Chapter One: Infection
"Remember, be quick and quiet. We want as little contact a possible. Leave no one who has seen you alive, we want this to be effective," Chris Redfield said, briefing his team and friends again on their mission.
The people circled around him dressed in full combat gear all nodded, checking their equipment. To his left was small, thin Jill Valentine, his girlfriend. Next to her was Rebecca Chambers who was checking her field chemistry set. Leon S. Kennedy was standing next to her, reloading his rifle. His sister, Claire sat on the ground next to him. She was fiddling with her earpiece and staring off into the distance.
"Hey, you okay?" Chris said, coming over the squat in front of Claire.
"What? Oh, yeah," she smiled, brushing her vibrant red hair from her eyes.
"You sure? You know you can sit out if you wan. No one is going to make you do this," he said, looping a friendly arm over her shoulders.
Claire laughed. "I swear if you ask me that one more time, I'm going to break you leg and take over your team!" She punched him in the side, still laughing.
Chris smiled at her. "You're a dork," he laughed.
"Takes one to know one!" She stuck her tongue out at him as he stood up.
"Alright," Leon said in his deep voice, glancing at his watch. "Let's move."
Claire sobered up and slipped her handgun out of its holster on her thigh. She could already feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins as she moved quickly and quietly after the others.
The guards at the back entrance were easily dispatched as Leon and Chris neatly slit their throats. The two bodies dropped with quiet gurgles of blood. Kicking them out of the way, Leon waved the rest of the group trough the door and covered the rear of the group. There was a time when killing people bothered Claire, but the people who worked for Umbrella deserved no sympathy.
Clair lugged the duralumin case with her that was for the viral samples they were taking to destroy. She had had enough of viruses and zombies and monsters to last her a lifetime; she would do anything to stop them. She shuddered to think what would happen to one of them if they became infected.
Clearing her thoughts, she focused on the task at hand. They snuck down the halls quickly and quietly, dispatching whomever happened to see them. The group was infiltrating and ex-Umbrella lab that had failed to go under when the head company did. It was located in a remote part of India, almost in Bhutan, high up in the mountains. Leon had received a tip-off from and agent in India, telling him of suspicious activities at a supposedly abandoned Umbrella laboratory. There were reports of shipments and missing people from nearby villages.
Chris had demanded that the group investigate and confiscate anything the facility had been working on. He had a personal vendetta against one of Umbrella's top researchers and former captain of the S.T.A.R.S. team.
Albert Wesker.
Claire herself had no love for the man since they met on Rockfort Island. He had beaten her and used her to bait Chris. She despised the man for everything he had doe to the Redfields. Every time they came in conflict with him, he left them beaten and bloody, and managed to slip away unharmed.
As they stormed through the facility, Claire avoided using her gun unless absolutely necessary. It wasn't that she was afraid to use it, but rather it wasn't her specialty exactly. When they reached the main lab, all the researchers scattered like mice. Leon and Jill neatly picked them off with their rifles as Chris located the head researcher.
The man was rather chubby with land brown hair plastered to his head with sweat. Chris slammed him up against the wall. "Where are they?" he demanded.
The man whimpered pathetically. "What-what are you l-l-looking for?"
Chris slammed him against the wall again. "What have you been working on? Umbrella went under, why didn't you?"
The man swallowed heavily and cringed when Leon took a step towards him. "Alright!" he squeaked. "Alright. We received new samples of a new virus just before the head company went under." He gulped again. "We are privately funded by rich people here in India who have, um, enemies. They pay us to develop these new viruses. We have all but one of them completely isolated and controlled."
"Where are they?" Chris ground out, shaking the heavyset man, which was no easy feat.
"In the next room! But you can't open the safe!" he shouted when Claire and Rebecca moved towards the door into the next room.
"And why not?" Leon asked in his deep, slow voice, stepping closer to the man again.
"Because you aren't me!" he shrieked when Chris forced him to his knees with his handgun pressed to the researcher's head. "The safe is fingerprint coded."
