Location: Teach Mharcus (Marcus Estate), Dún Bráonach, Ireland
Date: January 21, 2019
Time: 09:15 GMT
The door didn't creak. It surrendered.
Wood, softened by fifty years of Atlantic damp, splintered inward as Alen Wesker applied precisely enough kinetic force to shatter the lock mechanism without bringing down the frame. He stepped across the threshold, his boot crunching softly against decades of dust and rot.
The air inside was stagnant—a tomb sealed tight. It tasted of mildew, decomposing paper, and the heavy, metallic scent of silence. Spider webs hung like funeral veils from the ceiling beams, thick and gray.
Alen stood motionless for a moment, letting his senses expand into the dark. He was a shadow against the gloom. His mid-length, weathered black leather trench coat settled around him, the deep red interior lining flashing briefly like a warning. The faded Union Jack patch on his left shoulder caught a stray beam of light. Beneath the coat, his black commando sweater and tactical pants were functional, silent.
His hoodie remained up. His face was a void. His black fingerless gloves flexed, the leather creaking softly as his right hand hovered near the shoulder holster concealed beneath the coat. The Samurai Edge – AW Model-01 sat there, a cold weight against his ribs.
Alen moved.
He swept the ground floor with the fluidity of water. Room by room. The estate was frozen in decay—chairs arranged around a fireplace filled with cold ash, a dining table set for a meal that never happened. In the hallway, beneath layers of grime, framed photographs lined the wall. He stopped at one. It was a black-and-white portrait, dated 1928.
A young James Marcus sat in his mother's lap. Her expression was warm, protective, almost desperate. But behind them stood a man with rigid posture and eyes like flint. The father. Alen stared at the child's face—the seed of the man who would one day try to burn the world.
"So this is where you were born," Alen murmured, his voice deadening in the thick air. "Where the monster was made."
He moved on. Bedrooms. Servant quarters. The library. Everything was too clean. Too undisturbed.
"You were paranoid, James," Alen whispered. "You wouldn't just leave a house. You would leave a fortress."
He entered the Reading Room. It was a cavernous space facing the sea. Bookshelves tower from floor to ceiling, filled with molding texts on biology, botany, and Gaelic history. Alen stood in the center of the rug and closed his eyes for a second.
Reality-Lens: Active.
His perception shifted. The room dismantled itself in his mind.
* Airflow: Draft detected near the north wall.
* Floor Wear: Uneven patterns leading to the fireplace, but not away from it.
* Structural Density: The chimney breast was too wide for the flue size.
Alen walked to the fireplace. He didn't look at the grate; he looked at the brickwork to the right of the mantle. "Hollow," he noted.
He pressed his knuckles against a specific brick that was slightly cleaner than the others. He struck it once, sharply.
Clack.
A heavy, mechanical groan vibrated through the floorboards. Behind him, the massive oak bookshelf split down the middle. It didn't scrape; it glided on hidden, well-oiled pneumatic rails. It slid aside to reveal not a dusty closet, but a reinforced steel airlock door.
The keypad was dead, but the manual override wheel was coated in grease—preserved. Alen holstered his weapon and gripped the wheel. With a grunt of exertion, he spun it. The seals broke with a hiss of escaping pressure—air from the 1960s rushing out to meet the present.
He stepped into the dark.
The Belly of the Beast
The stairs were not stone. They were industrial steel grating.
Alen descended, his tactical light cutting a beam through the blackness. The architecture shifted instantly. The rotting wood of the 17th century gave way to the cold, brutalist efficiency of early Umbrella engineering—but better. He reached the bottom. The air here was cool, dry, and scrubbed.
"Generator room," Alen identified the shapes in the dark.
He found the power core. It wasn't a modern reactor, but a massive, industrial diesel turbine system, modified with filtration units to mask the exhaust. The fuel tanks were sealed airtight. Alen checked the gauges. Full.
"Preserved fuel stabilizers," he muttered, impressed. "You planned for the long haul."
He primed the pumps. He checked the spark plugs. He found the main breaker. He threw the switch.
KA-CHUNK.
