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"One" is a draft script written for Resident Evil. It served as a prototype for what became Welcome to New Raccoon City. The plot is split up into two storylines - one set in the year 2022 and another set in 2036. Without an available Act structure, this article will instead split the story based on the year, rather than alternating between scenes.

Plot[]

"Scientists-- they said the world would end in 2036. Climate change-- pollution-- the oceans would boil. The air-- you wouldn’t be able to breath it. Billions of people would die. But they were wrong. The world ended a long time ago. And this is the story of how it happened...This is the story of what came next..."
— Opening narration by Billie

2022 scenes[]

It is some three months before the pandemic. Jade and Billie Wesker are a pair of 14-year-old sisters. Their family dynamic is complicated, being half-twins born through IVF to a surrogate mother. Their father, Albert, has recently been re-hired back onto Umbrella Corporation's board of executives after a long absence, which requires the family move to his new office in Raccoon Two, a planned community built over the former Raccoon City. Everyone in the city is an employee of Umbrella in some way, whether they work at Raccoon High School or at a cupcake store, and it is due to this commonality that the people maintain an almost Stepford Wives display of happiness when in public, ever watched by CCTV cameras. Albert has had problems with his teenage girls for some time now, with Jade showing contempt for his parenting, his busy work schedule and having to move home so suddenly. Billie meanwhile is the more sensitive of the two, having become isolated after almost being expelled at her old school.

When the family arrives at their new home, they are greeted by Carol, an old colleague of Albert, who displays the same level of fake emotion as the other adults. Jade tries testing her with vulgar and sarcastic remarks, but the two soon leave her behind when Albert gets an urgent call about an incident at an Umbrella lab in Tijuana. Billie confronts her sister about her "bitch act", but only becomes another focus of Jade's displeasure. In the evening, the family has pizza for dinner as an icebreaker, though Jade is still angry over the move and claims she is on her period as an excuse to leave. Albert himself is finding the move just as difficult as his daughters are, and fears he is losing Jade for good. At bed time he asks Billie about Jade while taking a blood sample - something regularly done every two weeks - but another phone call about Tijuana distracts him. Jade hands him a blood sample she took on her own due to his distraction. With Albert heading into his bedroom, Jade goes to meet Billie, where they talk about their upcoming first day at Raccoon High alongside shared jokes about how their dad is probably a vampire due to his unexplained need for their blood. Albert meanwhile places samples under a microscope for observation, records his findings, then injects the blood into his neck.

At lunchtime the following day, Jade has already made new friends at school and sits with them at the cafeteria. Billie meanwhile has not been so fortunate, and avoids sitting with her sister. Her lonesome behaviour gets the attention of Tammy Isaacs, a student with a history of bullying. Tammy listens to Billie introduce herself and mocks everything about it, from her parentage to her veganism, and finally begins punching her after Billie tries standing her ground. Jade spots what is going on, but is unable to help when the other children cluster around the fight and record it for social media.

Back at home, Albert is in an online meeting with Umbrella's sales team to review the adverts for their new antidepressant product, Joy. He is displeased by the company's portrayal of a customer as such an idealic figure and wants realism, but agrees with the sales team's own problems - that Umbrella sales have been on a consistent downward trajectory for two and a half years and they absolutely must get the product out without delay. Billie and Jade return home from school, and while Billie heads straight to her room Jade lashes out at her father for not picking up the phone due to the meeting, finally smashing his tablet in anger. She refuses to tell him what happened to Billie when he asks, opening this rift further. When Jade finally gets to talk to Billie, she learns that the fight has spread online with Billie now a laughing stock.

The following day, the two girls head out to school once more, and though Jade has insisted she fight Tammy, Billie instead offers to make amends, only to get a burrito thrown at her instead. Having seen this from afar, Jade cuts class to steal one of the school's Raccoon mascot costumes. When she sees Tammy leave class to play games in the bathroom, she makes her move and bashes her in the head with a rock. Though Tammy would not possibly identify the assailant, she reports it to the principal, Mrs. Morgan, that it was Billie. With Jade having placed the costume's head in Billie's locker, she is directly implicated and both girls' parents are called.

