Location: Cambridge, England
Date: January 19, 2019
Time: 07:00 GMT
The morning mist in Cambridge was thick enough to taste—damp, cold, and smelling of ancient stone and river water. It turned the world soft and white, erasing the sharp edges of the university spires in the distance.
Alen stood alone in the cemetery. Before him were two headstones made of gray granite, their surfaces slick with dew.
> DR. JESSICA R. RICHARD > Beloved Mother. Healer. Date of death 2001
> JASON MITCHELL > Philosopher. Husband. Alen knelt and placed a bouquet of white lilies on the damp earth. The flowers looked startlingly bright against the gloom. He stood there for a long time, the silence of the graveyard a stark contrast to the roar of gunfire and the screams of the dying that usually filled his head.
>
"It's been a while," he whispered. His voice cracked slightly, the sound swallowed by the fog. "I'm sorry. I tried to do what you said, Mum. I tried to use my heart. But the world doesn't want hearts. It wants monsters."
He reached out, his gloved fingers tracing the letters of her name on the cold stone.
"This world took everything," he murmured, his blue eyes darkening. "My mentor. My wife. But I will not give up. I will move on until I perish."
He straightened his coat, the grief hardening into resolve. "I'm not done yet."
The Ghost House
He left the cemetery and walked through the quiet streets to the outskirts of town. The old Richard Estate stood behind an iron gate, overgrown with nine years of unchecked ivy. It had been legally held in a blind trust since Jessica's death, a silent monument to a murdered family.
Alen reached beneath a loose stone at the base of the gate—a trick his father, Jason, had taught him when he was six years old.
Clink.
The rusty iron key was still there.
He walked up the driveway. The gravel crunched loudly under his boots. The house loomed, dark and silent. He unlocked the front door and pushed it open.
The air inside was stale, heavy with dust and memories. Sunlight cut through the gloom in sharp beams, illuminating millions of floating motes.
Alen walked into the living room. It was frozen in time. Jessica's reading glasses were still on the side table next to a book she would never finish. Jason's pipe rested on the mantle, a layer of gray dust coating the bowl.
He dropped his backpack on the floor. The sound echoed through the empty house. He walked to the window and pulled back the heavy drapes. Light flooded the room, banishing the shadows of the past.
"I'm home," he whispered.
He didn't rest. Resting gave the ghosts time to talk. Instead, he worked. He stripped off his heavy coat and rolled up his sleeves. For five hours, he cleaned. He swept the dust, wiped the surfaces, and aired out the rooms. It was a ritual of reclaiming. This was the place where he grew up, the only place he had ever been innocent.
He went down to the basement. The fuse box was old, the wiring frayed. He put his trench coat back on and walked to the local hardware store, buying cables, new bulbs, and food. He moved like a shadow—faces in the town didn't recognize the boy who had left a decade ago.
Back at the house, he rewired the main line.
Snap. Hummmm.
Power returned to the estate. The lights flickered on, warm and yellow. Alen changed the bulbs, brewed a pot of coffee, and sat in his old room. He fell asleep in his childhood bed, the smell of old wood and rain providing the first peaceful sleep he had known in months.
The Riddle of the Leech Man
Date: January 20, 2019
Time: 08:30 GMT
The next morning, steam rose from a mug of black coffee on the dining table.
Alen sat surrounded by technology and history. On his laptop screen, Red Queen 3.0 (Trinity) was running deep-scan algorithms, the code cascading down the monitor like digital rain. In his hands, Alen held the leather-bound diary of Dr. James Marcus.
It was a tome of madness and genius. The handwriting scrawled across the yellowed pages shifted between clinical detachment and raving paranoia. Alen had deciphered the chemical formulas for the Progenitor Virus long ago, but now he was hitting a wall.
"Riddles," Alen muttered, rubbing his temples. "Always with the damn riddles, old man."
Marcus had written extensively about his research, but there were fragmented entries—references to a "Green Isle," to a lineage that predated Umbrella. It was geographic, but encrypted in metaphor.
Alen sighed, closing the book. He needed a translator. Not for the language, but for the man. He pulled out a burner phone and dialed a number.
Location: The Richard Estate, Scottish Highlands
Amelia Richard was in the garden, watching Ruby play near the greenhouse. The phone in her pocket buzzed.
"Amelia Richard speaking."
"Grandmother, it's me. Alen."
Amalia stopped walking. "Alen? What happened? Do you need something, my boy?"
"I'm fine. I'm in Cambridge. But first… how is Ruby?"
"She cried a lot after you left," Amelia admitted gently. "She held onto your shirt for hours. But Julian talked to her. She calmed down. She is playing now. She is resilient, Alen. Just like you."
Alen felt a pang of guilt, sharp and hot. "Good. That's good."
"Why did you call?"
"I need to ask you about your husband. About James."
Amalia's voice tightened. "I told you what I could, Alen."
"You told me about the scientist," Alen corrected. "I need to know about the man. Did James have any connection to Ireland? Specifically, the west coast?"
Amalia paused. She removed her reading glasses, looking out at the misty hills.
"He was… secretive," she began slowly. "He loved puzzles. But yes, you are right. He mentioned once that his mother's side of the family came from Ireland. He didn't speak of them often—he was obsessed with his father's status—but the Irish blood was there."
"Why do you ask?"
"Because of this diary," Alen said, tapping the book. "He references a place he went to alone. A place he hid from everyone. Even Spencer."
