thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| Wesker and OTA
WHAT| Post-Death Reflection
WHERE| District 11 suites
WHEN| Morning after his arena death
WARNINGS| It's Wesker.

It was the silence that Wesker kept coming back too.

Among all the things that had happened, everything he had encountered thus far, it was the remarkable quiet that he lingered over.

He'd never realized just how accustomed to the noise he'd grown over the years. The screams of panic and fear, the rattle of gunfire, the incessant cries of the infected....

But here, now, standing in the suite he'd been - assigned - he marveled at the difference. At the sounds of life he'd forgotten.

The city below, muffled and distant through the glass. Hearts beating, strong and steady, relaxed in untroubled sleep, down the hall. The happy voices on the television, unwatched, but on behind him....

And there - somewhere close - of movement, of someone headed his way.

His lips pulled (his reflection smirked back). Perhaps it was, what was the word they'd used? His mentor. At last.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It wasn't ego if it was true.

The corner of his mouth twitching, Wesker, without missing a beat, replied, "Said the fellow rat."

Edited 2012-12-21 11:47 (UTC)

Riddick smirked still and gave the guy a little mocking salute. He was a lab rat, sure. For now; he didn't expect that to last forever. It never did, when he put effort into the escape. "You plannin' on playing their game, then?"

"So they really do call it a game?" Wesker mused instead of answering, his lip curling - more sneer than smile. "How very Roman of them."

He looked out the window again, down at the glittering city, and wondered. Just how Roman?

Were these, like the games of old, just a cover - a distraction for the masses? A bit of ancient slight-of-hand? And, if so, what for? What were they hiding?

It was times like this Riddick wished he'd had a better education. He had no idea what "Roman" meant, aside from once having heard someone's nose referred to that way. He didn't ask, though; maybe the library-- which was where he was headed today-- would have something he could read on "Roman".

"They call 'em Hunger Games, if you wanna be specific," he answered instead. "This the first you've heard 'em called anything?"

"The Romans would, on occasion, give titles to their particularly special events," Wesker mused simply, almost as if he were talking to himself rather than answering Riddick.

Mind working, he was engaging in the conversation only so much as he had too.

At the small of his back, his fingers curled, his knuckles whitening... and then slowly relaxed once more.

"Who are these people?"

"Big city types who like orderin' people around," was Riddick's only answer. He wasn't particularly interested in trading theories with someone he didn't know a damn thing about. All he really wanted was to get the man's measure, or attempt to.

"And watching 'em die, I guess," he finished with a derisive snort.

"That narrows it down," Wesker said dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching. By that definition they might have been anyone - could have been Umbrella.

Riddick considered, then relented and at least gave Wesker the general layout of the place. "Country's called Panam, or somethin' like that. City's called The Capitol. There's twelve Districts that send shit to the Capitol. Ain't really much more than that to be found without a little diggin'. As you can tell," he added, "they ain't that creative with names."

"Panam?" Wesker mused, repeating the word slowly. As if tasting it.

Somehow it felt familiar, memory tickling. He mentally picked at it, trying to place it, and suddenly, with a strike of clarity, an unpleasant thought came to him.

What if he'd been too quick to dismiss the obvious? Perhaps he recognized it because he was supposed to.

"Does 'The Umbrella Corportion,' mean anything to you?" he asked Riddick, a vee appearing between the eyebrows of his reflection as he considered again the possibility that this was all Umbrella's doing.

"Nope. Why? You heard somethin' I didn't? Or's that somethin' from your world?"

Yeah, Riddick had already fully accepted the whole multiple-worlds-thing. Nothing else made sense, and he did have space travel and all, in his own time.

Wesker turned, his full attention suddenly recaptured.

"My world? As if to say that they are not all one and the same?"

"They ain't," Riddick shrugged, not phased by the idea. "I got taken off a small spaceship on route to an ice planet. There's some alien guy here with a bunch of eyes and eight legs, obviously not from anywhere I've been. There's people from an Earth way behind the times I remember, and I don't have any idea what planet this is. Panem's just a country in it, far's I can tell."

His jaw didn't drop. He didn't gasp. His outward expression didn't change at all.

Behind the lenses, however, Wesker blinked - once, twice - and his mind turned a mile a minute.

"Then yes, I suppose you could call it something from my world," he said eventually.

Was that really that the answer? This was... another planet?

That was more comforting than being trapped inside an Umbrella simulation, he ventured, but was it actually possible?

Edited 2013-01-07 13:17 (UTC)

Riddick waited patiently, watching Wesker-- or perhaps watching the window behind Wesker; it was hard to tell, with his glasses that dark-- while he sorted through that. "Probably not somethin' on this world, then. The only power seems to be the people who run the capitol city, this city here, that we're stuck in. Ain't seen much else." Yet. He was still looking.