I don't think I had ever felt so happy to wake up in my whole entire life. As I drifted off to sleep the night before, I thought to myself how much easier my life would be if I didn't wake up again. I wanted to wake up by all means, but I didn't think I would. Despite all my wounds being nearly fully healed except some skin paleness, I still thought I would die in my sleep. I stood up and stumbled over to one of the mirrors on the labs bench. I still felt very weak and very disorientated, but weirdly enough, I hadn't felt healthier at any point in my life. I stared in the mirror at my face, the paleness had started to go down and I looked about ninety five perfect normal. The C-virus could be a medical marvel if it could do what it did to me to everyone. I mean, think of how many people are injured and left burnt and scarred in awful accidents, the C-Virus could give them normal lives again. I was thinking about how much I could help change the world with the knowledge that I had, completely ignoring the facts that one, I had no enhanced C-virus left and by the look of things it was completely out of my system and two, I had no way to escape the oil rig that I was trapped in. Once that thought had sunk into my mind, my depression crept back to me and engulfed me once again. I was drowning deeper in depression than I was the ocean, considering I was at least one thousand feet down I think I was pretty depressed.

Despite relatively happy thoughts about Chris the previous day, the day later all I could think about was how badly he treated me throughout China. He constantly made me feel like I was a complete waste of space. Despite him making me feel like he wanted me to escape the last time I saw him, all I could hear playing through my mind was "fall inline soldier". That actually terrified me, truly terrified me. I actually needed a few seconds to regain some composure before I could follow him after that. Why did he treat me with so much hate? He acted like he cared for me, when I sealed him in the escape pod he was begging me to open the door. Was it just because he would look like a terrible captain if he lost every last one of his men? Did he only want me to survive to save some of his credibility? I managed to convince myself that the depressing thoughts which were torturing my mind were the actual truth. I started looking around the lab more, kicking chairs and tables in my frustration.

Whilst kicking around innocent lab materials and mentally murdering myself, I thought about how long I was inside the cocoon for. Before this I had never really thought about the duration I was actually inside for in detail, before I started smashing up the lab that is. I was more or less completely healed. My arm would have had to rot off and my new one grow from the base of my shoulder, which along with my face and other wounds would have had to take a massive amount of time. Surly if I was inside for weeks, months or even years. Chris would have come for me? I once told him how much I hate being alone, during a battle in Africa where I was a clean-up squad member and the first time I met and worked with Chris. Chris and I got separated and a bunch of Majini cornered us. He used an assault rifle and killed them all with the same clip. I broke down in tears after that, I thought I was going to die then and there. Chris pulled me up and lent me against the wall; he took his glove off and wiped my tears away with the back of his hand. He dragged me to an abandoned building, which thank god, was Majini free. We sat down and spoke all night about all our fears, mostly how much we fear that being in the BSAA could be the end of us. I told him there about how much I hate being on my own. It all stems from my childhood; I went camping and got lost like a stupid little child and slept against the tree in the pouring rain, all alone with nothing around me but darkness. That completely messed me up for life, since then, loneliness has been something which has made me emotionally and physically drained. Chris told me about how much losing his soldiers affect him. He told me about how many people have sacrificed their lives for him, the start of his nightmare in the mansion. Richard Aiken, who was a member of S.T.A.R.S Bravo team, saved Chris by pushing him out of the way when a Neptune, or as Chris called it a Zombie Shark, came to attack him. Richard was killed instantly but Chris survived along with other S.T.A.R.S members. Since then, Chris's team have been dropping like flies, he lost Jill Valentine and managed to get her back, but that was a rare exception, most of the time, Chris would lose someone and they would stay lost. I would do anything than be on my own, yet to save someone who didn't even like me, I injected myself with an enhanced strain of a deadly virus just to save them, and now I am on their list of the lost. Don't you just love poetic irony?

I thought after I saved his life more times than I can count, he would at least have had the decency to come for my body and give me a proper burial. Granted, he thought that I had been caught in the explosion in the rig and I would have been hard to find. But at least try for me. I only wanted him to try and find me again. But obviously not, I completely convinced myself that he did not care for me, my depression turned in to bitterness and I was covered head to toe in self-pity. The lab I was in was very large and was in a semicircle shape. As I walked around the bend I noticed a large test tube, the words written on it 'Project Ada' instantly caught my attention, for obvious reasons. Numerous files and memos were littered around the test tube in question and I gathered them all up, "some real interesting reading here" I said to myself.

