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Albert Wesker was going to kill someone, whether it be himself or whichever idiotic light technician it was that decided installing light fixtures this bright would cause zero complications whatsoever.
His head continuously throbbed as his eyes glared down at the viral cultures from behind his shades like threatening them with his sole presence would miraculously cause a solution to summon forth from the viruses for his problems, which it would eventually, but not for the current one.
How he wished he could be bundled up in his bed right now to sleep the torturous migraine off, and he would have been were it not for Birkin dragging him out of his room—not literally, Wesker was much too heavy for someone of his stature but not for the lack of effort on his end—because the higher-ups were subtly suggesting them to pick up the pace as if progress that actually held value could be rushed like the meaningless research the other useless fools here were conducting.
Wesker shut his eyes and took a deep breath before reluctantly peeling his eyes open to squint at the report held in his hand against the blaring lights and his pulsating head. He stared at the black ink on the paper, seeing the words but not processing them in his jumbled-up brain. He stared at it longer, trying to force down the fuzziness in his mind long enough to just read the damn thing. It wasn’t working. He sighed, putting down the report on the lab bench and bringing his hand up to rub at his eye instead, knocking his sunglasses off-kilter in the process.
“Al, are you feeling okay? You’re acting odd,” a familiar voice perked up from behind his back, though it carried a particular lilt, softer than usual.
No, William, he wasn’t “okay”, he was in pain and he didn't want to be here working in the lab today but you already knew that because he had only complained about his migraine like five times.
“There’s nothing wrong, William,” Wesker said, lowering his arm from his face to pick up one of the viral cultures so it seemed like he was occupied with it, the tone flat and careful, an instinctual reply, and pointedly did not turn around to look at him despite feeling eyes against the back of his skull.
The silence after he said that stretched considerably long which told him that Birkin was most definitely scanning him over for any signs that he was being dishonest, which he was distantly aware that William must have found some by now and the only reason he hadn’t said anything yet was because he was cataloguing all of them.
The humming of the machinery around them droned on and on, until William’s voice finally broke through the silence, “You’re absentminded, which I don’t think I need to mention is highly unlike you, and you’ve been rubbing at your eyes a lot. Not to mention, your fingers twitch every so often. Need I say more?”
Wesker stood there motionless for a moment, but eventually relented and returned the viral culture to its rightful place on the lab bench to twist his body around and glower at Birkin, crossing his arms in front of his chest while leaning against the lab bench now behind him, “I appreciate the concern, truly, but it is unwarranted. Proceed with the research, we mustn’t delay any further.”
Birkin frowned and furrowed his eyebrows, evidently unconvinced. “Your rate of blinking is abnormal. Each blink is a fraction of a second longer,” he stated.
Had it been anyone else who said that, Wesker would have thought they were being absurd and talking nonsense. With his sunglasses, his eyes were obscured and made it hard to tell whether he was blinking or where he was even looking. Moreover, that hindered people’s ability to discern his feelings and thoughts, which he much preferred, with the sole exception of one William Birkin that was.
Be it because of the substantial amount of time they’ve known each other or otherwise, William, at some point, had apparently learnt how to read the, infamously, unreadable Albert Wesker flawlessly and unerringly while somehow simultaneously being abysmal at reading people in general.
One day, when they were both still in the training facility, Birkin had suddenly outlined his exact thoughts like each and every word were directly plucked out of his brain. It had felt like Birkin drove his fingers straight into his insides like he was one of his test subjects and pulled the organs out one by one to study until he’d dissected every intrinsic part that made Wesker up. It was unnerving. The squelching of viscera had lingered in his ears as he quipped back at William.
He’d had half a mind to order Birkin to keep his mouth shut but reasoned then that it was most likely just a coincidence. William was an erudite, precocious individual just like himself, logically, it was inevitable that they would have opinions and ideas akin to each others’, so it was likely just happenstance, a fluke.
That was until it’d kept happening again and again.
At first, he’d been indignant, irritated. How could Birkin have gotten a read on him? Nobody else had even come close to navigating the networks of his mind, yet the scrawny, socially awkward, exceptional child that was William sauntered in so casually as if he belonged in there. It was infuriating, disorienting.
(It was cathartic, having someone else perceive oneself so completely. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone, even himself. He didn’t dare to inspect his own feelings towards the matter.)
