The one thing William least wanted to see had happened.
Of all the times they could have come, why now?
If they had arrived earlier, he would still have had time to destroy the G-Virus samples he intended to take with him.
If they had come later, he would already have been gone, with Annette and Sherry sheltering with Irons, and they would have found nothing to take.
But no—they had arrived just as he was preparing to leave.
Damn it.
What a rotten twist of fate.
And all that talk about guaranteeing his safety?
William had never believed a word that came out of Spencer’s mouth.
He and Albert had once believed the old man would never have Marcus killed, either.
Granted, self-preservation had been part of why they agreed to it.
By then, Marcus had gone completely off the deep end, even experimenting on his own students.
Under those circumstances, what exactly had been wrong with William and Albert betraying him?
During that conversation at the Executive Training School, Albert had even seemed to suggest that William should leave Umbrella while he still could…
Yet even if he could do it all over again, William would still choose to research the G-Virus.
He couldn’t accept anything less.
He had already reached the limit of what he could accomplish with the T-Virus, but his talent was worth more than that.
Marcus had his own creation.
That freakish girl had hers.
Why should William be condemned to spend his life studying scraps left behind by the two of them?
He deserved a virus of his own.
William Birkin was a genius.
He had been one since childhood, and because of that, he was prouder and more arrogant than most people could imagine.
If there was one thing in this world he had absolute faith in, it was his own brilliance.
And whenever someone vastly more gifted than him eclipsed it, jealousy and resentment spread through him like weeds.
Albert was the only person William truly acknowledged as a friend.
Everyone else could say whatever they pleased; he had no interest in winning the approval of ordinary mediocrities—unless, of course, someone brought up that freakish girl in front of him.
The G-Virus was William’s chance to prove himself superior to her.
It was the culmination of his life’s work.
How could he possibly hand it over without a fight?
Unfortunately, dire as the situation was, William might have been socially inept, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could take on an entire U.S.S.
squad by himself.
Even the Hunters he had deployed to stop them had been killed.
What chance did an unarmed scientist have?
Fortunately, he still had a delaying tactic.
A counterfeit G-Virus sample he had prepared in advance sat in his coat pocket.
If he handed that over, it might buy him enough breathing room to escape.
There was also a tube of the real G-Virus hidden in his clothes, and William was the only person who knew how to tell the genuine article from the imitation.
William reached into his pocket, intending to pull out the fake G-Virus and stall for time.
What he hadn’t anticipated was one inexperienced U.S.S.
operative seeing the motion, assuming William was reaching for a gun, and opening fire.
Several others reacted on instinct.
In the span of a heartbeat, William was riddled with bullets.
“Cease fire!
Who told you to shoot?!” It had happened too quickly.
HUNK shouted the order the instant the first shot rang out, but William still collapsed into a spreading pool of blood.
HUNK exhaled and opened a channel to command.
“This is HUNK, Alpha Team.
We’ve secured the G-Virus.
Dr.
William Birkin was accidentally shot and killed by a member of the unit.” Silence lingered on the other end of the radio for a moment before the reply finally came.
“Irrelevant.
Withdraw.” “Understood.” HUNK took the briefcase from William’s hand and inspected it.
Inside were samples of both the G-Virus and the T-Virus.
Satisfied, he snapped the case shut and carried it away, the rest of Alpha Team falling in behind him.
Lying in his own blood, William felt pain pulsing through every part of his body.
What had just happened dragged his mind back to July 1988—the day he and Albert had led a team in killing Marcus and William had inherited the old man’s research.
The circumstances had been disturbingly similar.
He and Albert had brought in a U.S.S.
unit and gunned Marcus down in the middle of his experiments.
William remembered how satisfying it had been to watch the old man die.
Marcus certainly hadn’t imagined, while dumping his students’ corpses into the treatment plant, that one day he would be the one thrown into it.
Then again, before Marcus actually returned, who could possibly have imagined that the damned old man would be resurrected by leeches?
Ten years later, William had somehow ended up receiving much the same treatment.
Fate had one sick sense of humor.
His vision was already blurring.
Rage tore through William’s fading consciousness.
Was he really supposed to let them walk away with his life’s work?
Let Spencer—that useless old bastard who did nothing but sit in a wheelchair—reap every benefit from it?
