I always loved Carla Radames from RESIDENT EVIL 6, and not just because she looks like the lovely superspy Ada Wong. She might have been a villain, but she was also one of the most tragic and sympathetic of the major players in that game series, and I've seen I'm not the only one who's a fan of Carla. Forced to become Ada Wong's perfect duplicate for the wretched desires of Derek Simmons, she was driven insane and sought to destroy the world and a certain butterfly. With that respect for the lady in mind, I imagined this story...however, check all of your reservations at the door because this might be a Yuri romance, but it's also a story quite unlike any I've written before. I hope you enjoy it all the same! Yes, I'm still writing Judgment Day, by the way. I thought of this story months before, long before REVELATIONS 2 came out, and I just had to get it out of me before I refocused on Cheryl and Rebecca!

The story begins as we discover Carla Radames survived the events of RE6 and her death struggle with Ada Wong...but for how long?

RESIDENT EVIL: GEMINI

written by Charles Spencer

A note to remember: this prologue is set only six months after the conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 6...the rest of the story will happen another three months later...

Prologue

Once upon a time, an ugly duckling grew into a beautiful swan.

She still remembered that story from her childhood...when her mother put her to bed at night. When she became an adult, when she excelled in biology and virology, she disdained herself so. She felt she had grown into an ugly duckling...she felt so overwhelmingly alone, that no one would ever be attracted to her. In the deepest reaches of her heart, she wanted to be a swan, to become a creature who could be loved and love in return.

She got that fondest wish only through the most malicious and terrible turn of fate...because another used her, transformed her for the sake of his twisted obsession.

She became a beautiful swan against her will, and then lost her mind. She became the leader of a terrorist force with the intent of destroying the man who betrayed her. She wanted to destroy the entire world and create something...better.

Only six months ago, her insane plans were ruined. Even though Derek Simmons was the target of her vengeful, irrational quest, just as important to her was destroying the one who she had been transformed to become a perfect mirror image of. Instead, Ada Wong destroyed her.

Almost.

It was the C-Virus that saved Carla Radames...she had transformed into a colony creature and when Ada Wong walked away believing her dead, Carla regenerated and reformed a new body from another part of the shapeless bio-organic mass. She lived again, but there were complications, the very least of which was that she was human again...when she regenerated, the C-Virus was also burned from her system. The greatest complications she suffered, however, had unexpected benefits, but those came later.

Carla was as nude as the day she was born, completely disoriented, but she had regained her sanity. She could only stumble about at first to find her scarf. It was sentimental, it was silly, but it was a treasured memento of her late mother. Oh, what would her mother have said if she saw what her little girl had become? She definitely wouldn't have recognized Carla.

But the Chinese soldiers who arrived on the battleship to find her and any remaining Neo-Umbrella personnel did recognize her instantly. She had launched a bioterrorist strike on their country, and their response was surprisingly restrained. They beat Carla within an inch of her life and then arrested her.

Afterward, when the rest of the world let the Chinese government decide what to do with her, Carla was taken to a remote gulag far, far north along a snowcapped mountain range. The facility was as far from civilization as anyone could imagine, a strategic choice. Even if someone escaped the gulag, which would have been remote in possibility, they wouldn't have survived for long in the surrounding territory, which was icy, frigid and lethally treacherous.

For Carla, the months that followed were an endurance test of torture and agony as her jailers interrogated her mercilessly, demanding to know if anything remained of Neo-Umbrella. Were any of her lieutenants still alive? Were there anymore bases in China or anywhere else? Those who questioned her were methodical and ruthless, but they were restrained. They put her through enough torture to avoid killing her...although she suffered so much she needed time to heal in the gulag's hospital...only to return to the torture room to know agony again. For reasons military scientists were still trying to understand, Carla had a healing factor far, far greater than a normal human.

But Carla's keepers didn't rape her, they didn't sexually violate her in any way - she was human and free of viruses, as far as their tests could tell in spite of her extraordinary regeneration rate, but better to not take any chances. A small comfort considering everything else they did. The cycle repeated again and again like that for almost six months.

It was during that endless time of pain she heard the voice. She hadn't lost her sanity again. The voice was very real, and it wasn't her own. This was one of the complications that came from her resurrection. And when she understood what it meant, she knew.

In spite of her surviving, Carla knew she might not have much time left.

But this complication did come with benefits. Not only did she hear a voice that wasn't her own, she knew things she had never learned herself. In spite of the fact she had virtually no resources of her own, she gained the knowledge to overcome her captors and escape the gulag, techniques and skills in counterintelligence that served another well. The best opportunity came when she was taken to the hospital after another cycle of torture. She had discovered that her healing ability could be affected by her force of will...she could heal even faster if she wanted to, and that was exactly what she wanted as they relaxed their guard when they shouldn't have.

She wasn't armed, she didn't even have any clothes when she got out of her bed and subdued the guards who had let hubris make them careless. They honestly thought Carla was helpless and well within their power. She didn't kill them...god knew she wanted to...but she had no right to pass judgment on them. Not after everything she had done when she was insane. But her first priority wasn't escaping...not immediately.

First, she needed to find her signature, treasured scarf. It took her some time and interrogations of her own to know where to find it. Fully nude except for the scarf wreathed around her slender neck, armed only with a heavy-caliber pistol she stole from one of her jailers, Carla Radames began her bid to escape with earnest. Those soldiers she couldn't avoid she neutralized, and there were only a few who gave her that much difficulty. Still, the voice that wasn't her own and the memories that weren't hers helped her make it easy. To her good fortune, a helicopter had arrived there the day before with a cargo of supplies, but it hadn't left yet.

She took command, flew away...and disappeared.

At first, Carla didn't know what to do with her newfound freedom...even if she did know, she had to stay underground because the entire world was hunting for her. There were the complications she suffered. More and more, the evidence was undeniable...she had no doubt she was going to die very soon. And then she knew. There was only one person she could go to. There was only one person Carla knew would understand her situation, even if no one else would. Gripped by her fear of the inevitable, she was sure that Ada Wong would know what to do.

She wasn't insane, but it was Ada's voice she heard in her mind...it was Ada's memories that gave her the knowledge she needed to escape.

Carla Radames thought, Ada, it may be the last thing I will do, but I will find you. Only you will understand what's happened to me.

Only you will understand what I yearn to give to you.

To be Continued...