Chapter Text
October 10, 2026.
Grace sobbed. Steam billowed up and swallowed her where she stood in her underwear, shaking and hugging herself desperately.
“Get in the shower.” Zeno’s order was flat and stony, like his expression.
She rubbed her eyes, her tears smearing the dried blood and grime that had caked her skin in the ruins of Raccoon City. She sniffled. Slowly, she pulled a bra strap down and over her trembling shoulder. “C-can’t you… close the door? Please?” she begged, one last time.
“No,” he said. “Get in the shower. I can smell you from here.”
She began to cry again, even as she slipped her panties down over her thighs. Her skin was mottled with dark purple bruises and fresh red scrapes, and suddenly every movement she made ached and stung, like some sort of delayed response to what she’d been through. She stepped over the edge of the old tub and crouched under the stream of hot water, hiding her body. Her hair hung over her face as the shower pounded down on her; her nose ran miserably through her weeping. All she could do was stare at the dirty rivulets of water pouring off of her agonized body and down the rusted drain.
She had never been nude in front of a man before. Ever. Her mind spun, dizzy with visions of pain, and blood, now at his hand instead of at a monster’s. She pressed her naked chest to her knees hoping to be too small, too insignificant and disgusting, for him to notice. From beneath the veil of her wet hair, she watched him and waited for whatever he was going to do to her.
He shed his clothes quickly - his gloves were off first, and then he was yanking the knot of his tie loose, shrugging off his button-down, pulling his undershirt over his head, letting it all drop to a pile of fine white fabric at his feet. As he unbuckled his belt, she stared at the tattoos covering his chest and his shoulders and his back, all the way down his arms… even the tops of his hands, his knuckles, and his fingers… dark and colorful, as if his entire body had been gloriously painted. She turned her head as his pants crumpled to the floor, the gleaming buckle striking the cracked bathroom tiles with a clink.
He was going to shower with her. Of course he was - he couldn’t turn his back to her, he couldn’t risk that. He was going to force her to clean herself, and then he was going to—
She found herself mouthing long-forgotten prayers from a childhood spent in parochial schools, begging for this ordeal to be over quickly, bargaining with a god who had remained faceless and silent through the torture of the last day and night.
“Oh, be serious, Miss Ashcroft,” he hissed, stepping into the shower with her. He reached around her and plucked the miniature bottle of complimentary body wash off the corner ledge. She saw the flash of his sleeve - something with intricate wings and all the colors of a muted prism. Strange little black symbols decorated every phalange of his fingers. She watched as he emptied what had to be most of the shower gel into his open palm. He tapped her hunched shoulder with the bottle until she took it from him.
She listened to him wash himself for a moment - heard the sounds of his hands running over his own wet skin, and felt the sensation of the humid air moving in the little bathroom. The unwelcome touch she was sure was coming… never did. On weak legs, she stood, painfully aware that he could see all of her back side. He could see everything.
“Switch,” he ordered gruffly, wanting to rinse off.
She flattened herself to the wall of the shower, her arms crossed over her chest, her thighs tight together. He didn’t so much as glance at her as he vigorously scratched the gel and soap out of his white-blond hair, thick bubbly suds drifting down his shoulders and back. She swallowed.
Perhaps he wouldn’t harm her. Maybe he was repulsed by her. She was invisible to most people, especially men… how could someone like him even see someone like her? Mousy and frightened of her own shadow. Stuttering and awkward, her body always feeling like an ill-fitted shoe.
Hesitant, she poured what was left of the shower gel into her hand and began to wash herself.
“Shit,” he muttered. He coughed then - wetly, and deep in his chest. She hazarded a glance at him, watching the muscles of his naked back roll under brilliant tattoos. The strange and creeping black tendrils on his throat seemed to throb as she watched. He was wiping his face and looking at his hand. Over and over.
Dark water at his feet drew her eyes lower. Bright red blood and soap mixed in the bottom of the tub and swirled down the drain.
The handcuff chimed like a bell against the headboard every time she moved.
She lay on her back, her manacled arm elevated but tolerably uncomfortable. She knew she probably could have slept through any inconvenience at that point. When he’d secured her for the night, he’d looked almost regretful. Her compliance seemed to shame him. She’d offered her arm willingly when he’d produced the handcuffs; he hadn’t looked at her since.
He sat propped up on the other bed, typing furiously on his laptop, the glowing blue screen illuminating his pale face in the dark motel room. He had Kleenex shoved up his nose, which had not stopped bleeding since they’d gotten out of the shower… a whole hour before. What looked like an entire box of balled-up red tissue lay beside him. He breathed through his mouth, heavy and labored. She noticed he hadn’t had a cigarette all evening.
He coughed and wiped his lips with a tissue. His teeth were pink.
She watched him. He was dying. The syndrome was killing him, like it had been killing Leon. Like it would have killed her mother, if she hadn’t been…
“You should take Elpis,” Grace said, little more than a whisper in the dark.
