Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 The proposal was a shock. These people weren't supposed to be reasonable, or logical, they were supposed to chase you down until you ran out of breath. He was cornered, but a hand had extended itself towards him with an exaggerated flourish; an unplaceable accent.

 “You and me, Ethan. Together, we go save Rose, and then we can use her to grind Miranda into paste.”

 Mia was dead, Rose was in flasks. He’d been through hell to get anywhere close to the leader of this warped family, and here he was, deep in the bowels of a metal prison, with only one deceptively simple way out. The man before him didn’t radiate trust, or warmth, or reliability. He radiated a delight in the torment of others.

 The lord tilted his head, and Ethan could see a hint of his lycan friends in the animalistic movement. Behind the dark glasses, his eyes were light and wolf-like. 

 “You’re not ‘using’ her,” Ethan spat. His fists were clenched. “My daughter isn’t a weapon. Fuck you.”

 Heisenberg’s eye twitched, and the sole of his boot planted itself in the middle of Ethan’s chest, sending him flying backwards, before a strong grip curled around his arm and left him teetering on the edge of the trapdoor.

 “Last chance,” Heisenberg said. He sounded calm, but his fingers were bruising Ethan’s skin through two layers of clothing. Ethan held tight, but he knew he didn’t stand a chance if the magnetic lord was to let him go. 

 His stomach turned in sickening rage at the thought of anyone taking advantage of Rose. Whatever ‘powers’ these freaks had mentioned didn’t mean it was safe for her to use them, especially not if it put her directly in harm’s way. But if there was a way to save her… if there was a way that didn’t mean he was risking his life, potentially too late in the first place…

 “Let me up,” Ethan said, sounding shaky. The factory lord obliged, perhaps sensing his hesitance, but keeping a warning grasp on his wrist. 

 “...How exactly would you use her power?” he muttered, hating himself for even asking the question.

 Visibly pleased, Heisenberg released Ethan’s wrist, brushing imaginary lint from his coat. He even went so far as to pat Ethan’s cheek, over which he almost burst a blood vessel in indignation. The guy was a creep, and it looked as if he'd learned to carry himself by watching Dick Dastardly cartoons.

 “Just hear me out,” the lord urged him, aiming for innocence and ending with sleaze. “I promise it’s worth hearing.”

 Ethan valued a promise from Heisenberg just as much as he valued the dirt he walked on, but he kept his mouth shut, and followed him through the steel intestines of the factory, filled with the hidden horrors of unnatural melding between man and machine.

 “It’s as simple as this, really, Ethan,” Heisenberg said, conversationally. “You want Rose alive, and I want Miranda dead.”

 “Why would you want to kill her? Miranda gave you your powers and everything you have. You’re her son, aren’t you?”

 Heisenberg snarled, for a moment becoming indistinguishable from the pack of wolf men he had fostered. “I am not her son.”

 “For God’s sakes, this isn’t my problem!” Ethan snapped, almost wanting to laugh at how pathetic they all were, clamouring for a mother’s attention. But he was past laughing, because every minute spent as Heisenberg’s therapist, Rose was closer to death. “All you’re saying is that you have some serious mommy issues,” he muttered. 

 Heisenberg immediately rounded on him before he had time to react, slamming him against the wall with a resonating clang. He was breathing heavily, pressing forward to increase the force against Ethan’s windpipe. 

 “Sweet little Rose,” Heisenberg whispered, speaking fast and maniacally. “She’s so lucky to have a loving father to protect her from that evil, scheming witch.” He smiled, before his face twisted into something grotesque and furious.  “It’s a shame I didn’t get that,” he screamed, flecks of spit flying from his mouth, the screeching sound echoing off the walls in the metal prison.

 He was so close, Ethan could see the fingerprints in motor oil smeared on his glasses. When he tried to swallow, Heisenberg shoved him violently, sending his head ricocheting off the wall, and a sickening wave of nausea washing over him. Doubled over in pain, his palms found the cold steel of the floor, the world spinning. 

 There was no movement from the towering figure above him. He caught his breath, felt the healing process begin its marrow-deep itching, and waited until the world became still. 

 When he looked, Heisenberg was staring down at him, blankly impassive. It wasn’t that he was gloating, or even apologizing, but the dark lens of his spectacles seemed to warn against poking the bear again.

 Ethan picked himself up, silently grinding his teeth. When Heisenberg reached out a hand to steady him, he stumbled in an effort to get away.

 “Suit yourself,” Heisenberg drawled, but there was no more bravado, only a guarded disdain. The pain quickly faded, but the memory of his volatile temper was seared into Ethan’s brain, and every neuron was screaming at him to turn tail and run.

 The lord turned, and Ethan followed, looking around to see scores of corpses transported on overhead conveyors, the barest hint of the depths of Heisenberg’s ethical depravity. The place was enormous beyond comprehension,  The elevator was just up ahead, but in that open space, the screeching of metal against metal was deafening.

 “Tell me about that thing underneath the trapdoor,” Ethan said quietly.

 Heisenberg’s mouth formed the shadow of a grin for a second, before he pushed the button for B4 and stood back so they were a couple of meters apart, neither looking at the other.

 “Are you sure you want to know what could have happened to you, had you been less amenable to our deal?” the lord asked, slyly.

 Ethan just glanced at him, a sharp look that said enough with the theatrics. 

 Heisenberg huffed. “Well, let’s just say, not every experiment is successful. Sometimes, you attach a turboprop engine to a man’s chest, and he ends up slicing his own arms off on one of his lunatic charges. That’s the way it is.”

 The elevator doors opened. Ethan shook his head. “And you’re not even kidding,” he said, under his breath, deciding he was going to put an end to this psychopath the moment Rose was safe. Heisenberg just laughed.

 He pulled a key from his trench coat and used it to unlock some heavy doors with an intricate mechanism. Ethan took note of the horse-shaped relief attached to the outside. It reminded him of the story Mia had been reading to Rose, last night, before… before Chris shot her. The thought of it made his eyes sting. He wasn’t ready to accept his wife was gone, just as he hadn’t been ready when she’d gone missing all those years ago. To think that one family could have this kind of luck was devastating. But Ethan would endure all the misery and heartache in the world, if it meant his wife and daughter were safe.

 “Come in. Take a seat anywhere you like.” The way he phrased it was as if Ethan had entered a castle or grand mansion.

 Ethan glanced around the room. It was completely dilapidated, dark, and reminiscent of a hospital, with its metal-framed cots and sterile atmosphere. It was barren of furniture.

 “This is how you live?” he wondered aloud, regretting it almost immediately as it had left his lips, lest Heisenberg take offense and choose amputation as an acceptable consequence. 

 “I don’t spend all my time here.” It was almost churlish, only missing a set of folded arms.

 “Do you sleep? I mean… do you have to sleep?” 

 “Do you?”

 Ethan blinked. “What are you getting at?”

 Heisenberg didn’t answer for a moment, instead choosing to root around a sparse wooden cupboard searching for the key to a padlocked drawer, from which he retrieved a dusty bottle of red liquid. 

 Ethan eyed it warily. “Is that what I think it is?”

 “I wouldn’t take anything from my whore sister,” Heisenberg said flatly. “But you can try it, if you want.”

 As expected, the label read Sanguis Virginis. He was immediately transported back to the castle, the way its plush carpet muffled his footsteps while he crept through its silent halls, tense with anticipation for the fluttering of insects swarming around him, or the sound of claws scraping against stone.

 “Do you want it, or not? I was trying to be a good host, but it’s not as if we have much time to spare. As we speak, Miranda has your daughter and is probably dunking her in fungal goo.”

 Upon receiving that mental image, Ethan accepted the bottle and glass offered to him. Satisfied, Heisenberg seated himself on the other side of the rickety table and steepled his fingers.

 “Fill your boots, as they say,” he said, intently watching his guest’s hand tremble as it poured crimson liquid into a chipped glass. “Now, I’m going to tell you the plan, so don’t interrupt until I’m finished.”

 Ethan set his jaw.

 “Miranda wants to use Rose’s power to bring back her own daughter. Her biological daughter, of course, because obviously none of us were ever enough.” The bitter vitriol in his voice was palpable. “Miranda’s own power comes from something called the Megamycete. A kind of fungus, if you will. But your daughter is infected with a different, more powerful mutation. If it comes into contact with Miranda, it will destroy the Megamycete, taking her with it.”

 “Why hasn’t it destroyed her already? She has Rose right now.”

 “Because it’s not on Rose’s skin, but in her blood. Miranda has been careful. But if we were to-”

 “Wait a second. You seriously think I’m letting you near my daughter’s blood? You can’t actually-”

 “Hold your horses, Ethan, I’m not a completely heartless bastard. Well, I am, but-” he paused, took in Ethan’s disbelief, and quickly moved on. “All you need is a tiny drop. Prick Rose’s finger, Sleeping Beauty-style, and coat something with her blood. A knife, preferably a bullet.”

 “How do I get to Miranda?”

 “Didn’t I tell you not to interrupt?” he said, irritably. “That’s where my life’s work comes in. I control enough lycans and soldaty to cause one serious distraction. While she’s busy taking care of the prodigal son, you’ll get the blood, and kill her. You shake my hand and we go our separate ways. Rose is saved, the bitch is dead, everybody lives happily ever after.”

 Ethan took a sip of the wine as he considered it. It tasted strange, with a bitter undertone that dried his mouth, and he quickly set it back on the table. Heisenberg seemed pleased that he didn’t like it. 

 “Even if I thought that plan had a remote chance of working out,” he started slowly, “How am I supposed to trust you?”

 The leader of the lycans leaned forward, taking his glasses off in some feeble attempt to make himself seem more genuine. “For almost a century I’ve wanted to escape that woman’s grasp. She calls us her children, but that’s only because she treats us as if we are. I hate her. I’ve never wanted someone dead so much as I want to see the life leave her body. She took everything from me, and I’ll do anything to get my revenge.”

 Ethan nodded slowly. “That makes sense, but have you considered, uh... leaving?”

 Heisenberg laughed, way too loudly and for way too long, before it petered out and left a somewhat awkward silence. He coughed. “That’s just not possible. She controls all of us. Well. She did, until you finished them off.”

 Ethan met his gaze, wary he was responsible for the death of Heisenberg’s grotesque little family.

 There was a feverish light in his eyes, an eager restlessness that made the whole room vibrate with magnetic energy. “When you killed them, what was it like? Did you hurt them? Did they beg you to spare their lives?”

 “You’re sick,” Ethan said, automatically, then flinched against a blow that never came. Heisenberg took in the sequence with a curious tilt of the head. It was as if he was fascinated by the sight of a normal person, trying to pretend he understood exactly how human interaction worked but always veering into uncanny valley.

 “My sister had strong words with me when she realized I had let you escape my trap,” he said. “I can’t remember the exact words she used… she avoided cursing, although a woman of that stature could hardly be considered lady-like, but there was a lot of ‘halfwit man-thing’ and threats to your anatomy.”

 Ethan managed a spasm of muscle which could be considered a brief and humorless smile.

 “Actually, she told me something quite extraordinary. That you have some kind of power. That your body heals far beyond what is natural.”

 It was a realization that had been building up for a long time, but hearing it spoken aloud still shocked him to the core. Every reattached limb, every wound that sealed itself back up into fresh and scarless skin, the unbroken bones, the bruises that disappeared within minutes. What he could do wasn’t normal, and the injuries he’d sustained should have been deadly.

 “Is it true?” Heisenberg prompted.

 Ethan shook his head. “I… I don’t know.”

 “But we can find out,” the lord declared, cheerfully. Ethan’s gaze snapped up to his, mind flooding with graphic images of what it would be like to be Heisenberg’s immortal plaything. He went pale, to peals of obnoxious laughter.

 “I mean testing. Every lord’s house has its own lab facility, because Miranda encouraged us to be as… creative as possible with our Cadou ventures.”

 “The Cadou… I’ve read about it, in their documents. What is it?”

 “Miranda’s specially engineered parasite. Everything you’ve seen- the lycans, the samcă, varcolac, moroaică, myself and the other lords- all of us were infected with the parasite. Depending on your genetics, you’ll react to it in a different way. And there’s something in you too, Ethan, but I don’t know what it is. Will you let me test you? Don’t make me say please.”

 “Why? So you can subject me to endless torture?” Ethan shot back, edged with hysteria. 

 “We had a deal, Ethan. I don’t go back on my word.”

 “Thanks. That’s extremely reassuring.”

 “Well, what do you want from me?” Heisenberg burst out, standing up so fast he knocked over his chair, and the metallic objects in the room began to shake and rattle against each other.

 Ethan stared at him, dead on, saying nothing, until the sounds stopped, and Heisenberg sank back down into his chair. He seemed uneasy, as if he was unable to control his own anger. 

 “There isn’t time for any tests,” Ethan said. He was surprised at the softness of his words; he hadn’t believed he could ever risk softness again. “I need Rose to be safe.”

 “But if we don’t do it now-”

 “Why do you want to know so badly?!” Ethan interrupted, frustratedly. “I get it, I’m a freak. That much is obvious now.”

 “It’s-” 

 Heisenberg stopped, and went uncharacteristically silent. All they could hear was the low and ever-present rumble of machinery. 

 “There is no one like me,” he said, eventually, without inflection. Ethan didn’t understand what he meant, and he wasn’t going to try. He was sitting before a broken, heartless person, who’d lived double his own lifespan and yet retained the temperamental mind of a child. 

 He simply looked back and said, “Please.”

 Heisenberg’s inscrutable gaze pierced him through black glass for a few more moments. “Fine,” he said, suddenly and loudly, clapping his hands on the table. “You win. You’re a persuasive man. We’ll rescue your spawn.”

 “Thank you,” Ethan said stiffly. He felt restless and impatient, so he stood from his seat. “If we do this.. I’m going to need ammunition.”

 “Now you’re talking,” Heisenberg smirked. “The armory is through there. If you see something you like, consider it a gift from your uncle Heisenberg.”

 Ethan made a face. There always seemed to be a twisted implication of some sort of familial relationship between himself and the monsters that followed him, and it only brought on a sense of dread.

 The walls of the armory were lined with shelves, stocked top to bottom with everything from shotgun shells to explosive rounds. Ethan wondered why Heisenberg had a need for all of this, when his mutant powers were more than enough to crush human nuisance. Maybe he just liked violence, the weight of the bullets, knowing even one could end a life in a split second. 

 He filled his backpack with as much ammo as he could carry. He looked at the spectacular display of guns mounted on the wall, most of them engraved by hand with ornate patterns and motifs, the most common being a galloping horse, the whites of its eyes exposed. He remembered the final part of the story, where the girl snatched the gear from the horse’s head, taking the gifts for granted. 

 He took nothing.

 Heisenberg had spread out sheets of paper over the table by the time he returned, making rough marks with a piece of charcoal. The rest were maps, some  distinctly representing the factory, others the village. Red lines stood starkly out against the black, and a path began to form.

 “Miranda will be on her way to the ceremony site. I’ll lead the soldaty and lycans through the caves, so she doesn’t catch on too quickly. You go through the village. Try not to let her spot you.”

 “You think she’ll leave Rose alone to deal with you?”

 “She’ll have to,” Heisenberg answered darkly. “Are you ready? Did you choose anything?”

 Ethan licked his lips. “I read Village of Shadows,” he replied, measuredly. 

 The lord smiled, as if Ethan was a pet who’d performed a trick. His teeth were unnaturally sharp. “If only they had done the same,” he mused, indicating towards the lines of corpses swinging from the factory conveyors. He motioned for Ethan to come closer and study his route plans. At this proximity, Ethan could sense a strange kind of magnetic force emanating from Heisenberg’s body. It was a constant threat, and the way they worked around each other was like two lions’ vigilant, prowling face-off around a kill.

 When satisfied, Heisenberg turned and lay a hand on Ethan’s arm. He struggled not to pull away, feeling like a rabbit in a snare, and could only look helplessly into the steel-forged lord’s impenetrable spectacles as he spoke slowly and menacingly. “Take the elevator and leave through the barn. I’m trusting you, Ethan. Remember that we’re helping each other.”

 He found a hundred retorts on the tip of his tongue, each more bloodthirsty than the last. In the end, he bit his tongue, even when Heisenberg taunted, “Wise decision.”

 Upon departing the private quarters, Ethan felt tense and unsettled. The plan might sound reasonable, but it banked on the so-called army being any match whatsoever for Mother Miranda’s wrath. More importantly, it would fall apart if this was just all just an elaborate betrayal. He could already hear their cackling laughter in his mind. 

 In his mind, he weighed up his choices, despairing over either’s lack of appeal. Then, the elevator doors opened, and he found the Duke sitting inside. There was little room for the both of them, but the smell of fresh garlic and gunpowder helped calm him immediately.

 “My, my,” said the merchant, sounding pleasantly surprised. “I was beginning to search those corpses for your face.”

 “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Ethan said, suddenly overcome with exhaustion and uncertainty. He braced himself with a hand against the wall, his breaths coming in shallow bursts. 

 “There, there, Ethan. Try to calm yourself down. Would you like some herbal tea?”

 “N-no. I’m fine,” he gritted out.

 “Might I help you in some way? This road isn’t easy, but you’re not completely alone.”

 Straightening up, Ethan was prepared to decline, until he realized he was in dire need of advice. While he couldn’t consider himself lucky after everything he’d gone through, he was immensely grateful to have a friendly face around this hellhole. 

 He leant back against the elevator’s handrail. “What do you think of Heisenberg?” 

 He knew the Duke was more involved with this place than he let on, and his seamless fare through each lord’s domain suggested a connection. Whether it was personal or strictly business, Ethan had yet to discover. In spite of the mystery surrounding him, he found himself to be a good judge of character, and had already trusted the Duke with his life.

 “A fascinating character just like the rest,” the Duke remarked, carefully. “As I’m sure you know, each lord has his or her relationship with Mother Miranda. But they are merely children. Heisenberg is no different. He hates his ‘mother’ for isolating him from the rest of the world, and he hates his ‘siblings’ for loving her. This place… this awful place. It’s filled with friends. It’s filled with people, or more accurately, things, that can tolerate him.” The Duke sighed long-sufferingly, in a way that belied his deep understanding of the families. “I think he feels alone, and what fills that void is the desire for revenge on the one who caused it.” 

 Ethan sent the elevator back up to ground level, considering what the Duke had said. The way the merchant had framed it could almost make you pity Heisenberg, but Ethan was numb and wise to it, and that kind of capacity could only return when he knew his daughter was safe. 

 “Can I trust him to help me?”

 The merchant made a non-committal sound, seeming to ponder the question in detail before he gave his answer. “Never underestimate the pull of vengeance,” he said, gravely. “All I can say is that Heisenberg truly wants Mother Miranda in the ground.”

Chapter Text

 The bitter wind hit him in contrast to the factory’s choking heat the moment he left the barn. He hadn’t realized how much he hated the cold. The backpack was heavy on his shoulders, along with the sniper rifle strapped to his back. 

 The village paths were unnaturally quiet and distinctly empty of hungry lycans. He thought about the crystal remains of each pitiful lord he’d sold to the Duke; the slain Dimitrescu daughters, the freakish monstrosity in the depths of House Beneviento - and the man with a turbine engine for a torso. His time in the village could only be described as nightmarish, but the more he learned about Miranda’s influence, the more he could see them as victims, just as the Bakers had been.

 That didn’t mean he wanted to stick around. The end was in sight, if Heisenberg didn’t turn on him. He wasn’t hopeful. He was tired. Even the healing powers he’d vehemently denied were starting to lose their potency. 

 Mia had suspected it from the beginning. The reality of her loss hit him again for the second time in his life, and this time, there was no hope. He’d seen her riddled with bullets, and the memory made him sick to the stomach with rage. He thought then that he finally understood Heisenberg’s obsession with revenge, because just then, he’d give anything to see Chris Redfield dead.

 The ceremony site was near.

 Ethan hid himself as best he could, behind a rocky outcrop. He had little faith he’d remain undetected for long. Miranda was known for having eyes everywhere, and she’d stop at nothing to complete this ritual.

 He understood grief. He understood the paralyzing fear that came from the thought of losing your child. He prayed it would never become his reality, but he still couldn’t see himself falling as far as the woman who’d taken an entire village hostage in her anger, and countless atrocities in her battle against death. Maybe it was because he wasn’t a mother. Sometimes, he envied Mia’s sixth sense when it came to their daughter.

 With his heart in his mouth, he watched Rose’s crystallized body parts be lowered into a basin of dark, viscous liquid. He hated her for what she had done to his child, completely innocent in all of this. The wind carried Mother Miranda’s plea for the life of her daughter, but Ethan was pleading for his. 

 When she lifted the restored body out of the basin, her shrill, agonized cry echoed out against the mountains. It seemed she could tell that Eva had not returned. Rose was whole again. 

 "I don't understand," she fretted, under her breath. She stared at Rose so intensely that Ethan felt fear prickle up the length of his spine, terrified Miranda would lash out. 

 She did no such thing, unwilling to give up just yet. She set the child down on the altar and picked up an old and battered grimoire, flicking rapidly through its ragged pages. Time passed, with her frustration increasingly palpable by the minute, and yet she was so sure the answer was contained between the cover. Ethan held his breath, and prayed she wouldn’t notice him, crouched behind a rock formation.

 The sound of snow crunching underfoot was quiet, but nothing ever got past her when she was everywhere at once. Heisenberg knew how to put on a show, even if it was for an audience of one. He spread his arms, smiling wide.

 “Hello, Mother,” he said, mockingly. “I hope you don't mind, I invited some friends."

 He finally allowed decades worth of unrepentant hatred to seep into his voice. Alcina clearly believed he was the favorite, but he’d never been so sure. He was just proof that a vessel for Eva didn’t have to be irreparably fucked in the head, or grotesquely deformed, or ten feet tall with a taste for blood. She didn’t like him. She didn’t care that at night, the pain in his limbs was so bad that he cried, and it had taken far too many injuries from wayward shrapnel before he finally learned to protect himself.

 Miranda didn’t even bother to glance up from the grimoire, laughing hollowly. “Do you think I didn’t know what you were planning? Your resentment has shown on your face for years, boy. I must admit, I never expected you’d have the courage to act on your jealousy.”

 “Jealousy?” Heisenberg repeated, bitterness coloring his tone. “I could never be jealous of any of your depraved little experiments.”

 “The same experiments you’ve delighted in for decades.”

