Resident Evil: The Hades Memoirs

Brian Irons - Beholder

His mother's room was filled with a heavenly air; the floral, feminine haze of her cosmetics hung heavy, all musk and pressed blossoms. It smelled of beauty, because it was her room. When he entered, he was unseen, giving him the time he needed to soak in the wonder of it all. Young as he was, even the most mundane of things could be objects of fascination. Inexperience coloured his world with so many interesting shades, but this place was by far the most vibrant. From the soft fabrics of warm shades that dressed her bed, to the magnificent clothing that lay strewn across it, he marvelled at it all.

She sat at her vanity table; it seemed, almost, that she spent more time there than anywhere else, gazing into the mirrors as though searching for something that she had lost. Her golden hair descended in a soft, flowing cascade to the small of her back. Beneath it lay smooth, unblemished skin, ordinarily the palest white, like the most perfect of porcelain dolls, now rosy with emotion. She wore her best, an ivory-coloured, silk dress that made her seem almost angelic. A silver chain hung from her neck bearing the smallest, most unembellished cross and sapphire-studded discs of the same metal sat upon the lobes of her ears.

"Brian," she said, as he approached, staring at him in the mirror, and though she was going to tell him off, she did not sound angry, "what are you doing in here again? You know I don't like you to see me this way."

"See you what way, Momma?" he asked her, but though he tried to disguise it, he knew what she was referring to.

There was a circle of swelling around her eye, a deep, purple blemish that rose from her graceful cheekbone and traced the socket from which a bright, azure orb stared. She had been crying, he could see; her eyes were puffy and red, though the damp trails on her face were long dry. Sometimes she and his father would argue, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he would yell at her. When he was particularly angry, she would get hurt. She saw him looking at the bruising marring her otherwise pristine features and looked away, ashamed.

"You mustn't blame him, dear," she insisted, and he once again thought her amazing for how easily she knew his thoughts, "he is a man and men work hard to be the best they can. It's easy to become frustrated when people expect so much from you. All I can do is be beautiful for him; I am a woman and women must always try to be beautiful."

She reached out for her powders and perfumes, taking up a brush from amid the bottles and beginning the arduous task of covering the discolouration on her features. Every stroke that she applied to her face was familiar; he had seen them repeated dozens of times in the past and had learned them by heart. Quietly, he climbed up onto the stool beside her; it was more than wide enough to permit him to stand next to her while she sat. Once there, he took up the ornate hairbrush that was lying at her left hand and began to pass it gently through her shimmering tresses. The feel of it soothed her, he knew, and he wanted nothing more than to make her feel better.

"I caught a new butterfly today," he told her conversationally, after a few moments of companionable silence, "it was really beautiful, so I brought it home with me. Women are like butterflies, aren't they Momma?"

"Yes, Brian, they are," she agreed calmly, her voice tranquil and steady as she explained the world to him; all the while, he continued to delicately tease apart her lustrous tresses, "just like a woman, a butterfly will lose its colour and fade with age. It is a tragedy because, just like a woman, a butterfly would like to stay young and beautiful forever. It is a very important part of what we are, the way strength and position are part of what makes a man, and it makes us so sad to lose it."

This wisdom was her forte and he listened with rapt attention; his mother knew so much and, when she spoke, he could feel the mysteries of the world unfolding themselves in her speech. But she had been wrong about one thing; the butterfly he had caught would stay beautiful forever. He had sat and watched it for hours before he had finally snared it in his net, and then he had carried it home, just as he had done with the others before it. Their colours were always so enchanting that he found it difficult to leave them be.

So he had taken it upstairs to his room and, with painstaking precision, snuffed out its life. It had taken him several long, frustrating weeks to finally perfect his method, but now it was as instinctual as the ritual his mother used for applying her makeup. The treasured insect was pinned to a board in his cabinet, along with the others of his collection. They shone, bright and vibrant, and not one of them had aged or faded a second from the moment they had joined the gathering.