William wanted to charge after them and take it back, but his body had no strength left.
He heard footsteps approaching.
Probably Annette.
That could wait.
There was still one tube of genuine G-Virus in his pocket.
If he wanted revenge, it was his only option.
He still had enough strength to take it out and inject himself.
William knew better than anyone what the G-Virus could do, but he had no choice except to gamble.
Between lying there and bleeding to death while they escaped, or becoming a monster and taking his revenge, the latter was the obvious choice.
Sorry, Annette.
This is going to make things difficult for you.
Gritting his teeth, William pulled the G-Virus from inside his coat and drove the injector into the worst of his wounds, high on the right side of his chest.
He could feel his cells regenerating almost immediately.
Bullet wounds sealed.
Damaged organs repaired themselves.
But at the same time, his body was becoming something else—ascending to another level of life, or perhaps simply mutating beyond humanity.
“The G-Virus is my life’s work!
I won’t let anyone take it from me!” His vision sharpened.
The weakness from blood loss vanished.
Then a headache began drilling into his skull.
It felt as though another consciousness was being born somewhere inside his body, growing stronger with frightening speed.
For now, however, William could still control himself.
For now.
William staggered upright.
Annette was there.
The moment she saw the discarded injector on the floor, she understood what had happened and immediately raised her handgun toward him.
Yet after all their years as husband and wife, she couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger.
“Annette…
I’m sorry…” With his consciousness slipping in and out, William couldn’t tell whether he had actually spoken the words—or whether Annette had heard them.
Obsession alone drove him forward as he pursued Alpha Team.
At first he stumbled.
Then his stride steadied.
Within moments, he was sprinting after them at full speed.
His body continued changing as he ran.
His right arm swelled uncontrollably.
A gigantic eye opened on his shoulder, and William could somehow sense that the eye did not truly belong to him.
It belonged to the new consciousness growing inside his body.
Soon the entire right half of him was a mass of exposed, distorted flesh, his right hand expanding into an enormous claw.
At least he could still close it into a fist.
William frantically searched for something he could use as a weapon.
In his current state, firearms were out of the question.
That left something simple and brutally physical.
His eyes settled on a length of steel pipe lying on the floor.
“Strong biohazard signature detected.
What’s going on?” HUNK had been leading Alpha Team toward the laboratory exit with the G-Virus briefcase when his equipment picked up a rapidly approaching heat source radiating an extraordinarily intense biological signature.
The entire squad snapped to alert and trained their weapons on the direction of the incoming contact.
Then they saw him: G-Birkin, steel pipe in hand, charging straight toward them with murderous fury burning in his eyes.
Alpha Team opened fire the instant he appeared.
The same weapons that had cut William down only minutes earlier now seemed useless.
No—not useless.
Bullets still punched into his body and tore open wounds of every size, but within a single breath those wounds sealed shut.
Even the bullets were forced back out, clattering across the floor.
Shots to the massive eye merely made it squeeze shut.
In the end, despite the volume of fire, they failed to inflict any lasting damage at all.
HUNK felt as if he’d been hit by a truck.
G-Birkin was wielding nothing more than an ordinary steel pipe, and the U.S.S.
wore protective equipment designed specifically for encounters with biological weapons, yet none of it mattered against such primitive, overwhelming strength.
His head rang.
Through the haze, he watched one teammate after another fall—bludgeoned down, impaled, broken—until, once again, he was the only one left standing.
Maybe not for much longer.
The briefcase hit the floor and burst open, virus samples scattering across the ground.
The last thing HUNK saw before darkness took him was William snatching up the G-Virus samples from the case—and swallowing every last one.
With the object of his obsession reclaimed, William’s consciousness faded even faster.
The newborn mind inside him was steadily taking control.
In that condition, he naturally paid no attention to whatever hazardous material might be beneath his feet.
His boot came down on a tube of T-Virus and shattered it.
William wandered deeper into the laboratory while the spilled virus seeped into the drainage system and flowed down into the sewers.
Rats emerging from the drains had no reason to ignore such an unfamiliar new source of food.
September 22, 1998.
11:45 p.m.
The rats turned their attention toward the fallen members of Alpha Team.
And so it began.