~ 6 ~ Source of the depression

"You shouldn't ask too much of yourself for the time being, because everyone knows that pride comes before a fall." Claire frowns as she skims her own horoscope. She suddenly seems distracted and thoughtful, but just for a second, then she snaps out of it. That's my sister – she has herself under perfect control. But I've been causing her enough trouble during the last weeks to recognize the sorrow in her eyes when I see it, even if it's only there for a second.

"What's wrong?" I ask. For once it's her who causes me to worry, not the other way around. "Are you taking what it says there so seriously? And if yes..." I can feel a grin spreading on my face. "What crime have you committed to look so worried? Didn't you tell Leon you're pregnant?"

Her head moves too sudden, her eyes that weren't looking at anything in particular before now stare at me, widening. I can't hold it back anymore and start laughing... and so does she.

"Silly fool! I'm not pregnant with Leon's child!"

"Then whose child is it?"

She continues laughing for a minute after using the word "pregnant", then looks away. And there it is again – that worried look in her gray-blue eyes. Something is wrong and she won't tell me whether or not it has anything to do with that silly horoscope. I know her since she's on this world; in some respects she's just as stubborn as I am.

"You would tell me if there was something, right?" I ask nevertheless, just to make sure.

"It's... nothing," she insists. "I just thought..."

The doorbell rings. Claire's face relaxes in relief. "It must be Piers! Well... I just thought there was nothing here we could offer him," she says briefly before getting up to rush to the door. She only stops in front of the mirror to check on her hair and fixes her blouse. There was a time when she had better excuses for not having to talk to me about something.

But now is not the time to confront her about it. She opens the front door and smiles at the guest who just saved her from this precarious situation. But sooner or later I'll find out what she's keeping from me. If there's something worrying her – and if it's not me for once –, I have to know about it.

Piers Nivans still looks the same as the last time I saw him. His light brown hair is pointing upwards, he's looking at Claire with his dark green eyes (or are they brown?) and the full lips form a smile when he greets her. You could think there was something going on between the two of them... But Claire has Leon, and Piers has... I don't know if he has anyone.

I don't know anything at all about him, actually, except that he seems to have a preference for scarves and other neckpieces since he was wearing one at Claire's birthday party, and now again. On the one hand, it reminds me a little of my ex-boyfriend Dee-Ay who used to wear a scarf as a lucky charm too on his missions. On the other hand, it makes me think of Wesker whose trademark also used to be an accessory: his sunglasses.

Strange that looking at Piers makes me think of those two of all people...

He turns his gaze in my direction and his smile freezes, just like his movement. I'm self-conscious now. But only for a second, then he starts moving again and comes at me. Must have been my imagination again.

"We already know each other a little bit," he says, shaking my hand.

"Yeah, briefly. From the party," I reply. "Claire says you're interested in the BSAA?"

"Exactly." Just a short word, not even a sentence. But when I look into Piers's eyes, who is only a little shorter than me, it feels like he had said a lot more. Or at least he had wanted to.

"Why don't you go in already?" Claire suggests, and I lead the way, followed by our guest.

In the meantime it has become too dark to rely on natural light from outside, so the floor lamp in the corner is bathing the living room in a soft, subdued orange light. I always tell Claire that all that's missing here is a bar and the whole room would look like a comfy pub at night, but she likes it the way it is.

We sit down on both sides of a small coffee table. I leave the armchair I usually sit on to Piers and place myself on the sofa diagonally opposite. At first we're both silent while Claire is doing whatever she thinks she must in the kitchen corner. I try not to catch his attention when I scrutinize him from top to bottom while it seems to me that he's doing the same, for whatever reason. I have to check him out to decide whether or not he's suitable. I don't know his reason to do it.

"So..." I say eventually to cut through the embarrassing silence. "Do you have any experience so far? With army life, that is. Claire says you used to be with the police..."

"Yes, but only for a short time. I was with the army before and at the moment I don't have a job, if you will," Piers explains briefly and succinctly.

That makes me suspicious. Does he only want to join the BSAA because he doesn't have anything better to do at the moment? "But you know that what I do is more than just a way to kill time, right?"

Now he laughs. "Of course! That I don't have a job at the moment is not the reason, or at least not the only reason for my being here. There's also a couple of... personal matters."

Before I can ask him what he means by "personal matters", he continues: "But that's not so important as long as I'm fit for the job, right?"

And he's right about that. If he was keen on telling me about his personal reasons, he probably would do so. And as much as I'm interested in them, I won't ask him about it. It doesn't really matter what he wants as long as he's up to the job. And I probably wouldn't just tell him about my strange relationship with Wesker either...

But it's strange anyway. This isn't the usual way applications like this go off, and I'm not the one to decide who gets hired. But Piers is so excited, and Claire wants me to get to know him so bad, so I'll just do the two of them the favor.

Speaking of the devil...

"So, to make this a little more comfortable..." Claire puts everything you need to drink coffee on the table, including a plate full of cookies. "I know you prefer the high-proof stuff at the moment, dear brother, but I think you should have your head on straight when you make a decision."