He sighed. His voice was rough and husky. “I would rather die… than give up my powers.” They had both seen what had happened to Dr. Gideon when Zeno had injected him with Spencer’s atonement.
She turned away from him and listened helplessly as he choked on his own god-blood.
Some time in the night, she woke to him unlocking the handcuff. Confused, she stared at him, his face so close to her own as he struggled to stay upright, as he struggled to release her.
The handcuff clicked open. Even in the darkness, she could see his luminous eyes were unfocused and dull. His chest heaved with each painful breath. There was a red smear on his mouth, red spots on his cheek like grotesque freckles. She could smell the metal of his lungs, iron and copper.
“Get out,” he wheezed at her, droplets of his blood on his breath. “Go as far as you can. Don’t stop.”
She blinked and held her breath. She stared at him dumbly, her arm still above her head like she expected him to think better of it and cuff her again. She didn’t understand, couldn’t compute. He was letting her go? After all the trouble of taking her?
“Get out,” he said again, trying and failing to shout in his feeble state. The effort to scare her seemed to take what little life he had left in him. As if in slow motion, he stumbled until his back was against the wall… and then he haltingly slid down to the dirty floor.
Grace sat up, still holding her breath, hoping her stillness would let her see something alive in him - a pulse at his throat, or the faint rise and fall of a breath. But Zeno was motionless.
She turned and looked around the sorry motel room, now silent, except for her own heartbeat rushing in her head.
She got out of bed and went to the attaché case on the table near the window.
October 11, 2026.
“Don’t speak,” he said lowly when the headlights of a car pulling in flashed on the wall.
She looked up at him from where she sat on the edge of one of the squeaky old motel beds. She was in a men’s t-shirt and a pair of too-big basketball shorts; the worn stitching in the comforter scratched the back of her knees. “Okay,” she said, nodding.
“What did I just say?” he snapped.
He’d been pacing for the better part of an hour, seeming to rehearse something in his mind. There had been a phone call earlier in the afternoon. He’d spoken in what sounded to her like Russian, or maybe some other Eastern Bloc language. She wasn’t a polyglot herself; she’d barely gotten through Spanish 1 at college. He wouldn’t care about her opinion, of course not… but she was impressed. No wonder, she’d thought. No wonder he was so important to The Connections.
Whoever they were.
A knock at the dented steel door startled her. He went to it in three strides, one hand on the gun tucked into his waistband, and his other hand hovering just above the knob. He peered out of the peep hole and then unlatched the door chain, and turned the deadbolt. When the door finally opened, Grace saw two figures against the striped evening sky.
“Zeno,” the woman said. Her voice was high and buoyant, girlish. There was no hint of a Russian accent. Her build was slight, and she had short white-blonde hair, so much like his. She was dressed almost indescribably in a white button-down and ironed slacks. She could have been anyone, anywhere, camouflaged and drab, with the exception of her strange black gloves.
“Ms. Birkin.” Zeno stepped aside and let his two guests in. He glanced out of the door and around each corner once, twice, before finally closing it and fixing the locks.
The man with the little blonde woman stood sullenly at the window. He pushed aside a few of the sun-damaged vertical blinds and glowered out into the darkening parking lot. He was tall - as tall as Zeno at least, and perhaps just as broad. His head was buzzed, but Grace could tell he had red hair. Unusual, she thought. His face was sharp and drawn. She could see the outline of a very large handgun holstered under his left arm.
“Who the fuck are you?” Zeno snarled.
The man with red hair turned, his cruel blue eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth as if to say something vicious back–
“Play nice…” Ms. Birkin warned one or both of them, hefting her attaché up onto the second bed. If she noticed the blood-soaked pillows there, she didn’t say anything. “This is Jake Muller,” she introduced them and popped the clips of the armored briefcase. It sprang open, hissing like a pressure cooker.
Grace watched Zeno’s face blanch, the way it had when Dr. Gideon had called him an imitation.
“Are they in here?” Ms. Birkin asked, gesturing to Zeno’s own attaché. Her wide-eyed gaze bounced from Zeno to Jake Muller. She sighed when no one answered her. “The Elpis samples. Are they in here?” she asked sharply, interrupting whatever had passed between the men.
“Yes.” Zeno grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the sad little corner table. Grace could see the muscles in his jaw clenching. He tapped one out, brought it to his lips, and lit it with the silver lighter Grace had watched him play with all day. He took a drag and exhaled, his smoky breath curling up to the yellowed ceiling.
“Put that out, please,” Ms. Birkin said without looking at him. The command in her cheerful voice landed like a well-placed slap.
Zeno glared at her… but then dropped the almost-new cigarette into a half-empty Coke can. Grace heard it sizzle ominously in the still air.
Ms. Birkin opened his attaché and gazed down at the temperature-controlled contents. She tilted her head. Grace glanced up at Zeno; she could almost feel how he was holding his breath. Her heart pounded, and she didn’t know why. Who were these people, so powerful that he was afraid of them?
