Unknown Location
May 1st

A distant faint ringing could be heard in the dark followed by incoherent mumbling.

The mumbling became easier to make out as each second passes.

"...A...ke ...p. C...me o... Ake up."

"...Uuugh. What?" The Player's voice, while weak, responds in the dark.

"Wake up," the other voice responds, now being intelligible.

A grey blur briefly appears before the darkness blinks out. It happened again, each blink the blur became more humanoid in appearance.

Before long the blur clears up revealing Brain Drain at the forefront of the Player's POV who had just awakened.

"You shouldn't have been out that long."

"Uugh... Brain... Drain?"

The Player was bound to a wall with his arms and feet in a bind, he had various vital readers and ECG electrodes stuck to his face and bare torso.

He looks around his environment and sees an empty dark room full of various incubation tanks and medical tools. It didn't take him long to figure out his predicament.

"...You've got to be kidding me," the Player said in a drowse.

"You weren't willing to cooperate so I had to take a more...drastic approach to the situation. Because of you and that little girl I lost my best weapon."

His comment struck a nerve that made the Player's expression darken with hate.

"Carol was never your weapon and you need to get that out of your skull. Then again...you don't have one so I'm guessing that's why you continue to believe that bullshit," The Player smirked with his eyes barely open.

Brain Drain huffs and folds his arms. "You're nothing at all like I was expecting."

"If you were someone I cared about I'd tell you I was sorry to disappoint you."

"Really? More insults?"

"You're not exactly giving me options for an alternative. I assure you, if I wasn't stuck here...this conversation would've gotten violent the moment I saw you."

"You think you can hurt me?"

"Get me off this wall and let's find out."

"Interesting. You've got that fire I always envisioned you having, but your morality keeps you from being so much more."

"It keeps me from being scum like you."

"Still so blind. You're worried about the life of a single individual when thousands, if not millions, are at risk of being slain by the Skullgirl. A bit selfish of you in the grand scheme of things, don't you think?"

"And what makes you any better?" The Player asked as his bitterness put some base in his weak voice. "You talk about being selfish, but you don't give people a choice. Your tunnel vision for a problem you have no control over clouds your judgement. And guess what? Your precious project was going to fail from the start. You couldn't fully control Carol."

"Of course. Valentine's altruism got in the way of that. She suggested we keep a fraction of that girl's soul intact, as a 'mercy,' but now that I think about it I'm wondering if that was an intentional design flaw."

Carol's ability to keep a small portion of her sanity, thus being able to resist control was the result of Valentine's forethought, further supporting Valentine was only keeping character as a morally unjust soldier as a front for her true intentions.

Proving once and for all that she was never on Brain Drain's side.

"I won't make that same mistake though," Brain Drain continued. "I'm going to create another biological weapon and this time everything will be specified to my original design. That Renoir was perfect."

The Player immediately bares his fangs and physically pulls forward only to be stopped by his bindings. "You go anywhere near her and I swear to god I'm going to-!"

Brain Drain swats the back of his hand across the Player's face and silences him with a hard mechanical slap.

The Player lets the slap register with his head in the direction he was turned. Afterward he spits out a shot of blood and slowly turns his glare back at Brain Drain.

"Big man," the Player smirked.

"She was perfect. Skullgirl corruption kept on a leash by a mortal soul, but that human half would've never been able to overpower her innate instinct to destroy and conquer through natural means. That is until you twisted how things work with her."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That Living Weapon she carries, it's a double-edged sword. It suppresses her Skullgirl power by feeding off of it with an insatiable appetite, but even with its help the scale tips in the Skullgirls favor. If she ever loses that weapon there will be nothing to keep that power in check and she could become a greater threat than her mother, but then I saw how you were able to influence her - how you were able to...enhance her."

Brain Drain was referencing when his psychic link was severed with Carol by Umbrella's resonance spike that he knew was caused by synchronizing.

"Because of you, there was enough to keep the Skullgirl corruption in check and balance out the instability. That light in her soul shinning over the dark, a positive reaction in the blood that spiked their resonance and undid everything I put into my own masterpiece."

Just saying that instilled enough frustration and anger in Brain Drain to warrant him giving the Player a good gut punch.

"Ugaah!" The Player lets out a winded gasp and slouches over.

He grabbed the Player by the back of his head and lifts him up so that they were at eye level. "And because of that you're going to help me perfect a new bioweapon."

"Huuu... uuuuu... You lost your goddamn mind if you think I'd ever help you do shit."

Brain Drain chuckled softly and released the Player's head. "Your role is more in line with that of a lab rat. Running through an intricate maze for me to study and gather data. Nobody truly knows what 'Heart Synchronization' is and why you're the only one who has the ability to do it, but that's the beauty of science - finding answers to the universes biggest mysteries by any means necessary. Get comfortable because you're going to be here for a while."

The Player was still winded from the punch but he was able to calm his breathing and pick himself up. "There's no way you're getting away with this. Once my friends find out something is wrong and they'll find you."

"Is that right?"

Brain Drain walks over to the operation table and hovers his hands over the various tools at his disposal: forceps, pliers, syringes, clamps, scalpels, and bone cutters. He picks the syringe and returns to the Player, sticking the needle into his arm to get a blood sample.

After examining the tube he walks over to a control panel and flips a lever.

The sound of machinery whirring filled the room and just as the Player looks around in search of the noise source electrical buzzing goes off and his body reacts with agonizing manic movement.

"GAAAAHAHHHHGHHHH! AAUUGGGGGHHHH!"

The numerous seals on his body was rigged to a generator that created powerful electrical charges that painfully surged through his entire body.

The intensity was low enough to keep it from being fatal but strong enough to like death was on the horizon.

"Let them try," Brain Drain challenged with his arms crossed, watching as the Player violently jerks about from the electrocution.

ZZzzzzzzzttttttttt! ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzrrrrrt! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRRRRRR

"AAAAUUUUUUUUUHHHH! GAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH! GRYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

His screams not only filled the room, but the hallways of an extensive lab area which would go on to echo up multiple floors before fading from being out of range.

The multistory facility that was surrounded by a dense forest, but when panning out from the greenery, the building was shown as a lone establishment on an island far off from the mainland.