The room smelled of aged mahogany, cigarette smoke, and something faintly metallic—the lingering stench of sterilized laboratories, where things more wretched than men were created. Alex Wesker inhaled through her long cigarette holder, a slow stream of smoke curling toward the vaulted ceiling of her estate office. It wasn’t a comforting scent, but she found it tolerable. Like everything else in her life, it existed to serve her, and she had no time for complaints.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling window, her island stretched out beneath the sickly gray sky, cliffs jagged and cruel against the rolling sea. The waves crashed against them in a dull, endless rhythm, like a heartbeat just shy of death. The thought amused her.

The T-Phobos virus was a marvel, something only a mind like hers could have envisioned. Fear—such a beautifully simple trigger. No convoluted injections, no agonizing transformations unless the subject gave in to their own weakness. It was elegant, natural selection at its purest. And the best part? The strong, the worthy, survived. The rest became failures, genetic filth liquefying from the inside out. The memory of it still sent a rare pulse of satisfaction through her. Watching those cowards rupture, their blood painting the floors of her testing chambers, their eyes rolling back in abject horror—nothing was more honest than that moment. No lies, no posturing, just biology making its decision.

She took another drag, flicking ash into the crystal tray beside her. The air outside shifted, a gust of wind shaking the trees near the cliffs. Even nature seemed uneasy in her presence. "The world would be better without all of this chaos wouldn't it?" She spoke, mainly to whoever was listening at the moment.