Russian Red

Title: Russian Red

Summary: [AFTERLIFE, AU]: Chris and Alice infiltrate an 'abandoned' Umbrella facility in Moscow, Russia to discover the whereabouts of several missing survivors from the Arcadia and stumble upon information on operatives from a defunct organization called 'BSAA'.

Author: Sakura123 (weber_dubois22)

Rating: T (PG-13)

Characters: Alice (Janus), Chris Redfield

Chapters: 1/1

Word Count: 2317

Written: 9/23/2010

Completed: 10/2/2010

Disclaimer: Resident Evil and all things related are property of Capcom, Paul W.S. Anderson and Sony Pictures/Screen Gems. Original characters are property of me, the author.

Authors Note: My only completed submission for the "girlsavesboyfic" community on livejournal. I had the hardest time choosing which characters to use for this particular tale, but ultimately decided on Chris and Alice (I wasn't in a sibling sort of mood hence the lack of Claire in this piece). There is more to this story, but unfortunately, I've yet to see "Afterlife" and thus I would not dare to pursue this any further before finally seeing it (my RE muse is running on critical empty).

"Janus?"

"Red?" Her voice came through loud and clear over a wave of static. He could hear the sound of her feet sliding across the floor in a moment for forgetfulness then fall silent. Chris fingered the safety of his berretta absentmindedly as he made himself comfortable in the corner of the empty computer room of what was once thought to be an abandoned Umbrella facility in a frozen Moscow, Russia. "We've got a bit of a problem."

"What kind of problem?" Alice inquired.

"The kind of problem that walks and talks," Chris replied, his voice barely above a whisper. He pressed himself against the wall when the silhouette of security guard walked by the door. When he was sure the guard was far away enough, he lowered his gun against his knee.

"I take it you missed one of the guards?"

"More like the guard noticed his pals are missing and came looking for them," Chris muttered, earning a soft click of the tongue from Alice. "This isn't going to work, we're too exposed."

"This'll work, trust me." The confidence in her voice was almost uplifting, yet he found no comfort in it.

"Right, trust you." Chris sighed. "How are things on your end?"

There was no immediate response, which gave him pause. Silence could only mean trouble. Trouble meant he would spent too much time lingering in a place he was sure to be caught in before he finally decided to go looking for Alice. He remained crouched in the shadows against the wall next to the doorway of the office. The only exit out of it. His hiding place was only mildly exposed to the naked eye, the darkness of the room being the only thing between him and immediate discovery. Alice had gone fishing for files in the adjacent office and hopefully had a better hiding place than he did.

Claire had been sure of this building's abandonment, Alice was insistent they wouldn't get another chance like this for while. The city of Moscow was crawling with undead and the Umbrella building they currently resided in was right smack in the middle of a festering horde who'd broken through the city's defenses back in '05.

"If this building is still intact, we have chance to retrieve the information we need to find Wesker," Chris remembered the way her eyes blazed when she said the chairman of Umbrella's name. He'd seen that look one too many times during his isolation in the LA county prison to brush it off as nothing. The mere knowledge that the superhuman freak of nature had escaped the ship and survived yet another attempt to end his life, drove her mad. His eyes narrowed slightly as he forced a coy smile onto his lips and leaned forward on the dashboard of the ship dubbed Arcadia.

"Who's looking for Wesker? Don't you mean the missing people on this manifest?" He gestured to the electronic pad in his hand. "People like this Jill Valentine I've heard so much about?" Chris watched as Alice's expression became frozen. Her eyes switched to the right for a second, the fire in her eyes died almost immediately before she returned her gaze back to him. "Of course," She said, lowering her gaze, a non-threatening smile on her face. "Of course, you're right."

Neither he or Claire - who was now just warming up to his attempts at reconciliation for lost time (and lost memories) - had any idea how to gauge Alice's emotions or motives. One moment she was hell bent on finding and helping survivors, the next she was single-mindedly dedicating herself to plotting the demise of Albert Wesker and what remained of the omnipresent Umbrella corporation. Both goals were admiral, but Chris was more concerned with the welfare of the 2,000 plus people housed on the ship. They could worry about Wesker and Umbrella once they successfully fell of their radar.

