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Originally, I wanted to work on a perfect resume.. a biography filled with eloquent phrases, beautiful sentences, perfectly formatted… something that would finally make people take me seriously. I even wanted to use AI to polish every sentence I wrote… but that’s not who I am. I’m not perfect.. at least not in that kind of thing and I don’t talk like a scientific robot either. My name is Luis Serra… and in the event of my death, this is my little treasure map to an antidote I’ve created.
I was born in Spain in a community you could compare to the Amish; the whole village had chosen to reject modern life… for a long time, I didn’t even know there was more out there, that the world had moved on. We were there to work, to survive, and to learn how to survive. I barely remember it now, and even today I still can hardly believe that such a life was even possible. It wasn’t all bad… there are a few things I could happily do without today… but that’s another story. My family died of the flu… one after another. I barely survived, and that was what sparked the defiance within me, I was certain that whatever had killed them could have been stopped. My grandfather took me in. He didn’t notice my restlessness, and he saw that I needed to grow.. that would have been dangerous for the community… they didn’t want that change, so… he left me in the forest, without a cradle or a packed picnic basket. I survived that time as well, and I kept running until I found a city, and there… my life began.
I think we’ll skip the filler parts… even though there were some really interesting events...you can believe me on that. Well, I ended up in a children’s home, went to school, and set my mind on becoming a virus hunter… and I would fight them like Don Quixote, for some, they were windmills; for me, it was a goal I clung to. Formulas, biochemistry… biology, and almost everything related to it became my life… I was obsessed with it, finished my degree, and then, at some point, someone approached me in a bar and invited me to a job interview. You think that’s strange, don’t you? I didn’t care back then, I lacked common sense, and I still lack it today. I eventually ended up at the Umbrella Corporation… and I was thrilled! Secret labs, endless equipment, samples of viruses and bacteria that even I had never heard of. Artifacts from the permafrost, thousands of years old. They gave me free rein, I got a small area all to myself… and then I spent almost every day there, analyzing… creating, destroying… until I stumbled upon something that fascinated me so much that I wanted to improve it.
Well… these pieces of amber. Actually, I’ve come to hate that term by now, but it’s simply the best way to describe them. Everyone knows amber. Golden-yellow, transparent… pretty to look at, except that these things didn’t have little flies trapped inside them, but something that probably would have been better off staying there forever. At first, no one knew what we were even dealing with. At some point, I just stopped trying to give the whole thing a name, because it behaved differently every time compared to the day before. It was almost as if it were mocking the fact that we humans always have to pigeonhole everything. It wasn’t dead. I started isolating small parts of it, exposing them to different temperatures, irradiating them, mixing in enzymes, leaving them in nutrient solutions for weeks on end, and waiting. Most of the time, nothing happened at all. Sometimes too much happened, I was convinced that there was something in it that could defeat diseases. Imagine… an organism that adapts, recognizes damaged cells, and simply repairs them. That would have been greater than any antibiotic, greater than any vaccine. I truly thought I was on the verge of creating something that could save millions of lives, but Umbrella had a completely different idea. At first, I didn’t even notice. They provided me with better equipment, gave me larger labs, more staff… every scientist dreams of that. I no longer had to wait weeks for new equipment, it was just there the next morning. Did I need a sample? Two hours later, it was on my desk. I thought they believed in me.
At some point, Petri dishes weren’t enough anymore. Then came mice, followed by rats, dogs and monkeys. It was always the same process. That stuff achieved things that were actually impossible. Injuries healed faster, some diseases disappeared almost completely… and then… at some point… everything started to change. The body healed, but the mind… well… or maybe it was healing, too… just into something else. I convinced myself that we just had to find one more little thing, a switch or something, anything that would turn off this side effect. So I kept going. Then one morning, there were files on my desk, they wanted to test it on humans… but it was definitely too early for that! I asked for clarification. The answer was… evasive.. they said it would be prisoners and the seriously ill. At some point, I stopped believing what they told me. Some people just disappeared and suddenly reappeared as a number on a lab report. Something I still can’t forgive myself for is that I stayed there anyway… because I convinced myself that if I left, someone else would take my place. Someone who might have had even less of a conscience than I did. That’s a damn good excuse… until you eventually realize that it doesn’t change the fact that blood is stuck to your own hands.
