–
He sat in his chair with little ease. If they found anything in the sewers, it would be an extremely long day, as it already was starting to feel like. Wesker leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He hoped this would all end soon. He vowed to himself that he would never get that physically involved with Umbrella ever again. Laughing in response to how impossible that was, made his ribcage bite. What he would give right now to have severed pain receptors and a few sleeping pills. The human condition always liked to remind him of his place in life, like a bully on the playground. No matter how much he threw sand in its eyes, it always got the best of him. It got the best of everyone in the end.
His phone rang. "Yes?"
"Al- I've got something for you. Stop by the diner tomorrow morning? You're buying me breakfast." It was Birkin and he sounded sickeningly overjoyed. Wesker knew when his friend got to this level of enthusiasm, it was usually for a good reason.
"Alright. But William, have you ever considered trying some place new?" Wesker asked, shuffling through the stacks of reports on his desk with a sigh.
"No. they have the best coffee."
"It's consistently burned."
"It's how I like it. Got to go."
A knock came at the door and a timid face peered around the door frame. It was Valentine.
Nodding, Wesker gestured her in and ended his call.
"Jill, How can I help." he asked, straightening himself to the best of his ability. His bones seemed to scream in his chest.
"You ok, Captain? You've been missed around the office." she asked carefully. The superficial scrapes and bruises had mostly healed from the car crash, but his body still felt like it had been hit by an eighteen-wheeler. He had been lucky to escape with so little. "I'm fine, just had a bout of food poisoning."
"Happens to the best of us." she said with a smile. "Well the others and I were going to go for some dinner on Friday, down at the bar on south street; just around the corner? I know you probably don't want to think about food right now… but. Well, it's Bill Henderson's 20th on the force. We were wondering if we were going to see you there?"
He was at the end of his tolerance level and a decline was on the tip of his tongue. But he took a seconds pause, calmed his nerves, and considered. Camaraderie to Albert Wesker was the best commodity to be in possession of. It led to loyalty, unyielding trust, and was only rivaled in his mind by the most potent of blackmail. You never knew when you'd need it, but often wished you'd had it. Much like a stiff drink, now that he thought about it.
"Alright." he said in the friendliest tone he could muster. "I'll do my best to make it. What time?"
"7pm."
"I'll be there."
Jill's expression erupted into a glowing smile and handed him a styrofoam container from behind her back. Wesker took it in his hands with a confused expression that marked the man for someone who wasn't used to receiving things he hadn't asked for.
"I got this, before I, ah, knew you had food poisoning. Figured you'd be hungry with the caseload on your desk."
He opened it to find a hefty salad from the Italian market down the street he would frequent when he remembered to eat. He recalled that he had gone there once with Jill and Chris months ago. She somehow remembered his order, exactly.
"Jill, you're a goddess," he said, feeling his stomach imploding on itself but trying not to look too famished. "Thank you."
She beamed with satisfaction. "No problem." she nodded with a smile and turned to make her way out, her agenda met in spades.
"Jill- One last thing. Malcom hasn't come by recently with any evaluation reports has he?"
She shook her head. "No, just some scheduling."
"Alright, Nevermind, then. Thank you." Jill turned on her heels and travelled back to her desk.
"Well?" Chris asked.
"He's coming." she said lightly as she sat back down.
"Everytime I ask him to go out for a drink, he hands me a report." Chris said, kicking his metal drawer shut with his boot.
"Jill Valentine, master of persuading." Joseph mumbled.
–
Later that afternoon, Albert Wesker strode down the hallway towards the office of his Bravo team, miffed and bristling under the skin. He had asked Malcom Wright for a monthly evaluation on the performance of his team. Wesker had appointed Malcom as team leader to help with his own bandwidth. The man was capable. Much like many of the men and women of STARS, he was ex-military and possessed a strong sense for thinking outside the box when it came to tactics. He'd been discharged from the army for bludgeoning another man to death. The circumstances were less than clear, which led to his discharge, but he ultimately remained innocent. Wesker was skeptical of the man's temper but Bravo seemed to respond well to his leadership, and no one had complained otherwise. There had been higher casualties when compared with his own Alpha team, but that wasn't necessarily the most pressing matter as of recent. No, he was more curious how the new recruit, Rebecca Chambers was fitting in. She was a remarkable medic based on her file and Wesker couldn't deny his eagerness to see her less adequate skills raised to the bar of STARS. That, or she would be cut.
He entered the office to find it empty, blinds half closed with the dim glass lamps lighting the room in a dirty haze filled with rays of light ribboning over his uniform.
He looked to Malcom's desk and began rummaging around it, searching for anything that looked like useful data. He found some doodles, case files, a picture of his mutts, and a half-eaten sandwich that looked like it had been there for much too long. There was a pad filled with dates and notes, not unusual, he thought, but a set of letters and numbers caught his sudden attention. It was Wesker's license plate number. Wesker picked up the pad and tossed through its loose pages. It became evident over the many hastily written pages that it was a log tracking Wesker's whereabouts. When he was out, when he was in- even the 911 called in for the burning wreck of his car.