He watched as she daubed her elegant face with paint, adjusting the tone of the cosmetics to match the curvature of her features. Soon, there was no trace of the mark that had once marred the top of her cheek, hidden, as the discolouration was, by her ministrations. Only if one knew what to look for was the slight swelling discernable. Pencil added shadow to her eyes, making their cobalt shade seem darker, more vivacious, their lashes teased out to give them depth. She applied rouge to her lips, coaxing out their potential for fullness, creating a crimson heart upon the pale canvas of her skin.

She retrieved the hairbrush from him and, with an expert hand, began to fashion her long, blonde tresses into fanciful decadent curls. He watched with an air of wonder clear in his expression. Once she had finished, she set the brush aside, arranging her hair so that it would most perfectly frame her face.

"There," she said finally, "don't I look beautiful?"

"You always looked beautiful to me," he told her, reaching out to take her hand and meeting her eyes earnestly in the mirror.

It was the truth; she was no prettier than she had been before in his mind. But then, there was something about the way she smiled, a kind of life that was not there without the makeup to bring it out, that made her glow. It was the only time he ever looked at her and thought she seemed truly happy.

"Oh, Brian, you don't understand," she insisted, with a shake of her head, a sudden sadness appearing in her gaze that vanity prohibited from turning into full-blown tears, "but you will one day."

They shared a moment, staring at one another's reflections. She was, of course, correct; he didn't understand. As far as he was concerned, there was little more to beauty than love. Nothing could make a person more beautiful than the eyes of the ones that adored them, surely. If his father truly loved her then he saw, and told her, exactly what he did. But then, they were both so much older than him; perhaps they knew better; perhaps women in general were happier as his mother was now, and would be happier if they could stay that way forever. Just like his butterflies.

"Brian," a gruff voice intoned, heavy footsteps thundering on the boards as his father, a tall, heavy-set man with slicked, black hair and a neatly oiled moustache, entered through the door, "go to your room. Your mother and I are going out."

He nodded, looking up at the looming figure, in its pristine, pressed tuxedo, with a sense of admiration. It demanded respect, as his mother had told him all men should, and she thought so highly of it that he couldn't help but agree with her. One day, he would become a man of strength and position, just as it was. He wouldn't disappoint his mother by being anything less than the best that he could be.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----

Anyone else would probably have described the room as a dungeon. With its bare, stone walls and racks of tools, there was certainly a sense of the macabre to it, but only someone who saw it without context would call it a torture chamber. It was a workshop, where base, ugly things were transformed into objects of unparalleled beauty. More than that, for Brian it was a sanctuary, a place of calm and tranquillity, where he could channel his frustrations into more worthwhile endeavours. When times were trying and escape was necessary, this place was his salvation.

Times had never been more trying than now, with Raccoon City crumbling down around him. The need for release was even greater than before.

That was why he had her. He had built the vanity table with his own two hands, carving each ornate, wooden panel and inlaying every mirrored surface to ensure the perfection he craved. It was a true paragon of craftsmanship, modelled on one he had seen as a child, befitting of the slender form that now sat perched upon the stool before it. Soft, golden tresses freshly washed of the grime that had once streaked and matted them, expertly straightened, fell to her lower back. Beneath, her flesh was pristine, supple, the colour of ivory, nevermore to know the flush of blood beneath its skin.

He had picked out her ensemble especially, a pearl-white dress that flattered her exquisite figure. It was symbolically appealing, the purity of its hue matching the purity of her beauty. To complement it, a pair of sapphire-studded earrings wrought from silver and a thin chain draped around her throat, suspending a small, plain cross just beneath her collarbone. There was something of the celestial in her.

The puncture mark from the hypodermic at the back of her skull was practically invisible, hidden as it was by her hairline. It had been a clean and painless death for her, though admittedly the life preceding it had contained its fair share of anguish. The unsightly blemish that the zombie had left upon her stomach had been rather more challenging to conceal, but he felt that he had performed admirably. Though he had been furious with her at first, having been so careless with such a valuable material for his art, he knew that he could not blame her for the wound she had suffered.

It had been his own fault for allowing her out of his sight at all, even if it had been her thoughtlessness that carried her into the waiting arms of the ghoul that had bitten her. Gouging his fingers into the bloody hole by way of a reprimand once they had returned to his office had, admittedly, not helped matters.

