Albert Wesker

 

Albert Wesker was a calculating, intelligent and callous individual who sought to stand at the top of the world. He was involved in biological weapons from the very beginning, helping to research and perfect the t-Virus before becoming directly involved in many of the horrific incidents caused by the virus over the years. He willingly betrayed those around him to suit his own needs and triggered the dark era of bioterrorism before ultimately enacting a plan to wipe out all of mankind, capitalising on a lifelong hatred of humanity.

Back in the 1960s, Albert was just one of many children from various nationalities that were collected by Umbrella. The one thing these children all had in common was being born to parents of superior intellect. They were all rebranded with the surname Wesker, after the chief researcher leading the project under the classified instructions of Oswell Spencer. All the children taken were completely oblivious of their situation, their name, or their new lives being shaped before them. This classified ‘Wesker Children’ plan was top-secret and even Umbrella co-founders Edward Ashford and James Marcus were unaware of its existence. Its genesis was Spencer’s personal vision of creating his own ‘Brave New World’ and ruling over a superior race of human beings. He was confident manipulation of the Progenitor Virus would ensure that only the right individuals were chosen for this new world, but it was also vital these humans would understand Spencer’s vision and be willing to serve under him. This altercation of a person’s free will was not possible through genetic manipulation alone. Albert was designated as test subject no. 13 and placed in a subliminal training program designed to indoctrinate Spencer’s values into his personality subconsciously. Following this process he was placed into a controlled environment under the watchful eye of Umbrella. He was never aware he was being monitored and money was provided in secret to ensure he received the best education possible in his chosen field of genetic engineering. Following several early achievements he was soon recognised as one of the most gifted Wesker Children. He was an elitist with absolute self-confidence that radiated an intimidating and unapproachable air. His eyes were always hidden by dark sunglasses, making his expressions and emotions difficult to read. He was cold and dispassionate, meaning he did not form relationships and friendships, instead choosing to remain clear-minded and absolutely focused. These traits led to the acceleration of what was a natural superiority complex. He possessed absolute ambition and these characteristics led to Spencer looking favourably upon him.

In 1977 it was arranged for Albert to enrol at the Management Training Facility just outside of Raccoon City when he was seventeen years old. There he aspired to become a leading executive and later he met William Birkin and the pair soon became colleagues and developed an intense rivalry. Birkin was perhaps the closest thing Wesker ever had in his life to a friend and was impressed with his ambition and saw him as an equal. Birkin’s drive made Wesker believe he could be so much greater than a mere executive. As they progressed, Birkin and Wesker became easily the most impressive candidates in the history of the training facility, even doing enough to attract the attention and admiration of Dr. Marcus who until then had shown no interest in anything other than his personal research. The usually paranoid Marcus even found himself being able to trust them both, or so he thought. In reality, Spencer had already taken steps to ensure Wesker and Birkin were on his team and had them regularly spy on his rival Marcus. On his orders they obtained a sample of the new prototype t-Virus and gathered enough evidence about Marcus’ illegal experiments on the trainees to enable Spencer to have him forcibly removed from power. As a reward for their loyalty, Spencer had both Wesker and Birkin transferred to the Arklay labs as new chief researchers, ready to begin work on the new t-Virus. There they were introduced to Lisa Trevor, the first Progenitor Virus infectant. By now Wesker’s arrogance and self-assurance had manifested to the point where he completely ignored the Laboratory Manager, and at this stage he would answer to no one other than Spencer. Over the next several years, Wesker and Birkin made several advancements with the virus, creating new variants and several B.O.W. prototypes as they tried to fulfil Spencer’s wishes. Wesker kept Birkin in check after the latter became distracted due to the rise of Alexia Ashford as a rival and he also lamented the quality of researchers he had working under him. In private, Wesker often mused they would be of more use as actual test subjects in the experiments. He also became frustrated with Spencer’s endless demands for the t-Virus to have a 100% infection rate, despite it being impossible to bypass the genetic DNA sequencing and meaning 10% of the population would always possess a natural immunity. He was later relieved when Alexia was killed in a laboratory experiment and Birkin returned somewhat to normal, although he denied Wesker’s request to obtain t-Veronica samples.