The further we went, the more Umbrella changed, too. Or maybe it wasn’t Umbrella that changed… but rather, I finally started to look closely. I gained access to projects that were never meant for my eyes. That’s when I realized I’d never been working on a cure. I’d merely helped make a weapon more lethal. So I took whatever I could carry, the unfinished antidote I’d been secretly working on, and all the data Umbrella wanted back as quickly as possible. I ran… not very gracefully, by the way. There was no explosion behind me, I was just terrified, and for the first time in years, I was smart enough to listen to that fear. I disappeared back to Spain, back to where it had all begun, hoping that Umbrella would never come looking for me there. I thought an old-fashioned commune would be just the thing;.. there, I could continue my research and try to make amends.
...well.
All right… Spain.
I really should have realized sooner that something wasn’t right. There were hardly any normal conversations anymore; those… cult guys were standing around everywhere, staring at you. The village had always been… peculiar, but this was in a whole new league. I really just wanted to hide my documents, track down a few old contacts, and get out of there, it worked like a charm… for about five minutes. Then suddenly a farmer was standing in front of me, looking at me as if he were considering whether I was edible, and swung an axe at me. That, by the way, was the moment I decided that polite conversation had probably died out for good in this village. Of course, I knew immediately what had happened. Well… of course might be a bit of an exaggeration. To be honest, it took me a few days to realize that Saddler was far more advanced than I’d assumed. The parasite was no longer just a research subject, it had become a religion… and, as we all know, religions aren’t exactly keen on discussing scientific counterarguments, gasp, gasp. Saddler himself… I don’t even know how to describe him. Imagine someone who, every time he opens his mouth, sounds as if he finds himself incredibly fascinating, he kept talking about how we were all going to become part of something greater. I, on the other hand, was mainly interested in not becoming part of anything... especially not part of him.
Oh, Ramón.
The man was about as tall as my shoulder, but had the ego of a god. To this day, I have no idea how he managed to come across as both an offended twelve-year-old and a centuries-old aristocrat at the same time. Biologically speaking, that should actually be impossible. By the way, he couldn’t stand me, which put my mind at ease. People with his taste generally worry me, Méndez was easier… he hardly spoke, he’d just look at you, and suddenly you’d find yourself wondering if you shouldn’t choose a different continent to live on after all… and somewhere between these completely normal personalities, there I was. The only attractive scientist far and wide... I mean… let’s be honest. If I’d had any competition, I’d obviously keep that to myself, but I didn’t. Ashley showed up at some point, at first, I had no idea who she was. I just saw a young woman who looked like she’d stumbled into the worst school field trip of her life.
Oh uhhh… Ada. You’re probably already wondering the whole time when I’m finally going to start talking about her. Heh... I knew long before I set foot on Spanish soil again that our paths would cross at some point. We’d already been in contact… if you could even call it that. We didn’t meet in a bar, we didn’t run into each other by chance, and no… she didn’t suddenly fall through my window with a gun drawn. In hindsight, that would actually have been much more normal. No, we exchanged emails, encrypted emails, of course… after all, I wasn’t suicidal. Don’t ask me how Kennedy was able to read those very emails immediately after just briefly touching my keyboard… I’m a scientist… not a computer geek!
The first messages, however, didn’t come from her at all. Someone suddenly reached out to me and knew an astonishing amount about my work, about Umbrella, and, unfortunately, about me as well. More than I would have liked. At first, I ignored the whole thing, because when strangers suddenly contact you who obviously have access to information that no one is supposed to have, it’s usually not a good sign. Eventually, though, my curiosity got the better of me… that’s always been one of my biggest weaknesses. If I’d been less curious, things would probably have turned out very differently, but then this story would have been a lot more boring. Eventually, it wasn’t just some random contact responding anymore, it was her. She wrote about as much as necessary and about ninety percent less than I did. While I tried to figure out who she was, who she worked for, and why she was interested in my research of all things, she generally answered only every third question and asked two new ones in return. In hindsight, that was probably a pretty clever tactic. At the time, I just thought she was rude. Of course, she always claimed she was interested exclusively in my research. Everything strictly professional, I believed her, of course… for about five minutes. After that, I eventually noticed that she found reasons to write to me with surprising frequency. No sooner did I have new results than a message would suddenly appear. If I didn’t get in touch for several days, she’d reach out on her own to ask whether I was still alive or if I’d finally discovered something interesting. Call it intuition… or just call it the decades of experience of a decidedly attractive man, but I was pretty sure she found me quite likable. Who could blame her? I was young, charming, brilliant, looked great, and still had a full head of hair. Well… fortunately, I still have that last one.
Of course, she kept the fact that she worked for Wesker a secret for as long as possible. I didn’t hear that name until much later, and suddenly a lot of things made sense. Wesker certainly wasn’t interested in me as a person… which is a shame, actually… but in what I knew and what I had created. Ada was basically his right-hand woman, only much more pleasant to look at. Our little deal was quickly sealed. I would get her information and, later, a sample; she would make sure I got out of that madhouse alive. Actually, a pretty simple plan… until fate decided to interfere again.
