Aftermath

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Chapter Fourteen

More than 600 miles south of Tokyo, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there was a small collection of islands called the Ogasawara Gunto in Japanese, or in English, the Bonin Islands. Of the more than 30 small islands in the chain, only three were inhabited, and one of those had only recently become so.

Kurisutaru no Shima was a tiny island on the edges of the Bonin Islands chain, separated from the main island, Chichi-jima, by 17 miles of open ocean. It was only about a third of a mile long, and thrust upward out of the ocean like a stalagmite, its rocky walls home to various birds. Bits of glassy igneous rock dotted the island, and from a distance they seemed to sparkle, giving the island its name. In English, Kurisutaru no Shima translated to Crystal Island.

Up until about six months earlier, nesting sea birds were the only residents of the island at all. Then Tricell purchased rights to the island and began construction of a scientific lab complex there, flying in the construction materials by helicopter and ferrying the workers back and forth from Chichi-jima for five months, until the main construction was completed. At that point, basic living quarters were completed, and they brought in another construction team to live on the island while they finished the more detailed work.

Albert Wesker sat in a desk chair and looked out the window toward the ocean. His office, or at least the room he was currently using as an office, was dark and gloomy, the only light coming from the laptop computer on his desk. There was little other furniture in the large room, as it was still not completely built yet. There were gaping holes in the ceiling where acoustic panels would eventually be placed, and a few capped wires hung loose in spots, as only half of the fluorescent lights were installed. The rough gray carpet was dirty with sawdust and mud from the construction workers’ boots.

Wesker’s desk was equally unfurnished. A laptop, a lamp, his cell phone, a pad of paper and pencil, and a couple of bottles of water sitting on the edge, room temperature since there was no refrigerator to put them in.

It was late, past midnight, and Wesker supposed he was the only person still awake. In the morning, Tricell was set to deliver some of the first shipments of scientific equipment, which were going downstairs in the main complex, which was still under construction. Nothing advanced yet, just some chemical analyzers and spectrometers, some growth tanks, and a ton of microscopes and centrifuges and test tubes and all the other basic apparatus that any lab would need in bulk. Wesker wasn’t really concerned with any of that, and in fact had no real reason to be on the island at all until the lab was functional, but he wanted to be there and get a feel for the place. Besides, he had nowhere else to be at the moment.

Crystal Island was to be his new home for the indefinite future. The lab being built there was tiny in comparison to his former lab in the Arklay Mountains, but size was not important. There was no need for a sprawling complex here, with various lab areas doing a wide variety of research with hundreds of scientists. This lab was to be Wesker’s private kingdom, and all the research done here would be done under his watchful gaze, with only a handful of high-level scientists working under him. When everything was complete, they would bring in the most advanced scientific technology in the world for Wesker to experiment with, and in these rooms, the future would be made.

At least, that was the plan. Wesker was confident, as usual. In his very short time as an employee of Tricell, they had already begun to discover the wealth of knowledge he delivered to them, and it would not be long for them to begin to profit from that knowledge. At the moment, Wesker had free reign to do as he pleased.

He could not continue to use the name Albert Wesker, of course, since the man with that name was supposed to be dead. If the wrong person overheard the name Wesker and it somehow got back to Umbrella, it would complicate matters. So in all official Tricell communication, he was simply called Greg Smith, although Wesker didn’t know why they chose the name or if they had any documentation to prove that’s who he really was. After all, if his future discoveries were credited to a mysterious person called Greg Smith, eventually people would wonder who that was. Wesker had to assume that Tricell knew this ahead of time and already had paperwork and proper identification to prove Greg Smith was a real person. For all Wesker knew, Greg Smith actually was a real person, some middle-management nobody chosen by Tricell to act as Wesker’s public counterpart.

So far, everything was going smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that Wesker was suspicious that something was bound to go wrong any day now. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

Suddenly, the door to the office opened, and Wesker turned around in the swivel chair to see a figure entering the room. Even in the darkness, he could see clearly who it was.

“Gianna,” he said, his voice betraying not a hint of surprise. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

Gianna Aldritch walked up in front of Wesker’s desk and took a seat in one of the cheap plastic chairs. “What do you mean?” she asked innocently, leaning back and crossing her legs. “I work here.”

Although she usually made a point to dress very professionally, although still with a generous amount of sex appeal, Gianna was now dressed much more casually. The top few buttons of her white dress shirt were unbuttoned suggestively, and her black skirt was ruffled and wrinkled. She was also barefoot, having abandoned her high heels, and her hair was untied and mussed up.

