Funeral Games – Chapter 10

They kept him hooked up to an IV at all times, one with a release that was controlled remotely, from beyond the reinforced one-way mirror that took up one wall of his cell. Wesker always knew when they were coming in because his right arm would begin to itch. As soon as he felt that, he had to brace himself, because it was not long before the itching became a slow burn, like fire creeping under his skin. Mercifully, that sensation never lasted long. Within minutes, the chemical cocktail reached his brain and sealed it off in a soft layer of dampening gauze.

He guessed that they were giving him Doxacarum to paralyze his muscles. He felt it when it took hold, like a switched flipped between his brain and his nervous system. He couldn't guess the size of the dose, but it must have been massive. Ninety seconds after they turned on the drip, his heart rate slowed to a crawl and his lungs felt like they were gradually turning to stone in his chest. But there must have been a pretty healthy shot of morphine in the mix too, because after the first few minutes even the pitiful struggles of his body because mere vague curiosities, viewed through hazy glass from a long way off.

Wesker wanted to stay proud, to hold that he would rather endure the whole spectrum of agonies these hacks might inflict on him than spend a single moment suffering the humiliation of being drugged. He knew, though, that he was only trying to salve his ego. Before, he would have believed it, would have welcomed anything that they could have thrown at him, but he had been naïve back then. He had known nothing of true pain.

He heard the door unlatch, and then the light tap of high heels on the linoleum floor. It was the blond woman, Jessica. Of the half dozen people with clearance to visit him in this windowless lab, she was the one he least wanted to see. Wesker had gather that she was ambitious, and she cared for no one; she reminded him too much of himself.

The last time she had been here, looking at the new pink flesh that had grown in under his bandages, Wesker had moved his hand. It had been more of a twitch than a deliberate movement, and when he tried again to replicate it, he could not. Jessica had noticed, however, and she calmly reached up to adjust a lever on the side of his drip. Instantly, a second dose of Doxacarum flooded his system. Wesker's heart fluttered, and his breathing ground to a halt.

Jessica watched him for what felt like a long time, watched him as if she intended, on nothing more than a whim, to let him die.

Wesker glared at her, unable to move, unable even to speak so that he could tell her, with his final breath, what he would do if their positions were reversed. He knew that he would die without so much as a whisper, and the horrible injustice of it all made his eyes cloud with furious tears. All was dark, dark and receding.

And then Jessica reached up and flipped the switch on his IV off. She drew a long syringe out of her pocket and slipped the tip of it lovingly between two ribs and administered a shot of adrenaline that made his lungs contract, sucking in a gulp of fresh air like liquid fire. For any other man, it would have been too late, but Wesker felt the familiar creep of the virus in his veins, shocking his system, dragging him back…

Jessica was still watching him with mild curiosity. She picked up his chart from the foot of the bed and scratched some notes.

"That was the first test," she said mildly, and then she smiled at him before she turned to go.

Wesker didn't know how long it had been since he had seen her last. Days, he supposed, but it was impossible to tell. He tried to count the hours, but he always grew confused and lost track. Regardless of the details, she was back now. Wesker knew that did not bode well for him. Carefully, as carefully as he could, he began to shore his body up against whatever indignities and outrages might follow.

Jessica stepped inside and crossed the floor with sure steps and not a flicker or hesitation. She was no longer afraid of him, and one day that might prove to be a mistake, but that day would not be today. As she came closer, Wesker felt his muscles slithering and coiling uselessly inside the cage of his paralyzed limbs.

Beyond Jessica's approaching shoulder, he saw Raymond slip through the door, turning his body sideways to squeeze through the smallest possible gap. Unlike his partner, he hung back. His mouth was twisted into a smirk that ran along well-trod lines, but his face was pale and faintly green.

There was still a poultice of bandages covering Wesker's left shoulder, the final remnants of his long and excruciating recovery. Jessica used a scalpel to cut the bandages away and probed the area with the tips of her fingers. Though her hands were cold and without gentleness, there was no real pain when she touched him.

He had healed almost completely. The skin around the spot was pink and sensitive and new, but it was whole. It even impressed Wesker how far he had come, for he understood now how bad he had really been.

If Jessica was surprised by his progress, she didn't show it, but she did let him know that she was pleased. One of her icy hands stroked his brow, and Wesker felt a little tug of resistance as her fingers snagged on his hair. He tried to roll his eyes upward to see it. He'd always thought his hair was one of the best of his many good features.

"You like that?" Jessica cooed. "You always did strike me as the type to get off on having his hair pulled."

On the last word, she gave his hair a sharp yank that sent a jolt of pain through him. His sight clouded, but it was only a physical reaction. He would not – indeed, could not – believe that he was crying, whether from pain, humiliation, or helpless fear.

Jessica's mouth jerked into an unpleasant smile. She opened her fist over his face and let a shower of loose hair rain down on him. Gold, Wesker thought, and not without some measure of satisfaction. Just as it should have been.

"Fun," Jessica said. "But it's time to get down to business."

She glanced back at Raymond who was standing with his back against the door as if he could sink though it.

"What are you doing, you big baby?" she said with an airy laugh. "Get over here."

