In Esse In Perpetuum

AN: This is dedicated to all the Birkin-fic fans out there, who are desperate for more. Especially the ones known to me by leaving each a kind review for my last attempt: Hello Captain, Ramen Kitty, Shakhanna (who seems to be more of a Wesker fan, but what the hell!), Kerria and Dman (who isn't necessarily a Birkin fan, but someone I'd like to thank and encourage to keep on writing, regardless!) The last attempt was well-received and I'd like a repeat performance with this - but it's… well… a little different. See what you think!

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Floating…

Here, in this space, if space it was indeed, there was no concept of time. Time was irrelevant. Thought was irrelevant. Pain was irrelevant. Loss and hatred were irrelevant. Everything was irrelevant. It was just a void. A nothing that seemed to stream out into the furthest reaches of infinity in perpetuum. The self trapped in a world of formlessness in which you could do nothing. Choice was irrelevant. Action was irrelevant. Everything was irrelevant…

It was not calm, or serenity, or contentment. For in order to prescribe to a particular feeling, one has to be in a particular state of mind. Here, there was no concept of self - no state of mind as one would understand. It was all irrelevant. There was no need to feel, or to be. It was indescribable. It was incomprehensible. It was nothing.

For an indeterminate length of time, there was nothing but the void. Nothing but a blank, all-consuming darkness. Before, there had been something… but there was nothing resembling memory. Memory was irrelevant here. It hurt.

At one point, a very faint shimmer of light penetrated the shadows in the form of feelings. Of doubt and discomfort - faint echoes from beyond the shores of consciousness. Noises, it seemed. Strange noises. Something was wrong. The noises grew louder, faded and died. The feelings of doubt and discomfort did not. If anything, they had only been heightened and were now accompanied by apprehension…

So cold…

… and cold, which was strange, as with it, came more new sensations: fingers, toes, arms, legs, bare skin, the gentle rise and fall of a chest whilst… breathing. It was what he… yes… he… had been fighting against. He didn't want to come back. It hurt too much.

Please, not yet… Not yet…

Fighting, trying to regress back into nothingness, he found the urge to feel, to be, too strong. The darkness was fading. There was nothing he could do about it. The bright glaring light of consciousness pierced the veil. His eyes snapped open…

… and he screamed.

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There was something on his face, covering his mouth and nose. Frantically, he clawed at it with numb fingers for a horrible moment before realising that it was a rubber mask. He was surrounded by water and encased in a glass tube. Given his current situation, removing the very thing that was keeping him alive would not be particularly advantageous. Forcing himself to calm down, he drew in deep, long breaths through the oxygen mask and tried to gather his thoughts.

A stasis tube… I'm in a laboratory?

Looking around, it seemed so. Placing his hands, palm first, onto the cold glass, he could make out a steel autopsy table, draped with a sheet of crisp, white paper under a bright, white light, and a door at the other end of the room, sporting a familiar red and white emblem, centring in his slowly reddening field of vision.

Umbrella…

Now he remembered.

A cold wave of realisation flooded through him. He didn't want to go back. He couldn't go back. Not without hurting those who had hurt him and so many others for so long. Not without vengeance. He wanted to bring down Umbrella, to make them realise, to make them pay…

But how was he going to get out of here? Surely someone would be watching him even at this very moment from behind a monitor, ready with sedatives or even with a gun to put him out of his misery. For hours, he just stayed still, waiting - but no one came. Something was definitely wrong.

Suddenly, from nowhere, the room plunged into darkness and he felt himself being pulled inexorably forward by a swirling current of water through where the glass should have been. He fell to the cold floor of the laboratory with a muffled thud and the contents of the stasis tube rushed over him, flooding the room. For a long time, he just lay there, shivering and gasping for air, wondering vaguely why no-one had come to deal with him. If it had been him, he certainly would have noticed if the contents of a stasis tube had spilled - in fact, there was absolutely no chance of it even coming to that, unless…

The noises he had caught snatches of during his return to consciousness. They were the sounds of frightened people, of screams, of pain, of gunfire, of death and destruction and of too little, too late. He knew those noises only too well.

Shit…

A leak? He felt a thrill of horror as a back-catalogue of every possible Umbrella creation which could now be running amok outside passed through his mind. The worst part was, was that he didn't even know where he was, which meant he didn't know what he was up against. Even though this room was safe, there was no chance of staying here. He knew Umbrella. Eventually, they'd either send in a team to clean up or they would activate the fail-safe. He was going to have to find a way out of here.

Staggering upright on legs weak from lack of use, he grabbed the sheet of paper from the steel autopsy table and wrapped it around him like a towel. It may not have done for keeping warm, but he felt it necessary to salvage any vestiges of dignity he had left. Smiling grimly at the thought, he brushed strands of drying, hair away from his eyes with a pale hand. However, when he reached the door, he hesitated.

