1978.
The pair have risen with their jobs and as such were shifted to Arklay Labs as chief researchers. Birkin was quite thrilled, but Albert was more calculating. Someday he wanted to own Umbrella.. or at least be high enough to do as he pleased. Their first trip, their tour, was when they encountered one of the specimens that had been there for several years. Her name was Lisa Trevor and she was 25 years old.
Albert was awed by her. The virus had thrived in her system for so many years and her current state kept it in check. She was in a tube, in stasis, monitored and whatnot. Birkin was more interested in the virus itself. They met Marcus a week after arrival.
With this job also came a sort of.. bonus. Spencer offered them a membership into his order. He called his group the Templars and told them that he was the 'leader'. Wesker was infinitely intrigued at the prospect of a semi-secret organization bustling within a large and growing medical corporation.. that the leader of said organization created and ran Umbrella, but it wasn't a total shock. He had always felt something.. different in regards to Spencer, like there was more than met the eyes. A double life sort of fiasco.
Birkin had been like a child given candy. Both accepted the offer, of course, but it was Birkin who had.. as they say 'squealed with joy'. He had apparently read books about the Templars of the Middle Ages as a young teenager and wanted to study them more coincidentally, but stopped when viral components and biochemistry became his main interest.
It had brought a twitching smirk to the blonde's face at the sight of his younger colleague acting like a wild man over being included in something he had only read about. Both were sworn to secrecy.
-x-
[Marcus' Notes]
January 13:
At last, they are ready. My wonderful leeches! Those of low intelligence, they will never have the privilege of tasting this sense of joy and satisfaction! Now, finally, I can move against Spencer. Soon, I will control everything...
January 31:
The devices I set to protect my work have been disturbed; it appears someone came looking for "T" and the leeches. Fool. No doubt it's Spencer's group.
February 3:
Administrated "T" into four leeches. Their will to survive leads them first to parasitism and predation, then they breed and multiply. Such single minded biology makes them attractive candidates for bio-weapons research. Afterwards, no major changes observed.
February 10:
Seven days since the administration of the "T". Rapid growth to double former size, signs of transformation emerging. Spawning successful, they double their numbers in an hour, but their ravenous appetites lead them to cannibalism. Hastened to increase food supply, but lost two.
February 11:
Today, I again found evidence of tampering around the entrance to the labs. If that is what they're after, I must find a suitable way to deal with them. Perhaps I should have William and Albert smoke out the pest... Those two are the only ones I trust. Apart from the beloved leeches, of course, But Spencer... It wouldn't end there... Would it? I will announce "T" at the next directors meeting and collect my just rewards...
March 7:
Provided them with live feed, but lost half when the live food fought back. However, the leeches are learning from experience, and are beginning to exhibit group attack behavior. They are also ceasing cannibalism. Their evolution is exceeding expectations.
April 22:
The leeches no longer exhibit individual behavior, even when not feeding, they move as a collective. They consume everything I offer with remarkable efficiency.
April 30:
An employee has stumbled onto my experiments. Can a human be a food source? How will the leeches respond?
June 3:
A day worthy of commemoration. Today they began to mimic me! Surely they recognize their father... Wonderful children, no one will take you away...
-x-
It's been decided. An 'unanimous' vote was in favor, without much resistance, to stopping the progress at the Training Facility in the Arklay Mountains. Umbrella closed said facility, but even with this attempt to 'halt' his work Marcus pushed on. He continued his research regarding the T-Virus.. and he would do so with or without his abundant resources.
They wouldn't stop him. He was so close..
-x-
[Wesker's Report]
Female Test Subject:
Monday- 1978.7.31
I went there for the first time at 18 years old during the summer. This is the story of 20 years ago.
I still remember the smell of the wind stirred by the helicopter rotors when we landed.
Though the mansion looked ordinary from above, there was something repulsive at ground level. As usual, Birkin, who was two years my junior, only seemed interested in the research papers in his hand...
The two of us would assume our positions there having been informed two days previously, on the day they decided to shut down the executive training school we belonged to. It all seemed both carefully planned and at the same time merely a coincidence.
