a/n: Slight AU, since it's pretty much confirmed that Carla always worked for Simmons. Here she previously worked for Umbrella. (I don't know… this way makes a lot of sense to me. Headcanon!)
If all goes well, there may be a continuation/sequel. Enjoy!
Milk
"Miss Radames, is it?"
She waits a minute, to pretend she's not so eager, and slowly, almost painfully, raises her head. "Yes?" You remembered me. She's grateful. And annoyed. She, of all people, is worth remembering.
But she had watched him stride around the proceedings, hands held behind his back.
A man like him might not remember, she reasons.
"You may be wondering why I've called you here today."
She doesn't answer, fearing that he'll continue (she would never want to interrupt), but he doesn't finish. She clears the phlegm from her throat.
"So it's over?"
"It's over."
A smile cracks her jaw, then her gaze darts down and her hair falls to hide her face. A moment of reveal. A moment too long.
"I trust that you're pleased?"
"I couldn't have hoped for better." She tries to look him in the eyes, but finds that she can't. She ends up staring at his neck instead, at all the little muscles and bones that move there as he speaks. Masseter, mandible. Diglastic. Trachea. She imagines him listing them off for her.
"That's fortunate for me. I have a great favor to ask of you."
"Of course."
Anything.
He slides out a folder to her. Inside, she finds a familiar series of reports. She spreads them out and scans. She has a good memory, almost photographic, but she doesn't need it: she remembers these well.
She remembers burning them.
She looks up and tries not to waver.
"I admit-"
"You don't need to confess," he says. "You have nothing to apologize for."
She wasn't about to apologize. That was her work. Her lifeblood, smeared all over the lab. But she waits. This time he goes on.
"I want you to continue your work."
She doesn't believe it.
"You… want me to continue."
"Yes. I need someone like you. Your involvement in the T-virus is admirable, and your work... extraordinary. Your melding of genetics and virology are absolutely inspired." He smiles a little, steeples his fingers. She looks back through her hair, with wonder: he saw the pictures. "I have a - let us call him a source - who can provide us with a new virus isolated from the Antarctica facility."
But that's impossible. The Antarctica facility was nothing but a joke. "It was destroyed in a security breach last winter," she says carefully. "There was nothing valuable there. What could be left?"
Simmons smiles very slightly. She finds that she has gone very still.
"What did you know of Alexia Ashford?"
"Her?" Alexia Ashford was a thorn in Birkin's side; she remembered that much, from the time she spent at Arklay. Someone had once mentioned her in Birkin's presence. They never made the mistake twice.
But, independently, Carla had read her notes. They were in aristocratic cursive, somehow neat and straight.
It was only months ago, when she had joined Simmons in his efforts, that Carla had finally seen Alexia's picture in a dossier. The genius behind the words: a young girl, bone-thin and flaxen-haired, wearing some kind of uniform. Fine, bright hair. Dark eyes. Cruel smile.
"I'm familiar with her," she says, dismissive.
"She was a child prodigy."
"She was a child."
"Ah, of course. Umbrella was full of foundlings." Her spine shivers: he remembers her history. He smiles, but he begins to tap his pencil against his desk. Slowly but surely – tap. Tap. Tap. "No, no. I thought you were familiar with Umbrella's workings?"
"She died. Years ago." No woman could have been as beautiful as that, and as clever. The world had made sure of it. Even retrospectively, her death had come as some relief to Carla. One less genius to compete with. Alexia Ashford, then William Birkin- if they kept dropping, she would become the premier geneticist in the Western world.
And she had.
She might not have had Alexia's fine face or terrible genius, but she had something else: permanence.
But Simmons - his tapping makes her uneasy.
"No - she didn't."
"She didn't - die? You're telling me she's alive? That's impossible."
"Oh, she's dead now. My source has dated her death around the end of December, 1998."
"Only months ago." Alexia would have been a grown woman, then. It was strange to think of that adolescent grown at last, grown into her brilliance. Disaster. "Why didn't I hear about this?"
"It's highly confidential. I tell you this with an understanding of utmost trust."
She nods. He stops tapping his pencil: the big thing is coming.
"I understand."
He sets another file before.
Carla doesn't open it.
"She experimented on herself."
