Onboard, Nemesis remained standing, but he was standing right in front of Alice. "So, Matty, how have things been?" Alice asked. No answer, not even a flicker of reaction. "Umbrella been treating you right, like I bargained?" Again, nothing. She turned to Wesker. "Hey, you assholes brainwash him all over again or what?"

Wesker gave her a cold look. "Umbrella has taken care of Project Nemesis as you requested," he stated. "We never once deviated from your requests."

Alice pointed a finger right at Jill. "What about that one where I said to let my friends go?"

Wesker's lips quirked up. "I did let them go. It's certainly not my fault that she made herself a persistent nuisance. Isn't that right, Valentine? You should have minded your own business."

"You're wrong, sir," Jill replied.

Wesker recoiled a little in shock. "Explain yourself," he demanded.

"If I hadn't wrongly interjected myself in Umbrella's business, I would never have had the honor and privilege to serve the company." Jill stuck her jaw out proudly, and Wesker got a content, smug little smile on his face.

Alice stared at Jill for a moment, then turned to face Wesker. She opened her mouth intending to offer a cutting retort, but instead her stomach simply expelled the half-digested glop Crystal had served her for breakfast that morning. Wesker looked down at his vomit-caked pants and snarled, "You utterly revolting simpleton!"

"Quit talking to yourself," Alice muttered, grabbing a sleeve of the soldier sitting next to her and wiping her mouth on it. Alice decided that continuing on this topic would result in her attempting to murder Wesker again, so decided to change the subject. "Hey, so Bennett said you needed my DNA or some insane horseshit like that?"

"Bennett? Ah yes, the movie producer." Wesker nodded. "The T-virus brought me back… but it's so strong. It fights me for control."

"Are you really anthropomorphizing a friggin' microbe?" Alice asked.

Wesker ignored her. "I thought if I ingested fresh human DNA, I could redress the balance."

"…Yeah, sure, buddy," Alice managed to say with a straight face. She then looked at Wesker's tacky-ass black and gray polka dot-studded suit and remarked, "I agree, though, you definitely need to redress, for sure," she murmured. "And hey, what's with the mouth tentacle things anyway?"

"Those are from a parasite known as Las Plagas," Wesker said. "Originally found in Spain, it imbues its host with a number of highly beneficial gifts. I incorporated it into my system for an extra edge."

"Cool, how do I get one of those things?" Alice asked.

Wesker glared at her. "Never in this or any lifetime will you be getting one."

"Aw, poo," Alice pouted. "But going back a smidge, you didn't tell me why it had to be my DNA specifically."

"You were the only one who successfully bonded with the T-virus," Wesker stated. "Your DNA is stronger than the others. I ingest you, I gain control."

"Okay, I have questions," Alice said. "First of all, while I'm not advocating you murder my clones, why didn't you just murder one of my clones and eat her corpse?"

Wesker did that thing where he flexed his neck to crack the vertebrae. "I did attempt that, believe me. There is something unique to your DNA specifically that not even cloning is able to replicate."

Alice narrowed her eyes, skeptical. "So what, you turning into Dr. Isaacs now?"

A distinct look of distaste crossed Wesker's face. "That man was an imbecile. Never compare the two of us again."

"Alright, alright," Alice said. "How much of me would you have to eat?" Alice asked. "Like, the whole enchilada? Or just, like, a pinky finger? Would a booger or a fingernail suffice?"

Wesker, at this very moment, decided that God must in fact exist, because for all the enormity of his sins, there could be no greater punishment on Heaven, Earth, or Hell itself than this goddamned conversation. "…While I would relish nothing more than to drink every last drop of your blood, I should think that even the smallest drop would suffice." He bared his teeth. "If you offer me one of those… other optionsI will absolutely butcher you right here and now, singularity device or no singularity device."

Alice laughed. "Touchy touchy! But, yeah, anyone got a knife?"

"You're not going to give him your blood," Chris said, a statement instead of a question because he was so dumbfounded.

"You're not going to give me your blood," Wesker echoed simultaneously, equally dumbfounded.

