks the tiles and the sudden sound makes you jerk in your seat. 

“You never did know when to stop , did you?” He growls, striding over behind the console before you can even think to get up from your seat to move away from him. Albert looms over you, his eyes slitted and annoyed as he uses his Uroboros arm to trap you in your chair, a few of the tendrils wrapping around your torso and jaw to keep your eyes on him. You try to swat them away with little success.

“I will not be lectured like an unruly child by you.” Albert ignores your attempts to keep him from touching you at first, but his expression hardens a moment later.

“Where is it?” Albert says lowly, an Uroboros tendril grabbing your wrist to maneuver your forearm into his line of sight. His eyes glow faintly as he looks at your left hand.

You look at Albert with a tired expression. “I’m not a mind reader Al-”

“My ring. Where is it?” 

Oh.

Truthfully, you hadn’t worn that ring in years. You don’t even know where it could be at this point. You’re silent for a moment, but then decide to just spit it out. “I sold it.” You say with a straight face.

Albert’s face twitches. “What? ”

You take a breath and continue. “I sure as hell wasn’t going to dip into your blood money to survive. Not that I could access it anyway. The whole thing was mysteriously donated to the B.S.A.A.”

Albert sets his jaw. “That ring was a symbol of our partnership-”

“Oh don’t pretend there was any love lost those last few months. Hell, those last couple years we were together. That ring represented a dead marriage, no pun intended.”

“A temporary falling out because you couldn’t see reason.” Albert growls.

“By willingly taking a virus that would statistically kill me? Huh! It’s a wonder I didn’t see ’reason.’ ” You bite back, putting air quotes around the last word to emphasize how ridiculous you saw his claim even while the additional appendages from said virus are still holding you in place in your seat.

Albert takes a sharp breath from his nose. “When we get to the mainland you’ll get another one.” There’s no warmth in his voice; only the cold pragmatism that seemed to seep itself into every interaction, as well as an underlying impatience.

“No.” You utter firmly, your previous fear replaced by an unresolved anger that’s been boiling below the surface for years.

“No? You made vows, sweetness. In sickness and in health.” Albert recites the words like a binding contract.

“‘-and til death do us part.’ You died. I’ve already fulfilled that. And if you think I’m willingly going to put on another ring of yours, you’re senile! You have no idea how unnecessarily difficult it’s been to live my life because of what you fucking tried to do!” 

“Oh life’s been a bit hard, has it? Oh poor thing. I wouldn’t know anything about hardship.” Albert spits in a mocking tone, tendrils tightening slightly around you.

“You tried to destroy the world, failed, and now have to suffer the consequences. Boo hoo, you have it so difficult. Do you hear yourself?” You mock back.

“We would have been gods.” 

“You would have been god of nothing except the ashes of civilization, and maybe my corpse if I didn’t turn into a pile of worms first!”

“You are better than them. We would have ruled above the rest. We are destined for more than mere mortality!” Albert insists with frustrating conviction.

“And what is so horrible about growing old together?” Your anger softens into something more hurt and vulnerable. “You talk about making a new world like our old one was insignificant but Albert I liked our simple life!” Your words ring in the air and dissipate, only emphasizing just how different you and your newly resurrected husband have become.

Albert stands there in silence, still looming over you, then slowly takes a few steps back so he can look at you fully. The Uroboros around you unfurl from you in an almost caressing manner as Albert stares down at you, the mutated arm resting at his side. His expression isn’t kind, but it’s not mocking. It’s almost tender, but still guarded enough so that he doesn’t show you anything that could be interpreted as weakness.

“Spouses are meant to strengthen one another.” Albert murmurs, his ruby eyes gazing at you with something akin to longing before he continues. “I’ll just have to show you the error of your thinking. You’ll forgive me later once you witness its power.”

You sigh, closing your eyes and shaking your head, disappointed. “If you wanted a partner in crime, you shouldn’t have killed Excella.” You utter, resigned to the fact that your future will never include the man the progenitor virus took away.

The mere mention of Excella’s name makes the tenderness in Albert’s expression vanish and become replaced with something volatile. “You are the only one worthy.”

“Excella would have gladly taken my place without batting an eye. You didn’t seem to mind. She seemed pretty worthy when she was feeling you up and you didn’t push her off.” You accuse with a frown. After seeing the security footage, you’re positive he only allowed Excella to touch him to get under your skin. Why not use it to get under his?

“Don’t pretend you’re innocent in all this.” Albert growls lowly, his eyes flashing then dying down into their normal brilliant red.

You have to steel yourself for a few seconds to keep up the facade of strength. “I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“You helped them.” Albert interrupts, staring you down and taking a step towards you. “You helped him. You’re going to tell me why.”

You keep your mouth shut, mulling over your options for how to get out of directly answering him.

You know what Albert’s really asking: Why did you help Chris Redfield of all people? Thorn in his side, Chris Redfield. Representation of everything Albert sought to destroy, Chris Redfield. Mortal enemy Chris Redfield. Apart from him and Sheva being your only options for rescue and escape, deep down you knew you couldn’t do what needed to be done yourself. The Uroboros plan was Albert’s twisted culmination of Spencer’s ideals and you knew when you were rescued from being strapped to that chair that Albert would succeed at his plan or die trying. You’re no killer, but it was surprisingly easy on your conscience to willingly give the keys to Albert’s demise in Chris’ capable hands to ensure the world lived another day. 

But you know that answer will enrage him, so you do the next best thing. 

You lean over and swipe the Uroboros case so it falls to the floor, and you make a beeline towards the chamber’s pod elevator in the center of the room. Within seconds you hear Albert’s tendrils catch the case and feel a couple others wrap around your waist. You try in vain to rip them off, groaning in frustration.

“Tsk, tsk. How very naughty and disappointing. I’ll have to rectify that.” Albert tuts in a condescending tone.

He reels you in with more and more Uroboros worms until once again you’re lifted off the ground until you’re face to face with him, trying in vain to squirm out of the tenderil’s wet grip. Albert holds the Uroboros case up, then plucks the syringe out of the case and dangles it within your line of sight while giving you a stern look.

“Choose your next words very carefully my sweet. You wouldn’t want my hand to slip. Would you?”

Before you can think of a clever retort, high pitched feedback rings from one of the speakers on the other side of the room which causes both you and Albert to wince. As quickly as it starts, it cuts out and you hear the clash of something small and metal landing on the tile beneath Albert’s feet. The world goes white from a flash of light and there’s ringing in your ears. Then, a gunshot shatters through the air and Albert lets out a pained, angry snarl. 

“Little late for a family reunion, huh Wesker?” 

Your vision clears as you look up towards the voice and you can’t help but let out a disbelieving laugh. Jake is almost all the way down the emergency ladder with holsters of weapons all across his body, a smoking magnum revolver in his hand and a pin from a used flashbang hanging off his thumb.

His clothes are scorched in places from the explosion, he has a few cuts and scrapes and minor burns, and he looks much worse for wear than when you last saw him, but he’s alive.

“It appears I missed one.” Albert grunts in annoyance, looking at Jake like he’s a mere pest and not a viable threat against him. To your relief, Albert places the syringe back in the case, shuts it, then places it back on the radiation console. He plops you in your chair. You briefly think about running again, but then Jake shoots at Albert again and Albert lunges at Jake and all you can do is watch the chaos unfold.

You’ve seen Jake fight beforehand you know he’s skilled in hand to hand combat, but it’s clear that Jake has underestimated just how fast Albert can be when he’s not inhibited by a parasite. Albert’s speed isn’t anything close to what it was in Africa, but it’s fast enough for him to anticipate Jake’s moves and land several unforgiving blows to his stomach before Jake can even line up another shot to fire.

After a particularly brutal jab that leaves Jake gasping for air, Uroboros wraps around Jake’s neck while Albert grips the holsters and yanks them off Jake’s body. Several guns and flashbangs clatter to the floor while Jake holds up the magnum, only for Albert to grip the barrel and aim it at the ground as another shot rings through the air like thunder. The tendrils squeeze harder around Jake’s neck and he begins coughing and clawing at the appendage in vain. While Jake is distracted. Albert rips the magnum from his hand and tosses it aside, then wraps his own hand around Jake’s neck to join the tendrils and lifts Jake up so his feet are no longer touching the ground.

Seeing the flash of fear on Jake’s face makes you come to your senses and dart out of your chair and shout across the chamber, your words echoing off of the metal walls. 

“Albert stop, he's your son!” You blurt out in panic. In a perfect world, you would have never willingly admitted that to Albert. However, between Jake having his neck snapped or experimented on by his own father, you’re taking the latter in hopes of buying him more time.

Albert’s arm stills. Jake is left barely able to breathe with his feet kicking air. Albert tilts his head towards you, a sign that he’s processing your words. 

“He’s your son. Put him down. He’s of more use to you alive.” You repeat in a wavering voice, your eyes darting between Albert’s stiff posture and Jake’s grimacing face.

After another moment of mulling over your words, Albert scoffs and tightens his grip. “You never had a child. I would have known.” Albert states coldly.

You swallow the lump in your throat. “He’s your son. Not mine. You and the Edonian woman’s.”

To say Albert’s expression softened would be inaccurate since that would imply he holds some kind of affection for the son he’s never met. Instead his expression becomes less hardened in annoyance, and more appraising; similar to how one turns over an apple to check for bruises or how one looks at a screwdriver to ensure it’s the right tool for the job.

“How-” Albert starts his sentence like he’s going to ask a question, but he stops himself to examine Jake’s facial features more closely.

“-unanticipated.” 

Albert continues to stare at Jake’s face, only slightly loosening the Uroboros around his neck so he doesn’t choke. He seems to be making mental notes about Jake’s face; the eyes and facial structure are his, the stature is his. Looking at them side by side, it’s impossible to deny they’re father and son. The only major differences are Jake’s slightly leaner build and buzzed red hair.

Albert tilts his head, letting out a barely audible “hmph.” He makes his way over to the spare pods near the radiation console, unceremoniously opening one of them and depositing Jake inside it and quickly shutting the door. The door hisses and beeps, signaling successful pressurization.

“Stay there. I have more pressing matters to attend to.” Albert states, making his way back to the examination table. The Uroboros enveloping his upper back shivers and shifts around the circular regulation device on his back, looking for some purchase in the metal.

“Hey!” Jake chokes out, coughing a few times before he can catch his breath. “Hey! Get back here I’m talking to you!” Jake bangs on the reinforced glass with his fist, not making any progress in getting out or getting Albert’s attention. Albert replies with his focus on the regulation device.

“Not to worry boy. You’ll have my undivided attention in due time.” Albert says, his voice practical and cold as he continues to try and get a good grip on the device with his tendrils, but they only slide off the metal without getting much purchase on the device. 

“We have so much catching up to do after all.” Albert grits, getting frustrated and letting out a sharp breath through his nose, then turns his gaze to you.

“My darling, twist the release mechanism.” Albert commands, his voice deceptively calm. Not seeing any viable way to refuse him and with a hesitant glance at Jake, you do as he commands.

With surprisingly steady hands, you twist the regulator on Albert’s back counterclockwise until you hear a click and a hiss. Underneath the mechanism, you see the hauntingly familiar sight of a glowing organ when you let the cover fall to the floor; his weak point. However, unlike Africa, there are thick bands of Nemesis parasite covering the body part.

So this is why the radiation hurt him earlier. 

You hear a soft hiss of air releasing behind you, and before you and Albert can react, a knife you didn’t see Jake carrying plunges into the glowing organ and Albert snarls in pain. Jake quickly grabs your arm in a vice grip and whisks you away behind some machinery while Albert attempts to remove the intrusion. Jake leads you behind a big machine with several monitors.

“You alright?” Jake whispers, eyes darting over your form checking for any injuries.

“I’m fine! How the hell did you-” You start to ask, but Jake puts up a hand to silence you.

“It’s gonna take a lot more than a candle to snuff me out, Doc.” Jake quips with his usual smirk.

Jake reaches into his pocket, then puts a remote in your hand. You look at him with a confused expression. “It controls the speakers, and it has a microphone. I need you to distract him.” Jake whispers with a determination that makes you immediately nod in agreement. You don’t know what his plan is, but you’re more than willing to follow along. 

You hear Albert let out another snarl across the room, then the clatter of metal on tile as he throws the knife to the side..

“My darling, you’re a smart girl. Can’t you see how necessary this is? The world is long overdue for a cleansing fire.” Albert announces loudly, scanning the room for you and Jake as he prowls around the center of the room.

With an encouraging nod from Jake, you press a button on the remote and see a green light illuminate on a speaker on the other side of the room.

“Do you hear yourself? What kind of husband insists on giving their wife a death sentence and calls it love?” You utter into the remote.

Jake gives you a thumbs up, then whispers, “Keep him busy, I’ll be back.” Then, you see him disappear behind some equipment. Albert makes his way towards the speaker with alarming speed, frowning when he doesn’t see you hiding nearby and then plunging his Uroboros arm into the speaker to render it useless, tossing the ruined equipment to the side. 

“What kind of husband would I be if I was against making my wife better and stronger than the rest?” Albert growls back, his red eyes glowing and scanning the room for your hiding place. He stalks the room, walking right by your current spot. You wait until he’s a safe distance away before scurrying to another position behind some shelves. You hit a button to activate a speaker on the other side of the room you can’t see from your hiding spot and speak into the remote again. 

“Do you not realize what you’ve done to yourself? You’re slow and weak. I don’t remember the last time I saw you this lost!”

You hear Albert’s heavy footsteps glide across the room, then the sound of electricity and a more aggressive clash of metal. His voice is low; a fake sweetness coats his words.

“Do you not remember how much I’ve done for you? How much I’ve provided for you? How much I loved you? I only want what’s best for you my dear.”

You change the speaker output. “So I should be indebted to you for doing things a good husband should do anyway?” You retort, speaking into the remote once again before crawling to your new haven of safety, switching the output to another speaker early since you’ve moved yourself into a tight spot under a table with not much else around that provides sufficient cover. 

Once again, Albert whips his Uroboros arm towards the speaker to clear away the equipment, which groans and breaks from the force of it. You hear Albert let out a frustrated “hmph,” then forcibly rip the speaker from the wall and fling it into the opposite wall. Despite his visible frustration, his voice is still even and persistent as he eyes the chamber for your hiding place.

“Come now dearest, don’t you want a taste of being divine? Your brain has always been your greatest strength. Don’t you want your other qualities to be just as insurmountable? Don’t you realize how special you could be?”

You speak into the audio system before you think about the consequences of your words. “What’s special about me didn’t come from a syringe!”

Tendrils wrap around the speaker and explode against the adjacent wall before you can even blink, followed by a frustrated growl from Albert. “Even when presented with the path to godhood, you throw it back in my face by wagging that smart mouth of yours. I think it’s high time I remind you who has real power here!”

It’s clear Albert’s patience has run out when he rips and destroys every speaker he can see from their respective positions one by one. The room is filled with the clash of metal, high pitched audio feedback, and the sound of electricity being freed from the confines of their cables. 

One of the speakers crashes against the wall above your head and you let out an involuntary shriek from how close it comes to hitting you. You slap your hand over your mouth, but it’s already too late. Albert pounces across the room, sneering at you when he sees you cowering under a table.

“There you are!” 

You try in vain to crawl away, but the tendrils are quick to coil around your ankle and drag you back out into the open. The tendrils once again bind your arms to your sides as they dangle you in the air where you’re eye to eye with an unamused Albert.

“As much as I enjoy indulging you in a game of hide and seek, I tire of these childish games.” Worms of Uroboros pluck the virus case from the table across the room and time seems to slow down as you realize what’s about to happen. You try in vain to wiggle from the grip of the Uroboros enveloping your body.

The tendrils hold the case next to Albert’s free arm, opening it for him and reaching inside. They search for a moment too long, then Albert looks down. You do as well: the case is empty. A growl emanates from Albert’s throat, confused and with angered annoyance bubbling below the surface.

“Looking for this?”

Yours and Albert’s heads whip towards the voice. It’s Jake aiming a heavy duty magnum revolver at Albert in one hand, and the Uroboros syringe in the other. He’s holding the syringe in between his fingers, playing with it like he’s spinning a pen for a moment before grasping it in a fist and holding up the magnum a little higher like he’s aiming straight between Albert’s eyes.

“Do us both a favor and put the lady down pal.”

Albert doesn’t move. He stands there with you tightly in his grasp, weighing his options before he forcefully tosses the case to the side into some smoldering rubble. 

“You will surrender that to me, boy.” Albert utters lowly, demon eyes faintly glowing with malintent.

Jake’s confidence morphs into a protective scowl. “So you can infect her?” Jake’s aim shifts from Albert’s head to the syringe in his hand. “Fat chance daddio.” 

A long silence falls over the room, only broken by smoldering equipment and the occasional burst of escaped electricity. Eventually, the silent standoff is broken by a chilling chuckle from Albert.

“Well yes.” Albert tightens his grip around your throat. “But you should know that there are consequences for defying my wishes.”

Jake’s eyes dart between you and Albert, his brow furrowing even more. “You’d kill her? After all that trouble to drag her here in one piece?”

Albert releases a chilling laugh that embodies disbelief and smugness all at once. “I can bring her back in other ways. After all, there are so many viruses and parasites to choose from. All I have to do is decide which one is worthy of my insolent wife.” To emphasize his point, black tendrils wrap around your throat and squeeze. It’s not enough to choke you, but it’s enough to dent the skin of your neck and make breathing just a little difficult. Despite the very real threat, you’d much rather suffocate than the alternative. You look Jake in the eyes and shake your head.

Destroy it Jake.

Jake’s eyes flick between you, then Albert, then the dreaded syringe in between his fingertips. He’s silent much too long for your liking, seemingly mulling over all the possibilities that could unfold if he pulls the trigger. He looks from the syringe to Albert, then you. His face morphs into something more relaxed and you know he’s about to do something stupid. Jake turns his gaze back to Albert with a cocky smile, holding the syringe between his fore and middle fingers.

“You want this? Then come and get it.” Before anyone can react, Jake uncaps the syringe with his teeth and plunges it into his neck.

