Chapter One.
Albert Wesker sat at a table that had likely cost more than some people's houses. For the thousandth time he caught himself wishing Umbrella had spent more money stockpiling supplies and less on tables.
The only thing the table was doing at the moment was holding a pile of dossiers, all documenting everything Umbrella knew about certain persons of interest. Wesker had just finished going through his own file and was surprised at some of the information it contained. Apparently, he had a psychological attachment to his sunglasses and always wore his hair in the same manner, slicked back.
He wasn't about to take his sunglasses off simply because some piece of paper had him pegged, but he did lower them to give the rest of the stack a hard look. Somewhere in the files was the key to pulling the entire world out of the hole it had sunk into. Hole, who was he kidding, it was a grave.
Umbrella was all about raising dead things from graves, so he pulled a dossier out at random and opened it. It detailed the woman at the core of the Alice project, Alice. It was just the dossier he had been looking for actually, as he believed Alice to be the key to the entire problem.
She was like him. Her DNA had bonded with the T-virus, giving her all of its gifts with none of its grotesque physical mutations nor any of its mind-obliterating properties. He flopped the dossier down on the table in disgust, remembering that there were some key differences between Alice and himself.
One was that he wasn't completely free of mutation. His irises were red and his pupils yellow and slitted. He has also noticed, along with whoever had written his dossier, that was more aggressive than he used to be. Sometimes it was a battle to keep from snapping the neck of an incompetent researcher, or to keep from smashing valuable equipment when it failed to work properly.
It was these things that made his genetic bond incomplete and, as tests would show, not suitable for being used a vaccine or a cure for the T-virus. Alice herself was needed for any headway to be made. Even the clones of her didn't work.
The largest and most problematic difference between himself an Alice was that he knew his current location, while Alice, if she was even alive, could be anywhere on the planet.
That wasn't exactly true, he thought as he tapped her dossier. By all accounts, it was likely she was somewhere in the American west, but that was a big place, and far away too. As it currently stood, he was able to contact the other White Umbrella facilities via satellite from his current location in Egypt. The facility he had called home for the past year was actually bellow another facility, one that had been destroyed by Vatican agents of all people.
A memo had been sent to the Nevada base telling them to keep an eye out for Alice. It had largely been a symbolic gesture, as everyone in the place had to spend much of their time underground.
He pulled out another dossier, this one on Sir Integra Hellsing. She was likely dead, but she had reminded him of another possibility. Putting Integra Hellsing back in the stack, he searched for another dossier, this one on Seras Victoria, an agent of the Hellsing Organization and vampire.
Hellsing and its agents had given Umbrella researchers a hard time. They defied everything everyone knew about science. To the unenlightened, it would seem that the vampires of Hellsing were indeed the magical creatures of lore and legend, but Wesker wasn't fooled. He knew there was science behind what the vampires Alucard and Seras were capable of, just science no one understood.
Reading the Victoria dossier, he thought the T-virus had been the same way in its level of bafflement. Wesker felt that calling it a virus was simply the result of lacking a better term, as no other virus did the things it did. It was likely that studies would show, should they ever obtain a sample, that what made Seras Victoria a vampire was the same thing that made a T-virus mutant.
Seras Victoria had last been sighted in London, and while that was some time ago, well before the T-virus began running rampant, it was believed she was still there if she was still alive. Certain data recordings suggested she was.
Wesker envisioned making people immune to the T-virus by making them vampires. The only problem was, where would they get the blood to survive? Perhaps cloning humans to be used as blood sacks…they could be fed intravenously dead clones…like in that movie with the robots…
He slammed his fist onto the desk, nearly cracking it. Every plan he concocted that didn't involve using Alice to synthesize a cure was as unfeasible as it was stupid. The temptation to leave the facility and its researchers behind to wander the earth as a nomad was sometimes great. He was certain a new form of T-virus ecology would develop on the earth and wondered how it would look, but leaving would seem too much like admitting defeat.
There was simply not enough information to act in any one direction. Hating the thought of waiting for something to break, he kept sifting through dossiers. The priest involved in the Veronica incident came up along with Los Illuminados and Millennium. All had been looked over multiple times, with this time yielding no more than the previous brainstorming sessions.
He left the folders on the table and got up to go find a researcher. One of the useless ones who was doing little more than use up supplies.
The intercom in his quarters beeped. He pushed the button. "Speak."
"Mr. Wesker, there's something here you should see."
He stood up immediately and headed towards the monitoring room. Everyone in the compound knew better than to say such things to him without good cause, so there was no worry that whatever it was he should see was indeed something he should see.
When he entered the room, there was a lone researcher in a white lab coat looking worried and afraid. He was holding long sheets of paper in his hand and a light on one of the monitors was blinking. "This just came in from Nevada, sir, along with a call from Dr. Isaacs."
He took the papers from the researcher without speaking and looked at them. They showed a substantial spike in psyionic activity, located on the eastern edge of Nevada. "Open the channel," Wesker said.
The researcher pushed a button and the face of Dr. Isaacs appeared on the monitor. He was an older man, unlike many of Umbrella's other researchers. Like them, however, Wesker thought he was more than a little rash and single-minded. "What is it Dr. Isaacs," Wesker said.
"I think the data speaks for itself," he said. "It's Alice. It has to be. We've already determined her general location and are searching via satellite. We'll move to capture as soon as we…"
"No," Wesker said. "I'll handle this."
Isaacs face contorted in anger, but mellowed back out once he remembered himself. "You? You're in Egypt. The trip would be a tremendous drain of limited resources, surely you know that."
"You attempting to seize her would also be a drain, as well as a complete waste. You must be aware, more than anyone, what she's capable of."
Isaacs seemed at a loss, but true to form tried to make his case. "She'll cooperate if we explain to her what we're trying to do. If she values…"
"And what if she doesn't?" Wesker said. "What if she simply doesn't care anymore? Had that thought ever occurred to you? We've given her absolutely no reason to trust us and you're not likely to convince her that we're even capable of saving what's left of the world. It could very well be that she'll kill the team you send and make every effort to trace them back to your location where she'll finish the job. Who knows? She may even use the information your facility's databases to track down the rest of White Umbrella."
That was a stretch, but Wesker didn't want Isaacs mucking up his half-formed plan. Similar psychic readings had been tracked in England, near Dover, but Wesker had thought little of them, as the science behind them was shady at best.
"You're being overly cautious," Isaacs said. "At this rate, we've little to lose."
"Wrong," Wesker said. "We have everything to lose. And if you're the one that loses it, I'll see to your disciplinary proceedings personally. Do I make myself clear?"
Isaacs's face had become a careful mask, but he was clearly sorry he had even called. "Yes, Mr. Wesker. We'll keep an eye on things and inform you of any changes."
"I'm sure you will," Wesker said. The monitor went blank, and Wesker turned to the researcher. "Get me everything we have on England."
"Everything?"
"That is the word I used, yes," Wesker said. "Do it quickly. We have to find a needle in a haystack and convince it to help us find another needle in another haystack. Go."
The researcher left quickly, leaving Wesker to churn.
To be continued…