As time progressed, Wesker researched the effects of secondary exposure to the t-Virus and began to find himself more and more distracted about Spencer, often finding himself wondering about his motivations and true intentions. This was the unconscious strings of Project Wesker tugging once again. He played a key role in the many triumphs of Umbrella throughout the 1980s including the development of the Zombie and the Hunter. He also contributed greatly to the discovery of the G-Virus as it was upon his insistence that they obtained a sample of the Nemesis parasite from Umbrella Europe which directly led to Birkin discovering the new virus inside the body of Lisa Trevor. Wesker had originally seen the potential in the Nemesis parasite developed by Umbrella Europe and plotted to take over and monopolise the project by correcting the flaw of the parasite killing its host within 5 minutes of insertion. But perhaps most poignantly of all, he took part in the operation to assassinate James Marcus, allowing Spencer to seize full control of the company. This was done after t-Virus research reached Level 3, marking the beginning of the Tyrant Program. However, a lack of suitable human hosts adaptable to this variant of the virus proved to be a problem and stalled the research. The callous murder of Marcus at Spencer’s request also planted doubts in Wesker’s mind about the level of trust in their relationship. If Spencer was willing to dispose of a long-time friend and colleague for personal gain than he believed he too would ultimately be expendable. This meant that as early as 1988, Wesker began to make secret preparations for life away from Umbrella.

In 1991, Birkin’s G-Virus project was approved and Wesker began to realise his limitations as a researcher. He felt such a complex viral strain was beyond his capabilities and instead applied for a position in the Information Department so he could continue his discreet investigations into Spencer. Shortly afterwards he met and had a brief liaison with a young Edonian woman who had come to live in America. Following the end of this tryst, the woman returned to Edonia and realised she was pregnant with Wesker’s child. Jake Muller was born in 1992 but Wesker was never made aware of his existence. When growing up, Jake was simply told his father had abandoned him.

Whilst at the Information Department, Wesker was acquainted with his namesake Alex, though he was unaware of her true identity and significance at the time as she operated under an alias to preserve the secrecy of the Wesker Project. The two developed a mutual respect and generated a professional rivalry. Spencer had a painting commissioned of them both sat confident and proud underneath a portrait of their master’s likeness.

Both Alex and Albert would naturally compete to set each other even higher standards of achievement. At the same time, Wesker used his viral expertise to enlist in the U.S. Army as a chemical engineer and technology officer. There he developed and honed significant combat and firearms skills and further excelled his natural leadership abilities. He also provided data and countermeasures for biohazard outbreaks to army officials which in turn granted him access to classified U.S. bio-chemical weapons programs. In secret, Wesker was able to relay the contents and plans of these programs back to Umbrella and this led to his promotion to executive status.

In 1995 Wesker returned to the Arklay Labs and was reunited with Birkin to oversee the final termination of Lisa Trevor, though still she refused to die and was instead bound in shackles and locked in the mining tunnels beneath the estate. He also met with Spencer and his butler Patrick, and Patrick would later record in his diary how cold Wesker seemed to be and that his unfeeling eyes and hard stare made him completely unreadable.

As Umbrella slowly extended their influence within the Raccoon City Police Department, their funding contribution towards the new S.T.A.R.S. unit allowed them to influence key recruiting positions. In 1996 they had Wesker installed as team leader and he immediately began conducting counter intelligence operations for Umbrella. Wesker worked closely with Barry Burton to build the unit from the ground up and they trained for a year and a half before becoming fully operational in December 1997. Wesker personally wrote a training manual he issued to all members outlying operational methods and his personal expectations which earned him their absolute trust and respect. He also worked closely with gunsmith Joseph Kendo in developing specially customised firearms for his team. Although Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and Barry Burton were also given customised variations based on their own specifications, only Wesker produced a concrete plan and sent it to Kendo. As team leader and a perfectionist, Wesker superficially believed he was obligated to superior countermeasures. He mentally envisioned everything including arms, tactics and strategy, things he conjured from his own mind and planned meticulously to always ensure he kept the upper hand.

