A/N: After the success of Humanity, I decided to write another fresh RE fic, but after scrapping several ideas, I eventually realized how much potential I had given Humanity and decided to continue it with a sequel.
So here it is, the sequel, it begins now, so get ready...
Welcome to Sanctuary.
Claire sat beside K-Mart in front of a bonfire, waiting for Alice and Katie to return from the woods. She glanced at her watch, a frown pulling at her brow.
A few minutes ticked by, and Claire began to feel nervous. It shouldn't be taking them this long to catch a deer, especially since they were working together. She looked over her shoulder into the treeline as K-Mart finally spoke up.
"You're worried about them, aren't you?"
Claire turned back to K-Mart and let out a sigh. "Yeah, I am. I think Katie took his death pretty hard... Ryan, I mean."
"Alice said it herself, they couldn't have saved him." K-Mart replied gently, placing her hand on Claire's shoulder.
"But I think Katie's at a big risk of committing suicide, you've seen the changes. When Ryan was still alive, she was happy, now... she's isolating herself, shut off from the rest of us." Claire hung her head slightly. "I even think it's affected me as well."
"What has affected you, Claire?" Alice spoke up from behind them, lowering her crossbow as Katie came into view with a black clad figure helping her to carry a doe.
"Who's this?" Claire instantly noticed the newcomer, who was carefully lowering the doe to the ground. She glanced at Katie, then back at Alice, then took a step towards them. "Who are you?"
Alice and Katie exchanged a glance with each other behind Claire's back, tensed for the iminent outburst from Claire.
"Does this answer your question?" The figure asked, pulling his hood and mask down, smiling at her.
There was a heavy silence for about fifteen seconds, broken only by the crackling of the bonfire. Then, surprising them all, Claire sucker punched him in the face and knocked him down onto his back, her expression utterly livid.
"You lied to us!" Claire spun around to Alice, who was wide eyed with surprise. "You fucking said he was dead!"
"You want the truth?" Ryan said from his prone position on the ground. "Remember the gas station before we left to get those supplies?" He indicated Alice and Katie. "We were attacked by some creature thing, and I stabbed it in the head, but one of its teeth cut my thumb, and I was infected."
Claire's jaw almost fell to the ground at his words, and her anger vanishing in an instant. She stared, dumbstruck at the revelation, her left hand blindly reaching out behind her for something to support herself with.
"So we came up with a plan to raid the Umbrella facility that Katie came from, and we went in, but there was an infected scientist there, named Issacs. He was a big ugly freak, and we fought him." Ryan continued talking, which made Claire's shocked face begin to go slightly pale.
"But he was killed during the fight." Alice suddenly spoke up, her arms crossed. "Issacs snapped his neck, right after Ryan managed to plant several explosives onto him. Katie detonated them, and then injected Ryan's body with the Anti-Virus we'd found in the lab."
"So... let me get this straight... You're like Alice and Katie now?" K-Mart asked, confusion plastered all over her face. "You've... bonded with the T-Virus?"
"Yeah, exactly, K-Mart! I can control electricity, like how Katie controls fire." Ryan smiled as he sat upright, allowing a few sparks to travel across his hand, arching between his fingers with a faint crackling sound.
"Claire..." Alice took a small step forward, realizing that Claire was now very pale in the face. "Come here, you look like you're going to fall over."
Claire weakly shook her head, rooted in place, but K-Mart's hand appeared on her shoulder and her face relaxed slightly as K-Mart gave the trio a small nod before leading Claire back to the Hummer.
"Other than almost passing out..." Ryan commented as he swiftly pulled his legs close to his chest and sprang to his feet with a burst of agility. "I think she took that rather well, don't you agree?"
"To her, you just came back from the dead." Alice said with a sidelong glance at him. "But I'm sure she's relieved that you're back with us."
