Chapter 36
Wesker entered the lab room and shrugged his jacket from his shoulders, letting it slide to the floor. He tossed his car keys onto a nearby counter and resisted the urge to fall into a chair. He knew that if he sat down, he would never be able to stand back up.
“You don’t look so good,” Birkin said. “In fact, you look pretty bad. How long have you been awake now? Thirty hours?”
“Something like that.”
“You should sleep.”
Wesker leaned against a desk; it was the closest he’d allow himself to sitting down. “I have too much to do. I haven’t even finished packing the samples.”
“I can do that myself,” Birkin said. “You can even trust me to do that right.”
Wesker slid his fingers under his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “Are you saying that I can’t trust you to do the rest?”
“Well, I have this little thing called a conscience.”
“So do I. But I installed a mute button.”
Birkin smirked. “Very funny. But I’m serious, Wesker. You look like you’re about to fall asleep standing up.”
Wesker waved him away. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure you want to pack samples if you’re that tired? You might get clumsy and drop one of them. No offense, but I don’t think I trust you to do it right.”
“Fine,” Wesker mumbled irritably. “You pack the remaining samples. But I have to monitor the Bravo team. Check their progress.”
“I can do that too, you know.”
Wesker ran a hand through his hair and his hand came away greasy. He’d been too busy the past few days to take a shower. He hadn’t slept, he hadn’t eaten. Considering the importance of the work he was doing, exhaustion was not likely to lead to success. He really should get some rest if he wanted to be ready and alert for the final stage, planned for late tomorrow night.
But it bothered him that Birkin was urging him toward sleep. Birkin couldn’t have discovered anything important in the few hours he’d been gone, but then again, he was so tired that he might have missed something. Just because Birkin had a higher moral standard, or at least claimed to, it did not mean he was any less cunning. Most likely, he wanted Wesker asleep and out of the way so he could investigate the lab without his supervision for an extended period of time. Maybe he even felt that he could thwart Wesker’s plans.
Wesker doubted that. Things had progressed much too far for Birkin to alter in a few hours. The disease was rampant, the Bravo team was already there, the zombies were contained momentarily. What harm could Birkin cause in eight hours? That would be more than enough sleep for Wesker. And then he would be rested and alert and prepared for the what was to come tomorrow. By that point, Birkin’s presence in the lab would be irrelevant.
And besides, one of the reasons he had invited Birkin there in the first place was to hold the fort while he slept. If he refused to sleep, Birkin had no purpose there at all.
“All right,” Wesker finally said. “I’ll sleep for eight hours. Can you handle this on your own for that long?”
“You know I can,” Birkin said, sounding rather self-satisfied.
Wesker left the room and went down the hall to one of the smaller offices. He had set up a cot the day before, ready for him to sleep on when he finally couldn’t stay awake any longer. He kicked off his shoes and set his sunglasses on the floor beside the cot. He was asleep the moment he closed his eyes.
Birkin looked into the office a few minutes later. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway, looking down at Wesker with an amused smile on his face. Somehow, when he was asleep, he looked different. Less threatening, maybe, but certainly less calculating.
Birkin probably knew Wesker as well as anyone on earth, save for the fugitive Spencer. Wesker never just looked at people, he studied them. He sized them up and determined what their strengths and weaknesses were, and how he could successfully take advantage of both. Wesker’s mistrustful, manipulative nature was like a mask.
But sleeping, the mask was gone. The lines on his face softened, the harsh angle of his eyes relaxed, and the confident sneer of his mouth gone. He looked almost normal. He looked like he really did have a conscience. Birkin tried to remember what Wesker looked like when he was asleep. What he looked like when he wasn’t constantly on his guard.
It occurred to Birkin that in all the years he’d known him, this was the first time he had ever seen Wesker without his sunglasses on. He always assumed that Wesker even slept with them.
He left the room silently, although he didn’t think the sound of footsteps could wake Wesker now. He said he would sleep only eight hours, but Birkin intended to let him sleep as long as possible. He certainly wasn’t going to wake him up. Wesker could only boss him around and get in the way if he was awake, and Birkin wanted some time to search the labs and learn what Wesker planned to do next. The possibility that Wesker actually told him everything never even entered his mind.