By now, he supposed that it was acceptable so long as William was the only being who could accurately read him, although he did still warn Birkin to refrain from exposing his opinions in front of other individuals.
Wesker sighed. “As previously stated— it is of no concern. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to work whilst having a migraine, I can handle myself,” he said, waving a hand to dismiss Birkin’s remarks, and turned back around to face the lab bench, signaling an end to the conversation, but not before adding one last comment, “Get back to work, William.”
“Seriously, I can handle the lab by myself for a few hours. I don’t mind if you need some time to curb your migraine.” Of course William could not take a hint. “You probably shouldn’t—“
“Need I remind you that it was your needling that led me here in the first place?” Wesker cut in, scoffing, “It would be best for the both of us to work lest we fall behind schedule.”
Wesker let that hang in the air for a brief moment. Hopefully, William, stubborn being that he was, would concede and allow them to work in solitude. It wasn’t that he disliked William or his voice— on the contrary, Wesker quite enjoyed his long ramblings and tangents, it was a delight to bear witness to his ambition. It was captivating and endearing, as radiant as the stars in space.
It wasn’t just any ambition, no, Wesker has seen and met ambitious people, people chasing meaningless dreams and aspirations, those who sacrificed and poured their blood into something only to amount to nothing in the end. They were fools.
But William, he and his ambition were like raging flames, so bright it would hurt to stare at but so hypnotic you couldn’t look away. (Good thing Wesker chronically wore sunglasses.) William always strived for more, never staying stagnant, surpassing the limits of humanity. Wanting to better himself, better the world— and he had the intelligence and capabilities to back it up.
Wesker loved to see the clockwork spinning behind his eyes, the moment when they widened as he achieved a breakthrough and his mouth stretched into a wide smile while his hand, gripping a black pen or pencil, scrambled across the surface of a piece of paper, eager to jot down the data and findings.
The way he got so easily entranced by everything, so filled with wonder towards the world and all it had to offer despite the horrors he’d seen. The way he studied with utmost focus, gaze rapidly flickering through texts and graphs. The way he could effortlessly refute the claims of the ignorant, showing off his knowledge and intellect.
Wesker had never met anyone like Will, nobody as fascinating as he was.
The problem, again, was his migraine. William wasn’t speaking particularly loudly, but the sound still made his head ring and he would much rather reduce the pain if he could.
“It’s not that you aren’t capable in the labs,” Wesker continued, voice mellowing out just a bit, placating, “But, one person can only handle so much at once, and two sets of hands make for faster progress. The quicker we complete today’s work, the more rest I can get afterwards.”
A nondescript sound was made, as if Birkin attempted to say something but abandoned the sentence before a single syllable was uttered, and then a sigh was heard.
“Just— don’t overwork yourself, okay?”
Wesker hummed but refused to give a proper response, choosing to instead focus on the task he was given.
It was ironic who that advice came from.
Wesker closed his eyes to mentally prepare himself, before turning his head slightly to look at the nearly empty tank to the right of the viral cultures. Inside was the dead, inanimate corpse of a mutated rat limply flopped over on the bottom of the glass tank, bulging muscles and tendons overtaking most of its tiny body with blood and pus leaking out, disfigured and grotesque.
Not nearly the worst thing that can be found in an Umbrella facility.
He tipped the glass lid forward just enough to reach his other hand into the tank until his fingers felt the slimy, squishy flesh of the rat. Taking the mess of pulp and bones out of its confinement, he placed it onto a stainless steel dissection tray he had laid out in front of him on the lab bench.
The rat was infected with a new strain of an unknown virus the higher-ups sent them to analyze. The mutations the virus brought were unlike the T-virus, causing accelerated, uncontrollable excess cellular growth. Wesker wasn’t sure how the virus was supposed to benefit Umbrella, considering it seemed neither efficient nor effective, nonetheless he and William were given this assignment, maybe it was thought that their combined intelligence would salvage the virus into something useful.
His hand went to grab a scalpel from a nearby mayo stand, lifting it up a few inches above the tray to rotate it around so that he could properly clutch it between his fingers—
His breath hitched when his fingers twitched, and the scalpel tumbled out of his hand and back onto the tray. A loud bang pierced through the room as metal collided with metal, as if a gun had gone off, causing a similar explosion inside his head.
