Over time, Wesker finally admitted to himself that Sherry would never carry his child.
An infant bred of G and his own experimented DNA would be a perfect testing ground: instead, over time, with all of the injections Sherry needed on a daily basis ripened her aging hair from a soft corn silk to a wheaten blonde, her bright cerulean eyes, so like Annette's to a duller navy, changing her soft, porcelain skin to a thin, pink, sheer delicacy.
Her initial hatred faded to a dull, fidgeting endurance, until eventually Wesker resorted to artificial insemination, knowing it was not her fault conception was slow. As maturity overcame the girl, she began to look less and less like the woman he loved so desperately, until he merely saw her with fondness.
Until the day in 2002, when he knew it was time to give her up.
She was no longer the child of Annette. Sherry had transformed until she was unrecognizable, an aloof, world-weary girl, with dark eyes that watched him with an odd mixture of malevolence and a shaming fondness.
Still, every time he laid eyes on her, he couldn't help but dream of Annette, the woman he'd once desired above all. Sherry was her legacy, Albert's legacy: but he knew he could no longer use her, no longer deal with her moody, adolescent silences and her infertility, her rejection. As a man of science, his foolish moods were not becoming.
So he sent her to one of his pawns.
Graham was a man of rare honor, a politician who was familiar with Umbrella. Sending Sherry there would be ideal: a safe home where she would never be suspected.
And so her identity was changed, morphing his darling G virus, his darling Annette, his Sherry into an altogether unfamiliar creature. Dressing her in a hideous schoolgirl skirt, he handed her a mirror.
She burst into tears.
Not allowing her to look in a mirror since his acquisition of her, it was a shock. She was no longer a curvaceous, slowly budding child. She was now a young woman, with dark eyes and pink coloring, her face completely unfamiliar to her. Her face was a strange and foreign land to her, unexplored and novel.
And just as all new discoveries were, she hated it virulently.
"Why didn't you tell me I'm ugly?" she demanded of him, her odd eyes flashing angrily.
Truth be told, when she was angry, she was closer to his memories. Riling her caused him relief, a sweet peace within that he could not retain from anything else. "Does it matter?" he drawled innocently.
Any fear she held had long ago faded. "Of course—no. I suppose it doesn't."
Her calm, melancholy answer surprised him. "You've come to the proper conclusion, although I can't fathom how."
"I'm stuck here. I'm just a toy. It doesn't matter if toys are ugly. They get thrown out anyway."
Feeling stung, he answered bluntly: "You were a toy. Now, you're going to be a real girl Pinocchio. You're leaving."
"What?"
She was a delight, his pride and joy. Letting her go was difficult: but she was not his Annette, and she could no longer be his Sherry.
"You're leaving." He drawled, keeping his tone level, bored.
"Where?" Bewildered, and oddly enough, injured, tears welled up.
Looking into her eyes, he replied, his voice level and mocking: "You're a real girl now, Ms. Birkin. In fact, you're now Ashley."
"What?" she repeated, shocked.
"So eloquent in the face of surprise, aren't we? Your name is Ashley Graham. You have been attending a prestigious boarding school for several years. Your father is a senator."
"How is this even possible?"
"My dear, you of all people should realize by now, that anything is possible in this world."
She looked at him, her strange eyes filled with hate and tenderness. "Will I ever see you again?"
Albert wouldn't fight his urges. He was a man who knew what he desired, who knew what he deserved. Looking at the strange, otherworldly creature before him, the complex emotions of kinship, of fatherhood battled the lust within him.
She was so like her mother.
But he was coming to realize she was her own person as well.
"You aren't really one who reacts well to shock, are you?" he asked the quiet girl before him gently. "You will become this man's daughter, you will forget me, and you will be happy."
Lies, lies, lies. For a split second, he almost hated himself, almost confessed. How strange that this young woman could guilt him so thoroughly, without even an inkling of his intentions.
In Spain, a virus had been rediscovered, recreated. Osmund Saddler and Ramon Salazar, two mysterious names of the perpetrators behind what they were calling "Las Plagas".
And 'Ashley' was his ticket to finding this, to creating his ultimate weapon.
Albert had a plan. Sick of death and destruction, of being Umbrella's pet, he had concocted an ultimate plan to return the world to perfection, to weed out the insignificant and create a world beyond imagination, of the genetically superior, of those who would lead humanity into a golden age.
This was a conception far beyond the level of his inferiors, those who had chosen to play with Lisa Trevor and never seen the connotation beyond Tyrant.
If Nemesis, or his beloved Tyrants could be destroyed, so could anything else. Albert did not want a horde of undead wandering about: he planned to save humanity from its own polluted DNA.
And if Sherry couldn't help him, he might as well spare her from his madness.
She was gone now, and he was left to his madness.
Within the facility he constructed was nothing but emptiness. Surrounded by lab rats and test tubes, he felt himself reach the limits of insanity, fantasizing of Sherry, dreaming of Annette.
