Chapter Text
The glass was too clean. It was the first thing you noticed.
Not the size of the room beyond it. The silence hummed louder than any scream ever could. What unsettled you was how perfectly spotless the glass was, as if whatever happens on the other side was never meant to leave a trace.
You stepped closer anyway. Your reflection stared back at you for half a second – young, composed, and dressed in the same sterile white they all wear here – before it dissolved into the sight beyond. The same sterile shade stamped across the walls of every Umbrella Corporation facility you’ve ever known.
There were endless rows of beds stacked three levels high, stretching wall to wall, floor to ceiling, swallowing the room in symmetry. Inside were people, maybe like three hundred of them, or more, all dressed the same with white uniforms, bare feet, and blank expressions, trying not to break into panic.
Some sat rigidly at the edge of their bunks, hands clenched in fabric that wasn’t theirs. Some whispered to each other in frantic bursts, voices too soft to carry through the reinforced glass but loud enough that you could feel the fear vibrating off them. Others stood frozen in place, turning slowly, as if expecting someone to explain why they were here.
“They look lost,” you said quietly. Your chest tightened, something unfamiliar crawling up your spine.
Behind you, there was a soft, measured sound of cane touching polished tile. Oswell Spencer never announced himself – he never needed to.
“They are,” he replied.
You glanced back at him, seeing him stand just a few steps away, posture straight despite his age, eyes sharp behind the thin veil of years. He looked at the room the way someone might look at a painting they commissioned – proud, analytical, and untouched by whatever emotion it might evoke in others.
“They don’t know where they are,” you continued, slower this time, trying to make sense of what you’re seeing as you looked back at the glass. “Why are they here?”
“Watch.”
Spencer said it so casually, like an order. You frowned, fingers curling slightly at your sides.
“That’s not what I asked.”
He stepped beside you, keeping his eyes on the glass. “Curiosity is a valuable trait,” Spencer said. “But answers are rarely given. They are observed.”
You didn’t like the way he said it. You didn’t like the way your question dissolved in the space between you, dismissed without being denied. Still, you looked over the glass again, observing a man in his mid-thirties, maybe, standing abruptly from his bed. He was speaking now, louder than the others, gesturing wildly as he turned to the people around him. You couldn’t hear the words, but his body language said it all – he wondered where they were, what was all this, and what was done to them.
Others started to follow, movement spreading like a ripple. Your pulse picked up, watching. “They’re scared.”
“Yes.”
Annoyance was an understatement of how frustrating it was for Spencer to be too fucking vague.
Your attention returned to the glass, observing more. Then a distant sound echoed through the chamber beyond, and the people inside reacted instantly. They all walked to another room as the panels slid open, revealing brighter colors with painted shapes, lines, and symbols that didn’t belong in a place like this.
A… playground?
“They’re gonna play?” you asked, the disbelief evident in your tone.
Spencer only gave you a nod. You furrowed your eyebrows as you watched, invested on whatever would happen next. The rule of the game was simple – you needed to move to the finish line, but if you moved outside the time frame, you lost.
But it wasn’t what you expected. Far from it.
The first person who moved outside the time frame instantly fell to the ground, body going slack in an instant. You gasped as you saw blood coming out of his body when he had been shot.
The pattern clicked into place before you wanted it to. The loser is eliminated – literally, eliminated. Your hand lifted instinctively, pressing against the glass as if that would somehow make sense of what you’re seeing.
“They’re killing them,” you muttered.
“Yes.”
You turned to him fully now, your pulse hammering in your ears. “For a game?”
“For failure.”
You shook your head, backing up half a step, your gaze snapping back to the scene unfolding before you. “I–”, your voice faltered, swallowing hard, forcing the words out. “I don’t like this.”
“You’re not meant to.”
“Then why let me watch it?”
“To observe.”
The players moved carefully now, seeing some of the survivors collapse where they stood, some shaking, and some stared blankly ahead. The game ended, and on the other side of the finish line, bodies were scattered, left where they fell.
What the hell?
Your breath left you in a sharp, uneven exhale. “This isn’t right,” you insisted. “They didn’t choose this. They don’t even understand what’s happening.”
“They understand enough.”
You shook your head. “No–they’re confused, they’re scared–”
“And yet they play.”
You turned to him again, frustration sparking. “Because they have no choice.”
“They always have a choice."
Your jaw tightened. “Between dying and surviving?”
Spencer looked at you fully this time. “And what did they choose?”
You gestured toward the glass. “This is cruelty.”
“No,” he simply said. “It’s the truth.”
Below, the games continued. One after another. They were simple, but deadly. With every round, something shifted the more the games progressed – they helped each other, whispered strategies, shared glances, and moved together. But in each game, it doesn’t last.
That made you realize that it never will be, because it cannot. The stakes were too high, and survival demanded something else. You saw it happen as the moment cooperation fractured with a push that was a little too forceful, and a hand that didn’t reach back in time, or even at all. It was a choice, small but almost unnoticeable. But it spreads like an infection.
“They’re turning on each other,” you whispered.
“Yes.”
You watched as one player stepped forward too soon, triggering something that took out more than just them. He made the other a collateral. You felt your stomach twist.
“They’re trying to survive,” you said quickly, clinging to it, forcing meaning into what you’re seeing. “Anyone would–”
“And in doing so, they ensure someone else does not.”
“They don’t have to do that,” you insisted, even as the words sounded weaker than you wanted them to. “They could’ve–”
“They won’t.”
You fell silent, watching as you saw the remaining survivors let out a relieved sigh, even when multiple bodies fell to the ground… with their own doing.
“Even here,” Spencer spoke, his gaze fixed on the glass. “Even in the most controlled environment, stripped of comfort and illusion, humanity reveals itself.”
You hated that he was right. Because as you watched further, Spencer was right, no matter how cruel whatever this simulation was.
They worked together, almost looking like hope, until it didn’t. When the balance shifted, when one side began to lose, you saw panic, desperation, and people who wanted to save themselves. Especially when they were made to choose – one survives, and one doesn’t. You watched as they hesitated, pleaded, bargained, and lied. One man laughed as he tricked the person across from him, even when the other didn’t get up.
“What is all this…?” you muttered.
“Greed,” Spencer said softly.
“He wanted to survive,” you countered instinctively, though you did not entirely believe it.
“Call it what you like,” he glanced at you as he replied. "The outcome remains the same.”
You couldn’t watch all of it anymore as your eyes kept drifting away, your focus slipping, and your thoughts louder than the scene itself. When you looked back again, now, only one person stood.
“They won,” you said, though it didn’t sound like victory.
Spencer studied the lone survivor. “They endured.”
“They were just people,” you said quietly.
“He was proof.”
You turned your head slightly, meeting his gaze. “Of what?”
“That humanity, given the right conditions…. will always choose itself over everything else.”
“You’re saying this is what people are like,” you said slowly. “That given the chance… they’ll always choose themselves.”
“I’m not saying it,” Spencer replied, gesturing toward the glass. “They are.”
Your heart pounded a little faster as you looked back at the glass, seeing the lone figure standing in the aftermath, and at the bodies they had to step over to get there, at what they had to become. Your reflection stared back at you from the glass, and for a moment, you imagined yourself down there in the games, the choices you had to make, and moments where hesitation meant death.
“They didn’t have to be like that,” you said one last time. “Not all of them.”
“They didn’t start that way,” he simply said. “Yet they arrived at the same conclusion.”
You didn’t argue, not this time. A part of you that you didn’t want to look at too closely, now understood.
Worse, you eventually agreed. Evil always had a name, indeed.