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Tracing the call to his cell phone had proved impossible to do retroactively, and while IT had given him detailed instructions on what to do the next time, Wesker hadn’t called him again, so they had to explore other avenues. It had not been easy, but they eventually managed to trace a little boy named Zeno W. to a comprehensive private school that was embarrassingly close to the BSAA headquarters. Well within driving distance from where he lived.
While he knew it was a long shot, Chris decided to go check out this lead anyway.
He decided to show up at the school in person around the time he got the phone call from Wesker the week before. He went alone, reasoning that if Wesker was trying to keep a low profile, he wouldn’t pose any danger, and that if he did, there wasn’t much backup could do except risk their lives. Chris had dressed discreetly, although from what he had read about the school, he knew he wasn’t going to blend in, and parked his car out of sight, walking the rest of the way. He managed to approach the entrance and saw a line of cars waiting to pick up the kids when the bell rang.
He recognized Wesker when his gaze met a distinctive pair of sunglasses in the side mirror of one of the cars. Obviously he’d keep his eyes hidden, lest he frighten the mothers that disproportionately occupied the other cars. He thought he saw Wesker shake his head minutely before he gestured at him to come over, so he approached the car, leaned against the passenger door, and looked inside.
Wesker didn’t seem all that surprised to see him and was only mildly annoyed, an expression Chris hadn’t seen since their S.T.A.R.S. days.
Chris waited for the window to roll down, and after seeing that he had no intention to get in, Wesker leaned across the seat and unlocked the door for him. “Get in, you fool. This is a school; you don’t have a kid, and you’re clearly carrying a gun,” he hissed the last part while he pointed at the shoulder holster concealed under his jacket. Chris blinked and got into the passenger seat quickly. “You were asking for one of the security guards to throw you out.”
“They could try,” Chris replied, although he knew that wouldn’t be a great outcome. Wesker looked unimpressed by his remark, too. They both seemed to realize this was the first time they were in such close proximity since their last fight, and it felt very awkward. “Weird seeing you again. What exactly are you up to, this time?”
Wesker looked at him through the darkened lenses. “What does it look like I am doing? I am in the pick-up line,” he said, with a twinge of irritation in his voice, and Chris couldn’t tell whether it was directed at him or the wait. Probably both.
“Because you’re picking up… your son?” Despite what he heard and what he read on the file the BSAA analysts compiled for him, Chris was still not convinced. “You’re telling me you had a son all this time?”
The car in front of them moved, and Wesker drove forward to prevent blocking the line. Chris checked the backseat and saw a car seat on the passenger’s side.
“Zeno’s not my son, really. He’s a clone.” Wesker told him, point blank. And Chris was stunned into silence, so Wesker continued. “I found him in a lab. I… I couldn’t stand the idea of him being treated like a test subject, so I took him.” Chris had a feeling he was leaving out a lot of details about his rescue, but if it was an Umbrella lab and Wesker had cleared it out, he couldn’t really complain about it.
“You took in a kid. As your child.” Chris was still having trouble wrapping his mind around it. It seemed too dissonant from the version of Wesker he’d come to expect after the mansion incident.
“In a nutshell, yes.” The cars moved forward again, and soon it would be their turn.
“And how does that fit with your plans?” Chris was curious to know. The last time they met, Wesker had been ranting about developing a new virus. How did PTA meetings fit into global saturation?
Wesker sighed. “It doesn’t,” he replied sincerely. “I didn’t want to send him to boarding school because…” he trailed off, and Chris nodded. They both knew he’d seen the files about his childhood. “And now I am stuck with school drop-offs, pick-ups, homework, PTA meetings, and fucking bake sales.”
Chris bit the inside of one cheek in his effort not to laugh at the idea of Albert Wesker baking.
Wesker glared at him, and Chris turned away, clearing his throat. “I’ve been there,” he said in his defense. Maybe not the baking part, but he had tried to be there as much as he could for Claire after they lost their parents. “Just wait until you have to chaperone school dances.”
Wesker drove to the designated space, then unbuckled himself and walked around the car to open the rear door so a kindergarten-aged child with white hair could climb in. Wesker put the small backpack on the seat next to him and buckled the child. “Do you have homework today, young man?” He asked the child, who shook his head and then was very busy staring at Chris, who had turned in his seat and was gawking at him.
“Who’s that?” The child asked.
“That is Chris. Chris, this is Zeno. Say hi.” As he spoke, Wesker was looking at Chris, who was still staring in wonder at the two of them, giving Chris the distinct feeling that the last remark had been directed at him rather than at the child.