He pinched his eyes shut and braced himself on the lab bench with one hand while the other latched onto his mouth. Nausea and agony consumed him as he gritted his teeth, willing his stomach to not expel its contents upwards.
“Jesus Christ, Al— shit— you didn’t get hurt, did you?”
The scraping of a chair against the floor grated on Wesker’s ears and he had to choke down the repulsive bile that filled his throat at the noise. He let out a shaky breath when his throat cleared, light tremors wracking through his body.
“Sit down, William,” he rasped, trying to regain his composure, hand tightening against the edge of the lab bench.
“What— Albert, you clearly aren’t in the condition to be working. I think you should step out for now—” Wesker imagined William was gesticulating with his arms even though they weren’t facing each other, most likely had an incredulous look on his face too, with his eyebrows raised and his gaze narrowed. “— I mean, you should be the one sitting down, your legs look like they’re about to give out from under you.”
Wesker straightened up, dropping both his arms against his sides, and interjected, exasperated, before William could put his hand on his shoulder as he always did, “Even in this state, I am perfectly capable of conducting a simple dissection.”
“If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be lab partners— that’s not the point. If you’re not going to leave, you should at least take a break. Are you not the one who keeps advocating for me to take regular breaks and to not disregard the symptoms my body displays?”
“That is because you constantly neglect to acknowledge and tend to your health, and you overlook your physical limits. I happen to be highly aware of my own.”
“I happen to be highly aware of my own,” Birkin deepened his voice, a poor mimic of Wesker’s, he could practically hear the eye roll that accompanied that line, and he did not put it above William to not also be striking a weird pose, “As if you don’t get drunk off your ass every time you’re in the vicinity of alcohol precisely because you don’t know your own limits.”
“That is unrelated.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t— you’re trying to divert the conversation, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “Fine, you’re certain you didn’t get hurt, at all?”
“Yes, William.”
“You better get some rest after this.” The pot calling the kettle black.
And that was that, Wesker heard the chair grazing the floor as William carefully adjusted his seat since he shoved it away haphazardly when he stood up originally. He, however, missed the worried look that Will had on his face as he did so, eyebrows pulled together, upper teeth worrying the lower lip, reluctant to leave Wesker alone after the obvious mishap, eyes only leaving his figure after he had resumed his own research.
Wesker cracked his eyes into slits, creating just wide enough of a gap to test whether the lights would aggravate the now receding nausea, and when it didn’t, he blinked open his eyelids. He did a quick mental once-over to evaluate his current physical status and wellbeing. Finding nothing amiss, omnipresent migraine aside, he figured he was fit to continue on with his dissection.
Accompanied by the resurgence of the clinking of volumetric flasks and burettes that echoed through the room, his right hand gripped the scalpel while the left pinched the forceps (without fumbling anything this time) and got to work.
He lightly laid the fine edge of the scalpel on the vulnerable flesh of the mutated rat, about where the top of the sternum should be if the mutations hadn’t caused it to shift around within its carcass. Then, applying a minuscule amount of force, he dragged the scalpel vertically downwards till the pubis by drawing his forearm backwards, relying less on sight and more purely on his years of experience, and scored a fine line, an opening that would allow Wesker to peer into the inner workings of the rat.
The jaws of the forceps descended into the incision and clamped onto the right flap of muscle and tissue, the side relatively less affected by the mutations, and pulled it outwards and held it down on the tray with the aid of a few pins.
Actually seeing the inside of the rat however, it, very quickly might he add, dawned on him that, with the oh so gracious presence of the migraine making it feel like his brain was moving through sludge and his vision ever so slightly fuzzy, all he could see was a blotch of red. Different shades of red, sure, but nothing with solid shape or form.
Wesker stood there, eyes pinned on the mess before him, blinking rapidly in succession a few times. His hands were held above the specimen, motionless, for a breath. Or maybe a few. He stuck the tools back in the corpse, eventually, depending on muscle memory and his prior knowledge of the anatomy of the Rattus norvegicus to locate the various organs and tissues.
In the midst of the monotonous and repetitive motions of slicing, peeling and cutting, his thoughts began to drift away. His body continued on with the motions, seemingly on autopilot, and his mind was on something else entirely, even though he should be focusing on making observations and noting down any significant changes.