"With… what?"
"She synthesized a new virus from James Marcus's research - go on, read it for yourself. She put herself in a cryogenic sleep and let it wrack her over fifteen silent years. The effects were quite... impressive."
The last of the evening light falls on his face, on his smirk. It makes his hair look brighter red, a little like a strontium flame.
She has no love for Alexia, but Carla realizes, in a moment of greed, that she may as well love Alexia's work.
"What did she call it?"
"T-Veronica."
"Veronica." A girl's name. Silly.
"An ancestor. Ashford may have been more clever than we give him credit for: he managed to implant an embryo with Veronica Ashford's DNA. Alexia was, as a chemist would say, the major product of that maneuver."
Artificial.
"Yes," he continues, to himself as much as her, "She was… not an animal. But not human. Why do these scientists keep testing their own experiments, do you think?"
She bites her cheek. He can't see, and he answers his own question, shaking his head. "Lunacy. The only explanation."
She tugs at her sleeves.
"What do you want me to do with it?" she finally asks.
He smiles, benevolent, and slides the file to her. She reaches out. In the exchange, their fingers touch, a moment of friction.
"Whatever you'd like."
A moment of friction to light a fire.
A moment of friction and Carla is burning.
It's months before she sees Derek again, and this time her heart almost stops. She withdraws from her slides, tacked to the wall. An assistant, a young man masked in acne, peers over at him. "Who's that? He looks familiar-"
"Keep working," she says, and she walks to him.
He looks odd under the flourescent lights, too expensive for such a cheap place. There is something in his bearing - she wishes that she could stand like him. So tall and graceful. She can imagine how she must look – spoiled milk, weirdly pale.
Her hand trembles as she smooths her hair, almost tugging it. She tries for a flash of palm, almost coquettish, but she's too disheveled to pass as a flirt. "It's been a while."
She meant it to sound cool, but instead it comes out weakly.
He has his coat draped over his left arm, and a briefcase held in his right. In his left hand is a folder. He sees her seeing it, and treats her to a smile.
"Are you doing something underhanded here? Something dangerous?"
Her laughter rings brassy against the metallic walls. She closes her mouth quickly. She imagines her face, clownish with lipstick.
"Of course," she replies. She marvels, in retrospect, at her own wit. That was clever. I wonder if he liked that – cleverness.
He smile-smirked again, and then checked his watch.
"It has been a while. I've been very busy, and you know that I have complete faith in your work here."
"Of course-"
"So you can understand why I haven't interrupted you until now. A new development has manifested itself."
He holds out the folder at last.
"Open it."
Carla obeys.
Inside, a blonde child looks out listlessly, and Carla feels a surge of dislike, one that she can't quite place, until she reads the caption.
Sherry Birkin.Now she remembers. Annette had the brat on her desk, in a family photo. Annette, sunshine-blonde, and a tiny daughter, squatting in the grass. Only William ruined the idyll. He squints into the camera as though unaccustomed to natural light.
She looks up at Simmons, grasping for words.
"The child survived," he says.
"You didn't tell me."
She's angry, almost. The feeling bubbles in her mouth. He promised. He promised.
"I know how you must be feeling right now. As you know, many Umbrella executives managed to outrun the bombing."
"We had a deal."
"Yes, yes, we did."
She'd been in a conference in Toronto. She'd watched the footage from a hotel room, glued like everyone else in the world.
That night, she might have been the only person to laugh at the coverage. Excitement. To know that, inside that city, each of her rivals was dying, one by one, and that, soon, she would be the only prodigy left.
She leans on a table for support. "You said only a hundred or so got out."
"Yes," he says, "a hundred or so. Executives. Exactly as a promised."
She can imagine how many scientists would have been down in that labyrinth when the plague washed over them.
"You said there would be executive in those helicopters. Only executives."
"And I kept my word."
"So how-" her voice is wispy, the world dizzy "-did the Birkin girl escape?"
"With civilians." He nods curtly. "You'll find that it's all in the file." He adds, as an afterthought, "You've nothing to fear. I've been hoping – I must admit – that the girl was bright, and could - shall we say - take up her father's mantle."
Fear breaks through her.
"But I was mistaken. She's nothing special… mentally."
No. No. "What is it? What did he do to her?"