Thus, the promise that they would go after Wesker once they were safe and out of harms way was all that was needed to calm Alice. She decided not to argue and fell into the routine of setting up house on the Arcadia for the survivors and broadcasting the signal for safe haven daily. Yet, after at least eight months on the ship and helping the disoriented victims of Wesker, Chris was beginning to feel the agitation of routine and wanted to break it.

So you can imagine his relief and Alice's elation when Claire announced that she'd hacked an Umbrella database for above-ground facilities untouched by the recent sweeps of purge bombs. There were six left, four of them - as far as Claire could tell - were inactive, most likely abandoned. Among those abandoned buildings, two were stated to be in the process of "relocating". "If we're going to find any information about the missing people on this manifest," Claire tapped the blinking dot on the LCD screen, "Moscow's our best chance and our safest bet."

"Assuming we make it that far," Chris quipped, expressing his doubt over the idea. "Don't worry. 6083 or so miles should be easy to cover in this boat," Alice reassured him with a squeeze of his shoulder. "Technically, it's more of freight than a boat," He countered. The whole idea still made Chris queasy to say the least.

Abandoning for a moment the pretence of immediate survivor rescue in the states, they embarked on the long journey from Los Angeles to Moscow. The plan had been an easy one; Chris and Alice would head into the city using one of the helicopters, land on nearby rooftop and enter the building via zip line. Claire would remain on standby on the ship, prepared to return to LA within the hour if anything went wrong.

However, a well laid out plan is not without it's complications. What they didn't count on was finding the building occupied by twenty seven Umbrella operatives, who were already making short work of the first level, transferring or purging the computer hard drives of all information. Their presence made things a lot more complicated in concerns to getting in and out without being noticed.

Sitting here now, Chris wished he had convinced Alice to go back to the ship, try somewhere else to obtain information on the missing survivors. If their cover was blown during this operation, the lives aboard the Arcadia were done for. Another shadow passed the door; Chris bit the inside of his mouth in frustration. "Janus?" He whispered, sliding further away from the wall.

A irritated sigh echoed across his headset, Chris surveyed the room for another escape route despite knowing there wasn't one big enough for him to crawl through. In the last three minutes, he counted three passes at the door, each time they occurred; it was after he spoke to Alice. There were two guards outside and two unconscious guards stuffed in a closet on the right of him. "Alice, are you there?" He whispered as quietly as he could.

"Yeah, I'm here," Alice responded finally. He could hear the faint sound of tapping on keys over her slow and even breathing. Suddenly there was a grunt, loud enough to make him flinch. "Red, what've I told you about the names?"

Chris felt a grin grace his lips at the obvious indignation in her voice. "Janus in public, Alice in private?" He replied, feigning confusion. Janus was a name Alice only recent confessed to remembering being her actual name and insisted Chris use it whenever they were speaking via radio contact. He obliged, but it was not a name he was used to using or one he thought suited Alice at all.

"Right," She said with a smile. "Right, gotcha," Chris repeated. "How are things coming along on your end? You never did answer that question." Another sigh echoed in his ears. "Not so good. Have you ever heard of the BSAA?"

"Yeah, actually," Chris responded, glancing toward the doorway. "If I remember correctly they were a counter-bioterrorism group formed by the president in '04 after the outbreak in Tokyo. When Umbrella was outed as the cause of the pandemic, they were sent in to apprehend Wesker and all of the corporation's top dogs, but they'd gone into hiding at that point and infection was spreading so rapidly that organization had to focus on helping the survivors. I requested to join them, but I got assigned to protect the country prison in LA." He paused, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. "Why do you ask?"

"Because, about half of the people on that computer manifest from the ship are BSAA operatives," Alice replied. "Twelve of them anyways; nine are dead, victims of Wesker's appetite. The other three are presumably alive on a well-"

"On the ship," Chris finished for her, biting the inside of his mouth. "What about the other survivors on the manifest?"

