Sergei Vladimir
Sergei was born in the small mining village of Jablotschnaja, Ukraine and grew up under the watchful eye of his father who had been a strong supporter of Stalin and a member of the Communist Party. As a youngster he attended a local school for the mining industry where he met another boy who was to become his close friend; Viktor Petrow. Viktor was a year older than Sergei and whilst he was a thin, nervous child with a well-formed face, Viktor was an all-round talent in physical perfection. The thin and rather shabbily-dressed Sergei admired everything about the strongly-built Viktor, worshipping everything he stood for. Viktor was a staunch patriot and often for nights on end, the two of them would stay up until the early hours dreaming of a forthcoming world revolution and envisioning the Soviet Union standing on top of the world.
However, Sergei never realised Viktor’s desire for such a world had gone to the extreme and he had begun kidnapping local children to teach them how to become perfect slaves. One day, he lured Sergei to a small cabin in the woods and presented him with several small dead bodies. He explained to Sergei that before death they became so scared that they obeyed his every word. They did this because they were frightened and that fear is an overpowering force. Viktor believed there were two kinds of people in the world; those who rule, and those who were ruled.
He believed Sergei was someone who was happy to be ruled and Viktor wanted to change this. He then preceded to torture Sergei in a bid to make him overcome his fear and convert it into pleasure. Although he was terrified at the time, it was this process that allowed Sergei to become completely immune to
fear, pain, and death later in life and to embrace these feelings as a pleasure. He understood and gradually began to withstand the torture, eventually resulting in Viktor letting him live, proud Sergei he had passed the test. Now he was a ruler. Eventually, Viktor’s practices were discovered and he was arrested and led away by the KGB. Sergei never saw him again and was able to return to his normal life, yet inside he was now a much stronger person. He was no longer afraid of anything. He had been reborn.
Years later Sergei enrolled at university where he studied Russian, Engineering Sciences and Marxism-Leninism. He was completely self-involved in party activities and self-sacrificingly submitted unsolicited articles on patriotism and the morality of good communists to various newspapers. He eventually enlisted in the military and joined the Red Army. In 1979 he was sent as part of the Russian forces supporting the Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Islamist Mujahedeen Resistance. He remained there for over ten years and at some point during the conflict, lost his right eye in battle.
Eventually the public soon had enough of the endlessly drawn out war and despite the difficult circumstances Sergei endured in Afghanistan, he fulfilled his duties faithfully until the withdrawal of troops loyal to his duty. By the end of his service he held the rank of Colonel; a moniker that remained with him long after he retired from active service. Sergei was well looked after by his subordinates, remaining a staunch patriot and his subjects loved and revered him. He was also very modest and even his greatest successes never went to his head. He also gave consent for his cells to be cloned at the request of the Soviet Army for an experimental program. It was also during his army days that he met Nikolai Zinoviev, and the two became firm friends. Sergei’s self-sacrificing loyalty to everyone he accepted as his masters secured him the recognition of the Communist Party and he was made a loyal party member for life. He even believed he would one day lead the Soviet Union into the future and that the era of world-wide victory for communism was not too far away.
But Sergei’s life was turned upside down on August 19th, 1991 when the Coup d’état of the conservative forces in Russia failed. The loss of power for the Communist Party was sealed and the Soviet Union was soon to be no more. Sergei entered a deep depression until one day he received a letter from his friend and comrade, Nikolai. It was this letter that put him on the path to Umbrella Corporation.
Sometime following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sergei approached the pharmaceutical giant looking for work. He was able to get a foot in the door when it was revealed his DNA was a rare compatible match for the Tyrant Program, a 1-100,000,000 adaptor. At this point the program was at a complete standstill due to the lack of suitable hosts. Umbrella quickly urged Sergei to donate his clones to them for research, using Nikolai to help persuade him. Eventually, Sergei relented and agreed to relinquish these ten subjects he referred to as his brothers. With ten compatible hosts now to work with, the Tyrant Program was jump-started and resulted in William Birkin engineering a new t-Virus strain that could allow almost anyone to become Tyrant compatible. In gratitude, Sergei was given an executive position within the company.
Sergei rose quickly up the ranks of Umbrella, soon catching the eye of Spencer himself and the two became close. He showed an ardour for following Spencer’s orders and made sure even the most radical of his wishes were carried out. He was even prepared to sacrifice his own men, as long as it served the greater good – his greater good; the resurrection of Mother Russia. He was also responsible for the creation of the U.B.C.S. and the Monitors; an internal group set up to watch and investigate suspicious company employees. He quickly installed Nikolai in one of these positions.