Tag List: @killerwendigo @appreciativemediaconsumer @kaymarnun @chucklefak

a/n: Thank you all for being patient! The pacing for this part and the next was bothering me so I split it up and the next part should be ready much sooner than this one! Thanks for reading!

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[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover and the Bastard Son - Part 5

Pairing: Chris Redfield x FEM!Reader

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (You are here) | Part 6

Summary: The more hours that pass, the closer he is to finding you.

Content: Canon typical violence/swearing, descriptions of blood, more reader lore drops, references to RE5, brief mentions of vomiting from seasickness, mostly next chapter setup but there's some juiciness in here, brief description of banging a head against a wall. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of (dead?) Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

a/n: That took longer than I thought but here it is. Once again, I appreciate you and thank you for reading!

w/c: 9.4k

It felt like you were running for an eternity after you witnessed Albert breaking out of his experimental confines. You didn’t look back. You didn’t have a plan. You didn’t even think on where to go next. Your only goal was to get as far away from Albert as physically possible.

Years of suppressed trauma from the day Albert died rears its ugly head and everything floods back to you in one overwhelming emotional wave that feeds your adrenaline and keeps your feet moving one in front of the other. Fear. Confusion. Anger. Devastation. Fear. You keep having to wipe away the tears that won’t stop leaking out of your eyes, trying in vain to keep your vision clear as you blindly wind your way through the facility.

But adrenaline highs eventually run out even if paralyzing fear is still present.

Your legs cramp. Your lungs scream for something more than just short puffs of air. Your heart works overtime from the strain of the situation and beats so fast it hurts and black dots the edges of your vision. Blood pumps through your veins so quickly that you can hear it in your ears so you can’t focus on anything else.

The moment you need to place your hand on the wall to keep yourself from collapsing is the second you decide to open whatever door is closest and hide out in whatever room is on the other side of it.

You’ve managed to run from the inner sanctum of the new lab all the way to an older, non-refurbished part. Is this the old lab? What used to be part of the military base? You can’t tell and you don’t care. You push open the door and sink to the floor as soon as you shut it again, trying to gulp some air into your lungs so you don’t keel over and pass out. As you try to slow down your breathing and collect yourself, only one thought is going through your mind.

This isn’t fucking happening he’s supposed to be dead.

There’s a sound that makes you jolt upright and whip your head to the edge of the room.

Whoever was here previously left in a hurry. There are loose DVD’s, clear DVD cases, and cases with DVD’s still in them scattered all over the desk in the back while a projector idly flickers against a white screen against the adjacent wall. The noise is coming from behind the projector.

You cautiously get up from the floor and make your way over to it, still wobbly on your feet but able to keep yourself from toppling over and discover the source of the whirring: a DVD player. The disk holder is trying to retract into the machine, but the machine is askew and miscellaneous office junk is preventing it from closing properly. There’s a date written in Sharpie on the disk: March 19, 2006. The day Albert died.

A note with an official looking letterhead sits next to the machine, partially crumpled up. You pick it up, unfold it, and read its contents.

RE: Wesker Collection: Africa Tanker July 2002 – March 2006.

To Our Most Esteemed Client,

We thank you for entrusting us with this extensive recovery project involving the late Albert Wesker and his surviving wife. It has truly been an honor to observe the infamous scientist in his private life while carrying out these services.

We are happy to report that 93% of the recovered footage provided from the Africa tanker was able to be upgraded to your UHD specifications, as well as remove the most glaring audio anomalies for improved sound quality. Please see the attached inventory sheet for a full breakdown. The full transcripts will become available in the coming weeks as previously discussed.

I would humbly encourage you to reconsider my suggestion regarding upgrading the remaining footage archive. There is much to be learned from his methods in creating the Uroboros virus as well as advancing the gestation of the Plaga parasite. Should you change your mind, we would be elated to welcome you back as a client.

You feel a gentle numbness come over you as you read the note. The DVD player whirs again. Your eyes flick over to it. You absentmindedly put down the paper, reposition the DVD player so it sits properly, and move the junk that’s preventing the disk compartment from closing. The little door finally closes with a soft tapping noise, and the DVD inside it whirs until it emits a soft hum.

The image flickers to life on the projector and you feel a lump in your throat. You recognize the room. It’s CCTV footage a captain’s quarters space with a metal chair in the center with straps to constrain an unlucky subject to it at the wrists, arms, and chest. On the screen, two distant voices outside the room are arguing: a man and a woman. As the voices get closer to the room, you recognize the sound of your own voice even before Albert kicks the door open and drags you into the room by your forearm while you struggle in vain against his grip.

“I’m not like you!” You retort defiantly.

“But you are my dear, in more ways than you care to admit.” Albert replies, clearly getting impatient with how you’re acting.

“Like hell I am! Statistically, I’m gonna end up like any other one of your test subjects!”

“Don’t you dare compare yourself to those weaklings!” Albert spits, incensed at your response and abruptly forcing you in front of him so his angered expression is up close to your nervous one. Albert breathes heavily for a moment, then speaks in a colder, more pragmatic tone that is expected of him.

“You will evolve beyond your limits, and you will thank me for it.”

You watch Albert force you into the chair despite your continued protests. You watch as he straps your wrists to the arms of the chair and your torso to the back of it so quickly that the video appears to buffer on Albert’s main movements while you fail to struggle against him. You know it’s not the video. He was just that fast. You continue to struggle even after Albert takes a step back with an angered look.

“I have a rendezvous with an old colleague that I can’t afford to miss, but when I return-” You watch Albert roughly grasp your chin and turn your face to look up at him and you freeze. Albert’s voice turns into a deadly, low tone.

“I want a satisfactory answer out of you.”

After staring you down for a moment, he releases your chin and walks to the door, intending to close it. You watch him go with a defeated look.

“Please don’t do this.” You beg with a small voice.

You see Albert pause at the door and sigh with his back to the camera. He doesn’t turn to look at you. “It’s happening with or without your participation my dear. I suggest you be in good company when my New World emerges from the embers of humanity.”

Albert slams the door and you jump in your seat. A lock engages, then heavy footsteps quickly get further and further away. Once it’s quiet again, you immediately resume your attempts to wiggle out of the chair.

With no warning, the footage erupts into pixelated static, a slideshow of random frames you can barely make out, then it finally cuts to you later, still strapped to the chair in that room, and screaming at the top of your lungs.

“HELLO? I’M IN HERE! GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS THING!” Your voice is strained from shouting and thick from crying. You remember the ship rocking from side to side so precariously that you thought it was going to flip over and you’d drown in that room. There’s methodical, forceful banging on the door and you can see it straining from the force of your rescuers on the other side of it.

In the real world, you hear heavy footsteps stomping towards the room you’re in and you’re suddenly very aware of how loud the projector is. Whoever heard already knows you’re here, so you just grab the closest thing to a weapon you see, which happens to be a stapler, and crawl under the desk and pull your knees to your chest. All the while, you hear yourself keep screaming for help on the projector.

A moment later, the door to the projector room flies open with so much force that you hear it slam against the wall followed by quick and heavy footsteps rushing into the room.

At the same time on the screen, you hear the door to that room finally break open, and Chris’ words trying to comfort you as Sheva and him undo your binds. Their chorus of ‘It’s okay’s’ and ‘you’re alright’s’ are ignored by you, and you get straight to business as usual, albeit with a rattled voice.

“What was that? Why was everything shaking?”

You can’t see the screen, but you know Sheva and Chris are looking at each other. Sheva finally answers.

“Excella was rejected by Uroboros.”

You’re silent for a moment on the projector. “… I tried to warn her.”

You hear yourself struggling to get to your feet, your seasickness coming back at full force as you struggle to walk in a straight line and you hear Chris grab your arm to steady you.

“Careful!” Chris says with a worried tone.

“Forget about me! We have to hurry we’re running out of time!” Your voice is strained like you’re about to vomit and you hear yourself quickly stumble out of the room while Chris and Sheva hurry after you.

The three sets of voices retreat from the room on the screen and the projector grows silent.

In the newfound silence of the room, you realize your breathing is much too loud so you cover your mouth to silence yourself.

But it’s too late for that.

You hear the footsteps stealthily approach closer.

And closer.

And closer.

You sense the presence stop right outside of your range of vision under the desk.

Albert found you. This is the end.

You yelp in surprise and raise the stapler to bludgeon whatever just discovered your hiding spot, but you freeze like a deer in headlights when you see Jake with his pistol raised.

For a moment, he just stares at you while you try in vain to steady your staccato breathing. You know you look like a mess. Tears streak your terrified face, hair sticks out in every direction, and most notably, there are blood splatters that stain your clothes.

“Doc? Jesus what happened to you?”

Jake holsters his gun and brushes your arms out of the way. He looks closely at your clothes, looking for entry points for injuries.

“It okay it’s… it’s not mine. I-I just can’t get a grip.” Your voice is hoarse and strained. No matter how hard you try you can’t seem to slow your breathing enough to even think about calming down.

Jake stops looking for injuries and directs his icy gaze to your tearful expression. “What happened?”

“He’s-” You take in a deep and shaky breath, “-he’s alive b-but he’s… he’s not himself and I… I don’t know if that’s better or worse-”

“Doc. Take a breath. Who’s alive?” Jake is trying to be the voice of reason in your panicked state, but his tone has an edge of seriousness to it.

“Wesker! These people excavated his fucking corpse and decided it was a genius idea to reanimate him. That director guy took me to the chamber, then he woke up and there was carnage when he heard my voice and… and…I can’t… I can’t do this again Jake!”

You slam down the stapler onto the ground and you put your head in your hands trying to get some sense of comfort. You mumble in your hands, still not wanting to believe your new set of circumstances.

“Why do people keep doing this? This kind of shit never ends well. You’d think people would learn but they just don’t.”

It never ends. People will always think they’re smarter than their predecessors.

Your head is pounding behind your eyes so you move a few fingers to pinch the bridge of your nose for some relief.

“What do you mean?”

You blink. Your hands retreat from your face and your eyes slowly move to Jake’s. “What?”

“You said you couldn’t do this again, what do you mean?”

Right. You did say that. You take a deep breath and finally muster up enough composure to answer.

“I… it’s a long story but to make it brief, I was the one who blew the whistle on the Uroboros project.”

Jake’s serious expression doesn’t change. You look at your hands.

“I finally realized how apocalyptic the project really was and I needed to tell someone. By a stroke of dumb luck I managed to get a B.S.A.A. radio and alert the African division.”

You feel your eyes growing hot again and you blink away the heat.

“Two agents were able to get to me about two weeks later and I told them how to kill him.”

You take another deep breath and continue.

“I told you earlier he needed regular doses of the virus to keep it stable. I knew that giving him too much would cause adverse effects. Or at least slow him down enough so the B.S.A.A. could put him down.”

You swallow the lump in your throat.

“So I showed them where he kept the extra doses. And then I showed them where the virus warheads were.”

You close your eyes and lean your head back against the underside of the desk. Jake doesn’t need to know the rest. He doesn’t need to know that Chris noticed how sickly and scared you were and put his hand on your shoulder to comfort you. He doesn’t need to know that Albert saw his nemesis touching his wife and was seething with barely contained rage because of it. He doesn’t need to know how your heart got caught in your throat when you felt Albert’s inhumanly strong arms wrap around your waist, your body move dizzyingly fast, and before you realized what had even happened, he had your back to his chest and his hand wrapped menacingly tight around your throat as he growled in your ear.

“It’s in your best interest to listen to me dearheart. We wouldn’t want any accidents to happen in front of our guests, would we?”

Jake doesn’t need to know that everything in your body betrayed you at that moment. You should have screamed, you should have thrashed, you should have done quite literally anything to try to escape his grip as futile as it would have been. But you didn’t. Jake doesn’t need to know that you’d seen Albert angry a handful of times but this was the first time you felt that he could actually kill you for going against his wishes. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he knew it was a thinly veiled threat at best, but it was more than enough to rob you of your voice, freeze in place, and cause tears to prick at the corners of your eyes, just like today.

You don’t tell Jake any of this, but he seems to understand the subtext of your words perfectly anyway. When you feel confident you’re not going to burst into tears again, you look back at Jake.

“Albert saw. He knows what I did. He’s going to kill me for betraying him.”

Silence weighs over the two of you like a thick fog, choking any semblance of hope in the haze of reality.  You sit there wallowing in the harsh reality of your words. You knew in your soul that it was the truth, but it feels so much more real when you hypothesize Albert’s intentions with you out loud. Jake is silent, the wheels turning in his head on what he should say.

“That was a long time ago you can’t know that for sure.”

“He’s not the forgiving type, Jake. He never was.”

You hear a distant clang, and something you could have sworn was a monstrous roar from the direction of where you last saw Albert outside of the room. You freeze. Jake glances outside of your hiding place, then back to you, now aware of how distressed you actually are. Jake holds out his hand to you. He gestures you to come out.

“C’mon. I found someplace safe we can hide out for a while.” He whispers in a confident tone.

You don’t look at him. Your eyes are trained on the open door to the room.

Would Albert inject you with a virus first? Terrorize you? Gloat? Kill you outright?

“Doc, we have to go. You can’t stay here, it’s not secure.”

The ‘not secure’ comment breaks through to you, and you turn your head away from the hallway to nod up at Jake. You let him help you to your feet.

It takes much longer than you would have liked to get to the safe place even though it’s only a few hallways past the room you ran into. You freeze at nearly every distant noise, but Jake is surprisingly patient with you. He gives you incentivizing but firm words to keep your feet moving, occasionally putting his hand on your back to encourage you to keep going.

The ‘safe room’ ends up being a hybrid communications room. One part is dedicated to running the security cameras with over a dozen different monitors flickering to different parts of the facility with an intercom system attached to it. Another computer system close by it has a complex-looking computer system with a microphone attached to it. Yet another part is made up of a large console for computers and a hodgepodge conglomerate of tech for listening to and watching different sorts of media, some storage boxes, as well as a professional assortment of radio equipment. Jake sees your eyes light up upon seeing the radio setup, then shakes his head with a serious expression.

“Don’t get your hopes up yet. It’s busted.”

Your shoulders slump.

“… great.” You utter quietly. You drag your feet over to a table overflowing with scattered papers, a pair of headphones and a personal computer on it, and slump into a chair.

“Hey, we’re not out of options yet. We’ve still got this thing.” Jake says optimistically, lightly smacking his hand on the control panel of the large computer system with the microphone. “All it needs is a key card with enough clearance.”

You sigh, wanting the computer route to work out but also trying not to get too invested in the idea if it doesn’t. “Try this.” You mutter, pulling out Youju’s white keycard and holding it out to Jake. The blood on it has dried to a sickly brown color and has a faint coppery smell. Jake takes it with an eyebrow raised.

You shrug. “It was Youju’s. He won’t miss it.”

“…. I’m sure he won’t. Give me a couple minutes.”

Jake heads over to the computer and you hold your head in your hands, leaning over the table on your elbows trying to process everything that’s just happened.

Albert’s alive.

You destroyed the only Uroboros sample on this godforsaken island.

You’re willing to bet the military part of the facility isn’t stocked up on a convenient rocket launcher to get you out of this mess.

You aren’t one to wallow in self-pity but given the unthinkable circumstances, you can’t help but feel like you’ve already been backed into a corner that you have no hope of escaping.

You take another deep breath and stare absentmindedly at the papers on the table. You weren’t particularly looking for anything, but you can’t help but notice the format of the documents in front of you. All of them are audio transcripts. One of them catches your eye with its title in bold letters at the top of the page. The heading reads WESKER/GIONNE UROBOROS MEETING– JANUARY 18, 2006. A few inches below it, there’s a handwritten note in the right margin: No good. Audio too distorted and she doesn’t say anything we can use. Positive depictions of the wife only.

Positive depictions of you only? That piques your interest.

You think back to what Youju said before you woke Albert up. We’ve tried recordings of your voice and they’ve yielded positive results but not the ones we’re looking for.

You turn your attention to the computer, then eye the headphones. You dig for the mouse under the mountain of papers and wiggle it when you finally find it. The computer monitor hums to life, already logged in. On the screen, there’s a video file already pulled up of the meeting.

Out of curiosity, you put on the headphones and hit play. As the audio recording runs, you alternate between looking at the transcript and watching the footage.

The footage plays and you see a board room with a presentation on a projector. The angle is from above the projector so you can’t see what’s on the screen, but you have a good view of you and Albert sitting on opposite sides of a conference table with a cloaked figure standing not too far from you.

Jill. She deserved a better chance than you to rescue her from hell.

You recognize Excella’s thick Italian accent before you can even see her come into view. You can’t really hear everything Excella is saying due to her being in such close proximity to the camera microphone, but you recognize choice words throughout her presentation.

Tanker.

Uroboros.

Transport.

Warheads.

You remember this presentation. Excella was talking about transport protocols for Uroboros leading up to the actual virus release. Albert insisted on your attendance. While you never gave verbal feedback on his experiments at this time, you eventually figured out that Albert would carefully watch your facial expressions and body language to get your thoughts instead. You perfected your stone-faced expression out of necessity in not accidentally contributing to his plans. You watch yourself paying rapt attention. You have to give yourself credit, your poker face looks good here even though you know you were scared out of your mind. It was finally sinking into your head that the world would end if you didn’t do something to intervene.

While you’re lost in your thoughts, Excella finally finishes her speech and sultrily saunters behind Albert’s chair. Now that Excella is farther away from the microphone, it’s picking up the rest of the audio in the room much better. Even so, the audio still sounds grainy.

“Albert?” Excella croons, putting her hands on Albert’s shoulders and lightly rubbing them. She leans down close to his ear.

“Do you have any contributing thoughts?”

Albert doesn’t even look at Excella. Instead, his sunglasses adorned face turns to you sitting across the table. “I’d like to hear what my wife thinks of this contingency plan of yours.”

Excella’s mouth morphs into a thin line and she straightens her posture, not happy about that request but not saying anything to refute it. She puts on a fake smile but doesn’t take her hands off of Albert’s shoulders. “Of course.”