He pats the briefcase at his side, and hands that to her as well. He leans in as he does so, so she can feel his breath on her ear. "You may want to open that in private. Her blood work."
She can feel the poison in her stomach now, burning her belly.
"Yes, it seems that Birkin always had a contingency plan. Her body is the last trace of G that we have access to – we can't be sure that Umbrella doesn't have its own, but I would bet against it." He flexes his hand, examining his nails. "We did a very good job of throwing a wrench into that relationship, hm?"
"A vaccine? For G?" William's pet. She can't decide: his daughter, or his virus?
"His wife oversaw its development, I believe."
"And you brought this to someone else first?"
"Please, Carla, don't snap. There was no hiding Miss Birkin's existence from the government – nor would I want to. Yes, I brought her to someone else first. But now-" and here he taps the papers in her hands, to show her what he has brought "-I leave the application of her blood to you."
Her breath catches. He knows, instantly, that while she may not be calm, she is certainly caught off guard.
"Prove to me that you're as brilliant as you claim," he says. "The others all want to make a vaccine with this. Even the boldest don't dare to suggest that, after Raccoon, we ought to harness Umbrella's talent for ourselves." He tapped the file again. Emphatic. "You'll see. You'll see what this virus is capable of." She can see a plan glistening in his eyes.
"Dead."
"Pardon me?"
He smiles again, and, half-calmed, she finds a frail smile to return to him. She closes the file.
"Dead talent. William Birkin is dead now. His wife is dead. They're all dead."
And finally, she manages another frail smile.
Her shower goes cold midway through, and she exits without shaving her legs. It's not important. She wears pants, anyway, to the labs, and a labcoat, and her legs are more like pale logs, anyway.
Strands of her hair fall out and swirl down the drain.
In her main room, she flicks on the light. The yellow hue unsettles her. I'm becoming like Birkin, she thinks, allergic to light.
She reaches into a most-empty cabinet and comes out with a dusty vodka that's almost full. She measures out a shot and takes it straight. Terrible. She checks her orange juice to make sure it's not expired, then mixes two shots in. Still foul.
She's not supposed to drink on her medication. Fuck it. Fuck it to hell.
With her drink, she sits down at her couch and stares at the wall. When her drink is empty, she pours another one and, finally, she opens the file again.
Sherry Birkin's eyes are blue, like her mother's. Like William's. With a closer look, her expression is more than listless: it's distrusting. A survivor's stare.
"You're welcome," she says, without meaning to. The drink makes her body light.
She turns from the picture and reads.
-escaped with the aid of RPD officer Leon Kennedy, 21, now in the employ of the United State's special divisions. He works in an unnamed division devoted to practical measures again bioterror.
It accompanies a picture of a young man, not smiling. A bruise shows purple on his cheek, giving him a mixed air of thug and boy band member. His gaze mimics the Birkin girl's.
So Simmons oversees this little side project, then. A façade. Like every soldier, this boy has no idea how little he is worth.
(Carla knows how to read between the lines.)
She skips the page, unhappy at the pictures of pretty boys. The following pages are more up her alley: test results, experiments. What she reads makes her eyes widen and her glass pause.
Good God, she thinks, is there any disease she doesn't have?
She's survived everything from arsenic poisoning to the bubonic plague. Her miraculous little body resists all attack.
Carla looks back at Sherry Birkin's photo. Her gaze is accusing now. Her mother's. Her father's.
Carla closes the file, but when she closes her eyes, she can't sleep.
She remembers it clearly.
1998. The year the world ended.
She hadn't known, at the time. But she hadn't slept in two days, so really, she knew. It was the gateway to hell. She wept in the bathrooms. She looked over her shoulders. She rearranged the paper towels in the bathroom trash. She traced her scars (fifteen, another life – she's older now, and wiser, and someday they would all pay). But most of all she watched her telephone, waiting for the calls.
She would come home to the beep of her answering machine. A moment of silence. A click. That was her signal.
It was September 21st. A Monday evening. Most of the others left, until she couldn't hear even their footsteps (that was the first sign that something was amiss). Two am and she was alone, as far as she could see or hear or feel.
She sat up off the toilet seat. Her heels clicked on the tile.