It doesn't matter… If you get caught, you deserve it after all you've done…

This was true. If he was killed, then he did deserve it. A fitting end. Though if he somehow managed to survive… uninfected… then he'd be able to exact his revenge on Umbrella. Simple.

If you're not already still infected…

He harboured no delusions as to why Umbrella was keeping him here. They were obviously planning to use him, if they had not already done so. To use him to try and find out about… about…

Bastards…

A reckless anger seized him. Stretching out a pale arm, he grabbed the handle, wrenching the door open and stepped out into the corridor, slamming the door shut behind him with a bang that echoed loudly into the shadows. Outside, the corridor was pitch black and he couldn't make out his own hand in front of his face. Cringing instinctively, he crouched low, waiting for an unidentifiable Umbrella something-or-other to leap out from the darkness and sink its virulous claws into him.

Instead, the lights came back on, after a fashion.

Baffled, he looked left and right, his watery, blue eyes red and stinging from his immersion in the stasis tube. There was nothing there. The door he had just come out of was on a corner of two long corridors perpendicular to one another, each dotted with doors leading off to other rooms. Low floor lights illuminated his surroundings with a cold, greenish glow. A little down the way, there was something encased in a glass box. He padded down the corridor in his bare feet, leaving a trail of water behind him and looked through the glass. Smiling, he realised that it was a map of the facility.

Excellent… At least I'll know what I'm up against…

Clutching at his makeshift paper clothing, he peered in at the map. His eyes were itching like hell.

North Sea Facility:

You are here.

North Sea Facility. Wonderful. As far as he could remember (everything was still very much a blur) that meant he was currently trapped on an oil rig halfway between Scotland and the Antarctic, and that the only way to get in and out was by helicopter. He thought he could remember that they had been developing BOWs for sea-warfare, the Leviathan Series, meaning shark, octopi and crab-like T-hybrids and possibly Albinoids. Not to mention the odd RE3 and the T-001 water adaptability experiments. But then, he wasn't quite sure. His head ached tremendously. Looking at the map, there was a red arrow pointing to the two corridors. It appeared he was currently in the B5 level - Basement Five, he surmised. The exit was on the ground floor along with a helicopter landing pad.

Terrific… Five floors of God-knows-what between myself and escape… and only back-up power, from what I can see of the floor lighting, which means no elevators…

And there was another question that had been lingering in the back of his mind. His eyes scanned the map for a certain room and - with a nod of grim satisfaction - he found it.

Q10, B5: Power Room.

Someone had to be hanging around in order to have turned off the power. If it was anyone from Umbrella - surviving researchers or a clean up team - then he didn't want to be hanging around out here waiting for them to put a bullet through his brain. The researchers' lodgings for the B5 level were a couple of doors down, just at the end before the power room. He'd go in there and try and find some clothes…

… and a few guns and a few more rounds of ammunition would be nice.

Suddenly, a shot rang out from one of the rooms further down the corridor. Immediately, his head whipped round to the source of the noise, and for a moment, he listened in silence, his heart pounding loudly in his chest. There was a shrill shriek and several more shots were fired. Cautiously, he started to pace toward the Researcher's Lodgings, in case anything unpleasant jumped out at him through the door. If it was what he thought it was - a RE3 fresh from its prison - then it could most certainly find a way out of the power room. With its heightened olfactory senses, it would have no trouble sniffing him out. His head was really beginning to hurt. Then, there was another shot, another shriek, this time sounding very final, and then silence.

Run…

Instinctively, his legs took over and he threw open the door to the Researchers' Lodgings and slammed it shut behind him. The sight and smells that greeted him in the room made him gag, and immediately, he slapped his hands over his mouth and nose.

Oh God…

The room was long and narrow, opening up at the opposite end into a larger living space for Umbrella employees. On his left and right were sets of capsule bunks stretching from floor to ceiling. Some of the bunks still held their unfortunate occupants, dead and rotting in varying stages of decay. Averting his eyes, he gingerly stepped over the body of a woman lying at his bare feet and yelped as he almost slipped on a puddle of dark, congealing blood. Almost at once, he regretted it. From round the corner, came a gurgling moan.

Shit…

His only chance was to make a dash for it.

Run forward… Find something to kill it with.

So he stumbled desperately past the bunks, still clutching at his paper sheet, into the living space ahead. In there was a television, a coffee table, atop which were magazines and old cups of coffee, a few sofas, a sink, kitchen facilities, a fire extinguisher… and lockers.

Unfortunately, a human viral carrier was blocking the way, a rotting mess of skin and bone shuffling forward, torn shreds of lab coat still clinging to its putrid flesh. Blind eyes coated with a white, eggy, mucous, stared, unseeing, at him, wanting only to tear chunks of raw meat from bone to satiate its voracious appetite. The sight of it made him stop and stare.