 “After you made me into this monster.”

 “Oh, Heisenberg,” Miranda sighed, falsely sorrowful. She shook her head, drawing herself up to a full height, her lips pulled back into a gruesome, pitying smile, sweeping forward until she was towering over him. “I thought you were different. But you’re nothing more than a disappointment.”

 Something triggered in Heisenberg’s body when he heard that word. Ethan could see it, a sudden change, an electricity crackling in the atmosphere. Even Miranda looked curious. 

 Then, the first piece of metal sliced through the air. It attached itself to Heisenberg’s limbs, followed by another. Scraps of corrugated metal, gears and cogs, engine parts, an enormous circular saw. They came thick and fast, clanking against each other as he took on mass, the metallic structure getting bigger and bigger as its magnetic field attracted more parts.

 When he moved, it was accompanied by a harsh, scraping bellow, so piercing it made Ethan momentarily cover his ears. He was suddenly acutely ashamed of his own naivety. He’d placed his faith and the life of his daughter in the hands of someone who wasn’t human. Whether Heisenberg ever had been, it was far too late to tell. 

 Then, Ethan saw them. Lycans pouring from every direction, out of mausoleums and cave exits, from the mountains and across the river. Behind them, ranks of soldaty, marching in unison, the reactors glowing red on their backs. 

 Rose was forgotten, only for a moment. Miranda left her precariously balanced on the altar, the baby silent with fear, while she twisted her body into spidery limbs and raven-black wings.

 “Cease this madness!” she cried shrilly, addressing the lycans. They were the useless result of bodies that rejected the Cadou’s gift, and yet she’d let the miserable beasts roam free and feral in amongst the villagers. “Who made you?” she shrieked.

 Heisenberg's dark laughter sounded like the tolling of bells. “You could never love anyone. Not the lycans, not us, and certainly not your own daughter.”

 “You insolent child,” Miranda hissed. A lycan threw itself at her, and she tossed it aside as if it were a ragdoll, its neck snapping instantly. Soldat ammunition rained down on her, but a targeted blast of glowing liquid mycete was enough to melt one of the robots into scrap. She lashed out with her spidery claws, scoring marks into Heisenberg’s iron-clad frame. 

 “I NEVER WANTED TO BE YOUR SON,” Heisenberg screamed, like the metallic sound of gears grinding together. Sparks flew as his form lunged towards her, and her laughter echoed around the mountains as she nimbly darted around him, six wings aiding her mobility.

 Ethan saw his chance. He ran for the altar, throwing himself out of the path of soldat lasers and lycan teeth. Rose was wrapped in a dark cloth that could have been gauze.

 “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered, taking out his knife, holding it against her precious, tiny hand. He gently nicked a finger, and brought the single bullet out from his pocket to coat it in the redness. 

 She began to cry, flailing her fists. He shushed her, it’s alright, it’s alright, and made sure she was swaddled up in a neat little bundle of his jacket before he retreated, placing her beside him on the ground, kneeling and shouldering his rifle.

 Through the scope, it was near impossible to keep Miranda in his sights. She moved like a spider, impaling a lycan with one spindly sharp limb before turning and sending a sphere of mycete towards her traitorous son. 

 “After everything I’ve given you, you dare to betray me like this? All I ever wanted was my daughter, and you will not stop me now I’ve finally found her vessel. That cretinous wretch Winters took care of your siblings, I only wish he’d finished with you.”

 “HE’LL FINISH WITH YOU,” Heisenberg roared. Instinctively, Miranda’s whole body whipped round to check that Rose was still safe. 

 What if it didn’t work? What if Heisenberg had been lying, or mistaken, and Rose’s blood was no more powerful than his own? A single bullet was barely a scratch. It might weaken Miranda, but would it be enough to kill her? His hands shook and his aim wavered.

 Ethan unloaded the sniper rifle into her face.

 It contorted into rage, and Heisenberg was forced to trap her by pinning two skeletal limbs beneath the steel beams attached to his mutated form. All too quickly, she broke free with a furious cry, uncaring and unaffected by the snapping of her leg. She rushed towards Ethan and Rose propelled by the force of her beating wings, and opened her mouth impossibly wide to reveal it was black and rotting inside.

 “No, no, no-” Ethan shouted, snatching Rose up from the ground and trying to protect her from the stabbing claws that pierced his skin, pleading with God and anyone else who would listen to spare her, begging for it to end, because he couldn’t take any more.

 The onslaught stopped. He heard the sound of rocks hitting stone, and slowly turned around. Mother Miranda’s face had frozen into a silent scream, inches away from the two Winters, and her body began to calcify and crumble.

 A lycan howled, and there was the distinctive whirring of a circular saw. Everything else was quiet.

 How could it be over?

 She had terrorized the village for too long. Families had been destroyed, warped into ungodly creatures that stalked their own children, their parents, siblings and cousins, until there was nothing left but death. She’d kidnapped Ethan’s daughter with the sole and selfish purpose of reviving her own, and tortured countless villagers into submission. He had to admit that that included Lady Dimitrescu, Moreau, Donna Beneviento, and even Heisenberg. They were the products of years of torment, medical, physical, emotional, and it had broken them. Despite their melodrama, their elaborate personas, they’d been innocent once, and he could only see it now he’d held most of them as crystals in his hands.

 Tentatively, it seemed as though her reign of terror was finished.  

 Ethan held Rose close and stood up on shaky legs, squinting past Miranda’s statue-like form to see the chaos they’d created. The melded steel creature that had once been Heisenberg was motionless, but Ethan couldn’t tell if it was alive, or dead, or simply staring down at its mother, taking in the fact that it was finally free.

 The sky went dark, a cloud of mycete obscuring their sun. From Miranda’s shattered remains, the Megamycete twisted its way into the air, tendrils spreading across the earth. Ethan scrambled away as it burst through brick and anchored itself into iron.

 Around them, the gory bodies of lycans lay among molten husks of the soldaty . Hundreds dead, wiped out by a final burst of Miranda’s waning powers. Would Heisenberg care? He’d led them all here. The few that survived gnawed on the bones of their fallen pack members. One rogue soldat stared down at the drill arm that had been severed from the rest of its body, now defective, and useless.

 The Megamycete continued its growth. It didn’t yet strike out at the few living souls around it, but Ethan was wary. It spiraled upwards, and attached itself to every available surface.

 Piece by piece, the metal parts attached to Heisenberg’s body began to fall to the ground. Some detached themselves with harsh wrenching noises that sounded almost painful, with the pieces falling dented and bent. It seemed like forever before he was free. Ethan found himself wondering what it felt like, because the entire process looked like agony.

 In the end, the human remained, tired and beaten. Even he was unable to offer any kind of satirical commentary. He knelt, struggling to get his breath. It had taken its toll on him, and he suspected fractures, scars.

 Eventually, he stood, and turned to see Ethan watching him, cautious and uncertain, with Rose tucked protectively into his chest. There was a long silence. Things had changed. Ethan had seen him for what he really was; a horrifying cross between man and machinery, just as heartless... but there was also a strange sense of understanding between them.

 “You’re hurt,” Heisenberg deadpanned. 

 He stepped forward, stumbling slightly as if he’d forgotten what it was like to walk on two legs after his mutation. 

 “Don’t-” Ethan said, reflexively, then stopped. He didn’t know what he was trying to say, or what he was trying to protect himself from. Heisenberg’s transformation meant he now looked diminutive compared to the giant form he’d taken on, and he seemed a little unsteady on his feet.

 Ethan couldn’t believe it was over. Adrenaline ran sluggishly through his blood, preventing him from any sense of relief. He was set to bolt, his body refusing to believe the danger could have passed. Since the Baker mansion, he’d felt a similar way. His psychiatrist had explained this constant state of alertness was a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, but Ethan knew in his case, it was justified.

 The wounds to his arms and back were minimal compared to what he’d been through. A few gashes that had torn through his jacket exposed his skin smeared with blood. Heisenberg’s head lolled to the side as he inspected them, seeming satisfied that his injuries weren’t too severe.

 “And how’s sweet Rose?” the lord asked with faux and dangerous cheer, a grin splitting across his face, which had grown pale. Ethan suspected the parasite inside him didn’t take kindly to the mutation process. It needed time to recover.

 “...Thank God she’s okay.”

 “What did I tell you? A happy ending, just as promised.” Heisenberg managed to summon a smirk. “But we need to take shelter.” He narrowed his eyes as he watched the fungal superorganism spread its nefarious way across the village. “That scheming bastard is planning to blow the Megamycete sky-high.”

 “Who are you talking about?”

 “Chris Redfield.” He spat the name out like a cherry stone. “The man who rescued you in Louisiana. He’s leading a squad to destroy Miranda, any other poor soul he finds here.” 

 Ethan’s mind had been racing in between near-death experiences to try and figure out what Chris was doing. He’d never felt such a huge sense of loss and betrayal. Over the years, they had become friends, and he knew Chris had gone out of his way to advocate for the protection of his family. They had been sheltered from intensive testing and strict regulations on their activities because of the agent’s special influence and credentials. That’s why none of this made sense. Unless Chris had been playing them all along, he had killed Mia in cold blood for no apparent reason, and although it could never make it okay, he at least wanted a better explanation than senseless murder. 

 “He killed my wife,” Ethan told him, quietly. It felt wrong to say it in front of Rose, even though she couldn’t understand. Her mother was gone, betrayed by what they believed to be a family friend. He could never trust anyone again.

 Heisenberg gave him a strange look, seeming to hesitate for a moment, before he drawled, “...Right. He’s merciless, and with the personality of a boulder to boot. But we’ll be safe in the factory, and then… then you’re free to leave, of course.”

 Ethan hesitated. He’d hated that place with a passion, and he didn’t want to bring his daughter into contact with so much concentrated evil. This new ‘understanding’ between them didn’t mean he trusted Heisenberg, or wanted to spend any more time with him than what was completely necessary, not with the sick way he treated the wretched denizens of the factory. Considering he’d had Ethan pursued by slavering werewolves for the sole purpose of his entertainment, and subjected him to elaborate traps designed to crush meat and bone into pulp, didn’t really suggest the ideal companion, either.

 But he’d also seen the ruthlessness with which the B.S.A.A. agents operated, and he doubted he’d be any safer in their custody, after what they’d done to Mia. He was between a rock and a hard place, not for the first time. Every time he closed the door on one horror, another opened. Another obstacle in the way of their safety. The side he’d chosen was testament to the dire lack of alternatives.

 “Can’t we get out in time?” he despaired, unwilling to believe this was the only way.

 “And go where?” Heisenberg snapped. His weaker state made him more volatile, and it seemed Ethan’s mistrust cut him surprisingly deep in a way he’d never admit. 

 There was no answer to the question. The village was in the middle of nowhere. It would take time for them to travel out of the blast radius, wait for the smoke to clear, and find some way of getting back to the real world. He hadn’t thought it all through yet, and now he realized his home might not even be safe to return to. Silently, he swore he’d find a way. 

 “All right,” Ethan relented, unhappily. This felt like the lesser of two unimaginably great evils, and he could have broken down then and there at the thought of confining himself back into that impenetrable steel fortress with its zombie-like inhabitants, and a madman for a keeper. With the sky darkening and the unmistakable sound of helicopter blades in the distance, it wasn’t the kind of luxury he could allow himself.

Chapter Text

When the Winters’ knew they had to go into witness protection, their destination had been a point of contention. Neither could have imagined how the cold and harsh climate in Romania would numb them. It had been three long years without any contact with the outside world, constantly catching shadows out of the corner of their eyes, flinching away at the slightest sound. 

And it was always so dark. 

The village was unrecognizable. Daylight was visible on the horizon, but the Megamycete was slowly but surely coiling upwards, throwing one huge shadow across its path. Stray lasers had caught a roof here, a tractor there, and flames were dancing between homes.

They hurried, boots crunching into snow and ash. Rose didn’t cry. It was eerie, her silence. Ethan had always known there was something different about his baby, although Mia had fought tooth and nail to deny it. She was quiet, but her hands were curled up against his neck, and she was nestled into his chest as if it was the safest place in the world.

His thoughts raced. What next? How could he ever get them home? How was he going to tell Mia’s parents-

He must have given something away; a twitch, a shaking sigh. 

“Rose needs you,” Heisenberg said, out of left field. His voice was manic and exhausted at the same time. 

“You don’t know what Rose needs,” Ethan shook his head, but there was no real bite to it; he was too tired and too scared. 

Heisenberg went silent, which set alarm bells ringing in itself. 

Ethan felt a mild but irritating pang of guilt. He paused, and took in the lord’s uncomfortable posture and harsh breathing, the way his proud chin had gotten closer to his chest as his hands shook and electricity crackled in painful bursts around his body. 

“Something’s wrong with you,” Ethan said, softly. 

“So I’ve been told.”

“Hey,” Ethan said, in the voice he used to stop Rose’s tears, to calm Mia’s panic. He was prepared to say more but the firmness in it seemed to stave off any snarky reply. 

“I’m fine,” came the clipped answer. “Do you show this kind of empathy to all your tormentors? I’m starting to understand why they fight over you.”

Ethan felt uncomfortable with the idea that there was something about him that attracted these kinds of monsters. Maybe it was gall, or cheek, or fragility, or determination. Deep down, he knew he found it difficult to hate them. He saw something broken and he had the urge to fix it. All he could promise was that it could never be at the cost of his daughter, who may well be a vessel for untold and unmatched power, but when all was said and done, a tiny creature who needed to be spoon fed her mashed banana. He felt himself tear up a little bit. She was everything. 

“It’s called being a decent person, you might want to try it,” Ethan said, addressing Rose so he didn’t have to catch the fleeting gleeful expression on Heisenberg’s face.

He imagined it had been lonely all these years. Never even enough for the person who’d twisted you into such a creature. He wondered what lengths Heisenberg would go to to preserve his most entertaining plaything. Ethan thought his chances of survival were slim, because this was someone who was used to picking out a new mouse from the nest as soon as the last one was too broken to chase.

Rose made a curious gurgling sound. Ethan’s hands soothed at her back.

“Have you ever killed a child?” he asked, quietly.

When he didn’t receive an immediate answer, he found himself staring into the abyss again. 

“I tried to refrain,” Heisenberg said, blankly.

Somehow, that was infinitely worse than ‘yes’. 

Ethan gripped Rose a little tighter, her cheeks dusted with pink from the harsh cold. No horrors were really enough to faze him any more. The bridge was close, but the Megamycete had grown thick and fast in the time they’d taken leaving the ceremony site, and night was coming in swiftly. 

It made sense that the factory could withstand the kind of firepower the Hound Wolf Squad were about to throw at it. The place was huge and stretched on well below the ground, like layers of hell. Rest seemed appealing. The thought of food made his stomach turn over, but he needed something to keep Rose going. Whether they would find such comforts in somewhere so hostile was yet to be seen, but he had to trust that Heisenberg was right, that they would be safe, or he would stop in his tracks and let the bomb do the rest.

While they turned the crank to raise the bridge, Heisenberg held out his arms. “May I?” he asked, politely. 

Ethan’s instinctive reaction was go to hell. The thought of handing his child over when he’d barely finished putting her back together was agonizing to say the least, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how small she was, how delicate, how easily she’d fallen into the wrong hands.

Then he remembered who was asking, and the rusted gears of logic over instinct started turning again. 

This was a power trip, nothing more sinister. It was better to cooperate, because it had worked well so far, and he was filled with a hopeless dread imagining what would happen if he was to refuse. 

His hands were shaking when he gave Rose over. I tried to refrain. The words played over in his mind, each edged with static and bringing a wave of anxiety.

“S-support her head,” he urged, embarrassed by his voice rising by about an octave, except Heisenberg didn’t know how to hold a baby, because he knew wasn’t used to handling small and vulnerable things.

The lycan lord obliged, moving Rose’s head to be supported in the crook of his arm. He stared at her, unmoving. She didn’t cry. Her hands reached out and she made a burbling, curious sound.

“I’ve taken hearts out of people by hand,” Heisenberg said suddenly. “I know what it feels like to squeeze them. It’s cathartic, I swear. But I couldn’t ever take out my own.”

Rose curled her tiny hand around one of his fingers.

“I think you’re stupid, Ethan,” Heisenberg said abruptly, the twin black lens boring into him. “You have to be more sensible than this. Your daughter is the most powerful bioweapon I’ve ever seen, and you’re letting me hold her.”

“Then give her back,” Ethan snarled, stepping forward in warning, a tendril of panic weaving through the gaps between his ribs.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” the lord said, smoothly. “But someone might, if you let them get too close.” 

It was pointed, and Ethan bristled, half in shame, but he knew he deserved it. “I…”

Heisenberg looked back down at Rose. “Not everyone gets a second chance,” he said, the quality of his voice softening oddly when he addressed the child. “Don’t waste it, kiddo.”

Ethan swallowed, and reached out for the baby. Heisenberg glanced at him, and after a moment’s reluctance, he handed her back, surprisingly gentle. The weight of Rose in his arms seemed to send his fear away to mix in the air with mycete particles. They were standing in a wasteland, but they were free. He couldn’t save Mia this time, but he’d been through hell to rescue his daughter.

The three columns which made up the bridge finished their rumbling ascent, and stopped. He heard the gunshot for what felt like an eternity quicker than he saw the blood spreading across white fabric. 

In that moment, there was no room for any feeling besides panic, or any word besides ‘no’. The word became bigger and bigger in his mind, until it was all he could see and hear and think. 

Heisenberg stumbled backwards.

They were a stone’s throw from safety, and it was too late. Ethan was seeing in dim red emergency lights and sirens. His eyes snapped to scan the mountain path behind them, and settled on shadowy figures saddled with guns. He pushed Rose into the crook of his elbow, shielding her as best he could.

And then, there was suddenly something Ethan needed to know. 

“Tell me your name,” he said, hands flailing, useless, unable to stop the dark flow of blood. He could have opened a file, a diary, asked Chris, turned over the immaculate engravings on the guns. But he needed to hear it.

Heisenberg was struggling to breathe around the silver bullet in his chest. His hands were gripping Ethan’s coat so hard he couldn’t have pulled away if he’d tried. He’d gone from a hulking mass of unforgiving steel to a small, cold creature, losing blood so fast he was lightheaded and laughing. 

Heisenber coughed. It was a rasping, wheezy sound. “Karl,” he said, the air rattling through his lungs and whistling out through his teeth. Identifiably German, the harsh, abrupt syllable suited him. Ethan watched the light in his eyes becoming dull, like a sick dog, and he found the pads of his fingers pressed down on Heisenberg’s knuckles, as if it would help him stay tethered to life. 

“Ethan!” yelled Chris from across the bridge. “Get away from there!”

Rose began to cry beside them. Ethan looked down at her, safe in the bundle of his coat, glancing back at the man who’d helped him make it happen. Who’d honored their deal. Who was dying now, just as he’d been set free from Miranda’s grasp.

“Can’t you heal yourself?!” he demanded. “You’re supposed to-” 

He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. 

Heisenberg took a shuddering breath and said, “I told you.”

Told me what? Ethan thought, hysterically, then he realized he’d said it out loud, and Heisenberg was frowning as he tried to force a response from his uncooperative lungs.

“You could trust me,” he finished, all the words spilling out in one careful breath like someone with a stutter. “And you did it. She’s dead. The bitch is dead.”

The triumph in his voice wasn’t diminished by its weak, labored tone. He didn’t seem to care that he might not be around to experience a world without Miranda, outside of her influence. The Duke had told Ethan never to underestimate the pull of vengeance, and here it was, in the barest hint of a smile on Heisenberg’s white face, drained of blood, and starting to crack as if it was porcelain.

“Ethan,” Chris shouted, again. Somehow, it was tinged with frustration, and Ethan didn’t understand. He didn’t understand what was going on. He was caught between hating Chris and needing him to put the pieces into place. 

“Stay away from Rose,” Ethan tried to answer, but his voice came out so hoarse it was just a whisper. He said it over and over again until his throat hurt. There was only so much one person could ever take, and Ethan had taken it tenfold. Among his panic, shock, and rage, lay the cold realization it was never going to end. There was never a chance.

The agents descended on them with far less frenzy than a pack of wolves, assured in their victory. Their helmets with mounted night vision goggles made them look alien and strange. He didn’t understand why they weren’t taking more caution, because Heisenberg made a life from death, but when he heard the sickening crunch of bones being hit by the butt of a rifle, and an accompanying thud to the floor, he knew they’d found a weakness.  

“What the fuck have you done?” Ethan screamed. He tried to run, but they stopped him. His baby was torn from his arms, and that was when she did start to cry. He hit the ground, and his face was crushed into a discarded pair of black spectacles, cracked, and broken. 

A radio crackled to life. Chris Redfield spoke into it. “We’re finished here,” he said.

Chapter Text

The dream starts, as always, with snow. 

It covers the ground like a sheet of plastic wrap, trapping life underneath. Even though he’s asleep, he can feel the cold eating into his fingers and toes, turning them black and shrivelled. 

The thick rope around his legs makes his damp, snow-soaked pants chafe against his skin. His hands are tied, too. Twine rubs painfully against the sensitive lines of scarring there.

He can’t move. It isn’t just the hypothermia; some force is stopping him. All he can do is look in dread towards the dark figure steadily dragging him towards the old house. 

In the hundreds of previous iterations, the dream ends when he disappears into the yawning door, consumed by darkness. This time, it’s different. He feels something warm beneath the ice, bursting through soil and into his skin. It doesn’t hurt, but he can sense its unnatural strength pushing into his bone and settling in the hollows. 

His captor stops and turns, and there’s something like fear and confusion characterizing the tentative action. 

Ethan feels warm and strong. Jack Baker stumbles back from him as he breaks the twine and kicks off the rope. 

He wakes up.

 At first, he thought he was still dreaming. The white glare reminded him of the wintry scenes he’d grown reluctantly accustomed to. But his reaction times were still unnaturally quick, and he became aware that this wasn’t the village at all. The source of the brightness was a series of overhead strip lights. He was laying on a pristine white bed. The room was around forty by forty feet, and it was less of a room, more of a cell; there was a glass wall blocking him in.

 He sat up. Through the wall, he could see a long corridor, and opposite, an empty white room identical to his. Nothing else.

 The sequence of events leading up to him blacking out returned slowly and foggily. Rose. His breath caught on worry. Where was she? What had happened to her? He didn’t really believe, or want to  believe, that Chris would harm his child, but he couldn’t really be sure. 