Katie, who had remained silent the entire time gave the doe a glance before she strode away, likely to find Otto to skin it to eat. The moment that she was gone, Alice gave Ryan a sweeping glance, her eyes glinting in the firelight. Her predatory glance was quickly noticed by Ryan, who cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the matter?" He asked, not realizing that she was sizing him up.
"We've got some unfinished business to attend to... Sparky." Alice replied huskily as she took a step very close to him. She instantly noticed the electrifying buzz in the air between them in such close proximity, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise with a tingling sensation.
"Really?" Ryan smirked. "Enlighten me."
"Then follow me." Alice took him by the wrist and pulled him towards the forest where they'd been reunited. Once they were out of sight from the camp, Alice suddenly grabbed Ryan by both biceps and pinned him against a tree.
Ryan's glowing yellow eyes were narrowed into slits, but when his face mask smoothly slid down from his face, he realized what she was doing.
Once the mask was all the way down his face, Alice was greeted by Ryan's signature cocky smirk, making her imitate it in turn, just before she launched herself forward and kissed him feverishly.
For both of them, time simply froze at the moment their lips connected. Neither of them separated for several minutes, but when they did, both were out of breath, panting heavily.
They stared at each other, their chests heaving until Ryan smirked and asked. "Do I get any say in this?"
Alice gave him a cute smile before simply stating. "Nope." She pushed herself forward, and nipped at his lower lip, gently pulling it with her teeth, then resuming her passionate kissing, firmly holding him in place against the tree.
Elsewhere, Katie sat in the pickup truck with her arms crossed over her chest, silently fuming to herself. She was there, she saw Alice kiss Ryan. Despite her fucked up eyes, she wasn't blind. She huffed out a sigh. She was jealous of Ryan, her older brother, for being the one that Alice had chosen... When she was the one that liked Alice.
Scoffing to herself, she mused that since Ryan had died, she'd had much more time alone with Alice, during which she had really noticed her feelings towards Alice.
Now that he was back though, Alice had made her descision between the two of them. Katie let her head fall back, closing her eyes. Oh well, she thought to herself. She just had to get over it.
Her final thought before she drifted off to sleep was that at least both Ryan and Alice were happy together.
Alice and Ryan silently reentered the camp after their lengthy time together, neither said anything as they noticed that Katie was asleep in the driver seat of the pickup truck, her head against the window.
Alice pointed over to the central bonfire, which was always given enough wood to burn for at least most of the night. Ryan gave a nod and unslung his G36K, M3 and his bow from his back, quietly depositing them in the back of the truck, and followed Alice to sit beside the fire.
Silently staring into the flames for several minutes, they both glanced at each other a few times, blushed, then stared back into the fire.
"She's gonna clue in, y'know." Ryan suddenly spoke up.
"About us? Seriously, you'd have to be blind, deaf, and completely retarded not to realize we're together. I think Katie's known from long before you were even killed by Issacs." Alice replied, but Ryan shook his head.
"I meant Claire."
Alice shifted over to sit directly beside Ryan, nestling herself against his side comfortably. "What do you mean?" She asked, a teasing glint in her eye as she looked up at him.
"Claire has this thing with relationships within the convoy... romantic ones, I mean." Ryan explained. "If one partner dies, then the one left behind is an emotional wreck... but on the other hand, if they separate, then there's drama between them."
"Do you really think that I'd be a backstabbing bitch?" Alice smiled, her eyes locked on his face.
Ryan easily caught her reference to her kukris, but he shook his head. "You don't seem the type." He laughed quietly.
"Maybe..." Alice shrugged. "You never can really tell. Besides, we don't die that easily, so I think..." Alice stretched her hand up and tugged his mask down, then rose up slightly to give him a kiss. "That Claire should just calm her shit about the two of us."
"You know, I don't think I can... to be completely blunt with you two." Claire's voice suddenly came from behind them, startling them both.
Ryan gave a sheepish grin as Claire sat on Alice's other side, and withdrew her bowie knife, picking under her fingernails with it.
