June 16, 1976, around 1:00 p.m.
When I returned to the office, the typewriter was still sitting there exactly as it had been yesterday.
On the desk where I had wrestled with paperwork all night, the same mountain of documents was piled up just as before.
I hung my jacket over the back of the chair, sat down, and let out a sigh.
Work finished, then more work... This definitely wasn’t the aristocratic life I’d imagined when I first came here.
For now, I opened the cabinet to check how much was left and pulled out the documents I’d been working on.
Still, there was a lot less than yesterday. I’d probably gotten through more than half of it.
I should be able to finish it today.
By now my hands had gotten used to it, so I slipped the report paper into the typewriter with practiced ease and started filling it in.
Click
"All right, let’s get this done quickly so I can rest a little too."
My hands moved again.
I sorted the blue marks and yellow marks, separating official data from data that needed to be altered, turning page after page.
My hands trembled less than they had yesterday.
Maybe I was getting used to it, or maybe I was just going numb.
Click, click, click, clack.
As I flipped through the pages, my hand stopped in front of an item marked in yellow.
June 9. Special cooling equipment operation log. I had definitely seen this item yesterday too.
It overlapped with the official experiment date, and the equipment model number was different as well.
This was the kind of thing I had to be careful with no matter how many times I looked at it.
These entries were the problem. It wasn’t the numbers themselves that were strange; it was the context.
The date, the equipment type, the person in charge. If even one of those went wrong, traces of the Veronica Project could be exposed.
Some big shot... especially someone like Spencer, would spot it immediately.
Oswell E. Spencer.
The founder and chairman of Umbrella, and the architect of all this madness.
In the game, he wasn’t just a villain.
He was pure evil, the kind that spent decades trying to steer the evolution of humanity.
The Progenitor Virus, the T-Virus, and the New World Project.
Behind all of it stood that one old man.
And now I was the one who had to submit reports directly to him.
My fingertips froze for a moment.
Honestly, saying I was scared didn’t even cover it.
That man always knew where every piece on the chessboard was.
And if those pieces became unnecessary, or even looked like they might rebel, he would discard them without mercy.
Not just discard them, either, but do it in the cruelest way possible.
Maybe he had already guessed that Alexander was trying to hide the Veronica Project.
Still, there was nothing I could do.
All I could do now was disguise it as naturally as possible....
Suddenly, I remembered what Alexia had said to me before.
"Survive until you have the power to change your environment.".....
Would I ever really have the power to change the environment around these children from Umbrella?
But thinking pessimistically like this wouldn’t change anything.
I went back through the official data.
I found another experiment record from around the same time.
There was one item that required cooling equipment. The model number was different, but it was from the same line.
This should read naturally enough, probably.
The word probably bothered me a little. It meant I wasn’t certain.
But hiding it perfectly was impossible from the start.
I just had to make it natural enough not to arouse suspicion.
Inside the office, only the steady sound of the typewriter echoed.
Then the materials Alexander had left behind ended with the June 11 section, and after that there was a gap.
And that day was the very day I’d fallen into this damn world.
Come to think of it, how many days had it been since I came here?
Without stopping my hands, I searched my memory.
I had possessed this body on June 11, and today was June 16, so it had only been six days.
It hadn’t even been a week yet, and I was already in this state.
I felt tired.
Whether my body was tired, my head was tired, or everything was just tired...
If there was one thing I had decided, it was that from now on I needed to stop caring about counting the days since I’d possessed this body.
I didn’t know how long I’d have to keep clinging to life in this damn world, but if I kept counting every single day, I felt like the number itself would crush me and drive me insane first.
Just surviving day by day was the best I could do. Forget about the numbers.
In any case, from here on out, document preparation was entirely my responsibility.
"How many years am I going to have to keep writing this stuff...?"
There was already a format left behind by the original Alexander, so if I used that well enough it should work, but how long could I keep relying on it without getting caught?
I thought about it, then stopped. That was no different from counting numbers either.
By the time afternoon had passed and evening was drawing near, I pulled the last sheet from the typewriter.
I neatly arranged the completed stack of reports, put them into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote the destination.
[Umbrella Pharmaceuticals Headquarters Research Department]
Done.
I set the envelope on one corner of the desk and leaned back in my chair.
My eyes stung. My wrists ached, and my neck had been stiff for a long time already.
But strangely enough, I didn’t feel bad.
Maybe it was the satisfaction of having gotten through the worst of it.
I looked at the envelope. Everything inside it was fake.
Fabricated numbers left behind by the former Alexander, dates forced to fit, lies wrapped up so convincingly that the finished document, completed by me, was nothing but a bundle of deception.
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
Honestly, I was nervous. No matter how hard I’d worked, could I really fool Umbrella?
But everything was already finished and sealed inside this document. There wasn’t enough time to start over from the beginning now.
So all I could do was leave the rest to luck...
Before getting up, I decided to organize the original materials I’d been working from and put them back in the cabinet.
These papers could never be shown to anyone.
The moment the original data and the altered version were discovered together, everything would be over.
As I tried to push the stack of papers farther into the cabinet, something caught.
"Huh?"
I lowered myself and looked inside the cabinet, trying to force it in.
At the back of the cabinet, where it should have been flush against the wall, there was a gap. It looked wide enough to fit two fingers through.
Was there space behind a place like this?
I didn’t think there had been anything like this in the game either...
It had been so long since I played that game that my memory was hazy.
I got up, moved around to the side of the cabinet, and tried pushing the side panel with my hand.
It didn’t budge at all.
I tried the other side. Same result.
Looking at the floor, I found traces of bolts around the cabinet legs.
They were anchored into the floor.
It had definitely been fixed there on purpose.
I returned to the front of the cabinet and pressed my eye to the gap.
It was dark.
But there was definitely space there.
Inside, I could just barely make out a faint outline, though I couldn’t tell what it was.
Had Alexander made it, or was it part of the mansion’s original structure....
Still, I couldn’t just ignore it.
Another hallmark of the Biohazard series, along with the T-Virus, was those maze-like facilities. Maybe this was connected to that too.
Curiosity surged up, but forcing it open now wouldn’t do me any good.
Setting aside whether I could even open it, if I went into that madman’s den alone without knowing what was in there, there was no telling what would happen.
For now, I sealed away my curiosity and decided to check it later. The children came first.
I looked away, closed the cabinet door, and locked it.
But I still didn’t know then that the place behind it would become the starting point of the tragedy I most wanted to prevent.
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