 It took time for his mind to sharpen. Being knocked unconscious left him confused and groggy, his weak body conserving little energy he could draw on to figure out a plan.

 He hated being so helpless. He couldn’t imagine what they wanted with him, or why he was being kept in a facility that seemed far more complex than a prison, without an orderly in sight. 

 It was then that he heard the crying. 

 At first, he wasn't sure what he was listening to. It was an angry sound, guttural and bitter. Yet the closer he strained to hear it, the more it sounded like sobbing. A sobbing that was wrenched out of an unwilling body through pain and terror. 

 Ethan felt a horrible pity coiling in his gut. 

 "Hey!" he shouted. His voice echoed unpleasantly. "What's going on?"

 The sobbing caught. It didn't cease, but devolved into shaking, hiccuping gasps; attempts at marshaling the body into calm. 

 "Who are you?" Ethan called out, standing up and making his way to the glass barrier. "Are you being hurt?" 

 There was a pause. 

 "...Ethan?" 

 It was two weak syllables, but Ethan recognised the cadence. 

 Heisenberg. 

 The man had survived the vicious attack by Chris Redfield's team. But something was wrong with him. It was a couple of seconds before that voice let out an agonizing scream, and this time Ethan picked up the sound of a strange, staticky whirring, like electrical machinery working overtime. 

 His skin prickled uncomfortably as he listened to Heisenberg being tortured. He bowed his head, pressing it against the glass. There was nothing he could do to help. Worse was that he wanted to.

 The lights began to flicker, at more and more regular intervals, until they were blinking so fast that one of them tripped and went dark. The hum of the machinery grew louder, and so did the volume of Heisenberg’s screams. Ethan was tempted into pity, but then he remembered this was a soundscape Heisenberg had revelled in for years. It was a bitter taste of his own medicine.

 It seemed to go on for hours, although in reality, he knew it had only been a matter of minutes. It came to an abrupt halt with a loud bang, accompanied by a blackout. The facility was plunged into darkness and silence, broken only by the sound of a pressure lock being opened. 

 Ethan swallowed, feeling his overreactive fight or flight response sluggishly kicking into gear, just as the emergency lighting came on, bathing everything in unsettling red. His eyes strained to see the sight of two figures retreating down the hall. They wore pristine lab coats and each carried a large briefcase. 

 Minutes went by and the power did not return. Nor did any staff. 

 “Heisenberg,” Ethan tried.  

 When he heard nothing in response, he wiped the sweat from his palms and said, “Karl?”

 The word tripped awkwardly off his tongue, and there was no pay-off, because Heisenberg had fallen completely silent.

 Ethan retreated to the cot. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. His body seemed to understand this was his best chance of rest, because he fell into a quick, deep sleep, exhausted by a barrage of physical and emotional pain.

 He was woken up by the return of the glare. He turned his head, blinking away the fog, and tensing up when he saw the shape and shadow of a person watching over him.

 It was seconds before Ethan's fingertips pressed up against the glass. Mia was there, all in white like an angel, with Rose tucked peacefully into the crook of her arm. 

 "Am I-?" he choked out. 

 "No, baby, it's okay, you're still here," Mia soothed, her breath catching on pity. He took in her appearance in a few fractions of a second, cataloging her fresh uniform, the familiar logo with no explanation for why it was on her chest, her clean hair and the dark circles etched deep under her eyes. She stepped closer, letting him see Rose's sleeping face. 

 He let out a slow, whistling breath, trying to reign in the adrenaline which always kicked in the moment he blinked awake. 

 He wanted to reach out to touch, to make sure they were both really here, but the glass didn’t yield. 

 “What happened?” he asked, simply.

 Mia adjusted her hold on Rose, and Ethan knew her well enough to see she was stalling. He felt apprehensive. Confused. The last thing he remembered was Heisenberg’s pale face seeping blood into the snow, and Chris - that asshole - speaking into his radio. Where were they now? What had they done to Heisenberg, to make him scream and cry like that? Had they killed him, and left his broken body in the cell next door? The thought filled him with more indignation than he’d care to admit. 

 Mia looked him in the eyes, and there was a certain quirk to her mouth which seemed like she was trying to stop it from trembling. “The B.S.A.A. made a deal with me. They’d give Rose back, and in return, they’d hide me from… from some really bad people. I wouldn’t have to go to jail, and I-”

 “Jail?”

 “There’s a lot you don’t know, Ethan. A lot I never told you… and I’m sorry for that. If I could take it back-” her voice wavered. “I would do it in a heartbeat. But this was the only thing I could do, and it’s for the best. For Rose.”

 “What are you getting at? What have you done? I’m tired of being kept in the dark, Mia,” Ethan exclaimed, frustratedly. He banged a fist against the screen. Not so much as a ripple. But Rose woke up, and she began to cry. 

Ethan knew then, that Mia was taking her away.

 “They’re going to do some tests on you, Ethan. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you. I made sure of that. But… since you rescued me at the Baker Ranch, your DNA was altered. I always suspected it. And I know that one day, it will explode out of you. You won’t be able to control it. It’s just not safe around our baby.”

“My DNA? I feel exactly the same, Mia. What are you going to do? Take Rose away from me? What’s going to happen to me?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But I know they won’t hurt you.”

“They already have,” he snapped. “Give me Rose. Give her to me. You don’t even…”

“I don’t even what?”

“You don’t love her as much as I do. You never did.”

 She stared at him as he trailed off. Her eyes were cold, no trace of the warmth he’d fallen for. He suddenly felt this tangible, choking sense that this would be the last time they ever saw each other. 

“Are you just going to leave me here?” he asked, voice breaking. 

 Mia’s expression shuttered off completely. “Goodbye, Ethan. I’ll make sure they take care of you.”

 Rose was still crying as her mom carried her away. Ethan was completely burnt out of fear and sadness. There was a weak spark of anger, and memories of the Baker Ranch played out like an old reel of film behind his eyelids. He’d sacrificed everything on the slightest chance that Mia might still be alive, yet she sold him out because her own mistakes had caught up to her. 

 He had to keep telling himself she was a good mother. She would do her best by Rose. Silently, he started to cry. 

 The facility in which Ethan found himself was hidden in the mountains, far from local knowledge and access. Specialist staff there had been transferred to this unit from Umbrella-owned laboratories. Their aim was to investigate the potential of parasites. The place had been abuzz with activity after they had retrieved the crystallized remains of the three village Lords, as well as the elusive Mother Miranda. And now, the final Lord, and one surprising addition in the form of Ethan Winters, had arrived ready to be tested.

 They had tried to preserve the Heisenberg specimen to the best of their ability but it had proved challenging. The process of separating the parasite from what was left of the ravaged human body was complex and could not be completed without causing great pain to the subject. The two scientists had been briefed on his reign of terror on the village’s residents, and so they did not waver at any point during the operation.

 It was difficult to say what would happen to the host without the Cadou, particularly as it had lived inside him for so long. When the electrician had restored power, they watched him eagerly on the concealed CCTV cameras. His limp body did not respond to Winters’ calling out, but it was only a few hours after it was transferred to the remaining cell before the ragdoll jerked, jumped, and lifted its head from the floor. 

 When Heisenberg regained consciousness, there was an onslaught of different revelations. Within them, he immediately recognized a sensation he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. 

 He felt powerless.

 He tried to make contact with that relentless stream of energy he had gotten so used to hosting, and found no response. His body seemed slower and weaker. Even keeping his head balanced on his shoulders was an effort.

 Putting off what was looking like an inevitable acknowledgement, he canvassed his surroundings. A white room, sterile and plain, nothing like the damp cave that Miranda had butchered him in all those years ago. Yet that process had been reversed today. He couldn’t yet grasp whether that was a positive or a negative, though what came to the forefront of his mind was what it meant for his future. 

 Maybe they were on their way to put him down. Maybe he was free to roam the land of the living. Or maybe he would go to trial, and be sentenced to death for all the people he had killed. No way to worm his way out without the Cadou’s gift curse.

 When he looked out of the glass barrier, he realized he wasn’t the only person they had trapped here. Still wearing the torn, bloodied clothes Heisenberg had met him in, Ethan Winters was watching him silently.  

Chapter Text

The most noticeable thing about the facility was its design. As they made turn after turn through identical blank corridors, Mia could only describe it as a maze. The countless cells were fitted with state-of-the art security technology, but if any one of their occupants were to somehow find a way out, the labyrinthine structure would take care of them until staff could neutralize the threat. 

 “Where are we going?” Mia asked. She struggled a little to keep up with Chris Redfield’s long and purposeful strides, adjusting Rose in her arms. 

 “A debrief,” he answered, shortly. 

 They lapsed into silence punctuated by the baby’s gurgling sounds. It seemed as if the place was empty, but she knew it was anything but. Cameras were stationed every twenty meters or so, with flashing red lights that warned someone was always watching.

 She felt guilty and sick. She was unable to get Ethan’s face out of her head. He hadn’t deserved to get caught up in any of this, but it was too late, and there was no way to get him out. They had promised not to hurt him, the faceless people on the video call. Deep inside, her heart ached, knowing that couldn’t possibly be true. 

 There was nothing more she could do for her husband, except for saving Rose. If he knew, he would understand. She told herself that because the alternative would destroy her.

 They arrived in front of a metal barrier in the middle of the corridor. On the wall, there was a keypad, scanner, and intercom. Chris pressed the intercom and spoke into it.

 “Redfield here. I’ve got Mia Winters and the child. Requesting access.”

 A robotic voice crackled out from the speaker. “ Approach the retinal scanner and look straight ahead.”

 He did so. A laser scanned his eye and then the barrier began to shudder open.

 Chris turned to her. “Let me do the talking here,” he warned. 

 She swallowed down her frustration and followed him inside. They found themselves in a large office space, with two individuals seated at a conference table, and four security guards posted in each corner.

 “Good afternoon, Captain. Mrs Winters.”

 Mia had not realized it was the afternoon. She hadn’t slept and there was no natural light in the facility.

 The person who spoke had a smooth English accent. She had graying hair tied tightly in a ponytail, thin eyebrows, and an overly lined face. She was wearing a black suit, perfectly pressed and shirt buttoned right up to her neck.

 Her companion was a younger man with closely cropped dark hair. He didn’t smile. He was wearing a patterned tie that reminded Mia of a cobra. 

 Chris pulled out a chair for Mia to sit on. She obliged, and he sat beside her. 

 “Our agents can take Rose while we talk,” said the woman. 

 “No. Thank you,” Mia told her, firmly. She looked down at Rose, who was blowing bubbles with her saliva. Chris didn’t say anything, but she felt his eyes on her, only for a moment.

 “We thought you might say that,” the woman smiled wanly. “Let’s begin, then.”

 The man beside her took out a folder and placed it on the table. “You must sign this document before you leave. It is essentially an NDA, but it is far more serious than anything you have encountered before. The consequences for violating this agreement are severe.”

 Mia opened the folder with one hand. There were a lot of pages, with tiny print. They explained she was never to talk about her experiences, to name any names, or refer to the location of the facility.

 “Your affiliation with The Connections will be erased by us. They will not come after you. They will not harm you, approach you, nor contact you after today. Nor shall we. You will be relocated and forbidden from leaving the country. We will permit you minimal communication with your immediate family to reassure them you are well, but you must not return to the United States, and your family and friends must not visit you at your new residence.”

  Mia swallowed. She’d known it was going to be difficult. 

 “Do you understand?”

 “Yes,” she answered, quietly.

 The man leaned back, and the woman forward. She clasped her hands together. “It took a lot of time and resources to ensure your safety. Your previous employers were not easy to negotiate with and under usual circumstances, we would never consider crossing paths with such a powerful and dangerous group.”

 Mia was well aware of the Connections’ power. The syndicate had controlled and blackmailed her for years, sending her down an endless spiraling path of crime and secrecy, which would lead into the worst period of her life. As of yet, she hadn’t surfaced.

 “In return for this, our superiors have laid down new conditions to the deal.”

 At this point, Chris glanced up sharply. “You can’t go back on what you promised,” he said. 

 The British woman laughed airily. "We appreciate your moral compass, of course, Captain, but… this is well above your pay grade."

 Mia saw Chris' nostrils flare like an angry bull, but he kept quiet, holding back by clenching his fists under the table. 

 "What are the new conditions?" Mia asked determinedly, feeling an uncanny prickling at the back of her neck. She could sense it was all falling apart. 

 "That you hand over your child for testing," answered the unnamed male agent. Smoothly and calmly, as if he were asking for a pocket change. 

 Mia felt a chill pass through her. "No," she replied immediately. "No, no, no."

 "Mrs Winters-" 

 "You promised," she said, numbly. "You said - you've already got my husband, and now you're trying to take my daughter? What's wrong with you? Do you make a living by tearing families apart?" 

 "Your daughter is a danger to society." 

 "What?!" Mia scoffed derisively. "She's a baby!"  

 "Obviously," the man said, through gritted teeth. "But she will grow, and no doubt at an accelerated pace. You saw countless horrors back in Louisiana, and here too. Don't pretend you don't know about bioweapons. Don't pretend you can't tell what your daughter is." 

 This was something she had pushed to the back of her mind for months now; a mounting suspicion which became more and more difficult to ignore. 

 There was something about Rose.

 She couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, and there was no way in hell she’d allow any experiments to be conducted. She knew enough, though. Enough about the Mold to know how it spread. One thing she was certain of, however, was that Rose wasn’t dangerous. Not now. She responded like a healthy baby. She was innocent, sweet, and completely powerless. No matter how hard anyone tried, they would never convince her mother that she was a threat.

 Mia remembered nights of pushing Ethan's hair back from his forehead as he retched over the toilet bowl. He had stumbled to the bathroom after yet another nightmare. She knew it wasn't just a side effect of the medication. 

 He put on a brave face, like always. Now she had to do the same. 

 “My daughter is an innocent baby,” she said. “And I’m not losing her again.”

 The two agents exchanged an unreadable look. 

 “We strongly urge you to reconsider. This is your only option. We will keep Rose safe, but she can’t ever be allowed to mingle with the civilian population. If you agree to the deal, you have the chance to build a new life. If you don’t…”

 Mia shifted Rose in her arms to hold her tighter. The baby stared up at her, oblivious to the heated conversation that was happening above.

 The woman sighed. “Well, we’ll take Rose whether you agree or not.” She gestured towards the security agents standing at each corner of the room. They began to advance. 

 Mia stood up, clutching her daughter, chair scraping the floor. She backed away, feeling a sense of despair roll in over her like the tide. It made her limbs feel heavy and the sounds of the room seemed to become muted compared to the pounding of her heart.

 She saw Chris stand up too. 

 “Stop,” he bit out.

 The agents seemed surprised that he had defied them, but they quickly masked any hint of emotion. 

 “Mia, take Rose and run,” Chris said suddenly. 

 All hell broke loose, but Mia was running before she could see it play out. 

 She heard footsteps behind her and then the sounds of a struggle. She couldn’t believe that Chris stood a chance against four trained men, but maybe he could hold them off for just enough time… for what? 

 She hit the exit button on the door and raced through. She had no idea where she was going. Rose was crying and that was alerting any potential guard to their location. She desperately tried to shush her, but she realized the jarring sensation Rose was feeling as her mother ran full sprint down the hallway wasn’t pleasant. 

 Mia heard shouting, and the sound of metal being thrown. In the back of her mind she tried to recall the path she had taken with Chris earlier, after being allowed to say goodbye to Ethan. That had hurt, badly. Without him, she felt like someone had cut her brake lines and she was careering off towards the end of a cliff. 

 When she turned the corner, she heard Chris’ voice. “Keep going!” he shouted, before it was cut off and swallowed up by the sound of fighting. Soon after, someone pressed the alarm. The wailing sound filled the corridors and emergency lights on the walls flashed red. Rose’s cries reached a similar pitch.

 Mia’s shoes scuffed against the flooring and she made it to the end of the corridor. Then, she saw the sign overhead. HOLDING CELLS 1-21. It was subtly placed and small, but it was enough. Muscle memory took over and propelled her towards the cell she had stood before and abandoned her husband. 

 Her luck, or Chris’ distraction, had run its course. Behind her, sprinting footsteps grew louder. 

 “Ethan?!” she called out, panting. “Ethan!”

 “Mia?!” 

 But before she could see him again, there was a vice grip on her arm. She was whirled round to face an armored guard, wearing some kind of black, featureless mask as facial protection. 

 Rose was wrenched from her arms. She screamed, and so did Mia. 

 The agents dragged her away, refusing to afford her the luxury of a neighboring cell to Ethan. They were rough, and their gloved hands dug bruises into the meat of her biceps.

 “Give me back my baby,” she cried. “Give her back! Give her back, she’s mine-”

 They threw her into the empty cell, with three blank walls devoid of decoration. The cot reminded her of a prison bed, if less comfortable. She lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, listening to her own ragged breathing that came in painful, sawing shudders. Rose’s crying became more and more distant, until she couldn’t hear it anymore. It was quiet as soon as the sirens were shut off.

 The B.S.A.A. had framed themselves as the good guys. They had promised to make Rose whole again. Instead, they had broken her some more. It seemed like she had a target pinned to her back, and people would never stop trying to take her away.

 Mia didn’t understand why Chris had risked so much to try and help. She’d thought he was one of the B.S.A.A’s most loyal men. Back there, in that room, she had heard the anger in his voice. As if he was disappointed that the organization would stoop so low, forcing a mother to give up her child.

 She wondered what had happened to him. If they had locked him up, just like they had done with her, and Ethan, and that man. The one with the factory. The four of them, doomed into becoming guinea pigs, poked and prodded like new toys, discarded when they inevitably broke in half.

 What would they do to Rose?

 For a few moments, the facility seemed peaceful. Then the whole room began to shake, followed by the unmistakable sound of glass, shattering into a million pieces.

Chapter Text

 Ethan watched Heisenberg regaining consciousness. It was gradual, and he half expected the man to twitch back into his usual manic liveliness like a robot with new batteries. But it soon became clear that that energy had dissipated, as if a circuit had burst and shorted out everything he’d been before. 

 They looked at each other. It seemed to take some time before Heisenberg recognized him, too preoccupied with the fragile state of his body post-torture. Seconds passed, until the feeling of being watched became uncomfortable.

 “...Are you alright?” Ethan asked him, hesitantly.    

 It had become their custom to ask, but he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with it.

 Heisenberg seemed to visibly take stock of his own body, analysing and cataloguing it carefully. He looked older, somehow. A rough edge had been sandpapered down and now it seemed like he was muzzled in some way. 

 “Something is different,” he answered, hoarsely, avoiding the question. He looked up, then, wearing an expression mixed between fear and awe. 

 “What is it?”

 Heisenberg exhaled, and gritted his teeth in irritation. “The place is crawling with cameras. We can’t talk freely.”

 Ethan knew he was probably right, but he found himself doubting any difference it made. They couldn’t exactly start scheming their escape. This place was evidently designed to hold the most dangerous of prisoners. There was no chance they would find a spare lockpick, or an access code written on a carelessly discarded note. 

 “Mia has Rose,” he said, uselessly. 

 Heisenberg nodded. His face screwed up a little, betraying the process of thinking, although it immediately smoothed back out into a mask. He fell silent, his shoulders heaving in harsh breaths, and Ethan wondered if he was in pain. He wondered at what point he had crossed the line into caring, and when he started trusting in the wrong people. 

 Even if they were able to escape, by some kind of miracle, what kind of life was waiting for them on the outside? 

 The last time Heisenberg had qualified as a civilian would be close to one hundred years ago. Ethan tried to imagine him as a boy, dressed in formal black with patches sewn over the holes in his clothes. He'd be clever. He'd make his friends laugh, in an accent he'd lost through time. 

 "After you killed Miranda," Ethan ventured. "You must have had plans." 

 "Plans," Heisenberg repeated, smirking slightly, phrasing it in the space between a question and a statement. 

 "Well, were you going to stay in the factory? Did you want… did you ever want to try living a normal life?" 

 "I wanted a detached residence with a lawn in a suburban Californian neighborhood." 

 "Ha, ha."

 "I'm not kidding." But he was; it all sounded brittle and mean, betraying his fear. Normality was a distant star for him, and he had neither time nor temperament to reach it. 

 "You know I live in California." 

 "I did know." Heisenberg said coyly, pressing his hands to the glass and stepping back to observe the print they left behind. "I know a lot about you, Ethan Winters." 

 Ethan shook his head with a humorless huff of laughter. "You don't."

 "Then tell me."

 Ethan stared at him, blankly. Heisenberg held his gaze, steadily, waiting. 

 They might have infinite time, sealed within these walls, or they might be living through their final minutes on Earth... of course, there was no way to tell.

 “... What do you want me to tell you?” he relented. 

 The lord offered him a crooked grin, lifting the corners of his mouth up to his gaunt cheeks. He thought about it for a few moments, pacing the length of his cell. He had bolted himself inside the factory for an age. He was detached from reality and the everyday lives of regular people must have been inexplicably alien to him.

 “Did you go to college?”

 Ethan laughed, surprising himself with the sincerity of it, and caught off guard by the innocence of the question . “Yes,” he said. “Yeah, I did.”   

 He found himself talking. He talked about things he imagined someone so isolated would want to know, like the wasp’s nest outside his dorm in freshman year, and the time he threw up on his first ever girlfriend’s heels. There was the varsity baseball team (he pitched, really well), the professor who refused to round up his GPA, and the frat guys who left a dead rat under his pillow.

 As he was speaking, he became uncomfortably aware that Heisenberg was hanging onto his every word. He didn’t make it obvious, he just kind of… stopped breathing. 

 “How did you meet Mia?” he asked. 

 Ethan swallowed around the lump in his throat. He was glad Heisenberg had said her name, because it helped him remember how much he loved her. He drew on old memories, not the fresh, raw experience of her betrayal. 

 “She, um… we were on the same train, and she left her purse on the seat. Her driver’s license was in there. I ran after her and she smiled at me, you know I- I asked her if she had time to sit in a bar with me. We missed the last train because we were talking all night.”

 “That sounds nauseating,” Heisenberg deadpanned. 

 "You would say that.” 

 It reminded Ethan he didn’t want to live without the people he cared about. That was something he’d known for a long time. When Mia had first gone missing back in 2014, his life had fallen apart. It took months before he could bring himself to leave the house. His boss had started out sympathetic, but it wasn’t long before the paychecks stopped coming in. The house was a mess, with takeout boxes piled high on every surface. 