He took drugs specifically made to allow him to sleep.
She haunted him, and which one it was, he was not sure. Dark eyes flashed to bright blue and back again, long legs wrapped about him, slender arms held him. Drowsing, he kept the visions with him even as he slowly woke from his tranquilized slumber. Arousal followed him with every blink into darkness, and he could not decide if it was Annette, her long, lean body tensed against his, or Sherry, her long hair brushing against him. His fantasies did not become him.
Occasionally, he couldn't even tell the two apart, their breasts mewing for his attention, their throats exposed, joining together in a familiar rivalry to please him.
Until he woke, sweating, furious with his lack of control with these two women.
It was beyond his control.
He upped his dosage.
Ashley Graham sat in her new room, the unfamiliar scent of bacon cooking rising beneath her. She decided to become a vegetarian.
Rather than becoming accommodated to her life as a rich young girl, Sherry felt herself often nauseous, miserable, and despite her luck and bright future, lonely.
She missed Albert Wesker.
At the luxurious private school she attended, she was new, and odd. Her strange moods, her quiet demeanor, her high voice, gave her a reputation of being different, at an age where different wasn't flattering.
Boys spoke to her, girls ignored her, and teachers watched her with consternated expressions. She missed Albert Wesker, with his dry remarks and his uncaring mellow tones, his arrogant attitude and his intelligence that angered her and occasionally made her feel inferior. Missing him was odd: usually, she couldn't wait for him to leave her, to stop touching her and roll off her. Usually, she hated him. Instead, now, his sunglasses played over in her memory, the way they caught the light, the way his dry laugh rumbled in his chest.
He was a panther, and she prey, the way he hunted her, the way he stalked her mind. It was not love: for she sensed instinctively that he did not belong to her. It was not hate: she missed him desperately.
Perhaps it was kinship, a friendship that she missed. Her father figure, the initiator of her life disappeared as quickly and as startlingly as he had come into it.
Graham rarely bothered to ask questions. He behaved as if she were a visiting niece: he knew her background but not her mind, and asked her oddments like "what is your favorite food?" and other such foolish, useless things.
Albert never bothered to care what her favorite food was, but he knew her inside and out.
How could she miss the man she had for so long hated? How could she feel such a fond memory for the man who raped her every night and touched his tongue to the backs of her knees, and kissed the back of her neck softly, gently, because he knew her body better than she knew her own?
She had been a tool. When her body had not accepted his caresses, he turned to artificial means.
She dreamt of him, never knowing quite why, just of the few times when he slipped off his shades, revealing his intense, bright eyes. They pierced her, those eyes, and were filled with such power, a mesmerizing enigma.
Until the day she was taken.
Two years, nearly to the day, after she'd been adopted so suddenly, by her father, the newly elected President of the United States, she was whisked once again from the world.
The day had been warm, but cloudy, recovering from a storm the previous night. Ashley felt herself wandering the streets leisurely, traversing the familiar streets of her college town. Spring was coming easily and steadily, with patches of green poking through the cobbled streets. A few cars drove by slowly, but mostly silence permeated the air. Cold, but not as chilly as usual, the light breeze felt good. Gray and green. Fitting, since she herself felt a bit like a contradiction.
Her schoolbooks weighed heavily on her shoulder, so she adjusted the straps. Her laundry-day outfit was itchy and uncomfortable. Days like these were the worst. Since she hated these two articles of clothing, they usually ended up as the only ones that remained clean. Even her number of clean socks dwindled down on these days. Laundry was one chore she hated more than anything.
Rounding a corner, only a block from her dorm, Ashley blinked. A tall, broad man stood before her, suddenly. "Sorry," she apologized automatically, stepping out of the way.
A blinding pain suddenly exploded on the side of her face, and she didn't see any more.
Jack Krauser watched the girl crumple to the dirty concrete, scooping her up quickly, messily, and quickly carrying her to the car. Placing her in the front seat, and arranging her hair and outfit so she'd look like she was only sleeping, he buckled her seat belt and climbed to the driver's seat, speeding away.
The process had taken less than a minute, and exactly like he had planned, there was only one person watching.
Through the rearview mirror, he watched as the Secret Service member dialed, until they drove out of sight.
Sherry was woken by the screaming of the jet as they flew over the ocean. Her arms were unchained, her legs free. But there was nowhere to go, and nowhere to escape to.
"Wh…Wha…" shakily, she tried to formulate a protest. Despite the terror burgeoning in her stomach, and the helplessness that made her toes curl with rage, she could not react.
The muscular man turned towards her, his eyes a hard and fiery blue. A jagged scar ripped across his cheek, red and raw. Quaking, she tried to hide her fear. Because only two years ago, she had been Sherry Birkin. She was Ashley, now, though, not Sherry, and this wasn't about her blood, or her father.
