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When he opened his eyes, he already knew he was dreaming.
Eddie stood in front of him, his hands clasped together. “I think our mental states have collided more often than we realized,” he hedged, looking down at the floor after a minute. “Because I…I know you’re confused about the death of my father.”
Waylon frowned, standing up from the chair he was sitting in. After all this time, the mental space they occupied when he was sleeping was still that same room – the beaten up metal table, the scratched chairs. Like an interrogation room of some kind, like something combined from all of their memories. “What do you mean?” he paused, put a hand over his mouth. “Oh.”
In Texas, Tess – Eddie’s neighbor, the woman who had been so concerned over him – had said that Eddie’s father had gotten drunk and stumbled out into the road. His uncle had killed himself.
But Waylon remembered reading, somewhere, that Eddie had murdered them both at nineteen.
Had mutilated them, castrated them, and then stabbed them to death.
“Is what Tess said true, then?”
Eddie nodded, still refusing to look at him. “I never gained the courage to raise my hands to either of them,” he shrugged a shoulder, scoffing as he rolled his head back, popping his neck. His hands clenched uselessly as he pulled a chair out and dropped himself into it. Ever since they had gotten back to their makeshift home, from where Eddie had once lived, he had been appearing in Waylon’s dreams in the outdoors-prepared outfit more often. The plaid shirt made him look softer, somehow, brought out the darker tones in his eyes. “It was a fantasy of mine, I suppose I thought…If I could just…”
His jaw clenched, his eyes moving to the tabletop as he shook his head.
He had reverted to his British-lilt of an accent, the way he always did when he felt cornered and scared. Waylon shook his head gently, crossing to him and pulling out the chair next to him. “You managed to get your nanites to interact with mine before we’d managed to make that a stable situation,” he pointed out quietly. “Is that how that got into my head?”
“I believe so.”
“I wish I knew more about how the nanites work,” Waylon hesitated for a second, putting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder as he decided what direction he would take their conversation. Eddie was the one of the three nanite ghosts that could actually, really and truly, touch him. If he got angry – not likely, any more, not since they had come back from rescuing Blake – then he would be able to lash out at Waylon. “They seem interesting. Programmable genetic computers, able to connect people the way we’re connected.”
Focus on the tech, rather than the way Eddie had curled in on himself.
Focus on anything but his history, the way his father and uncle had treated him. Coax him out of his own head, bring him back into the present. Eddie showed guilt in an interesting way, still sometimes blamed himself for what had been done to him. The books Waylon had picked up about helping someone recover from abuse had mentioned something about that being an after-effect.
Eddie choked on a laugh, hiding his face in his hands as he braced his elbows on the table. After a moment, his shoulders shook. “If I were not here with you, I don’t know what would become of me.”
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Waylon put his other hand on Eddie’s cheek, lightly until the man relaxed into the touch. “I’m glad all three of you are, actually.” A couple of years ago, he would not have said that, but he was a different man these days. Now, he was alone except for the quadruplets and the nanite ghosts, with Blake sometimes passing in and out of the house.
As if summoned by that thought, someone slammed their hand against the door of the room they were sitting in.
It was an odd sensation, given that they were in his head.
He and Eddie exchanged a glance before Waylon stood up. In his mind, he still limped, having gotten too used to it for that to have faded just yet in his dreams. When he opened the door, one of the quadruplets practically fell through it, crashing into him. From the way their hair was, Waylon could tell it was Alnilam.
They clutched at his shirt, off-balance, then looked up at him with panicked eyes.
“Someone’s here,” they informed him.
It was jarring as all hell to hear them actually talk – their mouth moving with the words instead of their telepathy at work. If they were in his dream, he supposed, it was technically all their telepathy, but the way it was framed was as actual speech.
“Someone’s here?”
“In the house,” Alnilam turned to Eddie, their eyes wide. “We can’t wake him up – too asleep, they did something. He won’t wake up. The others are doing everything they can to keep me projected here, the focus of three putting forth the fourth. Walrider is screaming and they are invading.” They turned back to Waylon. “Wake up! You have to!”
Waylon glanced at Eddie, then turned to look outside the door of the room.
Normally, when he looked, there was just a hallway that ended in a well-lit doorway. An obvious exit from the mental space that had been created to be shared with the nanite ghosts.
