Chapter Fourteen: Flesh Memories
Dryden hardly had dreams, but when he did they involved millions of blurry images, of faces he couldn't see and voices he couldn't recognize.
But now, he saw each face clearly, heard each voice as if the person was standing right next to him and speaking into his ear. Each memory that had been hidden in the deepest recesses of his mind came flooding out, filling him with the truth of his origins.
The first dream he had was that of the events after his birth. Even as a newborn Dryden was already very advanced – due to the T-virus in his mother's system – and his memory of that event showed him being held by the now dead Dr. Isaacs, who had personally regurgitated him from his mother's womb.
The woman lying on the metal table could have only been his mother. Blood trickled from between her legs, and yet her face was calm. Dryden fixed his gaze on her, and was shocked when he saw that she was Project Alice. Her red hair had been slicked back, and some hair on the left side of her head had been shaved to make way for two tubes that pumped liquid into her brain.
Dryden heard himself squeal, which soon gave way to a series of high-pitched cries, as if he were pleading for his mother to wake up. Dr Isaacs wordlessly handed Dryden to a female worker, who then carried him out of the room. Dryden knew the cries that echoed in the hallway of the hospital were his own, as he tried in vain to rouse his mother, the woman Wesker made him believe was the enemy.
Although Wesker had repeatedly drilled into his brain that Alice was the enemy, and that she was the one standing in the way of their development and the improvement of Umbrella, Dryden couldn't help but feel warmth towards the woman he had previously tried so hard to kill.
From the deepest recesses of his mind, Dryden was vaguely aware of two sets of voices, one of his mother's and the other of a man – Spence Parks – who claimed that he was Dryden's father.
Now Dryden knew why he felt as if Spence carried some sort of secret; it was the secret of his true parentage that Wesker tried so hard to conceal from him.
Before Dryden could try and pull himself from the catatonic state his body seemed to be in, he found himself reliving more memories. He saw himself being presented to Wesker merely two weeks after his birth. He was now aged around four, and the first thought he had had of Wesker was that this man was not a person to be trifled with. Dryden had been right; hours after Wesker had claimed parentage of him, Wesker brought him to a chamber that overlooked a room filled with the infected, who were greedily stuffing their mouths with the insides of several Umbrella employees who had tried to flee in the midst of the crisis.
Dryden had looked up at Wesker then, and had asked if the infected were the antagonists. Wesker's mouth had twitched into a small smile. "It depends on your point of view, my son," he had replied. "To us they are helping us reshape the planet. To the rest of humankind, they are the enemy."
"But the rest of humankind don't matter to us, do they?" Dryden had replied coldly. Even then he had adapted his foster father's way of thinking, a fact that drew Wesker even closer to him.
From there Wesker had ordered the boy to be given the most stringent and strenuous training regime possible, which gave Dryden the opportunity to exercise his mental and physical abilities. Dryden failed to tell Wesker however, that whenever he used a huge amount of his psionic ability, part of his energy was used up. Dryden had feared that Wesker would view this as a weakness, and all Dryden had wanted to do was to please and meet Wesker's expectations.
This proved to be the reason for him to be catapulted back to his real family, and far from Wesker's grasp. This realization neither relieved nor saddened Dryden; in fact, he only felt anger. Why had Wesker used him as a pawn all these years? His talk of improving the planet was a lie, his claim that Alice Abernathy was a dangerous psychopath who had no connection to him whatsoever was completely the opposite, and his statement that only Umbrella could bring the planet to its fullest glory.
Wesker was the reason why the planet fell into disarray, why billions of families were violently torn apart – both figuratively and literally – and why the scourge of the infected could not be abated.
The thought that Wesker would soon become a Homo Superioris brought a chill to Dryden's heart. If Wesker had the same powers as he had, he would certainly bring all the remaining survivors under his control. Dryden had heard of a former German dictator who had millions killed for the simple fact that they did not fit his criteria of a 'superior' race. Wesker would slaughter the remaining humans to further advance his power, until there was nothing and nobody left on Earth.
Now that Dryden knew the truth, he knew there was only one thing for him to do.