 His friends told him straight. You can’t live like this, man. I’m sorry, but she isn’t coming back. He knew they were right but there was some part of him that still clung to the chance that Mia was okay. 

 Something felt different this time. It was as if his luck had run out and he understood, wholly, that he couldn’t keep cheating death. It was okay. He couldn’t keep living in fear, shaking like a leaf when he heard the floorboards creaking. He was more than prepared to sacrifice himself, knowing he was damaged goods. But it didn’t seem fair that after everything, that sacrifice would mean nothing. 

 No. Life’s never fucking fair, is it?

 He was going to die here. They both were. 

 “I’m scared for Rose. And Mia,” Ethan said, out of nowhere. The words fell out as if he had tripped. He almost sealed his hand over his mouth, wishing he could push them back in. It felt like telling the fae his name. 

 Heisenberg cocked his head. The muscles in his pale, drawn face pulled themselves into a glimmer of fondness. 

 “Why did you tell me that?” he asked, softly.

 Ethan swallowed down the shame. He tried to hold the lord’s gaze but felt tension driving his eyes downwards. “I don’t know,” he muttered, and the moment for comfort passed. 

 The silence which they lapsed into was charged with something sharp. A tug of war that Heisenberg had won, some small victory on the long road to a white picket fence. Ethan wanted to go back to hating him. Behind his eyes, he recalled scenes of broken bodies, disrespected, degraded; and other victims disposed of along with that week’s garbage.

 They didn’t hold so much weight anymore. He was numb to it. All that sprung to mind was the screaming. I never wanted to be your son. And, not everyone gets a second chance. The longing way he listened to Ethan talking about life without death and destruction. 

 In the cell, there was no air vent. There were some small holes in the front-facing wall of glass, evenly spaced to allow oxygen to circulate. Those holes might act as a weak point in an attempt to shatter the glass, but that would depend on Heisenberg recovering enough to use his physical strength. Ethan would try, but he didn’t want to alert any guards. Not just yet. 

 The doors were locked through key card access on the outside. Predictably, there was no way to exit from within. When his fingers traced the walls, he felt smooth concrete. No openings. Nothing to gain purchase on or break apart. 

 If he were to take apart the cot, he’d struggle to unscrew the framework, but it might be possible. Then he would be left with metal bars, potentially usable as weapons, yet totally pointless if he couldn’t leave the cell. 

 The epoxy floor was equally unhelpful. Smooth, seamless, and completely impenetrable with the materials at hand. 

 I can’t lose my mind just yet, he thought. We could be here for days. The pessimist inside him argued the case for years. He knew this place was maximum security. He knew that compared to a medieval castle, or a derelict ranch, this was an entirely different ballgame.

 It was then that the quiet whirr of unidentifiable machinery was interrupted. Footsteps were hitting the floor, hard. A distance away, but getting closer. 

 The two of them shared a glance, standing immediately pressed to the glass to try and hear any better. 

 “What’s going on?” Ethan whispered, unnerved.

 “Be quiet,” snapped Heisenberg. His fingers were curled over the breathing holes, a caged animal trying to swipe at gawking visitors.

 The footsteps weren’t those of someone running full pelt, but close enough. There was the sound of sneakers scuffing against the flooring. 

 Then, “Ethan?! Ethan!”

 His blood ran cold. After hours of nothing, everything happened at once.

 “Mia?!” he called out, banging his fist against the glass. His heart was thundering beats against his ribcage, threatening to burst through, and his legs felt suddenly weak. 

 The dreaded screaming came soon after. The unmistakable piercing screams of his infant daughter, not even a year old. His wife, whose hands he’d never feel in his again. Before, he’d been angry with her, betrayed by the secrets she’d kept from him. After hearing her scream, that anger became primal fear. He could not listen to her die.

 He was yelling himself hoarse, far gone now, past forming coherence. He vaguely recognized Heisenberg’s voice cutting through the fog, but it was drowned out by something else. Something loud; a kind of droning, buzzing sound that lodged itself right in his brain. He realized, then, that it was inside his head. 

 His limbs felt too hot and the buzzing had turned to vibration, making his bones ache. When he looked down at his arm, his green veins had turned black, running dark and pronounced against his skin. 

 His body tore itself apart.

 It’s like a song, sung by someone pretending to be a child. If he didn’t know better, it might pass him by. But it’s too saccharine. Beneath the sweetness, there is a bitter grudge, held for a long time.

 “Daddy,” the voice trills. “Wake up.”

 He opens his eyes, and there is little difference in lighting. He seems to find himself in some kind of cave, humid and cramped. Particles of dust catch the minimal sun. He sits up and comes face to face with another frequent guest of his nightmares.

 “Hi, sleepyhead,” Eveline smiles. 

 His mouth goes dry; even if it is a dream. 

 “Where am I?” he asks, steeling himself against the nerves. 

 “This is where you belong,” she tells him, happily. “This is where you’ve always belonged.”

 He gets to his feet, unsteady. “I don’t have time for games.”

 “You do. But I won’t play them. Do you know why you’re here?”

 He shakes his head.

 Her smile disappears. “Rose needs you.”

 Her voice bounces off the cave walls, echoing loud and final. Memories filter in slowly, suspended in molasses, showing a glimpse of his wife and child. Fearful, separated. Without power and hope.   

 “Tell me what to do,” he pleads. 

 She crosses her arms, truly childlike then. “If you want my help, you have to apologize for what you did.”

 Ethan blinks at her. She raises her eyebrows and he realizes this isn’t just a cruel joke. How long has she been here, in this strange place? Is she alone? He remembers the lengths she went to for anything else.

 “I know you never asked for this,” he says, slowly. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to be happy.”

 A few seconds tick by, before she nods. “I accept your apology. Now I’m going to send you back. But there’s a catch.”

 “Tell me.”

 “You can’t ever be with them again.”

 “...But they’ll be safe?”

 “...Yes.” 

 “What do I do?” he asks, urgently.

 “You’ll know.” And she smiles.  

Chapter Text

Heisenberg watched as Ethan Winters’ human body turned into something else entirely. It was an agonizing process that wasn’t quick or merciful. The veins of each of his limbs filled with toxic poison, bursting out from within through clouds of spore. Ethan had thrown back his head and screamed, but it had morphed over time into a strange, thrumming sound, impossible to form with vocal cords.

            When it was over, a husk of a man was left behind. A creature uncurled from the inanimate heap of moist skin and heavy bones.

            This thing was treelike in its size, and animalistic in its ruthless, calculated movements. But Heisenberg knew that it most resembled a network of fungi in its true form, with all the ancient knowledge to match. Ethan wasn’t alone in there. In fact, Ethan may be so lost within that network of a thousand consumed people that he had no influence on the creature whatsoever.

            “Ethan,” he tried, regardless. “It’s me. Your old pal, Heisenberg. You’ve got to get us out of here. Save your daughter.”

            The grotesque being swivelled, and revealed to him a great, unblinking eye; not hazel, like Ethan’s, but a pulsating, sickly orange, and a ragged black scar of a pupil trapped in its amber.

            One of its many branches snaked forwards and tapped the glass, exerting very little force. Still, the sound of the crystals raining down onto the floor could be heard across the facility.

            Heisenberg cheered. For his support, he earned his own window of confinement shattered by a wizened tendril.

            Picking glass from his tattered clothes, he hopped jauntily over the threshold to his cell, and followed his shambling friend down the hall.

            Alarms began to blare. Interestingly, there were no legions of footmen dispatched down the corridors heavily armed. Not yet, at least. Cameras floating in corners were clearly set to record. It seemed their captors wanted to scope the situation before blindly risking loss of life and property. Not their usual style.

            Heisenberg could not blame them for their caution, but he doubted it would help their chance of survival. A spawn of the Megamycete wouldn’t go down easily.

            The creature was purposeful. Almost all the other cells were empty. At such a pace, they soon arrived at the cell which housed charming Rose’s mother, tragically without baby.

            Mia cowered in the corner. She risked her eyes to dart up towards the monster ahead, and visibly went pale.

            A low rumble. It seemed poor Ethan had lost his stellar gift of communication.

“Mia, your husband has come to save you,” Heisenberg called, gleefully. “Let’s get moving, now.”

In disbelief, Mia rose from the floor. It seemed then that their captors had seen enough, and a laser was aimed at her face. A squadron of well-equipped soldiers faced them with assault rifles and body armor.

“Put your hands in the air. Nobody move,” came a warning through a crackling filter.

The monster put distance between itself and companions, pushing them behind its mass for protection. One swipe of a heavy limb sent the front line sprawling. In fact, it almost seemed as if it had sprouted more limbs in the last ten minutes. Gunfire lit up the halls, and all hell broke loose.

            Heisenberg deliberated. To make a quick getaway, or to stay, and try to give something back to the man he’d become so attached to.

            He only deliberated for a moment. While Mia dived to grab a rifle and complete the world’s most bizarre husband-and-wife combat team, Heisenberg followed his heart for the first time in his life.

            Through the maze, he periodically ducked into cells and hid behind rickety cots and torture equipment in order to avoid the next squad of soldiers. At one point, he saw a gaggle of staff in lab coats evacuating through the east side. He made a mental note of that as an escape route for later. If he made it that far.

            The uniform halls indistinguishable from one another suddenly changed, opening out into an atrium. Here, blessed signage pointed him in the direction of the laboratory. His best guess was that Rose lay in stasis somewhere there. He went as fast as his weak legs could carry him.

 The lab was empty. The emergency lighting cast an unsettling glow over test tubes, monitors, and… there. A crib. Overly large, cold, and cased in pristine white cladding, but a crib nonetheless.

On the way, he noticed lab notes accompanied by a picture of his own handsome face. He picked them up and began to read.

Heisenberg, Karl

This test subject is a failed experiment of Miranda. He exhibits electromagnetic powers similar to that of stingrays, on a far more advanced level. He is able to utilize this magnetism to create a body of armor from metallic objects, and seems in control of this power. He is relatively intelligent and undamaged by the parasite, but has demonstrated a remarkably sadistic nature, employing the systematic torture of victims for little more than his own entertainment. We would describe him as extremely dangerous, and recommend that his powers are excised. Due to his personal relationship with Miranda, he would make an excellent informant if he can be convinced to cooperate. We have been unable to investigate his personal motivations and ambitions as he refuses to be interviewed, but we can see that he has displayed a bizarre fascination and lenience towards E. Winters. Termination is not off the table, as the Winters family will make for better options all round.

“Relatively?” Heisenberg frowned down at the document.

He tossed the notes in the trash and advanced on the crib. Despite its intimidating appearance, wires, buttons, and lights, Rose lay sleeping peacefully inside. At least he thought it was Rose. To him, all babies looked the same.

            With ease, he disabled the lock mechanism. It tripped another alarm, but it only added to the general cacophony. He lifted Rose from the strange, futuristic bed, and cradled her to his chest. Her eyes opened in an instant, and her face twisted into tears.

            “None of that,” he told her, reproachfully. Not that it mattered. No one would hear little Rose over the sound of guns and shrill emergency alerts.

            As he turned to leave, a voice stopped him from the shadowed part of the room.

“Stay right there.” A female voice, with a British accent.

He disobeyed and turned back around, eyes scanning the darkness. From it stepped a smart, stoic older woman, followed closely by a younger male companion.

            “I can’t stay,” Heisenberg told them, dryly. “I’m needed rather urgently.”

            The woman didn’t crack a smile, even a false one. “Your supposed sense of humor is quite notorious around here, but I find it lacking. I find you lacking generally, in the same way, I suppose, that your surrogate mother did. Taking this baby won’t make Ethan Winters care for you. It would be one more nail in your coffin, if we bothered to bury you in one. By the end of it all, by the time science had exhausted all the avenues in your body, even the worms won’t want to touch your rotten insides.”

            Heisenberg felt the old fury seep back into his exhausted bones. He bristled, had to actively remind himself not to crush Rose to death.

            “Harsh words from a woman who abducts children,” he answered, measuredly as he could.

            “Give us the child and you may be able to cut a deal with the US government,” the man spoke up, sounding robotic and rehearsed.

            “Who would ever want to work with those crooks?” Heisenberg laughed, heartily and derisively, slowly backing away towards the exit.

            Then the woman pulled a gun. It was a Sig Saur P226, a relic from the future that Heisenberg had only seen on the corpses of a specific organization.

The games were over.

“The child, Heisenberg,” the woman repeated. “When I shoot you, and you fall, what would Ethan say, if you smashed his daughter’s skull?”

Heisenberg tried to breathe evenly. He concentrated on contacting the old power inside of him, the friend he had in electricity that had surged beneath his skin for decades. He wanted to fry the inside of these people’s brains until they turned to soup. He wanted to crisp their skin until the room filled with the scent of cooking meat. A shudder passed through his spine, and the hairs on his arms stood on end, static gracing him once more.

But nothing happened.

A gunshot sounded particularly loud in such close proximity. He did not feel pain, but he knew that he could not survive another bullet wound without the Cadou, after the weak state his body had already fallen into.

When another gunshot went off, seconds after the first, he suddenly realized he hadn’t been shot at all. That the first bullet had come from someone else’s gun, and the second had come from the British woman’s – but it had missed, and now she was slumped on the ground.

Heisenberg held Rose close. She was crying again, so hard it made her whole body shake. He was glad he wouldn’t have to put up with it for too long, as much as he might recall her with fondness.

He stood up from where he’d gone to his knees and saw the woman’s companion kick his gun spinning across the floor, and kneel with his hands behind his head. He bent to check his friend’s pulse, and drew back looking colorless.

“Keep your hands behind your head,” Chris Redfield said, calmly. He put cuffs around the man’s wrist, and cuffed him to a table which was screwed into the floor.

“Thank you,” Heisenberg offered, tersely.

“It wasn’t for your benefit, believe me,” came the cold response.

Redfield approached, reloading his gun with a clattering of magazine and cartridge as he did so.

“Where do you think you’re going with Rose?” he asked.

“To give her back to Ethan. Obviously.”

“Ethan is a mutant fungus standing at about twenty feet tall.”

“He was fifteen feet when I last saw him.”

            Redfield disguised a snort as a cough. Wordlessly, he slid the British woman’s sidearm into his belt, where it joined the one her friend had given up. “We just need to get her out of here. That’s the best thing we could do for him.”

            Heisenberg chewed it over, letting Rose’s small hand curl around his index finger so she stopped her incessant wailing. In the end, the rapidly approaching sound of footsteps in military boots made the decision for him.

            “What’s happening here?” he queried as they walked rapidly from the laboratory and towards the north side exit, away from the direction of the oncoming troops. ‘Troops’ was a generous word. They were elite soldiers trained specifically for this kind of scenario: a biohazard breaching containment in a remote facility, where backup and sophisticated comms were like myths and legends.

            “I know as much as you do. They had me in a cell too,” Redfield answered, grimly. “But I’ve managed to contact the Hound Wolf Squad and they’re on their way with a covert chopper. All we have to do is reach it.”

            It sounded simple, when he said it like that.

When they reached the north exit, there were no guards to be found. The small number of personnel had been deployed into the labyrinth of cells, desperately attempting to subdue its denizens. They saw themselves on quadruple screens, looking furtively into the face of camera equipment. It was all recorded, so there would be no question of their escape. By the time it was discovered, they could be long gone.  

Outside, snow hit their faces with the sharp force of the gale. They were on top of a mountain, but darkness and fog obscured any chance of identifying its location in relation to the village, or other landmark.

By now, Rose was used to the cold. But she still cried. She might have lost both parents, and it almost seemed like she knew it.

“You won’t leave them there.” It was a statement that acted like a question.

Redfield exhaled. “We might have to.”

No sooner had he said it than a tiny speck began moving towards them from the other side of the mountain. The east exit. Then there was the sound of helicopter blades.

“We need to get going,” Redfield murmured.

That speck became the outline of Mia Winters. She was limping and alone. Heisenberg’s chest seized up with something ugly, a tight ball of resentment. He knew Rose felt the same. Why couldn’t your daddy be safe, hm? he thought, looking down at her pink, cold face. What’s so special about mommy, that she gets a second chance?

            “You don’t even love her, do you,” he murmured, addressing the baby’s eyelids.

            “What?” Chris Redfield hissed.

            “Nothing.”

They heard some kind of roar, from inside the building. It was like metal grating, combined with the rending of a tree, and a disturbingly human scream.

            “Chris!” Mia was shouting. Running, now, on a leg that looked lame.

            “Over here, Mia.”

            “Please, God, tell me you’ve got Rose. Oh please, God.”

            Redfield received her with a humorless smile. He aimed for kind and ended up looking like a wax figure. “No,” he said, softly. “But he has.” He jerked his head in Heisenberg’s direction.

            She advanced with a piercing glare, mother’s white-hot fury and all that.

Heisenberg beamed at her, holding up the bundle of cloth containing a most precious being. “I think she might need changing,” he said.

Chapter Text

“Aren’t you going to do something about-” 

Mia aimed for subtle but failed miserably, jerking her chin in Heisenberg’s direction.

“Do something?” he said, mockingly. He approached her, emphasizing the difference in their height, until she shrunk back - still, with defiance.

“Hey,” Redfield said sharply. 

Heisenberg paused, before he began walking ahead.

“I’m sorry,” he heard Redfield say. “Right now, there’s little we can do.”

The three of them picked up the pace as much as they could while weaving their way through the mountain’s many obstacles. Mia was slower, terrified she would slip on the ice and drop Rose, tightly cradled in her arms. Her leg was injured, too; grazed by a stray bullet. Heisenberg had to give her credit. She barely so much as flinched when Redfield peeled away the fabric from the wound. 

“Do you know where you’re going?” Heisenberg called, somewhat out of breath. 

“Yes,” Redfield answered through gritted teeth, his breath turning into puffs of ice as they jogged.

It was dark. The tiltrotor had landed somewhere behind a cluster of trees. Now, the wind was louder than the sounds of gunshots and metal grinding against metal, the screams of injured operatives and the odd, inhuman noises emitted by a monstrous, mutated form. 

Heisenberg wondered what they would do to him. Would it be jail? Death row? He knew the luxury of such places was improbable. Most likely they would subject him to hours of tedious debriefings, followed by tossing his useless body to the vultures in the lab, once again resigned to torture and experimentation.

He had already made up his mind that he would die before he was caged again. 

“Chris?” Mia tried to catch up, panting with the exertion. “Who were those people? I thought you worked for the B.S.A.A.”

They stopped for a few moments; it felt like they had been running for an age. Heisenberg felt weakened, and phantom pain still singed his nerves. He had forgotten that torture destroys more than the soul. Physical agony was something he was accustomed to inflicting, rather than experiencing. 

“That was the B.S.A.A,” Redfield answered, grimly. “Or rather, a division of the B.S.A.A. which works with Blue Umbrella. I’ve realized that the people I work for think the end justifies the means. That we need to fight fire with fire.”

“You mean, the B.S.A.A and Blue Umbrella want to create bioweapons… in order to fight bioweapons.”

“Yes, exactly. But you can see why this is a problem. The more bioweapons that exist, the more danger we’re in. We can’t control them, not really. Anyone who thinks they can is a fool.”

Mia went strangely quiet.

"I had my suspicions. But when they tried to take Rose from you, I couldn't stand back and watch."

Mia offered him a tired, tight smile. 

They picked up the pace again, the bitter cold causing them to stumble and help each other up.

After some time, they reached the trees and heard the sounds of helicopter blades. 

Emerging like shadows from the treeline, members of the Hound Wolf Squad were easily identifiable by their night ops tactical gear. 

“Get down on your knees and put your hands above your head,” one of them called out. 

Heisenberg did no such thing and glanced at Redfield expectantly, waiting for him to say ‘no, he’s one of the good guys’ which would have done funny things to his stomach. The asshole instead gave a nod. 

With a long-suffering sigh, Heisenberg’s knees were pushed into the wet snow. He knew, however, that this was no time for theatrics. His conduct in the next few crucial hours would determine the rest of his life. 

In his mind, he planned to snatch one of their weapons and die in a blaze of glory. He knew they'd melt him in a rain of bullets before he could so much as twitch an eyelid, but the thought of a quick death was comforting, and it was all he had. 

“Get Mia and Rose to the chopper,” Redfield instructed, in his element. “And take a look at Mia’s leg; I think she was hit.”

Heisenberg watched two of the operatives, one male and one female, judging by build and attire, help Mia towards the vehicle, whose rotary blades were starting up again. It made little noise, designed for stealth.

The remaining members of the team turned their attention to their prisoner. 

“You know who this is,” Redfield grimaced. 

“Looks kind of pathetic without the Cadou,” someone observed. 

Redfield shot him a sharp look, then continued. “Secure him with cuffs and take him with us. He might be of use as an informant. If not, the labs will gladly take his body.”

Heisenberg winked at him. Redfield had the emotional range of a large rock, and his face remained equally as stony. The squad proceeded to bind Heisenberg’s hands behind his back, in handcuffs that weren’t your usual standard fare. They were thick, with no chain linking them, with some kind of advanced locking mechanism. 

He knew he did not have the physical strength to break out of them, and without his abilities, it was even more doubtful. 

“These were specially designed,” the sniper who finished clicking the lock into place told him. “They don’t conduct, so if you somehow magically regained control of electricity, there’s nothing much you can do.”

“What a pity.”

“Don’t,” said his captor, roughly grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. Heisenberg’s knees ached as he regained balance, feeling himself chilled by the snow underneath him. “Don’t get smart with me. We watched you freaks for a long, long time. I saw what you did to all those people in the factory. The only special treatment you’ll be getting from us is a lack of mercy.”

Heisenberg said nothing, and allowed himself to be manhandled to his feet, and ushered towards the aircraft. 

He did not believe his own actions were forgivable, but he did not feel regret. He felt nothing at all. The only time he ever had were these last few days, where one man had managed to thaw the block of ice around his heart. Cruelly, but unsurprisingly, karmic justice had snuffed out that flame. What was his purpose now? No longer part of that perverted imitation of family. His revenge had been exacted. Nor was he travelling the road to retribution with a friend to monsters. There was nothing to tie him to this miserable plane and he was quite ready to leave it all behind. 

The V-22 Osprey was military grade and emblazoned with a Blue Umbrella Corporation logo. There was enough room to fit them all, as Lobo and Umber Eyes confined themselves to the cockpit. 

