Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil (well, I own a DVD of each movie, but that's different). I am not making money from this story. This is for creative purposes only.

Warning: Contains spoilers. Maybe not so much in this chapter, but there's a big'un later.

Resident Evil: Reflection

*This is a product of the Umbrella Corporation. Our business is life itself. Some side effects may occur.*

Dr. Ryan Cantor had just started his two week vacation away from the hive when the virus broke out. He would have considered himself lucky, if he hadn't first heard about it while he was being abducted from a beach in North Carolina. Umbrella had relocated the surviving members of the project to two facilities, one in Chicago and another somewhere in the Mojave Desert. Isaacs had gone to the one in Chicago, and Cantor, as the leading biochemist in the project, had been taken there as well. He had another lucky break, having been knocked out early when Project Alice went berserk and escaped. She might have killed him if she thought he was still a threat. Or maybe she thought he was already dead. Either way, he had escaped death twice now.

Now he was on a plane headed for the Mojave Desert along with half of the Chicago facility scientists. The other half had gone with Isaacs to San Francisco to try to deal with the outbreak there. Cantor knew they would fail. They couldn't contain it in Raccoon City, and that was an island. There were probably already infected people outside the quarantine zone in California. The world was royally and undeniably fucked.

He thought of Jess. Had she made it out of the Raccoon City? He had never received that information, no matter how many times he asked for it. He knew there was no way she was alive if she was still in the Hive at the time of the outbreak. He struggled, as he had for the last three weeks, to remember when her day off that week was supposed to be. If she had been above ground she would have been evacuated with the rest of the scientists on the project. Though he had heard that Ashford didn't make it out. Something about his daughter.

He had asked so many people about survivors from the Hive, but all he ever got was either "I'm sorry, that's confidential," or "How should I know?" He had tried to access her personnel file, but it was off limits. All the files for Hive employees, including his own, were suddenly locked-down. He had spent his entire time in Chicago worrying about Jess, and wondering if she was alive.

Cantor had been planning on asking Jess out when he got back from vacation. He was a good looking man, with thick light brown hair, bright blue eyes and a strong chin. He'd had no reason to believe that she's refuse. He was going to take her to that vintage cinema on Terrace Street, after dinner at Chez Pierre next door. Then maybe they would go back to his apartment in the Hive for a little . . . fun.

But now it looked like that date was never going to happen. Terrace Street was gone. Nuked with the rest of the city. And maybe Jess too.

He didn't want to think about that. The possibility that she might be dead was too much for him to handle. All of it was too much for him to handle. The world was dying, and not even staying dead, and it was because of his work. Because of the thing he'd been experimenting on. It was all his fault.

No. It was that moron from the military division, he told himself. Cade or Case, or whatever his name was. The one who had opened the hive. Cain. Yeah, that was it. Cain. That fuck-up. If he had just left it alone we could have dealt with the situation properly.

"We're almost there, sir," said the pilot.

Cantor looked out the window and saw his new home. It looks like a fucking tool shed, he thought.

"The entire facility is hidden underground," someone said.

Just like the Hive, thought Cantor. Splendid. He looked up at the man who had spoken. It was a neurobiologist he knew only vaguely. Dr. Harry Lane had already been stationed in Chicago at the time of the outbreak, Cantor had met him there. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed 51 year old hadn't appeared much older than 30 at that time, a product of his upbeat and energetic personality. But the weight of the situation had aged him. The poor man could have passed for 60 right now.

"How do you know?" Cantor asked him, happy for any sort of conversation to break the silent plane ride, and to get his mind off of Jess.

"I've been here before," the older man replied. "I was the lead neurobio on a project here two years ago, though they've probably expanded it since then." Lane chuckled bitterly and added. "I hope so, because circumstances dictate that we're going to be spending a lot of time in whatever space they've got under there."

Hardly the conversation Cantor had been hoping for. Just another depressing reminder of their situation. He tried again. "What project, or are you under silence?" he asked. "Under silence" was an unofficial term used by Umbrella's Science Division, meaning that a person was under obligation to not disclose the details of the project they were working on to anyone without the proper authorization, not even to other Umbrella employees. Everyone on the T-Virus project had been under silence.

"No," was Lane's answer. "But I think my people were the only ones who weren't. There were a lot of covert things going on down there. I couldn't tell you what," he told Cantor's questioning look. "I, of course, wasn't informed." He paused for a moment before he seemed to remember the original question. "We were working on a brain cancer treatment."

"Why were you –" Cantor started, but was interrupted by one of the toughs in suits that were their escorts. "We'll be landing now. Please secure yourselves." The big man spoke politely, but there was an air of command seeded into the request that was more effective then any "fasten seatbelts" sign. Cantor and Lane put aside their conversation to make sure their seatbelts were on. Cantor almost laughed at Lane putting an invisible tray-table in its upright and locked position.

Almost. The situation was too dire for laughter. But still, it was nice to know that they both still had a sense of humor.

As the small plane began its descent, Cantor eyed the big tough who had spoken. He was tall, well built and his head was shaven completely bald. This man, and the rest of the bodyguards in the plane, had the look an FBI agent, toughness and skill and precision all wrapped up in a nice suit. No, FBI wasn't quite right. Secret Service maybe? But Cantor knew very well Secret Agent Skinhead and the others were Umbrella employees. And not a single one of them seemed to feel anything when the plane touched down with a jerk.

As soon as the plane coasted to a stop, Cantor's escorts ushered him and his fellow scientists out the door and towards the tool shed. Each scientist was lead by the arm by their very own secret-agent-looking-tough-in-a-suit. His was a young Asian man who couldn't have been more than 25. Just like everything else had been in the last three weeks, this movement was very hurried. He barely had time to register men rushing to build fences and guard towers around the shed before Secret Agent Skinhead, who was at the head of the group with Lane, pulled open the door and lead his charge inside, the rest of them quick on his heels. Cantor blinked in the sudden darkness as the door clicked shut.