Raymond pushed away from the wall. There was something in his hand, something that knocked heavily against his leg when he walked. Wesker couldn't get a good look at it.

"You sure about this?" he said. That same smirk was still riding high on his cupid's bow lips, but now it seemed like an unconvincing mask stretched over the real face - undoubtedly twisted in horror – that lay beneath. Wesker was used to inspiring terror in people, and even sparking disgust, but this particular combination of the two was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He didn't like it.

"I have a good feeling about it," Jessica said. "I'm no scientist, but I'm willing to pull my weight around here. Are you?"

"Yeah," Raymond said, but he made no move to come closer.

"You're scared," Jessica said.

"No."

"Then you're squeamish." She laughed. "You find it cruel."

"It is, isn't it?" he replied.

"Whatever. I can't think about it like that, not while there's work to be done. I'll do it if you won't. Hand me that chisel."

There was a long padded armrest affixed to the side of the table Wesker was cuffed to. Jessica folded it out at a 90 degree angle, then she unshackled Wesker's wrist and moved it into place. He tried to pull away, more out of habit than any real desire to rebel, but he only managed to make his arm tremble impotently a few times.

Jessica either didn't notice or didn't find it worthy of attention. For a moment, Wesker forwent rage and humiliation in favor of the petty irritation at being ignored. Jessica stretched his arm out strait and strapped it down.

What happened next seemed very quick in hindsight. Jessica lifted a heavy, stainless steel chisel and laid the tip against Wesker's arm, midway between elbow and shoulder. Wesker instantly recognized it as a rather obscure surgical tool, but even then he was slow to grasp what she had in mind. Before he could sort it out all out, Jessica raised a hammer over her head and brought it down hard on top of the chisel.

Wesker's humerus snapped, a clean and complete break, so sudden that didn't even begin to feel the pain until well after he had taken stock of the blood dripping off the tip of the chisel, the awful racket the chisel made as Jessica tossed it onto a surgical table.

His stomach dropped. He could feel bile rising in his throat, but there was nothing in his stomach to expel. A red mist swam before his eyes, and his thoughts were buoyed between the disbelieving terror of consciousness and the merciful darkness of a dead faint.

He made a weak sound, low in the back of his throat, a kind of quiet, wet rattle that ceased as soon as it had begun. Wesker was glad for that. He had been ready for anything, braced against anything, save that pathetic animal noise that was not been able to control.

"That wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," Raymond said. "He barely put up a fuss at all. I got it next time, all right?"

He came forward to help Jessica arrange Wesker's arm so it rested against his side once more. He was trying to make amends with Jessica, but he only ended up getting underfoot.

Jessica swatted him away and finished shackling Wesker's wrist. His fingers felt numb, and he could tell that his upper arm was swelling already from the way it pressed uncomfortably against the steel table.

"I want x-rays once a day," Jessica said. "No, better make it twice a day."

"Just how long do you think it's going to take him to get his shit together?" Raymond said.

"All reports indicate that he used to be able to heal a break like that in a couple of hours. Now… who knows? I give it a couple weeks."

"I sure could have used something like that the time I caught gonorrhea in BSAA basic," Raymond said.

They were heading towards the exit now, and Raymond's laughter echoed back to Wesker from a long way off. It sounded genuine enough, but there was still a nervous edge to it.

When Jessica opened the door, a gust of cold air swept in, cooling the livid sweat on Wesker's brow. Making him shiver, the way a human would.

His arm throbbed, and that too was a sensation he had not felt since shedding the last of his vestigial mortality. As was the fear that had begun to creep through him, black and implacable, threatening to blot out all else.

If only someone would come for him, he thought. If only someone would take him away from this place…

Three days after the meeting in the diner, Jake's phone rang at two in the morning. He fumbled gracelessly off the couch and groped after the bright beacon of the screen.

"Sherry?" he said.

"No," replied a voice on the other end of the line. "Sorry."

It was Chris. Jake recognized him at once, though he'd certainly never given him this number. He was dismayed that Chris sounded neither surprised nor annoyed at Jake's shrill and half-desperate way of saying his girlfriend's name in response to a call from an unknown number in the middle of the night.

Leon had been right. Chris did know more than he was letting on.

"What do you want?" Jake said.

"I've been thinking about what you told me the other day."

"And what?" Jake said. "You want to jerk me around some more?"

"There's an old civilian compound out on the ice in Antarctica. It used to belong to Umbrella, but they abandoned it back in the 90's. There's been some activity there recently, though."

"So?" Jake sniffed.

"So, I think you might find what you're looking for there."

Jake froze. He felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and a shiver worked its way through him. "Why are you telling me this?"

"He's like an annoying ringing in your ears that never goes away, or a shadow you can always just barely see out of the corner of your eye. I can forget about him for a while, but he always comes back. Maybe you'll have better luck, Jake."

Jake said nothing. Not much you could say to that.

"Anyway," Chris went on. "I hope you will at any rate. It's your problem now."

"Sure," Jake said. "Thanks. I'll just go to Antarctica and ask around until I find this place. I don't even know how you get to Antarctica. Do I have to take a cruise or something?"