"Stereo mode enabled!" Alice wisecracked. Wesker and Chris gave each other a horrified look upon realizing that they agreed on something for once. "But think of it like this: Wesker's gonna gorge himself on innocent folks left and right if I don't do this, so it saves lives in the long run. Right? Any arguments?" None were forthcoming. "Cool. Now, someone knife me! SHIT I mean give me a knife, hahaha!" A soldier sitting across from her handed her a combat knife. "Thank you, my good man," Alice curtsied. She poked herself in the finger. "Owie!" she hissed. (If she were just a little bit more chaotic, she'd have Deadpool-esque fourth wall breaking powers and would say directly to you fine folks, "I'm contractually obligated to say that once per story", hehe).

She collected a few drops of blood onto the blade of the knife, then handed it to Wesker. Who licked it.

Alice made a disgusted face. "Okay, I guess intellectually I knew you were gonna do that, but it was still fucking nasty to watch."

Wesker chuckled. "That's rich, coming from someone whose wife eats human jerky."

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Chris stated.

Alice furrowed her brows together. "…Did I not mention that my wife is technically a zombie?"

Chris looked extremely consternated. "No, I think I would have remembered that little piece of information!"

"It's okay, Chris, Rain's an intelligent zombie," Claire assured him. "She doesn't attack people or anything."

"Oh, except Brian Irons!" Alice pointed out. "Did Jill tell you that the wifey tore out his throat?"

That seemed to help make Chris at peace with the information. "She did, huh? Well, then I guess she's earned the right to eat some human jerky here or there."

Wesker chuckled in agreement. "All this time, I'd thought the damned idiot died from the bomb. Good for her." He fixed a curious look upon Alice. "How come you haven't inquired as to her condition, Alice? I'd think a loving, dutiful wife would —"

"Stick it in your ass, cumstain," Alice snapped back sweetly. "Either she's alright, in which case your eventual murder at my hands will be swift and fairly painless, or she's hurt, in which case you'll die screaming, or she's dead, in which case I'm going to absolutely torture you for as long as inhumanly possible."

Wesker scowled. "Aren't you even remotely curious about —"

Alice's face schooled itself into blankness. "Our souls are bonded together, Al," she explained. "The existence of souls implies the existence of an afterlife. That means, worst case scenario, she's dead, so if I press this button I'll actually be reunited with her for all time." She gently fondled the button on the singularity device and gave Wesker an 'I fucking dare you' smile. "So please, go ahead, tell me she's dead-dead."

Wesker snorted. "You honestly believe that fairy tale nonsense?"

Alice nodded earnestly. "Unshakably so." She grinned a shark's grin. "You game for a little round of 'Does Hell exist?'" She lightly tapped the surface of the button repeatedly.

Wesker realized she absolutely wasn't bluffing. "I'll pass," he finally said.

The conversation died down for a bit. Alice looked down at the black hole bomb and decided to ask Wesker the million dollar question. "Hey, since when could you fucking assholes make black holes?" Alice asked.

"We made the discovery a few years before the pandemic," Wesker stated.

"And you didn't want to publicize it because…?" Alice asked.

"Because it suited Umbrella," Wesker said simply. "What more explanation do we need?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "Why use it as this crazy-ass defense system, though?"

"Well, what else would we use it for?" Wesker asked. "A lot of Umbrella technology is too sensitive to allow it to fall into the hands of our enemies."

"So you would have been okay with obliterating half of Tokyo to prevent people from finding out you've got some crazy cloning shit?" Alice said.

"Well, it's a rather moot point these days, isn't it?" Wesker asked. "But yes, if the political situation had deteriorated to the extent that the Japanese government was attempting to seize Umbrella assets by force, it was deemed an acceptable trade-off, as we'd likely not be doing business in Japan again regardless."

"I'm sure that would have reassured whoever was left of the 13 million people who lived there," Alice remarked. "Hey, how the fuck come you didn't put those things in the Nevada base, or the Hive? Actually, putting one in the Hive would have actually worked out really well for you assholes, because you could have used it to zap Raccoon City when all the zombies were getting to be too much."