Of course, he knew that Wesker planned on leaving him in charge, so he doubted that he would discover anything blatantly obvious. But it would be best for him to look around some more to get a better feel for the whole operation.
Annette didn’t like it when he called to tell her he wouldn’t be home. He was deliberately vague about what he was doing and when he’d be home, much to her displeasure, but there was no real way around it. He couldn’t very well confide in her that the Progenitor had gotten loose and all the scientists at Spencer’s lab were now the walking dead. He didn’t even tell her that was where he was, because that alone would have aroused too much suspicion. But he assured her that he would be home on Sunday night, as promised, and that helped derail some of her disappointment.
Unfortunately, Wesker’s little dilemma overshadowed Birkin’s family life, for the moment.
Birkin played the scenario over in his head a dozen times. Honestly, what would he have done in the same situation? Wesker hadn’t released the Progenitor in the first place, that had been the work of the mystery man at the treatment plant. Then Spencer ran off, leaving Wesker holding the bag. Nothing that Wesker did mattered by that point. Birkin gave Wesker credit for standing his ground even then. He could have followed Spencer’s advice and disappeared.
But to release the virus at the lab and infecting all the scientists working there? Was that really the best thing to do? Wesker had basically murdered dozens of innocent men, and for what? To save his work? To erase evidence and silence witnesses? To further his ambition? Wesker was too hard to figure out sometimes. It could be all or none of the above.
Birkin envisioned an outbreak at his own lab. The virus is loose, and it is only a matter of time before it spreads through the lab and reaches the city. What would he do?
Although he tried to believe he would take the noble course, he knew deep down that his first reaction would be to somehow delay the spread of the virus until he had secured the majority of his work and then escaped afterward, long after he had any chance of stopping it or warning the populace of the danger. His work was everything, it was his entire life. Wesker had said as much to him. He would not go about it in exactly the same way, but he would basically do as Wesker was doing. Contain the spread, minimize the chance of discovery for the time-being, and save as much of your work as possible before the outbreak gets out of control. Worry about yourself and your work first.
Infecting the other scientists was ruthless and inhuman to be sure, but it accomplished the desired effect: containing the spread. If Wesker warned the scientists, they would have escaped the compound and some of them would have undoubtedly informed the authorities. It didn’t even matter if the police believed them. The point was that it would not help matters. If Wesker had simply not told them and let the virus make its way there through more conventional means, then he would have had an uncontrolled outbreak, and some of the scientists might have escaped anyway
, maybe even infected ones. That choice could have spread the disease to Raccoon City even faster. It would have been a catastrophe.
Was that any better than deliberately infecting them all and letting them die? Was it any better than what Spencer had done? Was there anything Wesker could have truly done different? Maybe, but then he would not have been Wesker.
Birkin gradually made his way to one of the security offices and took a seat in front of a row of television monitors. Typing in a series of commands on a nearby keyboard, Birkin made the monitors come to life one by one, each displaying a different scene. Each screen showed the view from a different security camera from somewhere on Umbrella property. The Spencer mansion and labs, the Marcus labs, the old treatment plant, and even the closed training center.
Despite being deserted for well over a decade now, the training facility was never fully abandoned. Birkin never knew that it still had electricity and running water, and all the security cameras were still completely functional. At any time since the building had been locked up, Birkin could have patched into the security grid and viewed the rooms and hallways. Not that he, or anyone for that matter, had any reason to do so until just recently. But it was a good thing the cameras had stayed operational; Birkin doubted that Wesker could have made his plans without them.
Birkin sat back and put his hands in his lap. He felt like a voyeur in the worst way.
One of the cameras showed a black and white image of a narrow hallway ending in a small waiting lounge. There was an end table with an ornate lamp in the corner, two plush seats facing either side, and a black man crouched between a chair and the wall, a pistol shaking in his hands. It was one of the members of the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team. Birkin actually recognized where he was. It was down the hall next to the banquet room at the Spencer mansion. He wondered whether or not the officer would stay there if he knew that he could escape out the front door by simply taking the first door on his right and then heading through the dining room to the lobby.
Another screen showed the rec room at the guardhouse. An enormous dead spider lay in the middle of the floor, killed by another of the S.T.A.R.S. members earlier. Birkin watched the fight in tense disbelief, partially that the Progenitor could cause such unbelievable growth in a spider, and partially that the officer managed to kill it. He was still in the guardhouse somewhere; Birkin could use the cameras to track him if he wanted to.