All the same, the stitch that he had utilised was perfect and, with some minor cosmetic touches, he had turned back the clock, as though the fissure in her midriff had never been there at all. Now that he had corrected the flaw, dressed her and positioned her, as she would remain forever, the centrepiece of his collection, he reasoned that it was time to add the finishing touches. He opened the cosmetics case sitting atop the table and unpacked his brushes, admiring the reflection of his canvas in the pristine mirror.

As he commenced, he felt a sense of peace settle over him, brought on by the familiar movements of his hands. It had been quite some time since he had last worked with a model like Miss Warren; since his graduation, he had confined himself to working exclusively with animals. Indeed, his college years had been the last occasion that he had taken a human canvas. They had helped him to maintain order when his life had been otherwise chaotic, to restore serenity when his mind was in uproar.

It had begun with butterflies. He had collected them avidly as a young boy, not to categorise them based on arbitrary and uninteresting criteria, the way some did, but simply to preserve them. His fascination was with their beauty and their colour, and the way it would persist far longer in death than in life. The transition, in particular, was something that enthralled him; he had bought magnifying glasses so that he could watch its manifestations in intricate detail.

Eventually, he had progressed to other, larger insects and then to animals. All the while, he tempered his experiments into the end of life with a preservation of the creatures' innate splendour. That had formed the basis for his interest in taxidermy. For every one that died at his hands, he would celebrate it, transform it into a proud, attractive monument to its former life. In that way, he reasoned, it would never truly die, simply live on in a new incarnation, one that could never be spoiled by time.

When his life had been most anarchic, it had been his hobby that had seen him through the dark times. He would often see women of the most exquisite beauty in attendance at the campus and the thought of that beauty fading with age had caused his heart to ache in his chest. It had been the work of months to finally gather his resolve and deliver them from their grim fate. Though he had been clumsy at first and missed his opportunities, eventually he refined his art, just as he had done with his butterflies.

His five unspoiled angels might still have been there, locked away in the refrigerated basement of the derelict building in which he kept them. Their immaculately curled golden tresses and smooth alabaster skin would remain just so forever, eternally perfect. He had often looked into their rouged lips and imagined them giving their thanks for such a gift.

He hadn't acted blindly, of course; his studies in biology, anatomy and forensic science ensured that he knew how to treat the dead. His enthusiasm for law enforcement and criminal justice had allowed him the needed insight to ensure that his secrets remained hidden. If they had been discovered then they had not been able to link them to him; after more than two decades without word, he suspected that a legal reprisal wasn't going to be forthcoming.

The years he spent attending the police academy and, subsequently, as an officer in Detroit had been less fraught with upheaval. As he worked to improve his status, just as he had always known he must, he found less use for the hobby. He did not wish to endanger himself by giving in to temptation and, though it pained him to see rare and magnificent blooms wilting without his intervention, he knew that restraint was necessary. Eventually, his sacrifice paid dividends and he moved to Raccoon City, where his campaign for the office of Chief of Police was successful.

He had hoped that one day he would be given the honour of standing as Mayor of the metropolis he had helped to build, after dedicating so much of his life to its safety and security. It would have been a fitting reward.

Unfortunately, things had not worked out the way he had dared to think they might. His beloved city was in ruins and he needed the calm that only the hobby could offer now more than ever.

He had chosen his model well. Joanne Warren had been the jewel of Raccoon City's social circle, just as her mother had been before her. He had watched her blossom with mounting frustration; she was an exquisite canvas and had tempted him more than any other, but his resolve had been strong. When his well laid plans crumbled, however, he decided that he would allow himself the indulgence, a consolation for all that he had lost.

It had not been difficult to separate her from her father. When the madness began, he simply told the Mayor that he knew of his dealings with the Umbrella Corporation, and that he would be arrested if he did not surrender his daughter to Brian's custody. Michael Warren had been accepting money from the company to provide them with planning permission where they needed it, as well as deflect the civilian populace away from several of its operations. He had been so alarmed by this news, and so eager to comply to save himself, that he hadn't thought to ask where the Chief had procured the information. Or why he desired the company of his only daughter, for that matter.

