Chapter Text
Cold air slips through broken panes high along the warehouse walls, carrying the smell of rust and slow decay. It settles over the crates, concrete, and the scattered remains of a city that never learned how to recover.
BSAA agents cluster in small groups throughout the space. You watch their hands move through familiar routines. Tightening straps, resetting magazines, adjusting comms that crackle more than they speak. Their voices stay low, drawn into the same heavy air, until they are barely more than murmurs.
You drift closer to the opening where the warehouse yawns out into the street. Raccoon City stretches beyond it… or what remains of it.
Buildings stand in uneven rows, gutted and dark, their windows punched out like missing teeth. Cars sit abandoned at odd angles, doors hanging open, frames scorched into warped skeletons. Nature has begun its hesitant return in thin, stubborn lines. Weeds push through cracked asphalt, spreading into broken brick and iron where they can take root.
The sky presses low overhead, softening every edge and flattening the city into something closer to a distant memory than a place.
Even breathing here feels like an intrusion.
You let out a quiet exhale anyway and drop your gaze to your watch.
Still nothing.
The second hand drags forward with a stubborn rhythm, each tick stretching longer than it should. You check it again a moment later, as if time might have loosened its grip, bent just enough to break the waiting.
It does not change.
Your grip tightens around your rifle. You bring it up, checking the safety with a practiced flick. Safety on. Safety off. The familiar click settles into your chest, a small alignment that holds your thoughts in place, just enough to keep them from drifting too far from where they need to stay.
Yet they drift anyway.
You remember the village in Romania. Cold cutting through fabric and skin, carrying the thick scent of rot beneath the soil. The mold spores had already spread through the village long before anyone realized the air itself was compromised. You had breathed them in without knowing, mistaking them for nothing more than morning mist.
The fever came first, turning your body inward as heat and exhaustion stretched time into uneven hours. Then the wounds that should have taken weeks to heal… didn’t. They began to close with an unnatural pace, tissue knitting itself together too quickly, leaving no room for doubt. Something had shifted.
Your hearing stretched outward, catching details farther than they should have been audible. Your vision followed, extending in ways that never quite felt natural.
Your body no longer belonged solely to you.
The straps of your medic bag shift against your uniform, its weight settling back into your awareness with a familiar pull, almost grounding. Inside, gauze and tourniquets rest beside instruments meant to buy time, tools designed to keep a body intact long enough to matter to someone.
“Listen up.”
The Lieutenant stands near the center, posture held straight, his gaze sweeping the room until it settles on each and every one of you. Conversations fall away in uneven pieces, replaced by the soft scrape of boots against concrete as the agents turn in, the group subtly reconfiguring around him.
“Our objective hasn’t changed. We rendezvous with the advanced party in the center of Raccoon City, then move for the ARK.”
A brief pause follows, just long enough to draw every ear tighter towards him.
“Our mission is to retrieve Elpis.”
Elpis.
The word has been circulating through the chain of command in fragments, passed through classified briefings and partial clearances. Important enough to drag a team into the bones of a dead city, and and expect something to come back out intact.
Mind control was the rumor that slipped through the cracks of briefing rooms, carried in low murmurs and unfinished conversations.
You adjust your grip on the rifle.
Around you, a few agents trade brief looks, there and gone before they can fully take shape. Years of training smooths whatever questioning might have risen into something usable instead. One by one they fall into formation, bodies aligning into a tight, clean line. You fall into place without thought, fifth in line.
You tap the shoulder ahead of you to signal readiness.
The shift from stillness to motion happens all at once. Boots strike concrete in quick cadence as you move toward the opening. The warehouse releases you in stages, its dim interior thinning into the flat gray of the street beyond.
Weapons stay raised, tracking across broken windows, empty rooftops, and doorways that gape like open throats. Every angle is given a glance, every shadow checked for movement that might not be there until it is.
For a moment, it feels familiar, like muscle memory etched into your bones, something repeated thousands of times now.
Then everything fractures.
Gunfire splits through the street.
The first shot cracks through the air, violent enough to make your ears ring, echoing off the surrounding buildings until direction itself loses meaning. Sound ricochets, multiplies, then folds back into itself, turning the space into something distorted and hostile.
Blood splatters everywhere, followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground.
Someone shouts, voice cutting raw through the noise. “Man down! Man down!”
Another voice tries to answer. “Return fi-” The rest vanishes mid word.
You pivot on instinct, rifle already up, searching for a target that refuses to hold still. Movement flickers at the edge of your vision. A shape in a shattered window. A shadow behind a burned out car that vanishes back into the ruins before you can lock on.
