A Good Night to Die
(part I)

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"I am dead, dead to the world that held my hand.
Dead to the life I had..."

- Phao A Good Night to Die

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...September 1960...

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She'd been in labour for five hours.

Earlier that morning, she'd risen as she always did and walked around the neighbourhood where she and her husband of three years lived in a rather exquisite two-story house. Despite the youthfulness of their marriage, they'd both graduated years premature at the tops of their classes and landed well-paying jobs. After a year, they'd had enough saved to put a down payment on the house, and signed a lease in which they'd have it payed off in less than ten.

It sat on a third of an acre of property in the suburbs, where the streets were flanked by thick-trunked oaks and children played on the roads on bicycles or with hockey sets or basketballs or chalk. Cars drove by infrequently, and it was only a short time before everyone knew everyone. It was a safe place, quaint and quiet. A sort of paradise in its own right.

The house itself had three bedrooms, a den they'd filled with all the books they'd brought from their separate lives, a spacious kitchen with an island and bar stools in the centre and a living room with a large window that brought in plenty of daylight. A porch with a swing stretched around the front of the house and in the back, there was plenty of room for a sandbox, play structure or pool, if the day should come when they desired one.

After purchasing the complex, their first goal had been to set up a nursery beside the master bedroom. It was the smallest of the rooms, but as they decided, an infant didn't need much besides a suitable crib, a changing table and some toys to play with when older, most of which could be stored in the den anyways. So the room was painted a neutral yellow for they had decided early on to keep the sex of the baby a mystery until birth with baby circus animals bordering the walls. Matching curtains cut the piercing evening light that tended to stretch over the horizon and the crib was accessorized with the latest toys to lull the baby to sleep while subtly enhancing its intellect.

The morning had been brisk and as she roamed the empty streets, taking in the brightening dawn and goldening autumn leaves, she considered the fact that she was nearing her due date and realized that they'd be so preoccupied with other matters that they hadn't discussed potential names. So she ran through a list in her head, scratching out those that she considered to be unsuitable for every reason from that she'd once known a person with that name that made her uncomfortable or that it was such an unflattering name that the child might one day come to resent it. It had to be a powerful name, one that was not so easily forgotten. One that announced his or her grandeur, for certain any child of theirs would be no ordinary child - such is the thought of expecting parents - and instilled inspiration and awe in all who came to be within that child's company.

She'd settled on two, one for each gender, by the time she'd looped back around and climbed the porch steps. Her husband was awake, seated at the table with the newspaper and a fresh cup of coffee. He perused the business section, uninterested in the the mindless drivel of the sports section or the attention grabbing headlines. She moved around him towards the fridge, offering her round belly wide girth, and poured a glass of apple juice instead. Since the start of her pregnancy, she'd avoided all medication and drugs, certain that their child would have no abnormalities save the Will of God.

She'd finished her first glass and was nursing a second along with two eggs, toast and rows of crispy bacon when the first contraction began.

Five hours later, and she was half-sitting in a hospital bed in excruciating pain while the doctor sat between her legs and a handful of nurses stood in wait. Her husband, as frantic as a bird in a tiny cage, paced the room between the bedside and the window, muttering to himself as he often did at work when he was thinking too hard. She calmed him by asking him to stand beside her and hold her hand. And he did so, though his hands trembled more than hers and it was she who ended up comforting him.

When the doctor told her to push, she pushed, and feared she would pass out before the squealing of the child she'd just delivered echoed through the delivery room and all of the pain she felt evaporated, transforming into utter calmness and unfathomable joy.

The umbilical chord was cut and the infant was received by the nurses, who brought it over to a station set up to wash away the fluids and clear out the nostrils. She sat up eagerly in bed, stretching her neck to try and see and felt a pang of jealousy that those woman were able to see and hold her baby before she was.

"Is it okay?" she asked. "What is it?"

One of the nurses walked over with the bundle and handed the child to her delicately. "It's a beautiful baby boy."

She traded glances with her husband, whose eyes were as soft and moist as hers. He bent over and kissed the little boys head, which was covered in thin blond hair that was more like the fuzz on the skin of a peach. The child mewed in response, his eyes tightly closed and fists clenched.

Her husband stroked her head, wiping the sweaty strands of gold from her face, and then kissed her as well. "We have a baby boy!" he said in an excited whisper.

"I know," she breathed, barely able to comprehend it. Five hours ago, he was an idea; she felt him moving, growing, inside her, but he was still just an idea, something she never thought she would ever be blessed enough to have. And now...here he was. Her little baby...

After a short while, another nurse approached with a thin stripe of plastic and a clipboard and asked if they had yet settled on a name. She was a sweet-looking girl with long brown hair tied in a bun and blue eyes that sparkled. They thought nothing ill of her at the time. The new parents stared at each other for a moment, sharing smiles and thoughts. Then she turned back to the nurse and said, "Yes, we have. We're going to call him..." and she let it hang for a moment, and gazed down at the baby as though speaking directly to to, "Albert."

