Ivan stepped forward and clapped Billy on the shoulder.
When Billy lifted his head to look at him, Ivan smiled.
“Billy, trust me.
Just like we believe in you, there have to be plenty of other people out there who believe in you too.” “Real gold doesn’t fear the fire.
The truth always comes out in the end.” Hearing that, Rebecca came around to Billy’s side and looked at him as well.
“That’s right.
Until then, Billy, don’t let any of it get in your head.
You’re an honest, unbreakable soldier.
You’ve done right by your country and right by your conscience.
Just keep being who you are.
You’ve still got me and Ivan, and a lot of other people who believe in you.” Billy lowered his head again, Rebecca’s and Ivan’s words still ringing in his ears.
He wanted to say thank you, but his lips started trembling beyond his control.
He clamped a hand over his mouth.
A scalding, bitter surge came rolling up out of his chest without warning and slammed into his nose and the backs of his eyes.
No.
Every instinct in him fought it.
He forced his eyes wide, staring hard at the mottled grain of the floorboards, jaw locked, a hard ridge of muscle standing out along his cheek.
Years of being who he was made it impossible for him to accept his own “weakness.” But the dam he had built out of every scrap of pride and stubbornness he possessed could not hold, not once his mind started replaying, piece by piece, everything that had happened since he met Ivan and Rebecca.
It burst.
Every swallowed grievance, every ounce of rage and injustice, turned into a scalding flood that tore through him and blurred his vision.
Billy scrambled to cover his eyes with his hands, trying to wipe away the tears welling up, but the night-vision goggles were in the way.
And then he felt a weight settle onto each of his shoulders.
Ivan.
Rebecca.
One on his left, one on his right, both leaning back against the desk, watching him with gentle eyes.
They said nothing at all.
They simply held out their hands and gave him the steadiest support they had.
Billy, who had just pulled off the goggles, stopped trying to wipe away the tears he could not hold back anyway.
Because Ivan and Rebecca had become the new dam, catching all of it for him: the grievance, the rage, the bitterness… In the underground monitoring room, the white-robed man stared blankly at the screen.
He was remembering the days he and James Marcus had spent in the laboratory, sustaining each other through everything.
Back then, no one had understood James Marcus either.
Not Wesker.
Not William.
But to it, he had been willing to say anything, tell it everything, hold nothing back.
In those days they had been so happy.
And all of it… All of it had been destroyed by that damned Umbrella!
He thought of the fully armed soldiers who had stormed the lab under William and Wesker’s command, gunned James Marcus down, and dumped the body in the sewers.
Above all, he thought of William’s sneering words.
William: “Goodbye, James Marcus.
I’ll be taking over your research from here.
Hahaha!” The white-robed man’s hands pressed down hard on the control panel in front of him without his willing it, veins bulging on his hands and across his face, his eyes bulging round, every trace of his usual refinement gone.
“Wesker… William… Spencer!
Umbrella!” He bit down on every word as though he wanted to grind the names into powder.
“Just wait… it won’t be long now.
You’ll all pay for what you did ten years ago!” Once his composure returned, the white-robed man saw that Ivan’s squad had started moving again.
He had meant to release a few more B.O.W.s.
Most of them had already been cleared out by the U.S.S.
covert security unit Umbrella had deployed, but this place was the stronghold he had cultivated for years.
Squeezing out a few more would not have been difficult.
Except that he kept picturing Ivan and Rebecca standing there, offering Billy their support with such tenderness on their faces.
And that made him remember the way James Marcus had looked at him, cradling him in his palm, the two of them close in that quiet way.
So very much alike… The white-robed man rose, braced both hands on the console, leaned forward, and fixed a burning gaze on the figures on the screen.
“James Marcus, you would support this decision of mine too, wouldn’t you?” “Yes… you would.
Their purpose is the same as ours.
To expose Umbrella’s filth.
To take revenge on Umbrella!” He drew back, tilted his head up and spread his arms wide, his voice rising into something exalted, accompanied by an ethereal humming.
Leeches crawled back and forth over his body, clearly sharing in the white-robed man’s excitement.
“Ah~ ah~, they carry the same burning, honest feeling that you did!” “Ah, James Marcus, what is this if not fate…” The white-robed man sat back down at the monitor console.
After a brief pause, he reached out and pressed a button.
“Let me see, then.
Ivan.
Rebecca.
Billy…” He drew out each of the three names, plainly savoring the anticipation.
“When you face it, will you still be like James Marcus and me, bound together in life and in death?” “This is the final test.
Don’t disappoint me…” After leaving the second-floor office, Ivan’s squad returned to the first floor and resumed their search for a way out through the main hall.
Billy’s eyes were still a little red and swollen, but the curve at the corner of his mouth hadn’t faded once.
And whenever he glanced at Rebecca or Ivan, that curve climbed a little higher.
The confusion, the buried resentment, all of the emotions he had bottled up had finally found a way out.
Now he was like a blade drawn from its sheath, edge bared, keen and ready.
Ivan, walking in the middle of the formation, had felt something crawling along his back since a moment ago, a persistent sense that someone was watching him from the shadows.
(The white-robed man?
Or those two soldiers?) After the train had stopped, the three of them had turned the place over and found the bodies of two soldiers.
But those two corpses, riddled with wounds, had told them nothing useful beyond the fact that leeches had killed them.
Ivan tightened his grip on his weapon.
“Rebecca, Billy, do either of you feel like something’s been watching us this whole time?” Both of them stopped and spent a moment carefully feeling out the air around them.
Billy frowned.
“Now that you mention it, yeah…” Rebecca had caught a faint trace of that watching gaze too.
“I feel it as well.
I just can’t pin down where it’s coming from.” She had already seen how fast Ivan’s physical capabilities were changing, day after day, over the course of everything they had been through.
Even so, she had to say it.
“Ivan, you’re getting stronger all the time.
If you hadn’t said something, I never would have noticed anyone spying on us.” Billy nodded in full agreement.
“So what do you think we should do, Ivan?” Spending time around him, Billy had noticed that it wasn’t only Ivan’s body that was changing.
Even his temperament, once rather withdrawn, had gradually opened up.
There was a certain wisdom running beneath the things he said now.
His read on the relationship between James Marcus and Spencer in particular had shown a political shrewdness that made Billy look at him with fresh eyes.
Most likely his brain was recovering its original state.
And from what Billy had observed himself, whatever was happening to Ivan, Umbrella was tangled up in it somehow.
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