Now, however, it was a dark length of space with rooms and twists and turns he could not see.
Eddie’s hand landed on his shoulder as he moved past Waylon, looking out into the hallway. “Normally, if I am seeing this,” he hesitated, licked his lips. “Then Chris and Miles are arriving as well. This is what the hallway looks like when the three of us are coming to speak with you.” He looked back at Waylon, his eyes wider than they normally were. “They’re right – something is wrong. You should not be here when this hallway looks like this.”
He glanced back down the hall, his jaw clenching.
“Waylon…”
“Eddie?”
His eyes were an icy sort of steel, sharp and dangerous, when he met Waylon’s gaze. “Do you trust me?”
“I—What?” Waylon frowned, looking out into the hall when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. “Eddie?”
Eddie took his hands, held them in one hand while he put his other on Waylon’s cheek, holding him in place as surely as if he’d been pinned. Like a butterfly on a board, in a way, under those eyes. “Do you trust me?” Eddie’s voice was tense, his shoulders tight against some attack Waylon couldn’t see.
Did he trust Eddie?
Eddie Gluskin?
The man he had been afraid of, had nightmares of, had been possessed by, been chased by?
His hands trembled, his body shook, but when he opened his mouth, there was only one answer he could give. “I trust you,” he said it softly but that was all Eddie needed. The taller man nodded, leaning in slowly and pressing their lips together. It was barely a kiss, chaste and momentary, but when he opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – he was awake.
He was awake.
Waylon was awake with him, he could feel the other man staring out from behind the eyes of the body they were both inhabiting.
Eddie looked down at the hands he now controlled, so much smaller than his own. He had been in this position before, had been pulling from his memory of how it felt to possess Waylon. Before, it had been to save his life by killing someone, or near to it. This time, it was hopefully not going to come to that.
This time, he would do his best to get the man to safety with minimal fighting.
The quadruplets were being held in cages, was the first thing he noticed. Alnilam was several feet away from their siblings, their hands curled through the bars surrounding them. The snarl on their face was easy enough to see even from where he was laid out flat on a table of some sort. The IV in his arm was a nuisance and he sneered at it before glancing over to see what the other three were doing.
No wonder Alnilam was snarling, the noises they made just a hair short of being a scream – their siblings were all unconscious. They must have been knocked out in the time between Alnilam’s warning and him waking up.
Someone walked a little too close and he dropped his eyes shut for a moment.
A man walked into the room, pushing through the flurry of white-coated people, a gun strapped to his hip and a look in his eye that suggested a quiet sort of anger to him.
“That,” a voice he knew came from his left. “Is not who he says he is.”
Eddie turned just his gaze, spotting Miles. Unlike Waylon, he could actually hear the other two nanite ghosts, not just get a vague impression of their voices. He could also see them, clear as day, standing just a foot away. Chris had his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the man with the gun on his hip.
“Don’t answer us,” Miles warned. “Think we’ll need every advantage we can get.”
“He says he is Chris Redfield,” Chris shook his head slowly. “But I’ve met Chris Redfield. He works with the BSAA and he doesn’t move like that, doesn’t walk like that, doesn’t watch people like that – whoever the fuck that is, they’re not Chris Redfield. They’ve got most of his face, but only someone who’d never met him would think that was him.” His hands clenched into fists at his sides and shook his head again. “Not him. That is not him.”
“Easy, big guy,” Miles put a hand on his shoulder, pressing gently.
From Waylon’s memories, Eddie knew that the programmer could only vaguely see the nanite ghosts, get a vague impression of their voices. The man pretending to be Chris Redfield glanced around the room when a noise sounded, his gaze zeroing in on a device that someone had set on the table.
“I need the room cleared,” he told the group at large. “The nanite infection of this room is too high to recommend anyone staying.”
“What about you?” one of the hazmat-wearing people around the edge of the room spoke up. “Sir, if it’s dangerous for us, then what about you?” Eddie closed their eyes again, laying as still as possible.
“I’ll take that risk,” the man nodded. “Clear the room.”
