Summary: Albert Wesker investigates Umbrella Pharmaceuticals. William Birkin visits Raccoon City on his day off.
I
British businessman Oswell E. Spencer invests in Raccoon City's industrial sector.
Oswell E. Spencer purchases land in the Arklay Mountains to build a country house.
Umbrella Pharmaceuticals builds a training centre in Raccoon City.
New York architect George Trevor missed in the Arklay Mountains.
Albert presses the button to access the last microfilm.
Umbrella Pharmaceuticals: major employer in Arklay County.
Oswell Ernest Spencer and Alexander Ashford, presidents and CEOs. James Marcus: director of the Training Centre and chief researcher. A new name: Edward Ashford, father of Alexander Ashford and co-founder of Umbrella Pharmaceuticals with Spencer. Umbrella Pharmaceuticals grew out of Anzec Pharma, a pharmaceutical company founded by Spencer in the late 1950s. Edward Ashford was an investor in Anzec.
Ashford and Spencer were from England and James Marcus was from Texas. He needed a book on British peerage and to investigate the Texan. Travelling to England was impossible: Spencer lived in Essex and Ashford in Northumberland. The Spencers made their fortune in the British Empire: the spice trade and Reginald Spencer, Oswell's grandfather, was Governor-General of British India. In the first decade of the 20th century, the Spencers expanded their business into the automobile industry, in which they became well established. The Ashfords were descended from a Scottish royal family, the Stuarts. The great-granddaughter of the last Stuart queen, Veronica Ashford, was a businesswoman. James Marcus was a professor at a Swiss university.
No mention of the Progenitor virus or its T variants.
An impeccable façade.
II
Snow lay on the edges of the pavement. The icy wind damaged the parts of his face that he had not covered with his hat and scarf. Despite the bad weather, cars were driving along the road, oblivious to the dangers of the wintry environment. A handful of passers-by, including a postman, milled about, darting in and out of shops, sneaking glances at William and discussing their business.
The place reminded him of his neighbourhood in Baltimore, a peaceful suburban oasis just outside the city centre, but smaller and more decadent. From time to time he read the newspapers in the lab to find out what was happening in the outside world, and one of the news stories was about the continuing industrial collapse of that part of the Midwest. Economic disasters and cities in the process of being abandoned. Detroit was one of the first to fall. He was shocked by the sensationalist images of entire streets in ruins, but what moved him most was reading that Raccoon City was in the zone of decay, and that worried him.
Nothing disturbed his affluent life as a gifted boy, heralded in the local Baltimore newspapers as the future of science, except the abusive group of idiots with whom he shared the street. And walking down those desolate avenues took him back to the bitterest moments of his childhood. So on his days off, he avoided the many alleys that criss-crossed the city and refused to look anyone in the eye. He liked to think that his self-awareness was above average.
Around the corner was his favourite place to spend his mornings, a coffee shop. He entered and sat down in his favourite spot, a lonely armchair in the far corner. No one usually sat there because of its isolation, which he loved. The waitress approached him and he ordered his usual, an Americano and toast. He hung his coat, scarf and gloves over the back of the chair. It was in these moments of peace that he felt like a human being again.
Outside the Spencer mansion, he regained a fraction of his humanity. The pace of work had become hellish. The number of subjects had increased, as had the number of missing persons posters he saw plastered on lampposts. He was afraid to put two and two together because, as he was about to turn seventeen, he did not want to see himself as a participant in a conspiracy of kidnapping and human experimentation. He still wanted to see himself as a responsible young adult doing what he liked in a very important company. A ridiculous self-deception, as Albert scoffed, but enough to maintain his emotional stability and keep lying to his parents.
He was going mad. Fortunately, the nightmares about the creature had subsided. He had just gotten used to it. And what would happen next? He didn't think he'd stay in Arklay forever. There was a laboratory in Chicago and several others in Europe. There was much more he could aspire to, as long as he didn't go mad trying. Had Marcus gone mad? Maybe he already had. They were all mad as hell.
He finished his toast.
Everyone was mad. Tomorrow a nuclear war could break out and end civilisation. But that was his job, to replace nuclear bombs with B. .
He finished his coffee.
And B. weapons at that, mutating and transforming. Better than university and astrophysics.
He got up and paid at the bar, grinning from ear to ear. As he left the café, he saw the same row of missing persons posters.
Mad.