At 9:00 a.m. on June 15, 1976.
I shut the door the moment I returned to my office, stood in front of my desk, and spread out the documents.
The Umbrella Pharmaceuticals headquarters seal, the research team leader’s signature, and the number 48 hours, emphasized as the deadline, all jumped out at me.
They really were fast.
Changing the schedule had been my own impulsive decision this morning.
And yet the fact that paperwork had already come down from headquarters meant someone had reported it immediately in that short span of time.
Herman? Someone inside the research team? Or somebody else I didn’t know about....
"Damn it. Even getting the kids a meal is considered work."
But I didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on that right now.
I closed the file, pressed a hand to my throbbing brow, and looked out the window.
The blizzard outside was still raging.
Who would have thought Umbrella’s surveillance would be this tight even at the far edge of this frozen wasteland?
From the moment I fell into this world, I had been prepared to face them.
That was just what Umbrella was.
Still...now that I was the one directly under their gaze, I could feel just how suffocating that pressure really was.
[Request for full submission of all raw data from ongoing projects at the Antarctic branch. Deadline: within 48 hours. Failure to comply will result in an audit team dispatched from headquarters.]
Raw data, in other words, meant the official research records from this Antarctic branch that Umbrella wanted.
Virus mutation experiments, host response analysis, drug resistance tests, and so on...those were all official projects headquarters already knew about anyway.
That wasn’t the problem.
According to the game’s setting, Umbrella did not know the truth of the Veronica Project.
They didn’t know that Alfred and Alexia were in this facility, either, or how those children had been created.
That was top-secret information that Alexander had kept completely hidden from Umbrella’s eyes.
Come to think of it, that was also why he had built a base at the very edge of Antarctica.
I could hand over the raw data itself. The records had already been manipulated to exclude anything about the children, so there was nothing for me to lose by submitting them.
But the real problem was elsewhere.
What headquarters wanted to dig up might not be the raw data at all.
In a research facility that had been running without any major changes for years, the director suddenly started acting differently. That change itself was suspicious.
No matter the reason, Umbrella was quick to notice even the smallest deviation, and if it seemed impure, they would cut it out at the root.
So if they found out why I had changed, it would be over.
Just as I was sinking into worry, two sharp knocks in a row made my heart lurch.
"Come in."
It was Herman.
"Dr. Ross from the research team has requested to meet with you in the lab."
"...Show me the way."
Watching Herman’s retreating back, I quietly steadied my breathing.
I stood, opened the steel cabinet, and found it packed tight with several research notebooks left behind by Alexander.
I skimmed through them quickly, picked out a usable number, pulled out one chart, and followed Herman toward the laboratory.
The research wing felt completely different from the mansion.
Unlike the noble atmosphere of the mansion, the concrete corridor, slick with blue fluorescent light, was cold and utterly devoid of humanity.
Pipes were exposed along the walls, and cooling units hummed in regular intervals among the pipes overhead.
On the carpeted halls of the mansion, footsteps were muffled, but here the sound of my shoes striking the concrete echoed all the way down the corridor.
Researchers passing by gave me a brief bow, and I answered with a short nod.
About halfway down the hall, there was a thick steel door. Herman entered a code, and with a heavy metallic sound, the door opened.
The temperature dropped sharply beyond it. This was the inner laboratory area, with no windows at all.
When we stopped in front of the lab entrance, Herman said in a low voice, "Dr. Ross is waiting inside."
"Understood."
I took hold of the handle. The cold metal pressed against my palm.
Drawing in a full breath of the chilled air spilling from the lab, I repeated the words like a self-hypnosis.
I am Alexander Ashford.
Dr. Ross was younger than I expected.
Maybe mid-thirties.
Neatly combed blond hair, a white lab coat, gray eyes that seemed to be constantly calculating something, and behind him, two assistants came in carrying cases full of equipment.
"Director Ashford."
He greeted me first.
