Chapter Text
"Have you tried turning the PC off and back on again?"
The young woman’s tone couldn’t have been more neutral, even though she was fuming on the inside. How was it possible that a member of the most elite police task forces of the country was such a hopeless case when it came to technology? Redfield had been a pilot in the Air Force and operated far more complicated machines, for fuck’s sake. How were his skills failing him now, just trying to use a computer? She seriously didn’t have time to play tech support.
“Oh, right. Didn’t even think of that!”
With a carefree laugh, Redfield pressed the power button, causing Livia’s heart to break even more. Instead of commenting, she swallowed her words. This is your job, Liv. If someone expected you to fly a helicopter, you’d be lost too.
In the early morning stillness of the S.T.A.R.S. office, the only sound was the whirring of the PC fans. It was seven in the morning—an hour before shift started. That’s why Livia had been so surprised to meet Redfield in the hallway. Normally, no one else was around this early, except for the receptionists. It was the only time she could enjoy the silence.
Her surprise at Redfield’s presence quickly faded, however, when she saw the state of his desk: a jumble of forms, folders, and presumably highly confidential documents that Livia had no interest in. A few years ago, that scene would have completely thrown her off. But she’d spent enough time living in a college dorm that she’d become desensitized to chaos. Now, it was just a sign to her that S.T.A.R.S. probably had just as much on their plate as she did.
Chris simply watched as the young woman took in the chaos on his desk, the silence between them growing heavier with each passing minute. He knew Livia Jones wasn’t the chatty type, but now that it was just the two of them in the office, the whole situation felt even more awkward. For a few seconds, he listened to the mechanical hum of the computer booting up before clearing his throat.
“Heard your little sister’s joining our forensics team soon.” His attempt to spark conversation failed as his counterpart responded with nothing but a nod. What was she supposed to respond anyway? Of course, she already knew about her sister’s internship. “Looking forward to seeing her again?” he added finally, throwing a desperate glance at the monitor, hoping for salvation.
“Yeah.” Her fingers drummed impatiently on the wooden desk. Her eyes, too, were fixed on the screen. She didn’t really have the time—or the interest—for small talk.
“She’ll be staying with me, so we’ll see each other a lot.”
Liv’s smile looked forced, but Chris returned it anyway. Even if she was socially awkward, she seemed genuinely happy about seeing her sister, and that made her at least a little more likable.
“Oh man, lucky you. I wish Claire would stop by more often. But, well, her college is pretty far away…”
Before Redfield could ramble on, the long-awaited bling of the computer rang out, followed by the loud clicking of keys. Livia looked over Chris’ shoulder as he hovered the mouse over the application he had previously tried—and failed—to open. Skeptical that it would actually work now, he clicked. The loading circle appeared, as usual… and then the window popped up.
“Thank God…” he sighed, leaning back in his office chair with relief. He was only ten minutes behind now, at least.
“Okay, perfect. Next time, though, file a ticket with IT support. I seriously have way too much to do to take on their job,” Livia said dryly, tapping the desk twice with her palm, ready to finally head toward the door—until she noticed the wrinkle in Redfield’s brow. She could practically see the gearwheels in his head turning, struggling to process what she had just said and utterly failing.
“Uh…Aren’t you IT, though?”
“IT security, not support, Chris.”
The voice behind her said what she was about to. Even though she hadn’t interacted much with the man, she instantly recognized him as none other than the Captain of the Alpha Team.
“Exactly. But don’t worry about it. I’m glad I could help.”
She gave Redfield one last polite smile before finally making her way to her own workplace. Albert Wesker, standing in the doorway of his private office, gave her a once-over. She looked exhausted: her hair was thrown up into a half-hearted bun, the circles under her eyes were visible despite the makeup, and her clothes looked like they were pulled hastily from her closet.
The fact that he even knew which department she belonged to surprised her—though not too much. He worked closely with Irons, and Irons definitely knew who she was. She wouldn’t be surprised if he liked to complain about her during his coffee breaks.