He wondered. He wondered what it would be like in place of the rat.
In his mind’s eye, he saw himself lying there on a slab of metal, either a tray or a gurney, and gloved hands wrenching his skin open. Perhaps he was alive, kicking and screaming, though accurately speaking, this’d be a vivisection, but no, then he’d be strapped down with leather restraining his limbs and neck. After all, it would be a nuisance dealing with such an unruly specimen. Perhaps he was dead, which begged the question of whether he would be mutated, a virus rampant in his circulatory system and infecting his cells.
Perhaps he was neither dead or alive, consciousness absent yet the body moved. A better word would be reanimated, he supposed, like the subjects inflicted with the T-virus.
He thought of Lisa Trevor, who had been administered strain after strain, and yet still prevailed over death, at the cost of her sanity that was, who knew how much was left of Lisa Trevor in that husk. The women who remained bound in chains, suffering for an eternity. Perhaps he too had prevailed over death, and that was the reasoning behind his dissection.
Regardless of his status or the purpose behind the dissection, the hands delved into him, staining them with his blood, bright red against the pristine, white lab coat, tainting it. His bones creaked and his organs let out revolting squelches, protesting against the unwanted intrusion.
The hands belonged to a nameless figure, an undefined shape, a being that did not exist were it not for the hands. He wanted to push the hands out of his guts. This lowly, formless thing did not deserve to examine him so closely, could not even begin to understand his genetic makeup and anatomy, would not know how to map out his veins or sequence his DNA.
Though he’d give credit where it was due, the hands were those of a professional, they used no more force than they needed to, merely enough to get the results they needed. His ribs were removed from his chest cavity piece by piece, leaving his lungs unprotected as they sat there, motionless. The bones were set aside, however, as he turned to look at where they were deposited, they had vanished.
In the next moment, when he moved his eyes back forward, the figure shifted, no longer lacking in identity, but no less abstract. The figure became the embodiment of Umbrella, and Wesker’s heart dropped, and he did not understand why. The thought of being taken apart under Umbrella’s gaze, of Umbrella rooting inside of him, replacing parts of himself with their own, made him feel displaced in a way that he had not been in a long time, which was ridiculous as what was happening was not transplantation.
The room felt entirely devoid of oxygen, even though he had no trouble breathing just moments ago, he suddenly couldn’t get enough air into his body, forcing him to take rapid, shallow breaths, and he could see his lungs frantically expanding and contracting but it wasn’t enough and would never be.
The hands dug deeper into him. They were cruel, indifferent to the fragility of the human body, bringing pain and spilling blood wherever they touched. His intestines were leaking out of the gaping hole that was his torso, and he could feel the hands rubbing against his lungs as they were pushed aside like a gateway. There, his heart was finally displayed in all its glory, squirming and pulsating, tachycardic.
It made him sick.
He tried to look around for an exit, eyes darting around in its socket, a door, a hallway, anything, but they were surrounded by an all-encompassing darkness, an empty void. There was no salvation for him, nobody would come to liberate him from this purgatory. There would only ever be him and Umbrella, and he’d be delusional to think otherwise.
His throat tightened and his breath thinned to a degree he didn’t think possible, head spinning and ears ringing. It was suffocating. It felt like a hand had gripped his neck and started squeezing harder, and harder, and harder, and—
The figure shifted again, abruptly, and the shadow veiling it lifted at long last.
The figure became William Birkin, and suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, it felt like everything within him that had been dislodged snapped back into place.
The dread in the room lifted all at once, as if it were never there, and Wesker could breathe again.
He watched as William, paired with the stars in his bright, blue eyes, cautiously caressed the heart with a hand, like it was a rare specimen he’d never seen before. He leaned in closer, like he wanted to meticulously inspect every fine detail on each tissue. Then, with a scalpel that appeared out of thin air, he began slicing through the aorta.
He found that he did not mind dissection if the hands that cut him open belonged to William, and the mere thought was so outrageous that he immediately cast it out of his mind.
His body laid still as William disassembled his internal structure, encasing his organs in separate metal containers and preparing various tissue slides for further examination. Soon, he would be nothing more than a shell, a machine without gears or motors. William held the instrument that would be his undoing, stuck it inside him and—
Wesker’s hand slipped.