Wesker remained on Umbrella’s books as Chief of Security at the Arklay Estate and a consultant researcher for the T-002 Tyrant. He took charge of early crisis management when the t-Virus leak occurred on May 11th, 1998. He ordered all phones disconnected and prevented anyone from leaving the contaminated grounds. He feared the incident could expose Umbrella’s illegal biological weapons program to the wider public and so he made plans to defect to a rival competitor. Umbrella’s main rival company already had an independent contractor on their books under the alias of Ada Wong who had gained access to the Arklay estate by forming a relationship with John Clemens, the senior researcher in charge. Her mission was to retrieve a sample of the t-Virus and now this rival company wanted Wesker to deliver the T-002 combat and development data. His plan set, Wesker bided his time and waited for the right moment to execute it. At this time, Umbrella had charged Wesker and Birkin with leading the ‘Reclamation Project’; which was an investigation into the possible re-opening of the old training facility which had remained closed ever since Dr. Marcus was removed from power in 1978. This project was side-tracked due to the seriousness of the t-Virus leak but Umbrella insisted it went ahead regardless. They were receiving alarming reports of strange leech-like creatures attacking any trespassers trying to enter the abandoned facility and were concerned the virus was spreading. Wesker was also instructed to keep S.T.A.R.S. out of the matter and the regular police well away from the mansion. But by mid-July, the increasing tensions of Raccoon’s citizens due to all the bizarre murders in the forest meant that Wesker effectively had no choice but to send S.T.A.R.S. in. Umbrella decided to use this to their advantage and drew up ‘Operation X-Day’. Wesker was instructed to deploy S.T.A.R.S. to the contaminated mansion to engage the escaped B.O.W.s and record the combat data to assess their viability as marketable biological weapons. He was then to destroy the entire facility to cover up all evidence of the virus leak. But one order Wesker was not happy about was Umbrella’s decision to destroy the T-002. He regarded it as a masterpiece and could not understand why the company would want to discard such perfection before it was even fully operational. But, the T-002 stored in the lab was worthless to Umbrella for they had already extracted the tyrant embryo and could clone others if desired.

Another unwanted distraction came the evening before ‘X-Day’ when contact was lost with the Ecliptic Express; the privately owned train ferrying an investigation team to the training facility as part of the Reclamation Project. After giving S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team the go-ahead to begin their search for the missing hikers in the Arklay Mountains, Wesker met up with Birkin at his lab and there they monitored the progress of an Umbrella clean up team and were faced with the impossible revelation of James Marcus seemingly coming back to haunt them from beyond the grave. With the situation fast spinning out of control, Wesker knew this was the perfect time to execute his plans and leave Umbrella for good. But before he left, Birkin gave him a sample of an experimental t-Virus variant given to him in confidence by Spencer himself. It was designed to cheat death, and only to be used as a last resort for Wesker on X-Day if something were to go wrong. In reality however, this virus was the next stage of the secret Project Wesker program and was designed to screen out the more gifted of the remaining candidates. Spencer was keen to see if ‘Subject No. 13’ was worthy of making it through to the next stage following everything he had achieved at Umbrella thus far.

After deeming the Training Facility a complete loss, Wesker unexpectedly encountered Sergei Vladimir; an officer sent by Spencer to extract the T-011 ‘T-A.L.O.S.’ prototype from the Arklay Lab before its destruction. Sergei harboured deep suspicions that Wesker was about to betray Umbrella and intended to teach him a lesson for his failure to recover the training school by unleashing his new T-103 ‘Ivan’ Tyrant. The two fought in the basement station of the training facility and Wesker barely escaped with his life. Knowing Sergei was onto him, Wesker led the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team to the mansion later that night. There, he manipulated the transpiring events, blackmailed Barry Burton into doing his bidding, and waited patiently in the Tyrant’s room for any survivors to reach him. Such was Wesker’s ambition he even considered his own body as just another tool and did not hesitate to inject himself with the experimental virus and allow the T-002 to attack him in front of the other survivors. Despite being temporarily ‘dead,’ the virus revived him and he felt stronger than ever. He clung to an ambition of ‘standing at the top and surpassing humanity’ and his encounter with the experimental virus led him to believe he could realise his ideals. However, Sergei had secretly revoked his access to the computer network, preventing him from downloading the precious Tyrant combat data he so desperately sought. Worse still, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine had unexpectedly killed the Tyrant and the self-destruct system for the facility had been activated. Wesker decided to cut his losses, took all the data he had acquired on the regular B.O.W.s and escaped from the mansion just seconds before it blew up.

