He soon concluded that the virus could never be properly developed without using humans as the base organism. This led to Marcus experimenting on company trainees as test subjects, a move that ultimately cost him his job and saw him removed from power. The prototype t-Virus strain was eventually stolen and exploited by Albert Wesker and William Birkin under the orders of Oswell Spencer. Using Marcus’ work as a template, Birkin engineered numerous other strains of t-Virus that eventually led to the creation of the Tyrant; the ultimate human biological weapon.
The t-Virus is an RNA virus that takes the genetic code modifying properties of the Progenitor Virus base and improves upon it, resulting in the potential to create devastating new B.O.W.s. But to reach that point, countless experiments were conducted on various living organisms and there were many failures along the way. When an organism is initially infected, the virus rewrites the DNA, mutating the host into a creature with differing abilities and properties that cannot be found in the natural world. It has a capacity for adapting to its environment and every living thing serves as a vector for the infection.
After exposure, the virus will spread around the subject’s body, inserting its own genetic coding into the cells of the host, absorbing the viral genome in its own genetic make-up, which then takes over the cell’s functions. The cell begins to produce offspring of the original virus, self-propagating by using the synthesis properties and energy of proteins. In other words, the protein and nucleicacid synthesis program of cells that have been infected with the t-Virus is rewritten based on the nucleus of the virus, resulting in growing numbers of new t-Virus nuclei. The most significant attribute of the t-Virus is in how the infected cells themselves are subjected to mutated evolution. Once this process is complete, the new viruses are released from the host cell and infected the neighbouring cells, starting the process all over again.
After infection, the t-Virus spreads throughout the victim’s body and affects its systems, starting with internal secretory systems, then spreading to nearly all organs making up the body, such as the skin, muscles, nerves, circulatory, respiratory, digestive and skeletal systems. One major transformation is an unusual increase in growth hormone and the tendency for the host body to increase in size as a result. This trait is particularly common in insects, reptiles and arthropods. The effect of the virus on the muscular system – to multiply the strength of the host organism – is particularly surprising. For the nervous system, the virus dulls sensations of pain and fear, while at the same time significantly increasing aggression. Further benefits include heightened durability and offensive capability.
These are the important elements which make the resulting organism practical as a weapon. As a side effect, metabolism is slowed down significantly and some B.O.W.s species undergo tissue decay, making them not particularly pleasant to look at. Additionally almost all infected specimens display signs of eroded intelligence, making certain infectants extremely difficult to train as weapons. The t-Virus fundamentally functions as an intermediately of genetic combination between different species that would normally be unstable, and it appears to make it relatively easy to perform complex genetic manipulations together with the virus. William Birkin used this to great effect throughout the 1980’s creating organisms such as the Hunter prototype and Chimera.
The t-Virus also has differing effects on differing organism classifications. For example in arthropoda hosts, the virus typically exhibits an extreme increase in size and interestingly the least amount of visible necrosis. Their breeding capacity also increases and organisms with natural poisonous defence systems will see these traits enhanced with further toxicity. Reptiles are similar, although their growth increase is not as consistent. Breaking it down further, hosts that are mammal based undergo the most interesting mutations such as muscular growth yet also suffer the most external necrosis. By contrast insects attain minimal enhancements and this is thought to be because they are already halfway to an evolutionary dead end having been around since ancient times.
When a human is infected with the t-Virus, the cerebral neo-cortex necrotises, inhibiting memory and language function. Slowly they begin to develop a ravenous appetite with physical symptoms of skin necrosis and blood congestion. The longer an infectant survives, loss of reason and a clouding of consciousness increases. The subject soon has the appearance of death, with pale skin and in some cases, exposed bone. Motor functions are still active but the senses are dulled, allowing for a high tolerance to pain. An intense hunger drives the subject towards living flesh. This is referred to as the ‘zombie’ state. It should be noted that the t-Virus does not revive the dead, it simply incapacitates the host into an almost coma-like state and rewrites the DNA.
Once this process is complete, the host will ‘reanimate’. This was the case until fall 1998, when a new t-Virus variant was developed with further added influence from the Progenitor Virus which for the first time enabled the t-Virus to infect an uncontaminated dead body. Although viruses need live cells to propagate, Progenitor is able to bypass this process thanks to it being the fundamental building construct of all life on the planet and could therefore bring completely proliferated cells back to life.
When an infectant suffers a sustained period of incapacitation, the t-Virus survives by entering a dormant phase then undergoes regenerative transformation, stimulating the cells and reconstructing the body tissue. This process was first recorded in the 1980s when researchers noted that within certain environments, the activation of the virus within a living bio-weapon could cause fresh alterations to the organism’s genetic structure. But in order for this to occur, an external trigger was required and the structural alterations were usually minor and predictable. However ten years later a trait vastly exaggerating this process was discovered following an irregular mutation in a single zombie subject and was later classified as ‘V-ACT’ for ‘virus
activation.’ Because the accelerated V-ACT process made mutations more extreme and unpredictable than before, this saw an increase in so-called irregular mutants whereupon a single specimen would suffer unique changes dependant on their individual genetics. Examples of such include the Suspended and Al Lester.
Many t-Virus variants have different transmission vectors, but the most common are airborne which later adapts to transdermal. The t-Virus contains a
unique property to evolve with the passage of time and the external environment, gradually stabilising over time from its initial release. This means that
the t-Virus gradually becomes less infectious over time. Other infection routes include contaminated food and water, direct skin contact, injury, blood
ingestion and the virus is often carried by rodents or insects.
The incubation period can vary depending on any number of external factors, but the most significant improvement made to the t-Virus over time was accelerating the infection process. Documented accounts vary from just over one week to full transformation within the same day. These individual differences before reaching a zombie after being infected were down to minor genetic differences in each individual subject. It took several years to devise a method to rectify this state and when the perfected strain of the virus was created in the early 21st century, initial exposure could transform a human to a zombie in a matter of minutes after successful virus transmission.
As well as developing biological weapons, the t-Virus also harboured medicinal qualities and has been shown to destroy cancer cells. In clinical trials, the virus has been modified on several occasions for oncolytic treatments and research proved that if the virus was administered in small amounts together with its antibodies, it was possible to cure different fatal diseases like terminal cancer or congenital immunodeficiency. However, these effects don’t last long and larger doses were necessary over time. With this ongoing treatment, the body started to change its form and the brain showed signs of an abnormal development.
The t-Virus is extremely infectious and the risk of secondary infection was high thanks to its incredible ability to adapt to almost any host. Many natural viruses are limited in their infection radius because some are not cross-species and others will not affect every species within a given category. For example, some viruses that affect ducks or chickens are incapable of infecting other birds. The t-Virus has no such issue and is capable of infecting nearly every class of organism. Anyone or anything exposed will be malformed under the influence of the still active virus. This only highlighted the extreme danger the t-Virus posed. Even something as small as an insect was biologically capable of starting an outbreak on a huge scale. Even immobile organisms such as plants posed a danger. Something that could not move should limit any further transmission, yet their spores released into the air would also carry the virus. This ensured any outbreak would spread very quickly out of control unless contained in an isolated environment.
Oswell Spencer oversaw supervision of t-Virus development over two decades and desired a weapon capable of infecting 100% of its intended target rate in humans, however the best they could ever manage was a 90% success rate. This was down to the human genome differing very subtly from person to person and therefore 10% were always going to have a natural immunity to the virus. No amount of genetic research would change this fact. A viral weapon with a 90% success rate should have been enough for biological weapons development, but for Spencer, it was not enough, and this only further demonstrated his ruthless ambition.
