Resident Evil- Confinement

April 2nd 2003- 1357:

A spring day in Stoneville Colorado: A tenth grade class was waiting for their teacher to come back from a toilet break. The desks were arranged in a five by five square, directly facing a desk and a large whiteboard at the front of the class that had all of the teacher's things on them such as lesson plans, stationery and a picture of him and his wife. On the right hand wall next to the door to the classroom was a large map of the world, with each country filled in a vivid colour with the US and Colorado flags hanging either side of the whiteboard. The children were messing around as they usually did when the teacher was out the room- Throwing paper aeroplanes around and sitting on other peoples' desks while the more 'goody-goody' children sat in their desks as if they were stuck there with glue. Outside the windows on the left hand side of the room opposite the door into the room, green picturesque scenery could be seen as far as the eye could see, with the Arklay Mountains providing a stunning natural backdrop. On the other side of this mysterious mountain region was the rebuilt Raccoon City, once again a thriving mountain community with a larger population than before and free from the influence of the Umbrella Corporation. Knowing his class was messing around in his absence, the teacher burst into the room, catching everyone by surprise.

"Ok class, settle down" The teacher boomed as he entered the room, causing his tenth grade class to instantly take their seats and all have their eyes forward. He took a whiteboard pen and began to write. "Since it's the last day before the Easter break I thought I'd go over something different with you all." He wrote 'The Midwest in The Late 20th Century' in large letters on the board and faced the class while sitting on the corner of his desk. "I'm sure you've heard the question beginning with the words 'Where were you when…' such as 'where were you when the twin towers were attacked?' or in my generation's case 'where were you when the Berlin Wall fell', or 'where were you when Raccoon City was bombed'." He stood up and moved a mannequin into the middle of the floor in between the whiteboard and the class. It was a police uniform, with the white letters on the front faded and blood covering the front, with small tears and frayed seams on the blue shirt. An emblem was displayed on each sleeve and the mannequin had also been outfitted in a pair of tactical gloves as well as a pair of black boots, the latter of which the dark blue trousers had been tucked in to, with a pair of knee pads on top of the trousers.

"Mr Endsleigh" One of his class members began, raising her hand. "Is that a police uniform?" Mr Endsleigh smiled.

"Yeah" he said with a slight laugh. "It's a police uniform. And there's a rather interesting story behind it, kinda ties in with the last question of where I was when Raccoon City was bombed." He looked at the mannequin before turning back to the class. "Bring your desks in a little closer and gather round while I tell it to you."

July 25th 1998- 0630:

S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team's helicopter, which had been running on fumes since it left the Arklay Mountains, finally landed back in Raccoon City on the roof of the R.P.D's building. Emerging from the grey Bell 105 were the members of S.T.A.R.S that had participated in the investigation into the gruesome murders that had been occurring: Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton; Rebecca Chambers and in a very critical state- Richard Aiken. The five officers who greeted them on the roof were struck with confusion: Where were the others? Wesker, Enrico, Joseph, Forest, Kenneth, Edward and Kevin were nowhere to be seen, and their helicopter was nowhere in sight either. Chris was holding Richard up and shouted at the five officers to call for an ambulance as Richard was lay down on the concrete to rest. One of the officers sprinted downstairs and within minutes an ambulance had shown up, with Chris giving very discreet orders to have him taken to a hospital away from Raccoon City.

"We'll get him over to Denver" the paramedic explained. "They've got an excellent poison treatment centre" Richard was loaded onto a gurney and taken away, and the S.T.A.R.S survivors began to come to terms with what they had seen.

"How much stuff did you bring back?" Chris asked Jill as they headed back towards their office.

"Enough" Jill replied. "I've got Kenny's video tape too, as well as the proof that Wesker was working for Umbrella." Rebecca caught up and stood in between them, blood covering her face and clothes from where Richard had bled all over her.

"There was another building close to where that other mansion was" She explained. "Plenty of stuff in there too, I'll hand it all over, then I'm getting out of town in the morning. I got some friends in Salt Lake City that I was at Harvard with I can stay with." Chris, Barry and Jill wished her well and Rebecca left for Utah the next afternoon, keeping sporadic contact with her comrades from there

One of the officers who was there when Alpha Team's transport arrived saw them talking. He was a friend of S.T.A.R.S, and was one of the officers who made Rebecca feel welcome when she first joined. That evening, when everyone had gone home, he made his way to the S.T.A.R.S office and knocked on the door. A voice beckoned him to come in and he poked his head through the door.