The crowd of white-coated people cleared out, followed by the handful of people wearing hazmat suits. Not-Redfield waited until the room was empty. “That device,” he said once the door had closed. “Alerts me to a rise in nanites. Tells me when they wake up and how alert they are.” He moved closer to the bed they had put Waylon on, crouching next to it. “So tell me, Park, how does it feel, me knowing you’re awake right now?”
Eddie opened their eyes, staring at the man.
Something angry rose up inside of him, like a fire burning deep in the heart of him. The man sitting in front of him was dangerous, likely willing to kill them if he had to. He nudged at his connection to Waylon, allowing him use of their shared mouth. “Doesn’t feel great,” Waylon almost bit the words out, half-snarling.
Across the room, Alnilam continued snarling in their cage, their hands red from striking at the bars.
“We cage wild animals where I’m from,” the man glanced at Alnilam. “That monster was particularly hard to capture – she kept wiggling.”
“Bet she fought back,” Eddie said.
“I don’t think she likes being kept in a cage,” Waylon added.
Miles shifted a little closer, his hands curled like he was going to punch the man encroaching on Waylon and Eddie. “And you really should let her the fuck out,” he hissed. Chris was right behind him, his eyes narrowed.
“Who are you looking at?” the imposter smirked. “I can see your eyes darting off to the side, there. You aren’t looking at the escaped research, you aren’t looking for a way out. I’ve hunted enough of you to know that. Looking for a way out always involves darting eyes, all around the room. Looking for a weapon means slow, steady studying. And that’s not the right direction,” he leaned into their personal space, angling his head the same way. “To be looking at the vicious little monsters I’ve got in cages.”
Chris growled, less of a warning and more of a threat.
“So tell me what happened to you,” the man leaned back again, unaware of the threat. He looked at his hand. “I dealt with a problem out in Louisiana, recently. A family of backwoods folk who got infected with something their dumbass son brought home from the research facility he worked at, I was told. The records of a little girl and the monster I had to fight said differently, but who am I to question what I’m told?” he smirked.
Eddie stayed silent, Waylon doing the same.
“You might as well tell me,” he sighed. “You’re going to a research facility. The corporation is picking up some of the projects Murkoff left behind when they went belly-up.”
“I was a programmer,” Waylon broke first, it seemed. “I worked for Murkoff to make sure everything ran smoothly.”
“And, what, your conscience woke up?” the man laughed, smug. “Check that at the door, kid. There’s no room for a conscience in this world, especially not when you’re working for one of these companies. You signed up for that job, took on the responsibilities. You knew what you were getting into.”
“I didn’t, actually.” Waylon looked up at him, his hands curled into fists as he slowly sat up. “I was told I was just an on-site problem solver. They waited until I’d been working for them for a few weeks and I had signed an NDA to show me what was happening. I saw a man screaming in pain as they loaded him into a machine. I saw another man get shot in the head because he was fighting back too much. That didn’t happen often – they medicated the asylum patients down enough to make them drowsy and pliable, kept them awake enough to move on their own.
“The real problem,” Waylon chuckled. “Was when I sent out a message to call someone in to investigate, to spread the story. I got him killed by doing that, and I wish I could apologize to him for it, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. Murkoff shut down because of that.”
“They did, but do you think they’re really gone?” the man rolled his eyes. “Sure, they went underground for a while, disappeared off the map, but they’ll be back. Different name, different people in charge, different figureheads appeasing the media, but they’ll be back.” He leaned forward. “I heard you got to witness Gluskin. Tell me, what was he like?”
Eddie’s hackles raised, translating to a snarl on Waylon’s face. “He tried to kill me.” Waylon said.
“I almost succeeded,” Eddie continued.
The man’s eyes went wide as he leaned away, rocking back on his heels. “What?”
“I chased him off a rooftop, down an elevator shaft,” Eddie’s anger was rising. “Your machine tells you when the nanites are active – do they tell you who the nanites belong to?”
“I got caught in the crossfire,” Waylon spoke up again. “I became one of their experiments when they caught me sending out that message and they volunteered me for the program. They poured nanites into my system and infected me with their bullshit. I carried a piece of Mount Massive out of the dark with me.” He leaned closer to the man, narrowing his eyes. “I am the monster they created and I am out in the world to make sure everyone knows.”
“And we followed him,” Eddie laughed. “And we want to make sure it never happens again.”