The scalpel clattered onto the metal tray as his right hand latched onto the gash he accidentally inflicted on the other. He could not prevent the awful, wounded sound that came out of his throat as the pain registered in his head, and he wished he could clamp a hand around his vocal cords to forbid it from producing a noise like that ever again.
He’d been so unbelievably stupid— committing such a foolish mistake an experienced researcher like him absolutely should not be making. Phasing out like that, not paying attention to the specimen— he wasn’t even wearing gloves, it wasn’t known if the virus could be transmitted by blood yet, he could be— completely, horribly asinine—
A hand wrapped around the both of his, his breath hitched as he tried to jerk his hands away, but the fingers held on tight. A second later, a mop of oily, blond hair appeared in his periphery— William, he realized and he felt his shoulders droop slightly, he hadn’t been aware of how tense he was until that moment.
He let William pry his hand away and allow the both of them to lay their eyes on the wound. It was a jagged, ugly laceration across the thenar eminence. Crimson, viscous liquid poured out of the cut but Wesker couldn’t tell how much of the blood on his hands belonged to him and not the rat.
William’s voice broke through the chaos swirling in his head, “— need to disinfect the wound now and stem the bleeding. I can’t tell whether you need stitches or not with all this blood, but it looks like a rather deep cut. I’ll go grab the first aid kit and you go run your hands under the water, okay?”
Before Wesker could respond, he was already off like a man on a mission. He blinked out of his stupor and swiftly walked over to the nearest sink and turned it on, leaving behind a bloody mark on the faucet which he wrinkled his nose at.
The stream of water turned murky with red the instant it hit his hands, streaming blood into the sink like a crimson river and splattering it everywhere within the basin, creating what looked to be a crime scene with how much of it there was.
He rubbed his hands together, mindful of not further agitating the wound, and scrubbed as much of the blood off the skin as possible. The water stung as it flowed over and into the gash but he paid it no mind, it was hardly the worst pain he’d ever felt.
The rhythmic thumping that was gradually increasing in volume alerted him of William’s return, and lo and behold, he reappeared to his left, white case in hand.
As Wesker tugged out a sheet of paper towel from the roll hanging on the wall by the sink, lightly dabbing the tear and the area around it to soak up the excess water to prepare for the upcoming treatment, William laid down the first aid kit on the counter adjacent to him and popped it open, grabbing a pair of non-latex disposable gloves and tugging them on.
“Al, hold out your hand, I need to determine how serious the gash is to see if I need to prepare to perform stitches.”
He complied, and William cupped his hand in his and drew it close to his face, tilting it left and right to look into the wound. He reached his thumb next to the laceration and lightly applied pressure so that the gap widened, allowing him to discern how deep it went. After the brief inspection, William had his verdict.
“Good news for me and you, stitches aren’t needed. Most of the blood may have been from the rat, though we still have to treat it as soon as possible, which is to say right now.”
William lowered his hand and let go, reaching back into the first aid kit to grab the materials needed to seal the wound. Wesker held his hand mid-air where it was left, awaiting the return of William’s touch.
His eyes never left William, committing his every move to memory.
The steady gaze, the way he acted with confidence, like he’d already planned everything out in his mind, the attentiveness, everything.
All for Wesker.
An invasive warmth lit up in his chest, warmth that he immediately pushed down before it could spread to the rest of his body because it had absolutely no business being here and would be treated with willful ignorance because the implications behind it were much too severe.
He mentally shook his head as a way to clear his head and refocus on the situation at hand as William pivoted towards him, antiseptic wipe in hand. Peering behind him, Wesker could see that an array of supplies were now laid out on the counter alongside the case.
“Hold still,” said William, likely as a formality, as if he hadn’t been holding still for the past few minutes waiting for him, and gently disinfected the area around the wound with the wipe. After that, he tossed the wipe on the counter, quite carelessly may Wesker add, without looking where it ended up, and grabbed the sterile gauze.
The gauze was placed on the cut and pinned with one hand as William picked up the tape on the counter with his other hand, bringing it up to wrap between the web of the thumb and the base of the palm opposite the side of the thumb, then a loop around the heel of the hand ending at the back and up till the gap between his thumb and forefinger again, repeating the process a few times, creating a v-shape.
