#ceraunios

It is sunken beyond layers and layers of concrete, at the bottom of a canyon fault line, wrapped in thick vines.

There's a heart under the corpse of Raccoon City and it belongs to an ever expanding plant that can talk with humans.

The BSAA up top don't go down this far, not without casualties.

You went because the monstrous plant heart asked you to. You had always had a soft spot for great, strange plants, when people wouldn't satisfy you.

This behemoth plant wanted you to come and get rid of something "parasitic", so you came. Among the vermin chewing on it, presented over the warp of the thicket was a headless body that had fallen so far into the depths that the impact had shattered most of its structures.

The head was on one side of the massive, lightless sinkhole it had fallen into, and the rest of it on the other. It was dressed in destroyed, fine clothing. It smelled like cigarettes and poorly kept composure. It made you laugh.

And it looked very much like Jake Muller.

If Jake Muller had ever been a man with money enough to become stupid, he might've looked like this: like he wasn't afraid to die but was too afraid to live truthfully.

You can't help but hold the lifeless head up, the flesh not yet beginning to decay, and laugh in the dark amphitheater while vines and soft squeals from the plant around you tried to put reasoning behind why you were laughing.

You politely ask it to carry the body behind her as a favor for cleaning its roots.

"Hello, Holofernes," you coo at the head, swiping a thumb under the death stiff eyelid on one side while you walked with it back to the rest of the body.

You can smell the oddness of the corpse, and that dry special blood. Faces were more blurry with time, but you remember the strange, pungent amnion-like vinegar of the Wesker progenitor strain, because it was your personal kryptonite. The C-killer. This thing.

The body is bloodless though. An empty shell.

You raise the head up to your eye level and laugh.

"You know what?" you say "There's this part of me that wants to see what you'll do, you copy. You imitation of an idiot man, you."

You peck the curve of the dead man's cheek and coax the vines to release the crumpled body to you. The plant throws him unceremoniously and you toe him under your boot to roll him around for inspection.

---

You peck the back of his knuckles as the thing with Wesker's face limps around. Original Progenitor had been something you worked with religiously, but not in the same context that William Birkin had done. You don't know the Doctor's motivations for it either: why make an immortal? Was it the Umbrella cell they shared or was it love or hate? Was it just a final fuck you?

You don't know. You aren't Birkin. You can't replicate that kind of passion. You don't look at this once again resurrected corpse and think yeah: what a deserving man.

Your charge, hilariously self described as "Zeno", has told you enough about himself that his recovery by way of milling about an open field like a wounded animal is probably an ego blow. The guy thinks he's a god, like the man that inspired his creation. Self described. God. You've never liked people like that.

At least you earned your own title.

You walk behind him slowly, watching this wounded thing that thinks he's truly a gift of celestial origin come to terms with the reality that life, that flesh hurts.

"This... isn't right," Zeno says, doubling over, the seam around his neck seeping wet pus into a ring of bandages. He clutches his stomach and vomits out decayed matter while you slither beside him and pat his back.

"Not yet. You've just come back."

Zeno shivers, for once breaking character, and looking very, very afraid.

A long time ago, a young woman called you "The Devil". You offer something, you give gifts, you test, and never is it without a steep price.

You like the name. It makes you feel much more powerful than a god.

God, in this context, seems to be a weak young man kneeling in a field, lost, and alone, vomiting his guts out repeatedly.

You laugh a little and put your warm palm on the back of his saturated neck and he closes his eyes because it soothes him.

---

The room is filled with corpses bent at unnatural angels. It's an expression of rage built up over a very, very short lifetime, and all that rage had to go somewhere.

For the first time, you think you find sympathy with a man, but it's very brief. These were Connections members, allegedly transporting a new, particularly interesting experiment. Not a problem any longer.

You weren't really here for them, but happening upon the scene was serendipity. Zeno stood in the middle of the room, shivering, and sucking on a cigarette like it would save him from the blood on the walls and the ceiling.

"Hiya handsome."

You wade through the blood and leave behind smearing footprints. He tries to set his jaw, and decide something, but he can't. You pluck the cigarette from his lips after closing distance, easing it out and coaxing his mouth down to yours for a kiss. Your first.

You taste copper, rage, and terror, and things far too human for his "godly" lineage.

"Wanna get outta here?"

There's a heavy hesitation like he wanted to stay, and the shaking hasn't stopped. This worldly monster of a man nods and chokes out a strained "yes" only after a sparking machine broke the silence. You can practically hear a pained insistence behind it. I'm still a god. I'm a god. I'm so angry...

You tug his shoulder and lead him back down a dark set of stairs, blood trailing behind the both of you. You've always enjoyed pulling this type of man to the abyss. You've always liked dragging them into the water, and drowning them.