In the parents' meeting, Dave - a server admin - lays into Billie with threats of pressing criminal charges and a lengthy stay in prison, before mocking her with suggestions she is a paranoid schizophrenic. Albert arrives at the meeting late, but in time to overhear the threats from Dave, who realises too late he has threatened the daughter of a company board member. Albert toys with Dave, first threatening his resignation to pressure the company into firing him, but quickly changes his mind with the threat of using the company's influence to blacklist him from any IT jobs to the extent even PornHub would be too afraid to hire him. Dave is quickly left a broken man, and he not only calls off the charges, but apologises for threatening Billie, then forces Tammy to do the same. Albert is happy to have his edge back and feel like a proud parent, and offers Billie to have lunch with him at his office so they can spend some time together.

After school, Billie heads down the street to Umbrella HQ, congratulated along the way by another student Tammy was bullying. Giving her name to a voice recorder, she is let in the building with a three-hour guest pass. The building is heavily automated, with no need for a permanent security force to patrol the building. Offices have glass walls, allowing all employees to be seen doing their jobs, whether it be a sales team reviewing a child-targeted Joy ad, or doctors overseeing the expertise of a prototype SurgeryBot. Albert sits in his office, having an important meeting with Roth about the recent events at Tijuana. Roth provides him with bodycam footage recovered from one of the guards, showing him shooting at another man, commenting that he isn't being killed by the gunshot wounds, and then being killed, himself. The incident has not yet made its way to the press, luckily. Albert's assistant Rhonda notifies him about Billie, who has just arrived outside his office. Back in the hallway, Billie's attention shifts to an attendant, Carl, as he pushes a cart carrying live rabbits into an elevator and, using a keycard, takes them down to level B4. Being opposed to animal testing, she is haunted by this experience for the rest of the day as Albert takes her out to lunch.

That night, Jade enters Billie's room again to apologise for going behind her back, but insists that by pinning the blame on her she will no longer be picked on and has earned some respect. Billie however, is more concerned with the rabbits, having checked online and found that Umbrella has officially come out against animal testing. Playing in to Jade's rebellious nature, the two agree to sneak into Umbrella HQ and get proof of animal experimentation. They plan things out with ease. As their dad is an executive, he has the right keycard. As his phone has voicemail, they can get by the voice reader at the door. As the facility is so heavily automated there are no guards patrolling the facility. The only problem they have is the CCTV, but Jade is sure that by shining torches at them anyone reviewing the tapes will be unable to identify their faces.

The two arrive at Umbrella HQ late into the night, and are able to enter the facility with ease. They hit their first snag, however, when they take the elevator down to B4, where an automated message reveals that travel to that floor requires a security escort. On the other side the two find themselves in a lab with cages full of rabbits, rats, birds and monkeys, serving as proof of animal testing. While Billie eagerly takes photographs on her phone, Jade takes advantage of Albert's monotonous nature and inputs his name and most-used password - "Spock21" - into a computer and accesses his files. One file catches her attention, titled "Raccoon City Incident - 1998", detailing how Raccoon City was destroyed that year with a 10 megaton bomb in an incident that caused many deaths, a fact that was so oddly never brought up by anyone in the city.

When the security alarm goes off, the girls are on borrowed time. As Billie investigates one last cage, she opens it to get a look at the animal, which is a mutant doberman suffering from a severe case of gangrene. The animal attacks her, but Jade is able to fight it off for the time being and they make their way into the elevator. When they reach the ground floor, however, they soon realise the animal has escaped the lab and is running up the stairs, using enhanced physical strength to burst through doors on the way. Racing down a hallway in search of the exit, the girls hide out in the sales team's office, but their presence triggers the playing of a Joy advert. The dog enters the room, and follows them back out by simply jumping through the window. The girls reach the front door right as Umbrella security guards arrive to investigate the alarm, but are unable to get out as they need Albert's voicemail again. While Jade takes out the phone, the dog lunges at Billie and begins tearing at her neck and chest. With Billie losing blood fast, Jade grabs a fire extinguisher and batters the dog to death with it.

2036 scenes[]

It is now fourteen years after the pandemic began. Earth's ecosystems have been ravaged by the T-virus, and the uninfected human population has dwindled to three hundred million. The remaining six billion have suffered brain damage and have become violent cannibals known as "Zeroes". They have mutated to have enhanced durability, though are physically deteriorating with many now blind and deaf, reliant on the sense of smell to hunt. The national governments that existed before the pandemic have long since collapsed, as have most of the cities. In their place are several large political entities - "Amazonia", "The Faith", "Sihai", "Fortress Scandinavia", the "Papal States", and a stretch of the American west coast controlled directly by Umbrella. Outside these entities are vast stretches of land called the "Dead Land", where the Zeroes thrive. Small enclaves exist in these places called Freeholds, where survivors in Boston, Paris, Capetown, Mumbai and Brighton maintain some degree of livelihood.

