Chapter Fifteen: A Traitor's Tale

The control room was as silent and dark as it was when William and Albert had been in it. The young man stood in the threshold for a moment. They had been his boys once. His legacy would have been passed to them. Spencer turned them. The young man's fists clenched.

He walked in, placing a hand on one of the chair backs, but didn't sit. There were only a few more hours until daylight. Then it would be time to sleep. Until tomorrow. He had been hoping to make them pay tonight, but the only one who remained was Wesker. The young man found him on one of the monitors—gathering files, and downloading data onto a flash drive. Though, he couldn't think of attacking Albert, especially with most of his family dead (thanks to those murderers who set his children ablaze). It was true that he was stronger than he once was. Strength was nothing compared to combat training and skill, both of which he knew Albert was proficient in.

Is that why you let the murderers go? a voice said in his head. Because you were afraid?

The young man winced.

You could have snapped his neck, the voice pressed. Then you could have done the same with the girl.

They are beneath us, the young man thought. Our main objective—

They killed our young ones!

His jaw tightened. After all, how could its simple mind contemplate the grandness of his design?

The cop and the prisoner were of no consequence. It was Umbrella who had to fall.

Let Albert and William get away. Let them have one more night. Let the traitors sleep thinking that they were safe. In one night, he and his children had brought both Arkley facilities to their knees. Sunlight was only a hindrance. By tomorrow night, he will have more children and they would devour another facility and another.

The young man grinned as he imagined Oswell Spencer watching his company fall apart. Secrets exposed. And then the young man would be there, staring into Spencer's eyes, when he gave the final blow.

But what about the murderers?!

The young man grunted at the voice.

Very well, he thought. As though on cue, he turned the monitor to the loading dock. The cop was dodging the T-001's hulking form and tumbling into the service elevator. After all, they will need a good feeding once they hatch.

Mama, let me in! Billy pounded his fists against the back door, tears swelling. The door towered over him, the blinds over its window firmly shut. I didn't mean it. His little nine-year-old fists bled, but he kept pounding them against the white wood. A roaring wind swept around him, as though he was in the middle of a cyclone. His soaking clothes clung to his shivering body. A voice came from the other side of the door, but he heard it as clearly as if the woman stood right beside him.

You wanna go play! Go! Leave me, too!

But he didn't want to leave her. He wanted to make her happy. He wanted to make her proud.

"Billy!" Another voice said over the roar. It shook him, forcing his eyes to open. Water slapped him in the face. His head throbbed, and the little bit of light made him squint. He clung to something—the strut in a broken pillar. The river around him pulled, threatening to untether him. "Billy!"

He followed the voice. It came from above, though everything was a fuzzy outline. A woman stood on the platform.

"Ma…ma?" Billy muttered, sputtering water. Something hit him—some kind of debris. His arm came undone, and the river carried him away. Billy reached out for his anchor, but it disappeared. The voice called out to him again. He was falling again. He wasn't even sure if he were alive or dead. The roar of the falling rapids sounded like his mother's voice—Leave me, you ungrateful bastard. It was a statement that followed Billy throughout his childhood and teenage years. But he never wanted to leave. He just wanted to make her happy. Doing everything she asked—whether it be to go pick up a bottle of Vodka for her (even if he were too young to get it) or pay the bills. Nothing worked.

So, when he told her he was joining Marines, she said something he hadn't expected.

'Don't go, Billy," she had said. He could smell her breath—rank with stale alcohol. Billy knew that he should be happy. After all this time, this is the one thing that he wanted to hear—for her to want him and to be proud. That's why he joined the Marines in the first place. But now, all he felt was disgust and anger. Years of trudging through the slurred insults, though challenges at his loyalty. Now, he just wanted to slap the woman.

Billy tried not to think of her as he went off to fight for his country. He did pretty well until weeks before that mission in Africa, while stationed in Taiwan.

"Mother Love," he told the Taiwanese man through drunken slurs. Billy's head had lulled to and fro on his shoulders. "Right over my arm. Tattoo that shit big and bold. Give me the one thing the bitch never gave. When she wouldn't let me in." The next morning he was left with a killer hangover and a tattoo he needed to hide from his commanders. The last thought Billy had before he faded back into unconsciousness was that, if he were dying, the last voice he heard was his mother's.

"Billy!"

The voice called him from far off. Who it was, Billy couldn't rightly say.

"Billy!" The voice said again, closer this time. Suddenly, he were rushing up through the darkness.

Billy leaned over, sputtering out water. His throat burned as he retched. The room's rancid odor—something that smelled like rotting fish—urged his vomiting on. Someone held his shoulders, keeping him in a seated position. The crashing waters came from somewhere behind. It took a few minutes before he could stop coughing. Finally, he slumped back—nearly exhausted. When he did, he saw who was at his side.

"Rebecca!" He said, feeling as though he wanted to start retching again. Everything came back in a flash—him pointing his gun on her, telling her to walk away. A ball of guilt rose up in his chest. He couldn't even bring himself to look her in the face.

