Chapter Three.

"We stopped checking for monsters under the bed when we realized they were inside us"

-Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahunik

August 17, 1980

23:52

"What took you so long?" Christine griped. She was laying across the couch in blue silk pajama's, face planted in some romance novel. The record player was blaring David Bowie, and there was a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray.

"The lab is completely abandoning the research on Progenitor and switching over to 'Tyrant virus.' I spent all day filing previous research and moving it to the basement," Annette said, visibly exhausted. She tossed her oversized bag on the dining table and pulled a chair out.

"What's 'Tyrant Virus?" Christine asked.

"I don't know yet... something Dr. Birkin came up with. Apparently it's a big deal. Once my shift was supposedly over, I asked if I could help him out with anything, but all he wanted was coffee." Annette made an exaggerated pouting face. "I couldn't resist. He's adorable."

Christine snorted and threw her book down against the coffee table.

"I think he's gay. Him and Al."

"You mean Wesker?"

"Yeah."

"They better not be. I stuck around to make Dr. Birkin four pots of coffee tonight!" Annette laughed, with an edge of disappointment.

"Al didn't want to go to dinner with me."

"And so he must be gay, right?" Annette pantomimed. Christine glared in response and swiped her book back off the coffee table. "To Play With Fire? That sounds ominous."

"I'm just skipping ahead to the parts where they fuck."

"That sounds thrilling. Can I have a cigarette?"

"I thought you quit?"

"I did. Then Dr. Birkin and Wesker decided we were going to switch over completely from Progenitor and make every lab assistant and researcher file away the past two years of research. Don't you have any say in that?"

"I just fax things, honey. Oh, and if you want one, get off your ass and get it."

Annette got up from the table and walked over to the couch, snatching up Christine's pack and lighter. She lit one up and immediately started sputtering.

"God, your brand is awful. I quit again."

"Good for you. I bet Dr. Birkin doesn't like smokers. You're too sweet looking anyway."

Annette rolled her eyes, though she knew what Christine meant. With corn silk hair and glass blue eyes, Annette looked more like she should have been singing her way through the hills of Austria than playing with potentially world ending viruses in the basement of a mansion turned laboratory. Or at least making coffee for the mad scientists responsible.

"So, how has your night been?" Annette sat down on the couch, narrowly avoiding sitting on top of Christine's legs.

"Tory can't decide if she wants to screw Magnus or Denzil. My money is on the guy who's name sounds like the god of big dicks."

"So, Denzil, right?"

"Oh, obviously."

"Why do you read that crap?"

"Boredom and sexual frustration. Speaking of which, would you like to hear about how Al turned me down?"

"It's not like I have anything better to do."

"Fantastic!" Christine tossed her book aside once again, and pulled her knees up to her chest, sitting against the arm of the couch. "Let me tell you, I have never met a man so singularly infuriating as Albert Wesker. He came to me, asking for a very large favor, and I suggested we discuss it over dinner, at which point he refused and left!" Christine made a little sighing noise and crossed her arms.

"And that's exactly what happened?" Annette asked, skeptical.

"Exactly."

"You're sure you didn't say something strange by accident?"

"Annie, my command of the English language is excellent. Anyway, Al is merely postponing what both of us know is bound to happen."

Annette raised an eyebrow.

"That being?"

"Well, obviously, Al and I are made for each other. We're both set on a path to the very top of Umbrella. He's really the only man I can see as being my equal. I mean, sure, Dr. Birkin is very smart and all, but he's got no vision..."

"Right, no vision. Well, I think maybe you should go over the plan with Al before you start picking out the color scheme of your nursery."

"You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?" Christine huffed. "Don't forget why you have this job." Christine pointed to herself. "Me. I know what I'm going to have, and you don't lay a finger on Will until Albert Wesker is mine." She was getting red in the face.

"As if that's going to be a problem," Annette responded, trying to make herself seem nonplussed by Christine's outburst. "I assure you, you have a much greater chance with Wesker than I have with Dr. Birkin. Anyway, thanks to those two, I need to go to bed. I have a whole day of filing to look forward to tomorrow."

Annette got off the couch and trudged off to her bedroom. Christine had been particularly bothersome of late, and it was starting to worry her. The obsession with Wesker was new, and Annette was fairly certain that it would end terribly.

Not bothering to take a shower or even brush her teeth, Annette collapsed into her bed, still wearing her blue polo shirt from work. She could already tell with a fair degree of certainty that she wouldn't be sleeping tonight. Between the last pot of coffee she'd helped Dr. Birkin finish off and Christine's worrisome behavior, tonight was going to be spent staring at the ceiling.