Wesker, again, scowled. He hadn't anticipated that line of questioning. It took him a moment to concoct a reason that wasn't the truth: "The Hive was scheduled to be partly renovated several months after the outbreak there occurred. A singularity device would have been installed at that time."

"Did those renovations include compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act?" Alice challenged. "Chuck Ashford told me himself that he would have died down there if you bastards had bothered to install wheelchair ramps and shit."

Wesker narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Are you upset that the Hive wasn't built with disabled accommodations, or that Dr. Ashford didn't die down there?"

"Both!" Alice said, as if it should have been obvious. "'You should treat handicapped people right' and 'Chuck Ashford deserved to die a gruesome death' are not incompatible lines of thinking! So come on, tell me, were y'all gonna add ramps and shit to the Hive?"

"Yes, fine, we were," Wesker spat out.

"Lies!" Alice accused. "Bullshit and lies! Do any of you believe this disabled person-hating asshole?" she asked the people in the craft.

"I wouldn't believe him if he said it was raining, even if water was falling from the sky," Chris said.

"Ditto," Claire echoed.

"I have no reason to doubt Chairman Wesker's statement," Jill stated.

"Your vote doesn't count, you're brainwashed," Alice told Jill. She turned back to Wesker. "What about the Nevada facility? Why no black hole bomb there?"

"Dr. Isaacs repeatedly rejected efforts to install the device there," Wesker said. "He was always a little paranoid of the board's oversight, and most likely believed that they would use it against him someday. And him becoming infected and slaughtering everyone else in the facility would certainly have qualified as a case where we would have used it."

"Yeah, that would have been Bad News Bears for me," Alice noted.

"Quite." Wesker said. "No matter, the base has been shut down for the foreseeable future." He casually stared straight ahead as he said it, but was unable to stop the slight curl of his bastardly grin.

Alice turned and stared directly at Wesker. "Explain."

"What's to explain?" Wesker said. "The clones you had on site were dispatched by me personally. I took exquisite joy in breaking Neo's neck."

"What about Rebecca?" Alice asked, her voice cold.

"She's… safe," Wesker said. "Her and young William both… surely you must have wondered why he wasn't onboard the Arcadia." To her great shame, Alice had completely forgotten to look for him on the prisoner manifest. Not like she was gonna tell ol' snake-eyes that, though. "As is the cure she developed. All safely in the custody of Umbrella."

They stared into one another's eyes for almost a minute. Then Alice broke eye contact to just jam her thumb down on the button as hard as she possibly could.

Everyone inside the gunship let out a startled gasp — even Jill and Wesker.

Nothing happened.

Alice pushed the button a few more times. Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened. "Huh, guess it's busted. Maybe something got knocked loose inside when Bennett crashed on the Arcadia. Or maybe it needs new batteries." She shrugged. "Whatever." She tossed the useless device to Wesker, who effortlessly caught it. "Hey Al, I bet you're feeling glad that I barfed on your dick earlier, so that nobody can tell you just pissed yourself."

Wesker looked at the singularity device in his hands, his barely-constrained rage putting serious dents in the casing where he held it. "Valentine, put Project Alice into a choke-hold until she loses consciousness," he ordered through gritted teeth.

Jill cracked her knuckles and got ready to stand up, before Nemesis reached out a hand to stop her. He took one step, bringing him directly in front of Alice.

"Aw, Matty, I knew that you —" She let out a shocked yelp as Nemesis wrapped one giant mitt around her throat and squeezed. She struggled to pull his fingers away or break loose somehow, but she quickly blacked out, Wesker's laughter being the last thing she heard.

XXXXXXXXXX

In Afterlife, Alice stabbed Wesker with a knife that had her blood on it. I suspect it had the desired effect of suppressing Wesker's cannibalistic urges, or else they'd never have let him into the White House later on.

I'm a little proud of the chapter title: It works as a reference to Alice's old plane, the Yak; it refers to how this is a dialogue heavy chapter; and it's also what Alice does on Wesker's lap. A hat trick!