Wesker never reported back to Umbrella and the S.T.A.R.S. survivors reported him dead. Investigation teams combing the site never found his body and his death brought the success rate of Project Wesker down to 18%. Out of the 12 remaining subjects given the experimental virus, only test subject no.12; Alex, survived. But Spencer was not worried, he held a niggling feeling Albert was still alive somewhere and that eventually the program would bring him back home. The experimental virus had completely recombined his cells and given him super human abilities. Wesker’s adaptability was down to his extremely rare and special blood type. His son, Jake Muller, also inherited this unique blood type which made them immune to practically any viral strain.

Wesker went to the rival company and presented them with the combat data he had collected and a recovered sample of the t-Virus, albeit minus the Tyrant. He was still accepted into their ranks yet his reputation had suffered a blow. He soon allied himself with a female spy operating under the alias Ada Wong and sent her a detailed history of his time with Umbrella and the development cycle of the t-Virus. Wesker then set his sights on the G-Virus after Ada had received word it was near completion and that the chief scientist was refusing to hand it over to Umbrella. Wesker knew this scientist was William Birkin and when the rival company declared their interest in obtaining a sample, he saw an opportunity to save his colleague. The upper hierarchy of the rival company viewed this opportunity as a test of loyalty for Wesker.

In late September they took advantage of the chaos in Raccoon City and attempted to gain the G-Virus. Unfortunately, Ada was unsuccessful in extracting William Birkin as Hunk and the U.S.S. team reached him first, mortally wounding him and stealing the G-sample. This led to Birkin injecting himself with the virus and causing a rampage, resulting in the t-Virus being spread by rats at a rapid rate around the city. Wesker decided not to risk his cover as a ‘dead man’ and stayed in the shadows to collect combat data on the various B.O.W.s, including the Nemesis T-Type, whilst Ada infiltrated the city alone. Although she achieved her objective, she was badly injured and Wesker was displeased with her actions in teaming up with Leon Kennedy and risking the success of the mission. But because she had secured a G-Virus tissue fragment, he reluctantly saved her life by providing her with a grapple gun and relaying instructions on how to escape the city before the sterilisation operation was carried out. The mission was a success, but only just and Umbrella’s subsequent investigation into the Raccoon City disaster saw them learn that Wesker had not in fact perished at the mansion as previously thought and was now directly in the employment of their biggest rivals. Wesker’s successful recovery of the G-Virus for the rival company restored his reputation and he began to earn power and influence within the organisation.

A few months later, Wesker began to hear rumours of a special ‘awakening’. Spies on the Ashford owned Rockfort Island had intelligence that the famed Alexia Ashford was still alive. If this were true then Wesker concluded that she must have injected herself with her own virus when she was declared dead back in 1983. The rival company wanted Wesker to capture her and so in late December he launched an assault on the island, utilising their H.C.F. Special Forces team. There he reunited with his old rival Chris Redfield and their fight took them to the very depths of Umbrella’s hidden facility in the Antarctic. Although he failed to capture Alexia, Wesker still achieved his goal by obtaining the dead body of Rockfort prisoner, Steve Burnside, who had been infected with the t-Veronica virus by Alexia. Only the impending countdown of the self-destruct facility prevented him from killing Chris before he escaped via a submarine, though he had left Chris a clear message; ‘I won this game.’

At the turn of the millennium, Wesker turned his attentions to South America and despite still working for the rival company, his own personal agendas were at the forefront of his thinking. He made clandestine deals with other companies and sold samples from various assets he had acquired to many of Umbrella’s competitors, all of whom compensated him greatly for each. He also made contact with drug lord Javier Hidalgo and sold him a sample of t-Veronica to treat his daughter’s illness in exchange for a large sum of money and a share of his vast business empire. Wesker did not seem to care about the potential danger in providing Javier with such a dangerous weapon. He also sold him several new B.O.W.s created by the rival company, including the experimental Veronica-based Jabberwock S3. Javier used these weapons to cause a bio-terror incident in his own country and a U.S. Government operation was put in place to stop him. Wesker was present in South America and watched the events unfold from a distance. Following the incident, Wesker was sought out by Jack Krauser, an injured U.S. SOCOM operative who had fought alongside Leon Kennedy, and offered his services. He soon became one of Wesker’s most loyal servants.

