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“When was the last time you were down here, anyway?” William adjusted the tourniquet with hurried fingers despite the attention in his bruised eyes, blinking rapidly at the dryness that made them a froggish red. It was probably the first time he’d been looking away from a screen or a microscope for the first time in something like eight hours.
“Whenever you showed me the rats.”
“Oh. Huh.”
Wesker waited for him to put together that that had been three months ago, but he was fairly certain William didn’t know that. He never had been the best with time.
Any further curiosity seemed to roll off William’s back with zero resistance as he reached for the tray and flicked at the tip of the needle. “Let me know if you feel compelled to eat my brains, please.”
“The hunger the T-virus evokes does not particularly target cerebral tissue.”
“Okay, fine. Let me know if you feel any cannibalistic urges, then.” William inserted the needle quickly and with little further ceremony, swiping away the blood that welled up after with a flick of a swab before tossing them all back onto the tray. The tourniquet he released as an afterthought. He rolled back in his chair, wrapping his arms behind his head and stretching himself out as the wheels rumbled across linoleum. “Well?”
Wesker studied his arm, placing a small bandage there over the injection site himself. The skin was no more reddened than any other time he’d ever been jabbed with a needle, but that meant little with the viruses.
“How long until you’ll take blood tests?” Wesker asked, rotating his shoulder pre-emptively. It wasn’t like they knew how bad the muscular soreness would be, if at all, or if he’d have muscles in three minutes at all. That was the delight of it.
“Hm.” William shrugged, eyes sharp on him, hungry. Wesker could hear the notes accumulating in William’s head; he was doing the same, as well.
“Nothing has changed yet, as far as I can tell,” Wesker said mildly. “Heartrate normal. I’m not experiencing any hallucinations.”
“Assuming you would know that there were hallucinations to be aware of in the first place.”
“Yes, well.”
William got to his feet, closest he could get to eye level with Wesker without getting a stool, and grabbed the ophthalmoscope from the tray. Wesker allowed himself to be manhandled as William grabbed his chin, pried at his eyebrows and eyelids, as he made Wesker turn his gaze this way and that.
“Hm,” William repeated, and did not explain. Another thing to pry out of his notes later, then. Wesker blinked, just to get on his nerves. When William backed up to scrawl things down in his journal, Wesker unwound the tourniquet from his arm fully and set it on the tray, squinting the bright afterimages of squiggling lines from his vision.
“It may require adrenaline, if my body’s not reacting. That or complete cellular—” Something tightened sharply in Wesker’s chest, and he stopped. For only a fraction of a second the world flickered, vats and windows and monitors fading as his heart spasmed. He pressed fingers against the underside of his jaw, feeling at his own pulse. His breath was even. There was nothing anomalous about his thought patterns. His skin wasn’t turning grey. He wasn’t feeling an insatiable desire to rend William’s flesh from bone.
William who was pressing a freezing cold stethoscope to Wesker’s chest, slipping it through the buttons of his shirt. Wesker grabbed his wrist, gripping entirely too hard, but it wasn’t…
“Still with me?” William asked.
“I suppose.” He released William, gaze still on the far wall. William had dimmed the room lights, inadvisably, but courteously. What a gentleman. A headache came on anyway, but it was bound to happen no matter what Wesker did. Difficult, though, to say if it was from the light or the virus running through his veins.
“I want to see what’s happening in you,” William said, snapping off the gloves he was wearing before swapping them out for new ones with the ease of a man born in a lab.
“Ask nicely.”
William gave him an unimpressed look as he prepared another needle, inserting it with barely a glance. Wesker noticed it in an abstract sort of way; he was well-used to blood draws by now.
“I’ll take another in a few hours, perhaps,” William said under his breath. He watched the blood fill the tube with a somewhat neurotic focus before drawing it away with another half-forgotten swab. At least he went for Wesker’s other arm.
“Well, don’t leave us wondering.”
William mimicked him mockingly under his breath, rolling over to the microscope and depositing a tiny sample between a couple of slides. He did the grotesque half-eyeroll half-slow blink at the ceiling to get his eyes somewhat damp again before diving into the dials.
“Hmm,” he said, automatically writing notes off to the side without looking at the paper. Wesker leaned across the bench to get a better look, but the desk lamp made it difficult to parse out the words.
“And?”
“Your leukocytes are throwing a real tantrum right now.”
“Fascinating.”
William hummed something nearly musical if not for how it trailed into grumbling. “And it looks like… the cellular penetration… oh, interesting.”