You don’t look at him. You only stare blankly at the presentation on the projector. You can’t tell from your body language, but you know that in this moment you were already thinking of ways to combat the Uroboros plan. But you also knew that voicing your honest thoughts would throw a wrench in any plan you would make in the future.

“Excella has already outlined the important details and caveats. I have nothing else to add.” You reply politely. Even through the slight graininess of the footage, your stiff posture and unwillingness to look in Albert and Excella’s direction are very noticeable.

Albert grunts with a nearly imperceptible frown, not satisfied with the answer. Or with the fact that you’re refusing to look in his direction. “Very well, but I still want your thoughts on the project.”

“You already have the project in good hands. End of thought.” You finally turn your head away from the screen and gesture to Excella with a neutral expression.

You knew that Excella wanted Albert, but you were almost certain that he didn’t want her. He only mentioned her in passing in whatever limited conversation he had with you, but there was always an underlying message in his choice of words that he thought she was beneath him. A pretty face with brains, a bankroll and resources behind it, but too caught up in wanting to be recognized as a legitimate member of her prestigious family and not having enough self-awareness to know she was in partnership with a viper in the grass that would discard her when it became convenient. You were almost certain because even though you knew this, he never pushed her off or rejected her advances in front of you.

“I feel tired. I’m turning in early.” You get up from your seat and briskly walk to the door.

It would have been easy to miss if you didn’t know Albert’s mannerisms so well, but you see him let out a sharp breath through his nose. He’s miffed by your response. He knew you were growing more distant by the day. He knew you didn’t like his plan. He knew you were slipping through his fingers like grains of sand that he methodically kept trying to contain by constricting his grip even more heavy handedly than he did before.

Any other interaction like this behind closed doors would have progressed to him subtly forcing his proximity to you; following you out like a suffocating shadow and pulling your attention to any mundane conversation that would ultimately lead to him explaining himself with yet another angle that didn’t justify his end goals in the slightest with the intention of you at least understanding why he thought this was the only viable course of action. Saving the known world is an admirable adventure in a number of epics old and new. But saving the world by starting anew? A new world with superhumans could never be justified by sacrificing billions of lives.

On any other day he would have followed you.

Instead, Albert is forced to save face in front of his suffocating business partner.

“Escort her to the suite.” Albert orders the cloaked figure, which follows you right on your heels. His tone is short. Controlled.

As soon as the door shuts behind you, Albert raises from his seat and shrugs off Excella’s wandering hands. Excella has an annoyed look on her face for a moment, but quickly covers it up with an alluring smile.

“You hear that, Albert? The project is in good hands.”

Albert doesn’t even bother to look at her. He only prowls to the front of the projector clasps his hands behind his back. A map of South Africa is reflected in his sunglasses. “Then ensure it stays that way. I won’t tolerate any further delays or incompetence,” Albert replies in a cold tone.

The video ends.

You pull off the headphones with a scowl on your face. The son of a bitch was trying to make you jealous on purpose.

Despite your annoyance, your eyes keep drifting back to the note in the margin. Positive depictions only.

If this one was rejected, then what do the accepted ones have you saying?

You begin looking more closely at the scattered papers.

It appears that Neo Umbrella was only working from security footage that was obtained from the Africa tanker. It’s not surprising they weren’t able to find a lot of usable audio from you. You were falling out of love and didn’t have a lot of sweet things to say to your husband. Even with that in mind, you’re surprised at how little they were able to scrape together with the gargantuan amount of media they had to work with. You knew Albert liked his cameras, but you didn’t know he kept footage of you that was this extensive.

From what you can see from the transcripts, the only ‘useful’ audio was you calling Albert one of the few pet names he liked hearing; dear, darling and love, sometimes with a ‘my’ thrown in there. Albert insisted that other terms of endearment sounded too casual, although in the early days of your marriage you’d call him increasingly ridiculous nicknames until he’d put you in your place in a way that left you both shaking and satisfied. There was a time where he liked it when you challenged him. Not just on the domestic front, but in the Umbrella labs. You weren’t afraid to tell him he was wrong or that there were more efficient methods of doing things. Sometimes you were right. Other times, Albert proved you wrong. Even with the latter, Albert would always at least listen to your input since he saw you as someone who was worth listening to.

Among the other transcripts, strangely enough, there was a fifteen page document of you reading plaga laboratory results to Albert. This was a routine occurrence. It wasn’t uncommon for Albert to ask you to read things like that aloud to help him think or as a way to review previously explored experiments before diving into new ones. It was a small ask in your eyes and it was a good way to stay informed on what Albert was doing, so you didn’t object unless you felt too seasick. What surprised you was how positive the margin notes were: Yes! She sounds interested and engaged. Find more of this to put in the rotation.

Talk about desperate for something other than curt politeness and apathy when talking to your husband. Nearly every other transcript has less satisfactory notes:

Wife too combative. Exclude from rotation.

She sounds too demanding. Discard.

This one has Gionne talking over the wife. EXCLUDE the audio if Gionne is present in future selections.

Too disinterested, but keep on file just in case.

They’re fighting again in this one. Do not use.

Can’t you read? Wesker clearly didn’t respect Gionne stop giving the lab team audio of her flirting with him.

“Doc, we’re in business!” Jake’s victorious exclamation pulls you out of your investigation.

You whip your head over to the monitor Jake was working on and to your delighted surprise, instead of the Neo Umbrella logo, you see a landing page with a number pad.

“What does it need? Radio frequency? Phone number?” You ask intensely, shooting up from your chair and standing behind his to look at the screen.

“Phone number unfortunately. The radio stuff is out as well.”

You blink, unsure why he made that sound like a problem. “Do you not have number you can call in your phone? Like your captain?”

Jake’s facial expression turns something close to sheepish.

“I lost it. Let’s keep it at that.”

You look at him blankly. Do people these days not memorize important numbers like that?

“… I know who we can call.” You mutter, shooing Jake out of the seat so you can type it in and speak easily into the microphone. You’re not sure if he’ll pick up, but he’s your best bet.

For a moment, you hold your breath hearing the dial tone come in over the speakers. Is he on a mission? Asleep halfway around the world? Stuck in a never-ending cycle of training exercises?

A gruff, annoyed voice that makes you weak at the knees finally answers on the last ring. A crowd of voices can be heard in the background. “Hello? You’ve reached Captain Redfield.”

“Chris, it’s Doc.” You breathe a sigh of relief. Even though it’s just Chris’ voice, you already feel a little better knowing rescue will imminently be on its way.

“Doc?” Chris’ tone immediately shifts to a relieved one as sounds of rummaging erupt on his end of the call. “Are you alright? Do you know where you are?”

“Well… debatable considering the circumstances and somewhere in the Pacific. Jake Muller has more info on that.”

The rummaging abruptly stops. “Wait, Jake’s with you?”

“Right here Redfield.” Jake says nonchalantly. However, you notice a sliver of something in his tone but you can’t place what it is. You have a feeling Jake isn’t on the best terms with Chris considering his role in Wesker’s death at the mansion. Second death at the Spencer Estate? Third death in the volcano? Does the third one even count at this point?

“Yep. We’ve already been introduced. He’s got an interesting history with the B.S.A.A. I’m shocked we weren’t introduced sooner since we’re both consulting.” There’s an underlying message of I know who Jake is and you’ve got some damn explaining to do in your words, but now is not the time to read Chris the riot act.

You hear Chris sigh on the other end of the line. “Well Doc I tried calling, but you’re a hard woman to reach.” Chris doesn’t sound accusatory. Just… stung. You feel your face heat up at that. You had been dodging his calls ever since that intimate moment in your kitchen a year ago. However, any guilt you feel is overshadowed by frustration in not being informed about Jake until today.

“You could have given me a little context and I would have made the time.” You reply through your teeth. Jake gives you a weird look as you’re leading this exchange. He silently points between the microphone and you, then holds his hand up in a ‘what’s that about’ gesture. You mouth back ‘long story’ as Chris ignores your comment starts addressing Jake. “Jake, your orders were to find the location of the G-sample.”

“I’ve done that boyscout.”

You hear Chris huff in annoyance. “Your orders were to find the location of the sample and not leave the mainland.”

“Well… when opportunity arises, I take it.”

“Do you have it?”

“… still workin’ on that.” Jake replies with a sour expression. You jump in.

“Chris, we’ve got bigger problems than the sample. Albert’s alive.” The words feel wrong coming out of your mouth, but you have to let any personnel know what danger is waiting for them.

Silence. Even the hum of the people in the background grows quiet. For a moment, you’re worried the call may have dropped from the old machinery.

“Did you hear me? Say something.”

“Heard you loud and clear. What’s his status compared to when we saw him last?” Besides sounding more serious, Chris doesn’t even seem phased. He’s in soldier mode: Know the enemy. Come up with a plan. Rescue the hostages.

“Physically, very similar to your encounter with him in the volcano. Mentally… he’s different I don’t really know how to explain it.” You try to put on a brave face, but even without seeing you Chris picks up on your current vulnerability.

“That’s alright. The important thing is that you’re safe and you stay safe. Are you two able to hole up somewhere until we arrive?”

“Well… we have a safe place for now. And how long’s that gonna be?”

“Depends on your location. Jake, do you have any coordinates?”

Jake responds with a latitude and a longitude. You hear talking on the other end of the line, then you hear something that has to be a curse from Chris before he finally gives you an answer.

“Seven hours, give or take.”

You sigh. That’s too long but you can’t shorten the length of the ocean, so you accept it. “Okay. Just operate off the assumption that he’s going to be hard to put down. Use flame-based ammunition, magnums, rocket launchers, and anything else you got that packs a punch.”

“I’ll pass that along. Keep this line open, I’ll be back. Don’t hang up.”

“Roger that. We’ll be here.”

You mute the microphone and lean back in your chair with a tired sigh. Jake gives you a pointed look.

“You have Golden Boy’s number memorized, but you talk to each other like that?”

You give Jake an annoyed look. “Not important right now! We have bigger problems.”

You get up from your seat to pace the room. You need to come up with a plan. “As of right now, we have absolutely nothing in terms of defense.”

Jake leans against the computer system with his arms crossed and watches you. “Not exactly. There’s too many gas masked bozos walking around here for there not to be an armory somewhere.”

You look at Jake, exasperated. “Machine guns and pistols aren’t going to make a big enough dent. There were five guards unloading everything they had on Albert in the chamber, and it didn’t even phase him. You’d need something stronger. A lot stronger.”

“Well maybe they have some heavy-duty stuff stashed away for emergencies. Point is, we won’t know unless I go out and look.” Jake pushes himself away from the monitor and starts to walk towards the door but you stand in front of him before he can get too far.

“You’ll be a sitting duck out there!” You chastise, ready to put what remains of your fighting spirit to convince Jake not to walk straight into the maw of the beast, but your facial expression shifts to a haunted look when something on the security system catches your eye.

One the center console, a hulking figure that makes your blood turn to ice comes into view. You see the black, elongated, tendril engulfed arm grasp the corner of a hallway before the rest of Albert’s body comes into view. The blood of all the unfortunate scientists is splattered across his face and chest. His red eyes are very clearly dilated, and he has an uncharacteristically wide grin on his face.

Jake notices your expression and looks behind him. Jakes expression and tone turn cold and serious.

“That him?”

You nod, unable to tear your eyes from the screen. You walk toward the console as if you’re in a trance and sit in the chair in front of it. Like driving by a car accident, can’t take your eyes off of the disaster that Youju insisted on causing. You see Albert’s lips move, but nothing is heard.

“Does this thing have audio?” You mutter the question to yourself more than anything, but Jake is quick to come to your side and flip on a switch on the control panel. Albert’s voice, somewhat morphed from the audio system, is heard loud and clear.

“My looooove? Where did you go lovely? We have so much time to make up for…”

Albert speaks in that same ‘off’ tone from before; direct and garbled. However, now it has a… singsong quality to it? Your fear is momentarily replaced with confusion. Jake glances at you, then back to the screen just as confused as you are. This is his infamous father?

“Did he… talk like that?” Jake asks, watching the screen along with you.

You keep watching the screen with a befuddled look on your face. “Absolutely not. The lava, or whatever Youju’s team tried to do to wake him up before today fried his brain or something. It’s a complete personality shift.”

You and Jake continue to watch Albert on the screen as he leans against the wall walking down the length of the hallway, leaving a trail of black gunk dripping down the pristine paneling along where he’s touched in his wake. When Albert’s in the center of the hallway, his posture grows rigid and he stops walking. His unengulfed arm attempts to reach behind him in the center of his shoulder blades in jagged movements. After a couple seconds, Albert’s body twitches again and the free arm drops back down to his side and he keeps calling out to you and continues his journey down the hallway.

You lean forward closer to the monitor that Albert was on.

“Wait… he was clawing at something on his back.”

Jake nods and pauses the footage. Then rewinds. As you saw before, Albert stops sauntering down the hallway and jerkily tries to reach behind his shoulder to something on his back. It’s easy to miss with all the black Uroboros tendrils overtaking his upper body, but there’s clearly a circular device between his shoulder blades.

“You’re right. What is that thing?”

You tilt your head and squint, recognizing the shape but confused as to why it’s there. “It’s hard to tell from the angle, but it looks like a regulator.”

“Regulator? For what?”

You shake your head, still confused. “Nothing Uroboros related.”

“Then why is it there?”

You don’t have an answer. You sit back in the chair and keep looking at the regulator in the center of the screen. “Before Albert woke up… Youju said all avenues of breaking his comatose state had been exhausted,” you think out loud.

The gears in your head are turning. Once solitary threads of thought gradually intertwine to form a loose weave until they tighten into a tapestry revealing the answer. The sample room. The audio recordings of your voice. His comatose state. Him acting much gentler with you than he ever was when you knew him. The regulator.

You sit up in your chair so quickly that it startles Jake, but you’re too caught up in your revelation to care. “Neo Umbrella gave him a parasite!” You exclaim excitedly, turning towards Jake. “We can use that.” You don’t wait for Jake to reply, you’re already up and out of the chair looking for some kind of map.

Jake looks at you blankly, not following your thinking. “A parasite? And that’s a good thing?”

“I think I know what Youju meant! There is no reason for them to have that extensive of a virus collection unless they were using it for something. I bet they tried injecting Albert with a bunch of viruses to see if they could wake him up. When that didn’t work they turned to parasites.”

A map of this floor of the facility hangs on the wall from haphazardly placed yellow tape next to the door. Your smile grows bigger and movements more animated the longer you explain your thought process as you grab the map off the wall. You turn back to Jake.

“But not just any parasite. The Nemesis parasite.”

Jake is still confused, not knowing what that means so you continue, walking back to the announcement system and putting the map on the console.

“Back when Umbrella was making Tyrants, big beefy bioweapons that were designed to be soldiers, they were impressive physically, but had limited brain function as a result of the T-Virus so they could only follow simple commands and they couldn’t talk. ‘Kill everyone you see,’ ‘guard this thing,’ you get the idea. They were trying to find a way to make them a bit smarter. They’d hit a dead end with viruses, so they added engineered parasites to Tyrants.”

You pause to make sure Jake is still paying attention. He is, but he still has a look that says, ‘how is this relevant?’ so you keep going, taking a pen from the table and trying to find the locations of the cameras to mark them on the map.

“The Nemesis still had limited brain function, but he could say a few words and it could carry out detailed commands and use weapons. ‘Kill these specific people, use this rocket launcher’ etcetera etcetera. But there was still a high risk of over mutation when the parasite was inserted, so they smacked on a regulator to help mitigate that.”

Jake blinks, still not understanding. “So?”

“So if they gave Albert the parasite, that means he’s going to be much more susceptible to taking orders from me.”

“From you? Weren’t you worried about him killing you earlier? Why would he take orders from you?”

“Like… the parasite has been told for however long it’s been in there to wake up because its wife is here. It’s only been given carefully curated audio snippets of my voice, so it’s forced to view me as a positive… figurehead in Albert’s life.” You point to the transcripts on the table, trying to make Jake see your point before turning your attention back to him.

“He told me he missed me, Jake. I’m willing to bet if I use that announcement system, I can lead him anywhere the system is-”

“-and give me a window to slip in and get the sample and some supplies.” Jake finishes with a serious expression.

“And if everything goes right, we just might hold out until reinforcements get here.” You’re smiling, still riding the adrenaline high from finally figuring out the bigger picture of what’s going on.

Jake crosses his arms and stares at the monitor with Albert still on it. “It’s a crazy plan Doc.”

Your face falls and you’re about to try and plead your case, but Jake smirks before you can answer.

“I’m in.”

_____________________________________________________

“Albert? Where are you darling? I can’t find you.”

You croon into the microphone and watch Albert, yet again, jerk his head towards the hallway you just projected your voice to and use his Uroboros arm to drag himself along the wall in the direction of your voice.

On the walkie talkie Jake scrounged up from the storage boxes that were by the broken radio equipment before he left, Jake provides an update on his search for better weapons plus the G-Sample.

“216 through 245 are bust. It’s just storage.”

“Copy that.”

You respond on your walkie talkie, marking off and labeling the relevant rooms on your map and watching Jake continue to navigate through the labyrinthine facility on the cameras.

Considering the circumstances, everything has been going well in the half hour Jake has been gone. Albert, in his limited mental capacity, hasn’t caught on to the fact you’re talking to him through the announcement system. Plus, Jake is making good time going through each hallway in the facility thanks to Youju’s white keycard.

 Chris’ professional voice from the computer system breaks your concentration.

“Doc? Jake? You there?”

You close your eyes and take a breath. You were hoping that the universe would be merciful, and the connection would drop so you’d have a valid reason not to talk to Chris.

You weren’t so lucky, so you check the cameras one more time to ensure that Albert and Jake aren’t going to cross paths, then roll your chair over to the microphone on the other module. You flick off the mute button.

“You’ve got Doc. Any updates?”

“We’ve got an army of guys on their way to your location. Time of arrival is estimated at seven hours.”

You feel your shoulders visibly relax. Rescue is on the way.

“That’s great news.” You mutter.

“Is Jake around?”

For a second, you think about lying so he doesn’t know you’re alone. Nothing convincing comes to mind. “No. He stepped out to get supplies. I can pass along a message on his walkie though?”