Tundra, the sole female operative, was bandaging Mia’s leg. There was no space for Rose to lay in, so she was held tightly in her mother’s exhausted arms. 

“Shall I take her for a moment?” Tundra asked. She had pushed up her helmet to appear less threatening. She was younger than Heisenberg had assumed, and a streak of dirt mixed with sweat ran across one of her cheekbones.

 Mia looked as though she was about to argue, but she suddenly became aware of her own fatigue, and eventually gave in. She slumped to the side, leaning against the hull, and closed her eyes for just a few moments.

Heisenberg was guarded on either side. 

Redfield and the others were huddled over a laptop, talking in low voices. Heisenberg was unfamiliar with that kind of technology, as the village remained trapped in the past. He knew what the device was, as he often purchased modern non-fiction books from the Duke, although he doubted he could operate it efficiently without sufficient training or time.

He picked up a few words here and there, noting that they were charting a course for their base of operations, not the headquarters. He got the sense that the team did not trust the rest of their organization, which added another layer of intrigue to the situation. 

"How long will it take for you to send backup?" Mia spoke up, tiredness coloring her voice. She was gnawing at her nails, which were filthy.

"Backup?" Redfield responded distractedly. He was frowning down at his datapad and using two fingers to scroll through information.  

"...For Ethan…" Mia said slowly. 

Redfield stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. Heisenberg caught two of the Hound Wolf squad exchanging an unreadable glance.

There was a deeply uncomfortable pause where the tension ratcheted up to a maximum.

"Mia…" Redfield began, carefully. It seemed he didn't need to elaborate because Mia shook her head emphatically.

"No.” She stared at them in horror, seemingly waiting for them to correct her, but the silence stretched on and it gave her a bleak answer. 

“Please,” she said, desperately. “You can't just abandon him. You have to go back. We have to."

The agent sighed. "That would involve way more than a simple backup squad, Mia. You saw the scale of the operation that was going on back there. We can't just go in all guns blazing. A proper investigation unit needs to be set up. And I swear to you, as soon as we get home, that's the first thing I'm going to do."

"Are you serious?" Mia demanded, her voice rising in pitch and volume, betraying her nerves and anger. "What about my husband?!"

She stood up and began to pace; her anger so great that it numbed the pain in her injured leg. The rest of the squad visibly readied themselves to intervene in any physical conflict.

Heisenberg felt her anger, but he'd seen it coming from a mile away. He thought about Ethan, who had saved his life. He thought that he had never cared so much about another person, with a strength that was frightening even to him.

"You're bringing that demon back to safety, but you're not even trying to save Ethan?" Mia shouted, stabbing a shaking finger in Heisenberg's direction. 

He said nothing. How could he argue? He had nothing to come home to. No wife. No baby. No job, no training, an education several generations too outdated. 

"Take me back, then," Heisenberg said suddenly.

"For God's sakes, will you both calm down?" Chris snapped. "This isn't the movies. There are protocols. And we have to follow them, or you'll die too."

"Ethan isn't dead!" Mia yelled.

The room went silent and the air became laden with pity and regret. 

Mia couldn't stand it. She retook her seat, and her head fell into her hands, her body visibly shaking with silent sobs. 

"Will you let me go back?" Heisenberg asked, quietly. He hated having to beg. 

"Why?"

"I don't belong in your world. And I've spent too much time being experimented on. If Ethan is alive, I'll find him."

"You don't have your Cadou abilities anymore," Redfield pointed out.

Heisenberg bared his teeth, loathe to be reminded he was powerless. 

"Then I'll die trying," he said tersely. 

"I don't trust you not to hurt him," Mia interrupted, sniffling and wiping away her tears, a wrathful gaze now directed at Mother Miranda’s failure. 

Rose woke up and began to make sounds. Her mother rushed to her side, and took her back from Tundra. 

"I don't really care what you think. Ethan trusted me. He trusted me with Rose."

"Oh, please. You were manipulating him. He probably thought you would kill the both of them if he didn't cooperate. He wouldn't be happy leaving our child in the arms of a monster."

"You know nothing about me. And you barely knew Ethan."

Mia laughed scornfully. "Do you really think he cared about you? Truly, for even a second?"

Heisenberg felt the shadow of the stirrings of electricity spark inside him as he lost control of his temper. "You're a real bitch, Mia Winters. Ethan was good to me because he's a good person. You don't know what it meant to grow up like I did, alone in the world, tortured since childhood. And for the first time, find someone who cared. Do you think I'd give up on that?" 

He stood, too. He didn't even realize that no one stepped forward to stop him. His hands were still bound behind his back, preventing him from grandiose gestures, but it didn’t stop him from looming over her and injecting barely concealed fury and disdain into every word.

"Do you think you are better than me, because of your cozy little home and that whining result of your heterosexual union? Ethan went through hell for you. And for what? What good did it do?"

He was an inch away from Mia's face, and she turned to protectively shield Rose. Another one of the Hound Wolf squad gently took the baby and began rocking her. The child held everyone in the palm of her hand.

"I want to go back for him," Heisenberg bit out. "I want to go back for him because he saved my life, just like he saved yours."

No one moved. And then he noticed that the lights were flickering. Flickering, in time with the furious beating of his heart. 

Slowly, it dawned on them all. 

He took stock of the tiny pool of electrical energy that was beginning to reform in the tips of his fingers. He felt a relief so strong that it made his knees go weak. 

Without his power, he was nothing. He was just like everyone else, no longer superior, except torture had broken him into something wholly useless. 

Could it really have come back...?

He would welcome it like an old friend.

Still, things were not the same as before. He could not summon the same force, and already, he felt drained from the small exertion of affecting the lights. He sensed a lack of control over this regained energy; that he couldn’t direct it as he had before. 

However, if time was all he needed, he would willingly wait a hundred years.

Chapter Text

His anger melted away and the lights became stable again. The number of weapons trained on him increased by a considerable percentage.

"He's a risk to the integrity of the aircraft," Lobo murmured, without taking his eyes away from the sights of his rifle. "We can't keep flying."

"You got your power back?" Redfield prompted.

He took a moment to consider it, taking stock of the newfound yet familiar sensation of static sparking up inside his body. He imagined an empty well, with but a few drops of water at the bottom. Slowly, it would refill. That is what he hoped for.

"A part of it, perhaps," he bit out, trying not to sound disappointed. "I don't feel as strong as before."

Umber Eyes snorted. "Yeah… of course you'd say that…"

He was mocking, but a hint of unease punctuated his words. 

"I'll find him," Heisenberg told Mia. 

Her face crumpled like she was about to cry. Then, it smoothed out; as though ironed. 

"Thank you," she said, robotically. She stepped forward to envelop him in a stiff, awkward embrace. It was the first time he had been held since he was a child. 

He stood there, unmoving, until she drew back. No one had ever really gotten so close; or if they had, it was a lifetime ago, buried under colder memories. Once he had impulsively wound his arms around a soldat’s armor. It was not like embracing another human. 

“Are you out of your minds?” Redfield barked. Everyone turned to look at him, slightly surprised by his outburst of obvious frustration. “I am not dropping a bioweapon back in the middle of a remote Romanian mountain, never to be seen again. After all the work we put into capturing him.”

“‘Work’,” Heisenberg repeated blankly. “I surrendered willingly.”

“So what do you suggest?” Mia asked, her tone level. “Because we are not leaving Ethan behind.”

The tiltrotor was still heading for the base. Around them, the Hound Wolf Squad wore impenetrable helmets, and it was impossible to tell what they were thinking. Aside from Tundra. She was chewing on her lip. 

“We could go back,” she suggested.

“And leave Rose to pilot the aircraft?” retorted her colleague. 

“No. We can still go to the base. Regroup, stock up on weapons and ammo. One of us can stay with Mia and Rose. The rest of us can go back for Winters.”

“It might be too late. By the time we get to the base and back, hours will have gone by.”

“You’d seriously trust that creep off the leash?”

Tundra shrugged. “There would five of us, and one of him. No weapons, no armor.”

The group seemed uneasy. It was a massive risk. They had just succeeded in recovering Mia Winters and her baby safely, and the last thing they wanted to do was return to that awful place. Yet, it was true that Ethan Winters was also part of that family. As a civilian, he had been forced through unimaginable ordeals. To abandon him now would be nothing short of criminal. 

“Please,” Mia addressed the team, her face imploring. “Please don’t leave Ethan behind. He deserves rescue way more than I did.”

Heisenberg was fascinated by her change in demeanor towards her husband - how stony she had been in the face of his pleas, when he was behind glass and she was safe on the other side. Mothers, he knew, would do anything to protect their children. Now that Rose was safe, she’d conveniently remembered she was also supposed to love her husband. 

Redfield was agitated, glancing between the members of his team, gauging their reactions to the proposal. Some of them exchanged words under their breath, too quiet to be overheard. 

Heisenberg didn’t need their help. The return of his Cadou abilities meant he was invincible. Well… compared to the fragile bags of meat and bone that they were all placing their trust in. In some odd way, he wanted to go back there alone. It would be a shot at some kind of redemption, like the movies he’d watched on the battered tapes and learned how to play the part of charming antagonist. He’d never cared about what people thought, until Ethan gave him that look - revulsion, pity, indignation, disappointment…

He almost flinched back from the memory and noticed how each of the agents reacted to the movement, weapons aimed again into his left or right eye. Perhaps there was still some hope; they’d been trained well. 

“We might be able to pull it off,” one of them stated. 

No sooner than saying it, the sniper who had berated Heisenberg shook his head. His codename was Umber Eyes. “You don’t speak for me. The mission’s over, and I’m not risking my life alongside him.”

“So you’re just going to leave an innocent civilian behind?” Mia demanded. “I thought you cared. You’ve been tracking us for so long, didn’t you get attached?” 

He turned to stare at her, an intimidating stare created by night vision goggles mounted on a futuristic headpiece. He looked . “I am sorry for your husband,” he told her, with an edge to his voice. “But the mission is over.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Redfield told them all. “If we do this, we have to be one hundred percent invested.”

Another person stood up, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Look, I…”

He trailed off, into awkward silence. 

“I want to help. I really do, Mrs. Winters, and I’m sorry. I just… I can’t see this going well. I think, to go back there, would be pushing our luck real hard. I have a family back home and I can’t risk all that. I hope you understand.”

Mia said nothing, but deep down, she couldn’t fault him. 

That left three of the Hound Wolf Squad. Night Howl, Canine, and Tundra. What began as a promising squad of capable agents was quickly becoming a suicide mission. 

Mia looked at their faces and read them like storybooks. No one said a word; but the spark of hope ignited among them had been firmly distinguished. 

For the rest of the journey, the group fell silent. The quiet was only interrupted by Rose’s sporadic and piercing cries, who sensed her mother’s despair. 

The Hound Wolf Squad’s Romanian base wasn’t particularly large or technologically advanced. There was no internet signal in the remote mountains, so the team could only contact their personal and B.S.A.A contacts at the base. Radio communications were used between them when they were deployed to the village, but the processing of data had to be done with the equipment that was protected in the base. 

The tiltrotor was landed expertly, and they were escorted towards the unassuming warehouse building. The air was still bitterly cold but somewhat tempered at a lower altitude. Even though she was no stranger to such temperatures, Mia was keen to get Rose somewhere warm and safe. She hurried ahead beside Redfield. 

Umber Eyes was harsh as he pushed their prisoner forward.

“I suppose you’re going to chain me up like a dog?” Heisenberg laughed bitterly as he stumbled, unbalanced by his hands being cuffed behind his back.

“I suppose I just might,” came the snide reply.

Their boots crunching through snow hit the metal frame of the staircase, and they were finally inside. Mia still couldn’t believe the nightmare was over, and she kept throwing haunted looks behind her, checking that some ghoul wasn’t about to snatch her baby away again. 

“Mia…” Chris said. “Sit down, please. We need to talk about our next steps.” 

He then said something to Umber Eyes that Heisenberg didn’t hear, but the sniper’s head moved up to look at him, and it was all adding to the sinking feeling in his stomach.

“My, my, you do know how to make a man feel special,” he said, dryly, as two agents retrieved heavy-duty chains from the bowels of the base. He was led to the farthest corner of the room, still cuffed, and lashed to a metal support column. A padlock was sealed tightly to ensure escape would require nothing short of a miracle. This was cemented when Umber Eyes and Night Howl remained behind, firearms poised to blow his head clean off lest he twitch a finger out of place.

“Can I use the bathroom?” he asked. 

They didn’t rise to the bait, or respond to any of his jibes. He settled back into an uncomfortable and awkward seated position, and tried to summon enough electrical energy to fry them into ash. 

No dice.

The rest of the squad, along with Mia and Rose, were sitting beside the main control table, where most of their tech was laid out. Multiple monitors displayed data like satellite images of the mountains, and live messages coming in from HQ. A makeshift crib had been fashioned out of an upended drawer, lined with Canine’s jacket.

Their conversations could not be overheard by their prisoner. 

Redfield was deeply unsettled after discovering the facility. He was paranoid enough already, but this had confirmed all of his fears. His beloved organization, the one to which he’d dedicated almost his entire life, was keeping secrets from even its most trusted agents. He was intent on formulating a new plan, one where the B.S.A.A would not be alerted to what they had found, nor would it gain access to any of the Winters’.

The squad members were acutely aware of the dilemma they faced. Who could they trust? Mia and Rose must be brought home, but that could not be done without coordinating with the very same people who tried to claim Rose. 

And what of Heisenberg? His powers were coming back. They had read his files. He was a sadistic psychopath and was undoubtedly lying about how much strength he had regained. They didn’t have the resources to keep him at bay, but they couldn’t trust the B.S.A.A to bring in reinforcements. 

“We have no choice,” Lobo was saying.

“I refuse to believe there is no one at the B.S.A.A we can trust,” Tundra shook her head.

“Forget the B.S.A.A. We need to contact someone on the outside.”

“Like who?”

“Captain, there must be someone you know…”

“Almost all my contacts work for the B.S.A.A.”

“What about Valentine?”

He shrugged reflexively. “You think she doesn’t know about all this? At her rank, that would be almost impossible.”

“Almost.”

“One wrong move, and we’re finished. They can’t get wind of what’s going on here any more than they already have.”

“I hate to break it to you, but they already know. They know where our base is. It’s just a matter of time.”

Tundra nodded in agreement. “We need to act now. If there’s anyone that can help… if anyone owes you any kind of debt, it’s time to pay up.”

They went silent for a moment. They knew there was no other option, and it was a race against time to get evacuated from the area. 

“There’s someone I can call,” Redfield said eventually. “But I need to figure out what to do with our guest.”

He asked for privacy, so the two armed agents guarding Heisenberg moved away. Still, their scopes were trained on him. Maybe he could feint and get them to hit Redfield…? No… that wouldn't really help his case. 

Redfield knelt down in front of him and looked him in the eyes. 

"I need you to be honest with me," he said. 

"Like always, you mean?"

"This isn't the time for jokes," answered the oaf, patiently, as though Heisenberg was a predictable clockwork toy. 

Heisenberg stretched his shoulders back and nodded. 

"To what extent did you get your powers back?" Chris asked him. His voice was low so that no one else could hear it. 

Heisenberg observed the lines in his face, the bloodshot eyes that had been open for too many hours. He smelled nicotine on his breath. Naughty, naughty. He supposed Chris didn't care much about his health. Repressed, reckless, and regretful. Men like him were churned out with cookie cutters in the military.

"I don't know," Heisenberg answered, honestly.

"Let me rephrase." Redfield had tried good cop and now he was losing his patience. The evident use of steroids probably didn't help his temper. "To what extent do you think you have your powers?"

"I don't know, Christopher," Heisenberg replied icily. "Shall we test it? Will you be my first ever willing volunteer?" 

His captor moved to sit back on his heels. Sore knees, old man?

"I'm trying to help you. You’re insufferable," Redfield hissed. 

The two nearby operatives shifted a little, uncomfortable, not within hearing distance but sensing the tension. Redfield exhaled from his nose like an angry bull, and walked away. 

Heisenberg watched him produce some kind of pager or comms device he was unfamiliar with. The agent turned so that no one could read his lips, and began to speak into the device. 

After he finished the brief conversation, he gave an order to his team.

His movement was severely hindered by his bonds; still, he tried to struggle, and the sound of metal chains rattling against metal filled the space. 

“What are you doing?” Mia shouted, alarmed.

“Stay still,” Umber Eyes told him, gruffly. He and Night Howl aimed down their sights, while Lobo and Tundra pinned his arms at his sides. They flinched when contacting his body gave them static shock, but he couldn’t muster anything more impressive.

“Do not come anywhere near me,” Heisenberg said maniacally. ““I’ll kill you all. Do you hear me? I’ll kill you, and I know how to make sure it’s agony.” 

Tundra advanced with the needle. He bared his teeth at her, eyes rolling like a spooked horse, but there was nothing he could do to avoid his fate. There was a sharp sting, and nothing more.

Heisenberg was too busy willing his heart rate down and taking stock of the effects the injection had had on his body to notice Mia shift Rose to one arm, then with her free hand, pick up the gun. 

Chris didn’t move an inch. His eyes were trained on the far wall. 

“Put the gun down, Mia,” he said, calmly. 

Her hands were shaking, and she adjusted her sweat-soaked grip. “No,” she shook her head. “Let him go, or I shoot.”

“Captain-"

“I can handle this,” Chris cut in. 

"He said he would find Ethan. You have to let him go," Mia insisted. 

"Put the gun down,” came the soft, rehearsed response. 

Her face contorting in cornered fury, Mia pulled the trigger. The deafening sound of the shot bounced off the walls, and blood slid down Redfield’s forehead, his body listing lifelessly to the floor. Except it didn’t. 

Nothing had happened, just a pathetic click. Chris pulled out a handful of bullets from his pocket, and held them out like coins in his palm. 

"I'm not your enemy, Mia," he said, softly. "And we can't trust Heisenberg."

Heisenberg’s eyes were closed and he had gone limp against the structural support column. His captors dared to lean forward and check for a pulse. Satisfied, they drew back.

“Did you kill him?” Mia asked, horrified. 

“We need to move,” Redfield told everyone, ignoring the question. The softness from his voice had disappeared. “We’ve been made. We’ll take four ATVs and hopefully confuse them with our tracks. Mia and Rose, with me.”

Mia couldn’t take her eyes off Heisenberg’s body. She felt that her husband’s chances of survival had died with him. Even Rose’s crying couldn’t pierce through the fog settling over her mind. She allowed herself to be dragged away towards the other side of the base, where the vehicles were waiting. 

The team worked hard to clear the base of everything they wanted to take with them, everything that needed to be left behind, and cut off any signal they might be transmitting. 

When Heisenberg woke up, the muscles in his neck were sore. It was dark outside, and all of the monitors and equipment on the tables had been turned off or unplugged. Confused and still groggy from the sedative, he tugged on his restraints with one dejected wrist. Immediately, it gave way. Shocked, he inspected the chains and found that the padlock had been left open. It wasn’t a miracle that he’d woken up - someone had wanted him to escape. 

Then he found the piece of paper tucked into his pocket, which he unfolded to reveal a note, scribbled in hasty block capitals. You’re presumed dead by everyone but me. Scanners can detect your electrical surges, so do not use them. Go do what you promised us. If you reach town, call this number to organize safe transport. +40705089927. CR 

The ‘do not’ was underlined three times. 

With his mind cycling through a hundred theories as to what had happened, Heisenberg realized he had little time to waste. He got to his feet and looked around the base. He spotted a generous amount of winter gear on one rack, so he took a backpack and a thick coat with fur lining the hood. The only food he could find were three pathetic and ancient granola bars. He stuffed them into the bag, gave the room one final glance, before heading out the open door.

The snow glittered in the moonlight. He spotted tire tracks leading into the trees, and turned in the opposite direction, filled with determination and the tenuous spark of the Cadou, which he quashed in fear of it broadcasting his location. 

If Ethan Winters was alive, Heisenberg would find him. If he was dead, Heisenberg would lie down in the snow right beside his body, and close his eyes for good.

Chapter Text

Based on the tiltrotor journey, Heisenberg knew the village lay to the west. He focused on placing one foot in front of the other and the sound his boots made in the fresh snow, instead of dwelling on how many days it would take him to get there. 

Why had Redfield left the base so quickly? What, or whom, had alerted him? Where were they going, and what was his plan to get Mia and Rose to safety? 

Focus on the task at hand. Don’t get distracted and miss something vital.

He was no stranger to being alone and it didn’t bother him, but for some reason, he found himself thinking of his siblings. As children, they had thrown sticks into the freezing streams that ran through the village. As adults, they had played cards together. Between the gruesome experiments that had been performed on their bodies, and the morbid side effects, they sought comfort in their family caricature. Heisenberg remembered rushing to grab cloth to clear up the endless stream of vomit that poured from Moreau’s despondent face. He remembered nicking his arm just to see if his blood would satisfy Alcina’s cravings. And he had spent hours in the workshop with Donna sat watching him in silence, as he fashioned her a new wooden doll.

It had been decades since they socialized as a group aside from the ghoulish meetings Mother Miranda would call to discuss their ‘progress’. Each one of them had kept themselves holed up in their respective domains; consumed by their desire to make the perfect vessel. To win the favoritism competition; chasing the ideal of a freedom they couldn’t even picture.

In a way, Alcina had been his closest friend. They never exchanged a word that wasn’t laced with venom, but she was the only one he had ever bothered to visit. They had spoken about Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra; who never called him anything other than Uncle.

When anyone suggested Heisenberg didn’t have a family, or didn’t understand the concept, he disagreed. It wasn’t a family he wanted to be part of, but its bloodsoaked dynamics differed very little from ‘normal’ people.

By now the chill had seeped as far as his bone marrow, yet his inhumanity granted him protection from the worst damage it could inflict. The unpleasant ache remained, without threatening to kill. He wondered if Ethan would be so lucky; if the Mold would preserve any remnant of his consciousness or his physical form, if it would be able to keep him alive past the mutation. 

The thought reminded Heisenberg of the torture he had faced. Residual anxiety hummed beneath his skin as his body struggled to forget the sensation of repeated nerve damage. He knew that it was comparatively minimal, and would never be enough to repent for the pain he had inflicted on others. He didn’t feel guilty, but he believed self-pity would be hypocritical. 

