Fledermaus

Starvation was the rot consuming them all. Alex knew its branches, its subtle shades, and she remembered all too well what it felt like to suffocate. First came hypercapnia: a desperate reckoning where the body fought with all its residual strength against the mounting carbon dioxide, forcing the heart to hammer faster, harder, in a frantic attempt to purge the poison and drag in oxygen. Then, the convulsive phase: the cerebral cortex began to drown, consciousness slipping away into nothing more than a twitching mass of tics and spasms — the final, misfiring impulses of a collapsing nervous system. Next, the breath died. The pupils paralyzed into that wide, vacant stare of pure, unadulterated terror that she now knew by heart. The heart itself — a stubbornly pathetic muscle — delivered its final, agonizing strokes as the blood pressure bottomed out into nothingness.

Silence.

Alex clawed through the bottom of the licorice bag, hunting for the strawberry-filled one. "He’s almost done." Daniel informed her, his voice deadpan. She leaned closer to the bag, scrutinizing the remaining candies.  "He’s gasping now." he added, propping his boots onto the control console. Alex found what she was looking for: she pulled out a small black cylinder stuffed with artificial pink and took a heavy, tearing bite. "Look at him." Daniel chuckled, washing down a breath with a swig of Sprite. "I would’ve bet good money his eyes were going to burst right out of their sockets." Alex wiped her fingertips on a crumpled tissue, her gaze drifting toward Monitor 3. There, James Grant — a journalist of the Raccoon Press whose curiosity had proven fatal — shuddered in one last, agonizing convulsion before going rigid in the oxygen-starved chamber. "We could’ve given him to Trenchy." Daniel mused, tilting his chin toward her. "Doctor Birkin needed intact specimens." Alex countered; she rested her cheek in her palm and sighed, and her breath bloomed with the cloying scent of strawberry and sharp licorice — a smell so heavy Daniel could almost touch it, forcing him to shift his weight from hip to hip in a sudden, uneasy discomfort. Alex shot him a sideways glance, utterly unreadable. Her eyes were a mirror of Doctor Wesker's: that same arctic, predatory blue that haunted his thoughts, his very existence. "And besides." she murmured, her tone dripping with a quiet, sickening ambiguity "Where's the fun in that?" She locked her gaze onto his and Daniel drew a sharp, ragged breath, swallowing hard. Alex smiled — a jagged baring of teeth and phantom blood. Suffocation wasn't the only way to die: not when she was in the room.

The double-breasted blazer hangs loosely from her shoulders, accentuating her thin, bloodless silhouette.

Wesker watches her, wondering what it would feel like to touch her now — whether she would break under his fingers, or if she would hold her ground, enduring his desire, his obsession.

Alex distractedly rotates her cup with the tip of her index finger, a half-eaten heidesand biscuit rests on the saucer.

Around them, the chatter of the patrons drifts through the air, thick with the scent of sugar and vanilla; Tiffany-blue walls are adorned with commemorative ceramic plates, and Raccoon City’s mascot sits on the counter next to a jar of chocolate chip cookies.

Wesker rests his elbows on the table, the chair groaning under his weight, and Alex looks up, locking her eyes onto his.

He shouldn't care; the terms were clear.

Were they really? a nagging voice whispers in his head.

Things were so clear that you fucked your sister for months before finding out the truth, the voice insists, mocking him.

Wesker tries to ignore it, silently studying Alex, her eyes a cruel mirror of his own — an arctic, freezing blue — but in his sister's eyes there is a glimpse of rage and disappointment.

Alex takes a sip of her coffee, leaving the crimson imprint of her lips on the rim — red lips that drag him back to other rooms, hotter skin and breathless, tangled moments.

"Birkin has been promoted to chief researcher at the NEST." she tells him, her tone neutral.

Wesker keeps his eyes on her: behind the counter, the waitress darts a glance at them, drawn by the ceremonial uniform he had resigned in, and the two golden castles pinned to his lapels.

"Annette is his second in command." she continues, monotonic.

Wesker listens, catching the taut vibration in her voice, and as she tilts her head, the golden light from the Art Nouveau lamps hits her at an angle, exposing her sharp features.

"Sherry turned five." she murmurs, crumbling the dark cocoa biscuit between her thumb and forefinger.

"I bought her a bicycle." she says, the words suffocating amidst those mundane trivialities.

Wesker remains silent for a few seconds, the waitress making a move to approach, but quickly changes direction under Alex’s stinging glare.

"A lot of things have changed, Al." she whispers, though it feels as if she wants to scream it, her fury a tempest battering her spirit, her thoughts.

"No." he fires back, staring at her.

Alex looks at him, a fierce glimmer in the depths of her pupils where rage mixes with a much more dangerous, fragile sentiment.

"Nothing has changed." he states, resolute.

Alex weighs his words, biting her lower lip in an absorbed, doubtful gesture.

"You're a dumbass if you think it hasn't." she counters, implacable.

Wesker reaches across the center of the table, grabbing her wrist — thin, frail.

"It hasn't." he reiterates, and Alex’s eyes flare with disdain and irritation, flushing her cheeks pink.

"Do you honestly think I don't know what you did with that whore?" she hisses, twisting her fingers and digging her nails into the inside of his wrist.

Wesker tightens his grip, drawing her slightly toward him, nearly lifting her off the booth.

"It doesn't matter."

"Fuck you, Al."

"It’s nothing."

"Albert Wesker, bending the knee for nothing." she remarks maliciously. "Good to know."

Wesker inhales sharply, planting his boots against the floor and pressing so hard against her bones he can feel them creak.

"Aleksandra." he barks.