"Oh hey, Doug." Jill exclaimed, surprised to see him. "How are you doing?" Papers were being put into ring binders by Brad and Chris and loaded into cardboard boxes to be taken away, while Barry practically destroyed Wesker's desk to try and uncover any hard evidence of his involvement with Umbrella. Doug was in his standard R.P.D uniform of a light blue button up shirt, black trousers and black shoes. He was a traffic officer, and had been with the R.P.D since 1996, as well as being a childhood friend of Richard's. He was around the same age as Jill, about 23 years old and had short cut light brown hair that was gelled forward. He was a respected officer within the R.P.D in the same way the members of S.T.A.R.S were, but his application into the special tactics division was pushed aside for that of Joseph Frost, a rejection that potentially saved his life.

"Are you guys ok?" Doug asked, stepping a little further into the office and waving at Barry who was using a hammer to smash open the locked drawers on Wesker's massive desk.

"If we keep busy, then we should be alright I guess." Brad replied, only having seen the Tyrant and the Cerberus dogs throughout the whole ordeal. Jill produced Kenneth's video tape and put it into the video player next to Wesker's desk.

"We've shown this to about ten guys and all of them believe this to be a fake." Jill told him as she pushed play. Doug watched as the tape showed Kenneth shooting at a zombie only to be pinned to the floor and have his throat brutally ripped out by the undead monster that was attacking him.

"If that's a fake then that's some good acting and special effects." Doug commented, completely shocked at what he had just seen. Chris then showed him some of the files, diaries and other pockets of information they had taken from the mansion in the mountains. Doug's eyes the whole time wide.

"What do you make of it?" Chris asked him, out of uniform and wearing jeans, t-shirt and jacket. A plaster was on his forehead from where he had hit the floor after Plant 42 had dropped him after Rebecca had succeeded in killing it.

"I want to believe it, but something like that just seems too movie-like for me." Jill, Barry and Chris agreed, while Brad, who didn't want anything more to do with Umbrella's affairs, grabbed his things and went home, not saying a word to anyone.

The next day, Chris, Jill and Barry stormed in unannounced into Chief Irons' office, and presented all the evidence on the Chief's desk. The Chief, a portly man with side parted hazel hair and a moustache, gave each of the S.T.A.R.S members a strange look.

"What the hell do you three think you are doing?" He asked, standing up.

"Evidence" Chris replied, shoving the files into the Chief's face. "Everything that happened between May and July of this year in the mountains is documented here. The murders in the Arklay Mountains fit within the same time frame as the events in these diaries." Irons sat down and began flicking through a blue diary with the name 'Jack May' on the front written on a white label. The diary was covered in blood and parts of it torn, with the writing becoming more deranged and rushed as the diary progressed.

"The murders in the Arklay Mountains were caused by bears. The coroner's report has finalised that." Irons replied, leaning back in his leather chair and putting his hands behind his head.

"If they were bears" Jill continued with the argument. "How come only five of the thirteen men sent in to investigate came home yesterday morning. Did you not see Richard's injuries?"

"Jill," Irons said to her, sitting forward in his chair now, "When Richard was attacked by those bears it may have been a little distressing for you, why not go home and take the rest of the week off?" Jill grabbed a glass paperweight off the table and threw it at the wall, knocking a stuffed Bald Eagle, a result of Irons' passion for taxidermy off its plinth and the paperweight smashing as it hit the floor.

"You're a dick and an asshole" She snarled and left the office.

