Derek Simmons: the Man Behind the Family in Resident Evil 6

Derek C. Simmons is the US National Security Advisor in Resident Evil 6, and secretly the head of the Family, a society that has quietly steered world affairs for generations. He arranged the 2013 bioterror attack that killed President Adam Benford, and the game's files put him behind the destruction of Raccoon City fifteen years earlier. He is also the man who turned his own scientist, Carla Radames, into a copy of Ada Wong. (Resident Evil 6)

Who is Derek Simmons?#

On paper, Simmons was President Adam Benford's National Security Advisor and his right-hand man. In secret he ran the Family, an organisation founded by one of his ancestors before the United States even existed. Its stated aim was a stable world order. Its real aim, according to the game's files, was to bend events to benefit its members, and for now that meant keeping America at the top of the pile. (Resident Evil 6)

The family's roots run through Tall Oaks. Its cathedral stands on land the Simmons line has held for generations, with hidden passages and traps underneath, and Simmons had part of the chamber below turned into a laboratory for C-Virus research. (Resident Evil 6)

He also had a hand in the life of Sherry Birkin. After the Raccoon City outbreak the government kept Sherry in custody because of the G-virus in her blood, and Simmons became her legal guardian. He let Claire Redfield visit her. Claire didn't trust him, and wrote Sherry a letter warning her to be careful, but it was intercepted and never reached her. (Resident Evil 6; Resident Evil 2)

Simmons and Raccoon City#

Resident Evil 6 rewrites the end of Resident Evil 2. The missile strike that destroyed Raccoon City in 1998 was called Operation: Bacillus Terminate, and the files say the decision to raze the city came from Simmons. He saw Raccoon City as a case study. He believed the world would move from conventional arms to bioweapons, used the outbreak to measure how well they worked, and made sure the truth about Umbrella's weapons programme and the government's ties to it would never come out. (Resident Evil 6; Resident Evil 2)

That secret is what the whole game turns on. By 2013 Benford had decided to tell the public. Simmons warned him over and over, and leaned on him through the Family, but Benford wouldn't budge. A memo Simmons wrote before the attack says Benford's biggest mistake was hiring him without knowing he led the Family. (Resident Evil 6)

Ada Wong and Project Ada#

Ada once carried out missions for Simmons, and she was the one person who rattled his usually cold, logical manner. Their working relationship broke when she learned he was behind the decision to raze Raccoon City. She left and didn't look back. (Resident Evil 6)

He took it badly. A note he wrote afterwards rages that she was the only one he'd allow at his side, and ends with the decision to make a replacement. That became Project Ada: using the C-Virus to mutate a living test subject into a copy of Ada. Thousands of test subjects failed. The breakthrough came when the Family's resources showed that one of his own researchers, Carla Radames, was a good genetic match. Carla adored him and believed he valued her too much to risk her. He tricked her into the experiment anyway. (Resident Evil 6)

A memo found under Tall Oaks marks the moment: after ten years and 12,235 experiments, the work was done, and he thanked Ms. Radames for it. He then trained the new Ada to talk and act like the original, and above all never to leave him. What he couldn't see was that part of Carla had survived, and that it hated him. (Resident Evil 6)

The Tall Oaks attack#

In June 2013 Benford came to Ivy University in Tall Oaks to make his announcement. Simmons needed someone inside the President's protection, so he had Deborah Harper, the younger sister of Secret Service agent Helena Harper, kidnapped and used her to force his hand. Helena sent a false alert over the Secret Service radio that drew agents away from Benford. Then creatures planted around the city released C-Virus gas, Benford turned, and Leon had to shoot his old friend. (Resident Evil 6)

Simmons named Leon and Helena as suspects, and the city was destroyed by a missile, just as Raccoon City had been. Orders he sent to the Family afterwards, which Ada later passed to Leon, called the assassination a success and told his people to plant one of the bioweapons on Leon and Helena's plane to China. Another message boasted that this time nothing would be covered up: the world would see America standing up to bioterror, with the Family at the helm. (Resident Evil 6)

Mutation and death in Lanshiang#

China was where it fell apart. Carla, still wearing Ada's face, had turned the Family's operations there into her own group, Neo-Umbrella, and launched her own C-Virus attack on Lanshiang. Simmons arranged to meet Sherry and Jake Muller in the city and found Leon and Helena there too. He admitted he was behind the President's death, saying it kept America and the world stable. During the gunfight one of Carla's J'avo shot him with a dart of her enhanced C-Virus. (Resident Evil 6)

On a speeding train he mutated into a huge, dog-like beast and fought Leon and Helena from carriage to carriage, taunting Helena over her sister. By then he knew the Family was ready to drop him. Beaten, he fell under the train. He didn't die. (Resident Evil 6)

He turned up again at the Quad Tower, the building tied to Project Ada, now in a giant, dinosaur-like form, and fought Leon, Helena and the real Ada, whom he took for Carla. Ada drove him off a platform with a crossbow bolt. On the roof he absorbed zombies to heal himself and took a final insect-like shape. Leon and Helena used a loose lightning rod to draw a lightning strike into him, then fired the rocket launcher Ada had left them. He fell, broken back into human shape, and was impaled on the obelisk in the courtyard below. (Resident Evil 6)

Ada left Leon a data chip with evidence of Simmons's crimes, which cleared Leon and Helena. What happened to the Family itself after his death, the game doesn't say. (Resident Evil 6)