When Jake found the source of the voice in his head, it was just in time to watch as Chris grew still beneath the weight of the man that straddled him. Gently, the man lowered Chris' head to the ground and rose, their back still to Jake. All he could see was the broad expanse of the man's leather clad shoulders and a slick mat of blond hair – not one hair out of place. He couldn't see the man's face, but he didn't need to. Kin, his blood sang. Alpha of my Alpha.

"Wesker," Jake said.

Dad, hung heavily in the space between them.

"You came," Wesker said, turning slowly to address his son. His tone was calm, cold and intellectual. Nothing like Jake had expected, and yet, everything like he knew it would be. "Chris has become stronger than I thought if he was able to draw you here. Excellent."

Jake wrinkled his nose, confused by Wesker's nonsense. He brushed the topic aside with his hand and took a step forward.

"What did you do to him?"

"I set him free."

Jake's gaze flickered down to where the man lay on the ground, fingers twitching fitfully as he stared blankly into the ceiling – blue eyes glowing like arctic glaciers. Jake sneered.

"Somehow I doubt that."

"I can set you free, too," Wesker said, extending one hand out slowly, theatrically, to his son. "If you'd only let me."

Jake took a step back, disgust written plainly on his face.

"Go fuck yourself."

A muscle in Wesker's jaw twitched, and Jake smirked. Good.

"Naw, really," Jake snarled, hands out. "How'd you think that was going to go? I'd just run into your arms? Did you think I've been waiting for this moment? To be reunited? Finally accepted? Fuck you. I stopped waiting years ago. I stopped caring years ago. I looked forward to this, yeah - I wanted to meet you. To track you down... So I could put a face to the name that my mother always chanted in her fever dreams. The man that left us with medical bills and debt and death. She loved you and you left her. And here you think that I'd want to jump in line for whatever the fuck you just did to him? Eager to be your faithful son? You're fucking crazier than everyone's been telling me."

After a long pause, Wesker straightened and sniffed disdainfully.

"A pity," he said, rolling his head on his neck – joints cracking eerily. "And here I thought we were going to have a happy family reunion."

And before Jake could even mutter the words 'fuck your family reunion', Wesker was streaking across the hall in a stream of black smoke. A hand congealed at his throat and squeezed, and suddenly Jake found himself off his feet. He scrabbled to grab hold of the wrist that held him, but his hands just passed through the man like a specter. His vision darkened at the edges, his throat burning, and all the while his blood chanted a steady thrumming of guilt and disappointment for his actions. His mind told him no, that was stupid. His heart told him he was in the right.

But his blood, oh his blood – how it ached to be accepted.

Jake cried out.

"Don't worry, my boy," Wesker said, but his words were anything but loving – cold and dripping with disgust as he eyed the creature in his grasp. "We can start again."

Images flashed across his mind suddenly, vicious and cruel and so real he felt his heart shutter. Confusing messages that tore through his memories, leaving small tattered holes in their wake, fluttering weakly as he tried to pull them shut again. Flashes of Piers betraying them. Ada and Jill tying him down at that facility and leaving him to the bombs. And Sherry, his Sherry, aiming the barrel of a gun right up to his head – her eyes cold and dead to him.

Jake struggled suddenly, his legs kicking out.

"No!"

"Yes, dear boy," Wesker purred and squeezed tighter, the images more vivid. Chris pulling him through the hallways and away from their betrayers. Changing him to save him. Bringing him here, to Wesker. To their Alpha. To their King. Their Savoir. Their God. "And let's be clear, son. I didn't leave you. Your darling mother," he spat, "Never told me. She left. She is the reason for your loneliness and your pain and the debt that engulfed your tiny, fragile lives until the day that finally she succumbed to her weak and useless body. Food for thought."

And then the images changed – moving in reverse somehow. No longer being implanted, but taken. Images of the people who were with him, the information they said around him, what little he knew of his location – all observations during his own catatonic state, but evidently enough. Jake struggled to cut the thread, and with a massive explosion of mental energy, he managed it – barely.

"NO!"

And the images stopped. But it was enough, oh, it was enough. Jake's body felt weak and frail where it hung heavily in Wesker's grasp, and all the while, the man just grinned – knowing. The damage had been done. Was this what Wesker had done to Chris? Jake's eyes slid to the man; catatonic and unblinking. No… whatever he had done to Chris had been worse, far worse. This was just a taste. A promise of what the monster would take from him, too.

"I'll see you soon, dear boy," Wesker said. "Very soon."

Wesker raised his other hand, poised to strike. Jake's lashes fluttered weakly against his draining cheeks. And then Wesker struck.

Jake flew forward from bed with a gasp that caught in his throat. Tubes in his arms. Wailing machines at his sides, blinking and shrieking. His hands scrabbled at the the needle in the top of his hand and the sticky nodes on his chest.