Another shot rings out. A body drops hard two feet to your left.
Your training takes over.
You’re already moving towards him, mind racing through pressure points and openings. Blood spreads beneath him, dark and fast, soaking through fabric and into the cracks of the street as if the ground itself is taking it in.
Your eyes travel further… There is nothing left to treat.
The head is gone, shot clean off that your hands have no point of impact to press, no wound to close.
You freeze for half a second, long enough for the truth to settle with a blunt and immovable weight.
Another scream rises behind you. “Get cover!”
You snap towards the voice.
More shots ring out. Another agent hits the ground hard. His leg torn away mid thigh, the rest of him still trying to move on limbs that remain. His hands claw at the ground, breath breaking into raw, choking sounds.
This was something you could help with.
You move, rifle still raised in one hand, scanning the space ahead, the other braced beneath his arm as you drag him backward across broken pavement. Concrete grates beneath him, catching on fabric, leaving streaks of blood that smear into the dust.
He's shouting…. or maybe you are. The sounds blur beneath the constant crack of gunfire, no longer distinct enough to separate.
“Stay with me,” you hear yourself say, voice roughened.
Your mind is already moving ahead, the distance to cover, rate of bleeding, what you have left in the bag, how long you can hold him together before something gives.
Then something gives.
You never see the shot that hits you.
You feel it.
The bullet pierces through your plated armor and buries deep in your shoulder with enough force to knock the air from your lungs. The impact spins you sideways.
Everything pitches out of alignment.
You hit the ground hard, rifle skidding out of reach, your medic bag slipping loose. For a moment, everything collapses into a colorless silence.
Then it surges back.
Sound crashes in first, gunfire ricocheting, voices cutting through in fragments. Heat follows, blooming outward from your shoulder, spreading in a way that feels too large for the space it occupies.
Your hand clamps down over the wound, instinct taking over where clarity lags. Blood rushes against your palm, slick and warm, slipping through your fingers no matter how much pressure you force into it.
Your breath stalls, catching between chest and throat, then forces its way through in uneven pulls.
You press harder. It doesn’t change the bleeding.
You try to rise.
The world blurs in response, vision pulling at the edges as shapes move too quickly to hold form. Figures dart through the haze, agents dropping one by one, returning fire, shifting positions that don’t seem to last longer than a heartbeat.
And then… you see him.
At first glance, he feels separate from it all. He moves forward at an even pace, as if the ruins have already been mapped to his steps. Towering, composed, silver hair catching what little light filters through the gray sky. A white suit beneath a dark coat draped loosely across his shoulders. Clean lines untouched by dust or blood.
Nothing reaches him. Not the Gunfire, not the panic, not even the aftermath of blood and broken limbs still lingering on either side of his path.
Your gaze remains fixed on him, brows pulling tight beneath your helmet. Confusion threads through the pain. Something about him feels familiar in a way that refuses to settle cleanly in your chest, like a face half remembered from a dream.
Beneath that thought, something else answers. A warm tightening slips through your veins, it is small, almost nothing, yet impossible to ignore. The parasite stirs beneath your skin, reacting to him with a recognition your thoughts can’t yet reach.
You drag in a breath that falters halfway, your lungs refusing to follow through. Your hand slips against your shoulder, drenched now, pressure tightening as you try to hold the wound closed.
A short, fractured sound escapes you. It nearly becomes a laugh before it collapses beneath its own weight.
Not like this.
You had imagined endings before, different forms, different outcomes, but never something this abrupt… this stripped of meaning.
Your rifle lies just beyond your reach. You strain toward it, fingers dragging across blood and splintered concrete, catching on nothing. Your arm refuses to obey, pain flares through in a sudden surge that blurs the edges of your vision.
He's moving closer.
The dark lenses obscure his eyes, but not the rest of him. The way his head tilts, the way his attention sweeps over the scene… there’s a familiarity in him that presses in heavier with every step.
The agent is still there, slumped against the ruined car, hands locked around his rifle, refusing to let go.
The man steps into his space.
His pistol rises.
A single shot rings out.
Your breath catches harshly.
The sound cuts through you, lodging somewhere deeper than the wound in your shoulder. It lingers long after the echo fades, a dull internal ringing that refuses to settle.
He doesn’t spare the body more than a glance. His attention turns toward you.
Your fingers finally closed around your rifle. The weight drags at your arms as you force it up, muscles resisting, vision struggling to hold him in focus.
His pistol lifts in the same breath yours locks into place. You do not think.
You fire.