The man looked afraid, now, his eyes wide as he threw himself backward, his eyes darting back and forth as he looked at something behind Waylon. “What the fuck—”
“Oh, can you see us now?” Miles’ voice was smug, his hands tucked into his pockets. For a projection, he was doing an amazing job of seeming solid. “Interesting.”
“You’re not Chris Redfield,” Chris snarled the words out, his hands clenched into fists larger than the man’s head. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not him.” He took a step forward, then another. Eddie reached out an arm to stop him, gesturing towards the cage that head Alnilam.
“Get them out,” Eddie told him. “We’ve got an infestation to eradicate.”
He jumped and rolled off the bed, using their momentum to pin the imposter to the ground, putting a knee into his throat. “If you had just left us alone,” Eddie snarled out. “You wouldn’t be about to die, right now.”
The man gurgled something out, choking on his own saliva, clutching at Waylon’s knee as his face started turning blue.
“I will spend the rest of my life making sure Murkoff pays for what they did,” Waylon informed him.
“And you really shouldn’t have hunted us down,” Eddie added.
“Because now we’re going to have to find somewhere new to stay. Do you know how hard it is to find abandoned houses that are in good enough shape to stay in to house several people?” Waylon sighed. “The quadruplets also need forest nearby, that’s how they stay somewhat sane.”
No one was quite sure who was in control of the arms as they reached down to snap his neck.
The door flew open, delaying the imposter’s death for a time. On the other side, a man with a handgun raised stood, looking around the room and taking in the scene he had just come across. Slowly, he raised one hand to his ear, tapping something. “Park has been found,” he spoke quietly.
“That,” Chris spoke up, still trying to get Alnilam out of their cage. “Is Chris Redfield.”
X
The scene had been locked down.
By the time they were clearing the back rooms of the house, Chris knew that the likelihood of them having made it on time was dwindling. Waylon Park had made a name for himself as someone willing and able to take down operations like Murkoff without getting caught for it. That sort of person was someone good to have on their side.
Minimal deaths, absolute stealth, and a point to make.
The BSAA could use people like that.
The scene he found, however, was like nothing he could have been prepared for. A slight-built man, Asian in some amount, crouched down over a man who looked stunningly like Chris, ready to snap his neck with the slightest move. Off to one side, he could see someone trapped in a cage, a weird haze in the air around the door. Another haze stood off to the other side of Park, not including the one that seemed to surround him.
Letting one hand pull away from his gun, Chris clicked his comm on.
“Park has been found.” He said, knowing Barry would understand what he meant. He still tended to make some jokes over the radio, a holdover from the days where he’d still felt like joking about things. If he wasn’t making a joke, something serious was happening. When Barry started to say something, he clicked his comm off. “Park?”
“Chris Redfield,” Park sat up a little straighter, something dangerous flashing in his eyes.
Chris had been involved in the world of Umbrella for so long that he felt like he knew when something was off. Park wasn’t quite himself, anymore, it seemed. There was something else lurking behind his eyes. “Don’t kill him. We’ve got enough evidence to put him away in a cell for a very long time.” Chris still had his gun up, aimed at the man on the floor. “And how about you stop choking him, too?”
“He threatened us,” Park’s voice was a little deeper this time. “He put Alnilam in a cage. Put their siblings in a cage as well, knocked them unconscious.”
Was that a different accent?
“I’ll get them out,” Chris promised. “I will. I just need you to stop actively killing him. I need your help, Park, and I can’t get it if you’re in jail for killing him.”
Park seemed to consider it for a moment, then leaned his weight back so that the man on the floor with Chris’s face could breathe again. He was still pinned, weak enough that he wouldn’t be able to get up, but he was breathing. Chris considered that something good, a small victory. “We’re staying right here,” Park’s voice was higher-pitched again, the haze still built up around him.
“That’s okay.” Chris holstered his gun, flicking the safety on with his thumb as he did. “I take it you want them out of their cages before anything else happens?”
“Yes.” Park’s voice was two-toned this time, like two people speaking at once.