“I mean, what are you even doing on this island?” Wesker asked. “I thought you left hours ago with those accountants that were hanging around all day.”

“No, I’ve been here the whole time,” Gianna said. “I made some phone calls and then I took a nap on the couch down the hall. I woke up a little bit ago. I knew you’d still be awake.”

“Of course I am.”

“You don’t sleep at all, do you?”

“Maybe for an hour or two if I really feel the need,” Wesker said. “Although I rarely do.”

“You might want to start pretending to sleep more often,” Gianna suggested. “People might start to get curious about the man who never sleeps.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

Gianna had shadowed Wesker since he first joined Tricell, and rarely left his side since their first meeting in the mall food court. She was a high level administrator in Tricell, exactly how high she never bothered to explain, but it seemed a fair guess that she called a lot of the shots, and was perhaps only answerable to the Board of Directors. She was ambitious, intelligent, beautiful, and she was beginning to get on Wesker’s nerves.

In the past few days, her casual flirtatious comments were becoming less and less subtle, and she was acting toward Wesker with far more familiarity than he felt comfortable with. She almost acted as if they were friends, even though Wesker did everything in his power to persuade her otherwise. He hadn’t had any friends in years and he wasn’t about to start making some now.

“Don’t you have more important work to do than staying here and keeping an eye on me?” he asked evenly, studying her carefully.

“Keeping an eye on you is my job. I’m your handler.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Handling me?”

“Not as well as I would like,” Gianna said, with a smile. She uncrossed her legs and then leaned forward to pluck a bottle of water off the desk, doing everything in her power to give Wesker an unobstructed view down the front of her shirt. She was not wearing a bra.

She sat back, unscrewed the lid, and then took a few sips of water. She smiled at him again, as if sharing some private joke. “You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, but if you have water then that means you must have to drink now and then.”

“I’m not a robot,” Wesker said. “I have to eat and drink just like anyone else. Just not as often.”

“What about your other bodily functions? Everything in working order?”

Wesker was starting to get annoyed with the game. “Yes,” he said. “In fact, it all works even better than it used to. Do you have a point you’re trying to make, or are you just curious?”

Gianna sighed in frustration and set the bottle back on his desk. “Are you sure you’re not a robot? You certainly act like one. I don’t normally have to work this hard to get men to notice me, but you’re not making it easy.”

“I hate to state the obvious,” Wesker said slowly, “but I am, for all intents and purposes, infected with the T-virus. You are aware of that, correct?”

“Sure I am.”

Wesker made a questioning gesture with his hands. “So you are doing what, exactly? Flirting with me? Trying to seduce me? I shouldn’t have to point out what a phenomenally stupid idea that is. Sleeping with me would be be nothing less than suicidal.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Gianna asked intently. “So you’re just going to remain celibate for the rest of your life? You’re not interested in women at all anymore? I’ve never met a man who would give that up so willingly.”

“I’m not like most men,” Wesker said. “And I’ve never had much use for romance.”

Gianna laughed shortly and slumped back in her chair. “Jesus, you are a robot. Here I am, totally in the mood, and I’m stuck with the one man on earth who doesn’t want to sleep with me.”

“Sorry,” Wesker said sarcastically. “You could always call one of the guys in the construction crew downstairs. I’m sure any of them would be more than happy to oblige.”

Gianna dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “I’m not into Japanese guys.”

“Well then, you shouldn’t have chosen to live in Japan. Maybe you should ask for a transfer.”

With a loud, theatrical sigh, Gianna slouched further in the chair and rested her hands in her lap, looking up at the ceiling. “No, I’m afraid that’s not possible. They assigned me to be your corporate liaison permanently.”

Wesker looked at her for a moment and then shrugged. Somehow, he expected as much. “I guess you are stuck with me, then. I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, more seriously this time.

“Yeah, well, thanks for your concern.”

Wesker leaned back a bit and looked at her through his dark sunglasses. Even in the almost perfectly dark room and wearing his sunglasses, he could see perfectly clearly. He had believed Gianna was in upper management, so to be assigned to be his assistant seemed below her. Something else was going on here, and after a few moments of concentration, Wesker figured out what it was. In fact, he was almost irritated at himself for not realizing it sooner. It didn’t change his plans at all, not really, but it would have been nice to know in advance.

“The Board knows about my condition, don’t they?” he asked.