"They're all here as well, but it's saying their location is classified." The frustration in her voice was evident and one decibel too loud. Chris felt himself stiffen when the shape of a man appeared in the frosted glass window of the door and the knob began to turn. Moving quickly, he holstered his weapon and ducked under a nearby office table as quietly as he could. The soft conversation of the guards filled the room. Chris crawled back out of sight until his feet hit the kickboard.

"Where was it you last saw them?"

"I saw them heading up here. You don't think-?"

"Those things aren't up here man. Chill out."

"It's not the zombies I'm worried about. Remember those things? The B.O.W.'s Kurtz said was crawling around further in the city?" The first guard inquired, stepping toward the desk. Shit. Chris reached behind him to grab his combat knife. "The leeches? Yeah what about 'em?" The second sighed, clearly exasperated.

"Well, what if they're in here?" The first guard nearly growled. "Those things could've eaten them."

"Doubtful. We would've heard something like that, not to mention seen the leeches."

"Yeah, maybe."

Chris listened to their footsteps move closer to the desk he hid behind, his hand tightened around the handle of his knife as he shimmied it loose from the sheath. The guards came into view, MP5K's at the ready as they surveyed the end of the room with little or no interest. They were too far away to use the knife. One of them would pull the trigger on Chris before he had a chance to get close enough to them. Slowly, he released the hold he had on the handle of his knife and began reach for his gun. "C'mon, man, there ain't nothing in here 'cept computers-"

"Red, you there?" Alice's voice startled Chris and the guards to attention.

"What was that!"

The second guard's flashlight illuminated the room and suddenly, Chris found himself staring straight into the iris of the bulb. There was a strangled cry of surprise, he wasn't sure from whose mouth it came from, but it mattered little to him now. The rattle of their guns filled his ears, his heart stopped beating, his breath caught in his throat and he could think of nothing. His body opted inaction over action. He froze like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He watched their arms draw back against their sides and waited to hear the rapport of the bullets exiting through the barrel.

Claire, I'm so sorry.

The bang of a gun went off, the sheetrock wall behind the guards exploded into a flurry of dust chunks. Chris flinched as chaos erupted around him; the flash of several guns going off at once became a symphony of madness whiched caused Chris to duck and cover his head. A strangled cry and the thump of a body hitting the ground echoed in the semi-vacant room, he raised his head in time watch Alice drop her glock and rush forward to grab the remaining guard. The guard had no time to react. Her hand was around his neck before he could block her, she snapped his neck without hesitation. Chris watched in morbid fascination as his body fell to the ground like a puppet cut loose from its strings. Alice stood over the fallen umbrella operatives with a grim look of satisfaction on her face before averting her attention to Redfield.

Chris stood from his crouched position, an admonishing look flashed in his blue eyes. "Cutting it a bit close aren't we?" He inquired sharply. For once, Alice pretended not to notice of his blatant lack of thanks. Instead she bent over to retrieve the unused magazine clips from the dead guard's vests. Chris cast a wary glance over his shoulder toward the door. Someone was sure to have heard all that noise. "Relax," Alice sighed, calm as ever. Straightening her posture, she raised her left hand and revealed an unmarked disc. Chris felt his anger dissolve immediately at the sight of it. "You got the information?" He grinned.

Alice nodded. "That and more," She replied. "There's some information on a project called Uroboros; Wesker's been using survivors in it as lab rats. There was also something about another virus."

"Another virus?" Chris repeated.

"Yeah, the G-virus. Something I haven't heard of be-" Alice's voice trailed off at the sound of glass shattering outside the room. They exchanged wary glances and hurried out into the hallway. The cries of men below had them over at the the hallway railing in a second flat.

A quick glance down to the first level revealed naught except the flash of machine gun fire. The umbrella soldiers were firing at something, yet there wasn't a zombie in sight. One by one, in quick succession, the operatives were knocked off their feet and dragged off into the darkness, screaming for their lives. "What's going on?" Chris murmured, eyes darting left to right. "What's attacking them?" Alice shook her head. "I dunno, but let's not stick around to find out," She said, stepping away from the railing. In the corner of his eye, Chris watched her run to the end of the hall toward the exit where the emergency stairwell was located. Chris stole one last look down at the chaos unfolding below before following after her.