Her left shoulder twitches — a sudden jerk that stops halfway through the motion of striking him across the face.

Wesker glances around, catching only the bewildered look of the waitress, a curiosity that quickly withers under the harshness in his eyes.

Alex licks her lips, squaring her back as she glares at him.

"Now that you know how it feels, Al." she whispers ice-coldly. "What do you say? Did you finally realize that fucking your sister is where you draw the line between madness and degeneracy? Not while you listened to Lisa scream, or while you assisted William with the Chimeras?"

Wesker doesn't let go: he is certain he is hurting her — he can feel her bones straining beneath his fingers — but he can't stop. He doesn't want to.

"I draw the line where I realize that you are my undoing, and that I didn't bend to her." he confesses, and Alex wrenches back, defiant and wounded.

"Not to her." he repeats, seizing her other wrist as well and pinning her in place.

A fork clatters to the floor, the coffee sloshing in the cup rattled by their movements. A few patrons turn around, intrigued.

Alex is a coiled spring of tension and wrath; she struggles for a few more moments before stopping, letting out an exhausted sigh.

Wesker adjusts his grip around her wrists, sliding down to her hands and intertwining his fingers with hers, which feel thinner than he remembered.

For a few seconds, Alex’s fingers remain limp, parted — his blood under her nails, the band on her left ring finger pressing against his knuckle.

"... I hate you, Al." she whispers, and Wesker releases a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

The sweet scents of the bakery rush back to invade his senses, mingling with the sharp stench of adrenaline.

Alex closes her fingers around his, and they both fall silent.

Her skin is a tapestry of red and purple hues — imprints of his desire, reflections of his hunger. Wesker traces the pattern with his fingertips, lingering on the small dip just above her hips. Alex laughs — a light, carefree sound — and buries her face in the pillow, sighing. She is a memory of blood and flesh, his sister, and when he breathes, he can still taste her under his tongue, down his throat. The virus will erase those stigmata; it has already begun to do so as he traces her vertebrae one by one, brushing the nape of her neck with a gentle touch that, to anyone else, would feel like a threat. The virus will make her skin flawless again — pale and smooth, as though it had never belonged to him, as though he had never desecrated it, turning her into a canvas of crimson and violet. The virus demands them immaculate, whole: the pinnacle of an evolution that had only made them too much — ambitious and selfish, fierce and ruthless. Wesker leans over her, looming above, burying his face in her hair. Alex smiles, closing her eyes and stretching beneath him — soft, warm. The virus could never take this away from him.

An accident: that was how she had been defined. Wesker rereads those papers as if they could offer him a different answer, tracing the words of a man under whose aegis he had grown — bred like a stud beast, or a prize competitor. Subject Number Twelve is a mere accident along the way, the file reads, clinical and cold. Despite an excellent genetic pedigree, the subject proved incapable of fully integrating with the virus, it continues, utterly aseptic. I propose taking into consideration the peculiar presence of the X chromosome: though Subject Number Thirteen boasts a 99.9% compatibility, perhaps the presence of genes distinct from those contained within the X chromosome granted this percentage of success, the hypothesis suggests. In the meantime, Subject Number Twelve must be considered what I call a "mutilated victory" and treated as such, the conclusion states, finalized by the seal of Umbrella. Wesker drops the papers onto the desk, lifting his gaze to let it rest on the sleeping profile tangled in the sheets — a pale curve rendered even more ethereal by the moonlight flooding the Tower loft. There are few clear nights over Sushestvovanie; most of the time, the island is whipped by overbearing winds and shrouded in heavy, gray clouds that frequently dump snow and ice: this is a rare exception — the stars starkly visible against a sheer, velvet-dark sky. Crossing his legs, he slips a silver case from the pocket of his unbuttoned trousers and extracts a cigarette — a Sobranie Black Russian. He taps the filter absentmindedly against the edge of the desk, brings it to his lips, and flicks the lighter, his cheekbones flaring crimson before he snaps the lid shut with a sharp click of his thumb. He inhales, and the aroma of tobacco envelops him, unwinding his thoughts, his mind — more a habit now than an actual need. An accident. His sister an accident, and by extension, himself.

"Of them all, only one survived."

Wesker curls the corner of his mouth downward, Spencer's arrogance an insult, an affront.

"You."

The old man had lied, yet he had done it anyway, defying his intelligence — his strength. He draws in another breath of smoke, watching it scatter toward the ceiling. The rustle of bedsheets tears him from his grim reflections, ash falling into an almost empty glass, where a mere thread of leftover whiskey clings to the bottom. "Al." his sister calls out, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. He looks at her — her hair disheveled, her gaze uncertain and heavy with sleep. Alex is fragile: he can perceive it the same way he feels his own heartbeat, or the pulsing flow of his own blood — a sensation he cannot describe, only share. She gets out of bed, padded footsteps bringing her to his side. She casts a fleeting glance at the documents he was reading, nudging his knee with her own, a silent prompt to make room. Wesker shifts away from the desk, and Alex immediately slips into his lap, resting her head against his shoulder and pulling her legs up to her chest.

An accident. A mutilated victory. A failure.

Alex wraps her arms around his waist, the contact with her bare skin always stirs the exact same sentiment within him — a horrific alloy of desire and comfort. He should be disgusted by it. He should despise himself for such weakness, but he cannot — he is incapable of it. A god does not err; a god does not fall.

Never.

He rests his chin upon her head, breathing in her scent — argan and him.

Them.

If she was imperfect,

flawed,

then what could he possibly be — the infallible god, the unstoppable monster, the man who had transcced his own limits? Wesker rejects the truth and closes his eyes.