"Ah," Amalia nodded, realization dawning. "That explains it. There were times, usually in the autumn, when James would disappear. He wouldn't tell me where. He wouldn't tell Edward Ashford. And he certainly wouldn't tell Oswell Spencer. He would vanish for a week and return smelling of salt and peat smoke. When I asked him, he would just smile that cold smile and say he went 'fishing.'"
"Fishing," Alen scoffed. "A man who wanted to replace God doesn't go fishing for trout."
"Precisely," Amalia agreed. "He went alone. Not even his 'Golden Boy' was allowed to go."
"Brandon Bailey," Alen said the name with distaste.
"Yes. Bailey," Amalia's voice grew cold. "James's favorite student. He attended university in Switzerland, studying virology under James. He was groomed for the inner circle. After James 'died' in 1988, Bailey came here, to the Highlands, in 1999."
"He came for Jessica," Alen surmised.
"He was obsessed," Amalia confirmed. "He knew Jessica was James's biological daughter. He thought marrying her would give him some twisted claim to the legacy. But Julian… Julian beat the living hell out of him. Bailey left with a broken nose and bruised ego, and went on to form 'The Connections.'"
"Good job, Julian," Alen smirked. "And I finished what he started."
"Indeed you did."
"Thank you, Grandmother. Take care of Ruby."
"Be safe, Alen."
The Coordinates
Alen hung up and crushed the SIM card, tossing it into the trash. He sat back down, opening the diary to the marked page.
The Riddle:
> "Where the green veins bleed into the endless grey,
> Count the breaths north of the fiftieth crown.
> Turn west until numbers lose their warmth,
> And water remembers my mother's name."
>
Alen stared at the text, letting his mind drift from literal meanings into the abstract logic of a 1960s intellectual.
"Green veins," Alen whispered. "The land. The Emerald Isle. Bleeding into the endless grey… the Atlantic Ocean."
He picked up a notepad and a pen.
* "Fiftieth crown" → The 50th Parallel North. The dividing line.
* "Count the breaths north" → A specific latitude above 50°. A 'breath' is likely a degree. The northern tip of Ireland sits around the 55th parallel.
* "Turn west until numbers lose their warmth" → Warm numbers are positive. Western longitude is negative. He was talking about the deep west coast.
* "Water remembers my mother's name" → This was the key.
"Trinity," Alen commanded. "Search Marcus's genealogy files. Mother's maiden name."
"Searching," the AI responded. "Name found: Mharcus. An old Gaelic spelling."
"Teach Mharcus," Alen realized. "Marcus's House. Or a body of water named after the clan."
He did the math, triangulating the poetic meter with map grids.
"Trinity. Input coordinates: 55.2457° N, 8.7019° W."
"Processing… Triangulating data points. Location found."
A satellite map appeared on the screen, zooming in on the wild, jagged northwestern tip of Ireland.
"Location: County Donegal. Near the Slieve League cliffs. This area is known as Dún Bráonach."
"Dún Bráonach," Alen tested the name.
"Analysis: It is a forgotten settlement on the far western edge. Isolated. Accessible only by single-track roads and footpaths. No modern infrastructure detected in census data prior to 1980. It is a place where history is oral, not written. Perfect for hiding something you never want found."
"Damn," Alen whispered. "Far away from civilization. Under the nose of the world."
The Departure
Time: 14:00 GMT
Alen moved with efficiency. He packed his bag: encrypted drives, signal jammer, silenced pistol, and the diary. He checked his gear—the trench coat, the boots, the shoulder holster.
He left the house as he found it—locked, silent, waiting.
He drove his rented van to an industrial port in Eastern England. There were no passenger terminals here. No civilians. Just steel, diesel fumes, and tired men who didn't ask questions as long as the money was right.
The cargo ship was Baltic-flagged. Old hull, new engines. It carried agricultural machinery outbound and came back empty—on paper.
Alen boarded through a side access ramp. No passport. No name. Just a shadow moving into the hold. Below deck, he secured his transport: a black Ducati, stripped of identifiers, plates removed, engine tuned for cold air and wet roads. A predator disguised as freight.
As the ship pulled away, Alen sat alone between steel walls, hood up, listening to the low vibration of the engines. No satellites tracked him. No flight logs. To the world, Alen Wesker had ceased to exist.
The Edge of the World
Location: County Donegal, Ireland
Date: January 21, 2019
Time: 05:30 GMT
The ship offloaded near a secondary industrial quay along the western coast—quiet, poorly lit, overlooked by cliffs.
Alen dismounted the Ducati and brought it to life with a muted growl. The sound was instantly swallowed by the wind and the crashing surf of the Atlantic.
The road west was narrow. Then narrower. Then barely a road at all. Stone walls pressed in close. Peat bogs stretched endlessly, black and sodden. The air smelled of salt, wet earth, and turf smoke. Alen rode hard, the rain streaking across his visor. He passed through villages that were little more than clusters of houses, blurs of gray in the mist.
Arrival: Dún Bráonach.
The road ended where maps stopped pretending.
Alen killed the engine at the outskirts and let the silence rush in. Ahead, Dún Bráonach crouched against the Atlantic wind—stone cottages, blackened walls, mist thick enough to smother sound. Beyond it, higher up, barely visible through the fog, stood the silhouette of a large stone house on the cliffs.
Teach Mharcus.
He dismounted, pulled his trench coat tighter, and pushed the Ducati by hand the rest of the way, boots sinking into wet earth.
No headlights. No witnesses. No record.