“That’s alright.”

Awkward silence.

“How’s working in Germany?” Chris sounds less professional this time.

You sigh and close your eyes. “I don’t think this is the best time for small talk.”

“Just making conversation. We’ve got time. I want to know how you’re liking it.” Chris says. You can hear the slight smile in his voice. The genuine nature of his words.

You always had a weakness for his kindness. He had a way of worming himself into your good graces without even trying.

“It’s good. The people are great. I miss having reliable air conditioning though.” You joke.

You hear Chris chuckle. “Yeah, the Europeans aren’t big on that kind of thing.”

Despite everything, you find yourself smiling. As much as you hate to admit it to yourself, you missed his laugh. How easy it is to talk to him.

“What about you? How’s Claire doing?” You ask.

“She’s still helping the world in her own way with TerraSave. She’s also been breathing down my neck about cutting back on smoking.”

“I’m sure you don’t mind that. If she’s breathing down your neck, that means she’s visiting.”

Another chuckle that makes butterflies erupt in your stomach sounds over the speaker. “If she were doing it in person, I don’t think I’d mind so much.”

Both of you sit in comfortable silence.

“I’ve missed seeing you around, but I’m glad you’re doing alright.” Chris says, vulnerability underlying his words.

Your throat gets tight, and you bite back the words before you can say them.

Don’t tell him you miss him too. It will make him feel worse.

Luck is on your side this time. Jake’s voice emanates from the walkie talkie in your lap.

“Doc? I need eyes on something.”

You let out a sigh of relief, then speak to Chris through the microphone. “Jake’s calling. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here.”

You mute yourself on the microphone and wheel yourself back over to the security system.

“I’m here. What do you need?”

“Can I get your professional opinion on what’s happening in front of 250?”

Your eyebrows scrunch in confusion, but you pull up the necessary camera to see what Jake is talking about. All you can do is stare for a moment at the grim sight. Most of the lens is obstructed by a black substance, but even with the limited visibility you know it’s the personnel and guards that were unlucky enough to be in Albert’s way when he escaped containment. Black gunk saturates the walls and ground that you’re able to see.

You force yourself to respond.

“Part of the lens is blocked, but those are casualties of Albert. Just step around them. The dead don’t come back naturally with Uroboros. It just makes them harder to kill.”

“Not talkin’ about that Doc. Give me a second.”

You’re about to ask what Jake means by that, but before you can, you see something wiping the lens of the security camera you’re looking through. After a few seconds you see an uncomfortably close view of Jake’s nose as he wipes away the gunk from the lens.

How the hell did he scale the 12 foot height to wipe that gunk off?

You use one of the other screens to pull up an angle of the hallway Jake just cleared, and you can see that he scaled the wall by somehow using his balance and strength to tuck himself into the corner where the two hallways meet.

“Were you raised in the fucking circus? Where did you learn that?” You say into the walkie in disbelief.

“By being a teenage shithead, now look!” Jake replies, exasperated and moving out of the way of the camera and revealing a body almost completely overtaken by worms of Uroboros. Your disbelief quickly shifts into grim realization.

That needs to be burned.

Your voice comes out eerily calm.

“Don’t touch it. Don’t shoot it. Don’t interact with it. Uroboros needs to be burned for proper disposal.”

You see Jake crouch to look at the body from a different angle. You see him bring the walkie to his lips.

“Will touching it infect me?”

“No, but it might eat you since you’re organic material!! Just don’t ingest it, keep your distance and you’ll be fine.”  You spit through your teeth, not liking Jake’s series of questions or what it could mean for his future actions.

Jake looks at the body for a moment longer then stands up with the walkie to his lips, looking at you through the camera.

“Don’t lick the weird black stuff. Seems simple enough.”

You groan. “Let’s just hope these Neo Umbrella guys had the foresight to keep a flamethrower on hand.” You tiredly respond.

On one of the other monitors, you see Albert meandering in the direction of Jake’s current location. You speak into the walkie.

“Hey sit tight for a minute, I need to redirect Albert.”

You see Jake give you a thumbs up on the camera and you flit your attention to one of the other monitors. While Albert isn’t alarmingly close to Jake’s location, it’s still too close for comfort. You set the microphone to make an announcement in the opposite direction.

“I’m over here love! Come find me!”

You see Albert’s face light up on the screen and turn to follow your voice, but he freezes mid-turn. You tap the screen, thinking that the old equipment froze up on you. But then you see Albert’s face twitching.

It’s mild at first; only one of his red snake eyes twitch. But then it’s his whole face. The uncharacteristically wide grin twitches downward, a scowl gradually etches itself into his visage, and his blown-out eyes undulate like a heartbeat smaller and smaller until they’re thin slits.

You hear a guttural groan of something akin to agony escape Albert’s lips as he attempts to reach behind him towards the regulator in between his shoulder blades.

“I will not be subdued!” Albert seethes through his teeth, arm, body and face twitching from an invisible battle for control. It’s a losing battle, and Albert isn’t on the winning side, but he realizes it too late. The second his eyes start to dilate and his arm stops grasping for the regulator, he throws his body against the wall in a vain attempt to remain coherent by bashing his head into the smooth white plaster. He shrieks in a heart wrenching combination of frustration and agony. You recognize it with dreaded clarity from the day he died in the volcano. The plaster is marred with a watercolor painting of red, pink and black splotches. Then, as quickly as it started, Albert freezes in place, his face twitches back to what it was before, then he meanders towards the direction he last heard your voice, not bothering to wipe off the blood or black substance from his face.

“Dearheart? Where’s my little wife?” Albert asks with an uncanny grin, leaving a trail of black liquid in his wake.

All you can do is sit and try to process what you just saw with a haunted look on your face. Albert hasn’t changed. It only appears like he has.

You slowly bring the walkie to your lips.

“Jake there’s been a development.” You speak into the walkie lowly.

“I’m guessing it isn’t the good kind.” Jake quips.

You don’t acknowledge his attempt at humor. “It looks like Albert’s fighting with himself.”

Jake is silent for a moment. “And what does that mean?”

You take a deep breath to collect yourself. “This is only a theory, but I think because Albert has a natural immunity to a lot of viruses and parasites, his subconscious is buried but mostly intact.”

“So… the parasite’s driving the car but Wesker’s in the backseat trying to take the wheel.”

“Exactly. And I don’t want to find out what happens if he succeeds.”

You glance back at the monitor where you last saw Albert. From a surface level perspective, he’s back to how he was when he broke out of the chamber. It’s apparent that the Nemesis parasite currently has the upper hand. But what happens when it doesn’t?

You shake away the thought and keep talking to Jake through the walkie.

“Look, try to find Youju’s office and try to figure out exactly what they did to try and wake him up. I can give a much more accurate game plan on how to handle this.”

“What’s the theory without it?”

“If he overpowers the parasite, we’re fucked.”

“Find the papers. Got it. Just keep the old man busy.”

“Will do. You keep laying low.”

You set the walkie on the security panel, already feeling exhausted. You watch Jake continue his methodical room check on the monitor, then drag your attention over to where Albert is heading, his sudden clarity sending a chill down your spine. Then you look over to the computer system where Chris is still waiting to hear your voice.

You groan and let your head hit the back of your rolling chair.

This is going to be a long night.

Tag List: @killerwendigo @appreciativemediaconsumer @kaymarnun @chucklefak

a/n 2: Thanks again for reading! I've got an AO3 account now so I'm cross posting this series on there if that's where you prefer to read your fics. Based on my outline, it looks like this thing is gonna be a 10ish parter so stick around!

Also I'm on AO3 now at wil_o_wispy if you like reading your fics on there!

AO3 link for this part.

[wil-o-wispy]

AMAZING CHAPTER 🫶👏👏👏👏

You are too sweet! Thank you 🥹

I was so nervous about the length because 10.8k words is beefy for one part but THANK YOU for reading.

Next part should be out in a month (hopefully I can’t write linearly to save my life and I have so much planned for future parts)

Everyone’s favorite B.S.A.A. boy returns in part 5 so stay tuned!

[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover, and the Bastard Son - Part 4

Chris Redfield x Fem!Reader (he'll be in the next part)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (You are here) | Part 5 | Part 6

Summary: Your past comes back to haunt you in more ways than you thought possible.

Contents: Major spoilers for RE6, canon typical violence/swearing, mentions of blood being drawn, improper use of a syringe as an improvised weapon, angsty Jake content, angsty plot content, descriptions of blood and violence, dialogue heavy chapter. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of (dead) Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

a/n: Hey peeps. It's me ya boi. I regret nothing for the events that are about to unfold. Thanks for reading :)

w/c: 10.8k+

There is no feasible way out of the cell that you’re confined in. After an indiscernible amount of time being unconscious from the gas released in the specimen room, you woke up here. As far as prisons go, it’s not half bad; a spacious white chamber with a basic cot with white sheets in the middle of the room. In the corner across from it is a security camera with a red light. What makes this room different from your handful of previous kidnapping quarters, are the metal shutters to the right of the entrance to the room that takes up the entirety of the wall. Given the room you were in reminded you of chambers for infected test subjects, there was a likely chance you were being observed through the camera on the other side of the wall.

There’s a second difference as well. You woke up with the crook of your arm wrapped in gauze and a cotton swab. These people had drawn blood from you while you were knocked out. Probably to test if you were compatible for the new virus you’re sure they’re making.

All you can do is wait and see if you’re right.

You aren’t too worried about your involuntary confinement. Not yet anyway. These people evidently want you alive and in one piece. You’re not too sure if Jake would be given the same courtesy though. If he was as skilled as he said he was, you would be willing to bet he was already long gone. If that boy had any sense, he would be trying to find a radio right now to signal for help.

You don’t have to wait too long with your thoughts. A short time after, you hear white noise hum from the speaker and the familiar higher pitched male voice echoes around the chamber.

“Good day, Dr. Wesker.” The voice is the same one you heard from the thin silhouetted man when you first arrived. He speaks in a slow, deliberate tone.

“Hello.” You answer back looking directly into the camera, keeping your tone neutral.

“I understand you had a little -detour- on the way to your room.”

“I did.”

“I would encourage you not to indulge in your wanderlust again, but you strike me as the type to take that as a challenge.”

You narrow your eyes at the camera and purse your lips. You don’t want to give anything away that would confirm the man’s assumption is correct. When you continue to be silent, the man speaks again.

“Forgive me, we haven’t made a proper introduction. I am Youju, one of the head researchers for Neo Umbrella. Welcome to my facility.”

You can’t find it in you to even care who he is. It doesn’t matter in the grand scope of things. As far as you’re concerned, Umbrella (or Neo Umbrella) was still just a terrorist organization that made bioorganic weapons. You don’t care about the specifics of what that means unless it’s relevant to preventing an outbreak.

“Will you just cut to the chase?”

There’s a pause from the speaker. “Pardon?”

You sigh and cross your arms, still looking into the camera. “I’ve done this song and dance multiple times and I have no patience for the dramatics anymore. What do you want?”

Silence from the speaker. You let out an annoyed huff.

“Do you have a new virus you want to test out on me? An old one you revamped? I’ve been proposed with job offers before but I’m letting you know right now-”

“No, no miss. Your purpose here today is much more… personal.”

That can’t be good.

“So I’m here for revenge? You’re going to have to specify. Albert had a lot of enemies, and I couldn’t be bothered to keep up with them.”

“You misunderstand what I mean when I say personal.” You can hear an underlying tone of deviousness in that statement. Youju continues.

“Tell me doctor, how have I gone all these years without knowing Albert Wesker had a son?”

You stand in stunned silence. Wesker? A father? The thought makes you want to laugh in disbelief. The only thing that stops you from doing so is the confidence in Youju’s voice.

What kind of ploy is this?

Is he trying to get you to admit a secret you don’t even have? You spend the next few moments thinking over what the man had just said, when you hear him tap the mic, which results in your ears being assaulted with high pitched feedback and you reflexively covering your ears.

“I’m not a patient man, doctor. Answer me.” Youju’s words are drawn out with a mocking, sing-song voice.

You lower your hands and stare directly into the camera, making a conscious effort to keep your tone even. “We never had any kids.”

Silence falls over the chamber again. Long enough that you think Youju must have left. However, you hear his voice again, but this time you hear a smile in his words.

“… well this is quite an interesting development. I have someone I want to introduce you to. Mrs. Wesker.”

The tone in his voice clearly indicates he doesn’t believe you.

A deep metallic click sounds through the chamber before the metal shutters next to you begin to raise themselves up, groaning their whole journey to the ceiling. As they ascend, the shutters reveal a window to another room. Although surprisingly, there aren’t any Neo Umbrella personnel behind the glass. Instead, the panels reveal an identical chamber to yours, except it’s Jake on the other side of the glass sitting on the bed and leaning on his knees. The bottoms of his pants are covered in dark mud, a part of his sleeve looks scorched, and there’s a sizeable gash on his temple that had scabbed over next to his buzzed ginger hair. Blood that has long since dried had trickled down next to the large diagonal scar on the left side of his face. In other words, he’s much worse for wear than the last time you saw him. Whoever came into the room to investigate the alarm really did a number on him.

You see a discarded bundle of gauze with a slightly bloody cotton ball in Jake’s room. These people took blood from him too.

That grating voice over the loudspeaker interrupts your thoughts.

“Mr. Muller! I hope you’re finding your accommodations acceptable.”

Acceptable was a stretch, but at least your rooms had the bare necessities. You can’t say the same for your past accommodations with other organizations.

Jake shrugs and leans back, taking a look around the room. You hear his voice come from a hidden speaker near the window.

“Not bad, asshole. Feels like I’m shacking up at the Shitz Carlton.”

You would have smiled at that if that nagging sense of familiarity from earlier wasn’t still wracking your brain.

Where have I seen him before?

Youju quips back with that knowing tone over the speaker. “Even when cornered in the lion’s den, you still have something witty to bite back with. Just like your father so I’m told.”

Jake’s carefree demeanor grows more rigid; shoulders squared, clenched jaw and sharpened expression. The man’s family is a sensitive subject.

“Where are my manners? Dr. Wesker have you had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Muller?”

It was hard to tell, but you could have sworn you saw Jake perk up at hearing your dreaded last name. You stare at him a moment longer.

“Can’t say I have before today.”

“Really? Are you certain?” The way Youju says that makes it seems like he’s trying to make you doubt an obvious answer to a trivia question. You stare at Jake, and he stares back, unblinking.

You turn back towards the camera.

“I would remember the scar. I haven’t met this man.”

“Interesting. Why don’t you look closer?”

The man from the speaker obviously wants to get some sort of point across to you, so you humor him. Sighing and shifting your weight, you turn to Jake. You look past the grime, the evidence of fights lost, and modern clothes.

You look at his face, his eyes…

You stop breathing.

You thought about what Youju had said before. Albert Wesker had a son.

Your mind races with a cacophony of scrambled thoughts over the next few seconds.

How did these people figure out Wesker had a son before you did? He looks like him. How did he go this long without being discovered? It’s likely Jake’s blood is special like Albert’s, so they’d want a promising candidate for virus injections. Who is his mother?

You don’t know where it comes from in the moment, but all you can picture is a displeased Albert holding a ginger headed baby, with his nice work shirt covered in spit up while another woman takes a picture and laughs.

It starts as a giggle, but the longer you think about this scenario, the more ridiculous the thought becomes and the harder it becomes to keep your shoulders still.

“So tell me doctor, what are your thoughts?” Youju replies smugly, waiting for your response.

You can’t help it. You start laughing like an insane woman. Jake’s existence was the cherry on top of an already stressful situation. Your body is exhausted from the journey here, you’re still processing the emotional whiplash from seeing and destroying the Uroboros sample, you’re mentally and emotionally done with everything that could possibly relate to Wesker and now you find out he has a son that isn’t yours? You just find the whole situation so absurd that you can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

It's clear that Youju doesn’t find your reaction amusing. His tone is cold and controlled when he speaks next. “Enlighten me Wesker, what could possibly be so funny?”

When you finally catch your breath, you look at the camera again with tears in your eyes from laughing so hard.

“This… establishment is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for bright and promising imbeciles, aren’t they?”

Silence, then the sound of a throat being cleared.

“Oh really? And why is that?”

Youju’s voice is flat. Controlled. You had struck something sensitive, and you intend to use it to your advantage to get a moment alone with Jake.

“Because this is ridiculous! Albert Wesker? A father- his father? Are we talking about the same Wesker?”

“His blood sample suggests otherwise-”

“And how do you know that exactly?”

Silence.

You let out a deranged cackle.

“I think I understand now. You found this stranger helping me in the middle of your ocean getaway, you thought he looked like Wesker, and your only plausible conclusion was that he has to be my son. So you’re comparing his DNA to mine because Wesker’s genome is impossible to find. Is that it?”

Youju struggles to stay composed under a guise of false confidence.

“Well we… any reputable institution would confirm hypotheses by… conducting their own independent tests and gathering their samples directly from the source.”

You hum and step a little closer to the camera.

“You know, Umbrella used to check their homework before going through the trouble of kidnapping persons of interest. Just goes to show that the copy is always going to be a letdown from the original.” You made sure to look straight into the camera when you say that, and it has the desired effect.

“You…I-I’ll know you’re lying one way or another soon Wesker!” Unlike before, there was no trace of confident humor. Instead, the voice spits out the words with prideful fury.

“Then by all means, do it. Waste everyone’s time. Hell, I’ll even volunteer for another blood sample when it comes back negative.”

It’s silent for a long time until the white noise from the speaker cuts out and all you can hear is the fluorescent lights above you.

You hear a muffled voice on the other side of the glass. “Hey Wesker!” Youju must have switched off the window speaker.

You let out a sharp breath through your nose. You turn to the window. Jake stands there, forearm resting on the glass above his head and observing you like a slide under a microscope. “Like I told you before, just Doc is fine.” You respond, annoyed.

You look up at the camera and see its beady red light still trained on you. You look between the camera and Jake. No use being stealthy. You walk over to the window with a determined look on your face, already in problem solving mode.

“We both know that test is going to come back negative.”

“Uh huh… and?” Jake responds, unimpressed.