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They didn't know they were being watched. They didn't even know about the company, of all of the money and resources they had at their disposal to know anything about anyone anywhere in the world. So they'd had no fear, handing their newborn baby Albert to the kind nurse with the gentle face, who strapped on the wrist band and white cap and brought him to the nursery with all of the other babies so his mother could get some rest.

But they had been watched, and the nurse, who was no medical nurse at all, carried the child not to the nursery, but to the waiting men in black coats with red and white logos on the breast pocked who then transferred the baby to a stroller and pushed it up into an idling van behind the hospital. The van left the vicinity, entered traffic and was soon lost among the speeding cars. Just to be safe, the drivers took detours and redrove parts of their route, just in case they had been followed. They were taking no chances.

Several hours and two pit stops later, they arrived at their destination: a research facility belonging to the Umbrella Corporation. Ozwell E. Spencer waited for the men just beyond the automatic doors and led them past the labs where samples of vaccines and everyday medication was tested for the company's superficial appearance, past the highly secure labs where specially suited researchers tested the T-virus on caged animals gathered from homeless shelters, to a nursery of its own. The walls were painted bright colours, with cartoon pictures and shelves of books and toys to keep its occupants busy while indirectly educating them in the most efficient way possible.

Inside, there were eleven other children of varying ages though all under three, sexes and nationalities. Some of the older children scurried around with toys, building structures out of the blocks and pushing beads on wires, while the younger ones slept uninterrupted in cradles where they were checked on frequently by Alex Wesker, the director of the Wesker Children project.

Alex spotted their approach through the window and patted the head of one of the nearest child hugging a plush bear before exiting the room and meeting them in the hall. No formalities were exchanged between Alex, Spencer or the men who'd kidnapped the newborn child; instead, they got immediately down to business.

Alex examined the child carefully without disrupting his slumber. There appeared no physical abnormalities - all toes were counted, all fingers. His lip had grown in fully and when Alex pushed open the eyes gently, the child cried softly, and squeezed them shut again. Alex whistled, lips close to either ear, and in each instance, the child turned away from the sound with a pinched expression, assuming that he had not been born blind or deaf - though further tests were needed to ensure proper platelet count, the absence of allergies and other illness.

"Albert," Alex stated, reading the penciled scribble around the baby's wrist and jotted something down on a slip of paper. "Subject number thirteen: Albert Wesker." Alex looked once more at the baby and smiled. There was just something about him...

"What is it?" Spencer asked after a long stretch of silence. He had high hopes of Alex, certain that his subordinate would be the one to discover for him the elixir of life, and pave the way to his new world. Alex's thoughts were always of great significance, and he was always intrigued to hear them.

"Nothing," Alex answered. "It is simply that...I have a feeling this one will rise up greater than all of the other Wesker children."

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to be continued...

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Disclaimer: All Resident Evil characters are property of Capcom and their individual creators.

Notes: I didn't actually plan on making another multi-chapter so soon, but this sprung from my other Resident Evil multi-chapter, Still Alive Due to the fact that the rest of this story is going to feature spoilers, I'll only be posting this first chapter for the time being. As soon as the large revelations of the other story come to light, I'll post more of this one, but I had to get it out so I didn't forget or never get around to it (not that that really stops me. I have at least three multi-chapter and/or micro-fic collection submissions that I've never finished).

Before we get into the bulk of the story, I'll apologize now for two things. One is that besides characters that actually appear in the Resident Evil franchise (minus Alex), I will not be naming characters. That is, random passers-by, Umbrella employees, even, as seen in this chapter, Wesker's own parents, will be referred to with pronouns. This is because I find that as soon as a fan fiction writer begins naming unofficial characters, they begin creating them and from my experience, OCs in fan fiction are never very well executed. So, I avoid that. Sometimes it makes for a more confusing read, but I feel that by doing that I avoid potential Mary-Sueness or OOC behaviour.

The second apology is for Wesker himself. He is, by far and away, one of my favourite animated characters (the other two being Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII and Sebastian Michaelis from Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler). That said, I would never write him OOC unless I felt there was grounds for it. Now, in the games, he always comes off as malicious, diabolical, etc. In other words: pure evil. He's never shown an ounce of remorse for anyone. And yet, the History of Resident Evil files in Resident Evil 5 claim that there's more to Wesker, that he always had his reservations for Spencer's work and, until the death of Spencer, was always bothered by something. This gives him more humanistic qualities than I'm sure most people give him credit for. If we, as players, assume that Wesker is your classic case of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (that power being Umbrella, the T-virus and his already superior intellect) then it's safe to assume he was once semi-normal. And that is what inspired this story.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of this fic!

Edit: I realized I spelled Ozwell's name wrong! And I included a date. I'm guessing on the month; it doesn't state when Wesker was born, only that it was in 1960.