Sergei based himself in the Russian Caucasus Mountains, working from a Chemical Plant abandoned by the government and bought out by Umbrella. It was originally built upon the research site set up to investigate the famous Tunguska explosion of 1908. The bladed weapon Sergei always carried was forged from the rare metal compound found at the blast site. It was stronger than steel and unable to rust or become dull. This metal was so rare it could not be analysed properly and mass production was impossible, making the weapon unique to Sergei. He was also a collector of other weapons and torture instruments from European and Asian territories.
In the summer of 1998 when the t-Virus leak occurred at the Arklay Labs, Sergei flew to Raccoon City at the personal request of Spencer to retrieve Umbrella’s newest Tyrant prototype, the experimental T-A.L.O.S. project. This prototype was stored in the labs underneath the mansion and he extracted it in secret before the whole place was eradicated in Operation X-Day. Sergei always maintained a deep mistrust of Albert Wesker and held a strong belief, later proven right, that Wesker was going to betray them all. On the morning of July 24th, Sergei and his personal bodyguard, a re-engineered T-103 model named Ivan, intercepted Wesker as he was about to leave the training facility. Sergei showed contempt that Wesker had failed the Reclamation Project and sent Ivan to teach him a lesson. However, Wesker managed to escape thanks to the facility’s imminent detonation. Despite this, Sergei took comfort in the fact Wesker now knew he was on to him.
Later that night, Sergei succeeded in infiltrating the Spencer Mansion and retrieved the T-A.L.O.S. before Wesker and the other members of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team arrived. He also got his revenge on Wesker by revoking his access privileges to Umbrella’s newly installed mainframe computer, hampering his progress to download the B.O.W. combat data he needed to complete his defection from Umbrella to their rival company.
Sergei returned to Raccoon City in September when the citywide viral outbreak occurred. He was inside the helicopter that deployed the T-103 to the RPD and the remaining units to the Dead Factory. All Umbrella personnel and military units in the city were put under his direct command and he again saved the corporation by extracting the UMF-013 mainframe from the underground laboratory before it was destroyed. He also evacuated a high-ranking Umbrella Officer just seconds before the directive Code XX sterilisation operation sanitised the city on October 1st.
Following the incident, Spencer invested heavily on expanding Sergei’s base factory into a state of the art, high-tech facility. He knew Umbrella would ultimately be blamed for the Raccoon disaster and that the company would never fully recover. Largely because of this, Spencer took more of a backseat in the running of the company, focusing instead on preserving the secret of the Progenitor Virus and the Wesker Children; effectively promoting Sergei as the unofficial head of Umbrella. With Umbrella USA facing bankruptcy, all containing t-Virus research was transferred over to Umbrella Europe, which Sergei now oversaw from Russia. Despite all the business suspension orders, the colossal legal fees and court battles, Sergei truly believed Umbrella would emerge a stronger being just as he had done that fateful day Viktor Petrow had taken him to that rickety old house by the river. With the UMF-013, T-A.L.O.S. and the Red Queen AI, he was convinced they could overcome anything.
In the early years of the new millennium, the T-A.L.O.S. project was completed under Sergei’s personal supervision. He also raised much-needed funding for Umbrella by signing contracts with terrorists, arms dealers and unstable countries to provide them with B.O.W.s., including South American drug lord, Javier Hidalgo. New B.O.W. production also continued, with a new model Hunter and the Anubis being just two examples. He also co-ordinated the safe storage of important Umbrella assets to numerous underground hangars located at various inconspicuous locations across the globe.
However, Sergei’s world finally came crashing down in 2003 when his facility was raided by a Private Anti-Biohazard Containment Team which included former S.T.A.R.S. members Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Albert Wesker also infiltrated the base on a personal mission of his own and caused a biohazard, ensuring Sergei would have to abandon the base. Wesker had plotted the whole thing and used Chris and Jill’s team as a diversion to achieve his own goals. But instead of fleeing, Sergei decided to face Wesker head on, not surprised for a second to see the Umbrella traitor was still alive and well, despite him being reported killed during the mansion incident. What he didn’t plan for however, was Wesker’s increased speed and strength thanks to the experimental t-Virus administered to him as part of the ultra-secretive Project Wesker. With his new powers, Wesker easily overcame the two Ivan Tyrants and Sergei made his last stand by injecting himself with the perfected t-Virus. But rather than become a zombie, his Tyrant matching DNA transformed him into a humanoid monster. This form was to be known as Monster Sergei.
Wesker was able to kill Sergei and so the final nail was hammered into Umbrella’s coffin. By now Oswell Spencer was in hiding and despite Wesker’s interrogation, Sergei took the secret of his master’s location to his grave.
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