“Personnel are going to come back eventually for another sample. Make it count and make it hurt although based on your current state-” You gesture to Jakes muddy and burnt clothes. “-your technique needs some work.”

Jake scowls. “My ‘technique’ is just fine.”

“Then prove me wrong.”

It doesn’t take too long for your assumption to come true. After a long stretch of time that you try to fill by pacing your room, you hear several sets of footsteps outside the room. A moment later, you see two men in lab coats accompanied by one guard armed with an electric baton and one armed with a pistol enter Jake’s room on the other side of the glass. 

Jake deals with them in a similar quick and efficient fashion to what you saw before when you first met him, except his moves are much more violent and incensed. Nothing like the cool and confident rescuer you first thought him to be.

The men in lab coats gesture for Jake to roll up his sleeve. Jake complies and one of the men puts a band on his upper arm to cut off blood flow. When the other man goes to do the blood draw, Jake grabs the syringe and plunges it into the man’s eye, causing to scream in pain and stumble back. The other scientist is frozen in fear as the two guards spring into action. The guard with the baton reaches Jake first, but he’s prepared to duck under the guard’s wide swing and he easily kicks the guard’s feet out from under him in one graceful move. As soon as the guard’s body hits the floor, Jake wastes no time grabbing the back of his head and chin and forcing his neck to an unnatural angle, immediately making the guard go limp.

The other guard is yelling something in that unfamiliar language while pointing his gun at Jake, but Jake doesn’t even acknowledge it as he charges at him with full speed. The guard is only able to shoot once, barely missing his shot, before Jake unleashes a flurry of blows, his skill in hand-to-hand combat evident in the way he dodges all the guard’s attempts at defense with ease.

While Jake is busy with the other guard, the remaining scientist finally comes to his senses and begins to run out of the room. But by the time he makes it to the door of Jake’s chamber, Jake has already disarmed and shot the other guard in the head. By the time the scientist opens the door, Jake has already lined his shot up perfectly and shoots the scientist dead in his tracks, blood leaking from the bullet wound on the back of his head.

The sight in the other room is grisly, but nothing you’re not already used to from the lifestyle you’ve lived. Once the last scientist is taken care of, you knock on the window to get Jake’s attention. He turns to you, breathing heavily and ripping off the rubber armband from earlier.

“Grab all their keycards! Can’t hurt to have them just in case.”

Jake nods and grabs the keycards from all the bodies, then exits the room. Shortly after, there’s a ping from your door and it opens to reveal Jake on the other side of it.

“Let me see?” You request, briskly walking outside the room and holding out your hand for the keycards. Jake plops them in your hand, looking at you closely. You ignore it and flip through the keycards, trying to discern security level but failing because the only difference between the two are the colors; red for the scientists and black for the guards. You halve them and give one of each back to Jake, which he pockets. He’s still holding the pistol he got from the guard at his side.

“Guess we’ll find out which have higher clearance when the time comes.”

Jake is still looking at you with that analyzing expression. “So you-” Jake is interrupted by an ear piercing alarm and the room is bathed in a foreboding red light.

“Time to move!” Jake grabs your upper arm before you can protest and runs out a door and down the hallway, half dragging you behind him while you struggle to keep up with his pace. You don’t know where you’re running to and Jake doesn’t appear to know either. You both keep running until you reach a four-way hallway where the alarm isn’t as loud and the lights are normal. Jake pauses, taking a moment before deciding where to run. You take the opportunity to yank your arm back, rubbing away the sting of Jake’s harsh grip.

“Wait, why aren’t there any guards? Or people?” You say, not quite sure where to go. Maybe it’s residual memories from working at Umbrella, but seeing the nearly identical hallways so empty is setting off alarm bells in your head.

“That’s what you’re worried about right now?” Jake replies, irritated, taking a few steps to look down one of the hallways trying to decide where to go while he holds his pistol defensively, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

“There’s no people! You don’t find that weird?”

“We’ve got bigger problems right now!” Jake snaps, looking at you with a cold stare. Not a second later, the ear-piercing alarm cries overhead and the lights flick to red.

“We’re going left.” Jake says, running down the left hallway with you tailing right behind him. As you’re running, you notice the grating on the floor.

You realize it’s like the flooring in the specimen room, and suddenly more details about this place make sense.

There’re no people around because they use the knockout gas as a security measure.

The guards wear gas masks so they don’t lose consciousness during breaches.

The alarms and lights warn employees to get to a safe place or avoid the area.

Unfortunately, you put all of this together in the middle of the hallway when the security doors at both ends light up red, rise up from the floor, and close with loud metallic clicks. You hear loud hissing from below you, and you realize with dreaded clarity that the hallway is starting to fill up with gas.

You quickly scan the hallway and see a door with a red marking on it like the one on the scientist keycard.

“Red door on your right! Move it!” You command, already running to the door, keycard in hand.

You don’t need to tell Jake twice. Jake wastes no time dashing into the suggested room once you scan the card. You follow Jake into the room right on his heels. The second you’re through the threshold of the door, you scan the keycard to close the door and engage the emergency lock, emergency protocols drilled into your head from your time at Umbrella taking over. The door beeps and hisses shut just in time to cut off the gas from invading the room you and Jake just entered. The room appears to be some kind of office with several desks around the room. The alarm on the other side of the door is barely heard in this room. You’re safe. For now.

You take a shaky and labored breath while leaning against the door, trying to get your bearings.

Too close.

Your break is quickly interrupted by an accusatory comment from Jake. “You knew him well, huh?”

You stay silent and finally look at Jake. His expression is a cocktail of anger and frustration, even as he’s trying to catch his breath. You glance at Jake’s hand by his side; he’s gripping his pistol tightly and his face is grim and cold. It doesn’t help that you’re looking at Jake with an exasperated and annoyed look.

“You of all people should know why I don’t freely give out my last name.”

You give Jake a ‘what the fuck are you doing’ look and Jake tightens his grip on his pistol as he lifts it a few inches like he’s thinking about aiming it. A few seconds pass and Jake takes a deep breath as he sheathes the pistol.

“Fair enough. But I have questions.”

You let out a crazed laugh and start to feverishly pace the room, still in disbelief at the sudden appearance of your husband’s bastard child. “I’m sure you do! I’ve sure as hell got some!” Your tone comes off as angry, but in reality you’re frustrated.

“I’m not too happy he’s my dad either lady!”

“That’s not- ugh. I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just-” You take a breath and try to relax your shoulders, so you don’t snap at Jake again. “The B.S.A.A. and I have a deal. I tell them everything I know, and I help their scientists deal with bioterrorism. In exchange, I’m supposed to get protection and they keep me in the loop. Simple right? But then-” You stop pacing and gesture to Jake. “-I get kidnapped, again, and I find out my dead husband has a whole ass… grown… child! In their organization! That’s a pretty major development if you ask me!”

You stop pacing the room and plop down in a chair and put your head in your hands, then run your hands through your hair. What else aren’t the B.S.A.A telling you? What isn’t Chris telling you? Did he know about this? He has to. You haven’t done anything to your knowledge to warrant them keeping something this big from you. Did they think you’d not take the news well? Take it out on Jake? Leak the information out of misplaced anger for Albert being with another woman?

“I don’t care what kind of bullshit deal you’ve got with the Bioterrorism Boy Scouts. I’ve got questions and I think considering everything, I deserve some fucking answers.” Jake’s steely look from the chamber is trained directly on you.

“You-” You stop. You’re about to tell him now isn’t the time and that you both need to prioritize finding a radio to call for help and come up with an exit plan, but you don’t. You can’t deny that you want to know more about Jake. He’s rightfully demanding answers about a father he presumably never knew. You know the B.S.A.A hasn’t been forthcoming about new information to you, so they probably haven’t disclosed much to Jake. You also know they won’t be too pleased about you spilling top secret intel about Albert to his son.

“You’re right. He’s your dad, you deserve to know. You didn’t hear this from me, okay? I don’t need more reasons for B.S.A.A.’s finest to dislike me.”

Jake silently looks at you, then nods his head. “Deal.”

You nod back. “Alright. You first.”

Jake leans against the wall, looking at you with a serious expression. “What kind of man was Albert Wesker?”

You look at him, confused. “I’m assuming you already know what kind of man he was.”

“I do. I’ve heard a hell of a lot about my old man, but not from the woman who knew him best. What kind of man was he?”

“An intelligent psychopath with a god complex.” You pause. “Well... the god complex came later. But still.”

“Intelligent? That’s not what I heard.”

“What did you hear then?”

“That he was crazy and he tried to destroy the world.” Jakes voice drips with disdain.

“Crazy and intelligent aren’t mutually exclusive traits. Are you positive that these people didn’t know who you were before they tested your blood?”

Even with everything that had just happened, you still couldn’t wrap your head around why you were brought here. To your knowledge, Neo Umbrella didn’t know Jake existed before an hour ago, let alone know that he was Albert’s son. How they knew he was Albert’s son is still unclear to you since his genome is highly classified information. The man on the speaker said your purpose here was personal but didn’t give any indication that it was related to revenge. What did he mean by that? How does this all connect?

“Hundred percent. If he was like that, why’d you marry him then?” Jake’s tone is accusatory, and a scowl that eerily reminds you of Albert adorns his face.

You’re annoyed with the one-word answer and his tone, but you keep your feelings to yourself. You know Jake has complicated feelings when it comes to his father, and he’s dead. You’re the next best thing when it comes to closure. After a moment you calmly and neutrally respond to Jakes question.

“When I first met him, I thought he was a very different man. Sure, he was stoic, cold and all business at the Umbrella Labs, but with me he was romantic, charismatic, and thoughtful." You feel like Jake’s gaze is piercing into your soul, so you look away and stare at the ground instead. “Three years I thought that. Then the mansion incident happened, and everything changed for the worse.”

“Romantic? Hmph. Yeah sure…”

You frown and let out a resigned sigh, shoulders slumping in the process, and you respond in a tired tone. “Has there ever been anyone in your life that you trusted with your whole being and they ended up being someone you didn’t even recognize?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Jake cross his arms and scowl become more prominent. Another sensitive subject. You move on.

“He was unfathomably good at making you believe he was someone else. He did it with me. He did it with his S.T.A.R.S. squad at R.P.D. He even did it to Umbrella. In the end, he was just a power-starved monster.”

“R.P.D? He was a cop too?”

You turn your head back towards Jake in surprise. You would have thought that Albert’s previous jobs were easy pieces of information to get ahold of, but then again, Jake may have not cared enough to know. Jake’s expression is still unreadable apart from his voice dripping with contempt as he asked that question. You keep your answer clinical and to the point. “Yeah. He was a scientific prodigy and worked at Umbrella as a researcher really young. Then one of his projects stalled and he became an Umbrella spy and worked in the U.S. Army and then became the captain of the Rescue Service at the police station. After that: bioterrorist.”

You stop and wait for any follow up questions. When Jake only continues to stare you down, you ask your next question.

“Who knows that he’s your father?”

“Couple of guys in the B.S.A.A. and a handful of government agents. Everyone else who knew is dead. What happened after the Mansion Incident? Between you two? There has to be more to that story.” Jakes expression grows darker and more serious.

The thought crosses your mind that you should lie about how you felt, but you have a feeling that you needed to be open with Jake. He deserves the truth, no matter how unpleasant the answer will be.

“I was devastated. When what was left of his team returned from that mansion, I simply didn't want to believe it. I didn't even know he worked for the R.P.D. before that day, and they’re telling me he led his team to die at a mansion in the mountains with a secret Umbrella lab I didn’t know existed? The whole thing sounded crazy." You stop and choose your next words delicately before continuing.

"You have to understand that I loved him at the time. I was in denial. I was mourning. I didn't know he survived the mansion until the Racoon City incident. He could have let me die in Racoon when everything went to shit but he didn't. Instead, he sent a mercenary after me to rescue me and kept me with him until he was killed."

Jake gives you a long look when you finish, his eyes fixed and unblinking. You can tell he’s digesting your every word as his jaw tenses and his knuckles whiten from the force of his fists clenching with his arms are still crossed.

“… so he saved you?”

His voice is icy, and there’s a dangerous edge to his tone that you’ve never heard before. Each word sounds like it’s taking great effort to force out. “Why?”

A pang of fear goes through you at his change of tone. You hit something sensitive, and you don’t even know what it is, which only makes you more nervous. “I don’t have a good answer for that.” Your voice comes out softer than you intend, but you do a good job of masking how intimidated you are by Jake in the moment. Logically, you know he’s probably not going to fly off the handle and do anything to you, but his eyes and expressions are so similar to Albert’s that it’s instinctively putting you on edge.

Unless Albert told you directly, knowing the inner workings of his mind was a challenging task even for you. You’d asked yourself that question and reflected on a possible answer countless times over the years, and each time you came to a slightly different conclusion. On the occasional day where you really missed your marriage before the Mansion Incident, you thought he may have been fond of you in some way. On days like this, your theories were a bit more realistic. You were a means to an end.

Either way, Jake’s eyes are boring into your soul as he’s waiting for you to answer his question.

“At the time, I thought it was because he loved me. But now-” You pause for a moment, desperately trying to gather your thoughts to present them in a way that won’t upset Jake further. “-I have two theories. Either he saw me as an asset with my virology knowledge and kept me close just in case, or he just saw me as something that was his. He almost always used possessives when he addressed me. My darling, my dear, my love. That kind of thing.”

Jake remains silent and his body language still has that edge to it like a cord dangerously close to snapping. You opt to ask a more neutral question.

“How long have you known about Wesker?”

“A year. So he saw you as an asset? You helped him with his plans?”

“No! Fuck no. He definitely wanted me to, but I refused every single time. I still looked at all the lab results and things the he left laying out to stay up to date on what he was planning, but I never gave him feedback.”

“If you refused, why the hell did he keep you around?” Another accusatory, but valid question. Albert wasn’t exactly the forgiving type if he didn’t get what he wanted.

“I think he thought he could wear me down or change my mind eventually. I work fast. I’m good at seeing patterns and remembering small details. My guess is that he didn’t want to get rid of me if there was the possibility of me being useful.” You catch yourself becoming slightly defensive, so you make a conscious effort to reel your emotions in before you ask Jake your question. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Edonia. If you were so against helping him, then why did you stay, huh?”

You’re starting to feel anger boil up in you.

“I was just happy to have my husband back at first! I tried leaving when I realized what he wanted to do. I really did. But by the time I took off the rose colored glasses, I’d seen too much and I was either locked up or he had someone babysitting me so I couldn’t run off. And Edonia? Really? That’s a long way from the U.S. Is that where your mom’s from?”

“Why do you care, huh?” Jake snaps at you, fire in his eyes and nostrils flaring.

You’re slightly taken aback with Jake’s combative response. “Because if anyone finds out she’s associated with Wesker in any way, she’s going to be in danger and needs protection.”

“Don’t need it. She’s dead.” Jake’s face holds no traces of relaxed cockiness like earlier. His expression has morphed into an explosive combination of wrath and pain. “And you know why? Because daddy dearest wasn’t there to pay for her medical bills. He walked out and didn’t fucking look back, yet she still acted like he was this exceptional man who could do no wrong.”

The atmosphere of the room is thick with tension. Even through Jake is a few feet away still leaning on the desk, you feel small and defenseless sitting in your office chair. You feel like the energy in the room could snap at any moment, so you keep your tone sympathetic, but firm.

“I’m sorry about your mom. But you need to believe me when I tell you that you are lucky he was never in your lives-“

“Lucky? That psychopath sent someone to a city that was tearing itself apart to save you but couldn’t send a damn check to save my mom?”

You’ve been patient throughout this whole exchange, and you were resigned to be Jake’s verbal punching bag. But suggesting Albert would have helped Jake’s mother without consequences? That’s the final straw that inevitably makes you lose your composure.

“Did you grow up feeling loved?” The question is sudden. Blurted without thinking of what could come after.

Jake’s angered expression morphs into confusion. “What?”

You know you’re playing with fire with this line of questioning, but you don’t see any other option that will be as effective. “Did your mother… tell you she loved you, make sure you had your coat before leaving the house? Hug you goodbye? Tell you bedtime stories?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Did she?” You don’t back down. You need to make him understand.

“Yeah! She did!”

You nodded. “Good! You wouldn’t have gotten that with Albert. Far from it!”

“Oh yeah? And why do you think that Doc?”

“Is that your question?”

“Answer it.” Jake spits, anger boiling to the surface.

“Do you know anything about Project W?”

You take the silence as a no and continue.

“Albert was a product of one of Oswald Spencer’s projects, founder of Umbrella, headed by Dr. William Wesker. It was a eugenics-based plan to create a race of more intelligent, more fit more whatever superhumans. Your father was essentially raised in a lab.”

You pause to make sure Jake is following your words and keep going.

“There were hundreds of kids in this program. When they were adults, Spencer weeded out a group of thirteen including your father. All of them were given the progenitor virus whether willingly or unknowingly, and only Albert and another woman I’ve never met survived. Albert was the only one who gained superhuman abilities.”

Jake is silent for a moment, then responds, “When you say willingly or unknowingly-”

“Some of these kids didn’t know they were in the program.”

Silence.

“That is where your father came from. You want to know what kind of man he was? He was opportunistic and manipulative. I have no doubt that he would have used you as a guinea pig just like he was. He would have framed it in a way that made it look like he was doing what was best for you too. If he had stayed in your life, you would have been living in a lab waiting for him to shove a needle in your vein as a bonding activity.”

More silence. Jake’s expression is unreadable, but he doesn’t appear angry like before. His eyebrows are scrunched together and he looks at the floor, deep in thought. 

“Jake?” You say, gently. He doesn’t respond.

“Jake. Please look at me.” You try again a little louder, and he turns his head to look at you, Albert’s - Jake’s - pale blue eyes look more understanding.

“Do you understand everything I just told you?”

“Yeah. I just-” Jake pauses. “I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that.”

You nod and give him a sympathetic look. “I know it doesn’t make it better, but I don’t think he knew you existed. He would have seen you as an asset and tried to find you otherwise.”

Jake doesn’t say anything, but he nods his head to let you know he heard you.