Something that he failed to understand was how his powers had come back, even in their diminished capacity. The scientist in him cried out for dissection, to peel back the layers of his flesh and inspect the misshapen cavities the Cadou had left behind in its effort to make his body into a nest. He knew they had operated on it, and it most likely had been removed. What residual power it held, how much of its DNA had been absorbed into his, would require extensive research to determine. And right now, the last place Heisenberg wanted to find himself was an operating table. 

As he continued on his path, weaving in and out of trees, something flashed at the edge of his vision. He stopped abruptly, squinting to make out the source of the light. There were two white circles approaching and he soon realized they were headlights. 

Quickly, he ducked behind a tree and kept completely silent, his breath coming in icy puffs. 

The sound of the vehicles rumbling over the terrain became gradually louder. They didn’t stop, and he dared to peek out. There were two vehicles rolling towards the direction of the base. They had not noticed him. Leaving it five more minutes to be sure, he set off at a faster pace, adrenaline flowing through his weakened system.

He was gaining altitude and this emboldened him. After some time he came to the crest of a small hill and was elated to see the unmistakable jagged shape of the castle. It meant he was going the right way. 

However, he wasn’t expecting to see the village in the state he observed it. The orange glow of fire lit up the houses and slowly spread between them. The black, spidery shape of the Megamycete had spread to consume most of the village, and had grown upwards to tower above. Heisenberg could spot dark shapes buzzing around the place like ants, and he suspected they were the bioweapons that Chris had spoken so critically about. What purpose they were fulfilling in the village, he wasn’t sure. 

The Hound Wolf Squad hadn’t had a chance to detonate the bomb; instead, they’d chosen to return Ethan and Heisenberg to the facility, where everything had gone to shit (and that was an understatement). Heisenberg was uncertain what form the bomb would have taken, where it was now, or if it had ever been planted. He had merely intercepted Redfield’s radio communications and heard talk of blowing up the Megamycete once they had found the civilians.

He kept going, towards the facility. He estimated that he had been travelling for around three hours. He considered resting, before dismissing the thought and pushing past his tiredness. 

Nothing mattered to him past finding the only good person he'd ever known. The most idealistic outcome would be discovering Ethan was alive and escorting him to safety, then getting him back home. Heisenberg was painfully aware that he didn't fit anywhere in the narrative beyond that. His entire world had been restricted to the village, and there was no place for him elsewhere. Revenge was all he'd sought - he never believed he could start a new life. That thought would have been devastating if only he'd cared. For better or worse, there was only one life he valued, perhaps to a sick and obsessive degree, but one that kept him distracted from his own tragic end.

The less idealistic outcomes didn't even bear thinking about. After three more hours, the village didn't appear much closer. He collapsed, exhausted, to the ground, and closed his eyes for just a few moments. 

Those few moments turned into a burning sun that rose above the horizon. It was dawn. He had wasted precious time asleep, and he cursed himself for it. Every minute lost, Ethan was less likely to be savable. 

From then on, he didn't stop to rest until the imposing sprawl of the facility came into view. He pictured himself as a soldat; refusing to allow his weak human form to hold him back, convincing himself he was as efficient as a machine.

After the sun dipped again, he was starting to flag. He had underestimated how far away the facility truly was, and began to lose hope. 

It was then that he saw the slow-moving shape on the mountain. It wasn't a person, or an animal. Completely baffled, he picked up his pace to try and see it closer. 

It was a carriage. At the front, an obese man held the reins, connected to a sable horse. 

Heisenberg ran. At some point, his legs gave out, and he fell some yards downwards. Bruised but otherwise undamaged, he brushed the snow off of his clothes and kept going, waving his arms but not daring to scream in case his voice carried on the wind and he caught attention from elsewhere.

When he saw the Duke’s carriage change course to meet him, he stopped running, and felt relief act as an analgesic to his aching limbs. He lay down on the snow, facing the bright sky, until he heard the sound of hooves crushing the snow.

“Lord Heisenberg, I never expected to set eyes on you again,” came the Duke’s pleasant Transatlantic accent. 

Heisenberg got to his feet and stopped to stroke the horse, which he had always been fond of, and it seemed to recognize him, snorting and pawing the ground with one giant hoof. “I’m grateful you’re here,” he said. 

“And why might that be?”

“Because you make a mean pilaf. And I need a ride.”

“Well, hop into my carriage, then. I can’t promise a pilaf; that would take too long, and I’d rather not stay so exposed, what with all the recent… activity. But I’m sure I can provide you with some kind of sustenance.”

The Duke looked cheerful, but there was something hidden behind his jovial expression. In the back of Heisenberg’s mind, he suspected the Duke knew more than he was letting on: about the facility, about the village, about Miranda. Regardless, he wasn’t one to look a literal gift horse in the mouth, so he obeyed the orders and climbed into the Emporium. He was hit with the comforting scent of spices, and allowed himself to stretch out as much as he could among the copious ingredients and other trinkets. 

The Duke shuffled round to his side and began rooting through sacks of food. He produced berries, cured meat, and a wedge of pale cheese, all of which Heisenberg devoured within seconds. He didn’t need to eat in the same way that a regular person would; it was possible for him to survive without food for much longer. However, it still provided some much-needed energy.  

“Do you know what is happening with the village?” Heisenberg asked, talking with his mouth full. This was something he had always done on purpose, to defy Mother Miranda’s strict table rules at the rare family dinners peppered throughout his youth.

“I know enough to realize it’s time to move on,” the Duke replied evasively. “I always knew this day would come. Where to next, I have several destinations in mind, but I’ll always treasure my time here.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Don’t pretend that there is anywhere else you could see yourself belonging,” the Duke said, smiling, but with a cold edge to his words. 

“Careful,” Heisenberg told him, equally lighthearted and equally razor-sharp. He brightened his tone a little. “Did you see the World’s Best Dad on your way up? I’m looking for him.”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t,” the Duke answered regretfully, before he switched to omniscience. "It seems you have a real soft spot for Mr. Winters."

"Doesn't everybody?" 

Too defensive. 

The Duke smiled knowingly. "Touché," he agreed. "But I must admit, it was never something I expected from you."

"Well, I'm full of surprises," Heisenberg shot back. “Now will you take me to the facility, or not?”

“I’m delighted you’ve learned about its existence. I’ve done good business there. But I’ve no desire to return. It’s far too risky.”

“Are there still people there?”

“Not as far as I’m aware. Most have either been evacuated in a military carrier, or are helping with the efforts to take samples from the Megamycete. I’d recommend, if you ever get the chance, to look into their plans for it. Gruesome stuff, which I’m sure you of all people would appreciate.”

“I’ll bear that in mind. But don’t make me beg.”

The Duke gave a long-suffering sigh, and picked up a waxy red apple, peeling off chunks with a knife, popping them into his mouth. 

“What can you offer me, Heisenberg?”

“Anything,” Heisenberg told him, with all the conviction in the world. “I’d do anything.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” the Duke said, a strange quality to his voice. “Get comfortable, now. It will take us approximately four hours to reach the facility. I shan’t wait while you search, but with any luck, you will be able to follow my tracks to the nearest settlement.” 

He extended a pudgy hand adorned with many gold rings, for Heisenberg to shake.

“It’s a deal.”

They set off; the poor, supernaturally strong horse turning back the same way it had come. Heisenberg knew that he’d arrive faster by carriage, and he could take the time to rest. He also knew not to underestimate what he’d offered to the Duke. 

He put the debt out of his mind and told himself it would be worth it. 

Chapter Text

“Where were you headed?” 

“A good tradesman recognizes when business has dried up in one area, and knows where to find more. I was heading to Sfânta Silvia, which is the largest settlement within fifty miles."

“I know what Sfânta Silvia is,” Heisenberg muttered. “I’m not a shut-in.”  

“But you’ve never been there,” the Duke countered, proving him wrong. 

It was a sensitive topic. Heisenberg was loath to be reminded of his sheltered upbringing, his lack of freedom, his lack of courage to venture beyond Miranda’s domain. He had lived in perpetual fear of what she might do to him, and in that process, he had become so corrupted that even his own kind couldn’t bear the sight of him. Looking back, he knew he should have tried to escape before it was too late, so being reminded of his own cowardice was enough to make him sick. 

“Are you truly sure you can’t wait for us?” he asked, trying to pull himself out of the dark ruminations he was descending into. 

“It depends on the state of the facility. If it’s occupied by its original tenants, then no, I shan’t overstay my welcome. They have left me alone and it’s worked well for both parties, yet I have no doubt they’ll start asking questions if I’m seen acting as your chauffeur. You’ve earned yourself a rather unpleasant reputation.”

Heisenberg flashed him a proud grin. 

“If, on the other hand, the facility is deserted, then I would be willing to remain in place for, say… up to an hour.”

“Your generosity never ceases to astound me,” Heisenberg told him. The Duke merely gave him a pointed glance. “Do you at least have access to a telephone?” He changed the subject, considering the possibility of proactively calling for help.

“Not on the carriage. The closest telephone would be the castle, or the facility.”

“Damn it. There’s almost zero chance that a phone will be working there, not after the state we left it in.”

“Couldn’t you restore the power?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Heisenberg laughed, hollowly. “My ‘power’ is a thing of the past.”

“What do you mean?”

Heisenberg grimaced. “I was… operated on. The Cadou was removed from my body.”

The Duke looked back at him, brow furrowed. He appeared to be thinking it over, his small and critical eyes taking in the state of the man before him. His response was completely unexpected.

“That isn’t possible,” he said, after a moment.

Heisenberg cocked his head, inviting him to continue. 

“The Cadou can’t be removed. If it had been, you wouldn’t be standing here talking to me. You would be dead.”

Heisenberg frowned. Although he had believed he understood the way the parasite worked, he suddenly realized he only knew half of it. His life had been dedicated to implanting the Cadou, but he had never attempted to extract it. Why? Why didn’t I? It slowly dawned on him that Mother Miranda had warned each of them that their conditions were permanent, that attempting to reject her so-called ‘gift’ would be a futile and no doubt punishable endeavor. There had never been a reason to save any victim whose body the parasite had rejected, civilians were ten a penny and not worth the effort or the resources. 

Even Heisenberg was a little taken aback by his own reasoning. 

“But my powers have gone, or at least, they’re weakened,” he pointed out. “So they must have done something to it.”

“Yes, but it hasn’t been removed, ” the Duke insisted. “As you know, the Cadou attaches itself to the very nervous system itself, and spreads, much like a cancer. Once it’s successfully implanted, particularly in your case, as it’s been there for decades, attempting to remove it would be impossible without killing the host, not to mention almost impossible to eliminate any residual matter. Speaking as your acquaintance, I’d be seriously concerned as to what exactly the procedure involved. I recommend, once you reach the facility, you find the report detailing the results of the surgery; if, indeed, it can be salvaged. I’ve only ever seen the Cadou be suppressed through medication. Unless…”

He chewed the thought over, seeming grave and entirely pessimistic. 

“Spit it out,” Heisenberg prompted, uneasily.

“Unless it’s been replaced by something else.”

Heisenberg struggled to follow his train of thought. What could they have replaced it with? He was an engineer, not a biologist or a surgeon (although, weren’t surgeons simply biological engineers?), but images of more aggressive and nefarious organisms quickly filled his mind, a disturbing slideshow of teeth and tentacles. 

“How could you possibly know about all of this?” he asked, helplessly.

“I’ve had my own experiences with the Cadou, and my own motives for studying it,” was the simple reply that served to illuminate nothing. 

They lapsed back into silence.

Heisenberg watched the flames dancing higher and higher across the thatched village rooftops. He felt conflicted about it. He would have happily lit the first match and set the cursed place ablaze; at the same time, it was his home, and his entire lifespan had occurred within its boundaries. Perhaps it would end here, too; made all the more probable knowing that his torturers had interfered with the parasite and potentially replaced it with something far more dangerous. 

“Humor me, as I’m curious,” the Duke interrupted the quiet, adjusting his grip on the reins. “What are you going to do once you find Mr. Winters?”

Heisenberg appreciated the use of ‘once’ in place of ‘if’, but also recognized it as a condescending placation. 

“Try and wake him,” he shrugged. 

“What if he doesn’t wake up?”

“Then I’ll kill myself,” Heisenberg snapped. He realized it was true the words left his mouth. He’d had more volatile emotional reactions in the recent weeks than he could ever remember having. He understood on a logical level that he sounded extremely unstable. But that didn’t help to quell the intensity of his feelings. 

The Duke elected not to comment on what Heisenberg had said, and instead, he calmly asked, “Where will you go?”

Heisenberg hadn’t thought that far ahead, perhaps on purpose. All he wanted to imagine was the moment in which Ethan opened his eyes; what would happen afterwards was more difficult to navigate, and didn’t necessarily end so happily. 

“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure Ethan gets back home safely. After that…” He spread out his arms in a grandiose gesture. “Well, you said it yourself, right? Where else would I belong?”

“...Such a tragic tale,” was the only response he got. 

They had arrived at the facility, which lay a few hundred or so meters away from the partial cover offered by the treeline. There were no signs of life inside or out. Smashed glass blended with the glittering snow, while debris was scattered all around, indicating the disturbance that had happened days before. The emergency lighting was still visibly active, bathing the entrance hall in an unsettling red glow, although the alarms had paused. 

“This is where I leave you,” the Duke said, solemnly. “You have one hour.”

Heisenberg nodded. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by what he had learned about his own condition. Now, he was laser-focused on his objective: finding Ethan. 

He disembarked the carriage and began to walk against the bitter wind. Expecting to be ambushed at any second, he was pleasantly surprised to remain unaccosted, managing to reach the doors without incident. 

Inside, he was able to get a better understanding of the facility’s layout and how it functioned. There was a reception desk with several screens that had gone dark. He assumed they had once been connected to the CCTV cameras which were observable in almost every corner. 

Heisenberg progressed through the building slowly and quietly, though there was little he could do to disguise the sound of broken glass cracking into further shards beneath his boots. There were no residual traces of the monstrous form that Ethan’s body had taken, and Heisenberg wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one.  

In some places, there were corpses; unidentifiable in full-body tactical gear, with limbs splayed out at unnatural, broken angles. He assumed that was the exemplary work of a mutated Ethan. Farther, there were some corpses whose bullet wounds had leaked pools of blood that had dried into sticky brown smears on the flooring. 

Here and there, the red emergency lighting had failed entirely, bathing swathes of the facility in shadow. Heisenberg moved swiftly away from those areas, feeling a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. After several minutes, he came to an unlabeled area filled with computers, which he decided to enter in case any data stored there would be able to provide clues regarding his condition.

Inside, there were rows of monitors and keyboards. Lab reports were strewn carelessly across desk space. He approached and found himself rifling through each sheet of paper, checking for his own name or one he recognized. Some of the documents didn’t feature any name at all. Then he was looking at the results of a blood test, and below that, a series of other medical reports. At the top of each piece of paper and in answer to ‘TEST SUBJECT’, blocky writing spelled out “HEISENBERG, KARL”. 

He didn’t find any of these papers to be particularly illuminating, as he had a primitive understanding of medicine, and doubted his own results would ever align with a healthy human anyway. Still, finding the papers at this particular desk suggested there may be data on the computer as well. He attempted to turn it on, and nearly put a fist through the screen in frustration when it didn’t work.

He knew he didn’t have enough time to go searching for a backup power generator, and that doing so would attract unwanted attention. As far as he was concerned, that left a single unsavory option. In his uncertain state of physical health, he was reluctant to attempt call on his limited powers, especially after Redfield’s warning against using them. But if he was successful in summoning it, a small surge to supply power to the computer and learn more about his condition could prove worthwhile. 

Mustering all his strength and drawing on decades of experience, he allowed a feeble crackle of electrical energy to gather in the palms of his hands, feeling his internal electrocytes respond sluggishly but definitely to his efforts. As he summoned enough power to supply the computer for several minutes, he knew he had to work quickly. It was a great strain on his body and mind. 

The monitor was open on an unfinished document, unprotected by passwords - the facility relied entirely on its external security measures to avoid breaches, and research was shared openly between its staff. 

The document was entitled, Observations on the first attempt at using the Blestem parasite to subdue and upgrade the Cadou parasite.

Heisenberg felt his strength dwindling by the second as he barely managed to maintain concentration on powering the computer. He read as fast as he possibly could. 

The Blestem parasite is a more aggressive, more powerful, yet more particular version of the Cadou parasite. It has a more frequent rejection rate and it also tends to involve more complications for the host during the assimilation process, until it eventually rids the host of any agency at all. 

Bypassing academic jargon, he eventually encountered a phrase which sent a chill down his spine. 

Our hypothesis is that once the Blestem parasite has fully devoured the Cadou, it will move on to the internal organs including the brain until the host is little more than a vessel. At this stage, we will assess its utility, particularly in comparison to the non-Cadou test subjects, who were physically weaker and lost intelligence post-Blestem. 

Karl Heisenberg, one of the rare successful Cadou hosts, is the first test subject for this particular procedure, which involves infecting the Cadou with Blestem DNA, which will develop during an incubation period of several hours before it begins eating the original parasite. This process is likely to last for approximately a week before it progresses to the final stages. During the process, we predict that the host will experience bursts of power (in this case, electromagnetic surges) at varying levels, internal pain, and other symptoms. 

It is the organization’s hope that test subjects like Heisenberg can be used in order to 

The sentence stopped there, and so did his ability to maintain the power: he was suddenly overcome by an intense wave of pain that sent him sprawling onto the ground, breathing harshly. His vision was blurred, and he could see the computer screen had gone dark. 

Well aware he was running out of time, he focused on controlling his breathing and getting himself to an upright position. The inexplicable pain diminished slightly as the seconds passed by, but not completely, and his body felt battered and bruised.

Heisenberg realized that he was dying. 

He was surprised by his own lack of reaction. Ironically, there was even an underlying sense of relief: the question of what would happen to him, where he would find himself now that chapter of his life had ended, had been lingering like a black cloud over his mind. The thought didn’t shock him, either; he had never imagined a picturesque retirement, always expecting Mother Miranda to tire of him eventually. What angered him was not the concept of death, which had begun to chase him since he’d first taken a life. It was the idea that the B.S.A.A. had engineered that death. 

He forced himself to keep going and put what he’d discovered to the back of his mind. While it was not his main priority, revenge was now on the table. 

He picked up his pace, gritting his teeth against the pain, throwing a cursory glance into each window panel, every cell, every office. More corpses, more hastily abandoned projects and paperwork, but no sign of living occupants. The last time he had seen Ethan, his mutated body had grown to span the entire length of the facility, trailing branches of Mold, but he had been focusing his attention on the agents that pursued his allies. That had all taken place on the facility’s opposite side. 

As he continued, he was able to spot the main exit. He hurried towards it, and the glare from the snow momentarily blinded him. Feeling discouraged, he desperately hoped this side of the facility was harboring what he wanted to find. 

True enough, he didn’t have to go much farther before he spotted the unassuming gray shape that blended into the winter scenery. Drawing nearer with bated breath, his eyes adjusted to the brightness and identified an unmoving humanoid, around 5’10”, wrapped up in the tattered remains of a fleece hoodie and a jacket the color of grass.  

Chapter Text

Ethan's skin had lost all its color. Frost shimmered in the strands of his hair, on the cracked skin of his lips. His fingers were turning blue, stretched out across the white expanse of snow. To the untrained observer, one would easily assume he was dead. Yet the subtle rise and fall of his torso indicated some semblance of life remained. 

Heisenberg got closer and inhaled sharply when the illusion of a perfectly preserved sleeping beauty was shattered by the teeth sprinkled out like snowflakes on the ground. Worse than the dislocated jaw pushed out of place, worse than the snapped arm that lay limp, was the single unblinking eye, still linked to its optical nerve, covered in a thin layer of ice, staring up at the sky. 

The lord was good at breaking things, and far less successful at putting them back together. But he knew this was the most important repair he’d ever attempt, and time was running out. Painstakingly, he slotted the eye back into place, ignoring the unsettling squelch of viscera. Teeth were tucked back into bloody gums, the jaw popped clinically back to its original position. 

Heisenberg knew he had to wake him, but for a while, he was completely spellbound.

"Ethan," he whispered, crouching down. He tried to tenderly brush the hair off the unconscious man's forehead, but miscalculated and dug his nails into the skin.

He took a deep breath, puffing out a visible cloud on the exhale, and tried again.

"Wake up, Ethan," he said, more clearly now. He shook him by the shoulder, and then pressed the pads of his fingers to Ethan's neck, searching out a pulse. A dull beat sent relief to sedate him.

When Ethan began to stir, Heisenberg gathered him up into his arms and sat back, staring down at his bruised face, watching it slowly knit itself back together. He didn't care about keeping distance or startling him.

Ethan's eyes opened and he tensed. Heisenberg could feel it; his muscles stiffened and he blinked rapidly.

"Relax, it's only me," Heisenberg drawled, barely able to disguise his delight.

Amusingly, Ethan did relax, so that brought the total count of people who found the idea of Karl Heisenberg 'relaxing' up to a solid one.

"We need to get out of here."

"Where's Rose? Where's Mia?" Ethan’s voice sounded rough and strained. His breathing was harsh, and Heisenberg suspected that the healing process his unique body subjected itself to was a painful one. 

"They are with Chris and the rest of his loyal pack, and they're fine,” he answered patiently. “We don't have a lot of time, so I can entertain you with all the sordid details later. Right now, you need to stand up and walk with me. Not for long. Can you do it?"

Ethan didn't answer, but he was already twisting out of Heisenberg's grasp and attempting to lift himself up from the ground.

Heisenberg attempted to help him, but was brushed aside. The rejection injected a few millimeters of unfiltered rage into his bloodstream and he fought back the urge to scream and throw him back to the ground before biting into the skin of his throat for quite some time. Recognizing it as an overreaction was futile; he felt the full strength of the emotion all the same.

Ethan said something that brought him back to the present, but he missed out on what it was.

"Hm?"

"I said, let's go," Ethan repeated, staring at him warily.

They began walking, with Heisenberg intent on staying vigilant in case they were surprised by the return of any bioweapons or B.S.A.A units. Every so often, he cast his gaze down to watch Ethan walking, noting the way his limp faded into a regular pace, as evidenced by the gradient of tracks left behind them. At a later date, the butcher inside him would be deeply eager to discover the catalyst for Ethan's transformation, and the answers to questions such as how did it work?, could he do it again?, and could it be controlled?