And then Leon showed up. Leon S. Kennedy. I’ll admit… at first, I really thought the two of them would shoot each other at the first opportunity. They talked to each other like two people who’d hated each other for years but still kept crossing paths. One moment, one of them would hold a gun to the other’s face; five minutes later, one would save the other’s life, and afterward, they’d both act as if it were perfectly normal. I stood by often enough and wondered whether I should step in or if I just needed to give them some privacy. At some point, though, I started noticing the little things. Those glances, that constant mistrust hiding something entirely different, and that unbelievably bad act they both put on to convince everyone they’d love nothing more than to get rid of each other. Come on… I’m a scientist; recognizing patterns is practically part of my job. Even Saddler would have eventually realized that something was going on between the two of them... and that’s exactly why I held back.
If I’d been more selfish back then and had decided to seriously court Ada, the story would probably look a little different today. Maybe she’d be carrying my last name now, we’d have at least two kids who’d both be stunningly good-looking and, of course, would have inherited all my good genes, while Leon would probably be sitting somewhere with a bottle of whiskey, wondering where exactly in his life everything went wrong. But I’m a gentleman, after all… at least that’s what I keep telling myself to this day. Someone had to show some magnanimity, after all… and since Leon clearly had other qualities, that task probably fell to me.
I should actually be dead. At least that’s what everyone tells me today. I still remember how the bullet hit me, and at that moment I actually thought to myself that this really was a pretty shitty way to die. Spending years dealing with viruses, parasites, and bioweapons, constantly believing some monster was going to rip your head off, and in the end, it’s just an ordinary bullet... kind of disappointing. After that, everything gets pretty fuzzy. I remember that Leon was there, I remember that Ada must have been somewhere nearby.. and I remember that suddenly everyone became more frantic than I was. When I finally opened my eyes again, I was alone.. and that was probably the first time in my life that I was genuinely happy about it. No one knew I was still alive; after all, dead scientists aren’t hunted anymore, and that was exactly what I desperately needed at that moment. So, for the time being, I stayed dead as far as everyone was concerned. It’s amazing how easy that becomes when everyone is firmly convinced that you’ve long since been buried six feet under. I didn’t have to convince anyone; I just had to stop existing.
The next few months consisted mainly of constantly moving on, finding some run-down places to stay, using names that weren’t mine, and cobbling together labs that would probably have given any halfway decent safety officer an immediate heart attack. My first lab basically consisted of an old wooden table, two used microscopes, both with their own quirks, several pieces of equipment that I’d either repaired or, to be honest, picked up somewhere, and a coffee maker that was probably more dangerous than anything else in the room. Looking back, that was probably the first lab where I could really work freely.. there was just me, my notes, and that damn antidote, which apparently didn’t want to let me go any more than I wanted to let it go. I don’t remember how many experiments I had to throw away. The antidote exists. It’s not perfect, because perfection is an invention of people who’ve never done serious research, but it’s good enough that, for the first time in many years, I felt like I might not have lost my family completely in vain after all. That’s exactly why, though, I won’t repeat the mistake I made back then with Umbrella. Knowledge isn’t automatically given to everyone. Some things have to be earned, and some people should never get their hands on them. That’s why you won’t find a neat little formula here that I’ve neatly written down on the last page. I’m not that naive a second time around.
I tore everything apart because I knew that no one would ever find all the pieces by chance. Each scrap of paper on its own looks completely insignificant. One might just have a chemical compound written on it, another a small sketch; somewhere there’s a coffee stain that I deliberately never removed, and in another spot, suddenly, a sentence in Galician, even though I wrote in Spanish before and after that.
A normal person would think I’d simply been sloppy, but anyone who knows me knows that I never switched languages by accident and that I always used the same fountain pen as soon as I believed I’d discovered something truly important. I’ve revealed far more to you in these notes than you’re probably aware of right now. Not about the formula… about me. You’ll never find the individual pages if you’re looking for a formula. You have to start looking for Luis Serra, for the things I liked, the places where I felt at home, the stories I talked about over and over, and even the bad jokes I kept repeating. Eventually, you’ll realize that practically every section I’ve written here is more than just a memory. Some sentences are clues, some names will lead you further, and I certainly don’t mention certain places twice just because my memory is starting to fail. If you think you’ve found the first part, don’t go looking for the second one… instead, ask yourselves why the first one was hidden right there of all places. Only when you can answer that question will you even begin to understand where I’ve hidden the next one. This has always been my favorite game… and this time, I really hope that only the right people stick with it until the end.