Chapter Text
(Artwork by annausagi2!)
PART I - RESCUE
~ Day One ~
I have no idea why I've decided to write this. Or what "this" even is. It's been a while since I've kept an old-fashioned diary.
What now?
I guess I need something to start.
Let's see... might as well pick the day my life changed about half a year ago.
When I first saw that picture.
THE picture.
HIS picture.
I blame Artie for all of this.
Okay, that's probably not fair, but who cares about what's fair?
I don't want to write that much about Artie - you can never tell who's gonna read this - but I CAN say that he's been my best friend for many years.
And that he's one of the best hackers on this entire wrecking ball of a planet.
A friend of his who's working for a company named Tricell had apparently tipped him off about some shady things that have been going on there, and Artie being Artie meant that he got right on it. When I went by for a visit a few months ago, his entire apartment had been filled with Tricell files: Prints, pics, floppy disks, CDs - you name it, he had it.
I know, this really isn't in tune with the whole super secret hacker cliché, but you wouldn't believe how 'unorganized' some hackers can be.
Especially Artie.
But, back to the story I want to write down.
There were files over files in Artie's apartment, and a small pile of printed pages had a sheet of paper with a picture on top.
Yeah, THE picture.
It was a copy of a photograph (from the looks of it, it must have been taken with a really old camera) that showed a castle entrance and a mysterious-looking guy in a hooded robe and some monks leaving said castle. The guy in the hooded robe drew my attention almost immediately. I still have no idea why, but I just HAD to pick up the whole thing and examine it to get a closer look.
Not that this had helped much - the quality of the picture hadn't been the best, and the fact that it had been a copy hadn't helped much either.
I remember how I'd walked over to Artie with the picture in my hand and had asked him who THAT guy was.
"Oi... he's a real mystery, tha' one. All I know is tha' he's the leader of an ancient cult called Los Iluminados. Name's Osmund Saddler."
I had been tempted to tease Artie about being a bad hacker for not knowing more but had then thought better of it and had just stared some more at the picture instead.
Artie, however, being ever-so-perceptive, had picked up the vibes already.
"He's your type, eh?"
Goddammit, Artie.
I had made myself a copy of the picture and had taken it with me and then, as soon as I had been able to, I had started my own research into this entire matter, without a lot of hope that there would be anything to find.
I mean if Artie hadn't managed, who was I to try?
Much to my surprise, however, I actually found quite a few references to the cult... just not where you'd expect them. Artie had simply looked for them in the wrong places - they weren't in digital files and databases.
They were in actual archives.
You know, those magical places where you find stuff that's written on paper so old that you're only allowed to touch it if you're wearing gloves?
Yeah, those.
My Latin is rusty, even rustier than my Spanish, but I still managed to gather that the cult's origins were in Spain (no surprise, given its name), and that they worshipped "holy insects" - whatever that meant - but a lot of the texts were incomplete and the paper they were on was usually tattered and torn, almost like as if someone had gone to great lengths to make sure that the cult would be forgotten.
Which had only made me more interested, of course.
And then, last week, just before I had been about to fly to Madrid to check out a small private archive someone had referred me to (for once the connections I had established as part of my job as a research and documentation assistant had come in handy) it had happened.
The 'big disaster', as I've come to call it.
I had been at Artie's again to say goodbye before I went off to Madrid for a few weeks, and he had shoved another 'top secret' Tricell file at me with the words "Got something that might interest ya".
I had opened the file and my heart had sunk.
The folder had consisted of a whole bunch of incident reports, among them one from a Tricell associate named Albert Wesker. It described the downfall of Los Iluminados and the death of Osmund Saddler at the hands of an American government agent named Leon Scott Kennedy.
Osmund Saddler.
Dead?
NO.
It couldn't be.
I had copied the file, thanked Artie and had then returned home to study it all further.
And eventually I had found what I had been looking for: A tiny, hand-written remark at the bottom of the last page, easy to overlook right under the final paragraph that described Saddler's death.
'As of yet, no body found.'
And that's where I am right now with all of this.
Sitting here with two packed bags.
I'm still going to Spain.
But not to an archive.
Let's just say there is a much more interesting place for me to visit.