I sat down on the floor, with my back against a computer stand, actually a lot more comfortable than it sounds. I opened the first memo and started reading the complicated serums and strains of viruses that were used in "Project Ada". After reading through chemical information that made no sense to me, I came across a file that had photographs of Ada Wong. I say file it was more like a complete album. Each of the photos seemed to range from different periods in time. One I noticed was from a Racoon City street camera; it was just Ada walking through the street and was dated 1998, shortly before the T-Virus outbreak began I assumed. Next pictures include her fighting a Tyrant creature on what appears to be a Racoon City highway, next she is using her grapple gun to hang on to a helicopter container. Each of the pictures was taken from CCTV cameras from Racoon City, before its destruction. The next page was dated 2005, in the photographs she was wearing a very high cut red dress whilst in an area which was dated as "2005, Spain, Los Illuminados Incident". Wow, were the only words that came to mind. Someone had a very bad obsession with her, up to the point of practically stalking her, enough pictures of her in there to fill entire walls, how creepy was that? After putting down that photo album I picked up another file. This time the picture inside was of a young blonde woman and security advisor Derek C Simmons. The pictures after show more pictures of the blonde woman who according to this file was named 'Carla Radames'. She was project Ada's biggest success. I then saw pictures on how the C-Virus completely mutated her in to a clone of Ada Wong, everything down to fingerprint was completely moved over to Carla's body. Just like tracing paper. She, like me was birthed from a cocoon after the virus infested her body. Just like me, she was completely healed during the transformation. According to the paperwork, a scar from Carla's childhood was completely healed during the transformation, I then checked my left leg to inspect a scar from training years before and to my surprise, it was completely gone and nothing but a pale outline was in its place.

My thoughts from the previous nights started to return, this time about the two Ada's. One of them had to be Carla according to the research and judging by her coldness towards Leon, I bet it was the Ada who was wearing blue, the Ada who was leading Neo-Umbrella, that was the Ada or should I say the Carla who killed all of my teammates. I felt bad whilst thinking about the Ada we saw on the ship wearing the red outfit. I was shooting at an innocent woman. I had no idea so I shouldn't really feel bad. But why did she not once think to talk to Chris and I and explain the situation. Granted we wouldn't have believed her but when we saw them both together, that would have proved it. Women, complicated creatures, this is the sole reason I am happy to be gay.

That thought alone made me think of Chris again, all I could think about was how much I wanted him, and how much he hated me. It was clear to me then that he did not care for me at all. He threw me around in China and treated me like complete shit. The only reason he didn't want me to die was because it would look bad on his position as captain. I stood up and carried on walking around the lab, standing on test tubes which were littering the floor and I was causing more destruction with each step. I noticed another door which required a Neo-Umbrella Keycard. I looked through every draw, spare lab coat, and cupboard, anyplace a Keycard would be. At last I finally found it, ironically, it was Carla's, or used to be Carla's. I used it and entered the room, this one being the worst room of all. Every space filled with nothing but test tubes and poor bastards unfortunate enough to be locked inside. C-Virus test subjects seem to be written on absolutely everything in this room. Were they experimenting on fish or something? Captain I'm the best person ever, told me in Africa about T-Virus sharks he ran into during the mansion incident, where he lost Richard many years ago. I stood there and started thinking about Haos. Was that hideous lump of jelly just a C-virus pumped fish? I kind of feel pity for it if that's the case, no creature should be forced to be evil just because some sick bastards want it that way. The same way dogs shouldn't be forced to fight for others amusement, I stood there frustrated, thinking all the thoughts that some animal nut from PETA would think.

This lab was very dramatic in size, just like the other one but this time, it was just a long straight room, the end, completely out of sight to me at that point. I was just walking around staring aimlessly at the fish locked inside the test tubes, I felt like a kid in an aquarium. I approached a portrait on the wall. The portrait was of a man, who looked youthful but also old, like he knew more than his years said. He had slicked back blonde hair and a dark pair of shades resting on his eyes. Looking at the shades I instantly knew who he was, he was Albert Wesker or to people who don't know him, a lunatic who tried to destroy the world. Did the people working here look up to Wesker as some sort of example? If that is true then I genuinely worry about people in this world because people like Wesker aren't something to admire. Chris told me back in Africa about the mansion incident in severe detail and how Wesker lured two S.T.A.R.S teams to their deaths. Only four out of twenty two survived. Wesker was scum, he blackmailed Chris's friend Barry into helping him carry out his plan to separate S.T.A.R.S around the mansion, by using Barry's family as bait. He also tried to kill Rebecca Chambers numerous times before the mansion incident, while she was looking for clues to the Arklay Mountain happenings on a derailed train, after she met Chris, Wesker shot her at close range to which she only survived due to her bullet proof vest.