She thought about William smiling up at her when she came back into the lab with a fresh pot of coffee and remembering to ask her about her Ebola research. Then she thought about the prospect of losing her job, her apartment, and defaulting on her student loans.

Hopefully Dr. Birkin and Wesker really were together. That would save her a whole lot of trouble.

August 18, 1980

08:42

"Morning, Miss Weiss."

"Oh, hi, Dr. Sarton. How are you?"

Annette rubbed her eyes, trying to summon up the energy to have a conversation with her superior.

"Just 'Henry' is fine, Miss Weiss."

Henry Sarton was a heavyset man with thick red hair and nervous eyes. He twitched almost constantly, which lead to his nasty habit of bumping things over. Annette didn't particularly like him—his discomfort with everything was contagious. After spending enough time around him, she felt like she should be second guessing every action she made.

"Sorry; I forgot. What can I do for you, Henry?"

Dr. Sarton rocked back and forth on his heels.

"Dr. Birkin and Wesker are about to test the Tyrant Virus. All the researchers and assistants are supposed to observe."

In a lab where most everyone was under the age of thirty, Dr. Sarton was the oldest of the staff at thirty-five. Annette wondered if he resented being bossed around by a bunch of near-children.

"Is this immediate? I have a lot of work to do." Annette gestured to her workspace, a lone desk covered in papers, with several cardboard crates on the floor. "I don't know why no one bothers to file their research around here."

Sarton sweat. Annette wrinkled her nose.

"It's really rather urgent, Miss Weiss."

"Annette is fine. Let me just put these down..." Annette sat the papers down on her desk and did a cursory check of her name badge and lab coat. "Okay." She nodded at Dr. Sarton, who seemed relieved to leave her stuffy little office.

Female, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. Probable Russian or Middle Eastern ancestry. Coarse dark hair and wild gray eyes, darting everywhere. Gag over her mouth, tied down to the table.

A little sacrificial lamb.

Annette was sitting in the back of the large room, on top of an autopsy table, legs dangling above the floor. Next to her was fellow lab assistant, Gail, who looked completely exhausted. She was tall and gangly with olive skin, black hair and raccoon circles under her eye that matched Annette's. "What do you think they're going to show us?" She whispered to Annette. Annette shrugged in response.

Gail was the only other female lab assistant at Arklay, a distinction which lead to her and Annette frequently being paired together on projects.

"Dr. Birkin discovered some sort of Progenitor derivative, and now we're pouring all our resources into it. I assume they're going to show us what it is, maybe?"

"Tyrant virus, right?"

"Yeah, that's what it's called."

"Huh." Gail shrugged her shoulders. Annette heard the joints crack. "It better be really fucking good for them to be working us like this."

Woman at Umbrella were not known for their manners.

The room was full to bursting with researchers and assistants. Annette noticed that her fellow assistants had hung to the back of the room. Not having a doctorate was a sign of shame at Arklay, even though Wesker didn't have his either. He insisted on being called by his last name regardless. Annette didn't care for Wesker. Christine could have him, and his massive complex.

Dr. Birkin was hanging to the back, behind Wesker The Great. He looked just as beat up as the rest of them, if not worse. His posture had a stoop to it, and his hair was a disheveled mess. She felt a surge of pity for him.

How strange.

Wesker—perfectly composed, of course—got the attention of the room with a simple clear of his throat. He paced around the table where the girl writhed and screamed in protest to her restraints. No one paid her any attention.

"Today we will test the Tyrant virus on an... uncompromised human specimen." The lights shined off of Wesker's gold hair, illuminated him. Annette imagined the view the girl must have gotten of him from the table; some sort of angel of death.

"Prior experimentation on the Progenitor Type-B specimen proved to be inconclusive."

Lisa Trevor—the girl in the basement. She must have been a test subject first.

"The subject is a healthy 23 year old female of Bosnian descent with no complicating conditions. We've collected a DNA sample of her prior to infection that will end up on the desk of one of you lucky ladies or gentlemen." Wesker smirked. "Tyrant virus is an RNA acting mutagen derived from a composite of Progenitor virus with leech DNA, which stabilizes the otherwise uncontrollable mutations Progenitor may cause. As of now, the effects of testing upon a human population are unknown... but we are soon to find out. Dr. Birkin, if you will?"

Birkin produced a syringe from his lab coat, and the girl began screaming louder than ever. Birkin smiled down at her.

"Hush, it's almost over. But, I'd like to thank you for contributing so much to the field of virology."

He stuck the needle in her throat. The death was almost immediate, eyes fluttered, her body loosened to the restraints, head lolled to the side. Dead as a doornail, or whatever the saying was.