“Do I need to shove you off that chair?”
“No, no, hold on.” He hummed again. “T-virus, T-cells… poetic, really.”
“William.”
“Al-bert.” He snapped his tongue on the t, then snapped his bloodshot eyes to Wesker’s. “Lemme see you again.”
Wesker spread his arms, irritation riding over the wrongness that was drumming through his blood. “Haven’t run off yet.”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes.” William peeled back the bandage and squinted at the injection site. The skin had reddened a bit more, but not swollen. The veins were no more visible than they had been beforehand. “Well, look at you, mister evolved lifeform.”
“Is it—”
“No, you’re not that special. It’s still in there with you, you’re just fighting it remarkably well. Sure would be a shame if you didn’t get to feel any effects from it whatsoever.”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” Wesker said, resisting the urge to jut out his chin.
“Shut your mouth. Give it a second, you’ll be drooling and writhing on the ground in no time.”
“It’s almost like you don’t want me to be right.”
“Oh, I’m certain you’ll always be right.” William gave Wesker a look one could describe as ‘venomous’ before rolling back to the sample. “The virus is mutating.”
Wesker leaned forward impatiently, not trusting his legs. “How so?”
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of mutation.”
“Yes, darling, I’m terribly sorry for every sin I’ve ever committed and all of my wrongdoings forever and always in perpetuum. What is happening in my damned body right now?”
William wrote more notes in agonising silence before pausing, glancing back over his shoulder. “The virus has realised that the only way forth is compliance.”
“Stop anthropomorphising proteins.”
“What, would you like me to use bigger words? The virus has figured out masking itself is only going to get it killed. Your T-cells only target foreign bodies and hostile invasions, so the only way to bypass them is to not be hostile. Just as I theorised.”
Wesker exhaled hotly before smoothing his face back over. “Does this qualify as the same virus, then?”
“Start bleeding from the eyes and we’ll see. It is interesting, though—like a Nemesis without the Nemesis. In this case, you yourself take the place of the parasite.”
“Calling me a parasite, now?”
Another stink eye, this time prompting Wesker to grin.
“So, tell me, my dear William. What does it mean, for a virus to be compliant?”
“Check your arms.”
The blood was still present beneath the bandages, the slight spots of crusted red, but as Wesker—and William—watched, the flesh beneath reunited, dimpled, silvered, and sank back down into a perfectly smooth surface. As though nothing had ever happened.
“My caloric needs are going to be abominable,” Wesker said.
“I ought to bottle you,” William replied. “Keep you in a tub on my shelf to ponder.”
“I want to see it.” Wesker tried to stand sharply but his knees collapsed beneath him the second he put weight on them, William’s spindle-arms wrapping around him, pulling him close before he melted through the floor. His vision swam, his heart turned in his chest. His ear was pressed into William’s navel, hearing the life in him. A hand came up to stroke over Wesker’s hair, and Wesker hummed into him.
“Feel like the Übermensch, yet?” William murmured. Blood flowed around Wesker’s head.
“Oh, yes.” His hand wrapped around William’s thigh. He sighed deeply, listening to the two of them together. “I want to feel you inside of me.”
William petted him for a few moments more, tucking his fingers around Wesker’s temple and following the gelled brushstrokes back to the base of his neck. Then he said, “Let me show you yourself.” He guided Wesker to the chair, partially rolling it for him until he could lean against the desk and peer down into the microscope.
"Ah,” Wesker murmured, “they’re dancing.”
The first thought that shot through Wesker’s numb body after his brain came back online was fuck, I’ve mutated, haven’t I? He felt at his chest as frantically as his aching body could manage, glancing down and around in a startle. He could hear gunfire and the pound of heavy steps, but not close.
Right. Right.
Onto shaky legs Wesker went, and out came his intestines. They spilled from his abdomen with a sticky, slick sound, drooping down little more than a foot from the ground. Wesker listed to the side, lightheaded, and gathered them up into his arms before stuffing them back into the cavity. It was like wrestling with soft, meaty snakes that tensed and coiled in his gloved hands, dripping with slime. The world was cloudy, as though he were removed from it by a cellophane film. He watched the borders of his skin creep up and consume the gap, swelling and shrinking with the rasp of every breath.
Everything was blindingly bright, so he squinted around it as he stumbled against the rows of tanks. His tanks, his genius. His genius holding his guts inside his body right then, keeping his head on his shoulders.