"You don't approve of us being together? Even though both of us bonded with the T-Virus?" Ryan asked, his yellow eyes glinting in the flickering firelight with an unusually sinister sparkle.
"No, I don't. Honestly... I couldn't care less about you two both having it. I'm more concerned about the possible shitstorm you might cause when you break up." Claire answered, sternly pointing her knife at them before returning to attackng her nails.
"You say that like it's guarenteed to happen." Alice commented, pointedly inching herself closer to Ryan's chest, feeling her hair begin to stand on end as the static electricity that he now constantly generated began to strengthen with his rising annoyance.
"I'm sure it was different for you, having travelled alone for so long... But within the convoy, it took over a dozen relationships before I imposed that rule..." Claire's hands stopped moving when she faltered into a stone cold silence for a few seconds. "Ask Ryan about Sherry." She ordered as she pointedly averted her gaze away from the pair.
"Sherry? Who was she?" Alice looked at Ryan, whose expression had darkened considerably. Unknown to Claire though, his static has strengthened considerably as well, making Alice inwardly uneasy.
"Sherry Birkin, a young girl that Claire rescued from Raccoon City. When I first joined the convoy, Sherry, Claire and K-Mart were extremely close... even closer than you, me and Katie, in fact."
When Ryan paused, Alice felt his static weaken, and heard a faint note of sadness in his voice. She waited for him to continue, but he clenched his jaw and remained silent for over a minute before Claire suddenly spoke up.
"Sherry was infected with a prototype virus created by her father, who worked for Umbrella. She, Ryan and I were together when she revealed it to him, and we didn't realize it at that moment... but there were some bandits eavesdropping on our chat, hiding behind the vehicles." Claire turned her head towards Alice, who listened in a stone cold silence.
"Was her father named William Birkin? Because if my memory serves correct, he was head of the G-Virus Program." Alice thought hard of the surname Birkin, and remembered a report she'd received while she was head of security for the Hive.
Claire nodded. "Exactly. As soon as she said it, one of the bandits shot her in the face, screaming his head off about 'they've got infected, kill them all!' to the other fuckers hiding in the camp."
"She was executed right in front of you?" Alice inhaled sharply, her expression one of utter shock as she looked at Ryan's barely concealed anger.
"Exactly, but here's the part that made me instigate my relationship rule: Sherry was the favourite of the entire convoy: Carlos, LJ, Ryan, Mikey, K-Mart, even myself... we all loved her. She was young, cute, and above all, full of hope." Claire leaned forward slightly. "I'll give you three guesses as to who took her death the hardest."
Without even thinking, Alice knew who Claire meant, and glanced at Ryan with sadness in her eyes. "It was you."
Ryan let out a sigh, "Yeah." He breathed, looking away from Alice, but she put her hand on his cheek and pulled his face closer to her own.
"Was it because she reminded you of Katie, when she was taken by Umbrella?" Alice whispered softly to him, forcing him to maintain eye contact with her hand whenever he tried to look away. "Tell me, please..."
"Yes." Ryan finally admitted, defeated. "Yes, Sherry reminded me of Katie... before everything... and everyone went straight to Hell in a handbasket."
"See?" Claire looked directly towards Alice. "No relationships allowed in my convoy, because I can be the bigger backstabbing bitch than you."
Alice pursed her lips for a moment before her lips tugged into a sinister smile. Ryan and Claire both noticed.
"What are you smiling about?" Claire narrowed her eyes suspiciously, suddenly tensed.
"Just had an idea you'd hate, don't worry." Alice replied as she stood up. "I have them quite often... I just never let it show."
Claire shot Ryan an annoyed glance at her comment, but even he was confused by her words. They both watched as Alice bade them goodnight and joined Katie inside the pickup truck, leaving them to ponder her dark words.
A/N: I'll be uploading this story in sets of five chapters, until it is completed. So keeping reading! :D