BOOK ONE:

What God Abandoned

Chapter 1: Final Moments

"It takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I'd been living, they asked me why - but there's no use in talking to people who have a have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people." - Ride, Lana Del Rey

The pain consumed her like a wildfire growing in her veins. Searing her organs and blurring her vision, all she knew was the agony drilling into her bones. She could hardly stand but staggered unsteadily forward, her heels smacking the concrete below her and sending a harsh echo back to her ears. Every second she could feel it worsening, feel every cell in her body being ripped apart by the mutagen. She wasn't a match, she had known it from the beginning. Not many people were, not even him...

"Why... when I've done so much? All for you..." She choked. Her breathing was beyond labored now, her lungs were failing and soon the rest of her organs would follow suit. "Albert... you said we'd change this world together! Why!?" Of course she knew the answer, but even in her final moments she stayed true to her dramatic personality.

She could barely make out two figures before her with her fading eyesight, it must have been that BSAA agent and his savage partner. Maybe if they heard her final words they would have the courage to do what she never could and kill that awful man.

"I thought they were partners?" She could hear the wild-woman say. Excella smiled bitterly through her gritted teeth. The same thought had crossed her mind several times, often as a way to reassure her that despite all of the bad things he did they were in it together. If someone had bothered to grant Excella a dying wish it would have been to go back a year and slap herself for making such stupid decisions. For investing all of her family's money. For falling in love.

That was the saddest part of it all, really. She loved him. Even then and there as she clung tightly to her abdomen in anguish for what he did to her, she still loved him; in a pathetically ironic way.

"Wesker doesn't give a damn about anybody but himself." Chris responded. At least the oaf got the picture, Excella thought. Wesker had recounted a few tales about his former S.T.A.R.S. colleague. She knew all about Chris Redfield, and if everything she had been told about him was true he just might be able to stop the bastard before it was too late.

A familiar voice melted through the speakers in a calm but assertive tone. The voice of her lover. Her betrayer. She had gone completely blind by now and her hearing was going fast, she prayed that man's disgusting voice wasn't the last thing she would ever hear.

Excella had been mentally checking off every symptom through some sick habit formed when she would watch their test subjects die on cold metal lab tables just inches from her. They had no dignity in their deaths nor a proper burial, and neither would she. It amused her that that of all things was what upset her the most. She would have laughed if her organs weren't failing.

If she was lucky the mutations would leave some semblance of her former self and she might be recognised by whoever came to clean up this mess; deep down she knew that was unlikely. In the off chance that Chris was able to stop Albert, the Tricell executives would have this entire incident written off as a terrorist attack and have every last inch of the Kijuju labs and ships incinerated. She would be unceremoniously piled up with the rest of the Majini and scorched.

It seemed almost fitting, being laid to a final rest in a pile of the sin she had only brought upon herself by trusting a man like Wesker. That wasn't the part that bothered her. It was the looming idea that after the day all the evidence was destroyed she would be removed from history. She had pursued this project in the first place so that her talents and efforts could finally be recognised. It was supposed to be payback for the arrogant executive pigs who refused to let her prove herself. She was going to make millions off of this new drug Albert had promised her; it was going to cure cancer and she was going to change the world with it. They were going to change the world.

How had things gone so terribly wrong? She couldn't remember now and she didn't care to dwell on it in her final moments. In a few short minutes her body would give up its fight against Uroboros completely and she would become something else, an abomination of the Devil himself. She prayed to every god she knew of that she would lose consciousness before she mutated. Remaining sentient after Uroboros took over was a fate worse than hell. If only Nina could see her granddaughter now, in the prime of her life, her chromosomes being unsystematically torn to shreds.

'This is the price of your ambition.' Excella could hear her grandmother's voice in her head. Her eyes welled up with tears as she remembered Nina Travis. A cough racked her body and she dropped to her knees. The end was coming, she could feel it. Her thin frame wasn't strong enough to hold off the cancerous plague, she only had a minute or two left to her life.

Her sharp fingernails tore the delicate fabric of her Alexander McQueen dress as she doubled over in another intense wave of pain. Is this worse than the pain of childbirth? I guess I'll never find out she thought bitterly.

Excella's mind was racing. This truly was the end, wasn't it? Everything she had ever done all led up to this moment. All of her sins, good deeds, ambitions, dreams, actions performed and words spoken added up to this point in time. It was disappointing. Depressing. Embarrassing. Everything she was and ever would be had been depreciated to nothing by a madman, and she had nobody to blame but herself.

She felt a wave of relief as her hearing began to wane, saving her from having to listen to his voice in her final moments. Shutting her eyes tightly, Excella let the memories of the last 26 years flood her mind and grant her some peace and solace from her fate...