Chapter 37: A Virus That Makes You Immune to Physical Attacks
Of everyone at Umbrella, Birkin was probably the one who approached viruses with the most genuine passion. Not as instruments of power or evolution the way Wesker and Spencer treated them. He actually loved the work.
"Walk me through the new virus, Dr. Birkin."
"Gladly." Birkin straightened with the expression of someone who had been waiting to be asked this. "Though I think a demonstration will give you a clearer picture than a description."
He led Matthew to a sealed chamber enclosed in thick bulletproof glass.
Inside, suspended by mechanical arms from the ceiling, was a vampire. Its limbs had been removed. The skin and flesh had dried to something skeletal, the blonde hair on its head mostly fallen out. Without context, you would have thought someone had hung a desiccated corpse from the ceiling.
"This is the organism following V-Virus integration," Birkin said.
Matthew looked at it.
He had been expecting something in the Tyrant category. What he was looking at was a husk.
He turned toward Birkin with an expression that came within a word of asking if he was being made a fool of.
"You've misread the situation," Birkin said quickly. "I didn't bring you down here to show you a dried corpse."
He turned to the operator at the adjacent console. "Supply it with nutrition fluid."
"Yes, sir."
Two mechanical arm-mounted fixtures above the specimen began to spray.
Blood came down from them like a fine rain, coating the chamber walls, soaking the suspended body.
The moment the blood made contact, the specimen's eyes opened.
It went from motionless to violent in the same instant, straining against the mechanical arms with the focused desperation of something that had been waiting for exactly this. The dried, shrunken torso inflated rapidly. The severed limbs began regenerating at a visible pace.
When the limbs had fully returned, something unexpected happened.
The body disappeared.
Or not disappeared. Changed. The entire figure began to mist, the physical mass dissolving into a diffuse, reddish vapor cloud that drifted where the body had been. The mechanical arms that had been holding it closed on empty air.
The mist drifted backward a few meters, then accelerated toward the glass.
It hit with a sound like something solid.
The impact shuddered through fifteen centimeters of bulletproof glass.
The mist cloud dispersed on contact with the barrier, spreading across the glass surface. Within a few seconds, the scattered vapor pulled back together into a coherent shape some distance back.
Then it charged the glass again.
And again.
And again.
It repeated this without variation, without fatigue, as though each previous attempt had not happened.
On the other side of the glass, Matthew watched this with noticeably increased interest.
Birkin had been watching for exactly that reaction.
"The V-Virus," he said, "takes its name from Vampire. A product of the T-Virus recombined and mutated with selected vampire genetic sequences."
"The virus carries the vampire's primary advantages. With a sufficient blood supply, the host's limbs regenerate without limit. More significantly: the host can voluntarily mist their body tissue, which renders them effectively immune to physical attack."
"Immune to physical attack," Matthew repeated.
"Yes." Birkin pressed a button on his remote.
From the ceiling above the chamber, an automated turret descended.
It aimed at the mist.
Then it opened fire.
The rounds tore through the cloud continuously, and the mist screamed. Each burst scattered it, and each time it reconstituted. The cycle repeated. The sound coming from the chamber was unpleasant.
After half a minute, the turret stopped.
The blood mist, when Matthew looked at it again, was visibly smaller than before.
"The reduction in volume isn't from the physical impact of the rounds," Birkin said, reading his expression. "It's thermal damage. The heat from the bullets."
"Which brings us to the weaknesses."
"V-Virus inherits the vampire advantages. It inherits the weaknesses as well."
He pressed the remote again. The turret retracted and was replaced by a UV lamp.
The lamp came on.
The mist reacted as though it had been lit on fire. The screaming was considerably louder. Under the UV exposure, the gaseous form was forced back into solid tissue, which collapsed and curled in on itself.
"Through repeated testing: the host's ability to sustain mist form exists because the V-Virus has infected every cell in the body. Under viral influence, the host can voluntarily trigger cellular vaporization and subsequent recombination. A self-directed process." Birkin switched off the UV. "You might think of it as similar to the gaseous life forms from science fiction. The mist form is a coherent organism with directed intent."
"Under vampire genetic influence, the V-Virus mist form retains the classic vampire vulnerabilities: heat, cold, UV exposure, and high-concentration allicin causes an explosive combustion reaction on contact."
"What about silver?" Matthew asked.
Birkin answered with something close to deference. "The rounds we just fired were pure silver, sir."
Matthew moved to the glass and crouched to look at the UV-scorched specimen on the floor. At close range he could see several silver bullet fragments lodged near it. No reaction at all. The silver weakness had been outgrown.
"Any other weaknesses?"
Birkin's tone lost some of its earlier pride. "Yes, sir."
"Beyond the ones already mentioned: if the mist form becomes too dispersed, if pieces get too far from the main body, the smaller fragments lose coherence and die. It can only lose so much volume before it starts becoming irreversible."
"Intelligence remains a problem, the same as with the T-Virus."
"And the virus itself has no secondary transmission pathway. Injection only. It can't spread person to person through contact or airborne exposure."
"Which means it's essentially useless as a large-scale evolutionary agent. It can only function as a B.O.W. production tool."
Matthew looked at him.
"So: significant list of weaknesses. Two advantages: mist immunity and regeneration."
"...For now, yes." Birkin said it honestly.
He caught something in Matthew's expression and moved quickly. "Sir, every virus starts with a catalogue of problems. That's the nature of the work. With continued research I can resolve them, every one. Eventually I'll produce something without these limitations."
He meant it.
Matthew looked at him for a moment. At the specific quality of expression that came with genuine conviction about a project, the kind that was either delusion or the real thing and was difficult to tell apart from the outside.
"All right. I believe you."
He put a hand on Birkin's shoulder. "You've been working hard. I'll authorize another research allocation to keep this moving. Don't disappoint me."
He turned and walked toward the exit.
He was most of the way out when he stopped and looked back.
"One more thing, Dr. Birkin. Could you spare a single sample of the V-Virus? I'd like to add it to my collection."
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