Her hands shook as she unlocked the file cabinet. Inside, she chose sparingly: a paper here, a paper there.
Nothing too obvious. She took a whole report when necessary. You want to be as clean as possible, she reminded herself. How different were Umbrella and the government, anyway? They were all playground bullies. They were all squabbling. None of them had any idea where the real power lay.
After all, they had only called her after William Birkin failed to arrive at work.
The thought triggers something primal inside of her. Double-dealer. Filthy, stupid pigs. They aren't scientists. They think they can judge her as subordinate to Birkin?
They're misinformed.
Her flight is tomorrow, though, and then she will be their informant. Whatever happened to Birkin was a godsend. She doesn't believe in a God, but this is some whim of providence, surely.
She stares at the shredder, intent half-forgotten. Her jaw clenches and a sob retches out from her throat. The papers fly to the ground and when she comes back, they sit scattered and untouched.
She uncorks the acetone and burns them.
I'm a genius, she thinks, as she watches the flames. Birkin is gone. Umbrella is gone. I will be the only one left.
And, in a fit of lunacy:
The last prophet.
The fire alarm goes off, but no one comes.
That's when she knows that something is very, very wrong.
She notices a statue of a life-sized woman, reaching out. Her face has a veil over it. Carla can't make out the woman's expression, but she can see her lips parted (in desire?) and the details look so fine that she fears the veil slipping. The space around her space is so fluid that it looks like she's melting.
Carla can't tell if the woman is returning to the stone of her pedestal or emerging from it.
"Ah - you have an appreciation for mythology," he says, when he notices her staring. She averts her eyes. Her hair falls in her face. This place makes her feel young and small.
"A bit."
"You named your work after mythology."
She feels her stomach turn - to think of him seeing them. What must he think of them? But he told her: he thought they were "inspired". "The human-fly chimeras. That's just a generic name.. My request never went through."
"And what was your request?"
"Arov."
He smiles.
"You have a beautiful house," she tells him, and it's true. He looks right here. Tall and stately.
Meanwhile, she recedes into the walls.
"You think so? It's been in my family for generations."
Carla swallows hard and wrenches her gaze to Simmons.
"I looked at her bloodwork."
"Very good. What did you see?"
"Exactly what the tests suggested. She's racked up immunity to everything they've exposed her to with – only mild symptoms?"
"Some vomiting and discomfort, depending. She's not immune. But she's resilient."
"I assume you've done more tests since those records."
He holds his palms up to show his innocence. "It's all in your hands, Miss Radames. The experts have had their say. Now we leave it to you."
"I – I am an expert."
"Of course. Did I suggest otherwise?"
He looks at her with a sort of indulgence, like she's nothing but a child. She wants something else from his eyes. Something else from him.
"Miss Radames, if you'd please follow me…"
He leads her through halls and halls of things, all with their share of closed doors and decoration. In the room he finally chooses, the carpets are oriental. A butterfly hangs from a picture frame on the wall, red and black and red, palindromic symmetry. She sits on a chaise and crosses her ankles. She clasps her hands together. She tries to look like someone else, some lady that this room was built for.
He looks entirely at ease. Of course. He built the room.
They exchange words about Sherry Birkin. Numbers. Percentages. Dosages. How much arsenic have you given her, exactly? How high a fall have you recorded for her?
"Her bones mend very quickly." His voice drops. "You noticed that she's on medication? A mood stabilizer."
"I did."
"Her father's virus has made her indestructible, but he can't account for that. Fascinating."
She picks at her nails.
"Miss Radames?"
"There's another thing."
"Another thing."
"Her telomeres and her cells… she's resilient to harm on a cellular level. Poisons that should have disturbed cellular function – that should have cut and ravaged her DNA – they didn't work."
"That's very admirable, but what are you getting at, Miss Radames?"
"I couldn't substantiate my claims without further testing, but from the blood work… her healing has been quickened, and her aging disrupted."
Simmons pauses. The teacup sits poised between his fingers. "You mean she's going to die young?"
Carla can feel the hatred burning inside of her. It's the truth, she reminds herself. No matter if it was Birkin's work. She's an accident. A freak of nature. And her DNA is yours, now.
