Step One

[Albert Wesker]

According to a watch that had been arbitrarily set to a random time, it had been nearly six hours since they had left the strange white void. In that time he had summoned a new vehicle, traveled to the edge of the monochrome bubble world and through a smoke-belching gate...then summarily lost the vehicle to unexpected engine trouble caused by a sharp upturn in not only temperature, but pollution in the air.

Internally, he blamed it entirely on the driving of his aide. He knew it was entirely inaccurate; Mister Death had in all likelihood been the better choice for driving between the two of them. Purely mortal and limited to human capabilities he may have been, but he had been doing such work and operating vehicles in all manner of terrain far more than Wesker himself had. Despite his time as a STARS operative, and later as an intelligence agent in Umbrella's covert operations, he had been more focused on the boots-on-the-ground aspect.

By his reckoning, the entire scene had taken perhaps two hours, from summoning to losing the vehicle. Which put them at another four hours, in this smoke-hazed landscape. For a while now they had been mercifully free of the shimmering heat haze that seemed intent on proving itself the maximum possible irritant, and had managed to make fairly steady progress. Progress to where, the seething executive had no idea. But progress was progress.

Mister Death's tracking skills and experience in the field had proved itself useful, however, in finding the broken carcass of what looked like a path of some sort. In this arid, ashen wasteland, it was hard to really identify it as any sort of path at all. The telltale signs were everywhere, of shifting landmasses and the lay of the land changing -- possibly by the day. Quakes in the land, flows of lava from eruptions and geological flatulence...it did not shape up to make for stable ground to traverse.

Yet somehow or other, through it all, Agent HUNK had proved his worth. It was little more than a footpath, freshly broken and trod, and in places there were stretches where it was completely lost. But it was still there to be found and followed, even if where it actually led to was a mystery.

"This entire place seems far too desolate to support any sort of developed intelligent life," Wesker finally stated. "Unless there's some sort of species that can survive off of volcanic rock and not mind the ground being torn to pieces and relaid every other day."

"Never can tell. Place like this, all bets are off," HUNK responded shortly. "Since I got here, watched you patch yourself up from what should have taken days to heal, at the least, in just a few hours of rest and effort. After pulling a new suit and wardrobe out of thin air, and making that car drop out of your imagination." The special agent turned his gasmask-covered face toward his superior. "Rock-eating lava-ignoring intelligent life seems mundane next to that."

That was a sensible enough observation, and it gave Wesker pause for a moment as he considered it. In his agitated state, he had failed to even consider it from an outside point of view. In his mind, it was just another useful ability to be carefully explored and then fully utilized and exploited. Entirely different from anything he could have possibly attained in his home world, but still something he had readily accepted. Regardless of where it came from, it was his now, and it would be a valuable tool.

...but it did cast some things into a strange light, and make him reconsider the likelihood that they wouldn't encounter anything resembling intelligent life here. The more he thought about it, the more he began to find other possibilities creeping into his mind. In an arid and desolate land like this, it was terribly unlikely that there would be an abundance of life of any sort, save for extremely hardy sorts. Certain types of reptilian creatures, perhaps, could survive in these inhospitable conditions. The lack of moisture would be their primary concern, but perhaps they had adapted enough to gather all they needed just from what they consumed; preying upon each other.

Then there was also another prospect. Reaching up a hand, he pulled the sunglasses off his face, running his other across his features to wipe away a disgusting mixture of collected sooth, ash, dust, and sweat. Squinting against the smoky haze, he scanned the horizon, and...aha. Of course, active volcanoes and mountains. Ample space for caves and quite likely underground chambers, if even one of them was inactive or had gone quiet.

The mind of a scientist was truly something, when set to a task such as this. He had not put it to such work in a long while, saving it for work in the lab rather than the field, but he was more than a little self-satisfied to find that he still had his edge when he took the time to bring it to bear. It was with a faint smirk that he slid his shades back into place, and adjusted the collar of his coat. Even for someone of his fortitude, the garment was stiflingly hot. Only the painstaking care to make it loose and flowing, all the better to billow and catch the wind, made it bearable at all.

....much longer in this insufferable hellscape, and even he would need to see about changing it, or removing it altogether, though.