"I'm not entertaining this preposterous idea any further" Irons said casually. "Now get out of here." Reluctantly, Chris and Barry left and tried to find Jill. It was the beginning of an endless quest to uncover the Umbrella conspiracy. Their heads were telling them that they should just let it go and start all over again like Rebecca had done, but their hearts were telling them that the world had to know about the sick and twisted experiments that were going on in the Arklay Mountains: Innocent people being subjected to viral experiments that took their humanity away from them, and their friends and families not having a faintest idea as to where and why they disappeared, with the whole concept of zombies and blood sucking leeches being the imaginative brainchild of Hollywood writers. Over the next few days, the surviving S.T.A.R.S members began to distance themselves from not only the other officers in the R.P.D, but each other. Chris and Jill were the main investigators in this, going behind the back of their Chief to ensure that the truth was told. Their friend Doug on the other hand was beginning to notice the townspeople were beginning to act strangely . While he wasn't there when it all happened, he was starting to believe that something like what had happened existed. It actually made quite a bit of sense when he sat down and thought about it, and in a week had managed to convince three other officers that maybe what the S.T.A.R.S members were saying wasn't made up. However, his supervisor Marvin Branagh, an African American officer with close cut black hair and a beard; wasn't easily swayed.

"While I think the S.T.A.R.S members are incredibly talented guys" Marvin told him, "do you honestly believe all this stuff about Umbrella is true? They just make medicines that doctors prescribe to you, not bio-weapons with the potential to destroy the earth."

"I've read the reports" Another officer replied. "They've got a video and photographic evidence to prove it, but everyone's just claiming it was all an elaborate hoax. Why did only five of them come home?"

"Believe what you want to believe" Marvin sighed. "I know what I think. Lunch break's nearly over, you'd all better get back to duty." Ignoring his superiors' order and heading upstairs, Doug entered the S.T.A.R.S office. None of the S.T.A.R.S members were there and it was as clean and tidy as it had always been. Save for Chris' desk. Rebecca's desk, the tidiest of the seven in the room, had a piece of paper with a case report on it that hadn't been sent to her superiors for processing:

On July 23rd, an MP vehicle was found inside the Arklay Mountains. Corpses of MP members and an unidentified body were found near the vehicle. According to the information from military authorities, the unidentified body was identified as former Marine 2nd Lieutenant Billy Coen, who was sentenced the death penalty following a court-martial on July 22nd.

While Coen was on transfer via Navy MP escort, they must have experienced some kind of accident. The corpses were severely mauled, apparently torn apart by unidentified wild animals. The following day we returned to the location to recover the bodies but they were nowhere to be found. Military authorities have requested that we turn over Coen's body as proof of his death, but due to the circumstances described above, it will be a difficult task to recover the corpse. I am requesting that this case be temporarily closed until further notice.

Raccoon City Police Department

S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team

Rebecca Chambers

Doug saved this piece of information for the time being and began to search the rest of the office where Chris had written a letter to Chief Irons regarding the incident and how to go about investigating. However, due to the Irons' flat out refusal to look into the issue, the letter was just left on the desk, obsolete.

Dear Chief,

Below is my account of what led up to the explosion of the mansion:

On July 23rd, S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team, led by Captain Marini, went to investigate the bizarre homicides that occurred in the Arklay Mountains. After contact with team's chopper was lost, S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team, lead by Captain Wesker and consisting of Wesker, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Joseph Frost, Brad Vickers and myself went in to search for them.

We found the remains of Bravo team's helicopter on the ground. After landing we were immediately attacked by bloodthirsty dogs. We later discovered that these dogs were actually zombie dogs as they did not even feel our gunfire. After Joseph Frost was killed, we were forced to retreat to a nearby mansion. After further investigating the mansion, we learned that it was actually a secret laboratory of Umbrella Inc. All researchers were turned into zombies by some type of unknown virus. We also discovered that Umbrella was using that lab as a testing area for new Bio Organic Weapons.

We found the dead bodies of some of the Bravo team members including Enrico Marini, Kenneth Sullivan, Forest Speyer, and Kevin Dooley, while Richard Aiken was severely injured and Rebecca Chambers was very much alive and well. However, Edward Dewey's body is the only body unaccounted for. We believe that those Bio Organic Weapons caused their deaths. After that we discovered that Captain Wesker was actually working with Umbrella and that both Alpha and Bravo teams were being used as live test subjects for the Bio Organic Weapons. Wesker had betrayed us! We barely managed to survive that nightmare. However, since the mansion exploded, there is little evidence to support our claims of Umbrella's secret lab or the Bio Organic Weapons.

We suspect that Umbrella is somehow linked to bio-terrorism. In order to solve this mystery and put an end to the monsters that are still roaming the Arklay Mountains, I propose we launch a formal investigation into Umbrella. Thank you for your attention to this extremely important matter.