“Wesker,” she greeted with a nod as she walked past him. The blond man could clearly tell she had no interest in staying in that room a second longer. He mirrored her nod before disappearing into his office:
“Jones.”
With a relieved sigh, she felt the cushion of her desk chair give beneath her. Finally. Livia instinctively followed her routine: boot up the PC, pull out notepad and pens from the drawers, grab her folders. All the while enjoying the silence that accompanied her. Normally, the distracting chatter and gossip of her coworkers filled the room. But for now, she had a few more minutes before the rest of the team arrived. So, she immediately dove into her work while she could still concentrate. And that was more than necessary.
When Livia had sat down at her desk yesterday, she had already heard Wilson’s panicked voice. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to start her PC. Her supervisor—if he even deserved to be called that—had urgently tasked her to “take a look” at something. At first, she hadn’t fully grasped the seriousness of the situation, but once she saw the problem herself, there was no doubt. Stress and a bit of excitement bubbled up inside her at once.
“A virus.”
That’s what Wilson had called it. Technically, it was a worm, but Liv knew most of her department wasn’t up to date with the latest terminology. Not surprising, considering the team was mostly made up of middle-aged men. Regardless, Livia was both thrilled and alarmed. The worm itself had been neutralized relatively quickly and the immediate damage reversed, but one question remained: how had it gotten into the network and infected every RPD computer?
That question still plagued her even after she’d gone home. While yesterday had been spent neutralizing the worm, today was about identifying the vulnerability. As it turned out, every device in the network had been affected equally, so Livia couldn’t immediately conclude that the attacker had targeted a specific access point. After some thought, she had put together a plan for today that would help her identify the source relatively quickly, so she could finally focus on the more important question: who was behind the attack?
She was already going over theories and scenarios in her head as she pulled up the network logs. Maybe she’d find unusual activity that could point to the origin of the worm. The redhead was so absorbed in her work that she barely noticed her colleagues trickling into the office. It wasn’t until a loud conversation about last night’s football game echoed through the room that her attention shifted away from the screen.
“Mornin’, Liv. Any new findings yet?” asked CJ, having picked up on her annoyed expression. With casual steps and his hands shoved in his pockets, he crossed the room to get a look at her monitor. The lanky, brown-haired man was closest to her in age. Even though he didn’t understand much of what she did, he was one of the few who had treated her with respect from the very beginning. Now, with a furrowed brow, he stared at the network logs without really grasping what they meant. His specialty was more in physical IT security; when it came to code or networks, he was mostly lost.
"Alright... I'm currently analyzing the sequence of incoming data packets," Livia began as her fingers flew across the keyboard. "If I sort host activity by timestamps, I might be able to identify which device showed an anomaly first. Once I know that, I can check who logged into that computer and what was happening on it before the first infection started."
CJ stepped closer to her desk, his eyes scanning the complex columns of numbers and colorful markers on the screen.
"Makes sense..." he muttered, a hint of respect in his voice. "And this... is the activity from last night?"
"Mhm," Livia confirmed shortly. Her eyes narrowed. "But right now, I'm filtering only for the timeframe just before the first system alert. See this line here?" She pointed to an entry. "That's unusual. This computer was the only one receiving data packets at a time when no other host was online."
With swift movements, she continued clicking through the logs, a small crease forming between her brows. The lines on the screen changed as she entered new parameters. She stared at the monitor for a quiet moment, then zoomed in.
"There it is..." Her voice was quiet, almost reverent, like someone who had just discovered the entrance to a hidden room.
"Computer 27-D... the system was activated at exactly 6:13 a.m. Three minutes later, the first unusual processes were recorded—a chain of scripts launching automatically. After that, the worm started spreading through the network."
CJ took a step back, as if just knowing the origin made him uneasy.
"27-D... whose is that?"
She had many guesses, but none of them included walking up the stairs to the S.T.A.R.S. office for a second time today. Livia really wasn’t in the mood to instruct a coworker, but everyone else had firmly refused to take on the task. So now, it was up to her. The wood creaked under her black boots as she climbed the stairs with quick steps. She didn’t want to waste more time than necessary. She was far more eager to continue examining the worm and learn where it came from. They really didn’t pay her enough to educate people.
