MUTED SORROW’S || Resident Evil: Requiem x Oc
˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °. 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊
chapter: 34
˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °. 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊
Many times before, actually.
Every time Victor Gideon looked down at her motionless body and calmly ordered another injection.
Every time her heart stopped and someone brought her back.
Every time another piece of herself disappeared.
Death had become familiar.
She remembered the silence.
She remembered waking up.
She could feel the marble beneath her cheek, unnaturally cold against her skin, while the yellow walls reflected rippling light across the room. Even with her eyes closed, she could see it.
The reflections swayed like water, washing over her eyelids in endless waves until she couldn't tell whether she was lying on solid ground or sinking beneath an ocean.
Her body refused to answer her.
She couldn't open her eyes.
She couldn't move a finger.
She couldn't even force herself to breathe deeper.
She had already accepted her fate long before any of this.
If this was finally the end...
she only hoped she wouldn't become another monster.
"Leon!" Grace said, seeing that Leon was also unconscious sitting against the marble wall.
Grace quickly kneeled down beside him. "Oh no..." She said before her eyes drifted toward Mina.
Her dark hair was matted against the marble floor, her skin carrying that familiar sickly green tint the infection had left behind over the past several weeks. She looked impossibly still.
Grace slowly walked over before kneeling beside her. With trembling fingers, she pressed two fingers against Mina's neck.
Grace's expression crumbled.
Her voice barely escaped above a whisper.
She stared at Mina for another second, almost expecting her chest to rise.
The words left her mouth before she even realized she'd spoken them.
Behind her, Leon let out a faint groan.
Grace turned immediately.
"Hey! it's me. it's Grace." She said worriedly, placing a hand on his knee.
"Please wake up... Come on. Wake up. wake up."
Leon made another small sound before slowly stirring.
"Hey you." Leon said sighing. "Just resting my eyes."
Despite everything, Grace couldn't help letting out the smallest laugh before relief overtook her.
Leon coughed, lifting his head just enough for his eyes to find Mina.
“…No.. kid..” Leon whispered.
He looked at her for a long moment.
Long enough that Grace knew exactly what he was thinking.
"You're ok.." Grace said.
She slipped one of Leon's arms over her shoulders and carefully helped him to his feet.
Leon looked at Mina one last time before meeting Grace's eyes and giving a small nod.
He pressed the square on the large door as it slid open automatically.
The ARK Laboratory's Central Refining System—PANDORA—revealed itself once again.
Exactly where they had been before.
The chamber fell quiet again after the door sealed behind Leon and Grace.
Silence settled over the yellow marble room, broken only by the distant hum of ARK's machinery.
Somewhere beyond the walls, alarms continued to echo through the facility, but they sounded muffled here, as though the room itself refused to let the outside world in.
Mina remained motionless.
For several long seconds...
Then her fingers twitched.
A shallow breath escaped her lips, followed by another. Her lungs struggled against a pressure she couldn't understand, each breath feeling unfamiliar, as if her own body had forgotten how it was supposed to work.
The lights above her rippled across the polished marble ceiling until it looked like she was staring through water. She blinked several times, but the room refused to steady itself.
The thought never became words.
Her throat only produced a quiet clicking sound that made her flinch.
Her heartbeat should have been racing.
Panic crept into the edges of her mind.
A faint sound echoed behind her.
Someone who wasn't afraid.
Someone who already knew exactly what they would find.
Mina's eyes slowly followed the sound.
A tall figure emerged from the shadows.
His long white coat looked almost untouched by the destruction surrounding him. One sleeve hung empty where his left arm should have been, neatly pinned against his side as though the absence meant nothing at all.
Eyes that had watched her grow from a frightened five-year-old into whatever she had become now.
He stopped a few feet away.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then, almost fondly, he smiled.
His voice was as calm as she remembered.
"I was beginning to think this experiment had finally failed."
Hatred burned through Mina's exhausted mind.
She tried to push herself away from him.
She barely moved an inch.
"You always were stubborn."
He slowly lowered himself into a crouch.
Not because he pitied her.
Because he wanted to look her in the eyes.
