Location: Beneviento Estate, Outskirts of the Village
Date: July 18, 2020
Time: 09:45 AM Local Time
A brutal winter snowstorm tore through the remote Eastern European mountain forest. The wind howled violently, bending ancient pine trees until they groaned like dying men, whipping snow sideways in a blinding white curtain. The world felt hostile, isolated, and dead.
Through the whiteout, a silhouette emerged.
He walked against the wind with a gait that defied the physics of the storm. The deep snow did not seem to impede him; he moved over it, leaving clean, deliberate footprints that the wind erased seconds later.
A long black duster coat trailed behind him, the heavy fabric moving with a liquid, unnatural smoothness. A wide-brimmed black fedora crowned his silhouette, shielding his face from the biting frost.
He stopped at the edge of the cliff overlooking the mist-shrouded valley. Below him sat House Beneviento. The mansion was a rotting jewel of the Old World, perched precariously over a freezing waterfall. It was silent. A place where people went to lose their minds.
The camera circled the figure. His face was swallowed by the shadow of his hat, a void where a human visage should be. Then, two points of light ignited.
Vibrant, ocean-blue eyes.
They glowed with the bioluminescence of the A- virus and T-Phobos cocktail running through his veins. They were not angry. They were clinically focused.
"I have arrived," Alen whispered. His voice was low, frictionless, and utterly devoid of fear.
He reached into his coat pocket and deployed the Micro-Drone. The tiny device buzzed into the air, vanishing into the snow like a mechanical insect.
"Activate Cognitive Dominion," Alen commanded, tapping the side of his sunglasses. "Protocol: White Noise."
The air around him shimmered. The "signal" of the Megamycete—the mental Wi-Fi that connected every monster in the valley—was instantly jammed in a fifty-meter radius around him. To the Mold, Alen Wesker didn't exist. He was a glitch. A ghost in the machine.
"Time to meet the doll maker."
The Graves of the Past
Alen crossed the suspension bridge, his boots rhythmic and heavy on the wood. He paused at the entrance to the estate garden. The wind died down here, suffocated by the heavy canopy of trees.
He walked past the frozen fountain and stopped at a large, neglected tombstone.
CLAUDIA BENEVIENTO
Alen stood over the grave of the child who died too young, the tragedy that likely started this family's descent into madness. He looked at it with the detachment of an archaeologist viewing a fossil.
"Sentimental," Alen scoffed, adjusting his black leather gloves. "Grief is a powerful motivator, but a poor strategist. You buried your heart here, Donna. And Miranda dug it up."
He turned his gaze to the main double doors. Usually, visitors here would feel a creeping dread, a sense of being watched by a thousand glass eyes. But today, the atmosphere was inverted.
The house wasn't watching him. It was holding its breath.
Alen pushed the heavy wooden doors open. They groaned in protest.
The Predator Becomes Prey
Location: House Beneviento, The Workshop
Target: Donna Beneviento
Deep inside the manor, beneath the floorboards, Donna Beneviento sat frozen at her workbench. Her hands, usually steady as she painted the porcelain face of a new doll, were trembling violently.
Beside her, the doll Angie sat slumped in a chair. Usually, Angie chattered, manic and alive with the gift of the Cadou, screaming obscenities and laughing. But now? Angie was just wood and cloth.
"The voices..." Donna whispered, her voice raspy from disuse. "They stopped."
The constant hum of the Megamycete, the comforting presence of Mother Miranda in her mind—it had been severed. Cut off. It was as if someone had walked into a crowded room and screamed for silence.
And then, she heard it.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed from the floor above. They were slow. Rhythmic. The footsteps of an apex predator that knew its prey had nowhere to go.
Donna scrambled to the workshop door, peeling back the velvet curtain to peer into the hallway shadows. What she saw stopped her heart.
Standing at the top of the stairs was a figure straight out of the darkest urban legends. Tall. Shadowy. A trench coat that seemed to absorb the light. Glowing blue eyes that pierced the gloom.
"The Hat Man..." she breathed, clutching her chest.
She knew the folklore. A shadow entity that appeared during sleep paralysis to feed on terror. But this wasn't a story. This was real. And he was radiating a pressure that made her lungs seize.
This wasn't just fear; it was biological panic. Alen's Cognitive Dominion was flooding the house with the Phobos Frequency, hitting her amygdala like a sledgehammer. It whispered to her instincts: Run. Hide. Die.
She tried to fight back. She focused on her pollen, trying to weave a hallucination to hide herself. She squeezed her eyes shut, projecting an image of the house twisting into a nightmare—giant dolls, weeping babies, walls closing in.
Glitch.
Down the hall, Alen paused. He watched as the wallpaper briefly flickered like a corrupted video file—turning into skin, then snapping back to floral print. He tilted his head, unimpressed.
"Your firewall is weak, Donna," Alen called out. His voice carried through the house, sounding like it was coming from everywhere at once—inside the walls, inside her head. "Stop hiding. It is... undignified."
Donna panicked. The spell broke. She grabbed Angie and ran.
The Stalking
Alen walked through the corridors. He didn't run. He didn't need to. He moved with the terrifying inevitability of entropy.