Wesker fought against himself to get to the door, but his ligaments seemed to be warring with him, alternating between too-weak and too-strong at random intervals. He breathed through his mouth, tasting his own viscera in the air so finely it was like it was pressed against his tongue.
It had progressed. The virus had progressed.
For the past week it had only been a fever, a few spats of dizziness, some nausea, a mild sweat. Now he was drenched in it and he could hear every tiny creak in the floor, every moan in the ceiling. His fingertips and feet tingled oddly, scratchily. He was so fucking hungry. His head pounded like heavy artillery, a hundred thousand voices layered over each other, all screaming at him to Get Up.
He stood, without his organs spilling this time. Something in his eyes pinched violently, but he swallowed his pain as he always had.
Upon arguing briefly and infuriatingly with the computer, he limped down the grated floors. The lab, his lab. He could feel the echoes of the tyrant’s claws through him, piercing. Chris’ nearly irritated gaze, before his mouth split in a scream. Wesker’s blood was on fire.
What does compliance mean to a corpse?
When Wesker slid a key into the lock for a door sunk deep into the wall beyond where Chris would have seen it, the metal bent and deformed under his fingers.
What is compliance? What does death make advantageous?
He could feel William’s words, his hands on Wesker’s shoulders, his cheek against the side of Wesker’s neck, the fear in him. The anticipation. It was the giddiness of waiting by a centrifuge, beside a ticking computer, beside a sequencer. The breath held before real bliss. He wanted to grab William and say, yes, it worked. Yes, you were as right as I.
He stumbled down a tight hall, letting the door fall shut behind him. He hadn’t planned… well, he had planned for quite a bit, but some things were a little difficult to predict.
Upon meeting the end of the hall, he slapped his keycard against the lock madly before shoving the door in.
“Christ,” he muttered, and made his wavering way into the train car. The controls hummed far too loud against his ears, grating. He gritted his teeth and set the computer to halt the engine halfway to NEST for him to take one of the tunnels out again. It was only after the cars started moving that he let himself sink to his knees, twisting so his shoulders could rest against the wall panel.
What may have been elation seeped between Wesker’s ribs, nervous to make itself known. He breathed in deep, chest burning, and began to bellow laughter. The hysterical edge it bore could be disregarded because he was gone, he was out, he was free.
And then the burn in his eyes grew claws. And he gasped.
It was worse than when he’d been stripped of his sunglasses at noon on a bright summer day, worse than the clinical lights boring him into the surgical table, worse than knives being driven directly into his brain.
Something trickled down his cheeks as his vision alternated between stark white and pitch black, and despite his fears it was iron he smelled, not salt. His mind jolted frantically—the Ebola—but those were just jokes, that wasn’t how those genes had been realised, surely—but it’s never been tested like this—but his genes, his cells were in a waltz with the virus, they needed one other—you made me strong, do not fucking break me—and with the searing agony of being thrown into lakes of lava Wesker dug claw-like fingers into his orbital sockets and pried the melting balls of oozing flesh out of his body.
His lungs inflated, deflated, and a sharp rage surged through him, boiling him. How dare the virus do this, how dare his death have caused this, his own biology betraying him, his fucking mastery, and he, left blinded—
A guttural sound escaped his throat, followed by a retching as his muscles locked all at once including his diaphragm. The same fear from before, from when he’d awoken, reared its head once more. In that moment, he knew that if he did nothing at this very instant he would be consumed. Necessity, cooperation, compliance, for the desire to destroy.
Wesker drew his tongue over bloody lips. He would not be an animal. He was not a creature of emotion. He would not be one of William’s monsters. He was immortal.
So he sat there, holding his breath every time it quickened, insistently lightheaded, body lax by sheer force of will, and with a terrible silence the spaces where his eyes used to be began to refill with something just as wet and seeping.
New blood trickled down to his jaw. He didn’t bother to wipe it away, letting it congeal and dry that way. The sharp agony dulled to a constant, drumming throb.
It could have been days, hours, minutes, seconds, but then he was there, sat on the floor of the train, and he blinked back alive.
To him, the world: painted red.
Miss Ada sat, lovely and distractedly bored, across from the shining black metal of Wesker’s desk.
“Looks like you got yourself set up fast,” she said.
“I don’t believe in stalling,” he replied. Besides, New Zealand was far enough that the risk of being hasty was minimal. The great reward of being dead. “So?”