Chris Redfield

S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team

This piece of information was also taken with Doug, and he immediately headed for the station's underground car park to get back to duty before Marvin got angry.

When he returned to the station at about half past three to fill in paperwork before clocking off, he headed to the first floor to go to the toilet. This involved heading through Irons' secretary's office, a nicely decorated room with a crescent shaped desk in the opposite corner to where the door to the main hall was, with a door to another hallway to the left of it. Potted plants were also present, as well as a row of three comfortable chairs on the left wall where people awaiting meetings with the Chief sat. The secretary was sat at her desk tapping away at her computer when she saw Doug.

"Hello Doug." She said cheerfully to him. "Have Chris and Jill cheered up any?"

"No" Doug replied. "Apparently Irons isn't listening to them, and lately he's been locked up tight in that office. Something is not right." The secretary lowered her voice to the point of a whisper and invited Doug in closer so he could hear.

"You're telling me. You know those two statues in the open area just before the S.T.A.R.S office? I leant on one of those yesterday and he began screaming at me. I thought he was going to rip my head off. If he's that protective of his 'art' then he shouldn't leave it in the open like that. I'd actually like to know where he's getting all the money to pay for it, because the stuff he's been bringing in lately has gotta be worth over $100,000 apiece. And what do you make, Doug? 20k a year?"

"Not even with overtime" Doug mused.

"Exactly" The secretary whispered. "I think there's a third party involved somewhere. Where else would he be getting the money?" Doug couldn't help but agree. No one else in the police department knew where the chief had been the last few days, but being the sort of person he is, Doug was getting exactly the information he needed without asking directly. He made a mental note of what the secretary had said so he could pass on the theory to Chris or Jill the next time he saw them.

"Keep this under your hat." Doug told her sternly. "If the Chief finds out your theory he's going to go completely mental." Doug went to the toilet and then back to his office to finish his paperwork. He had pulled over a drunk driver that afternoon and was filling in the report sheet so that it could be passed on, just like the ones written by Rebecca and Chris regarding Billy Coen and the mansion. As he had been through a pretty uneventful day in terms of his day job, he headed home to his apartment in the centre of the city- A five minute walk from the police station. While he was watching the Friday evening talk show where once again they were lampooning the Arklay Mountain 'hoax', his phone rang.

"Doug, it's Chris- has anyone mentioned anything regarding Irons?" Doug began to tell Chris the theory surrounding the Chief. Chris told Doug to keep a low profile for now and let S.T.A.R.S handle the Umbrella affairs, while Chris began a separate investigation into the Chief. Chris was trying to protect Doug in doing this- He didn't want to put him in any danger unnecessarily. As much as he appreciated any help from Doug, he wanted him out of the investigation, for his safety more than anything.

Jill was at her apartment in the northern part of downtown, leafing through newspapers in her room, looking for anything that had been overlooked. On the other side of the wall was the empty apartment of the Mallet family, all three members of which were killed in the Arklay Mountains just before the night the S.T.A.R.S members' lives were changed forever. It seemed only yesterday that the two young girls Regan and Lucy Mallet had knocked on her door with a friend of theirs asking if she would help them find their friend's missing dog. Jill had agreed and spent hours out with them searching until the dog was eventually found. The deaths of the two young girls saddened Jill deeply, and she hoped to track down those who created the T-Virus and allow Regan, Lucy and their mother to rest in peace. Out of the six members of Alpha Team that landed in the mountains on that night, Jill was by far the most gifted of all of them. She was a skilled mechanic, a competent knife fighter, an expert lock picker and a computer wizard, as well as being a sharp shot with a handgun and an incredibly athletic individual who was a black belt in ju-jitsu and Krav Maga, the hand to hand combat techniques developed by the Israeli Special Forces. After the events of July 24th, Jill's S.T.A.R.S handgun was permanently kept on her bedside table next to the picture of her and her boyfriend Simon Armstrong, a member of an accountancy firm who was currently in Boston on business, and set to be there for a while yet. That was good for Jill's state of mind- In Boston he would be safe, as he was far away from all the things going on in Raccoon City, and in the back of Jill's mind, an outbreak of the T-Virus in Raccoon City was a possibility, given that there were infected crows, mutated canines and the bodies of Kevin and Joseph lying in the forest, as there was no clean-up operation after the incident and the Bravo Team UH1 was never recovered. On the other hand though, she hoped that the force of the explosion of the mansion would have taken some of the monstrosities the virus had created out. She nearly jumped out of her skin as her phone rang. After catching her breath, she picked it up and put it to her ear. On the other end was Rebecca, letting her know that she was settled in Salt Lake City, ready to continue her life after seeing what they had seen.