She says it: "when you make a decision". It's not my decision! All I can do is put in a word for him. Either she doesn't know that or she's hiding something from me. Anyway, she winks at me and goes back into the kitchen. I realize there's only two cups on the tray she brought.

"Hey, what about you?" I ask nervously. "You're not staying with us?"

"I still want to finish this novel today, but I'm there if you need me." With these words and a pile of imprinted paper that doesn't look big enough to take much time reading, she disappears into her room. I catch a glimpse on the first page of the short story and manage to read the title: "Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx.

Back to Piers. While we're talking, I scrutinize him once again. Since I can't have him go through any fitness tests at the moment, I try to rely on my gut feeling for the time being. And on what I see. He's tall, almost as tall as me, and slender, but I'm sure there's some muscles underneath the casual clothes. Physical strength and above-average capacity are good qualities for a BSAA agent. Considering everything we have to endure in the field, it's better to have too much of both than too little.

All in all, Piers Nivans still reminds me of myself when I was about his age. The only thing that doesn't really fit here is his hands; big, but soft like those of a woman. I can hardly imagine him using a heavy gun with those before. Not even Claire has soft hands like this. Maybe I should ask him what kind of hand cream he uses.

"Well, now I've told you some things about me," he says after a funny anecdote that made both of us laugh. "Why don't you tell me something about yourself?"

I raise an eyebrow. "About myself?"

"Yes. You know, your time with the BSAA so far. How did you get round to it? Claire says you're one of the founding members, and of course I've already caught up on it, but you can't look up the field experience of real BSAA agents anywhere on the internet." Piers is downright beaming. Nothing of what he's heard about the BSAA so far seems to put him off. I hear that some people are just like this; they know when they've found their purpose in life.

Anyway, I feel relieved. For some reason or another I was afraid at first that he'd want me to tell him about Wesker. No idea why that's always the first thing that comes to my mind when someone asks me to tell them "something about myself". Maybe because it's a part of me, and an important part of my life, even though I'm not often willing to admit it. Whenever I'm supposed to speak of my past, especially of the professional part of it, I simply can't get around mentioning Wesker.

I tell Piers what he wants to know, not mentioning my life before the BSAA, that's none of his business, but trying to be as precise as I can about everything since the foundation. The coffee pot soon becomes empty, and it's getting late. Of course Albert Wesker makes an appearance or two in the story, but since I don't know how Piers would react if I told him the truth about everything that happened between the two of us, I confine myself to the bare essentials, leaving out the personal details. Until after all I reach the last episode of my life so far, the mission in Africa...

I had a new partner, Sheva Alomar, who was working for the West African branch of the BSAA, and she was assigned to me because she was familiar with the region. We were sent to a shanty town called Kijuju to stop a trade with biological weapons on the black market. Jill had been declared dead after the incident in the second Spencer Estate although no body had been found after three months of search; a loss I was still struggling to cope with, and I hadn't seen Wesker ever since. I couldn't know whether or not he was dead since he had survived a couple of things in the past that a normal person couldn't have survived... But I would find out soon.

The guy we were chasing escaped us several times, but we soon learned that none other then Albert Wesker was really behind all of it. And he was not the only one who was still alive – Jill was with him. He kept her under control with a chemical that was administered to her at regular intervals through a device on her chest, and could do with her whatever he pleased. The development of biological weapons had gone that far already.

Sheva and I managed to free Jill of the influence of the chemical, but we didn't have time to celebrate our reunion appropriately. Wesker had actually conceived the weird plan to spread a new virus called Uroboros around the globe to infect everyone with it, have them mutate and become their new god, or something like that... He had lost his mind, and I'd finally lost my feelings for him... or so I thought.

"You might not believe me the next one... My God, it's so crazy I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been part of it!" I tell Piers with a fake smile. "The big showdown between Wesker, me, and Sheva happened in an active volcano shortly before its eruption."

"Wow! Sounds like an action movie!" Piers says, but I can tell by looking at him that he believes every single word. He's simply intrigued like a little boy who is told by his father what he was up to in his wild youth.

Here as well, I leave out what doesn't seem appropriate to me. Not because Piers is not old enough to hear it, but because he wouldn't understand. Not even my sister knows about it and I'd like to keep those things as they are. I don't even understand myself. But the one thing that changed my life, the cause of my depressed mood that lasts till today, happened in that volcano.

Sheva was nowhere to be found for a few minutes, so Wesker and I were alone with the lava of the volcano that would soon erupt bubbling under our feet.

He was no longer the man from our last encounter, let alone the one I had originally gotten to know so many years ago. He was standing in front of me, his upper body exposed, just like his face – he looked different without the sunglasses –, and cursed me with a look I had never seen on him. I had ruined his ultimate plan, destroyed everything he had worked for for years, and there was nothing left of the calm, the usual coolness with which he usually approached things. He was really pissed off and not afraid to show me that.

"Why did it have to happen like this? Why did you always have to be such a stubborn self-opinionated bastard?" he asked me, threateningly waving around the debris of the plane we had crashed over the volcano in front of my nose. His right arm had mutated due to the Uroboros virus and become even stronger than it had already been before.