Once the gauze was secure, William stepped back to admire his handiwork. Deeming it satisfactory, he reached for a bottle on the counter, which Wesker promptly realized was a pill bottle as it was brought closer to him.
“Here, ibuprofen— for the wound and the migraine.”
Wesker accepted it and popped out two tablets, throwing it back and swallowing it dry.
He watched as William packed the supplies back into the first aid kit, something lingering on the back of his mind, something important that he needed to mention, but he couldn’t quite recall what it was.
He mulled it over, replaying the past hour in his head, scanning through and looking for anything that was out of place besides the obvious accident.
Talking with William, preparing lab equipment, going through the lab reports, dissecting the rat...
The rat. The horribly mutilated, virus infected rat.
”Will. I need to be screened for viral infection. Now,” he spoke out against the relative silence of the room, emphasizing the urgency, nervous panic underlining his words.
William had the nerve to tilt his head, eyebrows furrowed, asking, “Why?”, like there wasn’t an active contamination risk and Wesker could mutate at any moment now.
“The blood of the rat had, undoubtedly, gotten into contact with my blood circulatory system and we hadn’t tested the virus’ method of transmission beyond direct injection—”
“Actually, about that,” William interjected, sheepishly, “I might have done some personal investigation between experiments when you were asleep, since... You know, I get bored waiting and the time could be spent doing something productive and all.”
William closed up the box and started tidying up the counter, wiping everything down with paper towels and collecting the trash he’d left behind, continuing, “I found that the virus actually migrates into tissue cells, and specifically only tissue cells. Even if the virus was injected into a subject’s veins, the virus would vacate the blood circulatory system and infect the tissue cells nearby instead. While it is a virus, its effects are surprisingly similar to cancer. I concluded that, unless the virus were to mutate, the only method it can transmit as of right now is by direct injection into a subject’s body. Case in point, I don’t think you have to worry about being infected.”
Wesker raised his eyebrows, once again questioning the higher-ups’ decision to investigate the virus, but shrugged it off, internally.
William let out a contented sigh as he stretched his arms above his head, no doubt his body was sore after doing lab work all day. Wesker blinked, then looked at the clock on the wall behind William. It was 8 p.m. They’d been doing lab work for 14 consecutive hours, give or take, skipping every meal along the way. William’s horrendous habits must have been rubbing off on him.
Wesker grabbed William’s wrist with his uninjured hand, stopping him in his tracks as he was about to move. “It’s late, we should retire for the night.”
William blinked at him, twisted his head to look at the clock, then back at him, frowning, “It’s eight, not even midnight yet, how in the world is that considered late? Besides, I still have more to do, you can go before me, Al, I’ll head to bed when I’m done.”
“You haven’t slept since two days ago.”
William froze, but it was gone the next second as he fumbled for excuses, “Well— the work I do takes time and— I don’t even feel that tired, really— I’ll be done soon, just go on without me—”
“You’re dead on your feet, your hands shake as you write as if your handwriting alone isn’t bad enough already, and your body is visibly giving out on you. You’re exhausted, Will, you can’t run on fumes. Come to bed with me.”
He remained silent, looking for a way to refute him. Finding none, as expected, William begrudgingly relented, “At least let me put away all the lab equipment first.”
Wesker had none of it, using the hold on William’s wrist to start dragging him out of the lab whether he wanted to or not. “An assistant can do that, we’re leaving.”
“Ah— you know I don’t trust any of those morons around our work.”
Wesker didn’t deign him with a reply.
William walked alongside him, knowing he had no way to sway him otherwise, but Wesker kept his hand on the other anyways, just in case he ran off. There wasn’t any other reason beyond that.
“Maybe I am feeling a bit tired, I think I almost tripped over my own feet three times.”
“You need to learn how to take care of yourself. You’re reckless with your own body. You can’t keep working if you keel over from exhaustion.”
“Save me the conversation, you’ve repeated the same thing enough times.”
“Yet, you still haven’t taken to changing your tendencies.”
“Besides, you’re the one that got hurt, so you should set your sights on yourself for once.”
“I’m perfectly healthy, the migraines are an exception.”
“Right.”
Wesker just walked faster in reply, making William scramble to keep up as he laughed.
He wanted to listen to that sound forever.