The recoil jolts through your wounded shoulder, pain flaring bright enough to steal your breath. The shot is clean. You know the distance. You know the angle.
It should land
It doesn’t.
He shifts, a blur too quick for your eyes to follow, catching only the ghost of where he stood. The bullet cracks somewhere into the ruins behind him.
The motion tears something open inside you. Your breath stutters, caught between disbelief and sinking realization.
Raccoon City flickers behind your eyes, a familiar street swallowed in smoke and screams. A S.T.A.R.S. uniform moves through the haze, blue shirt, dark vest, sunglasses perched on an angular face that never quite fit in a city like this, not even back then. The captain you had only glimpsed of on flickering news screens as a child.
No. That is not possible.
Your thoughts reach for something solid, something that can explain, and settles on a name instead. A file you should not remember so clearly. A photograph that lingered longer than it should have.
Albert Wesker.
Confirmed dead in Africa. Chris's reports left no room for doubt.
And yet here he stands, untouched by everything, composed with the same impossible grace the files had once tried to capture in cold text.
You tighten your grip on the rifle, holding it firm as a tremor runs through your arms, your strength slipping with every drop of blood.
He steps forward and closes the distance as if space offers no resistance.
Your throat draws tight
“…Wesker?”
The name drags out of you, roughened by pain and something that still doesn’t feel real.
He pauses.
His head tilts slightly, studying you like something that has changed in a way he did not account for.
And then you see it clearly, and something in you stills.
The mold’s signature threads along the left side of his face, delicate black veins slipping beneath the edge of his glasses, curving along the sharp line of his cheekbone before vanishing below the edge of his collar. Intricate and almost impossible to look away from.
The long barrel of his gun remains aimed at you, yet he does not fire. His gaze drops briefly to your shoulder where your gloved hand presses firmly against the wound. Blood seeps between your fingers, staining the uniform and the ground.
“You are still intact,” he says, more to himself than to you.
Your vision falters, edges softening as your body tries to pull you under. There is relief in it, it would be easier to let go, to stop resisting the downward slide.
Your hand tightens instead, holding on to consciousness.
His attention lifts, settling on the rifle in your grasp.
You don’t catch the next motion that follows. One moment the rifle is in your hands, the next it is gone, pulled free with a blurred efficiency that leaves you grasping at empty air.
Then he is closer, closing the distance and crouching in front of you, lowering himself with ease until you both are at eye level. Up close, the resemblance settles into something more tangible, more difficult to dismiss.
“Take your helmet off.”
His voice reaches you through the haze, smooth and firm, leaving no room for refusal.
For a second you simply stare at him. Then a sound breaks from you, half laugh, half strain, catching in your throat before it can fully form.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” you manage, breath hitching as pain tightens through your shoulder again, “But I'm a little indisposed currently.”
The words pull against your lungs, each one costing more than it should.
His gaze lingers on your helmet a moment longer, then shifts, tracking the way you're holding yourself together by stubbornness alone more than strength.
You feel the weight of his attention, the way it dissects, reducing you to components rather than a person.
“You are losing blood,” he says, tone almost absent of weight.
You let out a thin disbelieving breath. “Yes… That tends to happen when one gets shot.”
There’s a slight twitch upward at his mouth, nearly imperceptible.
Before you can react, his gloved hands close around the front of your helmet. Warm leather grazes along your jaw, sliding down the side of your neck where your pulse jumps hard against his touch. The contact pulls an involuntary breath from you before you can catch it.
The seal breaks with a soft hiss, and he pulls the helmet free.
Cool air rushes in, washing over your face, your throat, too sudden after the enclosed space. The helmet is set aside with a kind of practiced indifference, as if it had never been part of you at all.
He leans closer, Close enough that details force themselves into focus whether you want them to or not. The calm stillness held in his posture. The firm line of his jaw, the mold's signature along the solid line of his neck, the dagger earring on his left ear. And beneath the dark lenses, when the light catches at the right angle…
Gold.
Your breath hitches again, quieter, drawn thinner this time.
He looks at you, really looks. His gaze settles first on your eyes, holding there as if searching for something hidden. Then it moves slowly across your face, over the line of your cheekbone, to the tension in your jaw, the way you’re holding yourself together through sheer will alone.
“Say it again.” He says.
Your brow tightens, focus slipping in and out beneath the weight pressing through your shoulder.
“What?”
“That name.”
Your throat feels dry. The name catches on its way out.
“…Wesker.”
You force it through the haze, breath uneven, vision wavering as you hold his gaze a moment longer than your body wants to allow.
His eyes narrow behind the dark lenses, studying your face again, closer this time, as if he's waiting for something deeper to surface with the name. A memory, perhaps.
