[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 533 - Wesker Prepares to Fake His Death and Escape

He didn't just lose William. He also lost John's Hard Drive, and the female Agent Ada — sent in specifically as a mole — had vanished into thin air.

This battle, he had lost completely.

The Nest mission: unfinished. That old fox Spencer wouldn't sit still for explanations.

In the eyes of the Board of Directors, only results existed.

Botch a project this size, and what waited for Wesker wasn't a demotion or a disciplinary hearing.

Inside this pharmaceutical giant, failures got zipped into body bags. Or tossed into cultivation tanks as experimental material.

Wesker knew this better than anyone.

He had spent years doing Umbrella Corporation's dirtiest work. Assassinating James Marcus. Stealing the core data of the Progenitor Virus. His blood-soaked hands had steadied Spencer's throne through every crisis.

And what had he gotten in return?

Exiled to a police precinct to command some S.T.A.R.S. unit.

Officially, to monitor law enforcement activity.

In plain terms: a guard dog chained outside the door.

For years, he had watched the idiots in their air-conditioned offices, men who couldn't read anything but spreadsheets, ride his hard-won experimental data straight to promotions and fat salaries.

They really think they can swap me out whenever it suits them.

Wesker let out a cold snort.

Whatever thin scrap of loyalty he'd had at the beginning had been ground down to nothing, one dismissive day at a time.

If he obediently followed his adjutant back to headquarters today, he wouldn't see tomorrow's sunrise.

A pawn that wants to survive has to step off the board first.

"Pull the outer cordon back 2 kilometers." Wesker turned and issued the order to his adjutant. "I'll handle cleanup here personally."

"Notify headquarters: the Arklay facility was hit by an unidentified armed force. Losses are still being assessed."

The adjutant looked like a man who'd just been handed a pardon. He threw a salute and was gone at a jog.

Silence settled around the site.

Wesker walked to a serviceable off-road vehicle, pulled the door open, and dropped into the driver's seat. He didn't touch the ignition. Instead, he reached inside his Tactical Vest and drew out a custom satellite communicator.

Not Umbrella Corporation issue.

This belonged to H.C.F.

The Nest. An organization operating in the shadows, positioned directly against Umbrella Corporation at every turn.

Wesker had been building himself an exit for over half a year now. He'd traded fragments of Umbrella Corporation's peripheral data, the scraps no one would miss, to earn the trust of H.C.F.'s upper leadership.

The communicator screen bloomed with faint green light.

Signal connected.

"This is Wesker."

The speaker returned an electronically synthesized voice, run through a modulator, gender stripped out entirely. Flat. Professional. All business.

"Things on your end don't sound promising."

"The contact we sent to extract Ada has gone dark."

Wesker leaned back into the seat and tapped the steering wheel with one hand.

"There was a complication."

"Someone who had no business being there disrupted the operation. Ada's location is unknown. William Birkin was most likely taken as well."

The line went quiet for several seconds. That gap was enough to shift the balance of any negotiation.

"Mr. Wesker, this is not consistent with our previous arrangement." The voice remained flat. "You stated you would turn William's loyalty away from Umbrella Corporation and bring him to us. William has now disappeared."

"The organization's assessment rating of you is declining."

No cushioning. Straight to the throat.

These intelligence-and-bioweapons traders could change faces faster than turning a page.

Wesker loosened his collar.

"The mansion's database sustained heavy damage."

"But I still have something considerably more valuable."

He let the silence sit for a beat, letting the other side's curiosity sharpen.

It worked.

"The G-Virus?"

Wesker held up the communicator.

"No. Not the G-Virus."

"A complete performance report on B.O.W.s in extreme live-combat conditions. Real bullets, real bodies — actual kill data. Not the rigid parameters you get out of a laboratory."

"Oh? Let's hear it." No disappointment that it wasn't the G-Virus. If anything, the interest in their voice climbed.

Wesker studied the mountain forest through the windshield, the trees buried under a thick grey overcast.

"I will arrange for the S.T.A.R.S. elite unit to enter the mansion." He kept his voice even, methodical, laying the chips down one by one. "They are the finest tactical law enforcement operators in the country. Rigorously trained in urban warfare, counter-terrorism, and jungle survival."

"I will put them inside the mansion, seal every exit, and let them face Hunters, T-101s, and T-102 Tyrants with nothing but the light weapons in their hands."

"A perfect, sealed killing ground."

Wesker's cadence picked up slightly.

"You have always wanted to quantify how bio-organic weapons actually perform against elite human combatants. These men are the ceiling of what human training can produce. Their lives will be more than sufficient to fill your databases."

Another stretch of silence on the communicator.

For H.C.F., this was a genuinely tempting offer. Laboratory data, however clean, could never compete with real combat records for raw clarity.

"If you can deliver this live-combat data, the organization will extend you the highest level of protection. Plus a development fund you will find satisfactory."

"The condition: you must stay alive long enough to hand it over."

"Deal."

Wesker killed the connection.

He pushed the communicator back into his pocket and exhaled slowly.

The situation was clear now.

Umbrella Corporation had no further use for him. He needed to die, cleanly, convincingly, in front of his former employer.

Only a dead man stays ahead of pursuit forever.

The faked-death plan moved officially onto the table.

To fool old foxes like Spencer, he needed either a sufficiently convincing corpse or an explosion that left no survivors.

The self-destruct system in the mansion's lower levels had not yet been triggered.

That facility housed the largest explosives cache in the entire Arklay mountain range.

All he had to do was wait. Let the S.T.A.R.S. unit and the creatures tear each other apart inside. Then collect the data at his leisure, and bring the whole structure down.

After that, no one would be sorting whose bones were whose in the ash.

There was another option. He still had a T-Virus sample on hand, one that William Birkin had carefully refined.

Drinking it was a viable path as well.

The faces of Chris, Jill, and Barry drifted through his mind. The rest of them too.

Those cops called him Captain with genuine warmth. They followed his orders without question, without hesitation.

In Wesker's eyes, they were shelf merchandise. Waiting for the right buyer.

Using their flesh and blood to smooth his escape route was an excellent trade.

And there was already a ready-made hook: Bravo Team's Rebecca was missing somewhere in these mountains.

Search and rescue for a fallen colleague.

Those cops, with their chests full of righteous purpose, would walk straight into the fire without blinking.

Fools. Every last one.

Wesker's smile was cold.

The vehicle bucked over the uneven mountain road.

He switched on the radio and tuned to the Raccoon City Police Department's internal channel.

"This is Albert Wesker."

The duty dispatcher's voice crackled through immediately, laced with static.

"Captain, we read you."

"Bravo Team lost contact during an investigation in the Arklay Mountains. Helicopter signal is gone." Wesker kept his voice low and measured, letting just a thread of fabricated urgency seep through. "Notify all Alpha Team members: all leave is cancelled. Full assembly at the helipad in 1 hour."

"Repeat: situation critical. Full gear. We are going to bring them home."

"Received, Captain. Contacting Chris and Jill and the others now."

The radio went dead.

Wesker took the steering wheel with one hand and swung through a sharp curve.

The plan was already running.

In a world where the strong consumed the weak, loyalty was a fiction. There were only stakes on a table, and whoever pushed the right ones forward at the right moment.

S.T.A.R.S. Go and perform your final service.

With your screams and your despair, pry open the door to a new world for me.

The night was black and heavy.

And somewhere in the city, those operators, completely unaware, were pulling on bulletproof vests, running functions checks on their weapons, and getting ready to drive straight into a slaughter that had been designed specifically for them.

➤ Next: Seeing Through Wesker