Summary: Albert Wesker and William Birkin receive the news that the Antarctic base has been destroyed.
January 12th, 1983
At two o'clock that night I received an urgent circular: the Umbrella base in Antarctica had been destroyed by an explosion. The president and the chief researcher had survived. No further details were given.
I ran to William's bedroom. I knocked on the door and he opened it. I knew from his contorted gesticulation that he had also received and read the circular.
He reacted with disbelief at first. He didn't believe it. I assured him that yes, it was true. Then he mumbled about whether the investigation there hadn't blown up. I shrugged; I didn't know. Confused, he sat up in bed. How were we supposed to interpret this event? I told him not to rush into it, to wait for further clarification of the facts or to see what the consequences of the event would be.
I warned William to return to his old style of work as soon as possible. The imagined rivalry he had had with Alexia had poisoned his will and slowed our performance since 1981. I reminded him that Alexia, even if she had lost her project, was still the daughter of Umbrella's president and still twelve years old. By contrast, we were poor twenty-somethings who depended on a favorable evaluation to survive.
He seemed to take it well, despite everything. The other researchers spoke of Alexia as a kind of eminence. I learned that those who talked the most had been Edward Ashford alumni at the university or Ashford fellows through their private foundations. A truism, however, that heightened William's illusory competitiveness. For the sake of his badly bruised pride, he began to double the hours worked for nothing, refusing to admit his hatred for a 10-year-old he would ever meet and against whom he measured himself to prove his worth.
So many years of being the class favorite and receiving accolades had not prepared him to face the certainty of being outclassed by a gifted, multi-millionaire little girl. It wasn't worth it, but William didn't give up the battle. He clung to the Hunter project as a sign of his greatness and vowed to achieve the unassuming 100% efficiency demanded by Spencer. He increased the number of guinea pigs and, consequently, the money. Arklay's director called us in and put us both in a room: either we cut back, or we'd be out on our asses. William moderated his eagerness to preserve the remnants of his dignity but kept up his unattainable pace.
Finally, with the circular in hand, William's hell could have come to an end. I sensed it when he gave himself a nervous smile. Maybe this was the jolt his mind needed to come to. Maybe it wasn't. I don't know. In any case, I left his room worried about the future.
Albert Wesker