The turbine coughed, wheezed, and then roared to life with a steady, rhythmic thrum. Power restored.
Overhead, banks of fluorescent lights flickered—buzzing like angry hornets—before stabilizing into a clinical white hum. The blast doors ahead hissed and slid open.
Alen stepped onto the main walkway and stopped dead. His eyes widened. "Holy…"
The facility was vast. It was a cathedral of science buried beneath the peat.
* To his left: Rows of Cryogenic Stasis Chambers. Pristine. Empty. Waiting for subjects that never arrived.
* To his right: A server farm of reel-to-reel mainframes and early supercomputers, their indicator lights blinking awake in a mesmerizing dance.
But in the center, encased in a silo of reinforced glass that stretched up through the ceiling (likely to the pond above), was the heart of it all.
A Biological Computer Core.
It was a pulsating mass of gray matter and Leeches, fused with fiber-optic cables and electrodes. It was a brain—grown, not built. It suspended in a tank of nutrient fluid, roots spreading out into the facility's walls like nervous tissue.
"A biomechanical neural network," Alen realized, stepping closer to the glass. "Before the Red Queen… before the U.M.F…. you built a living mind."
This wasn't just a lab. It was a sanctuary. Alen walked past the core, down a long reinforced corridor labeled LOGISTICS. He pushed through the double doors and found himself standing on a mezzanine overlooking a cavernous hangar.
Below him, sitting in the dark, was a runway. And sitting on the tarmac, covered in tarps but unmistakably sleek, was an aircraft. A prototype VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) transport jet.
"Stealth ingress. Silent extraction," Alen whispered. "A private airfield buried beneath history."
The sheer logistical genius of it staggered him. Albert Wesker had relied on Umbrella's resources. Alex had relied on an island. James Marcus had built a kingdom under the nose of God and Spencer alike.
The Voice from the Grave
Alen walked back to the Central Command station. The dust covers were still on the consoles. He pulled one off, revealing a master control board. A single red light blinked on an old reel-to-reel audio deck.
< PLAY >
Alen pressed the button. The tape spun. Static crackled. Then, a voice cut through the air—sharp, arrogant, and unmistakably young.
> "If this recording is playing… then congratulations to my future self. Our suspicions were correct. Spencer has betrayed us. I built this facility—Teach Mharcus—because I trusted no one. Especially him. Umbrella was never my endgame, merely a vehicle for funding. My father sought status; I seek evolution."
>
The voice paused, a sound of glass clinking against a desk.
> "If this is not me… if I have been erased… then know this: Spencer will try to bury my name. He will steal my research. But he will never find this place. This is the black site. The brain. The contingency. Whoever you are… use it. Burn his dream to ash."
>
Click.
The tape ended.
Alen stood in the silence, the hum of the cooling fans the only sound. This place was invisible. It was off the grid of the BSAA, the DSO, Blue Umbrella, and The Connections. It had power, resources, a stealth jet, and a supercomputer that no hacker on earth knew how to interface with.
"Why didn't my father find you?" Alen murmured, running a gloved hand over the console. "Why didn't Alex?"
He realized the answer. Because they were looking for a scientist. They weren't looking for a man who went home to hide.
Alen sat slowly in the leather commander's chair. It creaked, accepting its new master. He pulled out his phone and docked it into the console.
"Trinity."
≪ Yes, Master? ≫ The AI responded, her voice echoing in the vast chamber.
Alen looked up at the pulsating bio-core, then down at the runway blueprints, then at the screens coming to life. A faint, dangerous smile touched his lips.
"We just hit the jackpot."
He leaned back, his eyes reflecting the blue glow of the monitors. "The key to ending the bioweapon war wasn't in a lab in America or a ship in the ocean. It was buried by a madman in a bog."
He rested his hand on the Samurai Edge.
"And for once, Marcus," Alen added dryly to the empty room. "I'll thank you."
Status:
* Base of Operations: Secured.
* Assets: Prototype VTOL Jet, Bio-Organic Supercomputer, Tier-4 Lab.
* Mission: The hunt for Mother Miranda begins.