Ms. Birkin took a breath before saying: “I’m confused, Zeno.”
Grace swallowed hard, her mouth filling with saliva. She felt like her stomach was in her throat. She wished more than anything that he’d given her a gun.
“There are only three injectors here. You said… you used one on Agent Kennedy… one on Gideon… and recovered four.” Ms. Birkin looked at him, blinking innocently. She licked her lips. “Did you… forget how to count?”
Zeno’s pale eyes darted to Grace. He shook his head once, his brow furrowed, reminding her to shut the hell up. “I took one,” he said quietly.
“You took one…” Ms. Birkin repeated slowly. “Took one, as in… used it?”
“Yes.” His mouth was a thin, unreadable line.
“You administered one?” Ms. Birkin asked, skeptical. “To your own body?”
“Yes.” His nostrils flared.
“You neutered yourself?” Ms. Birkin asked, her mouth cutting up into a mocking smile.
Zeno stared at her. His Adam's apple bobbed as his throat worked. Grace gripped the edge of the old mattress, her fingers digging in so hard that her white knuckles ached.
“I–” he started.
“I gave it to him. I had to,” Grace erupted. She stammered. “H-he was going to die.”
Zeno’s furious eyes were on her then. His cheek twitched, but he didn’t correct her.
Ms. Birkin turned, seeming to see Grace for the first time. She was older, Grace realized, one of those people who looked so youthful from a distance. Ms. Birkin’s large eyes were a crystalline blue, glacial and hard like cut glass. She regarded Grace without any expression - not shock, or anger, or warmth. Devoid of all emotion, she seemed… inhuman, somehow less alive than the undead Grace had encountered some two days before.
“Hmm,” Ms. Birkin said after a moment of apathetic silence. She went back to her work and placed the three remaining injectors into her own briefcase, struggling to fit them into their compartments.
“Old fucking hardware…” she muttered under her breath as the third antiviral sample clicked into its frame. A screen on the inside of the attaché blinked to life. Codes ran across the entire LCD, cataloging the contents of the injector pens. Ms. Birkin watched, her arms crossed, her dead gaze ricocheting from one side of the screen to the other as the series of letters built Elpis in front of her.
“Well,” Ms. Birkin said, closing the attaché and securing it. “Father won’t be pleased about the missing sample, but I suppose at least you salvaged this.”
Zeno frowned at her. “Father?”
“Right. You haven’t heard,” she said, picking up her briefcase. “There’s been a change in leadership recently.”
A change in leadership? At The Connections? At a government level? Grace’s heart raced.
“What? What the hell does that mean?” Zeno demanded, stepping toward Ms. Birkin. The man with red hair reached under his left arm where his weapon was holstered. Zeno ignored him. “Your father’s been dead for 30 years,” he sneered.
“Of course he has,” she replied, smiling tightly.
“Stop fucking around - who’s in charge?” he barked. Grace flinched.
Ms. Birkin though only continued to smile. “Calm yourself. Everything has gone exactly to plan… Dr. Albert Wesker has come home to us.”
Zeno stared at her, slack-jawed. “What?” he whispered.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know. It requires time to… understand,” she said, her voice soft. She nodded meaningfully at the red haired man but he avoided her gaze. She continued. “We’ll deliver Elpis to Father, and someone will reach out soon…” She looked Zeno up and down, pityingly. She cleared her throat. “To provide further guidance.”
Zeno whipped around to Grace. She was a deer caught in headlights, every muscle in her body rigid and paralyzed.
“What about her?” he asked, accusingly.
Ms. Birkin stopped. She seemed surprised he’d even broach the topic. “Continue this arrangement until you receive—“
“I’m not a goddamn babysitter,” Zeno spat out through clenched teeth.
She met him, unflinching. Steadily, with her own permafrost rage, she said: “We are whatever He says we are. And right now, Zeno… you are a goddamn babysitter.”
The room was swelteringly hot and too-close. Grace’s chest felt caved in.
“Sherry, we gotta go,” the red haired man interrupted them, already halfway out of the door.
Sherry.
Sherry?
Sherry - the woman in Leon’s ear. In Raccoon City.
“W-wait!” Grace shot up off the bed. All of them looked at her. “Wait! You… you were helping him. Uh, Leon. You were talking to him.”
Ms. Birkin clutched the handle of the attaché, waiting.
“Did he… is he…” Grace couldn’t force the words out. She was light-headed.
“He survived, yes. And recovered from RCS. No small thanks to both of you.” Ms. Birkin glanced pointedly at Zeno. She turned back to Grace, her face schooled to seem more open. To seem sweet. “I believe there was a little girl who made it out as well.”
Grace’s hands went to her mouth. She was breathless with relief, with joy. “Oh, thank you. Thank you,” she said, shaking. “Thank you.”
Ms. Birkin smiled again, forced and false. The way she might smile if she was talking to little children.