As I returned the greeting, I looked straight into his eyes.
I knew that if I looked away first, I would lose.
"There was no prior notice about the schedule change."
His voice was polite.
But beneath that politeness, there was an edge.
"Managing the condition of the Veronica test subjects is also our research team’s responsibility. It’s not something the director can adjust on his own."
Test subjects.
The word scraped at my ears.
The image of Alfred’s wrist, cautiously extended to me that morning, flashed through my mind and vanished.
I sat down and spoke slowly.
"The children were in poor condition."
"According to the report..."
"I write the reports."
I cut him off before he could continue.
In a situation where I still hadn’t fully grasped this world, talking too much would only put me at a disadvantage.
Dr. Ross’s eyes narrowed slightly.
One of his assistants set down a case, and the lab fell briefly silent.
I didn’t break that silence. The side that speaks first loses.
Dr. Ross was the first to speak.
"May I ask why?"
"You know as well as I do that repeated sampling suppresses immune responses. If the body is already hypersensitive to external stimuli, the data will be full of noise. If we send that to headquarters, wouldn’t it only lower the project’s credibility?"
Dr. Ross’s eyebrows twitched faintly.
"If it’s immune suppression, we can verify that numerically. Looking at the most recent sampling results..."
"One more thing before that."
I cut him off and set the chart down on the table.
"You know I was bedridden last week."
Dr. Ross paused for a moment.
"I was informed, but..."
"The children came to see me then."
I continued in a casual tone.
"I should have isolated them, but I wasn’t careful enough. This morning, I checked on both of them and they had a slight fever. If a virus is added on top of suppressed immunity, sample contamination is inevitable, isn’t it?"
That story was a complete lie from start to finish.
From the beginning, I had only been pretending to be sick, so there was no way I had passed anything on to the children.
But if he wanted to refute it, he would have to examine the children himself.
And for that, he would need my permission.
Dr. Ross fell silent for a moment.
It wasn’t as if he had no argument.
But the moment he pushed back, he would be directly challenging the director’s authority.
And that was not the direction he wanted right now.
"...A verification procedure is necessary."
"Then why not verify it yourself in four days?"
I added with a light smile, "By then, the fever should have gone down."
Dr. Ross’s expression hardened for a moment before easing again.
"Very well. However, the raw data submission is a separate matter. The 48-hour deadline remains unchanged."
"I know."
I picked up a pen and signed one of the documents as if it meant nothing.
"The official project raw data will be submitted within the deadline."
Just as Dr. Ross nodded and reached for the papers, I spoke again.
"And one more thing."
He stopped and looked at me.
"The next checkup schedule. Come to think of it, four days isn’t enough."
"What do you mean?"
"You said they had a slight fever. It’ll take at least a week for that to fully clear and for their immune levels to return to normal. If we force sampling before then, we’ll run into the sample contamination problem I just mentioned."
Dr. Ross’s eyes narrowed.
"A week is too long. Given headquarters’ schedule..."
"Data quality comes before headquarters’ schedule, doesn’t it?"
I answered calmly.
"If you send contaminated samples to headquarters and there’s a problem later, that will be your responsibility. Would that be better for you?"
I was shifting responsibility onto him. That was more effective.
Dr. Ross said nothing for a moment.
One of his assistants glanced at him, then lowered his eyes.
"...Have you put them under quarantine?"
"From this afternoon, I plan to keep each of them isolated in their own room and let them rest. I’ll have their meals brought separately as well."
I added one more lie. It only had to sound plausible.
"We’ll check their numbers in a week. If there’s no problem, we can resume the schedule then. Submitting the raw data within the deadline and resuming the checkup a week later is the safest and most reasonable course, wouldn’t you say?"
Dr. Ross stared at me for a long moment.
"I’ll have to report this to headquarters."
"Of course. I’ll submit an official report as well."
I set down the pen and stood up.
"Let’s meet again in a week, Dr. Ross."
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