Wesker resurfaced again in early 2003 where a routine intelligence mission for the rival company led him to the wilderness of the Russian Caucasus. He had learned the location of a hidden Umbrella storage hangar in a remote village near an old chemical plant. This hangar contained viral samples and B.O.W. specimens frozen in stasis. Bizarre murders were occurring in the village, reminding Wesker of the same situation from Raccoon Forest back in 1998. He launched an investigation and confirmed a t-Virus leak at the location, also discovering the chemical plant was a hidden Umbrella base and where the UMF-103 data archive was being held. He quickly planned a mission to steal it. He leaked the existence of Umbrella’s base alongside rumours they were developing a powerful new B.O.W. to the Russian government and a privately funded anti-biohazard unit that Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine had linked up with. Whilst they raided the facility, he would use their presence as a diversion to sneak in undetected. Whilst waiting for the Russian government to mobilise, Wesker visited the village to steal the Hunter Deltas in the hidden storage hangar. There, he bumped into Chris and Jill, who had arrived in Russia just as he had planned. The Hunter Deltas were all destroyed in the ensuing battle but Wesker escaped from the village with detailed schematics for the Umbrella base to aid his infiltration mission. Soon afterwards, Wesker approached the facility and used Chris’s Anti-Biohazard team as a diversion whilst he caused a Level 4 biohazard. Wesker stole Umbrella’s perfected strain of t-Virus and killed Sergei Vladimir, escaping with all of Umbrella’s archival data which he downloaded from the mainframe. He then wiped the entire network of databases, rendering Umbrella impotent. He also took direct control over their remaining assets such as the surveillance satellite system.

In the following months, Wesker brokered a secret deal with the U.S. Government and testified anonymously in court against Oswell Spencer and Umbrella, providing irrefutable evidence that Umbrella was to blame for the Raccoon City tragedy. This soon led to the final dissolution of the company and set a clear path ahead for Wesker to take total control of the rival company and open up his new ‘umbrella’ of power. He leaked the perfected t-Virus onto the black market, triggering the mass era of bioterrorism. He also studied Sergei’s bizarre transformation and hypothesised that host’s mental state could influence the end mutation of the subject. Because of this, he began to wonder about his own potential mutation and later devised a serum known as PG-67AW he self-administered at regular intervals to keep the experimental virus in check.

Later that year, Wesker approached a member of global conglomerate Tricell Inc to discuss a possible business alliance. Excella Gionne was an up and coming member of their pharmaceutical division and she had piqued Wesker’s interest because of her intelligence and character. She was also distant relation of the Travis family, who were the original company founders. Wesker provided her with information on the t-Virus from Umbrella’s stolen archives, wanting her to use this information to advance her own position within the company and in the process giving him a powerful ally and another powerful conglomerate’s resources in his pocket. Not long afterwards, Tricell began their own bio-weapons program and assisted in the creation of the t-Abyss Virus.

Throughout all this time since he escaped the mansion and began leading a secret life with the rival company, Wesker often occupied his time with private thoughts about facing enemies equipped with their own creations born from the t-Virus and its many variants. He secretly began exploring possible countermeasures, a contrasting exercise to his usual business practices that only highlighted his naturally scheming nature. Amongst this research was the study of physical weapons and firearms for he assumed future years would lead to the development of high-powered weapons, armaments and viruses that would surpass the t-Virus. Corporations and organisations from across the world would partake in a cyclical arms race with B.O.W.s and viral agents replacing conventional weaponry as the future of modern warfare. To prepare for this eventuality, Wesker capitalised on his background as a scientist and researched and studied countermeasure tactics and techniques against a variety of viral weapons with the end goal of total neutralisation. He considered not only neutralising one side’s viral weapons, but envisioned situations where both sides were totally neutralised. The essence of his seemingly contradicting research on physical weapons and total neutralisation was to prepare effective countermeasure weapons under any circumstance – in other words his goal was to mitigate the contradiction. Wesker studied anti-B.O.W. weapons purely for his own profit rather than those of the rival company and it was the ultimate egotist’s idea that only he possessed these countermeasures, meaning he was the one who could direct the flow and control of modern global warfare, giving him an abundance of power.

His next goal was to bring back the Umbrella Corporation, albeit this time as a Private Military Company.