"I can't believe it," she said, almost to herself. Believe that he was alive? Yeah, I can't believe it either, he thought. Then something happened that Billy didn't expect—Rebecca wrapped her arms around him in an almost bone-crunching hug. All he could do was sit there—not sure how to respond.

"I'm…I'm sorry," he said with a hoarse voice. "I shouldn't…I was—" Afraid? Billy's jaw tightened. Wasn't that what he was going to say?

"I understand," Rebecca said softly. "I can't imagine…what it must be like…"

"Yeah."

Rebecca leaned back, her green eyes searching him. Her face seemed both resolute and warm. Almost like that of a mother's. Billy couldn't keep eye contact with her. They fell on a corner of the grated platform. A pile of Bones. White and blackened. Some with rotted meat still clung to them.

He stood and walked over. The stench of decay growing stronger with each step he took. Most looked normal, though the more Billy examined the pile, the more he spotted irregularities. Some forearms looked too long, or tips of fingers sharp and pointed. Something glittered among the stack.

"They must have been test subjects," Rebecca said behind him. Billy bent over, bring up a broken name tag. They had been soldiers. Just like him. Men who set off to serve their country, and it led them here. "They must have been war criminals or…"

"No one deserves this," Billy said, tossing the name tag over the platform rails and into the waters beneath. He watched the piece of metal slip beneath the tide, quickly disappearing within its depths. Even when it was gone, all he could do was stare at the place it had fallen. "Not even war criminals…"

Rebecca took a step forward, peering up at Billy's face. He didn't look at her—he couldn't. All he could think was that he could be among these forgotten bones. Or drifting forever in this plant's waters, until he was just another bloated mass. All because he trusted others…

"Billy," Rebecca said. "I just need to know…I need to know the truth." Billy turned toward her, the question making his heart stiffen. Again, there was the resolved gentleness to her face. "Did you kill twenty-three people?" Billy gave a laugh, but there was no humor in it. Whatever he thought she might ask, this defiantly wasn't it. "I'm not going to judge you," Rebecca said quickly. "I just…this whole night…nothing's added up…I mean you should have…"

"I should have killed you already?" Billy asked, gripping onto the railing and staring into the raging waters. Again, Billy laughed beneath his breath. They said he killed twenty-three single-handedly. I must be fucking Rambo. "It's really sad…you know? You give your all for a cause—a purpose. Then, in an instant, it's swept up from under you…maybe she was right. Maybe I was good for nothing…that I can't do anything right…"

"Billy?" Rebecca asked, taking a step toward him. Billy sighed. Get it together, Coen.

"It was about this time last year," Billy said, voice low. Each word felt like a razor in his throat. But he had to talk about it. It was as though it had harbored deep inside him, lying like a fiery ball. Now that he released it, there was no stopping it. "Our unit was ordered to Africa to intervene in a civil war. Our mission was to raid a hideout of some gorilla forces located deep inside the jungle. But the hideout…it was far away from our entry point. Some died from the heat. Others were killed by the enemy."

Images flashed through Billy's mind. He was there, in the African jungle again. He could feel the sweltering heat take his breath and the weight of his gear press down on him. He could smell sweat and blood and the sweet stench of wet plant life. Gunfire rang in his head.

'In the end, only four of us survived. Took us about a week to get there, only there was no gorilla hideout. There was just a village, its residence as much victims of the war as we had been."

"What do you mean?" Rebecca asked. Billy tightened his grip on the railing.

"The idiots in charge had us operating based on wrong information. But we couldn't just go back home, empty-handed—oh no! My team rounded up the villagers. They just did as they were told—probably thought we were there to help. Men, women, children. I didn't know what was going to happen until my commander told us to start firing. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't. Not even as gunfire started. I tried to stop them—to get the gun from my captain but…I was useless.

'They knocked me out. When I came to I was in a cell, getting ready to go on trial for twenty-three murders."

"Didn't you try to say anything?" Rebecca asked. "Tell them what happened?"

"Of course I did," Billy said. "But it was my word against my teams. Every one of them turned against me. Guys who fought beside me. Guys I thought I could trust."

"Billy…" Rebecca said. She placed a hand on his shoulder, wanting to say anything that might comfort him, yet the words wouldn't come. "I'm…I'm sorry…"

"Don't be," Billy said. "It was my own fault. Besides, its ancient history."

He walked toward the other side of the platform, and let her hand fall. Rebecca watched him walk away. It was only now that she noticed he walked with a slight slump in his stiff, militant posture. It was the sign of a defeated man who refused to accept it. Rebecca felt her heart flutter at the sight. How hard it must have been for him, to be so strong for so long. Even when he knew what the inevitable outcome was.

Her team would never believe it, but they weren't here. They couldn't see Billy…

"You coming?" he said, opening the door on the other side of the walkway.

"Yeah!" Rebecca said a little higher than she meant and ran after him. The raging waters beneath followed the two as they passed through the threshold, like echoed screams from the past.