matchbreaker | Recollé IC Inbox

No, that's perfectly understandable.

The fact of the matter is that ... Well, I've ever known you to be pragmatic. I figured there was some catharsis for you in saying it, and that if I acted as if I could process it seriously, try to think of cataloguing, that made more sense.

...I see.

I do appreciate it, Elda; there's an element of catharsis in it either way. It's not always easy for me to approach it from an angle that isn't clinical; whether you do the same or not, however, is really more up to you than it is me. I don't mind it if you don't.

I can never pull off fully clinical. Especially about you, Albert.

But I do try to handle it... well, not hysterically? I think I manage that.

It's been admirably not hysterical, for what it's worth; I'm fairly sure you handle these things better than I do at least some of the time.

Now you're flattering me.

But then, I do only get it secondhand.

But okay, to make sure I've got everything straight... there's a virus that can revive the dead, one which eats flesh and spreads by air, antibodies that remove a lot of the effects of the dead-reviving one, and mind control parasites?

...There's another virus that I know almost nothing about. One that my...

Let's call him a friend for simplicity's sake. The one that worked with the parasites - he was also working on a virus of some sort that was very important to him. I retrieved his body after he died for the sake of getting a sample of it, because clearly I was a highly well-adjusted individual.

It had done some horrible things to his body, but I don't know anything about what it was supposed to do otherwise.

That past you must've really trusted that friend to just be injecting them in willy-nilly like that! Particularly if the results were horrible?

But okay, that's...

Wow.

I don't know if I wanted the virus he was infected with for personal use or if I just wanted it for reasons unknown. Or perhaps to sell it.

Another running theme back then, it seems.

He did give me the one I'm currently infected with, however, back when he was still alive.

Why?

I mean I guess you might not know but did he like you? Consider the whole state you're in now good?

To be entirely honest, we both considered it good.

He was the first and only person I was legitimately close to back then, from what I can tell. He did it as a favor to me; it was his way of assisting me with something that he wouldn't participate in but knew I needed to do for myself. He wouldn't have done it for me if he didn't have utmost faith in the outcome.

As for my thoughts on the matter... I think I was angry about the state of things at first, but after a while I legitimately preferred being like this.

[ ... She doesn't have the courage to ask if he prefers to be like that now or not. She really doesn't. Mostly because she's not sure that she can face the answer. He died. He died and here he is, talking to her. It's a miracle, one she's thankful for... but the results of it, she can't help but be unsettled by the very idea. Something feels wrong on a level she can't put her finger on.

... It's ironic, to think that, when she herself is already a vampire. Or at least mostly one.

She taps at the phone a few more times ]

Do either of those viruses have names? The parasites are Las Plagas and the world ending ones are Uroboros, so...?

But in either case... it's strange to say, I suppose, but I'm glad you had someone you could be close to then? Isolation is a terrible thing for anyone.

I don't know what the virus I'm infected with is called; for the time being, I don't call it anything. But I remember that friend of mine was infected with something he called the G-virus...? I've no idea what it stands for, if anything.

...Strange or not, I'm grateful for him as well. I'm sure he would have eventually proven to be as much of a problem as I was, if not moreso, but while he was alive he was probably the only actual friend I had.

Was that man in the terrorism business too, or did this predate all of that? It certainly reads like a more formative experience for you.

Also why is everyone infected with their own viruses? Isn't the point of bioterrorism to infect everyone else?

We were more or less raised in the terrorism business, though he was less so than I was - he came in when he was sixteen or so. I was eighteen at that time and had already been there for several years, though not in any official capacity until I was assigned to work with him.

As for the virus itself...I actually don't know what he was doing with regards to that, because he never gave me any indication that he intended to use it on himself. So I'm not sure if he did it deliberately or if the infection was some sort of accident. Given how unfavorable the outcome was - and the fact that he should have known that it would be unfavorable, seeing as it was his work - I'm actually more inclined to believe that it may have been accidental.

[ Sixteen. Eighteen. He's been there for several years? What the hell that's so... it's inhumane, disgusting. The vampire's eyes narrow at her phone and she finds her thumb up towards her lips and she's nearly bitten down on a nail before she realizes what she's doing.

... God. ]

I'm not sure if that makes it reassuring or all the more unfortunate. I suppose there's no distilling tragedy.

It happened at a time in our lives when we both knew tragedy of some sort was likely unavoidable. About twenty years after we started working together. I chose to leave the corporation we were both working for at the time and offered to bring him with me; he decided to stay despite knowing that the lot of them would eventually want him dead - and even if they didn't, there were plenty of other people who would. He was aware of the potential outcome and that there would be nothing I could do to avert it once I left - he would effectively be on his own - but he chose not to come with me.

I can't say that I'm surprised; from what I remember, he was always somewhat like that.

Edited (html is hard) 2018-04-11 18:09 (UTC)

[ . . . Wait there are terrorist corporations?

Wait you can leave them?

But that's less material then, ]

Oh. I'm truly sorry to hear that, Albert. That must've been hard for that you of the past, and jarring for you now.

[well, in fairness.

there was a reason birkin wanted to make sure wesker could come back from the dead.]

In a turn of events that probably isn't all that surprising given that I was a failure of an empathetic human being back then, I wasn't particularly troubled by it back then. I think I was more annoyed with him for it than anything, but it was his decision in the end.

[ Mmm ]

Yes, that it was.

... There are terrorist corporations? Or have I misunderstood what you did?

Legally speaking, it was a pharmaceutical corporation that specialized in cures and vaccines and had a large number of subsidiaries. They also happened to specialize in creating bioweapons and accumulating deadly viruses for the sake of...I don't fully know. Eugenics, I suppose, was a large part of it.

So technically, yes.

... So like did governments buy these bio-weapons or did they use them theirselves or...?

What happened to the Geneva Conventions?

I actually have no idea on either count, but given that the entire place was already several hundred massive OSHA violations, I can't see them being too concerned about things like human rights.

So we're talking shadow corporations or some sort of insane libertarian dystopia?

I'd think so. Presumably?

Honestly, I'm probably thinking about it too rationally.

... And I guess assuming it was in the US maybe it was in Venezuela or Qatar or something

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