On the 24th of December 2012, Chris Redfield lost more than his men to the trickery of Neo Umbrella. Driven to the brink by grief and guilt, his memories shattered and broken, he abandons his post and everything he's ever fought to uphold.
The Marked Wasting is a Sare's most terrifying end. It doesn't discriminate between grown man and child, gentle gifted Quirk or Keeper. No healer can lift it. No medicine cure it. And while it may take years to take you there, at the end there always lies death.
Sinvik Shielding is at a loss as the Wasting threatens to consume her fledgling Keeper: Sadja. She thinks it unfair that after all the battles they've fought together, the ones they've won and the ones they've lost, this one doesn't even give them the benefit of a chance and leaves them helpless.
Fresh out of ideas, Sinvik decides to turn to the Cataract, to plead for it to bring her Fledgling hope. Or to at least grant her a peaceful end, away from strife and danger. Away from their shared burden.
Taffer Notes: This is a bit of an odd one, I understand. A cross over between an original novel I have been working on, and Resident Evil, two things that couldn't be any more different. It was meant to help me get a better understanding of my world, along with some of the key characters involved, and using poor Redfield as a sounding board has been incredibly helpful in that.
It's also been a lot of fun to write, so I decided to re-write it, shuffle the characters around a little bit, remove the spoilers to my own work, and here it is.
I hope someone, somewhere, enjoys it. And if there are any questions around it, ping me. I'm always happy to talk about it.
Sneak Peak into chapter 5: A change of clothes
Chris wiped at the fogged up mirror.
A dour face stared back at him, off no better than before. Still bruised. Still with the bloodshot eye. Still shit and having him wonder if he'd shot right past forty and was scratching at the bottom end of fifty. Or maybe sixty. He grunted, rubbed the bottom of his palm against his chin, and stared at the angry gash cutting away from his left temple and halfway across his forehead. Stitched. Tinged red. Weeping. Chris tapped gingerly at it.
It stung right back.
Do I do bar fights?
Had he gotten into a row last night? Been knocked stupid? Stupid-er ?
Chris scowled at his reflection, stood a little straighter, and counted off every bit of him that spelled out hurt.
Setting down his right leg properly was out of the question. Rolling his shoulders was a no-go. Blues and greens covered his chest and left side, all cruel, dull aches when he moved. A slow turn showed him a gash the length of his palm stitched just below his right shoulder, and he knew of another on his lower leg. That one had been bleeding. Heavily.
His hand dropped to his jaw. At least the dirty vagrant's beard was gone, and that ought to count for something. The rest?
Up for later assessment. For now he'd appreciate how his head had stopped pounding, a long while spent under the hot water having rinsed off more than grime and dust. It had cleared some of the haze from his mind too, leaving him to remember bits and pieces of yesterday and the day before.
Most of those he'd spent wandering.
He remembered a train and the confines of a carriage cart. Then walking, so much walking, until the city swallowed him. Though a lot of it he'd simple forgotten. Important things. Little things. Irrelevant details. Didn't matter what it was, forgetting seemed to have become somewhat of a trend, one he'd found maddeningly difficult to shake.
Even last night came in tatters, wrought together around an overly curious set of light brown eyes, a heavily accented voice badgering him from the side, and one last march.
To here. With a fresh set of clothes.
Chris picked up a black cotton sweater, just as clean and neat as the jeans he'd struggled into earlier, and dragged it over his head. One more look into the mirror, and a quick swipe at his hair with the palm of his hand, and he felt about as ready as he'd ever be.
Time to fill in some blanks.