In truth, Brian had been working for Umbrella for many years, perhaps even longer than the Mayor himself. They had been the ones primarily responsible for the success of his election campaign, but, of course, he was not to know that. Unlike Warren, who was simply being paid to look the other way, he knew the exact extent of the organisation's clandestine activities. Indeed, he had visited their laboratories many times in the past to speak with the Administrator of the R.C.U facility, Annette Birkin.

His relationship with them had crumbled in recent weeks, ever since their mishandling of the Arklay incident had resulted in the slow, torturous demise of his city. Now, he no longer cared what the company was doing, content to enjoy what small amount of time his life had left doing the things he truly took joy in.

With painstaking precision, he applied the last touch of paint to his canvas. She was so very nearly complete.

Human beings lost so very much of their vitality once they had died, but he had quickly learned that it could be replaced with the correct application of cosmetics. The time that he had spent with his mother had given him a keen insight into what steps needed to be taken. Foundation helped to restore a more natural skin tone; blush brought out the highlights of the cheekbones; shadow and liner for the eyes, as well as mascara, gave them fetching depth; a subtle shade of crimson returned lustre to their greying lips.

The only true difficulty was with the eyes themselves; they could not hope to survive long after the person was dead. As such, he removed them and replaced them with glass replicas, coloured with a most vibrant azure. He would always save this coup de grace until last; he savoured it as the moment of their awakening in a new, eternally beautiful form. Until then, Miss Warren's empty gaze stared endlessly and her reflection stared back, neither seeing the other.

Before he could add the finishing touch, however, there was one last thing that needed to be done. He retrieved the ornate hairbrush from its place in the container and began to pass it deftly through her silken hair. The style was his mother's, the one that he had used for his other models all those years before; he felt it gave them the most attractive air. Once he had finished and her curls sat at her shoulders, he brushed them into place around her features, taking care not to disturb her makeup.

He did not think of his mother much anymore; they had not been in contact in quite some time. Shortly after his graduation from the police academy, his father had died, the victim of a massive cardiac arrest. The death meant little to his mother, however. At that point in her life, she had begun to succumb to the ravages of age that she feared so much, and would spend unhealthy amounts of her time staring at her wrinkling skin and greying hair in the mirror.

Once she was alone and unable to care for herself, Brian had admitted her to a hospital and hadn't seen her since. The love that he had once felt for her had faded with her beauty; to him that was simply more proof that his intervention had been necessary, lest the women he converted die withered and unloved.

Gently, he reached for Miss Warren's arms, folding them neatly across her chest so that her hands were clasped at her bosom. They remained there without support, a fortunate effect of the embalming process. He bowed her head slightly, balancing her weight so that she would not slump or slouch, and smiled at the image projected in the mirror. She looked almost as though she were praying, or perhaps giving thanks, a soft smile touching the corners of her lips.

He reached into his pocket, fondling the pristine, glass spheres there and preparing for the moment when he would see his masterpiece, his opus, completed, his vision of her realised in all its glory. Even now, the anticipation was almost too much to bare, a giddy, boyish excitement banishing the rage and frustration that had been steadily building since the catastrophe had begun.

But something stayed his hand, a noise that made his blood curdle in his veins. Footsteps, echoing from the stone in the passage beyond his sanctum, were approaching. Asserting his composure and setting aside his fierce desire to see the result of his labours, he peeled away his latex gloves and hastily folded his apron. He tossed them, and his eye goggles, onto the counter nearby and retrieved his Desert Eagle, moving to stand in the shadows at the edge of the room.

Whoever this trespasser proved to be, they would die for daring to interrupt him at the most crucial moment.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----

It was the girl again, the one from before, who had happened by his office following the second explosion, not long after he had given his latest trophy her lethal dose of poison. He had expected as much; the puzzle lock in his office had been far too intricate for a zombie to decipher and most of the precinct's occupants were already dead, many at his own hand. He recalled their previous meeting, remembered feigning anguish over allowing harm to come to the Mayor's daughter, whose well-being he had supposedly been charged with. It had not been difficult, distraught as he had been over the wound on her midriff.

She had clearly believed him traumatised; her condescending tone as she had questioned him had made him seethe.