“Of course they do,” Gianna replied, tilting her head back down to look at him. “You didn’t think I was going to keep it a secret, did you?”

“Not at all,” Wesker said. “But it does explain why they were more than happy to stick me on this remote island. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were in their position.”

“Well, it seemed like a good idea.”

“But why would they stick you here with me? You’re too valuable of an employee to be given such a pointless task. I mean seriously, a corporate liaison? Is that what they told you?”

“It’s just a title. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“But you know why you’re here.”

“To spy on you, of course,” Gianna admitted with a shrug. “The Board doesn’t trust you, not really. And I don’t mean they think you’ll betray them, it’s just that …”

“They don’t know what the infection might have done to me,” Wesker finished for her.

“Your behavior doesn’t help. The way you act sometimes throws people off their guard.”

“That’s intentional. And for the record, I’ve always behaved this way, even in high school.”

“I believe you.”

Wesker leaned forward and set his elbows on the desk. “So you’re here to watch me to make sure I don’t go insane or grow a third arm or start biting people and spreading the virus?”

Gianna clearly didn’t like to think about that. “Like I said before,” she said, “I’m your handler. I’m here to keep an eye on you.”

“I’m not just the scientist in charge here, I’m also one of the experiments?” Wesker prompted.

“Something like that,” Gianna said with a nod.

“Then why don’t you just ask me? Go on and ask me what I feel like. Ask me what the virus has done to me.”

Looking at him suspiciously, Gianna sat upright in her chair. “Okay,” she said after an uncomfortable pause. “What has the virus done to you?”

Wesker set his hands down on the desk and slowly stood up.

And then, in the blink of an eye, he zipped around the desk and placed his hand on Gianna’s arm. She screamed in fright and flew backward, tipping over in the chair and falling to the floor. She rolled over and scooted back until she was against the wall, staring at Wesker in shock, her hair hanging wildly around her face.

“And that’s just the beginning,” Wesker said smoothly. “I can do much more than that. And not much can stop me, not even a bullet.”

“My God,” Gianna whispered.

“Still want to sleep with me?” Wesker asked, smiling malevolently down at her. In the darkness, his teeth seemed to glisten like vampire fangs.

“You never … I mean, you didn’t really tell us exactly what you did,” Gianna said, her body tense, her voice trembling slightly. “You must have taken some kind of … what? An antidote, a vaccine?”

“Not exactly. Certainly not something I would recommend taking unless your life depended on it, as mine did at the time. I have no evidence that it would work on anyone else anyway. Once this lab is up and running, it is one of the things I would like to test thoroughly.”

“And your eyes?” Gianna asked.

“An unfortunate side effect.”

“Are there other … side effects?”

“No other physical ones that I’ve noticed. Although it’s entirely possible that more may develop over time.”

“What do you mean?”

Wesker knelt down and set his elbows on his knees, making Gianna back up a bit more, afraid he was going to try something. Seeing her in such fear amused him, although he felt guilty for being amused. When he did nothing, she relaxed a bit, but still watched him carefully, even though he had already shown her that he could move faster than her eyes could follow.

“You see,” he said softly, as if sharing a secret, “the T-virus was originally created by bonding the Progenitor virus to the DNA of leeches. When the Progenitor bonds with the DNA of a host, it creates a new strain of the virus. This can either be done over time by breeding infected hosts, or it can be done with prolonged exposure under the right circumstances.”

When he was sure that Gianna was paying close attention, he continued. “I have been exposed to an unknown strain of the virus. One of our projects in Raccoon City was a human host exposed to numerous strains of the virus over many years. Some of those strains, over time, bonded with the DNA, creating something new. That new mixed strain was then injected into my bloodstream, but I didn’t have time to isolate exactly how the virus changed, or even which strain of the virus I was actually testing.”

Gianna asked, “How did you know it wouldn’t kill you?”

“I didn’t,” Wesker answered. “I was going to be infected with the T-virus anyway, so I didn’t have much choice. But over time, this new strain will eventually bond with my own DNA as well. And since it is already a combined form of the T-virus and the original host’s DNA, it will in effect bond my own DNA with itself, creating something even more complex. I am most definitely an experiment, because we never accomplished anything like me in the lab. We were never able to combine the DNA of two separate hosts with the virus.”

“So you don’t even know what’s going to happen, do you?”

Wesker slowly shook his head. “I have no idea what might happen, and I don’t know how long it will take. It might be months or years, but eventually I am going to become a host for a completely unique strain of the virus.”

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