He passed the kitchen. A wooden mannequin tried to move, animated by Donna's desperation. Alen simply glanced at it, his blue eyes flaring brighter.
< SIGNAL JAMMED >
The mannequin collapsed instantly, its connection severed. Wood clattered against tile.
"Subject is exhibiting high levels of cortisol," Alen noted dryly to himself, checking his internal HUD. "Heart rate: 160 BPM. Inefficient. She is burning energy she will need for the interrogation."
He turned the corner, his black coat swirling around his ankles. He looked like Mr. X, but faster. Smarter. And far more arrogant.
Donna stumbled into the Guest Room on the second floor, her breath coming in short, terrified gasps. She clutched Angie to her chest like a lifeline.
He's coming. He's coming. He's coming.
She dove toward the large wooden wardrobe in the corner. It was a childish hiding spot, but terror had stripped her of logic. She squeezed inside, pulling the doors shut, tears streaming down her scarred face beneath the black mourning veil.
She held her breath.
Silence returned to the house.
One second passed. Two.
Had he passed by?
"Found you."
The voice was right beside her ear. Inside the wardrobe.
Donna screamed—a sound of pure, unadulterated terror that shattered the silence.
She kicked the doors open and tumbled out. He hadn't walked across the room. He had relocated. One second he was in the hall, the next, he was standing inches from the wardrobe, utilizing the Spatial-Phantom movement—speed so fast it registered as teleportation.
Alen loomed over her, a dark god in a black coat. He reached out, one hand grabbing her waist to steady her before she hit the floor, the other pinning her arm to prevent escape.
"Who... what are you?" Donna squeaked, her legs giving out completely. She looked up at the sunglasses, seeing her own terrified reflection.
Alen looked down at her. He adjusted his sunglasses with his free hand, his posture radiating absolute dominance.
"I am the solution," he said coldly.
The fear was too much. The Phobos Frequency, combined with the sheer intimidation of a Wesker closing the distance, overloaded Donna's nervous system. Her brain simply pulled the emergency brake.
Her eyes rolled back.
Thump.
She went completely limp, collapsing into Alen's arms like a ragdoll. Angie the doll slipped from her grip and clattered to the floor, face-down.
The Awkward Silence
Alen stood there, holding the unconscious Lord of the Valley with one arm, looking utterly dumbfounded.
The terrifying "Hat Man" aura vanished instantly, replaced by genuine, scientific confusion. The blue glow in his eyes dimmed.
He looked at the woman draped over his arm. Then he looked down at the wooden doll on the floor. Then back at the woman.
"..."
The silence in the room was heavy and awkward.
He tapped his earpiece. "Trinity?"
<< Yes, Master? Combat status? >>
"The target has... rebooted. Unintentionally."
<< Did you terminate her, Master? >>
"No," Alen said, sounding genuinely annoyed. "She fainted. I believe I may have calibrated the Cognitive Dominion intensity too high. Her neural pathways simply... gave up. It seems the 'Hat Man' persona was effectively... too effective."
He sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. "Pathetic resilience. I expected a mental battle, not a nap."
He shifted Donna's weight. She was surprisingly light. He carried her effortlessly to the velvet chaise lounge near the window. He laid her down, arranging her limbs with clinical precision—arms at her sides, head elevated.
Curiosity took over. The scientist in him woke up.
Alen reached out and gently lifted the black mourning veil covering her face.
He studied her.
She was pale, deathly so. On the right side of her forehead, the Cadou parasite had created a fleshy, flower-like abscess that had taken her right eye. A visible, jagged scar ran down her cheek. Most would find it horrifying.
But beneath the scarring and the parasite...
Alen paused. He tilted his head. He felt a sudden, strange spike in his own biometrics.
She was warm. Despite the cold house, despite the death that surrounded her, she radiated a soft, human heat. Her remaining eye was closed peacefully. Her features were delicate, tragic.
It reminded him, just for a nanosecond, of holding Isabella back at the ranch.
"Interesting," Alen murmured, his voice losing its harsh edge.
He traced the line of her jaw with a gloved finger, analyzing her bone structure. He pulled a photo of her from his pocket—an old Umbrella intel file—and compared it to the sleeping woman.
"Despite the parasitic deformation and the severe psychological trauma..." Alen tilted his head, speaking with the objective, detached appreciation of an art critic evaluating a statue. "...her facial symmetry is remarkable. Aesthetically adequate."
He paused, correcting himself.
"Perhaps even... beautiful."
He stood up, adjusting his trench coat, regaining his composure as the son of Albert Wesker. He picked up the doll, Angie, and set it on a chair facing the wall, like a punished child.
Then, he sat in the armchair opposite Donna, crossed his legs, rested his Samurai Edge on his knee, and checked his watch.
"Wake up, Ms. Beneviento," Alen muttered to the unconscious woman. "We have much to discuss. And I do hate to wait."
Status:
* Target: Donna Beneviento (Incapacitated).
* Mission: Infiltration Successful.
* Current Mood: Mildly Disappointed / Scientifically Intrigued.