He watched her in silence as she entered the chamber, dishevelled and filthy in her red leather trousers and jacket, her long, dark hair tied back in a dirt-streaked ponytail. She was the antithesis of beauty, everything he despised in a woman, with a headstrong, conceited personality to boot. That she had dared to enter his sanctuary uninvited, with no consideration or respect for his place of tranquillity, made him all the more livid. With tentative steps, she approached his canvas, no doubt captivated by her splendour, and leaned down to stare into the mirror affixed to the vanity table. He imagined that it was probably the empty eye sockets that caused her to leap back, horrified.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed, brushing the back of her hand against her mouth, as though she were worried that she would vomit. He doubted she would; the stench of the city alone would have emptied her stomach hours ago.

"Watch your mouth, girl," he snapped, emerging into the light that haloed the centre of the room, smirking thinly as she spun to find the cold, dark eye of his high calibre handgun glaring unflinchingly at her forehead, "there is a lady present, after all."

"Calm down, Chief," she began calmly, backing instinctually away from him a step and lifting her hands in a pacifying gesture, revealing the Browning HiPower clutched in her right hand, "what happened?"

"Shut up," he insisted, no longer in the mood for pretence, particularly with one so entirely beneath him.

Her eyes widened and she lowered her arms, a wise move, in his opinion. She was at least smart enough to realise that she was only antagonising him. He watched the gears spinning slowly behind her eyes as her feeble mind fought the inevitability of her situation; it was amusing to think that she might have believed herself capable of escaping at all. Her life was in his hands and there was a certain enjoyment to be taken from it that caused him to stay her execution for the moment.

"First things first, my dear; eject the magazine from your weapon," he instructed, watching and smiling nastily as she obeyed, clearly believing that she could play for time, "be sure to empty the chamber as well; don't play me for the fool. Now discard it."

"I found your journal, Chief," she informed him bluntly, as she continued to follow his commands, dropping the empty sidearm to the stone at her feet, "quite a revelation. What did you mean about Umbrella ruining your city?"

The words earned her an even nastier smile; it had been an obvious bait, something intended to keep him talking, that much he was well aware of. All the same, he considered her question; it was surprising that she would ask him about his involvement with the company rather than some of the more morbidly curious topics he had mentioned in it. The leather pocketbook he had misplaced contained details of both his plans for Miss Warren and the deaths of several police officers that he had been given the pleasure of hunting down.

Still, he was aware that some found such matters too macabre to actively consider. They preferred to pretend that such things didn't happen, though he personally found such ignorant tendencies to be offensive. Death was a natural thing and happened to all living things, as she was about to learn.

But not just yet. There was no reason that he could enjoy a little sport with her, before returning to his work. Delayed gratification, after all, only compounded the thrill of the reward.

You're going to kill me anyway, she seemed to say, what's the harm?

"You have no idea what I've sacrificed for this city and that bastard company," he told her, baring his teeth in a cross between a humourless sneer and a snarl as he recalled a life spent in toil now wasted, "I've worked for years to turn this town into the metropolis it was always meant to be, the metropolis I wanted it to be, and in two months they've fucked it all up! And it's all because of Birkin and that son of a bitch, Wesker."

She recoiled slightly at the venom in his voice, but then, he was speaking of the people that had ruined him. Arklay had been the catalyst and that had most certainly been Umbrella's fault; it was their research that had gone so very wrong to begin with. However, it was their mishandling of the catastrophe that had really caused the backlash that crippled Raccoon. Their mistake had been putting Wesker in command of the operation. His mission had been to destroy the facility and eliminate his S.T.A.R.S subordinates before they were able to connect the incident to the company, a mission he had failed miserably to achieve.

Instead, Brian had been forced to cope with both the fallout from the biohazard unleashed in the forest, as well as the nuisance that the surviving members of the team had made of themselves. In the aftermath, both Redfield and Valentine particularly had been a thorn in his side, a thorn that was now hopefully lying in a gutter somewhere, being eaten alive. He had heard that the male had left the city a month ago, however, which meant that there was unlikely to be any retribution to be had there.

For their part, Birkin and his wife had relied heavily on him to deflect both police and media attention from their research at the Chemical Plant just outside the city limits. They had then had the nerve to alienate the company by going rogue several weeks ago. As such, the corporation had forsaken Raccoon City and all of its employees in the area, himself included, when the disaster finally reached critical level. Admittedly, he had allied himself with the Head Researcher by accepting money to stymie Umbrella's investigation into his renegade activities. But then, surely he was entitled after the difficulties their incompetence had caused him.