"You ask me? If your brain hadn't been eaten up by viruses and there was still some sanity left in it, we wouldn't be in this situation now!" I replied, aiming my pistol at him, ready to pull the trigger as soon as he started coming my way. "You've gone crazy! It's all because of your megalomania!"

"Every person dreams of power. You could have become my partner, Chris! I would have shared my power with you, with you and nobody else. But you were too proud, too blinded by your ridiculous ideals, and where did that lead? You will never reach your goal, the Earth will never be a save place! But with me, you could have reached a different goal, we both could have reached it. Is it really better to chase a dream that will never come true, than to make space for a different dream which actually is in reach, although perhaps not everybody will morally support it? Think about it! Most of the people you're trying to protect every day wouldn't have declined what I offered you. If you're so much opposed to it, do you really have fun risking your life for people like that?"

I lowered my pistol a bit, but only a few inches. I was confused. Was there a little bit of desperation in Wesker's voice, a true emotion? But desperation was not the right word. It sounded more like... disappointment. He couldn't really be sad because I had decided against him, or could he?

"Why me?" I demanded to know. "Why didn't you move on, look for someone else after you must have realized you wouldn't be able to persuade me?"

A geyser erupted only a few meters from us, hurling lava and stone up in the air. I flinched, seeing a big rock flying in my direction as if it was aiming for my face – and then, before I could jump out of the way, plane debris crashed forcefully into the rock, pushing it away from me. At first my astonished look followed the piece of stone that now landed a few meters away in a lava pit, before my eyes moved on to Wesker. Had he just saved my life?

"Is it so easy for you?" he asked, his voice only a bit lower than before. "Could you just move on and find a new love after being ditched by the old one?"

My eyes widened, my pistol wasn't even aiming at him anymore, but at some empty space. I didn't know what to say, I was angry and confused at the same time. He was talking about love, not only like he was capable of such a feeling, but also like he had actually felt it for me.

That wasn't possible. Sexual desire, there had never been any more than that. And if yes, he had a very strange way to show love – inhuman, as he was.

But still – I took a step in his direction, lowering my pistol even further. I had to know more about it. "What are you talking about? I've always been nothing but a pain in your ass after our divergencies!"

"Above all, you've always been the dream of my sleepless nights. There was hardly a day I didn't think of you, despite our divergencies," he admitted openly while I was keeping it to myself. For me, there had also been more than one reason to think of Wesker during those last years.

"You know, I would have been ready to change something about the... let's say, radical nature of my actions. I'm not the monster you see in me, at least not always. I also have a soft side, but I was forced to find out that it's better to hide it as well as one can. I could already have killed you so often in order to avoid this situation, but it always prevented me from doing so. My soft side, and my hope that someday you might change, come to your senses. I never wanted anything but you."

There was silence for a moment. Not even the noise of the volcano, which wouldn't remain a peaceful place for long anymore, could break it. Wesker and I looked at each other and I wondered what had made him become the person who was now standing in front of me.

But then – a shot, loud enough to downright mangle the silence. I felt a quick brutal blow next to me when the bullet rushed past me, hit Wesker's chest and caused him to stagger.

"Albert!" I yelled, but it was too late. He lost his balance and I watched him fall like in slow-motion, how he fell backwards into the lava that not even a superhuman like him could ever escape. I imagined our eyes meeting, him staring at me while he was falling, willing to say something to me, one last, concluding thing... But he had disappeared before it could happen, and Sheva showed up behind me, her pistol raised, believing she had just saved my life like Jill must have believed back then at the Spencer Estate.

"Are you alright?" she asked, but the ground began to shake as if Wesker's death had enraged the volcano. A mighty quake had us fight for balance. Sheva dropped her pistol, that piece of metal which had only caused harm, and the ear-shattering noise of a propeller cutting through the air grew louder above our heads. I looked up to see a chopper come to save us. Jill was on board, throwing a rope ladder down to us that we climbed up. It seemed to be over, but then...

"Chriiiiiis!"

I cringed. The angry pained scream went through my whole body. Wesker was still alive. Fifteen meters below us he had raised his upper body out of the glowing lava. His arms had formed tentacles, apparently a side effect of one of the newest viruses he was carrying within. It seemed impossible, but they were actually long enough to grab our chopper and shake it violently. Every one of us was in danger to fall out through the open door at least once. Wesker didn't want to let me go.

"Chris, Sheva! Use those!" Jill shouted louder than the rattling of the propeller, handing us the two rocket launchers the chopper was equipped with.

"That's it for you, you son of a bitch!" Sheva cussed, aiming her weapon at Wesker who wouldn't let go of us voluntarily.

I hesitated, but Jill's piercing look as well as the immediate danger we were in urged me to act. I had to do it, otherwise he would have pulled us all into the lava.

"Suck on this, Wesker!" I screamed, firing my rocket a second later than Sheva fired hers, but it didn't miss its target.

Sheva's rocket reached Wesker first, breaking through his head and then the surface of the lava, causing a fountain. The blink of an eye later, my rocket hit his chest, ripping apart his body, his heart – and mine as well.