Welcome To The Umbrella Corporation

Chapter Eighteen

When doing the same thing every day, time goes by surprisingly quickly. Weeks and months fly by without warning, and the next thing you know, you’re a year older and haven’t accomplished everything you set out to in the beginning. Each day blends into the next with graceful ease and the daily cycle begins again.

Birkin didn’t even bother to look at his calendar anymore. His body adapted itself to a grueling personal schedule, and he stuck to it seven days a week without fail. As far as he was concerned, people who took days off weren’t dedicated enough. He woke at seven every morning, even on weekends, even on holidays, and worked straight through until ten o’clock at night, with only short food and bathroom breaks scattered in between waking and sleeping. He spent a few hours before bed reading the most recent scientific journals to keep himself informed on the latest discoveries and projects. He fell into bed at roughly two in the morning and got up at seven the next day to do it all over again. What he lacked in sleep he made up for in coffee; his caffeine addiction was now out of control. On an average day, he drank fifteen cups.

Day in and day out, he spent his time trying to single out the regenerative aspect of the Progenitor while removing the unwanted side effects. Birkin once compared his work to removing the taste of food without changing the ingredients, but he didn’t feel that way now. He liked to think of the virus as green paint, created by mixing negative blue characteristics with positive yellow ones. All he had to do was reverse the mixing process and separate the original pigments. For a year, that is what he tried to accomplish.

Most of the lab assistants and other scientists that worked with him asked for transfers or moved on to more productive endeavors. In a year, he went through almost fifty research assistants, driving them to their breaking points by the long, dull hours, complete lack of any recreation time, and Birkin’s own incompatible personality. He was harsh, quick to anger, impossible to argue with, and a hopeless perfectionist. He ran the lab like a prison warden and treated the other scientists like inmates.

Since his promotion to Research Project Manager at the Raccoon City lab, Birkin successfully scared away all but three of the other permanent employees there. And despite all complaints about him, his rough methods, and his total lack of social skills, Spencer never made a move against him. This especially grated on the older scientists, some of whom had worked in the field longer than Birkin had been alive, and they resented the arrogant twenty-one-year-old who treated them like ignorant office temps. Whether they liked it or not, Birkin was there to stay.

Two new employees began working there one day, and Birkin started in on them before he even knew what their names were. He rarely bothered with names anyway, since so few of them stayed for long. He preferring to point and say, “Hey, you.” He gave them instructions and shoved them into different rooms to do their work. The day passed like any other.

Most of the other scientists finished up their work by five or six in the evening. Usually, Birkin was alone by the time he finished his own work, and locked up the labs by himself. But this time, as he was turning the lights off in some of the other labs, lost in his own thoughts about what he would work on the next day, he noticed that one of the brand new employees he bossed around that morning was still in the lab.

He stuck his head in the door. “You’re still here?” he asked gruffly.

The new lab assistant, a young woman with straight, dull blonde hair reaching to her shoulders, looked up from a microscope. “Yes, Dr. Birkin,” she said hesitantly. “I’m cataloging the new blood samples.”

Birkin dropped his worn briefcase on the floor and approached the lab table. “I thought I told you to plot the new infection time scale. That other new guy was supposed to catalog the samples.”

“Yes,” the woman replied, “but he didn’t finish them all. I finished my work at about five o’clock. He left at four, so I’m finishing them up for tomorrow.”

“How many do you have left?”

“Sixteen, I think.”

Birkin flipped through the pages of the open log book on the table next to her. He could see when her hand writing took over from the previous person, barely half way through. “He only logged half of the samples?”

“He spent most of the day working with the men in the lab down the hall. He didn’t start these until noon.”

Birkin closed the book. “Who told him to do that?”

“I don’t think anyone did, sir.”

“I gave him specific instructions. If he can’t do what he’s told, I don’t want him working here. He obviously can’t be trusted to follow orders.”

The woman, looking uncomfortable, nodded passive agreement. “I guess not, sir.”

There was no sense in getting angry when the cause of his anger wasn’t even there, so Birkin managed to keep his temper in check. Besides, it wasn’t fair to the other new assistant to suffer Birkin’s wrath. But the assistant who disregarded his orders was already fired as far as he was concerned.

“You shouldn’t have to do his job,” Birkin said. “Let me help you finish those up, so we can get out of here.”

The woman smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

Working together, it only took half an hour to complete the rest of the blood samples. They closed up the lab and went to the elevator. Birkin glanced at his watch and frowned. It was nearly eleven; he would have to cut tonight’s reading short.

“When you see him tomorrow, tell him that I want to talk to him,” Birkin said as the elevator doors closed. Birkin punched the button for the next floor up.

“Yes, sir,” the woman said.

The elevator rose up and the doors opened again. Birkin stepped out and took a few steps down the hall when the woman called after him. “Dr. Birkin?”

He turned around and saw that she was holding the elevator door open. “Yes?”

“Aren’t you done for the day, sir?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you have to get something? Do you want me to hold the elevator for you?”

“No,” he said. “I live here at the lab.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” the woman said, feeling foolish. “I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

“Yes,” he said, and then added, “Have a good evening.”

“You too, sir.” She let the elevator doors close and Birkin watched as the illuminated number above the door went up and stopped at the ground floor. He stood there in the hall for almost a minute, lost in his thoughts.

