Chapter Text
July, 1995: Arklay Laboratory
Wesker looked on dispassionately from the observation room as William injected the still form chained to the table. By degrees the steady beeping of the heart monitor, already at a shambling crawl, slowed to a stop. William eyed his watch for fifteen minutes. The many monitoring machines all registered the same reading for her vitals: nonexistent.
“That’s done it,” William said. “She’s not getting back up from this one.”
Wesker regarded the motionless woman on the table, and had to agree.
Everyone who looked at the female test subject, as she was widely known, saw something different. Arklay’s new head researcher saw a terror and a nuisance, an obsolete project that lacked the grace to die when it was no longer needed. William saw the birth of his greatest creation, the source of the seed which would grow into G. Wesker saw a warning. This was what happened to anyone who outlived their usefulness to the likes of Oswell Spencer. Her name, which he had ferreted out after a great deal of hunting and breaking into classified files, was Lisa Trevor. Her only crime had been a relation to a man who knew too many of Oswell’s secrets. Wesker was resolved not to go the same way, whatever it took.
If only William knew such caution.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” was John’s greeting when they had put away their hazard suits and exited Lisa’s chamber. “I would have executed her myself, but as you were the project heads, and knowing her advanced rate of regeneration, we thought it better to be safe than sorry.”
“Of course,” Wesker replied blandly.
“Perhaps you would like to have a look at our progress while you’re here? Bit of a nostalgia tour, eh?”
William walked right past him, muttering “waste of time,” under his breath. Wesker silently agreed. He followed William, paying no attention to the flummoxed researcher. This, in itself, was nostalgic. Wesker had once learned the value of appeasing people below you, but he no longer had any need to play nice with Umbrella scientists. He had switched departments.
“When will the helicopter arrive?” he asked over his shoulder.
John struggled to pick his jaw off the floor and catch up to them. “Uhh--about 20 minutes.”
Wesker paused, then turned down a different passage.
“We’ll wait in the residence,” he said.
“Good idea,” William said. “Maybe I’ll take a nap.”
They took the ladder that led up into the guard house, then from there, followed the winding wooded path to the residence.
The building had fallen into some disrepair since they had last stayed here. Wesker filed away a mental note to get some of the weakening floorboards looked at, before he remembered that this place wasn’t his problem anymore. He and William grabbed a few drinks at the bar before the ruckus of a pool game upstairs drove them off in search of an unoccupied room. They wound up settling into the bedroom which hid the entrance to the Aqua Ring.
“Remember when this place used to be top of the line?” William asked him from where he had sprawled over the top of someone’s bed, lying half on a bunch of stray newspapers. “It all seems so run down now, compared to Nest.”
Wesker hummed noncommittally. The place did need some remodeling, not that that was likely to happen. The trouble with murdering the chief architect of your mansion full of secret traps and passages was that it made later maintenance very difficult.
“You should visit sometime, Al. I have to show you how we set up the--”
The door opened, cutting short William’s 15th attempt to cajole Wesker back into a laboratory. A researcher stood there, one of the newer ones that Wesker knew by face but not name. The short man’s startled eyes flitted from Wesker to William and back. He looked dazed and lost.
“What is it?” Wesker asked. The helicopter couldn’t have arrived already.
“I just....I need....Aqua Ring,” the man stammered out.
Wesker jerked his chin, eloquently demanding the man get on with it and get out of their hair. The researcher shuffled past them, still with that dazed look on his face. His hands shook faintly as he shoved the bookcase aside and vanished down the trapdoor. A curious reaction to their presence. Wesker knew he could be intimidating, but he had never had such an effect on someone before.
“I wonder how the Neptune is doing,” William said.
“To this day I cannot believe Spencer okayed that project.”
“It’s cool, though, isn’t it?” William grinned. “Zombie shark.”
“The most useless bioweapon we have ever produced. How often are clients going to need to terrorize a beach?”
“You’re forgetting the moths,” William said.
“The second most useless bioweapon we have ever produced,” Wesker corrected himself.
“They can’t all be winners.”
They lapsed into a comfortable, familiar silence. In the old days, it would have been Wesker lounging around on the bed, dozing or reading, while William scribbled frantic notes at his desk. Being back here was putting him in a strange mood. He kept expecting Crackhorn or Burnside to rocket into the room, barking about some breakthrough they’d made on the Tyrant project.
He rubbed his fingers together, frowning. It was awfully dry in here. A problem with the ventilation system? They’d never had issues with humidity levels before. If anything, the nearby Aqua Ring had always left the air too murky.
“Where did Annette wander off to?” William wondered out loud. You would think the man would be better at keeping track of his wife.
“John will find her when the helicopter gets here,” Wesker said. She had come with them at her own insistence, for reasons Wesker couldn’t fathom. Everyone was so used to her being attached to Will’s hip anymore that no one questioned it. She couldn’t even go down to the cabin basement with them, as a safety precaution due to Lisa’s documented proclivity for ripping women’s faces off.