Rebecca was sort of an enigma to her comrades in Bravo Team. She had blitzed through school and college due to her being a child genius and possessed a master's degree in chemistry and a degree in field medicine, yet underneath the smarts was your average eighteen-year-old girl who in any normal circumstances would have just finished senior high school. Wesker must have seen something in her otherwise she would have never made it into the Raccoon City Police Department in the first place. She had only been assigned to the unit for two months before Wesker ordered Enrico to load up the helicopter and go and investigate the murders in the Arklay Mountains. Despite being shy; inexperienced and being so young, she was one of only two survivors of Bravo Team, getting out relatively unscathed while her friend and mentor Richard Aiken was in Denver getting some much needed medical attention. Rebecca was eager to impress in S.T.A.R.S, and just wanted to be the best she could be. She was mature enough, but she did sometimes feel a little intimidated since she was much younger and shorter than everyone else, with Edward Dewey towering over her at 6'3 compared to Rebecca's 5'6. Getting out of Raccoon City was the best thing she could have done. After her two days of hell in the Arklay Mountains she wanted to get away from everything and find herself again as well as starting over. Instead of moving in with old college friends, she had found herself a small one bedroom flat in Salt Lake City Utah whilst getting a job as a nurse in the hospital there. The flat was paid for with help from her father who is a Marine Colonel stationed at Quantico while her mother is a head chef at a posh hotel in St Louis Missouri.

"It's good to hear from you" Jill said down the phone to her, happy that Rebecca couldn't see her face as she felt like she could burst into tears at any minute and have a complete breakdown. "How's the job?"

"I start tomorrow" Rebecca told her. "I got this little place in Salt Lake: It's not much but its home I guess. Perfect for getting over what's happened lately. How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine" Jill replied, a barefaced lie. "If I keep busy at the station then time will pass quicker. There are only three S.T.A.R.S members left now though. Barry's taken his wife and kids to Canada to get away from the city, so it's just me, Chris and Brad, and another officer is sort of tagging along with us- your friend Doug from traffic. So it looks like S.T.A.R.S will be finished. Might be worth doing what you've done actually"

"Well, I'm just glad that the three of you are ok. You take care of yourself, and don't work yourself too hard, okay?" Jill laughed as Rebecca denied any relationship with Doug before they said their goodbyes and put the phone down.

Three days later, things began to appear in the media that got Chris and Jill a little more paranoid:

AN EERIE VOICE FROM THE UNDERGROUND Recently there is spooky talk around South Campbell Street. It is said that groans can be heard from the drainage system at night. It is easy to dismiss it as ghost story that middle school students love to talk about on camping nights. But the amount of missing people has increased rapidly at this locale for the past month. Eight people have gone missing. Strangely, the missing people have lot in common: They're all single white females aged eighteen to twenty three with beautiful blonde hair. The street was wrapped in a dense fog the day after they went missing. From the sewer drain which runs north-south along the street a woman's constrained voice could be heard for several hours. Of course the drainage sewers have been thoroughly investigated. But neither the missing persons nor any traces have been found. The Police Department has so far denied the relationship with the bizarre incidents that have rapidly increased after the 'mansion incident'. However the events must be related.

Rest to follow...

Report by Ben Burtolucci

"Sound familiar?" Chris asked as he put the newspaper cutting down on Jill's desk. "There was that thing we saw skulking round the mansion, the one they kept doing those sick experiments on." Jill thought for a moment, pondering over the name of the person Chris was describing. Laura? Lorna? Leila?

Lisa.

"Lisa" Jill blurted out. "Lisa Trevor- The architect's daughter"

"How the hell could she have survived that fall in that coffin room as well as the explosion when Rebecca activated the self destruct system?" Chris asked. Jill put her head down on her desk.

"I don't know… I really don't know…"