Jade is now a researcher for a university in Madrid. Sent out on a research project to record any new mutations in the Zeroes, she has spent the past three months in Britain. Much of this time has been spent in London's St. James' Park. Every day she gets out of her fortified encampment, brings out a rabbit, pricks its ears and observes as the Zeroes chase it around. Today she gets a call from Arjun Batra, her senior at the university. Batra is displeased with her findings which show no change in 81 days, and gives her three days to make a breakthrough then head home. She runs her test as usual, letting the rabbit out so she can observe Pack #2426. Among the Zeroes is a man she nicknames "Dickface", owing to a penis-like growth on his face. She observes how the blind, deaf man tries in vain to catch the rabbit, with no help from the others. During her observations, Jade slips and cuts her leg on a rock. With their enhanced smell, the pack quickly determines where she is, and she runs back to the camp. Dickface is able to grab her, but she knocks him back into the security perimeter. As the other Zeroes arrive, they are incinerated by flame throwers. Though she is safe, her observations are now ruined due to the premature death of the subjects.

Suddenly, a massive forty-foot long caterpillar digs its way under Jade's camp, having felt the chaos above. Their fight is brief, with the caterpillar getting the upper hand by simply rolling over her and pressing her against a wall. The creature is killed by gunshots from a team of survivors - Tate, Yen and Maskey - who have come into London by helicopter to salvage anything of value. Confirming that Jade is neither dead or a Zero, they decide to rescue her, but soon take notice of a tattoo on her wrist marked "R002".

Jade wakes up in the Brighton Freehold in a medical bay, having been treated by one of Umbrella's SurgeryBots. Tate comes in soon after, and shows her around the settlement. Much of it is a shantytown, with the Zeroes kept back by series of well-placed shipping containers. With the Zero population on the other side of the wall measuring anywhere from a few hundred to thousands over the course of the year, the only means of transport is by helicopter, with Paris and Oslo being regular destinations for their trade in computer parts. Heading into a bar, Jade explains to Tate her research task, while Tate tells her about how he escaped the pandemic by being put on a refugee boat sailing from Glasgow to Fair Isle where he spent the next ten years. Their conversation is cut short when Yen reports that an Umbrella helicopter is on its way. When Jade realises they are working with Umbrella, Tate has to take a gun out to keep her confined to her seat. As she is a person of interest, Tate believes he can hand her over to Umbrella in exchange for access to their West Coast settlements.

Soon, three Blackhawks fly over the camp and deploy troops, led by the overweight Richard Baxter. When Jade is pointed out to him, he immediately shoots Tate dead and orders his troops to wipe out the other survivors. As the two factions enter a shoot-out, Jade tries to hide in the medical bay, soon followed by Baxter and a flame trooper. With the building set alight, she heads back out, seeing how the Brighton survivors small arms are unable to penetrate the soldiers' armour. With nowhere else to go, she climbs up onto the shipping containers, ready to throw herself into the mass of Zeroes. Baxter soon spots her and orders the troops to detain her. Though he is able to pause her suicide attempt by telling her her sister is alive and is looking for her, Jade rejects his surrender offer and jumps down to the mass of Zeroes.

Characters[]

  • Jade Wesker
  • Billie Wesker
  • Arjun Batra
  • Dickface
  • Albert Wesker
  • Carol
  • Tate
  • Yen
  • Maskey
  • Tammy Isaacs
  • Mrs. Morgan
  • Dave Isaacs
  • Richard Baxter
  • Toby
  • Roth
  • Carl
  • Susan

Differences from the series[]

A number of minor differences can be seen in this early draft that differ from later information on the series:

  • The gap between the 'past' and 'present' is different in later material, which establishes a gap of 16 years based on Jade's age in both times. This draft was likely written during that change, as it establishes a gap of fourteen years, but Jade is still 30.
  • The city's name is "Raccoon Two" in this draft, while later material would refer to it as "New Raccoon City".
  • In the draft, the uninfected human population is estimated to be 300 million. This was later reduced to 15 million.

Sources[]


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