Rather, it was about her father, the president. The idea of her father being president had amused her at first. Albert Wesker had hardly planned that when he fostered her off on Senator Graham. Yet now it scared her. She'd been promised freedom and safety, and a new life. This icy feeling that vibrated from her feet to her face, numbing her, was not new. What she felt now, she had felt once before, years and years ago. Sherry's eighteenth birthday had passed in January, but Ashley's twenty-first birthday would be this December. Ashley, though, hadn't been around when Raccoon City had been infected.
Sherry liked being Ashley, because Ashley hadn't seen the death or watched the dogs. Ashley wasn't infected. It was her, only her. Sometimes, when she woke up, she would be Sherry. Only, she wasn't supposed to be Sherry. This was the sort of thing that happened to Sherry. When she was Ashley, these things didn't happen because of the Secret Service and her father and her college friends. Ashley had brown eyes. Ashley wore contacts. Sherry had twenty-twenty baby blues.
"You're pro'ly wonderin' what's happenin'." He drawled, his pinched, masculine face contorting. "Well, you don't need to know. Just know we ain't gonna hurt you… much. You'll be safe'n sound, soon enough." The malevolent grin that accompanied his promise seemed raw with deceit, and Sherry's heart stopped. A kidnapping? Ransom? This could happen to Ashley. Something as terrible and wicked as this could still happen to her, because Ashley was the president's daughter, not because Sherry was heir to the G virus.
Despite herself, she felt safer. Ashley had friends and family and connections. Sherry had re-established contact with Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, but that was it. They did not know she was Ashley. Maybe one day she could tell them, but not any time soon. It was dangerous. Everything was just too dangerous and undecided.
"Might as well eat somethin', kid." The man spat, getting up and walking over to the pilot's section. "You're in for the long haul."
Trying to resist, she nodded and curled up, her knees tucked behind her arms. She rocked in the fetal position, looking at the tray. A bottle of water and a tray of sausages, cheese, and crackers lay, with a dull knife. She waited for what felt like hours. It was probably five minutes.
Cutting the creamy cheese and spreading it on the cracker, she bit into it. Growling prematurely, her stomach rumbled as she swallowed. Dehydrated, she drank half the bottle of water before she realized it.
Taking a sausage and biting into it greedily, she eyed the interior of the jet warily. It seemed safe, at first glance, and average. Try as she might, she couldn't understand what was happening. In action movies, the victim always figured out what was happening before death. Perhaps her inability to comprehend her sudden situation would save her. Hoping superstitiously that this was true, she suddenly felt nausea overcome her, and fell asleep in her seat, curling up to fight against the chilly air-conditioning.
She captivated him.
The child's wide blue eyes gazed at him in terror, filled with distrust. Her small hands trembled as she glared, trying so futilely to be brave. The rumpled garment she wore was stamped with the symbol of the United States government.
"Where is she?" her small voice was shrill with fear. The child of his late friend, William, had become to blossom into a woman who, quite fortunately, resembled Annette.
Pardoning the tiny, winged brows framing her eyes, she was a miniature copy of Annette, down to the false bravado.
Albert Wesker smirked to himself, fascinated by the child Ada Wong had brought him. Sherry Birkin had remained in a government facility for two years, until reaching the maturity required of what Albert wanted.
Once straight hips curved out generously, her small bottom pert and fresh, rosy cheeks whitened by abject confusion and fright.
She had eyes a man could drown in.
"Ada?" he drawled careless, adoring the trepidation drowning within those impossibly blue eyes. "She was merely a messenger… the bringer of goods. I am the man you are going to be with, for a very… long… time. Do you remember me, Sherry?"
It was obvious she did not. More the better, in Albert's opinion, for the less she recalled, the more convenient it would be for him to use her.
"My name is Albert, Sherry, and from this point on, I am the only person whom matters."
The teenager's smooth, unlined face wrinkled with horror. Emotions flashed through her mind, showing on her face as clearly as if she were a monitor. Confusion, terror, anger, sickness, heart-stopping mind-numbing sickness that looked as if it were about to overwhelm her.
"Wha- what do you mean, - sir?" she added the title at the end, hoping to flatter him, he noted amusedly.
Albert did not know what caused his reaction, but he slowly bent his head towards her and kissed her delicate, white nape and whispered to her, keeping his voice a low, terrifying whisper: "You are mine now."
Sherry woke with a jolt at the clear, overpowering memory, sweat beginning to gather at her armpits, hands, and feet. Even the soft skin behind her knees were uncomfortably damp, even though the rest of her was chilled.
The blonde man sat across the way, throwing his knife in the air and catching it, slowly, repetitively, his steadily movements without a break or a catch, just the even stroke of his fingers through the air, blade flashing. She shivered at the power behind the easy movement, wondering if that knife was to be used on her. Her blood was something that belonged in her body, not in the air, nor on her skin, and certainly not on the sharp, gray blade.
He caught her looking at him, and snorted. "Don't be scared, kid, this ain't meant for you."
This time, he did not seem to be lying. That should've made her feel better, but the easy the words drawled so condescendingly from those pinched, angry lips made her feel even more afraid of what was to come.