“Where are you taking me?” Ethan managed to bite out. 

“If God is good, a mutual friend shall be awaiting us once we reach the front of the facility.”

“You don’t believe in God,” Ethan muttered.

“You’re right,” Heisenberg replied warmly. 

The flames assailing the village crept higher, and soon they could make out the Duke’s carriage, stationed patiently at the top of the snow-covered hill. Heisenberg was deeply relieved that he had waited; without a method of transport, it would take them days to reach their destination, and he was doubtful that his companion was in the physical or mental condition to undertake such a journey. 

“You better explain what the hell is going on when we get there,” Ethan said, out of breath. 

“How about, ‘thanks for rescuing me’, ‘thanks for saving my life’, or even, ‘thanks for being the only person who didn’t abandon me’?”

Ethan gave him a baleful stare. 

They reached the carriage. The Duke was as merry and affable as ever. “Mr. Winters, what a relief to see you alive and well.”

“I couldn’t claim to be well,” Ethan sighed. He climbed up onto the carriage, still ignoring Heisenberg’s proffered hand. His companion joined him up there.

“To Sfânta Silvia, then?”

“Yes.”

"How are you feeling?"

"Awful. My entire body is aching. I feel like I could sleep for a year."

“Do help yourself to any refreshments, Ethan. Or clear yourself some space for a siesta; there are plenty of cushions.”

Ethan shook his head. “Thanks, but... I need to know what’s going on first.”

He settled back against the carriage’s wooden frame, wrapping himself in an assortment of patterned rugs and colorful blankets he found within. Heisenberg sat opposite, knees tucked close to his chest, looking strangely small and harmless among the trinkets crammed into the cramped space. 

The carriage moved off and began gaining momentum as the horse picked up its pace. The lanterns gave a soft and cozy glow to the interior, in total contrast to the blinding white exterior landscape. 

Ethan realized he had no idea what had happened, or how long he’d been out. The last thing he remembered was Rose screaming, his vision going dark, and the sensation of every last pain receptor being set alight. 

“What do you need to know?” Heisenberg asked him, sensing that his mind was fraught with questions. 

“How long was I out?”

“That’s hard to pinpoint. Approximately a day. Twenty-four hours. Something like that.”

“And… what happened?” 

“I’m curious, too,” the Duke chimed in from the front seat. 

“Well, my friends, my esteemed colleagues, it’s quite the story. We begin with our hero, Ethan, who mutated into a gargantuan Mold-creature in order to save his family…”

Heisenberg regaled them with the grandiose tale, pausing to answer continuity questions. He left out the part where he’d discovered the Blestem, but included his struggles with regaining his powers. He wasn’t quite sure how to break the news of his terminal condition to Ethan, or moreover, wanted to avoid the devastation he’d feel faced with an indifferent reaction. 

Ethan began their discussion appearing somewhat distant and disorientated, though as the three of them conversed, color returned to his face and he seemed to better process his brush with death. The mystery of his transformation was a pertinent question that lingered on all of their minds, but nothing was more urgent than reaching civilization. 

As Heisenberg spoke, the sun descended below the mountainous terrain, casting them into dim light.

“So you have no idea if they’re safe, or where they went,” Ethan concluded.

“I suppose I know nothing for certain, but they seemed to leave in plenty of time. Chris mentioned a contact he could call, and he gave me this note.” He passed it to Ethan, who scrutinized it with a frown. 

“And your powers really are gone?”

Heisenberg made a face. “It’s… complicated.”

Ethan stared at him expectantly, waiting for an explanation. 

Heisenberg stalled, fidgeting around awkwardly. “By complicated, I mean it’s…”

“Will you just tell me?” Ethan exclaimed, growing impatient. 

"We aren't talking about this right now."

"I need to know."

"Why do you need to know?!"

The Duke interrupted, diffusing the increasingly tense atmosphere that had built up inside the carriage with ease. “We’ve been traveling for a while now, gentlemen. Let’s take a break and prepare some tea. Umbră needs feeding and rest, much like ourselves.” 

They came to a halt. It was now dark outside. Heisenberg exited the carriage to get some air. Around them, the landscape hadn’t really changed, though the castle was barely visible, only its towers spiraling into the clouds. Sparse trees and snow stretched out as far as the eye could see. 

The Duke eased himself off the seat and began searching for the sack of the horse’s feed. 

Ethan hopped out to stand beside Heisenberg, leaning against one of the pine trees.

“Thank you,” he said, eventually. “For coming back for me.”

Heisenberg just looked at him. He seemed healthier already, the pallid sheen gone from his skin, the whites of his eyes less dull than they had been. Still, he exuded an anxious, wounded energy, like a wild animal kicked and mistreated one too many times. 

“I’m going to make sure you get home safely,” Heisenberg addressed the trees.

Ethan wore the ghost of a smile. “And what will happen to you?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“...Actually, it does. The BSAA isn’t going to let you roam free, and you won’t survive out in the wilderness without your powers. They’ll track you down and kill you, or worse. You’ve seen worse. You should come with us.”

“Do you seriously expect me to believe your people wouldn’t do the same?”

“I’ll make sure they won’t,” Ethan shrugged.

“Why do you care?”

“You saved my life. I can’t forget that.”

"But there's no point anymore," Heisenberg snapped. "Do I really have to spell it out for you?"

"Oh, because I'm so damn stupid? Maybe you should."

"I'm dying."

Ethan turned to look at him, surprised. 

"They didn't just remove the Cadou from me,” Heisenberg spat out. “They put something else in its place. A more aggressive parasite. It's growing, and when it's done, it will eat me from the inside. It'll take over and I'll be just like those bioweapons."

He didn’t want to see Ethan’s expression, so he focused on the bark of the tree trunks, noticing various shapes in their twisted texture. 

“There must be something we can do,” Ethan asserted. His voice was disgustingly gentle. It made Heisenberg’s skin crawl. 

Heisenberg finally allowed himself to make eye contact. “There’s no place for me beyond here. I’m helping you, and that’s it.”

“I can’t leave you to die.”

“Your concern is touching, but I think we both know that you can,” Heisenberg answered, coldly. “Let’s get back on the figurative road.”

They piled back into the carriage, the mood now somewhat somber. They had been traveling for around four hours, and predicted that they would arrive at the settlement by morning. 

To pass the time, Ethan asked Heisenberg what he knew about the new parasite. But the lord was reluctant to discuss the matter, and all his answers carried a weary, warning tone. 

After some more reticent responses, Ethan picked up one of the weapons from the back of the carriage, a sniper rifle with a detachable scope. He searched through the weapons case, before finding an attachment and installing it on the weapon.

Then he pointed it straight at the man in front of him.

"What are you doing?!" Heisenberg yelped.

Ethan shushed him. "Trust me," he said, absently, but knowing the immediate effect the words would have. Heisenberg shifted uncomfortably and looked straight down the barrel.

Ethan fiddled with the attachment until it slotted properly into place. He put it up to his eye, taking aim, and careful not to let his fingers stray anywhere near the trigger.

The thermal weapon attachment painted a bizarre picture.

"Look at this," he murmured, passing the weapon to the Duke.

"That's certainly not the Cadou," he remarked.

“Well?” Heisenberg prompted, anxious and irate. “If you’re finished treating me like a circus spectacle, care to tell me what you’re looking at?”

“It appears that the new parasite is taking over the old. Slowly but surely, we can see this kind of throbbing, toothy, sharp creature eating away the Cadou.”

“I could have told you that,” Heisenberg muttered. “I read my file.”

“Did they say why they implanted it? What they were planning to do?”

Heisenberg laughed cheerlessly. “The report stopped at that crucial point. It’s easy to speculate, though - I imagine their principal aims haven’t changed much from creating the perfect bioweapon; one that’s strong and follows orders.” He turned to address the Duke. “It’s ironic. They called it the ‘Blestem’.’”

“What does that mean?” Ethan demanded. 

Heisenberg sighed. “It means ‘curse’.” 

Chapter Text

As the moon rose high and became part of the mountainous backdrop, there was nothing but the sound of carriage wheels churning through ice, and the occasional snort from Umbră. 

Now and then, the Duke would find himself seized by a coughing fit. It wasn’t enough to wake Ethan, who had fallen asleep, chin resting on his chest, half his face bathed in shadow, the other half lit by a mosaic lamp that swung precariously from a hook. It looked uncomfortable. Heisenberg had wanted to say, you can sleep on my shoulder. Pathetically, shamefully, he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle being rejected, so he hadn’t said a word, and just watched; and took great pleasure in being able to watch.  

Supposedly, Ethan was nothing special to look at. He was the spit of any suburban father, college-educated, wearing a smart ironed shirt with cufflinks gifted by his mother-in-law. He looked like he mowed the lawn outside his picket fence home, and belonged on postcards depicting the perfect nuclear American family. Wish you were here. Generic, bland, unremarkable, and yet so unbelievably remarkable. 

He liked baseball, he liked meeting with his friends and reminiscing about mischief wreaked in their youth. He had a surprisingly dark sense of humor and a rare, delightful laugh, that had somehow escaped being tainted by trauma. He was meticulous in the workplace and valued for his commitment to problem-solving. He was born in February, 1984. The date was only a few days away. Heisenberg wanted to find a gift but in his worst moments, he was terrified he had nothing to offer.

He had studied this man as if he were a textbook. 

He knew his tells, his every idiosyncrasy. The way his injured hand still shook even though it was years since it had been severed and repaired. The anxious way he reloaded his handgun, which was sufficiently efficient, and displayed shadows of his recent military training, yet operated more obviously on prey instinct. The near-imperceptible changes in his breathing that indicated he was dealing with great pain. Every little detail of Ethan’s life that Heisenberg had ever been drip-fed was neatly ordered in the files of a mental cabinet.

The problem was that he didn’t want Ethan to know any of this. He felt it would provide him an unfair psychological advantage, knowing that Heisenberg was unfathomably, painfully obsessed with him. 

While he mused, Ethan opened his eyes and looked straight at him. Some strangely intimate time passed between them before he finally whispered, “Do you hear that?”

Heisenberg was immediately alert. 

Sure enough, there was a subtle new addition to what had been a peaceful soundscape. A rumbling growl that seemed to be gradually gaining in volume. 

“Duke,” Heisenberg hissed. “Stop. Can you hear that?”

Dutifully, the man pulled back on the reins and brought the carriage to a halt. The three of them remained stock still, unease mounting, straining their ears to work out where the noise was coming from. As it got louder, they realized it was directly in front of them, and it sounded like an engine.

Not like a car; no, it was less powerful than that. 

The quad bike burst from the trees, coming to a roaring stop in front of them, spraying snow in every direction. Umbră reared up with a frightened, shrieking neigh, and the Duke called out for him to calm down. Inside the carriage, Ethan and Heisenberg stared at each other, frozen like deer caught in headlights. 

Ahead, the fateful words were uttered: “Don’t even think about moving, or trying to escape.”

Heisenberg had thought about it. He’d thought about dragging Ethan by the collar out the back of the carriage and sprinting off into the forest. But what then? It would be nearly impossible for them to find their way alone. 

Something about the voice that had spoken was familiar. Before he could grab the idiot and pull him out of sight, Ethan was peering out the gap between the front and back of the carriage so he could see what was going on.

“I suggest you put your weapon down. To what do we owe the pleasure?” The Duke was making frosty conversation with the new arrival. To buy them time? Whatever time they could borrow wouldn’t manifest a solution to their predicament. This was a hostile landscape, and any conflict would be fought with razor-thin margins. 

Silently, slipping so naturally back into survival mode, never lulled into a false sense of security, Ethan began taking an inventory of the weapons inside the case, slinging a shotgun over his back and stocking up on handgun ammo. Heisenberg followed suit, picking up the rifle that his companions had used to view the Blestem, complete with its thermal attachment.  

“It’s not you I’m looking for,” the person was saying. “Just hand over your passengers, and I’ll let you pass freely.”

“Ah, but all my cargo is important to me,” the Duke countered. 

“As important as your life? Hand them over, or I’ll put a bullet in your gut. It’s hard to miss.”

Ethan leaned up and whispered, “It’s okay, Duke. We’ll handle this. Don’t wait up.” 

Heisenberg admired his confidence, despite how false it must have been. Without needing to exchange a word, the two of them stepped down from the carriage, leveling their weapons at the stranger.

But he was not a stranger. Both men recognized his camouflage tactical vest, black coat, and night vision goggles mounted on a helmet. 

“Which is that one?” Heisenberg asked, out the corner of his mouth. 

“Lobo,” Ethan answered, grimly. 

Questions regarding why he was here, what he wanted, whether he had betrayed Redfield, flitted through their minds and were quickly dismissed in favor of adrenaline-fuelled plans to escape, assessments of their environment, and weighing up their chances. 

“Gentlemen,” the Duke addressed them head on, sounding pained. “I hope you can understand my predicament, and accept my apologies. I wish you the best of-”

“It’s fine, there’s no need for you to soapbox,” Heisenberg deadpanned. “Get yourself out of here.”

Prompted by the Duke’s cry, Umbră sped off, and their observers made note of the direction in which the carriage was headed, in the unlikely event they emerged unscathed. And so the three of them were left alone. They could not believe that safety had been stolen away from them just as soon as they’d encountered it, but simultaneously, they had expected something to go wrong, as it always did, as their luck dictated. 

Carefully, Lobo dismounted the ATV, keeping his rifle trained on them.

“What are you doing, Lobo?” Ethan asked, steadily. 

“I came to deal with him,” Lobo answered, jerking his head in Heisenberg’s direction. “I didn’t think you’d still be standing. You’re tough, I never gave you enough credit for that. But you’re also a danger, and a liability.”

“To who?”

“The B.S.A.A. Chris has gone rogue, I don’t know why we didn’t retire him years ago. While you’re all clutching your pearls at the idea of bioweapons being used by the US military, you don’t realize that other nations are getting a huge head start. If we don’t develop our own B.O.W.s, we’re setting ourselves up for a war we can never win.”

“What does any of that have to do with me? I just want to go home to my family.”

“You’ve always been naive, too. No one’s ever had the heart to tell you that you shouldn’t be within 100 meters of your family, God damn it. You’re not a person anymore, Winters. You’re a weapon, but not one we can use. You’re damaged goods and you’re too unpredictable. Killing you is a kindness to Mia and Rose.”

“Keep their names out of your mouth,” Ethan snapped. His hands were shaking around the grip of his handgun; out of cold, out of fear, out of anger. “Are they alright? Are they safe?”

“The last I checked, Redfield was carting them around the mountains on a quad bike. So I guess it depends on how you define ‘alright’, and ‘safe’. Alive, probably, but not for long, unless they turn themselves in.”

“How about we do some math?” Heisenberg burst out, suddenly. “There are two of us,” he held up a hand with two fingers. “And one of you.” On his other hand, he held up one finger, glancing between both and comparing them, with a falsely confused expression. “So… what does that mean?” He paused for dramatic effect. “That’s right!” he exclaimed, viciously, before dropping his voice. “You’re outnumbered. Run along home, little wolf. I’ll rip you limb from limb.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re really fucking embarrassing?” Lobo laughed.

Ethan fired a shot. It missed, and chaos ensued. 

It seemed that Lobo had come prepared to even the odds of an unfair fight. Almost immediately, a smoke grenade was deployed, and the illuminating moon wasn’t enough to improve visibility. More gunshots rang out, and all three men soon lost sight of each other. 

Who really had the advantage? Ethan and Heisenberg had been labeled as threatening, mutated freaks, but right now, they were confused, taken by surprise, and felt unable to control their respective abilities. Lobo was outnumbered, but he was decked out in tactical gear that gave him the upper hand compared to their unprepared, exhausted states. 

Through the smoke, it took seconds before Heisenberg caught a glimpse of a scene that sent a chill down his spine. Lobo had grabbed Ethan and was wrestling his weapon away. Though Ethan valiantly struggled, kicking his attacker in the groin, he was weakened, and it did little to turn the tables. 

Lobo forced the man to his knees and held a handgun against his temple, the rifle now slung around his back. Ethan was helpless, out of breath, seething with anger and indignation. The sight of him so vulnerable filled Heisenberg with dread, an intensely sick and possessive sensation that he hoped would motivate him to rescue them both. 

“This is farcical,” he spat. “You told me you’d kill him anyway, don’t try to convince me you’ll let him go.”

“Actually, I’m not sure if either of you have worked this out yet, but we’re pretty sure Ethan is ‘unkillable’, at least in our traditional understanding of the word. But there are ways to ensure he’s as good as dead.”

“I’m not hung up on the semantics of it. What are you doing?”

“Just needed a breather,” Lobo shrugged through the lie. Although he was masked, Heisenberg could sense the amusement coating his words like syrup. “I wanted to tell you that no one’s getting killed right away. That will come later. First of all, I’m taking you back to our base, as a gift for the geeks in the lab.”

“Well, I can promise you one thing. I’ll never be anyone’s lab rat again.” 

Lobo just chuckled, which bounced out of his helmet through a metallic, echoing filter. 

“You’re in the middle of nowhere, how are you planning to get back?” Ethan asked through gritted teeth.

“The B.S.A.A knows what happened; I gave them the heads-up that you’d probably run. They know you and Redfield’s rogue squad are still sequestered up in these mountains. Have you ever heard of thermal imaging technology? It’s especially useful in cold conditions. It won’t be long before we’ve rounded you all up. All I have to do is press a couple buttons on this portable comms device, and they’ll know exactly where to send the chopper. It’s all worked out, so don’t feel embarrassed. Amateurs like yourselves never stood a chance.” 

“You betrayed Chris.”

“Chris betrayed his friends, his team, his country, arguably the entire world. He’s a fossil, so set in his ways that he can’t see the greater good. I have no sympathy for a traitor. But I admire your effort to play for time. It’s your specialty, isn’t it? Reasoning with people and things that want you dead. ”

“You really like the sound of your own voice, huh.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bore you.” With the handgun still trained on Ethan’s head in his right hand, Lobo’s other hand moved in a rapid blur. Heisenberg did not even see or hear the dart until it was already embedded in his skin, and even if he’d reacted in time to shoot, there was no way he would risk hurting Ethan. 

He didn’t despair, because the words portable comms device had triggered something in his brain moments before, and he was fixated on that. Portable comms device. Military vest. Pockets. Knife. Grenade. Medicine. Ammo. Portable comms device. 

Before the tranquilizer dart ever reached him, his eyes zeroed in on the telltale shape of that metal box, filled with circuitry, and most important of all, energy. Electricity. Not knowing, nor caring, about the side-effects of using his power, he marshaled every tendril of his nervous system into obeisance. Portable comms device. Portable comms device. Portable comms device.

It exploded in Lobo’s pocket. 

Chapter Text

For hours, the scenery sped past in a blur of ghostly tree trunks, shadowy foliage, and glittering ice. The ride was bumpy and uncomfortable, with the relentless chill biting at their faces, turning their lips a pallid shade of blue.

Mia’s arms were bracketed around Chris’ waist, and in front of him supported by his arms either side of the handlebars was a small box which he had strapped securely to the ATV, where Rose was wrapped up warmly in her blanket. 

She didn’t know where they were headed. She wasn’t even sure that Chris knew; this sudden change of plans had been a spontaneous improvisation. Raising her voice above the engine’s rumble would have been too much effort, and besides, she doubted she’d be able to hear any response over the whistling wind. 

As they drove on through the mountains and forest, Mia found herself staring up at the sky and reflecting on the recent events that had turned her entire world upside down.  

It had started with her being kidnapped by Miranda, then being ‘rescued’ by the B.S.A.A. From there, she lost track of time, and knew only the characterless corridors of the facility. She had pulled out handfuls of her hair, cursing herself for endangering Rose. 

More than anything, she felt this was all her fault. Ethan had always been naive and unsuspecting, and at times she had resented him for that. But it was also the reason she loved him: his integrity, his simplicity, the comfort he provided, even if she didn’t truly believe he could protect the three of them from dangers she had brought to their family. 

When Ethan had shown up, part of her was happy to see him. She never wanted him hurt, she was elated to learn he was still alive, and she would be eternally grateful that he had protected and rescued their baby. But she also knew that he had entered a wolf’s den, and was unlikely to survive the experience for much longer. She had grappled with losing him so many times that it rendered her cold and numb. 

She did not understand how or why Ethan had come to collaborate with Heisenberg. The B.S.A.A had told her what kind of man he was, and while she didn’t trust them completely, there was irrefutable proof that he had tortured, experimented on, and killed hundreds of people. 

Mia loved Ethan deeply. She wished she had never involved him in any of this. She wished she had never joined The Connections, though there was nothing she could do to change any of it, and after all the trauma they had experienced, they would never return to the happiest days of their marriage. There were parts of her that pitied him, his innocence, his failure to recognize that there was no going back, that he was no longer the man she married, and she had never been truthful with him in the first place. And even though she knew it was wrong, it was a sobering realization that he would always put Rose before her. 

So what was left? 

Her internal battle with that question was cut short when she suddenly became aware that their surroundings had changed. They emerged from the treeline at the top of a hill, and far off in the distance, she spotted an arrangement of warm orange lights, and a cluster of buildings huddled together.

Even then, she did not allow herself to assume she was safe. If that village wasn't another figment of her imagination, that didn't mean its occupants would welcome two outsiders. The last time she had entertained the presumption of safety, she lost her baby, her husband, her freedom, all at once. She couldn't let herself hope. She just couldn't.

Chapter Text

Ethan was blinded by a bright light, accompanied by a loud bang and a heat that seared his exposed skin. Instinctively, he dove for cover and shielded his eyes from the fire. The smoke still lingered in the area, but when he finally moved his arms away from his singed face, he was able to piece together what had happened. 

Lobo was lying on the ground, seemingly unconscious, though Ethan acknowledged that might not last long. A little distance away, Heisenberg had collapsed, but was visibly moving and attempting to pick himself up off the ground. 

First, he stumbled over and kicked Lobo’s torso, who stirred with a groan. His gear was blackened by whatever had exploded on his person, and in some parts, his clothes had been burnt through to raw, pink flesh. 

“Tell me where Chris was taking Mia and Rose,” Ethan demanded. 

Again, all he received was a pained groan. He saw through the ruse and snatched the knife away before Lobo could attempt to stab him with it. Now crouched at the same level, he roughly grabbed Lobo's shoulder and forced his helmet off, so he was forced to make direct eye contact. He had never seen Lobo’s face before; it was bearded, lined, streaked with grit and inset with two dark eyes that glimmered with contempt.  