The door opened again. This time it was two people, a man and a woman. They shuffled past in a daze, muttering about the Aqua Ring, before disappearing down the ladder.
“What’s the rush today? They weren’t even wearing lab coats,” Will observed.
It was so dry in here. He could feel the moisture leaching out of him, sucked greedily out by barren desert-like air. Yet he couldn’t find any chapping or cracking on his hands. The skin was smooth as ever. He reached absently for his glass, but touched only air. William had just vaulted up and snatched the drink, beating him by seconds. Wesker watched peevishly as the other man chugged it down.
“They need a humidifier in here,” Will griped when he had polished off the glass. He ignored Wesker’s baleful look. Will’s own glass was already empty, making even retaliation impossible.
“It’s....dry,” Wesker agreed, fidgeting in his seat. His throat ached like he’d spent ten minutes sitting in front of a blow dryer with his mouth open.
“I’m having a bath,” Will declared abruptly. He was off the bed and into the adjoining bathroom before Wesker could finish turning to look at him.
Wesker stared at the open bathroom door, dumbfounded as he listened to the racket inside. He heard the squeak of a rusty tap turning, followed by water rushing into the tub. Was William serious right now? The helicopter was due to land in less than 10 minutes, and he wanted to jump in a tub? He hadn’t even closed the door.
Yet as Wesker sat there, stewing in baffled incredulity, the muted roar of water pouring into the tub became very...distracting. He could not tear his attention away from the noise, from the tumble, splash, and rippling of water filling the tub. He could picture it clearly in his mind’s eye, all that...water. Again he attempted to swallow with his dry, dry throat. All over, his skin itched.
The door opened once again, a new dazed researcher shuffling through. Unlike the previous visitors, this one abruptly stopped right outside the bathroom door, her head turned to stare inside it.
“Don’t even think about it!” Will snapped at her.
She leaned forward, pressing her hands to the doorjamb.
“But...”
“Just keep walking! This is mine. Get your own.”
The woman’s hollow expression erupted into a snarl. Sensing violence, Wesker leaped from the chair and grabbed her upper arm before she could assault his colleague.
“You want the Aqua Ring,” he told her firmly, pulling her away from the door.
She honest to god growled at him, scrabbling at his arm with her nails. He jerked his arm away, stunned to see she had actually broken skin. She tried to claw her way back to the open door. No longer playing nice, Wesker grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her off the ground, then walked over and dropped the struggling woman down the hole to the Aqua Ring. He didn’t care if she twisted her ankle or hit her head during the fall--what mattered was that she didn’t come back up afterward.
He retreated to the desk. Something was wrong here, if he could only think through the siren call of water pouring in the next room. Every movement of his arms through the air felt like layers of his skin were being sloughed off.
His hand found the receiver for the old rotary phone lying on the table. This behavior...he had to report it. Something wasn’t right and someone had to do something. He put it to his ear and dialed the number for security. The tap shut off as the phone rang. Wesker’s eyes fixed on the open door, listening to the splash as William dropped into the tub.
“...Hello? Hello! Residence, respond.”
Wesker inhaled sharply, blinking rapidly, as if woken from a trance. The security officer on the other end of the line sounded annoyed, like they’d been trying to get his attention for some time.
“This is Albert Wesker--security operative, White Umbrella,” he filed off, because that was familiar, easy, something he’d said a thousand times. He struggled with what to say after that, with what he was even doing. His brain swam in a fog, like all the moisture in the air had concentrated itself inside his skull. “Reporting...reporting suspicious behavior. The researchers are acting strangely.”
“Describe the behavior.”
“Everyone is going to the Aqua Ring. They seem to be in a trance. They’re desperate to get to...to...water....” he trailed off, distracted by the rippling sounds of William shifting in the tub.
It was so goddamn dry in here.
“Water?” the man repeated, confused.
Wesker didn’t answer him. He had dropped the phone and made for the bathroom, unable to take it anymore. William had thrown himself into the tub fully dressed, his head submerged to the tip of his nose, tie and unkempt blond hair floating on the water’s surface. Unlike Will, he did have the presence of mind to slam the door shut behind him, and to kick his shoes off.
“Mine. Get your own,” William mumbled at him, but it was without heat. He didn’t do anything to stop Wesker from climbing in beside him, only grumbling protests when he was elbowed into making room.
The first splash of cool water over his body was heavenly. Wesker sighed with relief, sinking down to his neck, uncaring that his feet hung awkwardly over the edge. Two grown men crammed into the small tub together--what a scandalous picture that would have made back in the day, even if they both had their clothes on. Wesker couldn’t bring himself to care, any more than he could care about the fact he’d gotten his clothes wet.
The dryness had been soothed away, but the fog was still there, mucking up his thoughts, making the room dim. Beside him, Will huddled into a spasming ball, gritting his teeth and choking. Wesker stared at the ceiling, still struggling to think, to pinpoint what had gone wrong and how. Moments later the first pains lanced through his legs, and after that consciousness left him.