“Loving him came at a price. Be thankful for the anonymity you have.”

“What was your price?”

Everything.

“My future.” Jake looks at you with an eyebrow raised, so you continue. “Because of the relationship I had with him, it’s impossible to live a normal life. I’ve tried, but there will always be people trying to find me to recruit me or kill me because of that.” You say this off-handedly. You’ve become used to this kind of life to the point where happenings like this feel routine.

You and Jake sit in silence. Jake’s presence doesn’t emit that aura of anger anymore.

“That’s not fair to you.”

You give Jake a wry smile.

“It’s not fair that he’s your father. We can’t change the past. But we can try to make the future a bit less shitty.” You quip.

Jake chuckles a little at that comment, and his smirk finally returns.

“You’re not-” Jake stops, and you wait for him to finish, “-how I expected you to be.”

“…thanks?” You reply, not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Jake snorts at your comment. “And uh… sorry I got heated for a minute there.”

You give Jake a dismissive wave. “Hey, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten my ass chewed out because of Wesker, and it’s not going to be the last. At least yours was warranted. You love your mom. I can’t fault you for that.”

“Appreciate it.” Jake replies, his smirk disappearing after a moment.

“I’ve got one more… personal question.” Jake looks at you, a dark intensity to his gaze.

You nod. ”Go for it. You deserve to know.”

“Do you have any children?” After a long, silent pause, Jake’s eyes lose their intensity and he gives you a small, sympathetic look.

You give Jake a sad smile. “No. No we… everything I said before about bonding activities? That’s not anecdotal. Just conjecture. Just-“ You gesture to Jake. “You.”

That I know of.

You clear your throat. “How old are you, by the way? I’m just curious-”

“You don’t need to finish that, I get it. Twenty.”

“You look older.”

“Mercenary work and a civil war will do that to ya.”

“Sorry I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s okay.”

You shift in your seat from the awkward turn of events and say your thoughts out loud. “Let’s see…” You do the math in your head. “That would’ve been ’92. I met him in ’95. We got married in ’97...”

“And everything with Umbrella went to shit in ’98.” Jake finishes.

You feel the side of your mouth curl into a half smile. “You’ve done your homework.”

The alarm outside the room suddenly stops, and you hear a hissing noise from the hallway outside. You look to the door, then back at Jake. “I’ll tell you more later. We gotta get moving.”

You stand up from your chair and check the panel on the door. Still red. It’s going to take a minute or two for the gas to filter out of the hallway. You look over your shoulder at Jake.

“Did you end up finding that sample by the way? Or a way to contact the Tokyo base?”

Jake frowns and checks his pistol. “No, but I have a better idea of where those things could be.”

 You sigh and shake your head. “Better than nothing, I guess. Any theories?”

Jake shrugs. “Half this place used to be a military base and the other half an Umbrella lab that’s had some renovations. The old lab holds the old samples-”

“So the newer part of the lab should have the new samples and the military part should have a radio?”

Jake smirks and points at you. “If everything goes right, we’ll be outta here by sunset.”

The office door panel beeps and lights up green. You smile and slide the red card and the door swooshes open. You look back to Jake. “I like the sound of that. Let’s go.”

As you both walk back out into the hallway, you notice it’s still eerily empty. However, the security doors are still engaged at both ends of the hallway. You and Jake walk over to the door you were heading through before the lockdown. You scan the red keycard and it declines. You huff and scan the black keycard, and you hear the lock disengage and the security doors split open and return their respectful halves to the floor and ceiling. You look at the black keycard with a stern look as Jake walks though.

“Only guards can open security doors? That sounds like a shitshow waiting to happen.”

“You an expert on security now too? C’mon we’ve got a schedule to-”

Jake is cut off by a loud buzzer, followed by the security doors slamming shut so you and Jake are on opposite sides. Jake hurries up to the doors and looks at you through one of the small windows in the middle.

“What the hell? Try the card again maybe it’s a timer thing.”

You scan the black card again, but it returns an error message. You shake your head in annoyance, but then it turns into concern when you hear shouting and footsteps from the direction of the observation rooms you were held in.

“It’s giving me an error message. Try yours on that side!” You shout at Jake through the door.

You see Jake’s face as he scans the panel on his side but based on how Jake grits his teeth in frustration he’s probably not having any better luck than you. You hear shouting and footsteps growing louder. Jake notices and tries to pry open the security doors with his hands. You scan the red card again, but it also returns an error message.

“Shit! Jake, they know which cards we took and deactivated them. They’re no good!”

You throw down the cards and take a few steps back to get a better look at the hallway to find an alternate route or some structural weakness in the door arch, but you notice nothing. The sounds of guards shouting and running are getting even closer. Your only chance of getting out of here is Jake. He can’t be here when you’re ultimately discovered.

You hurry back up to one of the windows on the security door to shout at Jake. “You need to go, now!”

Jake ignores you and keeps looking for purchase on the door, but it’s too smooth to get a decent grip to pull it open.

“Jake!” You scold.

Jake pauses to look at you, scowling.

“They obviously want me alive I’ll be fine. You find that sample and radio for help. I’ll stall for as long as I can.”

Jake’s scowl on his face deepens as he tries to open the mechanical door again, but his efforts are fruitless. He finally slams a hand on the door and lets out an annoyed huff and looks back at you through the window.

“You’re sure you’ll be fine on your own?”

More yelling and bangs echo down the hall.

“More than likely, yes. Just be quick about it. I’d rather not be a lab rat if I can help it.”

Jake takes one more analyzing look at the door and gives you a curt nod, clearly not happy with the new set of circumstances.

“Don’t say anything that’ll piss em’ off more.”

“No promises, now go!”

You turn around at the sound of the opposite security door opening, and you hear Jake’s footsteps grow further and further before they disappear and are replaced with the stomping of a battalion of gas masked soldiers. A group of eight quickly block off your only exit and train their semi-automatic TMP’s on you. Seeing as you’re heavily outnumbered, you put your hands up in surrender.

As you do, a wiry man a little taller than you walks leisurely through the intimidating crowd of masked faces. He wears a suit under a pristine white lab coat and looks at you with cold eyes through a pair of square glasses.

“Where is Muller, Doctor?”

You recognize the lilting voice immediately. This is Youju. Your immediate impression is that he’s much too young to be the director of this facility. But then again, Umbrella is chock full of young prodigies. Time to buy Jake some time.

“I could care less about where he went. As I told you before, he’s not my son.”

“I see.” Youju walks a few steps past the line of guards towards you and looks at the mechanical door behind you, skeptical.

“Why stop here Dr. Wesker? Why this door?”

“Because your security system needs some work. It closed and it can’t be opened.” You reply, curtly.

“Then why didn’t you run?”

“I’ve been in enough scrapes to know when I’ve been backed into a corner.” It’s not a lie. Even though your main goal is to distract these people, you know when you’re beat. Especially when you have an overwhelming handful of guns trained on you.

Youju frowns. “You still haven’t answered my question. Where. Is. Muller?”

“I. Don’t. Know. We went our separate ways when it became convenient.” You reply condescendingly, already tired of answering Youju’s questions.

Youju narrows his eyes at you, calculating his response. “Very well then. Since you’re so keen on seeing what amenities this facility has to offer, allow me to give you a guided tour.”

“I’d rather go back to my room. I’ve had enough cardio for today.”

Youju waves his hand and the guards put their guns down, save for one who quickly positions himself behind you with his gun still aimed at your back. Youju gives you a chilling smile. “I must insist, Doctor.”

As Youju walks back through the crowd of guards, he announces one more command to the crowd of guards.

“Find the other one. Alive. Maim him if you must, but ensure he is brought to me in one piece.”

Not ten minutes later, Youju and his guard lead you deeper into the facility, seemingly with one destination in mind for your guided tour. Youju leads the way in front of you, while the soldier trails behind never once lowering his weapon. He seems to be leading you into the newly renovated parts of the lab. There are no windows into the many rooms you pass so you have no inkling of what could be going on behind closed doors, but Youju ignores all of them in favor of the main lab at the center of the facility.

He scans a white key card and a large lock disengages from the mechanism in the middle of the door, spinning until it’s completely free before the doors finally open to reveal another set of sliding doors. Youju scans the card again and enters with you and the soldier right behind him.

It's a room with several scientists checking over miscellaneous machines and monitors, as well as fridges with multiple different colored chemical substances. All of them periodically glance over their respective stations and into the observation chamber below through the window that takes up the entire expanse of the wall opposite the door. A handful of soldiers line the wall in the back of the room. Youju saunters in and stands by a monitor that flickers to show a different part of the facility every fifteen seconds or so. A microphone stands idly next to it. Youju trains his dark eyes on you, a barely noticeable sly smile on his face.

“Welcome to the inner sanctum, Doctor. I would like your thoughts on my latest and greatest project.”

You cross your arms defiantly and shift your weight with a bored expression on your face. “As I said before, I have no interest in any job you have to offer me.”

“I didn’t offer you employment. I only ask that you take a cursory look. I assure you, he will be of great interest to you.” Youju speaks in that same, know-it-all tone from when you were stuck in your quarters. Like he wants you to figure out his point.

Better yet, who’s ‘he?’

You roll your eyes and humor him.

You look over the consoles and into the chamber below. There are illuminated chambers filled with substances you don’t recognize and over a dozen machines tracking something you can’t discern from this distance. The cylindrical tank in the middle of the room is the focal point of the observation chamber. It glows with a foreboding orange light, illuminating the space in between itself and you. At first, you can’t tell what the tank holds with the light emanating from it shining in your eyes. When your eyes adjust to the light, one by one you notice features of the creature inside; you see the outline of a man. Then notice one of its arms is much longer and darker than the other. The scar tissue across its chest. Then, most devastatingly, disheveled, slicked back blonde hair.

Your heart drops and your annoyed expression shifts into something much more terrified.

“Where… that’s not…”

But it was. Behind the glass in the chamber below was the body of a mutated Albert Wesker floating in a liquid filled chamber. His chest and legs are overtaken by burnt scar tissue, but otherwise look about the same as the last time you saw him; although you don’t like to think about that series of events.

The bomber. The volcano. The helicopter that he almost pulled down into the lava with him. Any one of those scenarios could have easily ended with your death, the world ending or Uroboros in your arm. Not that the three were that different regarding the death part.

 The last time you saw Wesker, he had mutated into the monster he had become on the inside. His snake eyes glowed red, black Uroboros burst from beneath his skin around his eyes, worms of Uroboros completely overtook his chest and arms, which he could stretch to great lengths, and he was altogether consumed by rage. Rage against Chris for besting him once again, rage against himself for underestimating him, and you were certain rage against you for betraying him.

You stare blankly into the chamber as the reality of the situation sets in: Youju went to great lengths to find Albert. You didn’t know how he could have found him after so long, but you knew this man had to mine through volcanic rock at best and perform an underwater excavation of a volcano at worst to exhume him. Whatever he has planned, it can only spell doom for whatever unfortunate soul falls in Albert’s wake. Your body can’t bring itself to move, so you stand frozen by the console of the observation room overlooking the chamber Albert is in.

“The union of Wesker and Uroboros is truly a remarkable miracle of nature,” Youju says smugly, relishing in your shock.

All you can do in the moment is gape at your husband in horror.

“There’s nothing natural about this.” Your voice comes out small. Rattled. Nothing like how you planned when you stepped into this room.

“Natural? That’s a matter of perspective, Doctor. We are seeing evolution in real time.” Youju is enjoying your torment, but there is a pit forming in your stomach that is screaming for you to talk sense into him. You know in your bones that this is a bad idea, but you can’t articulate it into words that will break through to the Director. You knew men like him. He won’t listen until it’s too late, but you try anyway.

“Whatever you’re planning is not worth the consequences you’re going to reap from playing God.” You still stare at Wesker’s peaceful, mutated face.

“I assure you it will be. Your husband is an incredible case study. He was medically dead when we found him, but you know as well as I do that the dead don’t tend to stay that way for long in our profession. Uroboros preserved his brain and nervous system better than any modern medical instrument you or I could have hoped to have at our disposal.” Youju explains with pride.

“Weapon, DNA, or emotional blackmail?” You reply cooly, still staring at Wesker in the chamber below.

“Whichever has the highest bidder. Although I think the value of a subject like him transcends material wealth, so I’ll hold off on an auction for now. I have more pressing plans first.”

You break your gaze from Wesker’s body in the chamber and look at Youju with a cautious expression, curious as to what he means.

“We know his brain is showing activity, but he hasn’t woken up you see. All the regular avenues for breaking comatose states have been exhausted.”

Youju turns to the chamber and puts his hand on the window thoughtfully as he speaks.

“Sure, we could harvest his DNA and easily make our investment in excavating him a drop in the bucket. As you’ve said, his DNA is one in a trillion. But it’s not just his DNA that makes him unique, it’s his mind as well. He was- is- the greatest mind manufactured by man. By Oswald Spencer himself. What I would give to speak with him! To know his thoughts on my research. To continue where Spencer was forced to stop.”

The Director looks away from Wesker and back to you, with a giddy look you know all too well. It’s a dissecting look of a scientist attempting to peel away the mystery of an unsolved problem.

“But then one of my researchers had an interesting hypothesis. This is not a regular subject so normal avenues are more than likely going to prove fruitless. Perhaps Wesker needs a familiar face as an extra incentive to chat with us. Someone who knew him much more personally than anyone else. Someone like you. We’ve already tried recordings of your voice, and they’ve yielded positive results, but not the one’s we’re looking for.”

“The saying ‘you should never meet your heroes,’ definitely applies in this case. You need to quit while you’re ahead. You’re inviting nothing but trouble by indulging this fantasy.” You warn, unable to wipe the look of barely contained terror on your face.

Youju tilts his head and gives you a mocking pout.

“Awww… what’s wrong Dr. Wesker? I thought this would be a happy reunion for you. After all, you survived him. He respected your intellect. It’s not every day that a genius offers his lover a place beside him in a new world. And don’t deny it. I’ve seen the footage of him offering you Uroboros on multiple occasions. I’m not a betting man, but I’d say those weren’t the only times he tried to convince you.”  

“Director, you need to stop-”

“Not until I get what I want.” Youju’s gaze turns cold and he flips a switch on the console in front of you both. A red light above it switches to green. The guard behind you raises his gun to your head. Youju turns his face towards the microphone but keeps his eyes on you.

“Albert Wesker, you have a visitor. A personal visitor. Go ahead and say hello my dear.”

You avoid looking into the chamber and keep your mouth shut while staring down Youju. You would rather die than awaken that monster.

“Your wife is here to see you Dr. Wesker. Mrs. Doctor Wesker, if you know what’s good for you, please speak into the microphone.” The tone the Director uses reminds you of a car salesman; sleazy and said with a gritted smile. Attempting to get you to bend to his will no matter the cost if it gets you to sign the metaphorical dotted line.

When you keep your mouth shut, Youju motions to the guard behind you and you feel the cold steel of the muzzle of the gun on the back of your head. Your breath becomes unsteady, but you stay silent. He needs you. He wouldn’t kill you so quickly when he needs you. You’re sure of it.

“You know I’m not a patient man dear. Speak, or I will make you.” Youju spits out the warning, his patience already wearing thin.

You clench your jaw and stay silent. You fully intend to stay quiet, even though the urge to call Youju a dumb motherfucker is strong. You see a flicker on one of the cameras on Youju’s monitor. A figure. You weren’t going to pay it any mind, but even out of the corner of your eye you recognize the large scar on the side of Jake’s face.

Youju lets out an annoyed huff at your continued silence, currently unaware of Jake’s presence. “I wanted to avoid making this messy, but it seems you’ve left me with no other option.”

Youju turns around and starts to bend down towards a drawer below the monitor. You panic. Jake is your only hope in getting the B.S.A.A. here. You can’t let his stealth go to waste.

“Albert!” You spit out the name without thinking. You already feel sick to your stomach at your choice of action, but it has its intended effect immediately. Youju snaps his attention away from the monitor’s direction and back to you, then back to the chamber, then to a monitor off to the side that you now realize is displaying brainwave activity. His brainwave activity. You hadn’t noticed it before because the brainwaves were barely perceptible, only small mole hills on a nearly straight line. Now, like a rising tide, the red wave on the monitor grows in intensity along with your heartbeat.

Youju stares at the monitor with you in awe, then turns his attention to the chamber while speaking to you. “Go on. Tell him to wake up.”

“Albert dear?” You pause to take a shallow breath of air. The red wave rises higher on the monitor. “I need you to wake up.”

The more the red wave rises, the more animated the other scientists in the room become. Youju most of all. Everyone buzzes with excitement over their machines and data displaying on the screens, but all you can do is stare at Wesker in the chamber with a lump in your throat.

You have an idea on how to get the upper hand. It’s stupid, suicidal, and against everything your brain is telling you not to do, but if it works it’s an almost guaranteed way for these people to lock you in your room again until the B.S.A.A. can get here with proper reinforcements.

“Albert help me they have a gun to my head!”

Almost immediately, beeping sounds emanate from each and every machine in the room. One by one, every piece of machinery has warning lights on their displays and nervous chattering erupts from the scientists. The red wave on the brainwave monitor devolves into jittery valleys and peaks. You see Wesker in his water chamber twitching, and his peaceful face morph into an angered scowl that you know all too well.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Youju scolds as he switches off the microphone. He grabs your shoulder in a tight grip and walks you back closer to the door away from the window seemingly the only one not concerned with the sudden uptick in activity on the monitors and more peeved at your little stunt.

“That’s enough from you for now Doctor.” He turns his attention to the guard behind you. “Take her back to-”

Youju’s command is interrupted by the sound of glass cracking, a rush of water and metal screeching in the chamber below. Youju’s eyes grow wide and he immediately rushes back over to the window. He turns his head to say something, but before he’s able to, a pipe breaks through the glass of the observation chamber and into Youju’s skull with so much force that blood splatters on you from across the room and you stumble to the floor in your shock.

All hell breaks loose. Some scientists scream, others duck and cover, a handful try and fail to open the door to the hallway, the soldier leaves your side and open fires on Wesker in the chamber along with the other ones in the room.