Interesting, so he wasn't as subtle as he had hoped. He felt himself feeling simultaneously annoyed and impressed. Pocketing the notepad, Wesker had been about to give up and head out when he noticed a folder tab peeking out from under the corner of the desk. To Wesker's trained eyes, it had obviously not gotten there on its own. He hunkered down as gently as his body would allow, and flipped through its contents, eyebrows raised in rare surprise.
"Sir?" a voice reached his ears as he slapped the folder shut almost gleefully and looked up. It was Rebecca Chambers.
"Ah- Miss Chambers."
"Please, Rebecca. Anything… I can help you with, Sir? Malcom is out on appointment."
"That's fine. I was just looking for his evaluation report. How's the training coming along? Getting adjusted?" He stood to his full height with a careful speed and leant his weight back against Malcom's heavily built desk.
She nodded with some hesitation. "Yes. Everyone's been very patient with bringing me up to speed. We completed several calls this week."
"And everyone is still alive, I see."
She gave an uncomfortable laugh. "That wasn't me, Sir. I…heard about McCarthy, and I know how dangerous this job can be. I just want you to know that I'm up to the task."
"I have no doubt of it," Wesker simply stated as if remarking that the sun was out.
-
He sat across from a cup of coffee that had been made most likely hours ago, and tasted much like a generous helping of battery acid. Wesker watched his friend gulp it down in minor disgust.
"Honestly, I'm shocked you're still alive."
"It's frankly a miracle that either of us is with the way things have been going. But I think you'll appreciate this little change in the wind. Behold- your gift."
William Birkin grabbed a thick hardcover book out of his bag and pushed it across the table. Wesker raised his brow, picking it up. There was no title and the pages were new. Too new. He opened the cover to reveal the hollowed out interior. In it were three, neatly packed syringes. "Mind elaborating?" he asked, closing the cover and setting it back down on the table, as if it had been nothing special.
Birkin looked around shiftily and leaned over the table. "The virus I found in the archive. It's almost ready but there's no way a host could survive without previous and controlled exposure. Otherwise you get a spectrum of unpredictable mutations, and I don't think you'd want to replace that pretty face of yours with what we have in cryo."
Wesker said nothing, feeling Birkin just beginning to wind up. "These are essentially boosters. You expose yourself slowly overtime, build up antigens- develop enough resistance so that your body can handle the final dose without it going haywire. You can see for yourself, all the labwork is inside. You take one- every 3 weeks."
"Side effects?"
Birkin shrugged.
"William."
"Nothing that will kill you or turn you into a walking slab of meat, if that's what you're worried about. From what I can tell, nothing crazier than your typical flu, if that."
Wesker's face grew dark. "You really know how to instill confidence," his said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
"You know I wouldn't come to you with this if I wasn't sure that it was relatively safe."
'There it was', he thought. 'relatively'. The truth was that he didn't know that. Albert Wesker and William Birkin had been friends and colleagues for over a decade. Birkin was the only person that had inspired envy in the STARS captain. When he had lost the candidacy for project lead of the T-Virus to Birkin, he had been furious. He knew however, that William Birkin was far more brilliant and perhaps, far more unhinged than he had ever hoped to be when it came to molecular biology and engineering. His work was his life and Wesker suspected the man had a stronger loyalty to the name of science than to the name of friendship. What Wesker did know was that results and exploration came before personal safety with the man sitting across from him, who was currently drinking burned coffee because he enjoyed the taste.
Birkin was no stranger to his friend's almost unreadable facial expressions, prompting him to put down his coffee and lean in over his dish.
"Look- it's up to you. I'm just telling you- if you're interested in the prototype, your best bet of not growing 2 heads and your skin flipping inside out is in that book." Birkin said, lowering his voice with an air of caution.
"I'll look into it."
Birkin nodded.
"How's your sleep schedule?"
Birkin looked up at him with deep circles under his eyes.
"Well, sorry I asked."
"Yeah, well you're no prized chicken yourself. I'm never sure which is safer, Intelligence or Research."
Wesker mused over his recent memory of the group of scientists who were quarantined after a cerberus leaked containment. They stayed quarantined, permanently.
"You know we're low in the research department. You ever think about transferring back? Do you really like hanging out with those buddy cops so much?"
Wesker sighed staring into his coffee. Birkin could sense a hint of sadness in the officer sitting across from him.
"If we both want to get out of here, we need to diversify our assets. I've spoken with our mutual friends and they've made it clear that if we get them the data, and the samples, we'll have positioned ourselves quite well. We've sunk too much into this now to pivot."
"Ah- good old sunk-cost fallacy." Birkin said, raising his cup in a mock toast, earning him a dismissive look from his colleague.
"I kid. As much as I would like to have you around, I see your point. We'll just have to wait a little bit longer. But imagine, Al. If that works," he gestured over to the book with his chin. "Do you realize what it could mean for us both?"
Wesker didn't say anything, but he continued to stare at the book's faceless cover, its contents seeming very much to him like a game of roulette.