In 2004, Wesker was in contention to lead the rival company and invited the spy Ada Wong to come and assist him again, having built up a professional working relationship since the Raccoon City incident. Ada accepted his offer, though unbeknownst to Wesker, she was secretly reporting back to the upper hierarchy of the rival company who were secretly plotting Wesker’s removal, citing him as ‘an uncontrollable spark that could burn the organisation from within.’ Like his time as S.T.A.R.S. Captain and his role in law enforcement, Wesker was viewed as a malignant tumour that threatened to spread and destroy everything around him. The rival company had re-recruited Ada with the specific purpose of keeping Wesker in check, a move that also suited her own personal agenda. She began intelligence missions for Wesker and one of these jobs resulted in her intercepting an e-mail from a researcher named Luis Sera which led to the discovery of the Las Plagas parasite in Southern Europe. Wesker wanted a sample and sent Jack Krauser to infiltrate the Los Illuminados cult who were using it. However, Krauser struggled to gain the trust of the cult’s leader, Osmund Saddler, and so Ada was sent in to help. But in view of the brewing power struggle for leadership within the rival company, the organisation’s top brass also wanted a sample of the Plaga and viewed the mission as an ultimate test of her loyalty and she would have to make a choice between Wesker and themselves.

In the end, Ada betrayed Wesker, sending the recovered Dominant Strain Plaga to the organisation’s leaders and just a regular Subordinate Plaga to Wesker’s faction. But although disappointed, Wesker was not concerned with this development for he had half anticipated Ada’s betrayal and had a contingency plan in place. Instead, he acquired a dead Dominant Strain Plaga via other means, allegedly from the body of Jack Krauser.

Despite Ada’s actions, the inevitable was only delayed and Wesker soon took de-facto control over the rival company. His goal now was a resurrection of the Umbrella Corporation in his own image with himself standing at the top of the world. He possessed wealth, status and honour, but over time the strings of Project Wesker began to tug at him subconsciously once again. He still could not fathom Oswell Spencer’s true intentions and why he spent so much on B.O.W. development. The whole point was to develop cheaply produced biological weapons to operate alongside conventional weaponry, yet the monies Spencer poured into the t-Virus project was not cost-effective in the slightest and this had always bothered Wesker. He began to invest all his time, money and resources into tracking Spencer down, who by now was a wanted man in hiding somewhere in Europe. All Wesker Children were subliminally programmed to seek their master out which manifested itself as a growing anxiety in each of the subjects. This was the discomfort Albert had felt throughout his life, and with Spencer now out of the picture since 2003, this anxiety was now becoming unbearable.

By 2006, Wesker’s obsession had manifested to the point where he had practically drained the rival company using its finances and resources to track Spencer down, all without avail. It was only when Spencer wanted to be found, and his butler passed his location onto Ricardo Irving, did Wesker finally find what he was searching for. Irving at that time was working with Ada Wong and gave Spencer’s location to her, which she in turn passed onto Wesker as a token gesture. This led to a final confrontation at the Spencer Estate in Europe.

One autumn night in 2006, Wesker finally returned to Spencer and learnt the truth of his existence from his ‘father.’ Spencer had lured Wesker back in in the hopes they could put the past behind them and forge a new alliance to complete the Wesker Children project and install Spencer as their god. But enraged at Spencer’s arrogance about the matter, Wesker murdered him in cold blood. Coincidentally, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine arrived at the very same time following a lead picked up by the B.S.A.A. concerning Spencer’s whereabouts and were on a mission to arrest him. They confronted Wesker and the ensuing battle had both Wesker and Jill Valentine plummeting hundreds of feet out of a window, presumably to their deaths. However using his powers, Wesker once again cheated death and even saved the life of Jill, intending to use her as a test subject for a new experiment to gain revenge on Chris. From that moment on, Wesker inherited Spencer’s vision of creating a superior race of humans and this was the birth of the Uroboros Project. Spencer’s revelation had only brought to the surface what had been Wesker’ goal all along, which was mass extinction and the forced evolution of humanity. He used the news of his ‘death’ to veil his activities, leave the rival company behind and turn back to Excella Gionne to execute an agreement he’d had in place since 2003. He was now with Tricell.