Someone was at his bedside was shouting – hands at his wrists, trying to stop him. But he needed to breathe. He needed the tubes gone, gone, gone. He coughed, his eyes stinging, and then he howled. His hands scrabbled first to his chest – whole where he was sure a gaping maw should be – and then to his head, where the pounding threatening to swallow him whole.

"Jake?" A voice said, soothing and familiar. With wide eyes, he sought it out between the fingers that were splayed across his face. "Jake!"

Piers.

The BSAA Agent reached for him, and despite himself, Jake flinched – his vision suddenly absorbed once more with the vision of Wesker raising his hand to strike, grinning in the low light. By the fake images the man had barraged him with. Fake, but oh so real. Piers backed off immediately, then moved back in slowly, as if appeasing a spooked dog.

"It's me," the man said, "Piers. Remember me? We hate each other? I saved your life, you saved mine? Ringing any bells?"

Jake couldn't fathom the man's words, but his tone he knew. Soothing and familiar and distinctly not his father's whispering in his head. He watched Piers through his fingers as slowly, his body relaxed.

"That's it," Piers said, continuing his low, even talking. "You're in a BSAA facility. You've been… hell, you've been out of it for days. But you're fine. You're safe."

Fine… Safe… No one was safe.

Jake licked his lips and when he spoke, it was a coarse hush of sound.

Piers moved away from him quickly, his own hands trembling, and it was only then that Jake noticed the state the man was in – pale and trembling and hollow. How long had he been waiting here at Jake's bedside? Had he not slept? Eaten? He looked like shit.

And that was exactly the first thing out of his mouth once he drank from the glass of water Piers passed him.

"Gee, thanks," Piers said, his face falling from excited puppy to the sour face he normally adopted when with Jake. "Asshole."

And that more than anything made Jake feel at ease, and all the tension from his fever dream passed from him all at once. He sagged back into his bed, simultaneously feeling exhausted and yet, never better in his life. He felt strong. Inhuman. Alive. Tainted. Some echoed in his blood, strange and alien.

The door opened to his room to reveal a man in a wheelchair with a shock of shaggy brown hair and oddly kind, yet tired eyes. Jake watched him warily.

"I heard the alarms and came as quickly as I could," he said, rolling up to Jake's bedside. When he reached for Jake's wrist, Jake jerked it away – his teeth bared before he could even register what he was doing.

"Hey!" Piers snapped at Jake.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Apologies," the man said, his kindness still firmly in place. His accent thick. Familiar. "My name is Alexander Kozachenko. You can call me Buddy. I've been monitoring you these past few days with Special Agent Nivan's help. You've been out for some time. I just want to make sure you're alright."

"Yeah, well, we've got bigger problems," Jake said, hating the fact that his confidence was lost to the hazy wheeze of his voice. He tried to clear it, but it didn't help. As if he actually had been strangled. "Where's Leon?"

Piers frowned.

"What's going on, Jake?"

"I saw your captain, sparks," Jake said finally, his eyes falling to Piers.

"Chris? What do you mean you saw him? Is he alright?" He asked, rushing forward to grab the bars around Jake's bed.

Jake grimaced. He wasn't fond of Piers – but that didn't mean he took pleasure in his pain, either. He shook his head, and despite himself, his heart fell a bit when he saw Piers deflate.

"Go get Leon," Jake finally said. "It's important."

"Let me," Buddy said, one hand at Piers' forearm to stop him. "We don't know what will happen if you leave, even if he's awake now. Best you stay, just in case."

And then Buddy was gone, surprisingly spry in his chair. Silence hung heavy in the air as Jake looked at Piers, taking the man in. He looked thinner than he remembered. Tired.

Weak, his father's voice whispered. He shook it away.

"Where's Sherry?" He asked, then, "Is she… Is she okay?"

There was an unsettling moment where Jake feared that Piers would not tell him, but then something in the man's face gentled and he said, "She's fine. She's here."

But she wasn't here now, and Jake couldn't help but feel stung.

"Jake," Piers said, and it sounded like the words were taking a lot from the man – exhausting him. "Chris, is he… is he still there?"

"With Wesker? Yes."

"No, I mean is he…still in there? Somewhere?"

Jake stiffened, thinking of how Chris' feet had scrabbled against the tile beneath Wesker's weight. His screams, and how he had begged. His blank eyes, staring. Silent. Still.

"…I don't know."

It was the smallest mercy he could give, and it wasn't enough. His words did nothing to hide the truth. Piers turned away from him, and Jake let him. It was a fucked up world they lived in.

Men like Chris Redfield shouldn't die.

[a/n] As always, thank you - thank you - THANK YOU for your constant patience and continued readership and support. You people are my favorite people. I promise I will finish this. Slowly, but surely. I promise.