And Dr. Birkin had killed her too, right in front of a whole room of people who had sat by and watched as she screamed. Annette tried very hard to care. They were monsters, were they not?

But she couldn't bring herself to feel anything for the strange little girl who could have been her friend, laying on the autopsy slab, dead and gone while twenty people watched her demise at the hands of a man Annette still found herself attracted to. The situation had a very unhinged feeling to it all.

Dr. Birkin stood back and appraised the subject, who was rapidly graying with death.

"Well, death is useful, but we could have achieved the same effects with a neurotoxin. We need contagion."

"You have very little patience, Dr. Birkin," Wesker remarked.

It was odd, their little couple's spat right in front of everyone. Annette wanted to giggle, or maybe cry, she wasn't too sure, because the world felt like it was tilting on it's axis to her.

Be sad.

Be fucking sad.

Be shocked or horrified or angry or something.

And then the tears came, she felt them welling up behind her eyes, in a strange burning way, because she hadn't cried in so long, and they weren't tears for the dead girl. They were tears for her own emotional impotency.

Something is wrong with me.

"Hey, Annie, why are you crying?" Gail whispered, a perplexed look on her face. Annette searched herself for an acceptable answer, but before she could respond, someone yelped in surprise.

Annette snapped her head back to see the girl fighting in resistance of her restraints again. But something was different this time. Something was very different.

She broke the restraints this time, hissing and growling. The gag in her mouth was spat out, a chewed up and bloody mess. The subject's skin had taken on a blue-gray tinge, and there was blood oozing out of her mouth. The whole mess reminded Annette of a horror movie.

The girl sat up from the table, to the fascinated horror of Dr. Birkin. Annette couldn't see Wesker's expression behind the sunglasses. She shambled up from the table and took a lunging step towards a researcher. Annette couldn't identify him by the back of his head. The researcher took a step back, but before anyone could properly react, the girl leaned in and took a bite out of the man's shoulder.

Someone screamed, and still Wesker and Birkin looked on, as if they were appreciating the spectacle. There was blood everywhere. To the horror of everyone around the unlucky researcher, the girl started chewing into him, blood foaming up around her mouth, all the while the researcher screamed in pain.

"Should we page security?" she noticed Dr. Birkin saying to Wesker. Wesker pulled a gun out of his lab coat—of course he walked around with a gun everywhere—and shook his head.

"Unnecessary."

It took a few shots to the head, but Wesker put the girl down. The researcher she had bitten was still writhing on the floor.

"If the infection spreads through blood contact, we should isolate this specimen before..." Dr. Birkin began, but the statement was cut short by the moaning of the former employee on the floor. The man, a peculiar shade of gray, stumbled to his feet.

"I think we may have given them a much too concentrated dose," Dr. Birkin remarked, as the man stumbled towards him. Wesker shot the researcher in the knee. It didn't even react, stumbling forward and dragging the offending limb behind him. Wesker shot again, this time aiming for the head. The nose was deafening; the crack of bone and sick spill of blood. The man fell to the floor, inanimate.

"Next time, use better restraints," Wesker growled at his partner.

"Uh huh," Birkin replied, leaning over to look at the two fallen infected. The entire room was completely still. It was plausible that Wesker and Birkin had forgotten they had an audience.

There was a buzzing tension in the air. Everyone still alive in the room was simply lucky. Annette could see the subtle tremors of the front row—not for their fallen colleague, but scared for their lives.

"Oh, you can all leave now," Dr. Birkin said, an afterthought as he surveyed the room.

Annette and Gail gave each other quick glances with wide eyes and bolted from the room.

The first time Annette had been to a therapist growing up, it was after her father died.

The second, third, and fourth time Annette had been to a therapist, it was because when she was asked how she felt about her father's death, she looked back at them, completely lost.

"What should I feel?"

The fifth time was after Annette beat the tar out of some snotty nosed playground bully for making fun of a friend.

And at her Umbrella psychiatric evaluation they asked her what her biggest weakness was.

"I find it extremely hard to care about other people."

And then they asked her what her biggest weakness really was.

"I care too much about very certain people."

And that was the end of it. Written down in her file, nice and neat.

August 18, 1980

15:25

There was a subtle knock on the door. Annette raised her eyes off her desk. People didn't tend to knock, they just came walking right on in. The broom closet sized office was usually shared with another researcher or assistant, but today it was just Annette.

"Come in," she called. Wesker opened the door. A trace of blood was smeared on his lab coat.

"Oh, Wesker. What can I do for you?" she asked, false smile affixed to her face.

Wesker gave her his own sly smile, all sincerity and danger.

"What did you think of the demonstration today, Miss Weiss?"