And the most incredible scene of all: a side view of the lobby of the training center, showing the north main hallway. Everything was calm there now, but less than an hour before it had been quite busy. Birkin rewound the tape half a dozen times to watch the mystery man attack the two officers in the hall. Even after watching it over and over, he still was unsure exactly what it was that he had seen.
It was unprecedented for an animal to exhibit the characteristics the mystery man showed on the video. Birkin was beginning to doubt that his changes could be attributed purely to the Progenitor. Something else was happening. Rapid mutation, uncontrolled physical abilities, movement and speed verging on the supernatural. Nothing Birkin had ever seen in the labs prepared him for what the mystery man was turning into.
His speed and physical capabilities were simply staggering. He moved almost faster than the human eye could see for short distances. The first time Birkin watched the scene, he thought the video was skipping. And the way he lashed out his limbs, stretching them out to many times their original length before retracting them effortlessly, defied description.
Maybe Wesker could have given him a more informed perspective, since for all Birkin knew, Wesker already discovered similar effects in his own experiments. But Birkin opted not to even tell Wesker about what had happened. When Wesker asked if anything important happened while he was gone, Birkin said no. For the moment, he felt it best to keep some details to himself, just in case Wesker found his presence there unnecessary.
Wesker had pages of notes scattered across the office, detailing the events since the original outbreak. Birkin added notes here and there, adding what he felt was important enough to include but not important enough for him to keep to himself for now. He mentioned the current situation of all the members of the team, simply designating them numbers. He didn’t know any of their names anyway, and preferred not to, given the circumstances.
“Number One” was the man hiding in the corner lounge. He was the first man to enter the Spencer mansion, and was designated as number one for that reason.
“Number Two” followed Number One inside, and was now prowling around the second floor. Birkin hadn’t checked his progress in a little while, so he could have already been killed.
“Number Three” had also entered the mansion and was stranded in the southwest corner. Through the security monitors, Birkin saw what appeared to be a giant snake, yet another extreme mutation caused by the virus. It seemed likely that he would run into it eventually.
“Number Four” was the one at the guardhouse who miraculously killed the spider. Unlike the first three, he was not content to stay put and await his death. He made pretty good progress through the mansion and would soon make his way out of the guardhouse. If he kept going, he would surely make his way to the underground lab complex. Birkin gave him a lot of credit for getting as far as he did. He even killed a zombie or two with nothing more than his knife.
“Number Five” and “Number Six” were at the training facility, after somehow surviving the encounter with the mystery man. Birkin was confused about those two, because the man didn’t have a S.T.A.R.S. uniform on, and the young woman appeared to point her gun at him threateningly a few times. But they worked together and S.T.A.R.S. members were the only ones alive on the premises, so they must both be officers. Besides, Wesker told him there were six S.T.A.R.S. members, and no one else had showed up on a security camera.
Exactly how they made it to the training facility was a question he didn’t have an answer to. Their first appearance on video was in the main lobby of the mansion, and as far as Birkin could tell, they had come up from the basement, but there weren’t any cameras to explain how they got there. He guessed that they must have come from the train Wesker told him about, since the railroad tracks did come fairly close to the training facility. But how they got into the mansion was a mystery.
The last time Birkin checked, they had snuck through the training classroom to the rear of the building, and by coincidence went to the astronomy tower. They probably felt it might be safer in there than in the mansion. There were no cameras in there either, but they hadn’t left and there was no way for them to know the code for the elevator, so they must still be there.
So far, it appeared that none of the S.T.A.R.S. members had been killed. Birkin wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad, since Wesker’s plans required them all to die, but getting killed right away would make their presence there a waste of effort. They needed to stay alive long enough to effectively slow the zombies down, but once that purpose had been served, they were completely expendable.
Although in truth, Birkin didn’t see why that had to be the case. If the S.T.A.R.S. members somehow managed to survive, maybe even long enough to escape, what did it matter? The longer they survived, the longer the zombies might be held in check, and that was the whole point after all. The zombies were going to make their way to the city eventually, so nothing the S.T.A.R.S. members could do would amount to anything anyway. Why did it matter if they died here today or in the city a week from now? He would have to ask Wesker about it later.
