The Connections
The Connections were an underground criminal network with known links to illegal drug and arms trafficking, money laundering and bio-chemical research. In later years they specialised in producing bioweapons for sale on the international black market. Little was known about their size, market share and number of members. It is also unknown when they were founded or where they were based, although they were confirmed to have a Central American branch and a European headquarters where some of their most secretive projects were kept. They also had an extensive client list and were known to collaborate and do business with other nefarious organisations, including Umbrella’s main rival company. Massive profits were generated through arms sales and the import and export of drugs. The Connections’ bio-weapons division was spearheaded by the discovery of the vicariant evolution fungus more commonly known as Mutamycete.
This new species contained unique psychotropic compounds and researchers theorised about creating a weapon that could change the very face of warfare. They envisioned a human biological weapon with the ability to turn enemy combatants into allies and convert hostile forces into willing servants, negating the need for conflict altogether. This ambitious pitch attracted the attention of several interested parties, including national organisations. In 1999, researchers introduced the Mutamycete genome to a pre-stage 4 human embryo and performed cultivation in a controlled environment over a period of 38-40 weeks. In 2000, around the time the first subjects were born, The Connections enlisted the help of the rival company and received technical assistance from their H.C.F. division to further develop the Mutamycete.
Following this brief collaboration, the rival company left the project for reasons unknown and The Connections continued development alone. Eventually, after many failures, four successful prototypes were created. A letter of classification was given to the subjects based on their compatibility to the hyper-evolved Mold and these four test subjects became the ‘D-Series’, after the A-C series had been completely unsuccessful. But through continued observation and experimentation, the D-Series were found to be faulty, with limited performance and poor practicality, although four more D-Series subjects were created, making eight in total.
Sometime later, these various faults were ironed out in a new subject, named Eveline, and she was designated as E-001 having demonstrated an acceptable level of stabilisation with the Mold. Through repeated observation, she was eventually seen as the completed form of the biological weapon and was able to excrete a special variant of the Mutamycete tailored to her bio-chemistry. The Connections confined Eveline and she grew up in isolation, and this caused a unique effect of her becoming obsessed with ‘family’. The Mold she secreted became known as the ‘E-Type Mutamycete’.
In 2010, The Connections recruited a woman named Mia, who would go on to marry a systems programmer from Los Angeles named Ethan Winters a year later. Mia hid the true nature of her employment from Ethan and insisted she worked for a trade organisation. She was often away on ‘business’ for months at a time.
By 2014, Eveline was perfected and The Connections began preparations to market her as a bioweapons commodity with the application to disrupt and influence political, military and economic destabilisation. E-001 was ready for field testing and a suitable clients were identified in the Americas. But by now the activities of The Connections had come to the attention of the newly reformed Umbrella Corporation PMC who were actively trying to track them down and put a stop to their criminal activities. Umbrella also secretly wanted to acquire Eveline and her special Mutamycete having known all about its potential from when they first provided technical assistance to the organisation back in 2000 when they were still the rival company. Chris Redfield also led an investigation team that may have been affiliated with Umbrella to The Connections’ European headquarters. Fearing a theft of the E-001 weapon by rival organisations, The Connections wanted Eveline transferred to their Central American branch for safe keeping. She was smuggled onto an LNG tanker with two
handlers, Mia Winters and Alan Droney, who posed as her parents. However, during the journey Eveline was able to break free after Alan neglected his fatherly role and upset her. Eveline took advantage of a huge storm and caused complete chaos on the ship, killing Alan and the entire crew then infecting Mia with the Mold before the tanker was destroyed. The remains of the ship washed up in the bayou in Southern Louisiana and the unconscious forms of Eveline and Mia were found by Jack Baker and taken back to his family home.
Once Eveline recovered she used the Mold to infect all members of the Baker family one by one and began building her new family. Mia was now stuck in limbo, having first been rejected by Eveline as her ‘mom’ and yet kept alive through infection. She also suffered from amnesia and lost all memory of the period where she worked for The Connections. She underwent further mental control from Eveline and her behaviour became very erratic. During this time, The Connections were actively searching for Eveline and eventually discovered the remains of the wrecked tanker on the outskirts of Dulvey. But Eveline was now too dangerous to approach so they observed her from a safe distance, setting up a small base of operations in an abandoned mine complex a few miles away from the Baker farm. Because Mia was now mentally unstable, in 2015 agents from The Connections instead approached Jack Baker’s son, Lucas, and gave him a serum that released him from Eveline’s mental control in exchange for him compiling progress reports on Eveline and forwarding them on to
the company. Lucas then pretended to still be under Eveline’s sway to avert any suspicion. Over the next two and a half years The Connections observed and built up more data on Eveline as she operated in the stable family environment she always craved. But without her treatments, she had rapidly aged and now had the appearance of an elderly woman. Her mental state had also declined and she was a danger to all those around her. As a result, the company sent Lucas the E-Necrotoxin with orders he use it if she gets out of control. Throughout all this time, The Connections had established a fully operational research facility in the mines and were experimenting on the E-Type Mutamycete, trying to create weaponised variants of the Molded creatures they deemed ‘White Molded’. These creatures were much more resilient than their original counterparts.
By 2017 the lead researcher was a Stanford graduate with a master’s degree in microbiology. He was mistrustful of Lucas Baker and branded him a lunatic. He was livid when Lucas eventually replaced him as lead researcher and planned to complain to The Connections’ headquarters at the next scheduled meeting. He
believed Lucas had no real interest in their work and just messed around with the test subjects, making them fight each other and conduct unnecessary autopsies to satisfy his own sick tendencies. He also accused him of knowing nothing about the potential of the E-Type Mutamycete. The Connections were also aware that Umbrella Corporation had located the site where Eveline was in play and surveillance photographs were captured of an Umbrella helicopter scoping out the area.
Events came to a head in June 2017 when it was revealed Lucas Baker was secretly in negotiations with another unknown organisation with plans to sell them the E-Series data. He killed all the researchers in the mine and planned to sever ties with The Connections completely. But Lucas’ plans were foiled by Ethan Winters and the imminent arrival of soldiers from the Umbrella PMC. Lucas was killed by Chris Redfield and the transmission of the E-Series data to his mysterious buyer was stopped before the upload was complete. Although Chris destroyed the computer server, Umbrella’s tech teams worked hard to restore everything and soon all The Connections’ research data on the E-Type Mutamycete was now in their hands. Documentation recovered from the labs confirmed that Mia Winters was a Connections agent and she remained in Umbrella’s custody.
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