21

Two years passed with deliberate, methodical slowness. Wesker spent his days, from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, supervising the work done at the Arklay labs. Not all of the projects there fell under his jurisdiction, but enough of them did that many of the other scientists there began to wonder if it was Wesker or Spencer who was really in charge. Wesker managed people effectively and fairly, and so there were few who complained about his youth. He was still only twenty-two, half the age of the some of the men working under him, but few people noticed it anymore. Wesker carried himself like a seasoned professional, adeptly managing and balancing the numerous projects going at the lab, showing great natural skill at the difficult job of handling the office politics of a large corporation. Under his almost effortless management, the Arklay lab ran smoothly and efficiently.

In the evenings, from four until roughly ten, Wesker performed his own experiments and engaged in his own personal projects. Some nights, he worked closely with Spencer with some aspect of the company. Other nights, he closed himself in the library and read until midnight. His itinerary was varied, but always packed. He took Sundays off, at least most of the time. When he did, he spent it sleeping.

He rented a house in downtown Raccoon City, but due to his busy schedule he was almost never there. His neighbors had no complaints, and his landlord didn't care as long as the rent was paid and nothing was damaged. For the most part, however, the lab was his home. His fellow employees were his friends and his work was his life. And his work was very fulfilling indeed.

A t the time, no one had fully grasped the staggering importance of Marcus' work. It was revolutionary, to be sure, but no one, not even Spencer, realized just how revolutionary it was. It took Wesker almost a year to discover its hidden potential, to uncover what made it so drastically different from its predecessor, the Progenitor.

He supposed it took so long to discover because of its curious habit of turning its hosts into zombies, just like the Progenitor did. That one similarity led most people to believe that the two viruses were nearly the same then, but Wesker eventually altered one of his experiments, out of curiosity, to see what would happen if the T-virus was injected directly into a living human host. Afterward, he was stunned that he had never performed the experiment that way before.

The T-virus somehow changed once it infected a host. The fascinating aspect of the T-virus infection, which no one had adequately explained, was that if an infected host passed the virus on to another host, then that second host became a zombie, exactly the way the Progenitor would have. Wesker called it "secondary infection." But that first host, the original source, was mutated to an unbelievable degree. When a human, for example was infected with the pure form of the T-virus, he or she changed into a grotesque, humanoid gargantuan.

The hosts sometimes reached heights of seven and a half feet tall when full infection took hold. They lost all skin pigmentation and looked like giant albinos, for some reason no one could discern, and also lost all their hair. They lost almost all of their mobility, even as they gained strength and muscle, and moved like slow robots. Sometimes they were the victim of other bizarre mutations, like a third arm growing from one shoulder. Some test subjects developed transparent skin. Others grew hideous growths from one of their hands or feet, turning it into a club made of misshapen flesh. One of the lab assistants, Wesker wasn't sure who, originally dubbed them Tyrants, after the T-virus.

Like the regular zombies, these mutated humans were almost impossible to kill. Fire destroyed them, but not much else did. They survived when electrocuted, when underwater, in sub-zero temperatures, and in a variety of other deadly environments. Out of every ten subjects, eight of them were mutated in such a way that made them useless for further experimentation, and were destroyed. The other two, however ...

Wesker became fully desensitized to the work they did after a few months. At one time, the thought of infecting a living person to turn him into an inhuman beast would horrify him, but not anymore.

He effectively turned off his emotions when he was working, and refused to think of the poor souls being experimented on as anything other than test subjects. If he let himself feel sorry for them, or admit that they were committing heinous crimes against humanity, he would not have been able to live with himself. And since the work he was doing was extremely confidential and extremely top-secret, if he couldn't live with himself then he wouldn't live at all. In two years, they had been forced to turn three of their own workers into test subjects when they gave signs of being unable to deal with the work anymore. It was disagreeable work, but under no circumstances could details of their work be revealed. If someone had a sudden attack of conscience and became a liability, the only possible course of action was to remove them permanently. Wesker approved of it only because they had no choice.

Sometimes late at night, either in the lab or at his house, when he was alone and left with nothing but his thoughts, he would ponder if he could live with himself. How many people had they experimented on by now? A hundred? Maybe more? Where they came from, Wesker never knew, and he never asked. But he sensed a much larger operation at work, since some of the unwilling subjects spoke no English. They would cry out in their own language, be it Spanish or Japanese or Russian, as they entered the observation rooms and became infected. And Wesker would watch them, suppressing any pity or remorse he felt, and use them as heartlessly as he would use a rabbit or dog to perform his experiments. He wondered if it made him inhuman, if he was becoming as monstrous as those individuals he infected. He wondered about his own humanity, he wondered about his sanity. Could a truly sane person behave so inhumanly? If someone's conscience was dead, did that not make them dead as well? Wesker spent some long hours searching himself for the faint traces that remained of his humanity, but he always found them, buried deep in the back, hidden by years of administering controlled torture. He could turn off his humanity, but he still possessed it.