Nodding, Chris pulled out the small toolkit Jill had given him for a birthday once. The lockpicking expert had taught him how to do the same on basic locks. He wasn’t as good as her, not nearly, but he could manage. The cage was all metal, thick bars with sharp edges on the inside. It made his stomach roll, disgust rising inside of him. It was the sort of thing meant for hurting someone, not just keeping them contained. The person inside of it, Alnilam as Park had called them, stared out at him. “I’ll get you out, just give me a second,” he reassured, sliding a lockpick into the lock and getting to work.
They reached a finger through the bars, brushing the back of his hand.
For a moment, he picked up on a flash of fear, of pain. The sound of screaming in his mind, high-pitched and terrified. He stopped, feeling suddenly faint. “Oh god,” he muttered, his eyes wide. Tears were building up as he worked, his hands shaking. “That’s horrible – what did they do to you?” he fumbled with the lock for a little while longer.
It felt like forever before it opened, time enough for Barry to walk into the room through the door he had left open.
Almost in time, Barry walked in just as he got the lock open. Alnilam moved slowly, closer to the exit of the cage. “She’s bleeding,” Chris turned to Park. “Do you have any medical supplies in the house?”
“They’re in the bathroom,” Park waved vaguely. “And Alnilam isn’t a she.”
Chris paused, then looked at Alnilam. “They?”
“Yes.”
Barry took a look around the room, then turned around and left again. When he came back, it was with a medkit in his hands, the red cross on the front of it reassuring in some almost-primal way. “We need to get them out of the cage.” He crouched down next to Chris, then nudged him out of the way. “Here, kid, come here,” he reached forward, curling Alnilam’s entire body into his arms. “There we go, that looked painful.”
While he was doing that, Chris moved over to the other cage, much bigger than the one Alnilam had been in. The three inside of it were still, but their eyes were starting to open. The lock-picking went a little faster this time.
Barry settled Alnilam on the bed, popping open the medkit and digging through it. “You’re okay,” he told them when they squirmed. “I’m just going to clean up these cuts on your legs.” He looked over at Park. “I’ve seen the files on these guys,” he said it softly and Chris winced. “They’re the same age as my youngest.” He turned back to Alnilam. “It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“They’re soldiers,” the imposter spoke up from his position underneath Park. “Not children.”
“They’re the same age as my children,” Barry shot back. He wiped gently at the first cut, refusing to look at the man. “I’m going to treat them as such. They need to be treated like people because that’s what they are.”
It hadn’t been a fun day when Barry had found the files on the Constellations project.
Park tilted his head, seemingly listening to something, then nodded. “Barry Burton,” he looked at Barry. “A good man, apparently. Could always use a few more good men,” he nodded again. “Chris Redfield is the one who passed that report into the hands of a man named Chris Walker.”
With the cage open, Chris turned to look at him. “How do you know that?”
Park laughed. “Because he told me.”
“I thought he died in Mount Massive,” Barry frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Park reared back and grunted as he knocked his pinned imposter unconscious. “He told me.” He stood up, brushing himself off. “Eddie, I think we’re safe now.” His body was still held rigid for a moment longer, then relaxed. As it did, the haze around him seemed to dissipate, leeching away until it was next to him. “My name is Waylon Park,” he spoke softer now, quieter. More like the man Chris had seen in the reports of his life before. “And I have three nanite ghosts following me around.”
A black haze curled around his shoulders and Waylon grinned. “Well, four.”
“Holy shit,” Chris stood up, having pulled off his tactical vest and laid it out on the bars of the cage. The three inside the cage would be able to crawl over it and avoid some of the same damage their sibling had. “That’s the Walrider.”
He had read the files they could dig up on it – all theoretical, of course, the implications of the papers being that the Walrider was simply a theory – and it had been a terrifying concept. Something that could awaken from inside the mountain, could fight with a host body anchoring it nearby. That sort of thing was something he had expected from Umbrella, from Wes—
Something he had expected from the nightmares he’d already fought.
A soldier, of sorts, able to slip in and out without the restraint of a physical form. Something like that would make any sort of defense useless, national secrets could and would be laid bare before something like that.
Wars could be won before they were even fought, with something like that.
It was not an idea he relished.
On the bed, Barry still patching up their knees, Alnilam tilted their head. Their eyes were focused entirely on Waylon, face willfully placid. “I’m okay,” Waylon said in response to whatever he was reading in their eyes. “These people – no, I don’t think they’re a threat. Not to us, at least.”