You can’t seem to escape from the bloodshed. No matter where you turn, more blood splashes across your clothes but you manage to keep your escape in mind: grab Youju’s white keycard to get out of the room. You do your best to block out the grisly sight of Youju’s head as you army crawl across the floor. The white keycard, now stained crimson in some places, hangs precariously from his belt. A black and blonde blur dives into the room from the chamber and the screams grow louder and more frightened. You grab the keycard and you crawl behind a large cabinet that got overturned in the chaos in the corner of the room and make yourself as small as possible by hugging your knees to your chest. You clutch the keycard for dear life.

Meanwhile, in the background, you hear Wesker spewing insults as he tears through the room.

“Ignorant cretins! Worthless, self-righteous chaff! Inferior good for nothing fools!”

Something in Wesker’s voice puts you on edge, and it has nothing to do with the fact he’s seething with rage or leaving a trail of blood and viscera and broken machinery in his wake. You can’t quite describe it, other than that it sounds wrong. The voice is Wesker’s, but the tone and intonation are just… off. Your Wesker spoke in a much sharper and eloquent manner. This voice is direct and garbled in some places.

In the moment, you don’t know which voice you’d prefer. You don’t have time to think on it when you feel a presence behind you. It’s only now that you realize the screams and cries of pain have gone silent. Your blood runs cold when you hear a familiar, yet unfamiliar voice in your ear that makes the hairs on your neck stand up.

“My dear? Oh, how I’ve missed you my sweet…”    

You freeze. His tone is uncannily gentle. He’s so close, you can feel Wesker’s breath on your ear and neck. Everything in your body is screaming at you to run, but it’s like Wesker’s words have you under a paralytic spell.            

“How dare they touch what’s not theirs…”

A wet, slimy and black tendril slowly makes its way into the corner of your vision and gingerly tucks a flyaway hair behind your ear. You can’t bring yourself to move and you heart feels like it's about to burst out of your chest it's beating so fast.

You sense Wesker move his head closer to yours until you can feel the damp heat of him over your shoulder. Glass breaks on the other side of the room and he whips his head towards the sound. There’s one last scientist left. She’s trying to climb into the observation chamber, but she stepped on a piece of glass and now she’s gaping at Wesker in fear.

Wesker attacks her with the bloodlust of a wild animal, plunging his Uroboros arm into her chest and not stopping his assault until it reveals itself again when it pokes out through her mouth. She doesn’t even have a chance to scream. Only gurgle sounds of pain.

The grisly sight finally breaks the spell, and you bolt to the sliding doors and run the second the door registers Youju’s keycard.

You don’t stop when you hear Albert calling your name behind you.

You don’t stop when you see other guards and scientists coming out into the hallway to observe what caused such deafening, monstrous noises.  

You don’t stop when you hear more screaming and gunfire erupting behind you.

You have no destination in mind when the hallways become unrecognizable.

The only thing consuming your thoughts is the fact that your psychopathic husband is alive, and that you’ve doomed the world because you destroyed the only Uroboros sample in existence to stop him in a misguided attempt to save it.

a/n 2: How's that for angst? More juiciness in the next part :)

If you've made it this far THANK YOU and sorry for this part being long I thought it would ruin the flow to split it up into two parts.

Tag List: @killerwendigo

AO3 Link for this part.

[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover and the Bastard Son - Part 3

Pairing: Chris Redfield x FM! Reader (but not in this part)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (You are here) | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Summary: One year after running from your feelings for Chris Redfield, an oddly familiar face emerges from the shadows.

Contents: Small spoilers for RE6, mentions of vomitting from seasickness, canon typical violence/swearing, Jake banter, canon typical puzzle bullshit, LORE. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of (dead) Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

a/n: Jake is literally one of the best characters in RE6 it is CRIMINAL that he's not in more fics. Be the change you want to see in the world. The plot is plotting in this part and I got a little carried away with descriptions but we're rolling with it. Also many thanks for 100+ likes on this series already. Enjoy!

w/c: 7.1k

1 Year Later:

Don’t puke. Don’t puke. Don’t puke.

That’s all you can think of under the black hood. The last thing you need right now is to puke on yourself. You should be thinking of ways to escape your current predicament, but your stomach lurching with the irregular rise and fall of the boat you’re handcuffed to, the indiscernible shouting of your kidnappers, the sweat all over your body from the unbearable heat and seasickness, and the sickeningly strong scent of fish and salty air is making that near impossible.

How the hell do I keep getting caught up in this shit? Don’t fucking puke. Breathe in through the mouth, out through the nose.

You’d had terrible seasickness since Albert kept you on that tanker for so long until Africa happened. After the second time trying to escape him and being mildly successful, he wanted to make damn sure that it didn’t happen again. Therefore: boat timeout. A boat prison meant it would be more difficult to escape. More resources needed, more planning required for a chance at walking on dry land. The chronic seasickness was an unintended side effect you’re sure, but it only gave another weakness for Albert to leverage against you. ‘The sickness will cease if you listen to me dearheart,’ didn’t sound like a compelling argument on its own to inject Uroboros in your veins, but presented as a solution to vomiting constantly because of the ocean’s movement for four years, it was pretty damn tempting some days. If you didn’t already know that virus was a death sentence, you might have given it a shot.

You’d even insisted that any transportation involving sea travel be explicitly prohibited while you were consulting/in protective custody with the B.S.A.A. Travel by air and car were far more convenient anyway, or at least that’s what Chris assured you. The man witnessed you puking your guts out the day he rescued you from that tanker. Of course he’d back up your request.

I wonder if he knows I’m gone yet. Deep breaths. Don’t puke.

It’s likely, considering it’s been some hours. Even though you’re considered part of B.S.A.A Europe now, you’re still willing to bet that Chris still got important updates about you considering your history. Higher-ups wouldn’t think twice about their favorite soldier wanting updates about the widow of Albert Wesker.

You know better.

His interest is much more personal than that.

As much as you would like to entertain a relationship, you can’t bring yourself to finding out what the aftermath of Chris’ professional life would be if you did. You felt guilty about leaving so quickly and not even telling him, but you figured if you had told him before you left, he might have convinced you to stay. You’d sent him a text wishing him well when you got to your new apartment an ocean away, which is better than nothing you suppose.

You hope he’d get a kick out of the security footage at least. You managed to aggressively elbow one of your kidnappers in the jaw and make them stagger back before you were overwhelmed, restrained and thrown in the back seat of a car. Surprisingly, there weren’t any physical consequences to that besides a mildly sore elbow. Whoever wanted to take you wants you all in one piece, which can either be really good or really bad. It’s the world’s most shitty game of roulette; is it a job offer to work for a terrorist organization? Or is it one of Albert’s disgruntled business partners wanting to use you as a test subject for revenge? Both were unpleasant in their own ways.

With all the circumstances surrounding your transfer to the Germany B.S.A.A. lab, everything was going surprisingly well. Too well. You should have known it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing good ever does in your life. Chris had tried to reach out a few times wanting to talk, but you always dodged his calls blaming the time difference, your workload, or the near-constant stream of outbreaks that always required your professional attention. You didn’t mind. Keeping busy meant less time to think about Chris’ wounded expression the last time you saw him. The attempts at contact eventually slowed in frequency and you only saw him in the occasional group video call regarding major outbreaks. The North American branch rarely had a reason to visit your particular station with it only being a lab and having nothing to do with the B.S.A.A.’s military operations. A small blessing in your eyes.

Germany was a far away dream at this point. There’s light piercing through the fabric of your hood, so you know it’s the next day. It was night when you were taken. You didn’t get a good look at your kidnappers, but you heard them speaking some sort of Asiatic-related language before they bagged you, as well as throughout your journey to wherever ‘here’ is. All you know for sure is that you were in a car for a long time, a plane for an even longer amount of time (that you somehow slept through most of), and this boat for what feels like an eternity.

Mercifully, your hear shouts from the shore and the movement of the boat changes from a straight choppy line to a diagonal jerky tug and pull. They’re docking the boat. You hear an announcement from an old-sounding speaker in that same unfamiliar language close by, followed by an ear grating buzzer. The words from the speaker echo around the space, giving you the impression of a rocky and unforgiveable terrain.

You still feel wobbly when you’re practically dragged from the boat by your handcuffed wrists, but you manage to walk in what you think is a straight line towards wherever your destination is. The hollow echo of walking on wood underneath your feet turns into the gravely sound of small pebbles, then morphs into solid concrete. The overwhelming fish smell also grows weaker the farther you walk inland, although you can still barely smell it if you focus on your kidnappers. They’re talking boisterously and laughing. You can hear them on either side of you, in front of you, and behind you. The desire to rip off your hood, bodycheck the goons next to you, and run off into God-knows-where was strong, but it was also a rash, stupid decision.

Don’t lash out immediately, know the enemy first.

You’d always been told to comply with kidnappers until the B.S.A.A. could get to you, but on the other hand you’re just too proud to blindly do everything they tell you. You always operate on the assumption they won’t find you in time. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. So, you do what’s become natural at this point: observe and take mental notes.

After a few more paces and a comment from the leader in front of you that the other three belly laugh at, you hear a metallic click, then the metal on metal symphony of a large factory sized door slowly opening a few yards in front of you. There’s a moment of silence between your kidnappers. Then, the ringleader in front of you tugs on your cuffs so hard that you nearly stumble to the ground, but you manage to barely keep your balance. He says words where he sounds like he’s smiling. A joke like before? But the other three aren’t laughing this time. The one on your back right says something quietly, and the ringleader holding your cuffs barks something back angrily.

Then it hits you: these guys are nervous. They haven’t been here before. They’re hesitating to go into the unknown entrance in front of you. These guys are probably a hired third party. The man holding your cuffs shouts something else, startling you and breaking your train of thought. He pulls the cuffs forward as he walks and you’re forced to follow. You hear three pairs of hesitant footsteps behind you.

It only takes a few seconds for you to realize why three of the four men got cold feet at the door. It’s dark in here. The sunlight that was able to pierce through the dark fabric of the hood lessens in intensity the further you’re dragged into the room. As the sounds of the ocean outside get further and further away and you’re questioning what kind of building could possibly be this large.

There’s nervous dissent among the three kidnappers behind you when the big metal door starts closing, but another angry remark from the leader shuts them up. You’re led further and further into the room. You hear yours and your kidnapper’s footsteps echoing around the cavernous room, but the sound gradually reverberates less and less the closer you’re led to bright lights on the other end of the room. The darkness under your hood lessens and grows surprisingly brighter until you’re forced to stop. The ringleader in front of you clears his throat, and pushes you forward slightly. He speaks like a game show host presenting the grand prize, the forced showmanship feeling out of place in the empty environment. A higher pitched, lilting male voice responds over a speaker overhead. Unimpressed. The ringleader tries to keep up the act, but is quickly shut down again.

You hear the higher pitched voice bark out something that sounds like an order, you hear a huff from the leader next to you, then the black hood is ripped off your head. Your eyes are immediately assaulted with bright, military grade lights pointing in your direction. You try to blink away the blindness, but even after getting used to not being in almost complete darkness, you can only make out the silhouette of a wiry man and a bulkier man with some kind of rifle standing next to him in an observation chamber above you. You see the wiry man nod his head in approval. He leans forward and you hear a polite, lightly accented higher pitched voice over the speaker.

“Welcome Doctor. It’s truly a pleasure to meet you.”

You don’t recognize the voice, so you elect keep your expression neutral. “It’s a pleasure to be here.” You reply flatly, clearly wanting to be anywhere else.

“I do apologize for your long journey. But some things just can’t be helped. These kind gentlemen will show you to your accommodations.”

At first, you think he’s referring to your kidnappers, but then you see two soldiers walk out from the darkness in front of you. They’re dressed in black, military style gear and wear something similar to a gas mask on their faces. They’re also holding electric batons. You look around. Your kidnappers are dressed in street clothes and appear close to middle age. Maybe you should have taken your chances with them outside. As the soldiers walk out of the shadows, the lead kidnapper holding you by your cuffs, the oldest by the looks of him, gestures to the wiry man above you all and starts almost shouting in a firm tone while alternating between rubbing his fingertips together and an ‘okay’ symbol. Payment.

The wiry man’s silhouette presses a button on the console in front of him in the booth, and more lights come on to your left. Crates. Lots of them. You don’t know what’s inside from this distance, but judging by the smile on the lead kidnapper’s face the payment is more than satisfactory. The previous nervous tension among the four men is completely eradicated. The nervous one that spoke before tosses a small set of keys to one of the soldiers, the lead kidnapper pushes you forward towards the other soldier, and all four of the men head over to the crates to check out their bounty.

You see the soldier with the key place it in one of the pockets on the front of his uniform and walk back towards the darkness, while the other places you in front of him with a firm hand on your shoulder and walks you forward. You’re in complete darkness for a few paces before you’re blinded again by a pair of industrial elevator doors opening and shadows walking towards you.

You realize the two escorting you are guards at best, not soldiers. The squad in front of you is armed with much more deadly weapons; you recognize pistols and semi-automatic TMP’s as the group marches past you back into the warehouse-type room with your original kidnappers. You don’t have long to wonder why they’re marching back into the room. Just as the doors to the elevator are closing, you hear the confused shouts of your kidnappers get cut short by rapid gunfire.

No witnesses. That’s never good.

You’re not in the elevator for long. The doors open to reveal a long hallway with more industrial style architecture. The guard in front of you starts walking forward and the guard behind you lightly pushes you to follow. His presence behind you makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

As you’re ushered forward, it feels like you’re walking through a cross between an old factory and one of the old Umbrella labs. Some things appear to be 40 years old or more, and other things, such as the doors, have been updated to be futuristic sliding electric doors with keypads for additional security. The wheels are turning in your head on what this place of operations could possibly be, but you don’t have enough information to make any solid conclusions yet.

The guard in front of you scans a key card on the panel next to the door, it beeps, then the door gracefully slides open to reveal another hallway similar to the last one, but completely renovated; bright white and futuristic. The architect clearly took inspiration from the old Umbrella labs.

About halfway down the new hallway, you realize you don’t feel the presence of the guard behind you anymore. You look over your shoulder and stop in your tracks when you see the guard unconscious on the ground a few feet away.

Huh. How’d that happen?

When you stop walking, the guard in front of you turns around, probably to get you to keep moving to whatever cell these people have prepared for you. But as soon as the guard turns around, you see a gray blur drop from the ceiling out of the corner of your eye. The gray blur, a ginger headed man, punches the guard, which makes the guard stumble but he regains his footing quickly. They exchange a few attempts at hitting each other; the guard tries to swing the electric baton but the mystery man dodges the attempted strike. The mystery man gets a few good punches in and successfully disarms the guard, but the guard is able to catch the man’s wrist, the guard then uses his forearm as leverage to pin the man to the wall. It looks the guard is trying to cut off the mystery man’s air circulation, but the man has enough strength and fighting know-how to not get knocked out.

For a moment, you don’t know what to do. You don’t recognize the new man. The only thing you know is that he’s a skilled fighter, and the other guard isn’t going down easy. You also know you can’t escape by yourself, and the B.S.A.A. doesn’t know where you are.

Help the stranger it is.

You run over to the unconscious guard and grab his electric baton and grip it the best you can with your hands bound together. The mystery man is still pinned to the wall by the guard and is trying to wiggle free.

You sprint down the hall, wind up the prod, and smack the guard on the side of the head. The guard doesn’t go down like you hoped, but the shock of you hitting him with the baton gives the mystery man enough time to grab the guard with both hands and ram him into the wall, knocking him out cold.

“You good?” You ask, somewhat out of breath.

The man stretches his neck and arms, nodding his head. “Never better. Thanks for that.”

Now that the man isn’t brawling with the guards, you get a better look at him.

A nagging sense of familiarity emerges in the back of your mind. You’re positive you haven’t met this man before. You couldn’t have. You would have remembered the large diagonal scar on the left side of his face that stretches from the junction of his cheek and nose all the way down to his jaw, or the buzzed ginger hair. Those features aren’t exactly forgettable, yet some detail that you can’t put your finger on in the moment keeps tugging at your memory.

You shake off the feeling. You can sort that out later, but right now you have more binding things to focus on. You hold out your wrists, still bound in the cuffs.

“No problem. Mind returning the favor? The key’s in his chest pocket.” You point your chin to the guard that you shocked.

“Sure thing.”

Jake saunters over to the guard, rolls the unconscious body over to unzip the front pocket to grab the key, then walks back over to you to start undoing the locks on your cuffs. Jake’s eyes flicker between the lock and your face as he does so.

“So… you’re the hot shot scientist.”

It’s more of a statement than a question. You narrow your eyes. Jake easily unlocks the first cuff and begins to work on the second one.

“That depends… who’s asking?”

“Name’s Jake.”

Knowing his name doesn’t help you place this man’s face. You stay silent and wait for Jake to keep going and give you a last name or the company he works for, but instead he unlocks the second cuff and tosses them away, looking at you expectantly with an easy smirk.

“This is the part where you tell me your name.”

“Not before you tell me why you’re here.” When in doubt, be on the side of caution. Just because this man helped you, doesn’t mean he’s on your side. You rub your wrists, trying to get rid of the sting of the cuffs being on your wrists for so long.

“Just a little… preventative maintenance for a friend. You got a name?”

You purse your lips, trying to get a read on what Jake means by ‘preventative maintenance.’ He took out the guards, so unless he’s going for a long con, he doesn’t work for the people who took you. Most mercenaries wouldn’t rescue someone on a job unless it’s in their contract, although any good murder for hire would know what their target looked like before accepting the job. You’re willing to bet his intentions are most likely in line with your own. You relax your shoulders.

“Just call me Doc. And yeah, I’m the virologist.”

The cavalier attitude Jake is exuding shifts slightly and for a moment you think he’s connected the dots on who you are, but instead Jake’s attitude morphs into optimistic determination.

“You know the periodic table?”

You stand there, confused and trying to figure out why he’s thinking about something so out of left field, but coming up with nothing. You answer honestly. “Uh… yes?”

A satisfied smirk stretches across his face. “Good. I could use your help. C’mon.”