Of course, it was possible that they had never intended to evacuate him, regardless of where his loyalties lay, but at least he could be sure that Birkin had paid for his transgressions with his life. His wife had informed him of such over a week earlier. Wesker himself was already long dead, buried beneath the smouldering rubble of Arklay; he hadn't survived to be punished for his failure.

"Wesker?" the girl asked alarmed, her voice suggesting that she recognised the name.

That was odd. The former S.T.A.R.S Captain had been a minor celebrity in Raccoon ever since he had transferred in to supposedly head the investigation into the so-called cannibal murders. But her accent, though familiar, was not local. Part of him wondered where, exactly, she had come from, but he was too caught up in his tirade to follow the train of thought to its conclusion.

"Yes, that's right, Albert Wesker and William Birkin; those are the two responsible for this whole mess," he explained, before his expression lightened slightly, aware that she was clinging to his every word as though he were preaching from some abhorrent gospel and revelling in the sensation of power, "of course, Wesker has been dead for quite some time. Birkin, on the other hand, has only recently paid for his part in this. He and his wife worked at the Chemical Plant on the outskirts of town performing, shall we say, illicit research for Umbrella. Until they chose the path of the renegade and ended up destroying my beautiful city with their God-forsaken virus, that is!"

"Are you saying that Umbrella were working on some kind of virus, and that the virus is why this has happened?" she said, continuing her barrage of questions as the intrigue drew her in.

"You truly are a simpleton, aren't you?" he taunted, smirking darkly and savouring her bewilderment.

He delighted in teasing her with the information she so craved, revealing the secrets that he no longer cared to keep, presenting them to her like a drug that she was desperate to take. They were building, inexorably, to the moment when he would tire of her and send her to her death, unfulfilled and ignorant as she had ever been. To choose how someone would meet their death was true power.

"They call it the Tyrant Virus, though Birkin was working on an improved variant that he called 'God'," he informed her, watching as her eyes widened, in the throes of his narcotic, "Umbrella sent men to retrieve it and killed him in the process. His wife, Annette, sent their daughter to me, though why she thought I would want to baby-sit her little parasite after what she and her husband have done to me I can't imagine. Regardless, I haven't seen Sherry Birkin in quite some time; perhaps you've seen her, running about the place somewhere."

He watched as she bit her tongue, forcing herself not to respond, but her silence told her story. She had met the girl, perhaps not that long ago, and was probably trying to protect her. Children were notorious for feeding on the kindness of strangers, particularly during times of crisis; they could hardly fend for themselves, weak as they were. This female had probably formed some unwise sentimental attachment to the errant child and she, in turn, had clung to that, the better to ensure her own safety. It was fortunate for her that she had been able to find another to care for her after the death of her minders.

He recalled his own family with similar disdain. His wife and two sons had served him well in the past. They had given him a strong public image, which he had been able to use to cement his place as Chief of Police. The same strategy had worked for his father and countless other powerful men throughout history. Unfortunately, when the disaster occurred, he had been so distracted by the worsening situation within the city limits that he sometimes wouldn't call home for days at a time. It was only when he returned one evening to find the house empty that he realised they had abandoned him.

A note on the table had told him not to try to find them and, in a detached, emotionless way, wished him luck for the future.

That had been the last time he had left the precinct. While it made him furious to think that they would survive him, he was sure they would not last for long without the living only he was able to provide. In a way, he would have his retribution against them for their betrayal also; that thought was enough to salve his rage.

"It doesn't matter," he continued, when a response was unforthcoming, "there's no escape from this place for anyone; not Birkin, not his wife, not his daughter, and certainly not for you. Everyone's gonna die! I'm going to take you all with me."

The pistol clutched in his hand centred on her face and he savoured the exquisite expression of fear that appeared on her innately flawed features. Though he knew it couldn't be possible, he could almost hear her heartbeat quicken in her chest, another burst of adrenaline supplementing the high that had most likely been keeping her alive thus far. Unfortunately, her struggle for survival would end in failure. She cast around for some way to defend herself, to evade the coming death, but he could see that she knew the other weapons strapped to her back would not avail her. They were all too bulky to be brought to bear quickly and the slightest movement would seal her fate.