Since he had come to this lab, he had never once wished any of the other employees a good evening. The few times they said it to him, he customarily brushed them off. He had no place for vague pleasantries, not when he was working. And yet, he said it to the young woman without even thinking. And to his extreme surprise, he found that he meant it. She stayed as late as he did, finishing someone else’s work. If nothing else, it deserved praise.

The next morning, the assistant who disobeyed him came to work and found Birkin waiting for him. Birkin spent twenty minutes yelling at him before sending him off to work. He lasted two more days before requesting a transfer, and was gone the day after that. Birkin was glad to be rid of him.

The woman, however, stayed at the lab and worked out rather well. Birkin didn’t remember her name, and he felt stupid for asking, so he checked the personnel directory, where she was listed simply as A. Porter. According to the records, she had just completed her training in Arizona and was sent to work in Raccoon City, just another new hire for Birkin to chew up and spit out.

Most nights, she worked as late as Birkin did, and after a few weeks he began assigning her to work in the central lab, where he worked most of the day. When he was satisfied of her competence, he started giving her long-term assignments instead of just some random different task to do each day. Some days they barely said a word to each other even though they worked so closely.

In a few short months, they found a perfect working partnership and Birkin quickly promoted her within the lab hierarchy until she worked as his personal research partner. She never complained about the hard work, she never missed a day, and she never did anything wrong. Finally, Birkin found someone he could work with. It wasn’t until she had worked at the lab for six months that Birkin realized that there was something he still didn’t know about her.

As usual, they were the last two people in the lab, everyone else already gone for the night. Birkin turned off the computers and other electronic devices as she put away files and racks of used test samples. Birkin shut off the lights and they walked down the hall to the elevator, as they had done dozens of times over the past few months. The conversation, as always, consisted solely of the work done during the day and the work planned for tomorrow.

When the elevator stopped at his floor, Birkin didn’t step off right away. He waited a moment, collecting his thoughts, and looked at his assistant. “Ms. Porter, you did very good work today,” he said. “You do good work every day, in fact. I should acknowledge it more often. You’ve worked with me for months now, which is an accomplishment by itself. I know I’m not easy to work for. I just want you to know that I appreciate all the hard work you do.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, and Birkin could almost see her cheeks turning red.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask, though.”

“What is it?”

He sighed and just said it. “I don’t know your first name.”

The woman smiled, and for the slightest moment, Birkin actually saw her as a woman and not just an intelligent fellow scientist. Surprisingly, he found himself smiling as well.

“My name’s Annette,” she said. “Annette Porter. If it makes you feel better, I don’t know what your first name is either.”

“William,” he said awkwardly. His head began to swim and he felt strangely dizzy.

Annette stuck out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, William.”

Birkin shook her hand, and could not stop from laughing at the inherent silliness of the situation. Annette laughed as well, and Birkin liked the sound. He realized that it had been a very long time since he’d had any reason to laugh. He did not tolerate foolishness or merriment at the lab, since they tended to get in the way of serious work, and as a result, he rarely had the chance to genuinely laugh at something. Ever since he and Wesker had started working at different labs, he didn’t even have any friends to talk to.

“Do you live in town?” he asked, the words popping out before he had a chance to think about them.

“I rent an apartment, yes.”

“Do you ...” he had difficulty asking her, “Do you have anyone waiting for you?”

Annette folded her hands in front of her and shook her head. “No, I really don’t know anyone outside the lab.”

“Are you doing anything tonight?”

She smiled again, and Birkin suddenly felt a contented warmth settle into his chest. As if someone had simply flipped a switch, Birkin became happy. It amazed him, even much later, that something as simple as a woman’s smile could melt away months of work-related stress and fatigue.

Birkin, not surprisingly, had never had a girlfriend. Child prodigies rarely do, since they are strictly academic-minded and are usually much younger than their immediate peers. A sixteen-year-old genius surrounded by twenty-year-old ordinary students has a hard time fitting in to the social culture of a university. It didn’t bother him at all at the time, since he would rather have been in the chemistry labs or the library than out with a girl anyway. His youthful hormones took a back seat to his intellectual obsessions. And once he had been hired by Umbrella, there had been no women around anyway, and little time to go out looking for them. And until that moment, he had not realized just how lonely he really was

Fate, it seemed, had sensed his loneliness, even when he hadn’t, and dropped someone into his life without him even realizing it. Someone named Annette Porter.

“I don’t have anything planned,” she said. “But it’s getting pretty late. I don’t think there’s a lot of places still open.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Birkin said. “I was just wondering if you’d like to visit my room for a little while. Maybe have a drink or something.”

She didn’t say anything right away, and for a horrible second, Birkin thought she was going to turn him down. “I’d love to,” she said firmly, as if she’d debated it and was convinced that it was a good idea.

They went down the hall and to the room where Birkin stayed. It was actually a large supply room converted into a living space, complete with a bed, desk, refrigerator, and stove. The appliances didn’t find much use, since Birkin spent his entire day in the labs downstairs. The room was pretty much used exclusively for sleeping.

For the first time since his time at the training facility, when he and Wesker were still good friends, he found himself pleasantly wasting time, just having a conversation with someone. It had been awhile, and he was out of practice, but Annette energetically questioned him about his life and his work, and he thoroughly enjoyed listening to her talk about herself as well. He expected her to stay an hour or two, but the next thing he knew it was almost four in the morning and they were still talking.

That was the first night they spent together.

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