Chapter Text
So, the little known fact of the matter is: William Birkin has a slight cocaine problem.
It’s not unusual at Umbrella. Really, it’s not. As any researcher inevitably finds out, coffee only goes so far. Even espresso. Wesker practically ran on cocaine and amphetamines during the ‘80s; Birkin knows, he was there to see it.
But Albert Wesker is one of those disgusting people who has . . . a way with his own body. Some kind of tune with it that Birkin does and has always lacked. From getting it to move in athletic ways to building muscle mass to even, say, casually shrugging off alcohol, cigarettes, and other addictive substances after long periods of abuse.
But Birkin—well. Today (or tonight, or this morning; time doesn’t flow in the same way in the lab as it does in the real world) he’s had, what was it, seven cups of coffee? Nine? And his eyelids just. will. not. stay. up. Even with the threat of the company looming, looming, looming, greater than it ever has before. Spencer, that useless, neurotic old man, would be pacing a hole in his office floor if he could still walk, as he foams at the mouth and plots to take Birkin’s research (his research, his virus, his creation, hishishishishis and only his), to pry it from his cold dead fingers (just like marcus) and ride its coattails to glory, the same as he did with everything Edward Ashford and anyone else ever produced for the company, the fucking leech.
There are spies. Spies everywhere. Birkin can pester that pathetic degenerate that plays dress up as chief of police for tighter security on his end, can demand NEST security personnel shoot anyone suspicious on sight—but it’s all a losing game, because Umbrella already owns all the pawns and even the board they sit on.
(He misses Wesker. Trusting Al wasn’t smart for most people, but Birkin has never been ‘most people’. Al would know just what to do right now. Who to contact. How to get out. But Birkin’s never been any good at that sort of thing, and Al’s gone. Not . . . not dead. He’s pretty sure of that. But not here.)
Laboratories have been home to him his entire adult life. More familiar and comfortable than any house, even the one he (tried to) live in with Annette and Sherry.
(Sherry. What if they go after his poor, sweet Sherry? They don’t, can’t, know about the secret in the pendant, but what if they try to use her to bargain with him? what choice would he end up making then?)
Now he can’t even let himself rest his eyes for thirty seconds as he sits in front of his own microscope. Because who’ll be standing there when he opens them?
But the air is buzzing in his ears and objects in front of him slip into each other if he looks at them for any length of time, something soft and dark and fuzzy continually trying to edge its way into the corners of his vision. He finishes the last cold, thickening dregs of coffee in the bottom of his mug, but it doesn’t stave off the involuntary sleep, coming in tiny second-long bursts that have him continually jerking back awake in his seat.
So even though Birkin’s body feels heavy and lethargic and just really doesn’t want to get up, he stands, nodding passingly at Annette as he goes by her and slinks off into the hallway. He has the fleeting thought that maybe he would’ve been proud if he’d had to get his little, well-disguised container all the way out of the back of his locker, or a drawer in his desk, instead of it already sitting there in the deepest pocket of his lab coat. But that’s quickly stamped out, because he can be even prouder of it this way, at hand and nearly empty. It’s just further proof of his devotion. His vigilance.
The bathroom is empty, and he locks the door behind him to make sure it stays that way. Anyone who wants to wander in is just slacking off, anyway, when they should be goddamn working, and this is his laboratory—he can do whatever he pleases in it.
He empties the baggy onto the side of the sink, and frowns at the amount. The degenerate he buys it from does deliver, but not to the lab, of course. He can’t go to his house right now, though (he maybe can’t go ever again, and god, thinking of it so plainly is brutal and terrifying in a way he’s never felt before) so it’ll have to last. Have to matter.
He fishes for one of his keycards in his pockets, trying a few before he finally finds one. Then he spends a good minute or so cutting the powder, hyperfocused on every tiny grain until they’re all just so, built up into a perfect little line.
Inhaling it is like . . . waking up. It hits the membranes of his nostril and sinus and almost instantly he feels that—that it’s all fine. There’s nothing he can’t do. Whatever the situation is, it’s not out of his control. He has energy, and drive, and oh, he could really do anything. He was just dreaming before, in that blurry, unreal way all dreams are. Now the world is sharper and clearer and brighter and there’s absolutely nothing not in reach.
This is the purest form of reality there is, that there could ever be. It’s filled with color and potential and everything that seemed so insurmountable and terrifying beforehand is gone, swept behind a gauzy curtain in his mind. And existence is just so much sweeter. Gentler. Yet infinitely more present.
The gunshots don’t even really register at first. He hears them—the rapid little explosions of submachine gun fire, cut off so suddenly it’s like the gun failed halfway through—but emotions like alarm and concern aren’t very compatible with the world he’s in. They choke in the back of his brain, and he could explain the neural processes that keep them at bay in a great deal of detail, just not right now.
Instead he shoves his keycard back into his pocket, licking the fine film of powder stuck to the edge before he does so, and wanders out of the bathroom. There’s a part of him that knows he really should investigate the sound, even as he laughs at the thoughts and speculations of what he’s going to find.
(It’s not going to be anything good.)
The staff looks alarmed, all wide, startled bloodshot eyes. And the men in the black combat gear practically run into him as they pass by, so rushed they don’t even notice him.
He knows who they are, of course. He knows what they mean.
(God, how he hateshateshateshatesloathes Oswell Spencer.)
There were other men, once upon a time. Dressed in the exact same outfits. Maybe they’re even the same men—what does it really matter, when they’re so interchangeable? (Birkin has always thought the gas masks were stupid. Progenitor, T, and G all have a fragile lipid envelope that doesn't allow them to survive outside a host for any length of time. They’re also quite ineffective at infection when airborne, but how can he expect idiots to understand the term ‘vector-borne transmission’?)
And it’s so like Marcus, when he finds her. He could almost be in ’88 again, Wesker a presence at his side. The broken glass, the blood, the look in her eyes. An arm reaching for him.
(That had made Birkin laugh, when it was Marcus. He doesn’t feel like laughing now.)
“They took it,” Annette manages to say, spitting up foamy blood immediately after the words are out.
Damage to the stomach? The esophagus? Oh yes, yes, he can fix that. (He can do anything.)
“I’ll get—I’ll get a first aid kit,” he says, trying to remember where they keep one.
She laughs, and vomits more blood. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she spits out, gagging. “You think that’ll help?”
Birkin doesn’t really know what to say to that. (She looks so much like Marcus.)
“I’ll get it back,” she says. She’s hyperventilating. “For you. I love you.”
Then she injects herself. And as the virus enters the DNA, altering it in its image, rewriting her as he watches—
He doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so beautiful.