Annette chose her words wisely.

"The T-Virus appears to have a great amount of potential as a bio-weapon."

Wesker nodded.

"I would tend to agree with your conclusion. Dr. Birkin and I also agreed with the conclusion of your personal research on the Ebola virus."

Annette felt her face flush. That paper was written solely as an excuse to talk to Dr. Birkin for a moment. She was surprised they had seriously looked into it.

"With the demands placed upon us by the T-Virus, Dr. Birkin and I are in need of dedicated resources. We're reassigning you to work full time on the T-Virus. There will be a pay raise involved, of course, and a change of office..."

Annette balked. After all she had seen today, the last thing she wanted to work on was the T-Virus. It scared her. Not the virus it's self, but her reaction to it all. If she didn't get out now...

"With all due respect, I don't want a part in this, Wesker."

Wesker pulled the sunglasses off. Annette looked to the floor.

"Look at me, Miss Weiss."

Annette looked up. She realized then what the sunglasses did.

"Don't you dare pretend that you're the better person." His eyes were going to make her melt with shame. "I personally read the psychological profiles of every employee at this lab."

She felt like he was stripping her down with his eyes and his words. The shameful burning sensation returned in the back of her throat.

"Don't be ashamed of what you are, Miss Weiss. Your particular set of skills could prove to be very useful."

Annette nodded, blank.

"Though, I think you may want to look into new housing accommodations. Miss Henri's profile was a much more interesting read than yours."

"She's my friend..." Annette whispered, trying to avoid his line of sight.

"Sporadic emotional attachment? Do you feel the need to fix me as well? Perhaps if I could persuade you of such, you would be eager to take on this project."

"I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to help people," Annette sputtered out, her last weak defense.

"Your soul is corrupted, Miss Weiss. Your intentions are not important. This is my final offer. You will join Dr. Birkin and I as a personal research assistant and report directly to us, and only us. Dr. Birkin is not easily impressed. You should take this offer as a compliment... and a demand."

Annette's knees knocked together. She felt her palms begin to sweat.

"I accept." Her mouth was dry.

She could have sworn she saw him smile at her words. There was something unkind to it.

"I will see you in your new workspace then, tomorrow."

"Thank you, Wesker." She extended her hand for a handshake. Wesker paused and put his glasses back on before reciprocating. She was glad for it.

As soon as Wesker turned, Annette made her way out of the office, first walking slowly, and then breaking out into a run as she cleared the doors.

She would not sell her soul, no matter how corrupted it was. She would leave tonight, pack her bags and disappear. Student loans be damned, people defaulted everyday. She had enough money for a shitty motel room, she could stay for a few days, clear her mind, and then what?

Still running, Annette turned the corner and slammed straight into William Birkin.

"Oh my God; I'm so sorry!"

Dr. Birkin seemed to have the wind knocked out of him. He took a few gasps while Annette yelped and cried out her multiple apologies.

"Are you okay?"

Once he caught his breath, William laughed, much to her relief.

"My new assistant is already trying to kill me, and I haven't even started you on the photocopying."

"Oh yes, um, thank you for the promotion!"

She felt like she was tripping over all her words, her mouth running as she tried desperately to control her emotions.

"Your research on Ebola is very insightful. It's written at a doctorate level."

Annette blushed, she couldn't help herself. Even after everything that happened, she found her pesky attraction to him returning, full force. He seemed so vulnerable to her at times, his paper skin and big eyes, almost like a kid thrust into the lab without knowing what he was going to be taking part in. Her pulse was droning in her ears.

"Do you feel okay?" he asked her. Annette could feel how hot and red her face was.

"Um, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just a little...frazzled from everything today."

William nodded at her.

"The loss of a coworker..."

She cut him off.

"I'm scared, Dr. Birkin."

He studied her face. He was so close to her, it made her weak.

"Of what?"

"Monsters."

He gave her a sympathetic smile.

"We will control the monsters, Miss Weiss."

She didn't have the heart to tell him that they were the monsters she was talking about.

But she came back to work the next day.

She told herself it was for the chance to work along side Dr. Birkin.

But she thought it might have something to do with Wesker's words to her.

She was already corrupted.

Author's Note: This chapter was quite the process. Some parts came really easily and others I had to work at for awhile until I got what I really wanted to say. I also lost my progress twice thanks to laptop batteries and personal negligence.

I intended on using all serious quotes from archaic books for this story, but the one for this chapter just fit too damn well.

Just a side note, all my OC's get their names from various files in RE1 and RE2. My inspiration for writing this was thinking about how many hints we're given about Umbrella, without every being told what was really going on behind the scenes.

Thanks for reading!