Something that does not come. A subtle recalculation passes through him, barely visible in his expression.
“No,” he says at last. “Not quite.”
The correction lands colder than the air against your skin. His attention dips again to your shoulder, to the blood seeping past the pressure you're forcing against it, slower than it should be.
Your strength slips another inch. Your arm threatens to give, the effort thinning what little control you have left.
He notices
Of course he does. There is no outward sign of it beyond the slightest shift in his eyes as his focus settles.
You swallow, the motion tight, and something in you reacts with it.
His scent.
Without the barrier of your helmet, it is immediate. Smoke lingers at his edges, threaded through something darker, like smoldering cedar. It fills your lungs before you can regulate your breath and stays there longer than it should.
His gaze lifts again, catching the change in you, the way your breathing stutters, the way your focus fractures for a second beneath the combined weight of pain and proximity.
You were already fighting for breath, and this…him, this closeness… tightens it further.
You resent that you notice any of it. Resent that your mind still has room to register scent and his closeness, when it should be narrowing to one mission only: Staying alive.
He just killed your team.
The thought strikes hard, giving you something solid to brace against, dragging you back into reality.
Yet you hold his gaze, unflinching, anchored in place by something more stubborn than strength alone.
Your voice comes out low, worn thin. “Kill me.”
His mouth barely shifts, settling into a small smirk.
“Hmm. Not yet.”
Before you can react, his hand closes over yours at your shoulder, firm enough to still you. He draws it aside just enough to expose the wound beneath torn fabric and fractured plating.
Air hits it. Pain follows immediately, jolting enough to tear a ragged breath from your chest. Your pulse surges beneath his grip.
He leans in. Closer than before. The space between you collapses into something narrow and inescapable. That scent follows him, stronger now, settling deeper with every strained breath you take.
His attention remains on your shoulder, studying the damage with detached, clinical focus, almost removed from the violence that caused it. He inhales once, deeply, as if registering something only he can smell.
“You have seen a biocontainment failure before,” he says.
Your jaw tightens, lips pressed together. You give him no answer.
“Raccoon City,” he adds, watching you.
Something in you reacts despite your effort to remain still, a subtle tightening you cannot fully hide.
His grip loosens slightly, recalibrating as though that single response has altered the framework he placed you in.
“Few still walk who can claim that.” he murmurs. “And yet here you are.”
A brief pause.
“Interesting.”
The word reaches you slower now, slipping slightly as your focus begins to thin at the edges.
“You’re… wrong,” you manage. The lie comes easier than anything else, though it costs more than it should.
“Am I?”
His gaze lowers again to your shoulder, to the blood now seeping slower than it has any right to.
“You are bleeding,” he says quietly, almost as if thinking out loud. “But your cellular structure is already healing.”
Your body answers before your mind can. Strength drains from your limbs all at once, like something essential has finally been severed. Your arm gives, your hand slipping away as the tension unravels completely.
Darkness doesn’t come all at once.
It arrives in uneven waves. Sound thins first. Then the weight of your body loosens slipping piece by piece, until even pain loses its bite at the edges.
His hand catches you before you can collapse fully, grip firm behind your shoulder, preventing the fall from completing.
The pain remains low and insistent in your shoulder, a dull pulse that keeps you tethered when everything else begins to drift.
You remain aware of movement. He gathers you with fluid confidence, one arm sliding across your back, the other slipping beneath your knees. The ground disappears entirely, your weight no longer your own as you are lifted and held with an ease that makes the motion feel unreal.
Your head tips to the side.
What little you can still see fractures into light and shadow, but sensations remain, you feel the fabric beneath your cheek, the solid line of his chest close enough to anchor you in something real.
The air shifts as he moves. Smoke and cedar deepen with each breath you manage to pull in, caught in the fabric of his coat, in the warm space around him.
The parasite beneath your skin hums deeper this time, a satisfied thrum curling beneath your ribs. It responds to him with an unsettling ease, leaving behind an awareness that is not entirely your own, as though some part of you is already reaching back.
You lean into him before you realize what you are doing. The hesitation comes after, a little too late to undo.
He adjusts his hold, securing you closer. One arm tightens as he gathers something from the ground, the motion distant, as though it’s happening somewhere outside your body.
Through it all, one thing remains clear.
Him.
The firm press of his chest beneath your cheek. The leather glove at your shoulder. The solid grip of him holding you together as your conscious slips.
And beneath it all. The low rhythm of a heartbeat… carrying you deeper into the ruins like a secret the dead city still refuses to release.