There was a silence between his reply and HUNK's next statement that was heavy, almost tangible, and Wesker felt himself tense, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.
"Birkin will be there."
HUNK's words were like the dead weight and tension of a bomb in the pit of Wesker's stomach. This is what he had been sitting on - the bait that he had been waiting to cast out since the beginning of the phone call. Wesker had known there was something, but this...
Wesker's silence was all too telling, as he mulled the news over. When he finally spoke, his words dripped with a mix of venom and muted shock - a shaking just beneath the surface of his veneered shell.
"Birkin, you say? Considering the news I've been given of his last known location, that seems a little improbable, don't you think?"
The words implied that Wesker was calling bullshit on the entire thing, but the undertones that he couldn't quite shake from his voice were all too telling. The average person wouldn't have caught them, but HUNK was far from average, and he knew Wesker a bit too intimately.
Birkin was the only casualty of Raccoon City and the viral outbreak that Wesker had actually mourned. To have him resurrected now was the last distraction that the former Umbrella scientist needed. It was also the clincher that HUNK had hoped it would be. Hook, line, and sinker. If William really was there, Wesker would find him.