Spencer, on the other hand, was harder to figure out. He had been in charge of the project for over a decade, whereas Wesker had only been in charge for two years. Would Wesker retain any trace of his former humanity after seventeen years? Of course, that was assuming that Spencer had been human to begin with, something else Wesker wondered about. At times, such as when getting sentimental about his former partner Alexander Ashford, Spencer could seem very human indeed. But at others, Spencer became a ruthless, callous fiend capable of the most atrocious acts of cruelty and premeditated evil. Wesker, thankfully, never found himself that far gone.

But still, what they were doing went far beyond simply illegal. It was illegal, unethical, immoral, unconscionable, and many others. What they were doing in the lab made the Holocaust look acceptable by comparison.

One day, Wesker brought the topic up in conversation. "What would we do if people ever found out?" he asked Spencer.

"They're never going to find out," Spencer replied, as if the question had been a balloon and his answer was a pin used to pop it.

"But what if they did?" Wesker asked. "What if someone discovered what we're doing at this lab and told the press? What if our big secret got out?"

Spencer eyes him suspiciously. "Why do you ask? Do you suspect someone of–"

"No," Wesker said firmly. "Nothing like that. I just want to know."

"Why?"

"Oh, come on," Wesker said, almost laughing at Spencer's clumsy evasion of the question. "Call it scientific curiosity. I mean, there has to be some kind of emergency procedure, doesn't there? We have to have some kind of plan, some course of action in case of an information leak?"

Spencer grunted and said, "Sure there is. It's called 'Get away as fast as you can and hope no one finds you.' It's the only plan I know of."

"What do you mean?"

"Wesker, think about it," Spencer said, getting irritated. "How would you cover up something on this scale? If anyone ever found out, there really is nothing that we could do. Denial would not suffice for long, and there is no way we could erase the evidence. If the authorities heard rumors about our activities here and wanted to look around for themselves, what could we do to stop them?"

"Probably nothing without appearing guilty."

"Exactly. If anyone ever found out about this place, my only advice would be to scrape together your life savings and find some third world country to hide out in."

"You can't be serious."

"I'm always serious. You should know better than that by now."

"So we have no emergency plans?" Wesker asked incredulously.

"None at all. That is precisely why the security here is so important. No one may discover what goes on here. If it ever got out, we would all be finished."

"Not just us," Wesker added. "All of Umbrella would be finished."

"But it will never happen," Spencer stressed. "Our security is far too effective. And besides, as you know, we have many allies in the local government that assist us in keeping certain details under wraps."

"The police?" Wesker suggested.

"Yes, and several members of the Raccoon City Council as well. Even Mayor Warren, as you probably know. We're working on getting one of our own people elected next year, when Warren retires. We're also trying to get the Chief of police on our payroll, but it takes time."

"Bribing city officials is illegal, if I'm not mistaken."

Spencer waved the comment away. "Please, we don't stoop to plain bribery. We make large donations to city projects and then lean on them. It's actually a common practice with large corporations. We ask for favors in return for financial assistance."

"Bribery, in other words."

Spencer glared at him, and Wesker could not help but smile. At one time, the ice cold stare would have frozen his blood, but he had been working with Spencer too long to be effected by his theatrics anymore. On a deep level, he was still scared of the man, but in general he knew that he was too involved in the projects for Spencer to truly threaten or antagonize him. So Wesker behaved insubordinately at times, without fear of reprisal.

"We do whatever we have to do," Spencer grumbled. And then, reluctantly, "But there are times when I wonder if paying them is enough. We can pay money for loyalty and never receive it. We might have to take more direct steps to ensure our safety."

"What are you thinking of?"

"Putting someone in the police station to keep an eye on things. If our business with the Chief of police is successful, I was planning to assign someone a position at the police station to make sure of the Chief's loyalty."

"Anyone in particular you have in mind?"

"Not really. It's just an idea. We're not sure yet if the Chief can be bought."

"What's his name?"

"Brian Irons. He's worked in the RCPD for fifteen years, and his record there is spotless, but our boys have uncovered some pretty hefty gambling debts hanging over him. He's also an amateur art collector, and he's gone into more debt acquiring some expensive pieces."

"That's promising."

"Yes. We'll see how it turns out."