Wesker passed on all his research into Las Plagas and associated samples onto Tricell’s Pharmaceutical Division where Ricardo Irving and his researchers began working on an improved strain to make the weapon more marketable. To continue Spencer’s plan, Wesker also needed the Progenitor Virus, but its source location had been always been top secret. But after recovering Spencer’s notebook from his estate, he was able to track down a high-ranking surviving former Umbrella employee and extract the information through interrogation. He now knew the source location to be a region of West Africa. By now Excella Gionne was now a leading figure in Tricell and Wesker persuaded her to take over the position of company CEO for their entire African division. Once this was done, Excella had Tricell Africa excavate, re-open and expand the old Umbrella Facility built beneath the ancient Ndipaya kingdom near Kijuju. Once they gained access to the Progenitor Virus in the Stairway to the Sun flowers, Wesker had the Tricell scientists go to work on his doomsday weapon. It was named Uroboros after the snake that ate its own tail and was designed to weed out the dregs of humanity, with only those possessing superior DNA eligible to cross over into the new age that Wesker now envisioned. There were initial problems as the virus was too poisonous and the mortality rate for those infected far too high, so Wesker used antibodies from Jill’s body to help neutralize some of the potency in the virus. In the meantime, he had Ricardo Irving create new B.O.W.s using Las Plagas and sell them on the black market to generate continued funding for Uroboros research. By 2009, the virus was finally perfected and Wesker stood ready to re-shape the world. But one thing still stood in his way, one thing that would just not go away, and that was Chris Redfield. Despite their intense hatred of one another, Wesker had always held a deep respect for Chris and his abilities as a rival and it was this respect that would ultimately prove to be his downfall. Despite numerous chances, Wesker failed to dispose of Chris and eventually, after rescuing Jill, Wesker was finally brought down for good.

Since injecting himself with the experimental virus and gaining super strength, Wesker had to regularly inject himself with a serum known as PG67-AW to keep the virus in check. However, too much of this serum injected too soon acted like a poison and neutralised his abilities. Chris managed to take advantage of this and after they had crashed onto a volcano, Wesker was backed into a corner for the first time in his life, Wesker infected himself with Uroboros in a bid to defeat Chris and absorbed a heavy amount of the virus. But in the end, his plan failed and he was destroyed by a rocket launcher blast fired by both Chris and his new partner Sheva Alomar. The remains of his mutated body were lost beneath the lava of the volcano. But had Wesker survived the fight and not absorbed so much of the virus from the exposed missiles, he would have acquired a permanent status of immortality for he was the only person whose genes bonded perfectly with the virus. All other subjects were lost, their bodies running rampant and developing uncontrollable cysts until completely consumed.

Following news of his demise, Sherry Birkin was allowed outside of U.S. Government protective custody and became an agent of the United States. His death also saddened Alex Wesker, his ‘sister’ and now only surviving member of the Wesker Plan. She would take steps to secure samples of the Uroboros Virus having seen its potential. Even Ada Wong, his professional rival, felt an emptiness at his passing. Wesker’s legacy of his unique blood type also passed down onto his son Jake, who became a target of The Family leader, Derek Simmons, and Neo-Umbrella terrorist, Carla Radames. They wanted Jake’s blood to enhance the latest deadly weapon, known as the C-Virus. Following his death, Wesker’s research and assets were seized and handed over to the recently revived ‘Blue Umbrella PMC’ which was now being run by his former associates in the rival company.

Capitalising on a clandestine deal Wesker had made years earlier with the U.S. Government to ensure the original Umbrella’s demise, the rival company had formally applied to revive the corporation via the United States Chapter 11 bankruptcy code, but the new management was charged with responsibility for redeeming Umbrella’s dark legacy. Many products and experimental data left behind by Wesker were inspected in-house and his anti-B.O.W. research results in particular mesmerised the researchers. Part of the research envisioned combat in an unaffected state; alongside much conceptualizing of practical use by skilled combatants not equipped with weapons of mass destruction like viruses. In recovered papers amongst his personal effects, Wesker had argued that weapons of mass destruction didn’t necessarily lead to improving the situation. The scientists used Wesker’s research to develop a host of specialised anti-B.O.W. firearms which were then supplied to various anti-biohazard units such as the B.S.A.A. for testing, with a wider aim of full mass production. These weapons were the fruits of Wesker’s secret research and were extremely effective in redeeming most of the original Umbrella Corporation’s dark legacy and allowed a new Umbrella to rise. Even years after his death, Albert Wesker is still achieving his goals from beyond the grave and continues to have a haunting presence across the world. Those loyal to him are continuing his work.

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