“Nice to meet you, Zeno.” Chris extended a hand and shook the child’s, who was studying him with his startling grey eyes.
“Hello.”
While they exchanged greetings, Wesker returned to the driver’s seat and prepared to leave the pickup line, correctly assuming that Redfield was going to hang around them until he had more questions answered. For his part, Chris finally buckled his seatbelt and made a mental note to go back to pick up his car later. He couldn’t help but keep stealing glances at the backseat, where the child had quietly gotten an illustrated book from his backpack and was keeping himself entertained by flipping the pages.
“He looks just like you…” Chris whispered, stunned.
“Of course he does,” Wesker replied matter-of-factly.
“Oh. Yeah.” Chris shut up and tried to focus on the path they were taking. He doubted that Wesker would take him to his hideout, although the school probably had an address on file for him. That was something he’d need to check out later.
“Are we going to get ice cream in the park?” Zeno asked, looking up from his book.
Wesker glanced sideways at Chris, who nodded. He would have liked to speak more to Wesker, and he’d never turn down ice cream. Finally making his decision, Wesker looked into the rearview mirror and replied affirmatively. “Just as we planned.”
Wesker drove to the park, where the child walked ahead of them to a playground with the ease of familiarity, and Wesker invited Chris to sit on a bench where they could watch Zeno walk up to other kids to play next to them.
“Is this something you do often?” Chris had to ask. The whole situation was eerily normal, and it almost made him lower his guard.
“Once a week. On Wednesdays we go to the library, on Saturdays we go to museums or the zoo.” Wesker paused for a moment and lowered his voice. “He hasn’t seen the inside of a lab since I got him out.”
They both watched as Zeno quietly joined a queue of other children to go down the smaller slide, and Chris couldn’t help but remember how Claire had hated waiting for her turn while she was his age. The memory brought a smile to his lips. “You know, after your call I got our IT department to search for you. We tried every possible spelling, but it was not that hard to find you two. You must have the only child named Zeno in the country.”
Wesker rolled his eyes. “They had already given him the name, and he responded to it. I didn’t want to confuse him by changing it.”
“Albert and Zeno. A to Z.” Chris chuckled. “I get it.”
Wesker huffed. “You know, you could have just called me back.”
“I couldn’t trace your number,” he admitted, a little embarrassed. “And I still don’t know how you got mine.”
“Chris, you have had the same number since the 90s.” At least Chris had the decency to blush and shut up.
Wesker took out his phone and dialed Chris’s number without obscuring the number this time, then hung up at the first ring. “There, so next time you want to comment on my parenting skills, we can talk on the phone instead of giving the PTA moms something to gossip about.”
“Are the sharks circling the middle-aged single dad?” Chris joked, and a flash of red told him that maybe he’d accidentally hit too close to the truth. “Maybe I could join you at the zoo next time.” He was half joking, but Wesker was still glaring at him. “Or not; I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“It’s not that. Zeno’s invited to a birthday party this Saturday.” Wesker replied, some of his annoyance at the idea clear in his voice.
“Oh, ok.”
There was a mildly uncomfortable silence while Chris kept staring at the child, sitting in a sandpit and happily sharing toys with another child near his age. He couldn’t help but wonder if Albert would have been the same at that age and just how much Spencer had fucked him up. “Is he… has he been infected?” he asked, lowering his voice to a whisper.
“No. I got him out before they could do anything to him.” Wesker’s anger was boiling under the surface as he spoke, but this time it was not directed at Chris, and he was containing it. “Which is why I called you last week.”
Chris turned to look at him, curious.
“I have been decrypting the data I took from the Umbrella’s lab when I cleared it, and I think I uncovered enough information to guess the location of another secret lab, but it’s too far. I cannot go check it out while Zeno’s at school.”
“And you wanted to ask me to babysit him?” Chris asked, incredulous.
“Don’t be absurd. I was going to give you the coordinates so you can send your BSAA trained monkeys to check it out.”
That made more sense. “Ok, but if you wanted to share intel, you could have just sent it to HQ.”
Wesker raised an eyebrow. “I don’t trust the idiots you work for.”
“But you trust me?”
Wesker was saved from having to give him an honest answer by the child, who had abandoned his sandy endeavors to stand in front of Wesker and gently grasp his shirtsleeve to get his attention. “May we have ice cream now?”
Chris found the child adorable. He looked well taken care of and was polite and calm, which probably had something to do with the way Wesker spoke to the child, patiently and almost as if he were talking to an adult.
“Sure. Do you already know what you want?” Wesker got up from the bench, and Chris decided to go along with them to study their interaction longer.
He’d go back to his car after he finished eating his ice cream.