He woke to the organized yelling of military men, the many distant voices distorted by wall and water. Wesker peeled his eyes open slowly, regarding Will, who lay a few inches away. They had both had the idea to huddle on the bottom of the tub, and Will had pillowed his cheek on his hands, face scrunched up in restless slumber.
How embarrassing, all of this. They were due to leave for Raccoon in a matter of minutes, and the two of them had chosen to have a nap together in the bathtub instead.
The bathroom door shuddered, someone trying to force their way in. Scowling, Wesker pushed it shut and held it down, weathering the blows of the men on the other side with ease. The last thing he needed was for a security team to burst in on him and Will like this. The rumors about the two of them had been bad enough when they acted as co-heads of Arklay. Like it wasn’t perfectly natural for two teenage boys to gravitate to the only other person their own age at the facility...
As he lay there, slowly waking up, a few unsettling details made themselves known to him. Like the fact that he and Will both had their heads fully submerged under the water, and neither of them were choking. In fact, Wesker could breathe quite comfortably, a motion that did not send the familiar tickle of air through his nose but rather tingled somewhere near his neck.
Second, the fact he was holding the door closed, that he could feel the banging and hammering of fists against the wood, when his arms were folded underneath him and the bathtub was on the other side of the room. Slowly, he pushed himself up from the tub, squinting through the streams of water running down his face. For a few seconds he couldn’t breathe, and then something seemed to shift in his chest and suddenly air was pulling in through his nose again.
The object holding the door closed was a thick, dark, tail; fish-like he supposed, though the shape of it and the wickedness of the fins put him more in mind of some mythical sea serpent. He traced the path of the tail where it wound in lazy undulations around the room, all the way over the lip of the tub to where it joined his own hips. Experimentally, he shifted his lower body, watching a ripple of movement sway through the length of the tail. The feeling was indescribably strange, muscles he couldn’t name pulling in a way he’d never felt before.
The tail didn’t look quite right, as if formed by some genetic architect that was trying to sculpt a fish without ever having looked at one. There were odd bulges scattered across the surface, tumorous growths surrounding cavities full of bone shards or teeth, and the fins were placed along it unevenly. The sight of the new appendage was so surreal he didn’t know how to process it.
“Doctors! Let us in!” A familiar Russian voice yelled from the hallway. Sergei was here. Just perfect.
Beside him, William stirred, mumbling something like “five more minutes, Annie.” Wesker looked down at his old friend, almost dreading what he’d see. William’s tail was a lot shorter and stouter than his, shaped more like a traditional mermaid. He cringed even thinking the word. The scales were a mottled purple-red, and ribbons of lighter flesh--or perhaps bone--coiled up the tail in spiral patterns. There were a handful of extra eyes scattered along it, all a lurid orange with green irises. They blinked at him lazily.
Wesker sank back under the water. He had to think. There was a security team right outside, and he and Will were obviously infected (with what? He had no earthly idea. No known virus in existence had ever caused these mutations). The minute the team broke in, he was going to get shot. If the source of this mutation offered anything like T’s regeneration he might survive it, but Umbrella would find a way to dispose of them anyway. If they weren’t terminated outright they’d be locked in a tank and studied instead. Neither option was acceptable.
But how was he supposed to fight off a team of armed men and escape when he was in the middle of a building, in the middle of a mountain forest, with a bloody mermaid tail replacing his once beautifully functional legs?
He was wrenched from his thoughts when the flat surface of the door beneath his tail splintered under the assault of an axe.
Wesker sat back up in a near panic, tried to speak and choked while his body made the switch back from gills to lungs. The door gave way, his tail falling through it and hitting the two men with axes, knocking them to the ground.
“Holy hell, that’s the biggest one yet!” someone yelped.
The security team gaped at him through the door, six visible, all armed and armored. Snarling, Wesker blindly lashed the tail in their direction. He didn’t have a good handle on how to move it yet, but the whole length of it was hard muscle and it whipped with impressive force, bowling four of the men over and putting a good dent in the wall. He might not have had a chance, but like hell he would go down without a fight.
“Doctor, calm down!” Sergei ordered, out of view and unfortunately out of range of a tail lashing.
Wesker responded by sweeping his tail to the right, hitting the last man standing and someone else around the corner.
“Sedate him,” Sergei ordered.
More men swarmed into the doorway, grabbing at his tail, struggling to hold it down. For all his thrashing, he couldn’t quite manage to get them off before a needle pricked the inside one of those tumorous regions that wasn’t protected by scales.
“Two more. He’s a big one.”
Already, the first shot had taken effect, making him sluggish and slow. Advanced metabolism meant drugs were absorbed more quickly, too. He could do nothing to stop the second shot, nor the third, from sinking into his flesh.
Cursing, Wesker fell back into the tub, teeth grit as the world again began to dim. He could hear heavy footsteps as Sergei entered the room, stepping over his twitching tail.
“Ahh, gentlemen, this tub is much too small for you. We will need a larger tank.”
As he was unwillingly dragged back down into darkness, the last thing Wesker felt was William startling awake beside him.