Perhaps the only person who knows the truth is Spencer. At the time, the very place he himself had created to serve as the center of T-Virus development in the United States was there, in the Arklay Laboratory.
Upon getting off the helicopter, the director in charge of the facility was standing in front of the elevator. I don't even remember his name.
Whatever the formalities, the Arklay Laboratory belonged to Birkin and I from that day on.
We assumed full charge of the research there as chief scientists. That was Spencer's will, of course. We had been chosen.
We ignored the director and stepped into the elevator. People who worked with us typically felt resentful after the first five seconds.
However the director didn't react at all.
I was a conceited young man at the time, so I left his presence unnoticed.
After all, during my time there I was merely dancing in Spencer's hands and being a higher-up himself, he understood Spencer's intention rather than I.
In a short time, the elevator carrying the three of us descended into the basement and Birkin didn't turn his eyes from the papers in his hand.
Birkin's eyes were fastened on a record of Ebola, a new strain of filovirus that emerged in Africa two years before. As we speak there should be many men around the world studying Ebola. However, its purpose can be divided into two parts. To help people and to kill people.
As you know the mortality rate of Ebola infection is 90%. Its immediate effects destroy human tissue within ten days and, even now, both precautionary measures and treatment methods have not been established. It may be possible to demonstrate great destructive power if used as a weapon.
Of course, it is illegal to study as a weapon even when we do, since the "Biological Weapons Convention" had already come into effect at this point. But there was no assurance that someone wouldn't use it as a weapon even if we didn't. In that case, it's legal to conduct research in advance.
The dividing line is extremely ambiguous because how it is used must be investigated when used in the study of a defense plan.
There's no difference whatsoever between the research of weapons and the research of cures.
In other words, it's also possible to research weapons under the false pretense of researching treatments.
However, Birkin at this point had no intention of looking over the record of Ebola itself for the purpose of research in either case. The virus had too many weak points.
First, it can survive only a few days outside the body and is physically removed simply by sunlight (UV rays).
Second, since it kills the host organism (humans) much too early, there's scarcely little time to move onto its next host.
Third, direct contact is necessary for host-to-host transmission and protection is comparatively easy.
But, as an example, I want you to think about the following.
What if a person struck with Ebola could stand up and walk with a steady rate of virus multiplication inside the body?
And if that person could actively seek out uninfected humans in a diminished state of awareness to infect them?
What if RNA, the genome of Ebola, could influence the human genome?
And imagine the human body endowed with stamina like a monster so it could not easily die?
Could it not become a "Bio Organic Weapon" that spreads the virus in its body to other living organisms in a now clinically dead state?
It was fortunate for us that Ebola did not exhibit such properties since only we could continue to monopolize them from now on.
Umbrella was founded mainly by Spencer and was nothing less than an organization to develop a virus with these properties. It was officially a viral treatment pharmaceutical company, but in reality, it was a manufacturing plant for Bio Organic Weapons. The discovery of the "Progenitor Virus" which recombines the genes of living organisms seems to be its origin.
In order to manufacture Bio Organic Weapons from the Progenitor Virus, a variant virus which enhanced its properties was being developed. That was the T-Virus Project.
The Progenitor Virus was an RNA virus prone to mutate and thereby make it possible to strengthen characteristics. Birkin was interested in Ebola to strengthen this property by incorporating its genes into the Progenitor Virus. The Ebola sample had already reached this laboratory at that point.
We changed elevators several times and arrived at the highest level of the facility. Even Birkin looked up there. That was the first time we saw "her."
No one told us anything about her beforehand.
She was the utmost secret of this laboratory and the data was never taken outside for any reason.
According to the records, she had been here since this laboratory was founded. She was 25 years old at the time. But we knew neither her name nor her reason for being here.
She was a test subject for T-Virus development. The experiment began on November 10, 1967. She had received experimental injections of the virus here for 11 years.
Birkin mumbled something.
Was it to curse or to praise? We had come to a place of no return.
Accomplish the research successfully or wither away like her? There was of course only one choice.
Her body, bound to the pipe bed, moved something in our consciousness.
Was this part of Spencer's plan?