Night pressed against Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center like damp velvet where inside, the facility breathed of institutional life. Hospitals always pretended to hide decay, but decay remained the truest form of honesty biology had to offer. Nobody appreciated that more than Dr. Gideon.

His office light buzzed overhead while the monitor on his auburn desk bathed the room in pale clinical blue. Victor leaned forward in his chair with the heavy posture of a man built for endurance rather than elegance, his massive frame hunched over the keyboard as if the desk had been constructed several inches too small for him.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard, thick and calloused, the skin across the knuckles dry enough that faint scaling showed where the light struck. Small flakes of shed skin rested on the black surface of the desk like gray dust. Victor brushed them aside with idle disinterest while the cybernetic goggles fixed to his face emitted a quiet mechanical whir, their lenses adjusting focus as lines of data scrolled across the screen. Blood panels and neural scans with long-term viral residue reports.

Raccoon City Syndrome continued to fascinate him.

The condition lingered like a ghost from the catastrophe decades ago—survivors of the t-Virus outbreak carrying dormant traces of infection buried deep within their nervous systems. For most physicians the syndrome represented a tragic late-stage complication, for Victor it represented opportunity.

"Ohhh… there you are," he murmured quietly, his voice soft but threaded with a faint sibilant undercurrent that gave off mock-safety.