Those people were his team, he was the captain and he watched as they each died like pigs in a slaughter. Chris still carries such a burden of that incident, hell, the only reason I know anything about it is because he hit an emotional wall and poured his heart out to me. He listed so many people that he had lost in missions, I wonder if he had added me on to that list yet, or maybe he's just forgotten, after all, I wasn't nothing to him, just a shoulder to cry on and a bag to punch.

The portrait of Wesker, which to be quite honest, was freaking me out, seemed to be in a gold frame, which was very thick. Using the Umbrella cardkey I obtained earlier, I tried to pop the picture off the wall; I had a hunch that there would be more to it than just a simple picture. I was again, completely right. The picture slid off and I threw it to one side, genuinely not caring if it broke or was damaged in anyway. Behind was a solid steel door, wonderfully enough, it needed a passcode. I really didn't have the patience to go looking through this lab for a scrap of paper. I punched the door a number of times to let out my frustrations. I then lent on it and slid to the floor, feeling the cold steel cool my back from the other side of my shirt. My moods were going up and down like a yoyo. One minute I was happy and positive about progressing further to escaping from this damn place and the next, after one set back, I was ready to completely kill myself. Punching everything around me and causing more destruction to the already unstable Umbrella Lab. How did the world come to this? Why was everything around me death or destruction? I was lucky to be alive and lucky to be sitting in that place, but considering how empty and alone it was, I wasn't lucky at all. I could be dead I thought to myself, but with how much emotional trauma I was going through then, death looked like the much more peaceful option. I checked my holsters and realised I had lost all of my weapons except my magnum. This was most likely because it was the smallest of all my weapons and didn't fall out during the events of the previous day.

I opened the round chamber and noticed two bullets left. I thought about how I could end it all. Every bit of pain that I felt at that moment could all be wiped away with one bullet, like how a classroom board is wiped away once the bell rings ready for the next day. I ran the cool metal end of the gun along the surface of my fingers. I felt every mark on the gun, ranging from scratches from where I had been in battle with Javo and other mutations, to the marks I scratched in myself so my gun had that all important sense of character. I next, put the gun in to my previously damaged hand and the way it felt was so different. It was like the nerves in my hand were brand new; I could feel each individual crease and dent in the gun in so much more detail. It excited my finger tips and made my hairs stand on end. It was genuinely like my new arm had only just come out of the womb. Like it had to grow and experience touch and pain all over again. My old arm had scratches and scars from battles, you know, it was my arm from my experiences, but this new one was just plain, completely empty, like a mannequin in a shop window.

I threw my gun to one side; I needed to get it out of my sight. It was too tempting, too easy to pull that trigger and have some relief and an escape of sorts from there. I decided to start searching for the passcode to the door behind the portrait of Wesker. I started rooting through every cupboard, draw and any place I could think a passcode would be, just like earlier when I was looking for the Labcard key. I noticed on the wall, the floor number was B-V05, I entered that hoping it would open. It didn't work, which I subconsciously knew it wouldn't. I mean, how easy would that have been? I tried to be cleverer about it. I entered Haos on the keypad, it still didn't work. I used anything and any name I could think of, even typing in Wong, hoping it would work and of course it didn't.

Hitting this brick wall, I decided to read through the papers about Ada, that I kept with me from earlier. Looking through them for any key dates that I could find, I entered Carla's birthday which didn't do anything, I entered Ada's after, that didn't do anything either. I was above frustrated by that point, I looked at my Magnum and it looked like the much better option than it previously did, it looked like the best option then, by this time it was looking like my only option. My mouth was dry and my stomach was empty. I couldn't take the hunger or worse, the loneliness eating me up more. Then I decided, I was going to enter the date from one of the captions under a picture of Ada and Simmons. The date was 7/3/98. If that didn't work then I was going to execute myself, using the magnum that saved my life to end my life. Seemed a very fitting way to go, considering I had no way out of there at all, other than a door that was sealed, I literally had nothing left to do than blow my brains out or starve if this date was insignificant. I stood up to enter the date in the keypad, magnum in my other hand for the inevitable moment I would have to use it. The keypad turned green, the door then opened. I couldn't believe it, it actually opened. The date being significant because it's the date Simmons and Ada first met, I assumed anyway.

Is it wrong that I wanted the door not to open? Is it wrong that I saw this as an easy way to escape? I felt, as crazy as it sounds, excited to die. I wanted to feel the relief and not the darkness that I'm walking around with right now. Putting my gun in my pocket, to hide the temptation, I stepped through the hole in the wall and in to the room that was now accessible to me. Another lab, more papers, more research, more test tubes and no way out. Fucking brilliant, after all of that it was another dead end.