“You keep going off of something only you can hear,” Barry spoke up. He held the roll of gauze awkwardly in his hands, having finished bandaging knees in the moments between conversation. “And it’s kind of freaking me out a little. Want to explain?” he turned to Waylon, frowning. The wrinkle between his eyes was pronounced, a sure sign of him worrying about something.
“The quadruplets are telepaths,” Waylon laughed a little. “I don’t know how or why, but they are.” He made a face. “I mean, I know why. Super soldiers, meant to be a single mind in four different bodies to make a neat little team.”
“Okay, but that’s not the only thing,” Barry stood up.
“Those nanite ghosts?” Waylon took a step forward, holding his arm out to one side. The haze that stood beside him had expanded, slightly, like a wild animal trying to make itself look bigger. “And trust me, I know how this sounds even before I say it. My nanite ghosts used to be living people. The Walrider, I’m not sure about, but the other three definitely were. Chris Walker,” he motioned towards the one still hovering near the cage where the three were still recovering. “Miles Upshur,” he pointed back towards the unconscious body of the imposter, where a haze was curled next to him. “And Eddie Gluskin.”
He held out his left hand, encompassing the haze that was still growing.
“He’s a little worried, right now,” Waylon shrugged a shoulder. “Which is why he’s going on the defensive and sounding worried to me, but he’s not going to attack you.” He gave a stern look to the haze, which immediately started shrinking. “They’ve been, all three of them, trying to keep me alive. The Walrider is…I guess an extension of me? It used to be attached to a young man named Billy Hope, then it was attached to Miles. Miles died when I was trying to take down one of Murkoff’s operations.” He looked at the haze he had identified as the once-reporter. “And then the Walrider jumped hosts to keep itself alive.”
For all that he gave them the information in a calm and collected way, Chris could see that there was something off about Waylon. He wasn’t insane, exactly, was giving them the truth as far as Chris could tell, but there was something broken in his eyes.
Something haunted.
Hunted.
“How long have you been running?” Chris made himself ask the question, almost knowing the answer already.
“Since I uploaded the first videos of Mount Massive,” Waylon sighed. “Since I managed to get out alive.”
That was a couple of years, at this point. Mount Massive had gone off in 2012, four years ago, long enough that Waylon being hunted down by Umbrella and the remaining folks from Murkoff was a terrifying prospect – what was the Walrider, exactly, to gain such a massive force of retaliation?
Not trusting himself to say anything, the words he could feel wanting to spill out, Chris moved over to the man Waylon had knocked unconscious. He looked almost exactly like Chris, his facial features just a touch different than the ones he saw in the mirror every day. The scars across the palms of his hands were unsettling in a way, looking too much like the scars an assassin would have. The gun strapped to his hip caught Chris’s attention and he reached down to pull it out. “I recognize this,” he turned to show it to Barry.
“Isn’t that the…” Barry trailed off, meeting Chris’s eyes.
“The Albert oh-one,” Chris held it up, his hand loose around the still-warm metal. “Made for fighting BOWs, got stolen about four months back.”
“So a guy who looks like you, pretending to be you, carrying a weapon he stole from you,” Waylon peered at the gun. “Seems like someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to try and drag your name through the mud.” He looked down at the imposter, frowning. After a moment, he crouched down, pulling something out of his pocket. “Employed by Umbrella,” he held up the badge he’d pulled out.
He held it out to Chris when a noise ripped out of his throat, his fingers trembling.
Fuck.
Was he ever going to be out and away from that goddamned part of his history? The corporation he had worked for, the people who had nearly ended the world in their hunt for power and money and control. Chris took the badge from Waylon, running his thumb over the insignia that he’d once worn on his vest.
The sign of near-ownership he’d been so blind to.
Standing there, at the end of a trail that had led to someone on the run and more questions than answers, Chris felt it. The weapon in his hand had been named by him, had been designed for use against what they created, but the overwhelming urge to scream, to start and never stop, was because of how he had named it.
It had started as a dig against a dead man.
But now, now he regretted naming it the way he had. It had been based off of the one his captain had used, had carried, one more mark of his difference, his superiority in reference to the team he commanded. The headset he’d used had been better quality, his gun had been different, his uniform had been different.
All subtle signs of him being above them.