She had complained to Irons often enough that he needed to send his staff to workshops so situations like this wouldn’t happen. Of course, he never took her seriously, and now she had to deal with cleaning up his incompetence.
The frustration was so distracting that she opened the S.T.A.R.S. office door without knocking. Naturally, Rebecca Chambers, who had just been about to walk out, looked surprised.
“Oh, sorry,” Livia apologized once she realized her mistake. The brown-haired woman stepped aside so she could enter the room.
“No problem at all! What brings you here?”
Rebecca was as energetic and friendly as ever. Her energy reminded Livia a bit of Grace, her sister, which made interacting with her a bit easier. Still, Rebecca was noticeably more reserved, so Livia sometimes wasn’t sure if the woman from Bravo Team actually liked her or was just being polite for peace’s sake.
“Hey, Jones! Back again so soon?” Redfield called from his desk, raising a hand in greeting. The chaos on his desk seemed to have lessened somewhat, though there were still scattered documents all over. How could anyone work in such a mess? Barry Burton, Jill Valentine, and another S.T.A.R.S. member whose name Livia had forgotten also greeted her briefly. To her disappointment, Vickers wasn’t in the office today. He was probably the only one there with a real understanding of computers, and she would’ve liked his support in explaining to the Captain what exactly he had done wrong. But she seemed to be on her own.
“I need to speak with Wesker. He accidentally opened a phishing email,” she said bluntly, hoping that would be enough of an explanation. But Burton, who had probably only been half-listening, extinguished that hope: “Oh, I didn’t know the Captain was into fishing.”
“Maybe you should ask him to join you and Kendo on a trip,” Valentine added teasingly before turning back to work.
Instead of explaining what phishing was, Livia sighed. She really needed to have another word with Irons. It was already bad enough having to teach one person, but she definitely didn’t have the teaching skills to educate the entire team.
“Good luck, Livia! Just a heads-up, Captain Wesker’s a little… well, stressed. But you’ll do great!” Rebecca offered in an encouraging tone before the door swung shut. Honestly, the cybersecurity specialist didn’t care much about the Captain’s emotional state and couldn’t see why it should be relevant to her. Still, she headed toward the door to his private workspace.
“You might wanna knock this time,” Jill reminded her, prompting Livia to comply with the suggestion.
Inside, Albert Wesker, like the rest of his team, was deep in work. Several bodies had recently been discovered in the Arklay Mountains—likely a serial killer, thought Wesker. But to officially classify it as such, certain criteria still needed to be met.
As far as he knew, the Raccoon Police Department had been working on the case for several months now without making much progress. As a last resort, Irons had finally assigned the case to S.T.A.R.S.—albeit somewhat reluctantly. It seemed to bother him that his own units were too incompetent to track down the culprit. In any case, that’s what brought Wesker here: surrounded by binders, documents, and findings related to the investigation.
The blonde man thought his day couldn’t get any worse when suddenly there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” he called, though his tone was anything but inviting. That didn’t seem to faze the woman entering his office with loud, purposeful steps—or perhaps she didn’t notice at all.
“Miss Jones, how can I help you?” He was a bit surprised to see the redhead again so soon. It was rare to find Jones outside of her own department. That she appeared in the S.T.A.R.S. office twice in one day was both odd and intriguing. What could she want from him?
“I’m not here for help. I’m here to help you.”
Wesker furrowed his brow in confusion. Help him with what? She seemed confident, certain of what she was saying. In any case, he didn’t have time for long conversations. Just as he was about to urge her to get to the point, she continued.
“Does this email look familiar to you?”
A freshly printed piece of paper was placed on top of his previous work. Skeptically, Wesker read the message: an email from admin about a new antivirus software. The text looked familiar—but only vaguely. He may have skimmed it once but couldn’t specifically place it. What was all this about anyway?
“No. Believe it or not, I don’t memorize every email that comes through my inbox,” he replied sarcastically, trying to prompt Livia to speed things up. But the comment rolled right off her.
“Then, do you at least remember the system being down yesterday?”