I thought the psychological issues I had before were bad, this time, it got much worse. After looking around the lab I noticed a picture on the wall. It featured about twelve people in front of a helicopter. The caption underneath, "S.T.A.R.S Alpha team" sent a shiver into my body. Eight of the people had black rings around their respective pictures, which I assumed meant they had died. The pictures that didn't were of Chris, Jill, Barry and Wesker. Just looking at Chris, looking at his eyes in that picture made replays of China play through my ears, I put my hands over my ears and screamed. I couldn't take it; I couldn't take hearing his voice say such awful things to me. I punched the picture which left a visible mark over Chris and accidently some of Jill. I threw the picture on the floor and walked as far away from it as possible. I could hear Chris laughing at me in my head, calling me "weak" and "pathetic". He also told me that Ada killed the wrong people and he actually wished I died and Finn lived as he was a "much better soldier". What was happening to me? I was going through a complete mental breakdown, looking back on it. I kept crying and destroying everything around me. The only thing I was thinking about was killing myself. I wanted to get that gun open my mouth and empty it in to my brain. Just so I could stop hearing Chris laughing at me. Was this down to the C-Virus? Or was it because I couldn't keep being mentally strong anymore? Throughout Edonia I had to constantly be strong, even seeing my friends die in front of me, I still stood unfazed by it. In the months I spent looking for Chris I had to be strong, just hoping and praying that I would find him again. Then in China I had to be stronger still, enough to actually give myself that shot of C-Virus to save Chris because I felt so strongly for him and I wanted him to be alright. I just couldn't do it anymore, strength came from within and I had nothing inside me left but hate and anger. All I could hear in my head was voices telling me what I didn't want to hear. I couldn't even cry by that point, my tear ducts swelled to the size of peas, not one tear could come out. I genuinely cried all my tears, sounds really melodramatic I know but it was the absolute truth. I still had this whole laboratory to go and explore. For all I knew, there could be an escape pod right at the end of this room, but my legs and my body just couldn't move. I tried to take a step and just collapsed on the floor, I curled my body up in to a ball and just lay there, I could still hear Chris's voice in my head, telling me about how much I failed, I could see my Magnum on the floor beside me, it fell out my pocket when I fell down a few minutes prior. I reached for it and put it to my head, my fingers would not even let me pull the trigger, I couldn't do it physically and I don't think I could have done it mentally. I was weak, I was pathetic. That much was clear up to that point. Just like the Chris in my head told me.

After about an hour I finally stood up again, my face was red and stained with tears. I felt so much better for letting it all out, the voice in my head also stopped, which I was thankful for, I could not take hearing it for much longer. I walked through the lab, this one much longer than the previous ones. The end of the lab contained a massive test tube. The most eerie test tube that I had ever come across in my life, with one unfortunate victim strapped inside.

T-Veronica test subject was written on the test tube. According to the corresponding paperwork, the subject or should I say you, Steve, have been sealed inside for fifteen years, while numerous experiments were performed upon you in order to remove this extinct virus from his body. You were taken and signed over to this underwater section of Umbrella by the one and only Albert Wesker, you may remember him? He always wore sunglasses. After Umbrella fell apart, the labs were sold at private auctions, which is probably where Simmons and Carla acquired it for their research. While I peered inside I noticed that you looked about 17, despite the fact you should be in your 30s but being locked in the cryogenic freezing pod, meant you didn't age. You are still the same age that you were when you were sealed inside. According to the paperwork, you were ready for incineration due to every strand of the virus being removed from your body. You were completely useless to them now; I wonder why Neo-Umbrella didn't use you. Unless they were saving you for something else like a supreme Javo or some other weird abomination.

Next to the test tube, there was a button which said "Release Subject". I saw this as the perfect way to stop being alone down there. I mean, sure we would both starve to death down here, but at least I wouldn't die alone if I let you out. I pressed the button and the test tube tilted forward and the middle parted ways and opened. You then slid into my arms. This caused me to fall on the floor with your unconscious body on top of me. I pushed you off me then took my body warmer off and put it over your body to keep at least a small section of you warm. I sat in a chair opposite watching you sleep, praying you would eventually wake up. I couldn't wait to hear someone else's voice. Your eyes started to flicker and I watched intensely as you began to wake up. "You asked who I was; you asked what led to me being down there with you and why you were let out of your pod". "One massive explanation later and here we are". "So Steve, I've told you my entire story, why I am down here and the events that led up to it". "So tell me, what's your story, how did you end up down here? How were you infected with the T-Veronica virus all those years ago? Do you even remember anything? You've done nothing but sit in silence and stare at me throughout the last few hours while I've done all the talking. Please tell me? You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, I just want to hear your voice".