He checked the cameras for a few minutes, seeing if he could track down the current location of all the S.T.A.R.S. members. Numbers One, Five, and Six were still where he had last seen them. He found Number Four heading down a long hallway entering the labs underneath the guardhouse. He was making some impressive progress. Number Two was out on the second floor balcony of the mansion. Number three was nowhere to be found, but a lot of rooms di
d not have cameras and Birkin could only assume he was hiding out in one of them. He wrote down everything in a notebook, listing the times and conditions of the S.T.A.R.S. members.
After sitting at the desk for a few minutes, staring up at the screens above him, he picked up a phone on the desk and dialed his lab back in Raccoon City. After two rings, someone answered
“Hello?” said a man’s voice. Birkin knew that a handful of people would still be working at the lab, even this late. Getting all the new tests and experiments ready according to Birkin’s timetable would require some overtime. Although they were understandably concerned about an unexpected call this late at night.
“This is Birkin,” he said. “Who is this?”
“Uh, Raines, sir. I work in lab three.”
Birkin put his feet up and tapped the desk top with his free hand, not really caring who it was he was talking to. “Listen to me. This is very important. I know we just got started with the brand new project today, but I need you to stop what you’re doing immediately. Scratch everything we have planned. No more tests, no more experiments, stop all work right away.”
“What? What do you mean –”
“Shut up,” Birkin ordered. “I’m not accustomed to anyone questioning me. You heard what I said. I know this is a shock, but you have to stop all new work as soon as I hang up this phone.”
“What ... what do you want us to do?” the researcher said in a weak voice. Birkin could almost imagine the man’s face going white with fear, but not just because Birkin was yelling at him. Everyone at the labs was smart enough to know that much of their research was borderline illegal, and if Birkin himself was telling them to shut everything down, that meant something serious was going on.
“Start taking an inventory,” Birkin said calmly. “Everything at all the labs. As complete as possible. I want comprehensive files set up for each variation and strain we have samples of. Thankfully, we already have some of that ready right now. But I want all documents and biological reports organized and filed. Have everyone start on this right away, and I mean everyone. Do you have phone numbers for the rest of the research teams?”
“Um, yes, some of them.”
“Call all of them and tell them to get to the lab immediately. Get the janitors and the security guards to help you. I want everyone working on this until I give further notice.”
“But, but sir ...” the man squeaked. Birkin knew in advance what he was going to say. “Everything, sir? That, that could take weeks ...”
“We don’t have weeks,” Birkin said. “I’ll be back at the lab late tomorrow morning. I’ll give you more information when I get there. Until then I want everything at that lab inventoried and organized.” As he spoke, he tried to think of everything that needed done. “I want all the sample catalogs pulled and put in order. Make sure everything is labeled correctly. I want all the biological reports and experiment details cross-referenced as thoroughly as possible, and I want all the samples organized to actually match our filing system.”
Birkin knew what he was asking of them, and it was just short of impossible. Over the years, Birkin allowed himself to get sloppy with such inconveniences as paperwork and filing. His own office at the lab was a mess of papers and notes in no particular order. He was told it would take weeks, but even that was ridiculously optimistic. Even with two dozen people working around the clock, it could a month or more to complete such an overwhelming task.
“Is something happening, sir? Are we getting shut down?”
“Nothing like that,” Birkin said quickly. “We’re being audited by upper management. I just found out a little while ago. They were going to inspect the lab without telling us first, so we need to get all this done as fast as possible.”
“Okay, sir, I was worried for a bit there,” the researcher said, relief evident in his voice.
“Just get started on the inventory. We have maybe a week before the audit, and it all has to be complete by then. I’ll call again before I return to see how things are progressing.”
“Okay, we’ll get on it right away.”
Birkin hung up the phone. That should get the ball rolling. By the time he returned to the lab, they should have gotten a good head start on what he actually wanted done. He didn’t really need all the files organized and cross-referenced, but he wanted them available without having to look for them. When he returned, he had to get as many samples packed away as possible. He needed all the biological reports in his possession, and all the samples at least set up to be taken away on a moment’s notice. He had to be prepared for the inevitable.
His turn would come soon, and he wanted to be ready for it.