Chris wasn't listening. He'd hung up already. Jake kind of wished he'd held back on the smartass comments for a couple minutes, at least until he'd asked Chris how he'd come across a piece of intel like that.

It didn't really matter, though. Jake already knew what he was going to do.

The next morning, bright and early, he called up Leon, who took the news pretty well. Not even their final destination seemed to surprise him. Hell, he probably knew the place already.

"What makes someone want to build a base in the middle of Antarctica anyway?" Jake said.

"Hubris, I suppose," Leon replied.

"Is that like having too damn much money?"

"Yeah, something like that," Leon said. "Listen, I'm going to have to pull some strings…"

"Seems like you've been tugging a lot of those recently. Just how many do you have left?"

"A few yet," Leon said. "Can you be ready to move out in the next couple of days?"

"I can be ready in the next couple of hours, if you can."

Leon laughed. "I can't. Lately it's at least three fingers of whiskey before I can kill a man, and three days of stretching before I can tackle a mission like this."

"I wasn't thinking it was going to get that serious."

"I wouldn't discount the possibility, honestly. You still want to do this?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Jake said.

"Make sure. That's the other reason we're going to wait a few days. I'll be in touch."

Even though he knew Leon had been trying to warn him, Jake still felt pretty good after he hung up the phone. But the longer he thought about it, the less exciting the whole thing seemed. Leon seemed pretty sure they were they were going to see some fighting. Jake was inclined to trust his judgment, but he couldn't imagine Umbrella or anyone else mobilizing a huge force just to guard a few charred remains, regardless of who they had once been.

It might just be a skeleton crew out there on the ice in the middle of nowhere, but it was going to be made up of real flesh and blood people. Not BOWs or Plagas or anything else. Jake had certainly killed people before. He had done it easily enough, but he had never taken it lightly.

He wasn't completely convinced that Wesker was worth it now.

Leon had been pretty cavalier about the whole thing, though, which had kind of surprised Jake. He was a tough old campaigner, but he'd never struck Jake as the type to kill without conscience. Leon had been in the thick of it for so long, he probably had all kinds of rationalizations in place, things he told himself that made it all right, or at least morally defensible, when he pulled the trigger.

Jake had never had the luxury of being able to build up a thick armor like that for himself. He just pointed a gun where the folks in the know told him to and left the rest up to luck.

That was how he knew, even now, even before they could be fully realized, that all his misgivings weren't going to amount to shit in the end. He'd been waiting all along for someone to tell him to jump, just so he could ask how high. He didn't need any high-minded ideals or equivocations or ethical compromises to do the things he did.

Leon left him alone for a few days, but it didn't feel like that long. It was as if just knowing that he had something definite to do was the same as actually doing it. Jake made good use of his sessions at the gym, brushed up on his Russian, which was so rusty it creaked and stuck every few words, and slept like a baby, though he always kept his phone on in case Sherry called.

When Leon finally showed up again, he was weighed down with bags from a camping store, which were stuffed with parkas, long underwear, boots, snow goggles. It must have cost him a fortune, but when Jake asked what he owed Leon wouldn't say.

Jake wasn't sure if he was being gallant, or if all of Jakes harping on his inheritance had given Leon the impression that the money situation was worse than it actually was. The first alternative was merely embarrassing, but the second was outright humiliating for someone with the complexes about money that Jake had. All the same, he did his best to keep his mouth shut as he tried on the cold-weather gear.

The parka was traffic-cone orange, but it fit him like a pillowy second skin, and Jake could tell that it was built for the bitterest of cold.

"I got us a ride in," Leon said. "The season is pretty much over down there, but I found a couple who let me charter a flight.

He rattled all this off casually, as if it hadn't given him any more trouble than calling around for a rental car. Then he went on, "They can only give us eight hours on the ground, since they want to sneak in between storms. The base is supposed to be abandoned, but I still didn't think it was a good idea to land on-site. That puts the closest level ground where they can touch down about six miles out. Six miles in and six miles back on foot. Doesn't give us a lot of time to look around, does it?"

Jake frowned. "You didn't have to do all this on your own."

"I know, but it looks less suspicious when there's only one person sniffing around where he isn't supposed to."

"Not that it doesn't look plenty suspicious," Jake said pointedly.

"Not that it doesn't."

"Fine, so you're saying we can expect about two hours to look around this compound."

"Conservatively," Leon said.

"Yeah, conservatively."

"I figure we can at least get an idea of the layout of the place," Leon said. "Use it to plan a second expedition for spring."

"Look," Jake said, "I feel like I should tell you, this might not even come to anything. I know you've spent a lot already, and I might not get the cash to pay you back. I know better than to get my hopes up when it comes to my father."

"It's fine," Leon said with a casual tone that made Jake's stomach twist itself into knots. For the first time, he felt a stab of dislike for the older man.

Leon must have seen as much on his face, because he said, "Look, I have investments. A nice little nest egg put away that I'm fully aware I'll probably never get old enough to spend. At least this way someone gets some real, meaningful use out of it."

"Okay," Jake said. "If you have to. But as far as I'm concerned, it's still just a temporary loan."