The T-Virus wasn't meant for humans… Look what it's doing… This is your fault… This is all your fault… This is what hundreds of people have died for… If it kills you, then it would be a fitting end… A fitting end… You're just as much a monster as this thing…

In a detached way, he noted how quickly it moved for something in such an advanced state of decay, how it was almost on him, its arms stretching out to receive him. He noticed that the skin on its forearms had sloughed off in chunks, bone glistening wetly through torn muscle fibre and tissue. There were teeth marks. Suddenly, it stumbled and hit the floor with a wet slap, snapping him out of his reverie. A gust of fetid air drifted up to greet him, and he shrank backwards, his icy blue eyes wide with horror, as calcareous fingers wrapped tightly around his ankle.

It's going to bite me… Need something… Anything…

With a last frantic lunge, he wrenched the fire extinguisher from the wall. The viral carrier moaned, irritated that its latest prize should attempt to run away, and went to plunge its broken teeth into fresh blood. Instead, it found its head knocked completely off course and being ground into the cold tiled floor of what was once its home. Fragments of bone and gore splattered across his face, but he kept on smashing the end of the extinguisher relentlessly into the carrier's head, again, and again, and again, terrified that it would get up. There was a loud, wet crack as its skull caved in, but he kept on and on and on until it had dissolved into a gristly pulp. Then, exhausted, he stopped, letting the extinguisher slip from his hands and fall to the floor with a hollow clatter.

I did this… This is all my fault… Everything is my fault…

Trembling violently from both fear and exertion, he walked over to the sofa and sat down with his head in his hands. Then, he threw up repeatedly until there was nothing else left to throw up and his sides ached and his lips stung. For a couple of minutes, he just sat there, staring at the floor and at the puddle of blood that was oozing its way toward his feet. When the little river of clotted crimson was just about to touch his bare feet, he blinked, stood up and walked over to the lockers.

Fortunately, they weren't locked. It would have been more than he could have handled at the moment if they had been, and he proceeded to ransack each locker of its contents. After a couple of minutes, he had salvaged a pair of jeans (two sizes too big for him), a white shirt, a pair of Reeboks (size nine) and a black rucksack - all of which he was now wearing. Also stuffed in lockers were two handguns (each fully loaded), a .45 Magnum (empty) and a first-aid kit. As a bonus, he found half a box of untouched Mars bars, which, as he had been in that stasis tube for god knows how long and was absolutely ravenous, didn't last any length of time. Another quick search lead to him finding some microwave meals in the fridge next to the sink that he could use if any complications arose and he needed something quick.

After doing a check of everything in his possession, he turned away from the lockers and headed back across the living space, past the bunk capsules - deliberately not looking at the floor where he'd left the dead carrier - and opened the door to find a young man with reddish-brown hair pointing a gun at him. There was a click and a flash of metal and instantly, the man fired. He fell to the floor and the shot went over his head. There was another click as the stranger reloaded and took a step forward, intending not miss this time…

"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" he called out hoarsely. "I'm not a zombie! Please! I'm not a zombie! Don't shoot…"

The man looked at him up and down, still training the gun at his head, and after what felt like an age, very hesitantly lowered his gun. The stranger took a tentative step forward and grasped his hand, hauling him to his feet.

"Sorry," the man grimaced, running a mucky hand through his hair, though clearly relieved to see another permanent resident of the land of the living. "It's been almost two days already and I guess I've gotten used to shooting everything that's walking in this shit hole."

Two days…?

The man offered a hand again and smiled.

"My name's Leon, what's yours?"

"William," he replied, shaking the man's hand - now known as Leon - and meeting Leon's steady blue gaze with his own. "My name's William…"

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AN: Oooh! Cliffhanger! There is so much potential for the proverbial mind-fuck in this story, there really is…

Now, I'm going to take the liberty of explaining myself because there's going to be some pretty shocked faces out there. My reasons for doing this are quite simple:

One, I like writing about William Birkin. It's a fun thing to do and not a lot of people do it. Two, if certain Resident Evil protagonists such as Albert Wesker, Dr Marcus and Alexia Ashford can be brought back (and there is a possibility of a reappearance from Steve Burnside,) then Umbrella, in their infinite wisdom, could certainly find a way to restore William Birkin (maybe through cloning him or some silly shit like that - I don't know, I'm no science buff - make up your own minds). Three, I have two papers due in by the end of my three week break, and this, in my mind, is the most productive way to procrastinate!

Now, I'm away to procrastinate some more by watching some TV. Thanks for reading. Also, if you could, leave a review on your way back into fanfictionland. It's probably the most non-canon thing I've ever written (I'm usually a hardcore canon-thumper) but, the idea has so much potential for messing with characters' heads that I just couldn't resist. For that reason alone, I'd like to know what you think.

Chapter two should be up sometime…

Thanks for reading.

- Ada K.