"I remember another day just like this."
His gaze never left hers.
"You had spent the entire afternoon trying to escape."
His head tilted slightly.
"You made it all the way to Corridor C before collapsing."
His voice almost carried amusement.
"When my staff brought you back, you bit Dr. Han so hard he needed reconstructive surgery."
"You were only trying to go home."
Memories surfaced without warning.
Bare feet against freezing metal floors.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
She didn't want to remember.
His tone remained gentle.
"You asked for your mother."
"You asked whether your little brother would be scared without you."
"You asked whether your father was looking for you."
How did he remember that?
Victor answered before she could even wonder aloud. "I remember every child."
His eyes wandered around the room.
"There were one hundred and forty-three. The staff reduced them to numbers. I never approved of that.They all had names."
"Ermao, Tsumugi, Anong…I made sure every file included them."
His voice carried something disturbingly close to pride.
"They deserved at least that much."
To tell him he didn't deserve to say their names.
Instead, another strained clicking sound escaped her throat.
Victor nodded sympathetically.
"I know. It must be frustrating. You always hated silence."
His remaining hand reached toward her before stopping just short of her face. Gently brushed a loose strand of black hair behind her ear.
The gesture made her stomach turn.
"I used to wonder what kind of woman you would become. You answered that question yourself."
His eyes studied her carefully.
"You survived every version of F-virus. Every parasite.Every recombinant strain. Every failed correction. The others adapted. You evolved."
"I know that look.You think I stole your childhood."
"I also saved your life."
"You would have died in Seoul. You don't know that because you never saw the reports."
He spoke as though discussing the weather.
"Your genetic profile was extraordinarily rare."
"The illness would have claimed you before your tenth birthday."
"F-virus changed that. It simply..."
He searched for the right word.
Victor seemed almost disappointed.
"You've always preferred comforting lies over uncomfortable truths."
A whisper drifted through the room.
She looked toward the corner of the room.
"He still speaks to you."
Mina's attention snapped back to him.
"I've always wondered about that specific voice." He sounded genuinely curious.
"Your psychiatrists insisted the voice was a coping mechanism. They diagnosed schizophrenia. They wrote hundreds of pages trying to explain him."
A faint smile touched Victor's face.
"I never found their conclusions convincing."
"Hallucinations are fascinating."
"They only know what their host knows."
His eyes locked onto hers.
"So tell me...How did your hallucination know the access codes to the Yellow Room?"
"...How did it know where we kept the prototype serum?...How did it know which doctors were about to betray me?"
The room suddenly felt much colder. Victor slowly stood. "I've spent twelve years trying to answer that question."
He looked toward the empty darkness where Mina had searched moments earlier.
Then, to the empty air itself, he spoke.
"If you're truly there..."
His voice remained perfectly calm.
"...you've been an interesting observer."
A whisper brushed against Mina's ear.
Don't let him see you're afraid.
She couldn't tell whether the voice came from beside her...
Or from somewhere inside her own mind.
Victor looked back down at her.
"I suppose it doesn't matter anymore."
He folded his remaining hand behind his back.
"Whether that voice is a fragment of your fractured mind...or something none of us have understood...the result is the same. You've become the closest thing Elpis has ever produced to perfection."
His expression hardened for the first time.
He glanced toward the distant chamber where Leon and Grace had disappeared.
He turned away from her, his footsteps echoing through the vast room.
"Come, Mina. I have one last truth to show you."
Behind him, Mina remained on the floor, staring after the man who had stolen twelve years of her life.
Then Dory whispered again.
Mina didn't know whether she was listening to a hallucination...
Or the only voice that had never lied to her.
Victor approached Mina picking her up grip closed around her with quiet certainty.
He lifted her clean off the ground like she weighed nothing at all. Pain shot through her immediately—sharp, burning through every place her body had already been failing. Her breath caught hard, a broken sound stuck somewhere between a gasp and a choke.
Her limbs twitched instinctively, but nothing answered properly. Everything felt too heavy, too far away from itself.
He just held her steady against his chest, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
Her vision blurred at the edges.
Please don’t let me loose control.