And now, here Chris was.
He was Wesker’s abandoned amalgamation.
Touched by his wrath, his broken spirit – the way he had worked in secret for the enemy, all that time. The way his history kept coming back to haunt him was poisonous – he should probably take Barry’s advice and get his ass into therapy for what had happened over the years, but that felt impossible. There was no one but the people he’d gone through these things with who knew what it was like. A therapist wouldn’t be able to know what scars had been left on him, the damage that had been done. He wouldn’t get better by talking about it – couldn’t get better by talking about it.
“Chris?”
Barry’s voice dragged him back to the present, away from the hazardous memories of a smug smile, brightly glowing orange eyes, eyes that had once been a hard-to-describe blue-grey color.
Eyes that had seemed to smile, the few times he had actually seen them.
“I’m fine,” Chris waved him off, clearing his throat awkwardly. “So we’re dealing with Umbrella again. How many times do we have to stop them?” he scoffed, shaking his head. From the way Waylon looked at him, he knew that his false calm about it wasn’t fooling the man. “The remnants of that damn company keep coming back to life. Seems oddly fitting.” He looked at the quadruplets. “And they were one of Umbrella’s projects.”
“If you even think,” Waylon took a deep breath, his eyes flashing with something that was gone too quickly for Chris to understand. “That I’m going to let you hurt them or separate me from them…”
“We’re not,” Barry stood up, holding out his hands, trying to appease the anger they could both hear in Waylon’s voice. “I think what we should do is take you guys to a safehouse. We have several, in a lot of different places. The BSA is prepared for when we have to hide for a while.” He crossed the room, putting a hand on Chris’s shoulder, like he was anchoring him to reality.
Chris was grateful for it.
“We have another person who is supposed to be here,” Waylon clutched his hands together, looking around at the hazes that now stood near him. After a moment, he nodded. “His name is Blake, we rescued him from someplace that Murkoff had controlled and contaminated with their experiments.”
“Blake…?” Barry crossed his arms over his chest and Chris found himself feeling grateful that he continued pulling the attention to himself.
“Langerman,” Waylon’s voice sounded layered, for a second – several people talking at once. “An old friend of Miles’, I was told. He should be getting back soon, if not here already. Or maybe he saw the invading forces and fucked off into the woods.” His face twitched, the features twisting with annoyance. He waved a hand through the air and the coalescing haze of darkness drew back from his right shoulder. It was the one he had looked at when he’d been talking about Miles Upshur before, Chris was certain of it. Waylon interrupted his thoughts before they went scrambling off too far. “I was told you’re an old acquaintance of Chris Walker, as well.”
He nodded his head towards Chris, dragging him back into the conversation.
“I—” Chris slid the Albert 01 into a pouch on his thigh, double checking the safety before he closed it. “I knew him. Met him…Once. Good guy. Went a little insane, somewhere in there.”
“I know.” Waylon moved across the room, a hitch in his step as he went. “He’s the one who told me that the pretender wasn’t you.”
“I’ve seen a lot, with this job,” Chris took a deep breath as the smaller man stopped in front of him. “But…Ghosts….That’s a new one. You’re talking to ghosts. About ghosts. You’re talking like they’re talking to you, right now.” He met Waylon’s eyes and took a half-step back, suddenly afraid at the look in them.
“Not ghosts, exactly.” Waylon sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. His head rolled downward and he sighed again, like all the air was leaving him.
When he looked up again, one of his eyes was a softer blue color. “Nanite echoes, certainly.” Waylon’s smile had a knife’s edge to it, something dangerous and threatening, even while it tried to reassure. “But not exactly ghosts, as mythology would describe them. No wailing moans or jangling chains. Just…Echoes. Still-conscious and aware of what is happening. People,” he chuckled. “With nowhere else to go.”
Chris looked at him.
Waylon was not an intimidating man. He stood about five-foot-four, his face somewhat gaunt and thin, his entire body of a slighter build. He’d been through hell and back, though, so he was tougher than he looked.
But he was small and unassuming and somehow he’d managed to take out several facilities. Murkoff had been ground to dust several times by him, kept from rebuilding itself.
“How many…” Chris hesitated, then stopped. He cleared his throat. “Which people are echoing, for you?”
