Get You Back
Chapter 1: The Bitter Season
It was the week leading up to Christmas although you wouldn't know it by the state of Barry Burton's house. An ex-S.T.A.R.S. agent who lived alone somewhere in New York, Barry kept mainly to himself nowadays, although he did see his former colleagues from the R.P.D. (Raccoon Police Department) once or twice every year.
In Barry Burton's spacious house there were no decorations put up; no christmas tree nor the presents one would usually find under it. There was also no mistletoe to be seen, or anything remotely Christmas-y; it was like any other day in Barry's life, although he couldn't go to the shops to buy his morning paper.
Sitting in his kitchen alone with a cup of coffee and a Lucky Strike between his fingers, Barry stared outside the window by the back door. Outside it was snowing, leaving a thick blanket of white as far as the eye could see. Barry didn't feel bad being alone during the holidays, as he didn't really enjoy Christmas, nor the premise of wasting money on pointless gifts.
Standing up from the kitchen table, a shiver ran down his spine; it really was getting cold. Although it was rather early for it, Barry thought it might be nice to light a fire in the front room, so he set down his cup of coffee and made for the living room, where Barry spent most of his time reading novels and playing with his magnum collection.
As firewood blazed on the open hearth, Barry sunk down in his favorite armchair, which was comfortable and almost as old as him. Scratching his fiery red beard, he shut his eyes as the peaceful sound of wood crackled in the fire. Just as he was about to nod off, his cell phone burst into life from the mantlepiece above the fireplace.
Almost leaping from the chair, Barry stood up slowly and approached his cell phone; on the screen he could see that Claire Redfield, also a former S.T.A.R.S. member and a good friend of his, was calling him. He smiled to himself, thinking she must be ringing to wish him Merry Christmas. Picking up his phone, he pushed the answer button and placed it next to his ear.
"Hello, sunshine." he exclaimed, joyously. Instead of the reply he was expecting from his usually cheerful female colleague, he could hear heavy breathing down the other side of the line. "Claire?" he asked, after a few seconds pause. "Are you there?"
"Barry..!" her voice suddenly cried out. "It's me, Claire! Where are you?"
"Claire, calm down." he replied, slightly worried now. "I'm at home. What's wrong?"
"It's... it's-" she began, her voice breaking up. He could hear that she was crying.
"Claire, it's okay." he assured her, in his deep, soothing voice. "Tell me what's wrong."
"It's my brother, Chris." she whimpered. "He's been kidnapped."
"What?" he muttered, rather confused. His heart began to beat fast in his chest; after the incidents regarding the Umbrella Corporation many years ago, Barry thought he could live out his life in peace. Apparently not.
"It's true!" she roared, holding back her sobs. "I received an encoded e-mail from his cell phone this morning; I- I tried replying to it, and calling him, but his phone is turned off."
"All right, just calm down and tell me what the e-mail said."
"It was short." she sniffed; there was a slight pause as she shifted the phone from one hand to another. "It read 'S.O.S., captive 37.826N-122.422W X-VIRUS'."
Virus. Barry suddenly thought, his breath caught for a moment.
"Are you sure this isn't some sick joke?" Barry managed to ask.
"I'm positive! I haven't heard from him for a while. And that e-mail was definitely sent from his phone; the encoding matches his phone's signature. I ran a check on it on my computer. He's been busy, you know, on an assignment. He wouldn't tell me about it, though. He was- he..." her voice began to break at this point. "...he always kept me in the dark."
Barry listened to her for a while before hanging up as she gave him further details, and he assured her that everything would be all right. Barry was worried though; he couldn't rely on the police department or S.T.A.R.S. for this one. Claire explained that she would search for him herself, but she had other urgent matters to attend to, things that just couldn't wait. When he questioned her about it, all she would tell him was that it was related to Jill Valentine.
Sitting back down in his armchair, Barry stared at the piece of paper in which he had written the e-mail that Chris had sent to his sister. It had to have meant something; Chris wouldn't send it without giving some clue as to where he was.
Barry thought back to his time at S.T.A.R.S., and the friends he had made. There had been some rough times where he had questioned his own loyalty to his department, and his country, but he had pulled through in the end. He thought back to Chris, the young man who had been by his side during the Spencer Incident so many years ago. From what he could recall, Chris had been a handsome young man, and very skilled with a handgun, too.
It must be the numbers. Barry thought, as he shot up from his chair again and approached the computer in the corner of the living room; it had a thick layer of dust on it from lack of use.
Blowing the dust off the keyboard, Barry turned the computer on. After a few minutes of clicking sounds and whirring noises, the operating system finally booted up, allowing him to connect to the internet. Quickly typing in the numbers that were in the e-mail, Barry was surprised when a list of results came up; he didn't need to look very hard, it was obvious what these numbers were: they were the longitude and latitude of Alcatraz, the former prison situated on San Francisco Bay, which was currently used as a training base for the military. Could Chris possibly be there?