"The opposite. Her cells are behaving normally, now, but I hypothesize that her aging will stop sometime after puberty. Her lifespan will be much longer than average, if only because she's impervious to both disease and cancer – her cells have near-perfect replication rates, as your previous scientists may have noted. She may live forever. I couldn't say."
Slowly, Simmons lowers his cup without drinking. It clinks on its saucer.
His voice is slow, too. "You're telling me that she can't age and she can't die?"
"Not exactly. Her lifespan may simply be lengthened to - more than a hundred-fifty years, I'd say. Enough trauma could still kill her. If you… decapitated her, or otherwise managed to fatally disconnect her central nervous system. But yes."
"Derek-" she shouldn't call him that, she realizes – "Mr. Simmons?" She sounds like a child. She's not. She's twenty-one years old, and she has the bags of an older woman under her eyes. She carries so damn much for him. She wishes he could see it. How much she can carry.
She would kill for that.
When she looks up, he's frowning.
"Yes?" he says.
"I have something I'd like to ask you. Specifically, about my psych evaluation…"
"Ah. About your history of… illness."
"Yes."
"Miss Radames, it's our little secret. "
He lets the words sink: little secret.
Theirs, or his?
He's talking again, she realizes, before she can process this transaction.
"I'd like you to accompany me to a conference in Japan this week. We're discussing the dismantling of the Japan branch of Umbrella with the Japanese government. I'd like an – expert on my side."
Her throat is dry. "I – I'd be happy to. Of course."
He uncrosses his legs and leans in. His voice is a little softer, the softness of a secret. "There's one more thing…"
"Y-yes?"
His pupils are dilated.
Large and black, all that she can see.
"I'd like you to start working on a project of mine."
She doesn't want to ask – just say 'yes', show him how ready you are - but she does. "What kind of project?"
Her voice sounds young. Twenty-one. But not the kind of twenty-one to tease and tempt. That's for prettier girls. Girls whose eyes are shadows, who figures are suggestions.
(But she would kill for him.)
"Cloning, more or less." He holds up a finger. "But we can't wait. A proper clone would take too long. I need the stuff of science fiction for this to work-" a smile, so sure –"and who better to call upon for the favor than a former expert of Umbrella? One of your colleagues has rigged his daughter to never age – I ask you to one-up him. I need a replica of a full-grown woman, without the wait of embryos and aging. The reasons are confidential. But we have lost a valuable source, and if I cannot have her… well. I'd like to make sure that we have some facsimilie of her."
Carla pauses a moment, thinking. She smooths the fabric of her pants. Then she looks up. "She must have been very valuable."
"Yes." His face closes, and he leans back. "That is all. It's confidential, you understand."
Her mind whirs. The science takes her over, and she finds her unsureness fading. She has no more thoughts about girls prettier than herself, because she is sure of one thing, and that is her own supremacy in the sciences. Here, he needs her.
"Have you thought of simply doing facial reconstruction and conditioning the lookalike to take her place?"
"It's not enough. This woman is… extraordinary." Something about the way he says it makes her feel uneasy. Had he called her that once? Yes. Of course. She remembered it, treasured it, but only now does she realize that his tone held nowhere near so much reverence as it holds now. "We need her. A perfect genetic replica."
"Of course." The moment has passed. She can feel sweat going cold in her armpits and nearly winces at her own stupidity. "You'll have to find a woman, then and… change her. Make her into that new woman."
His smile flickers on his face. "I wonder if we'd have any volunteers?"
She stares back at him, a level stare.
She worked for Umbrella.
Even more than him, she knows that, in true science, volunteers are optional.
They agree on it, and leave their tea cool and half-drunk, for some maid to clear away. Derek leads her out, telling her of the labs he will give her. Carla is too engrossed in the discussion to be unsettled by it. She won't let herself be. She won't think about it. She won't think about that other woman – extraordinary, in a tone that she cannot deserve - and she won't think about why he looks at her as though he's measuring her for new clothes.
She reaches to take his arm, but he draws away, cool. She notices his lip twitch.
She tries her best to bleach it from her memory.
On their way out, Carla can hear someone retching, muffled from behind a door. She looks to Derek.
"The Birkin girl," he says.
And that is all there is to it.
There is blood on her hands, and soon it will be her own.