1978

The two young scientists, seventeen-year-old Albert Wesker and William Birkin, had learned, in short order and through the misfortunes of their peers, how to read what sort of a mood Doctor James Marcus would be in that day. Silence was generally a good sign, provided he wasn't disturbed too early. If Marcus had started the day early, barking orders and then proceeding to ignore them for the better part of a day, that was better- they wouldn't have to walk on eggshells if they had to approach him regarding the previous day's work.

Today had started out as a good day. Marcus was coming up to a critical milestone in cracking the Prototype Virus, and they all knew it. The stakes were higher, of course. When their classmates had begun disappearing, they had been puzzled when friends had 'gone home' or 'been transferred without a fuss', with mounting alarm, they had begun to suspect something more dire. Some tried to run. They weren't heard from again.

As mounting despair swept through the group, the two handpicked by Marcus- who began to see for themselves the aftermath of these 'departures' in autopsies - had been contacted by Oswell Spencer. The founder himself had seemed to be well aware of the broad strokes of Marcus' decline, and offered them the keys to the intellectual kingdom- so long as they could steal them aware from the present heir apparent before they could leave at the end of term. There was an archaic, almost chivalric sense of justice in taking Marcus' most prized possession from under his nose, and the hatred they had quietly nurtured over the year, under the yoke of this monster in his little fiefdom, held irresistible appeal.

They just needed the right day to act.

Their moment came, unexpectedly, while they were assisting him in the lab, in the form of a telephone call. Someone from upstairs had patched it through, startling the old man at his workstation.

The two young men went very still.

After a moment's debate, Marcus went to the wall-mounted device and hit SPEAKER, waving absently at the two as he returned to his seat. A very good day for him, then. He rarely tolerated distractions. "What is it, " the old man barked. "I'm on a tight timetable in the lab and told them upstairs not to disturb me unless the place is burning down."

A stammering reply came through, apologizing profusely. Marcus had a fierce reputation at the regional head office, and it seemed well-understood that it was better to work around him than to make him live up to his reputation as the Director of the facility. That was an excellent way for accidents to happen. The company was generous in so many other ways, and it made itself a deeply attractive place to pursue a career, but Dr. Marcus' word was law.

An irritated, feminine sigh could be heard in the background, and the speaker faltered, uncertain. Marcus froze at the sound.

The two young men saw this and looked at each other. Fleeing would be seen as a sign of a weak, guilty mind. Distracting him would place a target on their backs. They were relatively safe, handpicked from the 'rabble'- charming people, these old tyrants, really.

Relatively safe was not an encouraging thought.

Forcing himself to breathe again, Wesker began working again, with exaggerated care. Birkin took longer to recover, only moving when prodded to pass a particular solvent by his elbow.

Marcus, for his part, gave a strangled sound. The executive stammered once again. "Sir, I apologize for the interruption! Ms. Ashford showed up for the annual general meeting-" Marcus jerked as if electrified, and a tray of freshly sterilized forceps clattered to the floor.

The poor woman on the line sounded horrified to be in this position. Spencer wasn't expected to show up himself, and the head office formed an implacable barrier of lawyers and executives to maintain their interests.

The newcomer's voice - Ms. Ashford, presumably - came through the line again, crisp, taut, with a lofty British accent of the same variety as Spencer's had been in their one conversation. "Ah, wonderful, he may actually be listening. Yes, head office sometimes likes to check in on the annual general meetings, and goodness, wouldn't it be wonderful if the person in charge of guiding the best and brightest incoming guard at the training facility could chime in with a few words. Given the astronomical size of the holes in your reports, it seems like the only means of dragging any information out of you is to get you on the line myself." Someone whimpered slightly in the background of the conference room at the other end of the line. Wesker could almost picture it, polished suits staring open-mouthed and cowering slightly in their chairs. Marcus may have held his little fiefdom, but this person had swept in and snatched it up handily, seemingly on a whim.

This person held power, and she was making a point of reminding Marcus of it.

Marcus' voice took on a very slight quaver when he finally spoke. "This project is a direct report to Spencer. You, of all people, ought to be aware of that." His voice was tight, waring for control.

"I, of all people, ought to know just what a repugnant idea it is to leave you in a room of teenagers who are smarter than you, but here you are, and there a large portion of the graduating class aren't, looking at the accounting ledgers for that wing. Perhaps someone can give me the forwarding address that a few of the washout candidates were sent? It's an awfully big company, Director Marcus. Wouldn't want a resource to got to waste."

The silence that followed filled the world. "Ms. Ashford?" The executive who started the call sounded so small in that moment, like they had briefly been shown the monster lurking under all of their beds. The moment stretched, until Ms. Ashford spoke again, more quietly this time. "Clearly I misunderstood the scope of this particular section, Ms. Everett. I trust Director Marcus will have updates available as your office requires. I'll have a word with Spencer in the meantime. Say something so I know the call hasn't dropped, or I'll come down there myself. " This last part was mildly said, but the sudden envenomed tone made it clear to whom it was directed at.

Marcus stood so quickly that he nearly upended his stool. "No need, Marigold, I heard you quite well. My office will be in touch." Acid and a thin note of panic laced his voice. He all but ran to the phone and stabbed at the orange button to END the call. He backed away slowly from the device like it was a striking snake.

When he turned, it wasn't the normal pique, or even the affected disinterest that they had grown accustomed to. There was a blank look of frozen panic on his face. The moment passed, and Marcus sagged from the adrenaline drop, leaning against the lab bench for support. The man seemed twenty years older in that moment - the vitality he had begun the day with now drained dry.