“Chris Walker,” Waylon gestured to the biggest haze, which had moved to stand in front of him. “Miles Upshur,” he gestured at that one for a third time. “The Walrider wasn’t its own person, before. It needs a host to be something resembling a person – it picks up traits and habits from the host.” He put a hand to his own chest, silence building like a wave about to crash. “Eddie Gluskin.”
Chris took several steps back, his eyes wide. He felt a surge of panic in his chest and he blinked a couple of times when his eyes started to water. “Eddie Gluskin?”
Barry, still standing by the quadruplets, glanced around the room, studying each of the hazes in turn. “That’s the one currently perching on you, isn’t it?” he cleared his throat. “I’ve read a lot of files about you, Park. You were a software person, a coder, a programmer – the fighting skills you’ve put into effect read more as a soldier, as someone capable of getting out of a tight situation because they have a lot of training. Unless you moonlight as a vigilante, there’s no way you learned those skills on your own.”
Waylon’s now-blue eye seemed to narrow as he stared at Barry.
Oh.
Oh.
“Gluskin’s kept you alive, hasn’t he?” Chris took a step forward. “He and the others – they’ve been training you and helping keep you alive?”
“Miles died to protect me,” Waylon nodded. “He was infected with nanites, he was the previous host of the Walrider. Mount Massive was filled with nanites. If you spent long enough there, you got infected with them. I was put through the Morphogenic Engine, which bonded them to me on purpose. You see,” he took a step forward as well, clasping his hands behind his back. “Jeremy Blaire found me out. He found out that I called reporters in. He volunteered me for the project.” His mouth twisted into a humorless smile. “Murkoff created this mess they’re in. I’m just making sure they know that.”
“He volunteered—”
“I wasn’t a consenting patient. He had guards with him and he had them agree that I had volunteered. I am, in fact, the fucking nightmare they created and they need to pay for what they’ve done to me and to every patient they were ever trusted with,” Waylon’s voice was hoarse, two-toned and furious.
Gluskin was talking through him.
Chris nodded, feeling like the floor had been yanked out from underneath him. Waylon Park wasn’t alone in his head anymore. “Upshur died to save you, I get that. How did Gluskin get attached?”
“I was obsessed with him,” the voice that came out of Waylon was deeper this time, that odd and out of place accent again. “I chased him off a roof and down an elevator shaft.”
“I watched him die.”
“I managed to kill myself on my own setup.”
“He bled out above me,” Waylon’s smile turned a little sheepish, like he was trying to apologize for something. “He tried to hang me and only managed to kill himself. The support beams of the gymnasium snapped.”
The video that Waylon had posted. The footage he’d taken in the asylum.
The furious, broken people he’d come across.
Chris could name some of them, had looked through the files that Waylon and Miles had recovered, had read up on the people that Murkoff had deemed an acceptable casualty. Eddie Gluskin had been on the path to recovery in a different asylum, had been under guard and medicated, three months of good behavior and a projected path of continuing.
And then something slipped up – a missed dose, a missing guard, an attack on his therapist.
He’d been transferred to Murkoff.
There had been something in the paperwork, though – something that hadn’t rung true. The wording hadn’t matched up, the paperwork had been rushed. Like someone had been trying to get him in their hold quickly, for some reason.
It reminded him of—
“How long were you an experiment, Eddie?” Chris met Waylon’s blue eye, playing off a hunch. He could see Barry’s head snap around at the edge of his vision, the man’s eyebrows rising to meet his hairline. That was the only thing that made sense, to him. Call him crazy, but that was the only reason he could see for Murkoff to be so keen on getting Eddie into their grasp. They had set something up beforehand.
The blue in Waylon’s eye and the way his voice kept changing – there was only one explanation for that, too. It didn’t make sense, he didn’t know enough about what had happened to the man, but it also did make sense. He just didn’t know how Chris Walker and Miles Upshur had gotten tangled into the mixture.
Eddie Gluskin’s nanites had latched onto the nearest suitable host.
They had attached a copy of his memories, his personality, everything about him – what could be termed a soul – to the poor man who had already been through a hell.
“Too long.”
Okay, Chris decided.
It was nearly pants-shitting territory to hear four voices come out of one man’s mouth. Especially when all four of them were that angry.