Jake strides over to a specific section of wall and presses an unassuming panel on it. A keypad pops out and Jake starts to type on it while you stay in your spot processing what just happened.

“Excuse you, I don’t remember volunteering my expertise!”

“What’s the hold up Doc?” Jake finishes inputting the number sequence and you hear a hiss, something metal releasing, the panel of wall that you now realize is a hidden door sliding back a couple inches, then the wall panel sliding to the left to reveal an industrial staircase winding downward. Jake turns back to you, a cavalier expression on his face. “You got something planned already with sleeping beauty over there? Or are you coming with me?”

Jake gestures to the guard you electrocuted on the floor. You look at the guard, then the other one further down the hall, then back to Jake. “Lucky for you, my plans just got canceled. Let’s go.”

It only takes a few minutes to figure out that Jake knows his way around this place. The staircase leads to another series of dingy hallways that Jake saunters through with confidence. Either he’d already figured out these sections weren’t closely guarded, or he’d taken measures to make sure he wouldn’t have to worry about surveillance. Either way, you’re relieved to be in the presence of someone who knows what they’re doing and isn’t trying to hold you hostage.

“So… you didn’t say who you work for.”

Jake thinks about his answer, then shrugs and keeps walking. “I consider myself an independent contractor. But right now, I’m on the B.S.A.A.’s payroll.”

“Really? You don’t strike me as B.S.A.A.” You know for a fact that the B.S.A.A. recruits almost exclusively from armies around the world. Army life causes soldiers to have a certain disposition. A certain disciplined way of carrying oneself resulting from years of drills and training. Jake’s body language felt much too relaxed for that lifestyle.

“I’m consulting.”

You give the man a half smile hearing that. The way Jake said that made it sound like he wasn’t exactly happy about it, but accepted the job nonetheless. Something you could easily relate to. “What a coincidence, so am I.”

“For viruses? You some kind of expert on bioweapons?”

You shrug and keep following Jake. “I’ve got a good amount of practical experience.” It’s a true but vague statement. Jake doesn’t need to know the details of why you know so much. Any mention of your past with Umbrella or Wesker never ends well with strangers.

Jake looks over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised. “Don’t give me that humble bullshit.”

You scoff and smile. Definitely not army. “Okay. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who knew more. Better? What do you need to know?”

“Give me a rundown of the G-Virus.”

You don't answer for a long moment, stunned. “The G? These guys went through the trouble to get me here for that?” Your tone is incredulous.

“What?” Jake doesn’t sound confused at your reaction. Only curious.

“It’s just… unstable and obsolete compared to other bioweapons. It’s not exactly competitive against strains nowadays where infected can tell the difference between enemy and ally.”

“Obsolete huh? What’s your theory on why they have it all the way out here then?”

“They’re… low on funding and have limited options? Or they didn’t care what they’re buying.”

You pause, realizing Jake can fill in some missing information for you. “And who are ‘they’ and what is ‘here?’ I didn’t get a good look at anything on my way in.”

Jake chuckles and shakes his head. “You must piss off a lot of people.”

You roll your eyes at Jake’s comment and keep following him. “You don’t have to be an ass about it.”

“Not judging, I respect it. I’m on a fair share of shit lists myself.”

“If you don’t know the answers, you can just be honest about it.”

“Alright alright. Technically, we’re in Japan, but it’s more of a small as shit island in the Pacific. I was told this was a former Umbrella research outpost.”

You scrunch your brows in confusion. “I didn’t know they had labs this far out from the mainland.”

“Neither did I, but ya learn something new every day.”

Eventually, the dingy hallways and platforms lead to another mechanical door that reveals another white hallway not unlike the ones you remember from Umbrella’s previous headquarters in Raccoon City. You don’t have much time to reminisce as you follow Jake to a door at the end of the hall.

The room you enter is somewhat dated. The equipment here looks like it came straight out of the 90’s, but with some modern updates in a few choice sections. Jake ignores all of that in favor of leading you to the other side of the room where a mechanical door and a keypad are waiting. The door is notably one of the only things in the room that’s been updated.

“Mind taking a crack at this Doc?”

Jake hands you a note with an Umbrella header on it:

Pierre if you’re reading this, I’ve changed the password to the specimen room. I know it impedes business to change it so frequently, but the boss insists on the highest level of security due to the nature of the special project. The new password is your namesake element on the periodic table. Just type in the atomic number and weight in that order. Don’t mess it up again. That damn alarm will lock everything down and Aimi nearly blew a gasket the last time I had to get the security key to disable it again.

“You brought me here for this? Seriously?” You look at Jake like a disappointed mother. Do schools not teach the manmade elements in chemistry anymore? In your mind, you think that Jake went a little overboard bringing someone with a PHD to solve a periodic table puzzle. Jake doesn’t react to your question. He just keeps up the cavalier attitude.

“So you can solve it.”

“You know Google exists, right?” You reply, deadpan.

“No service in the middle of the ocean. Are you going to help me out or not?”

You scoff at the comment, then hand the note back to him and stride to one of the bookshelves. “Yes. It’s Curium.” You thumb through the spines trying to find a chemistry book of some kind.

“But his name’s Pierre. You sure?”

You find a ratty chemistry book with university library stickers all over the spine. Bingo. You pull it out and flip through the back pages, finally finding what you were looking for: a periodic table.

“Pierre Curie and Marie Curie discovered the element. That’s the answer. Type in 96247.”

You snap the book shut and you hear Jake typing in the code on the door. Now that Jake’s errand is almost done, it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge. Or the ocean in this case.

“After you run your maintenance we need to find a radio, or a ride out of here. I don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere longer than I need to be.”

“I’m no travel agent, but I think that can be arranged.”

You turn to join him, but a logo on some papers scattered around on the desk by the bookshelf catches your eye; a Tricell logo. Your eyebrows scrunch together. Albert partnered with Tricell for the Uroboros project and the company has been defunct since Africa happened four years prior. Why is that logo here of all places?

You hear a beep behind you and a mechanical door sliding open with a soft hiss as you pour over the documents. They’re copies of internal documents relating to the development of the Africa strain of Plaga parasites with yellow highlights all over them. A large label that reads ‘G – U’ stuck on a keycard is blocking one of the notes so you move it to the side. More concerningly, the only things you see highlighted are locations of labs and sites of infection with handwritten margin notes in Kanji that you don’t understand.

“Hey uh, Doc?” Jake is calling you from inside the room that was unlocked.

“Hm?” You respond, still half-focusing on the Tricell documents.

“I don’t think these guys had limited options.”

A sense of dread starts to form in the back of your mind when Jake says that. You speed walk over to the now accessible room. It’s a large, white room with rows of what look like display cases. You see Jake looking through the glass and into display on the other side of it. You walk up next to him to look for yourself and your heart drops to your stomach when you see what he’s talking about.

On the other side of the glass, you see a complete family of Plaga parasite strains. As you walk down the aisle, you see the original strain from Spain, all the way to the newest strain that popped up in Edonia a couple years back. Although to your relief, you see that the Amber strain which allows the infected to have both strength and free will isn’t displayed.

You glance at the aisle behind the Plaga parasite display. You immediately recognize the familiar T-Virus series. It’s concerning how thorough the collection is. Even without reading the placards underneath each sample, you recognize the strain that caused the outbreak at the Spencer Mansion, the T-Abyss virus from a few years ago, a few different failed strands from the Marcus-Birkin projects, among dozens more. You feel your heart skip a beat when you see the T-VERONICA placard, but you relax when you see that the sample holder is empty.

“Doc? Talk to me what’re you thinking?”

Even with the display cases missing a few of the more powerful specimens, it was still the most comprehensive collection of viruses and parasites in a single place that you’d seen in your career.

“They nearly have the whole damn catalogue in here.” Your tone is grim. Samples as comprehensive as this can only spell something bad on the horizon, but you’re not too sure what.

“I don’t understand what their play is here.” You state, still walking along the T-Strain aisle and examining each sample. Your footsteps echo around the room from the grate flooring. Based on the setup, each one appears to be a live sample.

“I think I do. They’re trying to be a one stop shop for bioweapons and this is the showroom.” Jake spits in disgust.

At first glance, Jake’s observation appears correct. But upon closer examination, that conclusion doesn’t quite fit. You slowly walk along the aisle and look at Jake through the glass in the aisle opposite. He’s examining the strains in the G-Sample section, looking back and forth from the samples in front of him and his phone.

“I want to agree with you, but I don’t think that’s it.”

Jake stops and looks at you confused. “Why?”

“They don’t have nearly enough inventory. These are samples. An unusually comprehensive collection of samples, but there’s only one of each.”

Jake shrugs. “Maybe it’s somewhere else.”

Again, a logical conclusion that doesn’t quite fit. “Outside of this facility? Possible. Here? There would have to be at least a few dozen rooms like this to store everything properly.”

You stop walking.

“And logistically, it just doesn’t make sense. We’re practically in the middle of nowhere. Why would a business owner put their showroom in one of the most difficult to reach places on the planet? You would think they’d want to make it easy for the buyer to review product, as well as convenient for the owner to ship out that product. Someone wanting to be a one-stop-shop would be on the mainland.“

You pause, an icy feeling washing over you. The bag on your head during your transport here and the execution of your kidnappers suddenly makes a lot more sense. 

“These people don’t want to be found.”

Jake’s eyes flick from his phone to your face. “So they’re working on something big. A new G-virus?”

You shift on your feet shaking your head while looking over the G-Virus samples. “Yes to the big project, no to the G. Whatever it is, it’s not down here.”

“You sure about that? This one’s missing.” Jake holds his phone up to the glass so you can see on the other side of the G-Sample row. Jake’s correct this time: this specific strain isn’t displayed. You tilt your head in confusion.

“That’s not a strand I recognize.” At first glance, you know it's an unusual strand of G-Virus. G-Viruses are normally green in color, but this one is a sickly pink.

Jake grunts, shaking his head and pocketing the phone. “It’s never that simple. Is it? An all-inclusive virus buffet and one of the only one that's missing is the one I need.”

Jake pulls out a pistol you didn’t know he had, checks the clip to make sure it’s fully loaded, then holds it down by his side as he strides out of the room.

“Where you headed?” You call after him.

“Main lab upstairs. I’ll come get ya after I’ve got the G-sample.” He answers over his shoulder.

“Absolutely not!” You reply in disbelief and Jake stops walking, sighing in annoyance. He can’t seriously think he can take on the army upstairs with just a pistol. You try to talk some sense into him.

“We need to find a radio and get the B.S.A.A. here. These people will kill you no questions asked if they see you. Plus, that handgun of yours isn’t going to cut it against their hardware.”

Jake shrugs his shoulders, unconcerned. “I’ve had worse odds.”

“That doesn’t make lone wolfing this any less stupid! There’s a base in Tokyo, we just need to find a way to contact them-”

You stop talking abruptly when you catch a glimpse of a dangerously familiar sample. The one that changed the course of your life for the worse. The one that your dead husband tried and failed to infect the planet with. The name UROBOROS is proudly displayed at the end of the G-Virus aisle in the back, nearly drowned out by the sheer number of G-Virus samples.

You hear Jake saying something to the effect of ‘I’ll be back before they even know I’m there’ but you’re not registering what he’s saying. Your vision has tunneled to only focus on that devil sample. All it takes is one slip up by a careless scientist to infect this whole place. You think back to the keycard in the other room by the Tricell papers; ‘G – U.’ G-Virus to Uroboros. This time can be different. You have the power and knowledge to stop this.

“Hey? Earth to Doc? You still with me over there?”

“That needs to be destroyed.” Your voice is barely above a whisper as you stare at the Uroboros sample. You keep your eyes on the sample for a few steps, then brush past Jake to rush into the other room to find supplies; some kind of glass beaker, metal garbage can, something to contain the damned thing when you burn it to ash.

As you begin nearly tearing the lab apart in your barely controlled frenzy, Jake steps back into the sample room to look at what has you so distressed.

“Uroboros? That’s the uh… it’s not a G-Virus is it?”

You open a cabinet and find a large glass beaker. You grab it and set it on the counter and keep looking for more supplies.

“Yes! Now less talking and more helping. There’s Bunsen burners here, so there has to be some matches-”

“Can't this wait? Is it really any worse than the other ones?”

You aggressively close some drawers as you turn back to Jake with a serious glare.

“Albert Wesker. Heard of him?” Your voice is low and controlled.

Jake’s face melts into a barely hidden look of disdain. “Yeah, I have.”

“He tried to use it to cleanse the world, as he put it. He spent years injecting innocent people with that and he was the only one who didn’t turn into a flesh-eating worm thing.”

You open more drawers and find a cleaning cabinet with a half full container of rubbing alcohol. You grab it, along with a pair of cleaning gloves, and set them next to the beaker. You start soaking random bits of scrap paper with the liquid and stuff it into the beaker.

“Not only that, he tried to launch that shit into the atmosphere with a deranged smile on his face. It nearly ended the world once and that’s not something I, or anyone, needs to deal with again.”

You put another splash of rubbing alcohol into the beaker for good measure then forcefully put the bottle on the table causing it to spill some of the liquid on the table. It doesn’t slow you down. You quickly put on the cleaning gloves and dig through the drawers around the lab looking for a lighter or matches. Smoking isn’t rare in Japan so one of those items must be here somewhere.

“So Wesker had special blood?” If you were paying closer attention to the way Jake said that, you would have easily picked up that he knew more than he was letting on. But you don’t. You’re too busy trying to get rid of a dormant threat sitting in the other room. You answer without thinking while opening more drawers by the bookshelf.

“Genetically, he was one in a trillion. But even with that, he still had to take doses of the virus periodically to keep it stable. All the more reason to nip this in the bud before it becomes a problem again.”

“You know a lot about this.” A statement of fact, not a question.

“Yeah, I do!” You exclaim dramatically as you slam a cabinet shut when there, once again, aren’t any matches. You’re so frustrated that Jake is asking so many questions and won’t just help you.

“You knew him.” Another statement of fact, not a question. His eyes are dissecting your every move now. The look vaguely reminds you of Albert and you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Albert used to look at you like that when he wanted to know if you were lying or gauging your reaction to something he told you. You shake off the feeling. The Uroboros discovery is making you paranoid.                                                                                            

You sigh and shift on your feet, leaning back against the cabinet with your eyes on the ceiling. The scent of rubbing alcohol is strong in the silent room. You shift your eyes to Jake’s after a long moment. His expression is nearly unreadable, but there’s an underlying edge in his posture now. He knows. Not everything, but he’s catching on to why you’re so passionate about this. There’s no use lying about it.

“I knew him…well, okay? At least I thought I did before all the crazy. But right now we have more important things to do than rehash my history.”

You force yourself to tear away from Jake’s calculating gaze and resume your search.

“I nee-… we need matches. Can you just help me look please?”

You don’t hear a response behind you, and you think that Jake is going to keep asking you questions. But after you open a few more drawers you hear a rustle of fabric and a metallic tink.

“Use this.”

Your head whips over to Jake and a wave of relief washes over you. Then annoyance.

He’s holding a lighter.

He had that the whole damn time you were tearing through the lab looking for matches.

You decide it’s best to hold off on scolding him until after you get rid of the Uroboros sample. Instead, you take the lighter with a gruff thank you. You grab your supplies along with the ‘G - U’ keycard and head back into the sample room.

You enter the room with newfound determination. You couldn’t stop Uroboros on your own all those years ago, but this time it’s different. You’re stopping a disaster before it has a chance to start. You place your supplies on the floor next to the case, preparing to immediately plop the Uroboros sample into the beaker. In your peripheral vision, you notice Jake leaning against the doorframe, watching your every move.

You scan the card.

Instead of the glass sliding down into the base like you expected, it stops a quarter of the way down when a deafening alarm sounds overhead and Jake is forced off of the mechanical door when it reels shut. Before you can even call out to him, gas starts pouring into the room from the grates on the floor.

All senses of self-preservation leave you in this moment. Thousands of years of survival instinct telling you to run and claw at the door and scream for help is ignored because, once again, your thoughts are only consumed by the existence of the Uroboros sample. Possessed by only one thought: you can’t fail to stop this again. You couldn’t justify something as trivial as your own survival if it meant there was a sliver of a chance of something like Africa happening again.

You force yourself to focus, even though it’s getting so much more difficult with your mind starting to cloud from the gas. You hold your breath to prolong consciousness. There’s enough space between the glass and the edge of the case that you can squeeze your arm in and grab the damned sample. You can hear Jake banging on the door shouting your name, but his voice sounds so far away as you force the sample from its display rod and gracelessly sink to your knees.

Your hand feels unwieldy and heavy as you drop the sample into the glass beaker. Even more so as you try and fail to roll the lighter wheel fast enough to make a flame. You rip off a cleaning glove to get a better grip and you keep trying. You have to. This needs to work. You can’t fail again. You won’t fail again.

You pause to finally take a breath and force yourself not to cough from the downright bone numbing gas that’s still filling the room. Your vision is starting to blacken at the edges and your body slumps so much that you’re resting on your stomach, so you make a conscious effort to tighten your grip as hard as you can on the lighter and roll the wheel. A small flame erupts from the lighter. With a shaking hand you thrust it into the beaker and the alcohol-soaked kindling erupts into flame. You barely notice the sting of the flames against your hand when you retract it.

Everything feels heavy. You finally let your body resign to the gas and let your head rest on the ground. With each shallow breath, the darkness at the edge of your vision grows more and more prominent. You don’t hear Jake anymore, but you do hear indiscernible voices on the other side of the wall getting farther and farther away and loud pops. Gunfire? Or Jake banging on the door?

The last thing you remember seeing before the darkness overtakes your vision are blackened remains in a glass beaker and a pair of unfamiliar, polished shoes slowly walking towards you.

__________________________________

Thanks for reading!

Tag List: @killerwendigo

a/n 2: I really hate doing filler/transition chapters as a principle, but I promise that it's very necessary for what's coming. Chris x Reader is going to be on the backburner for a couple parts but I assure you he's coming back and it will feel rewarding when he does.

AO3 link for this part.

[just-french-me-up]

[wil-o-wispy]

Me, but with a few more steps: