The man had five eyes on his bloody face.

Five. 

Jake counted them as the j'avo started in. One large arm extended out into a claw, the other was normal and carried a dagger. 

"Muller," the infected tried to say. Its voice was raspy from twisted vocals.

But the thing that bothered Jake the most was the eyes. Five of them, scattered about his face. But lifeless, dead, sitting on an animated body bloated with infection that would never heal. With blood running out of the newly formed eye sockets. Small pockets of puss scattered across his forehead. He'd been a businessman once, judging from his ripped-suited attire. But now he was a mindless foot soldier, doing whatever Umbrella ordered him to do.

Jake found himself asking the same question he always did when confronted with one of Umbrella Corps' creations. 

Why? 

It swung the giant claw in Jake's direction. 

Jake ducked and rolled to the side, knowing from personal experience that the claw weighed a ton and felt like getting hit by a truck. Not to mention the sharp claws running down your back. He pulled the trigger from the floor the barrel pointed at the j'avo's face. 

The head exploded in a shower of gore as the creature toppled over next to Jake. He sat up and got to his feet as fast as he could. The creature did not mutate again. Jake sighed with relief. At least it had the right number of eyes now. Zero, none, because it wouldn't be bothering anyone or anything ever again.

He got up and moved into the hallway, stepping over the corpses of fresh killed B.O.W.s. He tried not to think about the fact that most of these had once been people. There was nothing they could do for them now except give them a decent burial.

The hallway looked deserted. Aside from the corpses he'd left behind him it was empty.

He inhaled. Rapidly fading cigarette smoke permeated the cool air, mixed with the musty stale smell of mildew. 

Someone was here. He sniffed the air again. The iron scent of blood greeted his nostrils away. He recoiled slightly. Someone had been here recently at least.

He cocked his rifle, listening to the echo reverberate down the empty hallway. He'd been through scores of sites recently. He had no idea if his partner, Leon Kennedy was alive and his wife and daughter were somewhere in the facility. 

He had no intention of hiding. Let them hear him coming.

Jake paused again, lightly balanced on the balls of his feet as he stalked his prey. 

 Water dripped somewhere in the vicinity, although it could have also been blood, judging from the smell. The lack of infected crawling through was unusual. 

The BSAA, the agency tasked with taking out the B.O.W.S (bio-organic weapons), had come through first. But where they'd ended up was anybody's guess at this point. Jake no longer heard the shots from the team and the last thing he and Leon had heard on the radio were screams. It didn't bode well for team seven. 

Jake fingered the rifle in his hand before making up his mind.  He started forward boots thocking against the aged wooden floor. Blood splatted beneath his soles as he moved through it. It coated the walls, the floors every where around him. But he ignored it. He was used to this carnage now. The sight of it no longer caused him to puke whatever he had in his guts out. If anything it only made him angrier. 

He moved swiftly, his other hand deftly tapping through his coms, hoping to pick up voices on any channel. All were eerily quiet. Things had definitely not gone to plan at all. At least not theirs. Somewhere in this building, his father Albert Wesker was in hiding. The real deal and not another fucking clone that had no clue why it existed. 

There was nothing else he could do but go forward. He had to see this through to the end now. Whatever mess his father had made, there was always a back door, always a way out for Wesker to escape. After the fiasco with the Nemans last year, demonic creatures that Jake learned had once been his test tube made half siblings, Jake had only one plan. And that was to seal that back door shut forever. Albert Wesker had had too many lives, too many do-overs. It was time to put him back into his grave and keep him there for good this time.

The floor creaked as he moved. He paused listening for the tell tales signs of bogies moving in. It was the skittering ones that were the worst, or as they were called, "lickers," creatures that crawled on all fours, and chased you down coming at you from all angles. 

 Jake kept moving, observing the bullets and the blood-spattered walls that revealed the last moments of some BSAA agents. No bodies though.

There never were any bodies. Umbrella cleaned up after themselves well. Bodies were a commodity. What are a few missing dead soldiers on a black ops mission anyway?

The cigarette smell grew stronger and Jake's finger inched over the trigger, his breathing slowed and evened out as he listened. Whoever they were, they didn't want to be found but they were close. 

Perhaps they should have picked a healthier and less fetid habit.

There was a door to his right. A janitor's closet. On a whim, Jake yanked it open jumping back when a short balding man with a bloody lab coat pulled back inside with a shriek. He tried to come at Jake with a broken mop handle.

He was clumsy and it took Jake nanoseconds to take him down. One chop to the throat and the shorter man dropped the handle and staggered back grasping at his throat as he gasped for air. Jake followed him through grabbed his throat and forced him against the wall.

"Where are they?" he growled.

The man squealed up at him and the piddling sound of liquid hitting the floor and the sickening smell of urine greeted him.

"I'm not going to ask again," Jake said. He drew a knife from his pocket and put the point of it up close to the quaking scientist's face. He knew in an instant that Sherry wouldn't approve of his methods. But she wasn't here. He'd move heaven and earth to get his family back. Hell, he mow through hell while he was at it if the first two options didn't work.

The man's eyes reflected on the blade, opened wide and bloodshot. "Who-oo--? Pleeass-- I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"A woman and a baby." Jake pulled back a little, lowering the blade to the man's cheek. 

The man's lips quivered and he squeaked again. "Level 3, that's where they take the newest specimens."

"Specimens?" Jake raised an eyebrow. Not this shit again. They'd been through enough.

"Yeeaah," the scientist squeaked, nodding, suddenly very eager to please. "Babies go through processing so we--" He stopped, his gaze frozen on Jake's stare. "Please... I don't---"

Jake leaned over. The guy actually wore a name patch that read "Smith."

"It's your lucky day, Smith," he said as he stepped back looking down at the scientist in disgust. How many assholes like him had stood over his own cage while they'd experimented on him and Sherry in China? How many had simply watched as they pushed his abilities to the limit? How many vials of blood had they drawn not caring when it was too much? How many nights had he held his wife calming her of those nightmares, quite literally after waking up from his own?

"Tha- thank you," Smith started to say, quivering.

"Take me to level 3," Jake said. 

Smith pulled back against the wall, trembling. The man looked like he wanted to cry. "No, no, I can't go back there. They're all out, it's no man's land there. They are all over the place. The clean up crew is here. We need to get out bef---"

Jake lashed out, his fist catching the man's jaw, dropping him into a puddle of his own urine on the floor. Stepping back his face twisted in disgust, Jake curled his lip. He had no love for scientists, especially in this particular field of research. No, he wasn't going to kill Smith today. The man was a lackey nothing more. A yes man, what they'd like to term "someone little bitch" when he was a mercenary. But that didn't mean he couldn't leave him with a broken jaw and a hell of a headache when he woke up. 

He knew what the 'before' was. There was always a clean up crew to destroy the evidence or move it. They'd bombed Raccoon City to prevent the original T-Virus from spreading. Sherry was one of the few survivors of that incident. There was no doubt in his mind they'd destroy this place too. At least what was on the surface. He was running out of time.

He walked out and shut the door behind him and kept moving. There was a door at the end of the hallway. It was always at the end of the fucking hallway. Jake wondered if they planned all these buildings the same way. 

Getting to it, he hesitated before twisting the knob. Level 3 is what Smith had said. Jake had no idea if the man was telling the truth, but no reason to belive the man was lying either. He'd pissed himself after all. Having a 6'3" man with a rifle in your face shove you into a closet was bound to ruin anyone's day.

The door opened with a squeak. The sound seemed deafening to Jake as the door revealed a darkened stairwell behind it.

"Of fucking, course," Jake muttered, rubbing a hand over his close-cropped hair. He clicked a light on his rifle and let it snap on.

The light shone on a man's bloody face.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Sherry pulled Anja close to her chest. 

The sounds of fighting had continued on away from them but nothing had prepared her for the dead silence afterward. Or the fact that no one had come for them. Not Wesker, and certainly not the BSAA agents that had swarmed through, guns blazing. 

She held the small Glock she'd retrieved from the floor, wiping it against her pants before changing hands. 

The lights flickered and Sherry sighed inwardly. She had to get Anja out, but she was severely outgunned, outmanned, and definitely out-beasted. She had no idea what would happen if she ran into a horde of zombies on her way back up. Would she eventually be eaten? Would she just keep healing until there was nothing left? 

The facility didn't appear to be too deep into the ground. And it was quiet. She was in a long hallway, with rooms on all sides but the 'specimens' were out now, chasing whatever was left of the team that had come in. A single tear slipped down her cheek. She'd known some of those men, they were good men, good soldiers.

She looked at the broken glass and tried to balance Anja. It was all chaos in here. For whatever reason, the doors had opened and the many B.O.W.s had been allowed to run out. The ensuing fight had shattered some of the glass partitions.

She started walking towards the door they'd come through originally. Anja gave a low whimper and Sherry turned to her when she heard it. 

A low growl sounded from the far end of the hall. 

She turned back and saw it. 

It had started out as a Doberman, but what it was now was a quivering dog, half alive, with a rabid appetite for fresh meat. Its face split wider than normal revealing another row of saliva and blood-covered teeth. Spots of infected skin dotted its once black coat. 

"Shit," Sherry whispered pulling Anja into a tighter embrace. Her eyes flicked to the right, noted the open door and she dove towards it as the dogs started running at her. 

It was ironically a specimen holding facility but if she could get them in there, nothing would get to Anja.

She leaped through just as the demonic infected doberman charged through, slipping on the blood it smacked into the wall behind where Sherry had been standing seconds before. Sherry kicked the door shut behind her just in time to hear the dog's body slam into it again and again.

She looked around. She and Anja were alone in this cell. They were safe, whatever that meant. She sat on the floor pulled Anja to her chest and started to cry. 

------------------------------------------------------------------

Jake jumped back for a moment moving the beam away before getting control of himself and swinging it back. It was a body, a BSAA soldier, and his death wasn't pretty and didn't look like he'd gone quick. His BSAA uniform was shredded. Parts of the midsection were missing. If the man had a name patch it had been ripped out with the missing sections of his torso.

"Fuck." Jake moved forward, his heart beginning to pound a little.

The man half hanging on the stairwell didn't move. That never meant anything before. In Jake's line of work, they came at you at the last second. A Head or heart shot was the only way to kill them.

But yet... He inspected the face closely looking for any sign of abnormality. The man had died in agony that much was clear. He'd seen monsters made from the half torsos of dead men.

Jake moved closer. The iron blood smell was strong and --- he reached out and touched the crimson liquid --- still wet.

Both good and bad news. They were close.

He swung the beam away from the gruesome sight. There were plenty of other bloody hand prints but no bodies, and no zombie hordes.

He shuddered as he started down the stairs. In all honestly, the zombie hordes were the least of his problems. It was the other creatures they created with the C & T-viruses. The smarter ones, the ones with more intelligence could take orders. 

And the dogs. He hated the fucking dogs so much.

Each step was loud and he expected at any moment a horde of flesh-eating infected would burst out of the darkness at him. But so far it was dead silence. They'd moved fast, which meant they were on the hunt. And it wasn't him, yet.

Jake moved faster, Level 3 wasn't too far down. Whatever had happened in this lab had happened quickly. He opened the door at the bottom of the stairs without hesitation, the hall lights were on but flickering. In the end, the exit sign was ripped off its foundation pulsing a small shower of sparks every few sections along with a hum of electricity to go with it.

He walked forward.

Specimens...

At first, he saw nothing. Just more puddles of blood. There were more doors on this level. It reminded him vaguely of a psych ward.

He walked close to the glass of one of the rooms. The lights were off and it was dark within.

But maybe...

"Sherry?" he whispered. He took the light from his rifle and peered inside, seeing nothing, and then...

--"Oh, shit!"

The creature inside resembled a giant bag of tits, the fleshy bags emitted a dangerous gassy vapor. The creature's legs were nobby and unwieldy but it could move fast at a moment's notice. Like now it slammed against the glass, its large tongue whipping out of its mouth in a frenzy. Jake had been locked in a macabre dance with one before. If it hadn't been for his healing ability, he would be dead.

He stepped back and listened as the creature repeatedly hit the side of the cage, over and over.

Wham!

Wham!

The lights flickered with their electric hum continued.

He backed off and moved away from the glass as the creature continued to run into it.

He checked all eight of the other rooms. There were other specimens, some of them still looked remarkably human but didn't move when he shined a light in. Several creatures were attempting to escape. 

Jake moved towards the end door side-stepping the small shower of sparks.

He was so close, he could feel it.

He grasped the knob and turned it again ignoring the sounds behind him. None of those people were Sherry. They were safer in their cells than out here with him. The blood-stained walls confirmed that.

Smith must have gotten lucky.

"Hello, Jake."

Jake stilled his hand still on the knob. That voice... how he hated that voice. He closed his eyes and listened as Albert Wesker's voice fluttered down from the darkened corner of the hall where a small camera was mounted. He barely noticed it at first but now it was all he could see. That one pinpoint of entry. He was either close or far off... the thought of being so close but not quite there was infuriating. Jake clenched his fists.

"I told you, you were the most dangerous B.O.W. I've ever created," Wesker said. "But of course you are strong, you are of my bloodline after all."

"Fuck you."

"And we'll need to teach you manners. I've seen my granddaughter, she's beautiful."

"Where are they?" Jake growled.

"Safe, secure, and fine," Wesker added. He paused. "I think you worry too much. They would be part of my new world order. You think I'm a monster but the daughter of my work partner and my son's wife?"

"I swear if you hurt them--"

"You'll what?" Wesker taunted through the mic. "Honestly, I don't know how out of all of my children you survived."

Jake stopped talking and looked at the door. He reached through and twisted the knob. The door swung open with a squeak and he stepped through it ignoring the voice coming through the microphone.

He wasn't talking anyway and Jake didn't have the energy to finish up this farce.

The door opened to another dark stairwell.

"Shit," Jake whispered. He inhaled. The facility was bigger than he'd expected. On the one hand, this section was also newer. There was less chipped paint and wear and tear on the walls as he started down the stairs. If anything the only big problem was the fresh coat of red splattered paint.

He moved down the stairs with ease, his father's words rattling around in his head. He'd heard the same phrase before. Wesker knew how to hit him with the thing that he feared the most. His unit back in Edonia had all mutated into j'avo. He still saw their horribly mutated faces and heard their scratchy voices in his nightmares as he killed them again and again to escape. Some of those men had been his friends. And yet he alone had been immune to the C-Virus. Because he was his father's son. 

His fingers clenched the rifle as he kept moving. The stairs were concrete and the only sound was the thocking of his boots against the ground and the wild heartbeat in his chest.

One more set of stairs. Level 6 C, he read before reaching for the handle. The doors swung open easily without protest. It should have not moved at all. He should have had to use a key card to get in here, but it was simply unlocked. Which meant he was being let in. Maybe herded in the right direction was a better way to look at this.

He had no choice.

He stepped through the doorway again to yet another floor and was immediately assailed with the heinous oder of rotten flesh. 

He pulled his mask up in a bad attempt to ward off the smell but it did little good.

"Shit," he whispered again as he struggled not to gag, but kept moving forward.

It was another long corridor but this one was different. The wall was lined with windows, the windows were openings to different versions of the inhabitants of hell.

"These are where our failures live." Wesker's voice snapped his attention to the front. The man was there, fully grown, no longer a clone.

Jake shivered and raised his rifle.

"Now, Jake," Wesker said. He held up his hand and snapped and the light to the room on Jake's left turned on. Inside were Sherry and Anja, Sherry holding Anja to her chest.

"No!" He ran to the glass and put his hand on it. Sherry who'd been sitting in the corner rocking Anja immediately ran and put her hand over his. Their eyes met. Relief flooded through him. They were alive and safe for the moment.

He turned and stared at the man who'd been the cause of his existence as well as the bane of it.

"Why?" Jake said.

"Why?" Wesker asked. "I hate to keep them here but I need assurances from you that you won't interfere."

"With what?" Jake kept his finger on the trigger, the rifle pointed at Wesker. Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill.

"I needed you distracted, Jake. I don't want to lose you, but you are one of the few who could stop my plans." Wesker fiddled with the keycard in his hand. His long black trenchcoat shuffled as he moved to look at Sherry and Anja behind the glass. 

"How did you know where they were?" Jake asked. "How did you fucking know where to find them and my m-- Annie." He hesitated to give Annie's name as his mother. She was a clone of his mother. Finding her in Raccoon City had been a bonus he'd not been prepared to deal with. Sherry had stepped in and gotten the woman a home, and a life away from Wesker. 

A door opened behind Wesker and Wesker's lips turned up into a smile. Footsteps came through, the sound of heels which felt like nails on a chalkboard to Jake when he recognized who it was that was walking up behind Wesker.

"We are going to have a family reunion, right here," Wesker said stepping to the side and holding up a hand. Annie took it, a radiant expression on her face as she turned to Wesker and smiled. 

"Annie." When Jake spoke it was flat, he turned his rifle between them. "At least I know the answer to the fucking question."

"Jake, try to understand," Annie said. "Albert and I, we've known each other for years. I know I'm not the woman who birthed you, but I'd like to get to know you."

Jake lifted an eyebrow. "Are you fucking with me?"

"Of course not," she said. 

"You?" He sputtered, rifle dipping slightly. "You told him? Why?"

"I don't know what you experienced growing up," she said. "But I never would have split our family up Jake."

"But she did," he snapped. "She saw him, for what he was. A fucking monster. She knew what he was, and she left, birthed me in Edonia."

Annie closed her eyes. "Edonia is a backwater, why would I do that? You must be missing something."

"She knew what he was, look what happened to his other children," he snapped.

Annie looked at Wesker. "Albert, what children?"

"Test tube babies?" Wesker said. "He thinks they were mine."

"They were," Jake said.

"No Jake," Wesker corrected him. "You are my only natural-born son."

The words hung in the air between them. It was supposed to mean something the way Wesker looked and Annie beamed. It was fucking sick.

Jake remember his mother, the way her hands deftly played the piano. The way she'd taught him all of the classics, insisting he should know. How he'd hid his double life from her the fact that he'd gotten into so many fights at a young age. How much trouble he was in when she had gotten sick. And the fact that in any other place the illness could have been treated, she'd still chosen to hide in Edonia and stay away from any place that would have picked up her name.

"She knew something you didn't," he concluded out loud. "She died to save it."

"Died to save you," Wesker corrected again. "But there was no reason for that Jake. She could have lived if she'd made different choices."

Annie however was looking at Wesker with an expression of disbelief. "What do I have?" She whispered turning to Jake. "Was it genetic?"

Jake said nothing, his gaze flicking to the room where Sherry and Anja waited. Sherry was staring at Annie, her jaw hanging open. Annie had stayed with her for months playing a doting grandmother. 

There was nothing left to say, so he raised the gun.

They aren't my parents, he corrected himself. They are just clones.

He pulled the trigger.

He aimed at Wesker but Annie was there in front of him. The first bullet went straight through Annie's chest. She didn't register the hit at first. Her expression was one of disbelief as she clutched her chest, the red stain growing wider under her shirt.  

"I'll bring you back," Wesker said as he shoved her aside, pulling his own glock from his belt. His eyes no longer held any expression of sympathy but the cold hard killer that everyone had told him Wesker was. The mask was off. 

Annie sank to the floor sliding down the wall, leaving a blood stain behind her, her red hair, the one defining feature she'd passed onto Jake getting stuck in the crimson liquid. 

"I---," she sank to her side.

There was no expression of grief there, only anger.

"I can bring her back again," Wesker said.

"It's not her," Jake said. "You sick fuck, it will never be her."

Wesker's jaw ticked. "It's not about her," he said. "It's about what she did. Who do you think invented the mind readers so we could take a picture of their memories and re-plant them? Anja Muller was a genius. She invented a way to keep the memories of our loved ones alive. And then she found a way to implant them back into living tissue. All we needed was the body."

Jake was at a loss. "No, she never worked for you, never."

"Who do you think brought me back, Jake?" Wesker sneered. "Your mother," he continued. "Could not stomach the fact that she'd lost her dear Albert, and invented the best component to bring me back. Love is a powerful thing indeed."

"Simmons perfected the cloning process," Wesker went on. I helped him get a tool for the memories. I don't even think Ada remembers getting those taken before we used it on his assistant."

Jake had no idea what he was talking about. Annie twitched on the floor. She stared up at Wesker, pleading with him, a hand lifted in his direction.

Wesker simply turned and walked away.

She dropped her hand to the floor in disbelief. The door closed behind him.

Jake moved out of his trance to Annie's side. Behind him, Sherry pounded on the glass.

Annie looked up at him, he saw sorrow there and anger. She clutched his hand and she gasped.

"I'm sor---rry---, J--ake."

He nodded. There was nothing left to say. He couldn't help her.

He pulled the rifle up and got to his feet. He took one look at Sherry, who nodded. They were trapped across the hallway from a dozen or so monsters. Some Jake recognized, others he did not.

"Damn it."

He looked between Wesker and Sherry and his choice was clear. He ran and opened their cell, using the keycard he'd stolen from Smith.  

He opened the door to their cell. Sherry tumbled into his arms with Anja and he held them close all the while, looking over their shoulders. 

"Can you get out?" He asked as he stepped back. 

"Wait, what about you?" Sherry clutched his arm, her face going from relief to seriousness.

"I have a job to finish," Jake said. "Something else is happening. Wesker mentioned me being distracted."

"Jake," Sherry yanked him close. "Chasing him is the distraction. You get that don't you?"

Jake paused... He was so close to killing him, he was sure this was the original, if not the original set of memories. He nodded. They were close and he needed to get them out first. 

He looked at the door behind him torn and turned back to Sherry. "Let's go."

He took two steps when the shot rang out. Pain lanced through his shoulder. He glanced back.

Wesker.

There was no pretense on Wesker's face. Wesker pointed the Glock and fired at him again, striking his other shoulder. He groaned but let the pain slide through him. 

"Go!" He shouted at Sherry pushing her back towards the door, so she wouldn't hesitate like he knew she wanted to. It was one of the things he loved about her the most. "Go upstairs, don't stop, shoot anything that moves." 

He heard her footsteps moving away and relief flooded through him. He couldn't do this with them standing there. His father was a fucking monster that needed to be put down.

But so was he.

Both bullets dropped from his shoulders as his healed body pushed them out. They hit the floor with a ping and lay there as both men stared at each other.

Jake raised the rifle again and pulled the trigger but Wesker simply flinched in the right direction and the bullet missed by mere centimeters. He kept firing and then it stopped. He was out.

Getting close enough Jake dropped the rifle and went straight for the kill.

He had no doubt that Wesker had used the virus in Jake's blood to make himself stronger and have the same healing abilities Sherry had. He'd experimented on Jake first after all.

Jake pulled a knife out of his belt and swung in a fast uppercut going for the throat. The knife hit clothes, but not skin as Wesker ducked out of the way.

"Always was curious about who would win," Wesker said as he drew his own knife.

Jake winced. His face had once born a three-inch scar across his cheek until one of Umbrella's monsters dubbed Ustanak II had beaten his face to a bloody pulp. His face had healed without the scar remaining.

"Bastard comes at me with a knife," Jake muttered and lunged. This time the blade connected to the arm that Wesker through up to protect himself. It stuck in the bone. Wesker swore as Jake jerked it back-breaking several layers of skin in the process.

Wesker stepped back and took off the ripped trench coat. Blood pooled on his arm and then stopped. The skin in the opening visibly healed and tightened back into place as both men watched. Wesker flashed him a malevolent smile.

The knife fight went on, each man trying to gauge the other's weakness as they ducked in and out of each other's reach. Jake leaned into his next swing and dove into tackle Wesker.

Or he tried. Wesker evaded and Jake went head over heels as his momentum carried him into the wall. But he was back on his feet in an instant. There was never a question of who was superior. Wesker moved with superhuman speed, his motions a blur. And now he could heal quickly.

He is fucking toying with me, Jake realized.

The two men faced off. Their combat lasted only a few minutes.

Head or heart, he could hear Leon telling him. 

"I remember when they told me about you first," Wesker said side stepping. "I always thought having a son would be a great way to usher in a new world."

"No thanks," Jake said trying to shove back. "I'm trying to quit!"

"Too bad," Wesker leaped forward, arm outstretched, dagger in hand. This time the blade struck home, piercing his chest. Jake gasped out loud as his lung struggled to hold air. He felt the blood coming back up his throat as Wesker smiled down at him. "We would have done great things together."

Jake shoved him back and the two men went sprawling. 

This time Jake stuck his blade into Wesker's side. The man winced and both struggled in a bloody wrestling match, neither pulling the other's blade out as they tried to push their own in. Try as they might, they couldn't outdo the other. 

Jake found himself pinned to the floor, the dagger in his chest kept it from healing. His breath came in rasps as he struggled to maintain the hold on the dagger he'd stuck into Wesker's side.

"I think I'll keep you here, as one of my best specimens," Wesker said driving the blade further into Jake's chest. "You are perfect for experimentation after all."

"Always a silver lining," Jake spat back at Wesker, spraying his face with bloody spittle.

Wesker opened his mouth to retort when his head exploded into a pile of gore all over Jake's face. Jake sat up pushing Wesker's body off of him, pulling back as he simultaneously yanked the dagger out of his chest. The wound began to heal immediately and he looked up in disbelief at his rescuer too shocked to even wince at the pain in his own body.

Sherry stood behind Wesker, the Glock she'd picked up firmly in hand, still smoking. 

"Sorry," Sherry whispered. "That one's still mine."

-----------------------------------------------------

Jake's wet toes sank into the sand as he strolled on the beach in nothing but swimming trunks. The waves crashed around them. Anja ran around them in circles shrieking with delight every time she found a new sea shell.

They needed this.

Sherry squeezed his hand as he looked over his shoulder again.

"He's finally gone, right?"

"I exploded him myself."

Jake felt the corner of his mouth tip up as he turned to look at her. He tried to relax but Wesker had made so many comebacks he wasn't ready to believe the man was dead.

He squeezed Sherry's hand back and kept walking. Seagulls cried out around them, as the sun kissed their skin with warmth. He was a natural redhead after all and he would be fried out here. No matter how much sunscreen he applied. 

Anja ran behind them, jumping on sand dunes, her red hair flaring out behind her. She was five and he hoped that her life wouldn't be disrupted any more than it had been already. He forced himself to relax.

"Jake," Sherry whispered. "If he does show up again, we're both right here."

He nodded and leaned in to kiss her. It had been two years and no sign of any Umbrella Corp or a shell company with the same values rising from the ashes.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He watched them stroll on the beach through the camera. Their life was so droll, so unexciting. Yet he enjoyed watching them immensely. 

Behind him in his cold fortress, a machine reprinted the body of Anja Muller again. It would take a year or so, but she'd be back and so would he.

He followed his son's progress on the beach. The tiny camera, designed to look like a mosquito could fly almost anywhere undetected.

Almost...

It was plucked out of the air. Anja's pudgy three-year-old face swam into view.

Wesker sat up immediately, as her eyes peered into the camera. Eyes that were way too old for a three-year-old. She knew he was watching, Wesker realized. 

"Hey Grandfather," she whispered. "Want to play a game?" 

The last thing the camera saw was a rock hurtling toward it, and the feed went dead. 

https://youtu.be/UxbV9xf2MIM