“So.” Ada glanced to the side, almost uncharacteristically nervous. Or was it nerves? Calculation, either way. There was a briefcase by her side, so it couldn’t be about admitting failure. “Are you familiar with the researchers Annette and William Birkin?”
A fog passed over Wesker in a great swallowing sweep. He blinked.
“It would appear that William became infected during Umbrella’s efforts to seize his research.”
“Which virus.”
“G.”
Wesker blinked again.
“Annette was killed during the event. Sherry, however, escaped and is now within government custody. We have reason to believe she has contracted the G-virus infection, but it is dormant or at the very least mundane. She is not under immediate threat. I have acquired the information requested in full.” She slid the briefcase before her feet, and stood. “Until next time, Albert.”
The door clicked closed.
The wall was of a rather substantial material, Wesker discovered, because it hurt quite a bit when he drove his fist through it. A whining sound leaked between his teeth before it tumbled into a throat-rending howl, wordless and stupid. His hands curled together into fists, driving steadily through his sternum as he gasped for air. Nausea sent his feet unsteady, shoulder banging into the wall. William, William and Annette, William, how could he—
This wasn’t the plan.
The noise in his chest muted as he clawed now at his hair, tearing out chunks like lint off a blanket. He slid down to the floor, grinding his forehead into the plaster. His dearest William, and of course the G-virus would not have been generous to him, no, because it wasn’t built for it. He’d made himself a weapon, why? but desperation will drive one mad, Wesker knew that, better than anyone, but he couldn’t ask him, he couldn’t ask him why, because William was dead.
The whining was back, a keen, hitching and ragged. Wesker was a dog stranded on the side of the road, and see, he was gnawing at his wrists all the same. The pain, the sensation, the blood around his too-sharp teeth, racing down the back of his throat, pried him from images of William’s grey eyes silvered over and empty. But they wouldn’t look that way, no, not with the G in him. No waltzes for him. Carnage, then, his body rendered meat. Wesker ground his teeth down harder, tensing around bone itself.
His own blood curdled in his stomach. He lunged for the trashcan but the only thing to come up was bile; the food he’d had only a couple hours earlier was already digested. Him, made efficient and perfect, William, made dead. Bitter saliva trickled down his chin. He coughed roughly, blinking at the burning in his eyes. What business did it have there? What gave it the right?
He twisted between grief, rage, grief, rage, before settling in awful buzzing silence. He stared down at the pinkish mucous he’d spat out, licking at his teeth. His wrist had already healed over. He was alone, now. It was only him. Him and Sherry, wherever the hell she ended up. Better than here, that’s for sure. Even with the bad data, there’d been some hope of salvaging this all with William.
A weakness passed through his arms, slackening his grip, and he slumped against the rim of the trashcan. All he could smell was stomach acid. His ears rang. He could call Alex; he should never let her know of this weakness. Chris, who hated him. William, who was ash beneath a hollow city. And Spencer on his iron throne, far away, uncaring.
Then it was his agents who killed William, who drove him to the G-virus.
The world tapered to a needle-fine point. Ruin Spencer; yes, ruin Umbrella. That was the plan. Ravage them. He could feel William’s hands in his hair, “once and for all,” gut them, desiccate them, ascend.
He glanced down. The joints along his knuckles had reddened and lengthened, flesh stretched and angry. The ligaments beneath ticked and yawned, as though aware of his watchful eye. And under that eye they were cowed, receded, fading back to a uniform white as the joints shifted back into place. It hurt, but he didn’t care.
God again.
The parasite writhed within its plexiglass confines, desperate for freedom, for him. Wesker eyed the sequences on the screen beside him, scrolling along the chains of nucleotides.
Absently, as though out of meaningless fiddling rather than meticulous thought, he selected a chain from a different sample and inserted it into that of the parasite’s. It was nothing important—little more than junk DNA, really, and a bare flick of detail in the haemoglobin. That the sample was from William Birkin was of no importance, considering the only thing denoting it as such was the faded paper label pasted over the tube containing the blood naming it Human, Caucasian Male, Blood type O-. Like that was the sum of who he was, in the end. Wesker supposed it was.
He prepared the new DNA, rendered viral, and had it deposited into an injector. The other researchers surrounding him paid him no mind, likely out of violently reinforced practice. He could start singing opera this very moment and they wouldn’t bat an eye.
Wesker deposited the DNA into the newest batch of zygotes in an unhurried fashion, gazing down at the incubator filled with dishes of barely-visible egg clusters.
Like this, Wesker thought with some mundane amusement, they would both live forever.