He rolled his eyes, though his sunglasses hid the gesture. What was her point? Was she trying to embarrass him? He really had better things to do.
“Don’t take me for a fool, Jones. Get to the point. I don’t have all day.”
Taking him for a fool? That couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone knew Albert Wesker was a sharp man, but Livia wasn’t sure how versed he was in cybersecurity. Still, she wanted this conversation to be over as quickly as possible. The less she had to explain, the better.
“Alright. That email you received and opened—it’s a phishing email.”
The term was clearly unfamiliar to Wesker. Even though he tried not to show it, a flicker of confusion crossed his face. Uncomfortable with not knowing what she was talking about, he raised an eyebrow. His voice remained biting, almost condescending, as he said:
“Would you care to explain what that is?”
“You told me not to take you for a fool, didn’t you?”
His expression hardened slightly. The fine line between annoyance and rising anger was palpable. A soft cracking sound escaped as he clenched the pen he had been holding. He wanted to snap back, raise his voice—but Livia continued speaking, calm and undeterred.
“This email looked like it came from admin—but it didn’t. It was sent by an attacker trying to trick unsuspecting recipients into engaging with it. By downloading and running the attachment, you infected the entire network with a virus designed to steal sensitive data.”
A cold, threatening smile played at his lips. It wasn’t amusement—it was an attempt to mask the sting of being called out. The accusation—that he, Albert Wesker, had made such a mistake—was almost grotesque to him. She had to be trying to show him up.
“That’s not possible. I wouldn’t fall for such a cheap trick.”
“Clearly, you did.” She held up the printed log, showing the email, the attachment, and the timestamp of the first executed script. To underline her point, she tapped the asset number of the computer—it was unmistakably Wesker’s. Why was he even trying to deny it?
Livia recalled a moment with her sister that had played out similarly. Back when she showed her the solution to a math problem years before it was part of her curriculum—what had she said to her back then?
“It’s really nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of people your age fall for this kind of attack.”
Your age? It wasn’t a direct insult, nor should it have meant anything to the blonde man. Albert Wesker wasn’t easily rattled. Jones was perhaps ten years younger at most. And yet the sheer nerve of framing him as some outdated, out-of-touch old man annoyed him more than the words themselves.
"Are you trying to make me angry?"
"No, quite the opposite. I don’t want you to feel bad about this. People who aren’t familiar with the latest tech often can’t fully grasp the scope of attacks or the security risks involved. That’s why I’m here—to help you understand it better."
She meant it sincerely. Her brow furrowed slightly—a subtle sign of confusion at how he was interpreting her words. To her, this wasn’t a power play—it was about education. Nothing more. Nothing less.
“So you think you're superior to me?”
Wesker raised a challenging eyebrow, his expression teetering between genuine irritation and a flicker of mocking amusement. Maybe he was just testing her. Maybe he wanted to see if she was as unshakable as she acted.
“When it comes to computers? Absolutely.” She gave a small shrug—not smug, just matter-of-fact. Almost like it wasn’t an opinion, but simply the truth. Still, even she realized that might be a tough pill for him to swallow. So she decided to offer an example:
“Even if your password weren’t sitting out in the open,” she gestured toward the yellow sticky note stuck to his monitor, “with the latest tools, it’d take me seven minutes at most to crack it. You might want to think about using both uppercase and lowercase letters… and maybe throw in a special character.”
Wesker’s expression darkened. His entire posture tensed so noticeably that not even the sunglasses could hide his true demeanor. It felt like a direct blow to his ego.
Without another word, he growled, “That’s enough. Get out.”
His voice was a low, dangerous rumble. Livia couldn’t fully read him, though. She was a little confused by how the whole conversation had gone, but honestly? She was mostly relieved to be done with it. Now she could finally get back to her actual work.
“Alright then. Have a nice day,” she replied with a shrug, distanced and collected as always, before leaving the room.
She pulled the door shut behind her, only to be immediately met by Jill asking how it went. Truthfully, Livia wasn’t sure. But overall, she had the feeling that the Captain had gotten the point.
So… that was a win, right?