“Tell me,” Ethan repeated, warning.

“Are you really going to kill me in cold blood?” Lobo asked hoarsely. “He's really rubbed off on you, hasn't he?” 

“You were going to kill me,” Ethan snapped.

“No. I was following orders to bring you to our HQ,” Lobo said, wheezing as he struggled to sit up. “You don't have to kill me. I'll tell my supervisors that you were merciful, and maybe they'll believe that you're not too far gone. Maybe you can see Mia and Rose again.”

To his abject horror, complete and total devastation, and utter shock, Ethan shot Lobo in the face. 

Blood burst out like paint splatters in a child's artwork. Ethan heard himself hyperventilating, his entire body going into shock, but it all seemed as though he was viewing himself from the outside. The traumatizing image of Lobo’s mangled face, viscera, brain matter and bone shards oozing blood and fat onto the snow, was burned onto his retinas. He couldn’t breathe; he dropped the gun. 

His vision became hazy to an extent which could not be blamed on the smoke, and he was dimly aware of two hands establishing a firm grasp on his forearms. A gentle voice was speaking, but it sounded distant and muffled, as though it was being transmitted through a thick layer of cotton. 

The seconds ticked by and he became aware that it was Heisenberg attempting to reassure him, to talk him down from his mounting panic. Only moments before, it might have been comforting, given their newfound and tentative truce. Now, it left an awful taste in his mouth, confirming the guilty whisperings that crescendoed in his mind. He had become friendly with a monster, he had allowed himself to murder in cold blood, out of a contagious, evil rage that could only have been contracted from Heisenberg. 

Don’t touch me, he wanted to say. The words dried up in his mouth, and only sobs came out. He doubled over and began to retch, the contents of his empty stomach coming up in acidic spurts that splattered against crisp, unblemished white. All the while, the devil rubbed soothing circles against his back. 

After an eternity he sank down, trembling, head tucked between his knees. 

One thing he could see: a corpse the footprint of his boots.

One thing he could hear: the howling of the wind.

One thing he could taste: the copper of his own bleeding tongue where he’d bitten into it.

One thing he could smell: blood pine trees, not so far away. 

One thing he could touch: ice which turned to melted slush in his bitterly cold hands.

When he looked up, he realized that Heisenberg had moved away and was creeping towards Lobo with the anticipation of a hunter who had felled a buck. His movements were off; as though his limbs were all operating independently of his brain. Ethan wanted to call out, but he was halted by an overwhelming instinct to get as far away as possible.

Heisenberg fell upon Lobo's dead body, ravenously pressing his face into the mass of gore that Ethan had created, as though it was a fine cut of meat and he was famished. 

"What are you doing?" Ethan screamed.

Heisenberg raised his head, his entire face dripping red with strings of fresh coppery blood. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. His eyes had turned into a milk white color, indistinguishable from the snow surrounding them, unfocused and darting around like a rabid animal. 

"Stop," Ethan cried, borderline hysterical, starting forward then stopping in his tracks out of terror. "The fuck is wrong with you?"

He was unnerved by Heisenberg's drastic change in demeanor. It wasn't that he thought Heisenberg was sane, stable, safe to be around, or otherwise mentally sound. But this level of insanity just didn't match up to the man he thought he had come to know. It was a deeply disturbing sight that made him feel ill. Was it the parasite? Was this the way it would progress? It felt karmic, but he didn't... he didn't think he wanted that karma exacted just yet.

Heisenberg watched him, his body swaying, droplets of blood dripping down his neck and collar. 

Without being prompted, he appeared to snap out of the daze. 

It was the first time Ethan had seen him afraid. Even when he was being tortured, even when he admitted he was dying, Heisenberg still had a stupid, witty retort. Now, he looked shaken. A trembling hand went to his mouth, coming back stained. Eyes that had returned to their wolflike silver were filled with utter confusion and fear. 

"What just happened?" he whispered.

"You tell me," Ethan answered, nonplussed, folding his arms defensively. Yet the flood of relief that washed over him was undeniable, and spoke volumes that he refused to address right now.

"No," Heisenberg corrected him, still managing to be curt and somewhat condescending. "What happened to him?" He looked meaningfully down at the corpse before him, clearly unbothered by the gruesome scene of death. 

“I killed him,” Ethan spat the words out like cherry stones.

“In self defense?”

In lieu of responding, Ethan stared at him with hatred, because obviously it wasn’t fucking self defense, it was brutal and calculated and half of him was still replaying the sight of blood spraying vivid red against a blank white backdrop.

His mind was racing and he couldn't catch hold of any particular thought to analyze it. 

Heisenberg raised himself up off of his knees, appearing particularly unsteady on his feet, drained of color, and with one hand splayed out against his chest like a talon. Consumed by his own self-disgust, shock, and panic, Ethan couldn't process the sequence of events that had just occurred. 

He didn't flinch away when Heisenberg staggered towards him, and put his hands on Ethan's shoulders.

"It's nothing," Heisenberg said, slow and stilted like he was addressing a child. "He was a traitor. He was going to kill you." 

Ethan swallowed, hard. He was unable to meet the other man's gaze, feeling bile rise up in his throat. Instead, he pulled away, grabbed a handful of snow, and pressed it against Heisenberg's face, wiping away the blood. Strands of his hair had become matted and sticky. Patches of his clothing were dyed a rusty color. 

Heisenberg was silent, expression unreadable. He patiently allowed Ethan to clean up the mess, like a well-trained dog at the groomer's. Any enjoyment he would have had from the rare human contact was greatly diminished by the increasing concern that he was losing control.

"Tell me what you saw," he said, quietly.

Ethan paused. "Well, I don't know. You just... you just fell on him, like you were... feeding, off of him." He felt uneasy recalling it.

"That's not something I'm known to indulge in," Heisenberg said dryly. 

Ethan shrugged. "Wouldn't put it past you."

Heisenberg grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip. "Look at me," he commanded. 

Ethan closed his eyes and counted to ten before he opened them, accepted his fate, and obeyed. 

"It's getting worse. I'm probably going to end up hurting you."

Ethan laughed, genuinely. And then his expression shuttered off again. "I knew that way before this happened," he replied, softly.

They lapsed into silence, retreating into their own minds and desperately trying to get a handle on the situation. Their chances of survival seemed to be dwindling by the second. The wind had already partially covered the Duke's tracks, leaving only light treading of wheels and horseshoes. 

Heisenberg lay on the ground, staring up at the unforgiving gray sky. 

Ethan busied himself with investigating the quad bike, attempting to see if it could be started. The fuel was running a little low, but he suspected it was enough for them to potentially reach the Duke. He also tried to investigate the cargo box located at the back, then realized he needed the key both to open it and to start the ATV, which was likely on Lobo's person, or what has left of him, having been killed mercilessly then desecrated by a lunatic.

He returned and noticed that his companion was unmoving, breathing shallowly.

For some reason, he found it extremely difficult to force out what he wanted to say. It was like an invisible moral barrier blocking the words from leaving his lips. He pushed past it to woodenly ask, "Are you alright?" 

"I see chivalry is alive and well," came the playful answer, though he quickly dropped the pretense. “I’m in a lot of pain,” Heisenberg admitted.

Wordlessly, Ethan sat next to him. He was breathing in small, pained, sharp inhalations, muscles twitching here and there.

“You can’t use your power again,” Ethan asserted, tone firm. “It’s killing you faster.”

“That’s easier said than done, isn’t it?” Heisenberg laughed breathlessly, before he was overcome by spasms of pain again, coughing and gasping for air. He looked feeble; a shadow of his monstrous self. Ethan felt the beginnings of a split inside his mind: half that sympathized with the torturer and felt compelled to offer him reassurance, versus half that reviled him and virulently wished he would die sooner.

It was the dead of night. They were covered in a layer of frost, blood, dirt, dust, and shrapnel. Their surroundings were nothing but miles of snow stretching out as far as the eye could see, and an impenetrable army of solemn trees, daring them to lose themselves in the forest. For company, there was Lobo’s body, his face caved in. 

The silhouette of the ATV called to them, being their only hope of survival. Ethan was aware that the Duke’s tracks would soon be entirely blown away by the wind and the inevitable snowstorms that plagued the region. If Lobo had found them by using his scanner, others could do the same. They needed to move, but he didn’t know if his companion was in any state to do so. 

He headed over Lobo, deliberately averting his gaze from the worst of the damage. The key was secured on his belt, which he removed, along with a utility knife, a grenade, a handgun with a silencer, a box of handgun ammo, and in the cargo box, he found the scanner and a length of rope. 

He held up the key which earned him a crooked smile.

“Is it getting any better?” Ethan prompted, hating himself for caring.

He was met with a brisk shake of the head. Heisenberg was unexpectedly nonverbal, which signaled that the pain was serious, and there was no hint of improvement, nor a timeframe that suggested he might be ready to start moving soon. 

Ethan sighed. “I think we have to keep moving, otherwise we’ll lose the carriage’s tracks, and we’ll be stuck.”

"You know, that wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't mind dying here."

"Well, I would. Stand up."

It took some considerable energy, but he managed to get himself upright. They headed towards the ATV. Ethan helped him to a seated position at the rear, before getting into position at the wheel. Politely, Heisenberg made the minimal amount of contact with Ethan's waist required to stop himself from falling headfirst into a pile of snow. 

"I feel like I'm on a date."

"Shut up. Just shut up," Ethan muttered distractedly. He turned the key in the ignition, praying that it would start. 

The engine thrummed into idle. For a moment they wore two sets of matching grins. 

Ethan tapped away at the scanner a few times until the screen lit up, and set it to a radar interface. He handed the scanner to Heisenberg. "Can you keep an eye on this?" 

"What am I looking for?"

"Red dots are heat signatures."

"I see."

"I'm going to follow the tracks as best as I can, while they're still visible. After that, it's anyone's guess."

"I have utmost faith in your navigational prowess."

Ethan put his foot to the floor and the engine roared. They were speeding across the mountain and it wasn't long before they entered the trees. For now, the scanner was blank, indicating they were isolated, which came with its own advantages and disadvantages. The gas gauge dipped lower as the minutes passed by, but for now, they kept momentum.

Heisenberg allowed himself to consider what had happened. He was frustrated that he couldn't predict the prognosis of the Blestem parasite, and mulled over how quickly he would deteriorate into a mindless, slavering beast, driven by primal instinct. The irony was not lost on him.

"I'm afraid of losing control," Heisenberg said.

"What?" Ethan yelled, over the sound of the engine and twigs snapping beneath its tires. "I can't hear you!" 

"I'm afraid of hurting you. Of making you hate me more than you already do, when I've tried so hard to convince you to trust me."

"I genuinely can't hear a word you're saying!"

"I know, that's why I'm saying it. You're not the brightest, are you?"

"Do you want me to stop? This better be important, I swear-"

"No, keep going," Heisenberg shouted. It took an unfortunate amount of effort to raise his voice. His weakness was infuriating. And worst of all, was the gnawing pit of hunger in his stomach, which he could only ease by licking the taste of Lobo's blood and brains from the back of his teeth. 

"You're so damn weird!"

The litany continued, and so did they. "I'm going to keep you safe. I'm going to die before I let them hurt you any more. You'll have your house and your sweet little baby and your beautiful wife. Everything will work out. You'll be free."

Chapter Text

They had covered some distance when Ethan braked abruptly. Heisenberg craned his neck to see what Ethan was looking at. 

There was a body lying on the ground, clad in the tactical gear of the Hound Wolf Squad.

Ethan dismounted the ATV and made his way towards the casualty. Never misses a chance to help someone; always runs headfirst into danger, Heisenberg thought with fond irritation. He was close behind, helping himself to the handgun they had placed in the cargo box for safekeeping. 

Warily, Ethan knelt down and placed two fingers on the poor soul's neck. 

“He's dead,” he declared.

“Thank you, detective,” Heisenberg drawled. “Do you know his quaint little codename?”

“Night Howl.”

“Cause of death?”

“Gunshot to the head,” Ethan replied, grimly.

“I think it's safe to presume that Lobo killed him.”

Ethan shook his head and sighed. “I just can't understand why he'd betray us like this.”

“Of course you can't, so pure of heart.”

Ethan rolled his eyes and began to search Night Howl's pockets and utility belt. He uncovered a compass, another knife, and another portable comms device. 

“Okay, let's see if we can get this thing working…” Ethan frowned down at the tech and turned it over in his hands. 

Heisenberg patiently observed him at work, listening out for any potential threats.

The communication device lit up and produced a static sound. 

“Hello?” Ethan said urgently.

No response.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

The device crackled and a female voice belonging to Tundra responded, “Night Howl?”

“No, it's… it's Ethan. Night Howl is dead. I'm sorry.”

“What? What happened? Where's Lobo?”

A male voice spoke up in the background but it was unintelligible. 

“I… it's a long story. Lobo-”

Another voice interrupted their back and forth. “Please don't use the comms unless absolutely necessary. Continue with the plan, we'll reconvene and figure this out.”

“Wait, hold on. Is Rose okay? And Mia?”

There was a short pause.

“Yes. Now stop using this channel, it's not secure.”

“Have you ever seen him smile?” Heisenberg asked disdainfully. 

Ethan snorted. 

The comms went dead. They were extremely relieved to know that they weren't alone, that the others were still alive and on their way to the other village. That aside, there was still a long, difficult journey ahead of them. 

Ethan stood, before stopping short when he noticed something. He inclined his head towards the gun that was tucked into Heisenberg's belt. “Can I trust you with that?”

“I could kill you with my bare hands without breaking a sweat,” Heisenberg answered, bored.

Ethan gave him a long, blank look. 

This must be what a father's disapproval feels like, Heisenberg thought. 

“Let's go,” Ethan said, eventually, preserving the tension that remained suspended over their heads like a cloud. 

Heisenberg smiled to himself. 

Their good humor didn't last long. When they returned to the ATV, Ethan turned pale. Heisenberg glanced over and saw the source of his distress: the ATV had run out of fuel. 

“I can try to jump-start it with the Cadou. The Blestem, rather.”

“No,” Ethan said firmly, shaking his head. “Not after last time. I don’t want to risk it.”

Heisenberg didn’t particularly want to risk it, either. When the Blestem had taken over and he came to with no recollection of what he’d done, he felt an unfamiliar emotion: fear. It was not a feeling he wanted to grow accustomed to. 

He could see Ethan struggling between trying to figure out what they should do next, and managing his mounting anxiety. 

Heisenberg took pity on him. “We'll do it the old fashioned way,” he said, brightly. 

“Hm?”

Heisenberg stepped forward, wearing a sharp-toothed smile, delighting in Ethan’s discomfort as he reached out and plucked the compass from his dear companion’s pocket.

“This is a compass,” Heisenberg said, slow and patronizing. “It points due north.”

Ethan sighed, exasperated, absently checking his pockets. “Yeah, okay, I get it. So we’re just going to walk?”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

In response, Ethan began collecting the items from the ATV that he thought might prove useful. 

They started walking, following the carriage tracks which were almost gone by this point. However, the compass meant that they shouldn’t stray far from their intended course. 

“Shall we rest for a while? It's only a few hours til dawn. It may be easier to navigate during daylight.”

“We're more likely to see the lights from the village when it's dark.” 

“It's your choice. You seem exhausted.”

“Aren't you? I haven't had a second to process even half the things that have happened in the past few days.”

“A few hours of sleep wouldn't do you any harm. You can't keep operating on sheer adrenaline.”

Ethan hesitated. On the one hand, he was right; their energy levels were waning, especially after the fight with Lobo. On the other, they didn't know how far away Sfânta Silvia was, and if they wanted to catch up with the others, they needed to hurry.

Still, it was unlikely that a few hours would set them back significantly. And they could radio in the event of an emergency. 

He relented, nodding. They attempted to form a makeshift shelter by bending two young trees and lashing them together with the rope. It was not yet spring, so there were few leaves to cover them. But it was better than leaving themselves totally exposed to the elements.

When they settled down, Ethan became aware of how tired he was. His muscles ached, his eyelids felt heavy. Heisenberg removed his filthy coat and folded it into a rough square, offering it up as a pillow. Ethan lay down, curling into a fetal position in an effort to keep himself warm.  

“Rest. I’ll keep watch.”

“Thanks. I won’t need long. I just…”

“Take as much time as you need. You’ll be stronger and more alert the more you can sleep.”

Ethan yawned and let his eyes fall shut. It was freezing cold, but his exhaustion allowed him to sink into unconsciousness. After some time, he blinked awake, only to see Heisenberg observing him, still as a statue, as unmoving as the glass remnants of his siblings. 

"You're such a creep," Ethan whispered contemptuously.

Heisenberg elected not to answer, and kept watching him until his eyes closed and he drifted back to sleep.

A sliver of burnt orange sun peeked above the horizon when he awakened. He didn’t know how many hours had passed, but he felt better already. He sat up and stretched, yawning once more. 

Heisenberg wasn’t there. He told himself not to worry, that the man surely wasn’t far. Besides, they'd been practically joined at the hip for God knows how long. Watching the sunrise, he imagined making the rest of the journey alone. An endless solitary walk.

A few minutes later, Heisenberg emerged from the trees. He was holding something in his hands. He sat beside Ethan, keeping the object carefully covered.

“Do you know what the date is?”

Ethan shook his head. He’d lost track of the days, with more pressing matters crowding his mind, and a large chunk of them spent in artificially lit facilities or the dark expanse of the factory.

“I believe, if my sense of time is correct,” Heisenberg stated, “that you were born thirty-seven years ago on this very day.”

Ethan blinked. 

It was entirely possible that Heisenberg was right. True, he wasn’t certain of the exact date, but his birthday hadn’t been far off when he was still at the house with Mia and Rose. He felt a deep sense of sadness and nostalgia for that life, which now seemed distant. Mia would have baked a cake, and helped Rose to make him a card, maybe with a messy, painted handprint.

“How did you know?” he asked, to distract himself.

“We did a lot of research into your background, when we took you.” Heisenberg cleared his throat, feigning embarrassment. “Anyway… here’s your gift. It isn’t much, but I did the best I could with limited resources, to pass the time while you slept.”

He handed over the contents of his hands. Ethan accepted it and found himself looking down at a carved figure of a horse, cantering on stilted legs. It was sturdy, fashioned from pinewood, and the holes carefully cut out to represent its eyes were surprisingly expressive.

“The villagers carved wooden figures to ward off evil,” Heisenberg explained. “The evil in question being myself and my dear family, of course.”

“Did they ever work?”

“No,” Heisenberg smirked. Then his expression became more serious. “But those figures were goats. This is a horse.”

Ethan pretended he didn’t understand the significance, his hands continuing to trace over the rough woodwork. “Thank you for remembering my birthday,” he said. 

“You are so very welcome.”

Ethan stood up and returned Heisenberg’s coat to him. He carefully tucked the wooden horse into his pocket, wary but touched nevertheless. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the progression of their relationship, from sworn enemies to… he quickly gave up on finding an appropriate description. It wasn’t worth thinking about now; they were working together, and there was no need and no time to evaluate the ethics of it. 

“Ready to go again?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s continue southwest, then.”

“You know, if we’re going the wrong direction, we’re dead.”

“Ever the optimist,” Heisenberg said under his breath.

They made a good start that morning, finding themselves with hopeful spirits and renewed energy. Overhead, crows kept them company, wheeling and diving into the trees, watching them with inquisitive, glittering black eyes. 

As they went, Ethan made conversation by asking something that had been playing at the back of his mind. 

“How would you kill me? If you were going to.”

Heisenberg glanced at him and clicked his tongue, amused. “What possessed you to ask me that?”

Ethan shrugged. “Just curious. I’d like to know what to expect.”

“It would be long and drawn-out. Escalating in severity of harm, because your healing powers make you so durable.”

“What would you use?”

Heisenberg delighted with the chance to share his sadistic fantasies, handed to him on a plate. He gestured enthusiastically as he spoke. “I’m creative with my tools. There are bone saws, the trusty old scalpel. Hammers, ice picks, drills, pliers, and so forth. You would be amazed at what the human body can withstand. I built mechanical devices that could hook under your ribs and slowly prise apart your ribcage, or gradually disembowel you. But in the end, it’s a close connection we have, so I think you deserve a more personal approach.”

“...Such as?”

“Strangling. Watching the life fade out of your eyes while you maintain a futile struggle till the end.”  

Ethan fell silent while he imagined it. He kept his gaze fixed on his shoes, damp with snow, and forced one foot in front of the other, phantom hands tightening around his neck.

“You know I don’t want to kill you.” Heisenberg phrased it as a statement, not a question. His tone was a little reproachful.

“...Sure.”

“You don’t sound very confident.”

“Do I actually need to explain that one? Your track record isn’t exactly pristine.”

“I’ve never cared about someone as much as I care about you.”

Ethan stopped and stared at him, completely caught off guard. Heisenberg just smiled back and showed his teeth; it was frankly terrifying.

A twig snapped. In half a second, Ethan lunged at him and pinned him to the ground. 

“Buy me a drink first, Ethan, goodness m-”

Ethan clamped a hand over his mouth. “There’s a fucking bear,” he hissed.

Heisenberg had been mildly irritated at being taken by surprise, mainly because he had had to stop himself from snapping Ethan’s neck in response, instinctively assuming it was an act of aggression. Now, he was grateful. 

Ethan leant in close and whispered into his ear, “Play dead until it leaves.”

They didn’t dare move. Ethan was breathing shallowly into the crook of Heisenberg’s neck, eyes squeezed shut. The bear came into their peripheral vision, its brown fur rippling across its huge frame, and pawed at the ground. It seemed to pause, perhaps noticing them, and their minds filled with silent prayers that it had faith in tastier prey. It ambled through the sparse foliage, snorting as it went. It felt like an age had passed before Ethan dared to raise his head, his heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s.

Slowly, he rolled off Heisenberg's body until they were laying side by side, catching their breath after the scare. 

“That's not how I wanna go,” Ethan sighed. 

“With your healing, I suppose you'd be the perfect prey. The snack that comes back.”

Ethan turned his head to make eye contact and they both burst out laughing. It was relieved laughter, tinged with hysteria and sleep deprivation. It was hopeful and fraternal and the first time either of them could remember such genuine laughter in years.