Birkin glanced from Marcus to Wesker in rising alarm, but Wesker surveyed the situation with interest. The two boys had learned to play off of each other well this year as a matter of necessity, and he desperately hoped that Birkin would pick up on his cue.

Clanking about slightly more noisily than normal, Wesker called out with a studied casual tone. "Sir, we're just about ready to move on to the next phase of the bioassay experiment. Would you prefer we break for lunch before we continue?" It was barely ten thirty, but Marcus seems thoroughly unaware of this fact.

"Oh…ah. Yes, of course." Marcus responded, dazed. His hands held a noticeable tremor that hadn't been there moments before, visibly sweating. The man often lost track of time, certainly, but he was also damned sharp, and more importantly, incredibly paranoid. One of his dearly departed classmates had tried this to no avail once, but…this was an opportunity. They still had to be careful in the execution.

Marcus seemed to notice the tremor and sighed. "That damned witch. I would have broken through years ago if I'd been a little faster." He seemed to be talking to himself, forgetting he wasn't alone.

With that, he trudged out of the lab, work, and protégés forgotten.

They waited thirty seconds before moving. Birkin cautiously poked his head out of the lab to peer down the hall. "The mess hall is the other way," he said as quietly as he could. I think he's going to lie down." A moment passed before their eyes tracked to the lab bench, with his precious, abandoned notebooks.


Back in the meeting, the team of executives stared at Marigold Ashford, vice president of Umbrella's outreach division in a mixture of horror and barely suppressed delight. She smiled at them, apologetic. "Headquarters will have more information at the end of this quarter. I do apologize that you got caught up in that." She took a long sip from her bottle of water, relaxed and solidly in her element. "Occasionally Doctor Marcus requires a rather sharp prod to recall he's part of a team. I can assure you, it's part of my job. Rest assured, we've been monitoring the situation recently due to some irregularities in reporting from the facility."

The executives around the room went quite still; she would wager that most of them had requested further direction from the only place that could give Marcus orders, and all of them were anonymous. "Nothing of that will reflect poorly on this board today." She smiled brightly. "I think we can take a short break, and reconvene in fifteen? We're making good time, and if we finish for three o'clock then I would love to see where, in Raccoon City, has a decent merlot." She gestured to the poor woman who had braved Marcus' wrath to make the call with the gentlest smile she could manage. "Shall we?"


Later that night, Wesker lay awake in his bunk. He should have felt jubilant. Marcus' little episode had sent him to bed for the rest of the day, and no one had seen him at dinner.

They had cleared the workstation to prevent sample degradation if possible; Marcus would find the work sealed and laid out for him to pick up again the next morning in pristine condition, with backups ready in case the live samples could not be salvaged. Birkin had even taken over analysis for the current study set. Missing a reading at this juncture was asking for punishment, and it would settle Marcus to see that the disruption hadn't impacted the timetable he had set too terribly. The reasons were written on a sheet in Birkin's neat, cramped hand. They would need to maintain the appearance of interfering as little as necessary while balancing the integrity of the study. Marcus had learned to value their intellect, but they were hardly indisposable.

Wesker's hands were much more occupied with the photocopier in the adjoining office, moving through ten years of notes with a mechanical momentum. The old man was paranoid, alright. Quick doodles and notes were scattered through the margins. He considered them briefly, then filed it as a curiosity for later. Spencer had told them to bring the work along, not to present it for inspection. He had handled the volumes with care, replacing them quickly to avoid suspicion. They were lucky, in a sense. Marcus had only chosen to install 'security' cameras in the live subject labs, for research purposes.

They were going to pull it off. Spencer's offer would take them out of this place, and to their own lab. They'd be able to work without the fear of James Marcus' casual homicidal tendencies, or his leech fixation getting in the way of progress. Marcus himself would be effectively neutralized.

The call today, leading to that little episode, had been a gift. But it had also been a deeply jarring interaction, and the near-hysterical effect it had had on Marcus had taken them both aback.

But it had been curious.

Everyone inside the real work of the company vaguely knew the story about the tragic death of the Ashford patriarch when the Prototype Virus sample lines work had just barely been secured. The blame had fallen on the son, functionally an exile now. The daughter- the woman on the call - had a veil of rumors surrounding her, but most agreed that her reclusive nature was due to the lingering effects of a previous illness. Apparently, she was positively gifted at brokering connections and managing the more delicate relationships for the company.

And from the call today, she clearly loathed Doctor Marcus. The staff still on duty had heard about it by dinner from witnesses on the other end of the call, snickering quietly behind their hands. This had happened before, they had confirmed. If Marcus had known she was going to be in town, he would have avoided the lab altogether if possible. "He'd chew off his own leg to avoid being in the same room as that lady," the operations manager said, eyes dancing with suppressed, conspiratorial glee. "It's the only guarantee of a holiday we tend to get around here. It's not worth it for me to know what she's got on him but wow."

The operations manager - Jones?- normally well pressed and composed, had seemed flushed, distracted. Everyone had gone out for a late lunch following the meeting with Ms. Ashford; she'd won the coin toss for a spot at that particular table. Evidently, that was standard fare for one of these visits; the VP seemed to feel sorry for those who had to deal with the staff around Marcus, and had treated the staff who had been staged in place for that little ambush generously afterward.

Something about the situation didn't add up.

Still, it wasn't urgent- why look a gift horse in the mouth before he was ready to take that particular snarled tapestry of those at the very top of the organization, while they were working with one cornerstone to undermine another. Once he and Birkin could walk out of this facility unmaimed, perhaps he would have the luxury of indulging in a mystery without undue risk to his own position.

Not a moment sooner.