He ran his tongue across his parched, flaking lips and relished the moment, just as he had done so many times since the beginning of the tragedy. His mind recounted the sprawled bodies of the officers he had slain, and the anguish on their faces, the misery when they realised that it was him, the Chief of Police himself, who had shot them. And then the delight he felt as death ensnared them, their features hanging slack, their weak struggling turning to stillness, their blood pooling around them. Her demise would be no different, satisfying and invigorating.

She broke his concentration when she glanced up at something above him.

"What are you...?" he began to ask irritably, until the shadow fell over him, a long darkness cast by an immense figure standing directly behind him. Her expression transformed into one of absolute horror and she began to back away slowly, the gun aimed at her head seemingly completely forgotten.

He turned, finger tense on the trigger, rounding on whichever of Umbrella's monstrosities had entered the chamber. His anger at her flared, beside him with rage that she had led some virus-spawned abomination into his sanctuary. The Desert Eagle roared, a high calibre round blasting a wide hole in the wall of the chamber and showering the floor with brick dust and disintegrated plaster, the noise setting his ears ringing. He screamed as the creature tightened its grip, inhuman fingers slicing into the meat of his forearm and sending blood drooling in thick strings across his fingers. His blood-slicked digits twitched involuntarily and the weapon fell from his hand.

The monster was vaguely man-shaped, its entire right side having grown almost completely out of proportion. It had a bulbous, fleshy mass for an arm that ended in thick claws where the fingers had once been and a fat ridge of bone that jutted from its shoulder beside its head. Its face was haggard and scarred, the right side covered in coarse, mutated skin. It wore a lab coat, shredded by its growth and by an apparent hail of gunfire that had left it covered in thick, purple knots of regenerated tissue.

It had once been William Birkin.

Brian stammered incredulously, staring into the intact eye of the former Head Researcher as it glared back at him, a glimmer of humanity remaining, capable of human thought and human cruelty. Its talons transfixed his belly and he shrieked the shriek of a tortured animal. Blood ran out over the blades embedded in his gut and down, soaking the waistband of his trousers, the hem of his shirt, the bottom of his stylish, but dirtied, waistcoat. He could practically feel it filling his stomach, rising up his oesophagus like bile, spilling forth from his lips in choking sputters. The claws cleaved his flesh apart, tearing and shredding him at the stomach, but his screams were drowned to gurgles by the blood in his mouth.

Whatever the scientist had become, it released his arm from its malformed grip, and placed the thin, near-skeletal fingers around his throat, holding him upright and closing his windpipe. His eyes bulged in their sockets and his features turned violet as he began to suffocate, droning blood filling his head. A sensation like a thousand needle pricks ran down his face, his ears filling with buzzing and his vision fading into darkness. But the pain of oxygen starvation was nothing in comparison to the pure, excruciating agony as something began to tear in his midriff, growing with each passing moment.

He gaped wordlessly and then his body ripped apart, his already-bulging eyes almost bursting from their sockets at the sensation. His legs fell away beneath him, dangling on strips of meat from his body like a gruesome marionette, before dropping to the cold, stone floor. Blood oozed, thick and dark, along with other bodily fluids, from the opening where his lower half had been. Unidentified organs pulsed and throbbed before following gravity's inexorable nature, sliding onto the ground with wet, splattering impacts. A length of spinal column dangled freely from his ravaged torso.

The monster dropped him beside his severed lower half, his head lolling to the side limply. His left arm fell outstretched before him, two perfect spheres of crystal inlaid with cobalt-coloured patterning rolling from his palm and across the ground. In truth, he hadn't noticed that he had removed them from his pocket. He watched as they followed the trail of his blood, skittering to a halt in the metal grate that channelled away the gore from his hobby. A tide of crimson lapped at the glass eyeballs as they looked back at him, their lifeless gaze seeming almost to burrow into his dying mind.

And then the light died in his eyes, his empty gaze staring endlessly while the prosthetic orbs stared back, neither seeing the other.

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