He eyed Leon and Chris nervously as they lifted him under his arms and forcefully propelled him through the door. They threw him at the ground in front of the safe. He looked up at them with terror. "What are you going to do with these?" he asked fearfully.
"Get rid of them so no one can use bioweapons as a threat!" Claire spoke savagely, speaking for the first time.
The man laughed hollowly. "Noble cause, but it will never happen. There are too many power hungry people in this world. As long as there are buyers there will be bioweapons."
Claire seethed. "I don't care. Open the damn safe or I cut off your hand and do it myself!" she said coldly, her eyes flashing dangerously.
"O-okay," he mumbled at the blatant anger in the redhead's eyes. He put his hand on the scanner and nervously looked up at the assembled group in front of him, all of whom were bristling with weapons.
There was a faint click as the door to the safe opened. A cold mist poured out. When it cleared there were five different vials shaped into spirals, each one containing a different colored liquid. Four of them were marked except one. It contained a dark purple liquid, so dark it was almost black.
Chris jerked the researcher back away from the safe and nodded to Claire. She set the case next to the safe and proceeded to carefully take the vials out and nestle them safely into the case. Just as she picked up the last vial, the unmarked, unknown one, an enormous explosion rocked the building.
Instinctually, she gripped the fragile glass tighter and in her panic, it exploded in tiny fragments, cutting her hand deeply. "Shit!" she cursed, picking large chunks of glass out of her hand, not noticing the blackish liquid from the tube mingling with her blood on her hand.
"We need to go. Now!" Leon shouted as the building trembled under their feet.
Sitting on the floor next to the safe, the researcher laughed maniacally. "You think you're going to get away with my samples? You will die down here in this hellhole with the rest of us!" he shouted, his eyes glinting dangerously.
"He triggered the self-destruct system, the bastard," Jill grumbled, running for the door.
"Why do they always have to self-destruct?" Rebecca asked mournfully, following close behind.
Claire snapped the case shut, wrapping her bandanna around her bleeding hand. "I have them Chris. Let's go before this place explodes!"
"Go! Run!" Chris and Leon shouted at the rest of the team, ushering them towards the door.
Claire snatched up the case and sprinted back the way they came, cradling her bleeding hand to her chest. Behind them, the man's maniacal laughter echoed through the halls.
"Move!" Leon shouted as they came into a room full of specimen tanks. There were half-formed and mutated creatures in them that Jill and Chris had slowed down to watch.
Another explosion rocked the building as they reached a flight of stairs. They clattered up and raced down a hall that was teeming with confused and scared scientists. Chris shouldered them violently aside as they shoved down the hall. Just as they reached their exit, an explosion much bigger than before tore through the building.
No one needed any encouragement to make tired limbs move faster. They made it one hundred yards from the door before the building collapsed in upon itself with a shriek of metal. As it collapsed, an earthen wall above the facility gave way, effectively burying the flaming rubble of the Umbrella laboratory. It was as if it never existed.
"And that's how Umbrella cleans up their messes," muttered Claire darkly. The rest of the group nodded as they trekked back to their base in a neighboring valley.
While they hiked, Claire dumped her water bottle her hand, washing most of the blood away. "Chris gimme your bandanna."
"Why?" he asked, unraveling it from around his wrist.
Claire shrugged. "I cut myself when the first explosion went off, that's all. It's still bleeding but I'll take care of it once we're back at camp."
"What did you cut yourself of?" Leon asked, coming up behind them.
"One of the vials broke when I was putting it in the case. That's all. I dumped my water bottle on it and got the glass out, so I'll be fine," she said, smiling at Leon.
Leon glanced at Chris, then asked sharply, "Which vial was it?"
"I'm not sure, why?" she asked looking between the two men.
"Nothing, I'm just being paranoid, Claire," He said and glanced at Chris again.
"Okay, well I'm gong back to camp to get this bandaged properly," she said, brushing past them.
Once Claire was out of earshot, Chris grabbed Leon's arm. "Is she…?"
Leon shook his head. "I don't know. But I do know that the purple, unmarked virus was the same virus as Wesker's. Ada told me about it. God forbid that be the one the broke."