Seeing this, Wesker turned his head aside and let out a soft sigh.
“William, I’ll say it again.
Everything about the G-Virus is already inside your head.
Do you really have to keep clinging to Raccoon City when the place is about to become a thing of the past?” “When that day comes, Umbrella won’t let you walk away, and the military can’t guarantee your safety either.
Their real objective, even…
hah…” But faced with those heartfelt words, William only shook his head.
He knew Wesker was right.
He simply couldn’t accept it.
“I’ll handle everything.
James Marcus, and every other unstable factor interfering with my research.
I’ll deal with all of it.” Wesker didn’t answer right away.
He took two more steps forward and pressed the elevator switch.
Then, with forced lightness, he said, “Suit yourself.
I’ll proceed as planned and lure the S.T.A.R.S.
team into the Spencer Mansion.” “They’ve had rigorous combat training.
Perfect test subjects.” With that, Wesker stepped into the elevator.
William pulled himself together, looked at Wesker, and added, “Mm…
but before that, James Marcus has to be eliminated.
Whatever that thing is now.” “It’ll be reduced to ash by the self-destruct device deep inside the Umbrella Executive Training School.” “I just need a little more time to pinpoint the exact location.” Wesker gave a slight nod.
“Take care, William.” The furrows in William’s brow smoothed out.
“Take care…
Wesker.” Bang!
The elevator doors shut.
The only light left in William’s eyes passed out of his sight.
After watching Wesker go, William looked down at the notes in his hand.
What Wesker didn’t know was the real reason he refused to leave Umbrella alongside him.
It was the resentment he had been swallowing for years.
He’d assumed that with time, that feeling would fade.
The person was dead and gone, after all.
But he was wrong.
Or rather, at first, when the “source of the pressure” died, he really had tasted a relief he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Then he thought about how quickly she had produced results, and looked at himself.
All these years gone by, and he still hadn’t completed a virus that was truly his own.
That contest against himself didn’t lighten the weight he carried.
It only made it heavier.
Memory pulled him under.
Every image in his mind emptied out until only one remained: a little girl with dazzling blonde hair.
Alexia Ashford, who had become director of Umbrella’s Antarctic Base at the age of ten.
Even fifteen years after her death, William still couldn’t forget how crushing the pressure that woman had put on him had been.
Before Alexia Ashford, he had been Umbrella’s acknowledged top genius.
And William had always taken enormous pride in that.
All of it was destroyed the year he turned nineteen.
It was 1981.
A little girl stood at a lectern and spoke with perfect composure, using spare, precise language to lay out the properties and potential of the t-Veronica virus she had developed herself.
Umbrella, from top to bottom, accepted her work without dissent.
On the strength of that achievement, Alexia Ashford was appointed head of the Antarctic Base at the age of ten.
Something so absurd it belonged in a fairy tale shattered the worldview William had built his pride on.
He thought of his own record: joining Umbrella at sixteen, becoming a core researcher.
Set beside Alexia Ashford, it amounted to nothing at all.
He used to be the center of every conversation among his colleagues.
After Alexia Ashford arrived, the name William was either pushed to the margins or vanished from those conversations entirely.
“Alexia Ashford really is something.” “Isn’t she?
I hear she’s only ten this year and she’s already head of the facility and chief researcher on top of it.” “Seriously?
So she’s better than that genius researcher we had before, the one who looked down his nose at everybody?” “Exactly what I’m saying.
Huh?
Come to think of it, what was that researcher’s name again?” “…” Every time he overheard talk like that, something inside William tore a little further.
His glory, his pride, all of it had been taken by that little girl.
This went on for two years.
By 1983, Alexia Ashford’s brilliance was blinding.
More research papers on the t-Veronica virus were circulating through Umbrella’s internal channels.
They confirmed that the virus had a future you could see and touch.
They added yet another halo to Alexia Ashford herself.
Everyone believed that in another year or two, under this prodigy’s leadership, the t-Veronica virus, with a higher ceiling and greater potential than the t-Virus, would be perfected.
Hearing that news nearly broke William’s mind.
By then he had “graduated” from the Umbrella Executive Training School, and Mr.
Spencer had assigned him to the Arklay Laboratory beneath the Spencer Mansion to work on the t-Virus.
But with his whole mind fixed on Alexia Ashford, he made mistake after mistake in his experiments, and the entire research schedule slowed to a crawl.
If Wesker hadn’t stayed at his side through it, talking him down, William honestly had no idea how he would have survived that stretch of his life.
And just when he had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life unable to raise his head under Alexia Ashford’s shadow, a bombshell swept through Umbrella like a hurricane.
“Hey!
Did you hear?
Alexia Ashford, the prodigy at the Antarctic Base, is dead!” “What?
No way.
Are you sure today isn’t April Fools’ Day?” “Tell me about it.
I didn’t believe it either at first, but her brother Alfred Ashford has already issued the death notice.
How could that be fake?” “Sheesh…
the wind’s changed…” When Wesker brought the news to William, a sharp gleam flared in the dead, ashen eyes set in his unshaven face.
(Dead…) His eyes burned brighter and brighter.
And then he found his way back to the man he had once been, the one who shone.
From that point on, William threw himself completely into researching a new virus.
Especially after James Marcus, one of Umbrella’s three founders, “tragically passed away” in 1988.
Having lost two genius researchers in the span of a few short years, Umbrella came to regard William as the core of its core.
Every request for funding and equipment was approved without question.
They even built him a research facility in Raccoon City that belonged to him alone: the “mother nest.” From then on William had free rein.
Building on James Marcus’s own foundational research, he delivered result after result related to the t-Virus.
The G-Virus program, formally launched in 1991, was advancing in an orderly fashion as well.
It was fair to say William had finally arrived at his own moment of glory.
William pulled himself out of the memory, clenched his fist, and let the edge in his eyes show.
“That is precisely why I can’t give up now!” “The G-Virus has far more potential and far more power than the t-Virus or the t-Veronica virus!” “Alexia Ashford, I’m going to make you understand.
I am the one true genius!”