"Welcome to NEST," Major Lennox greets a young woman as tall as his chin with platinum blonde hair, a small nose with black sunglasses perched over her eyes, and full, rosy lips. He eyes her cautiously, instincts telling him she's more dangerous than she looks.
She gives him a tight smile, clasping her hands behind herself. She wears a simple black blazer, a midnight blue blouse, and black slacks with black pumps. "It's good to be here, Major." She looks behind the human to the enormous Autobots standing in their bipedal forms with a small amount of nerves, and a great amount of awe and respect. "If you're trying to impress me, I think it's working."
The blue and red flamed Autobot kneels to get a better look at the woman before him. "I am Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots."
"Ravenna Abernathy, sir. It's good to finally know you're not just a rumor on the internet, or whatever."
The bot's lip-plates shift into a semblance of a smile, before gesturing to his lime green friend. "This is Ratchet, our Chief Medical Officer for the Cybertronian sector of NEST," he introduces them.
A blue light scans over the new medic, making her jump at the sudden tingle. "Hmm, there seems to be a kind of mutation and virus I've never encountered before in your species."
Her hands clench into fists as she looks away from them. "It's… not a story I wish to share, Ratchet."
"If there is an illness that could cause a contagion on base, then I need to know," he retorts, already knowing he won't enjoy working with her.
"I'm not contagious, so you don't have to worry," she bites back, closing her eyes to fight off the painful memories. "It's not a happy story either, alright?"
"Ratchet, you don't have to worry," Lennox butts in before the Autobot can answer. "She's been cleared by Mearing in an off the books interrogation." He then leads her away, a hand lightly pressing on her back. They all miss the relief in her covered, glowing blue eyes.
Epps approaches Lennox a few weeks later, and falls into the chair across from his friend in the lounge. "The new medic, Ravenna?" he starts, getting a hum of acknowledgement. "She scary man… she just…"
Lennox looks up at that. "What did she do?"
Epps takes a deep, shaky breath. "She whooped Graham's ass when he gave her basic training with moves I ain't ever seen before, like street fighting, or kung fu or somethin' man!" The Major stares at his friend in disbelief. "Come see it, I ain't lyin' man!"
As they step into the hall, they watch as their newest Medical Officer whistles cheerfully, with one hand easily dragging the unconscious Graham by the collar. "Morning Major, Master Sargent," she greets them smoothly, still wearing her normal sunglasses.
Lennox blinks, staring into space as Epps laughs at the shocked expression of his friend.
The men all gather at the bar of the club, sipping at their beers as they joke and taunt one another. After a while, they glance across the bar, and spot the last person they ever expected to see in a club, wearing six-inch black stilettos and an aqua dress barely reaching to mid-thigh, with golden loops holding it up as a halter. A man dances with her, wearing dress shoes, black slacks, and a black button-down with a blood red tie. They can't see what color his eyes are beyond dark, the same with his hair. But what shocks them even more is not the fact that these two are clearly all over one another, but that Ravenna lacks her usual sunglasses, revealing her soft blue eyes to the world with a light amount of make-up to bring attention to her aristocratic features.
As the song changes, they approach the bar, and he orders the two of them shots of whiskey, which they down easier than water two times each before sharing a laugh. The man with her points to the NEST group across the bar, and suddenly they find themselves looking into the laughing eyes of their Medical Officer. She winks at them, before handing the barman a few bills, then dragging her friend back onto the dance floor.
"I see you know my cousin, boys," the woman sitting next to them asks in a rough voice. Graham inspects her, finding the woman to be dressed in black shorts and tube top, with blue-green eyes and brown hair that might once have been a dirty blonde. She's about his own height, and his instincts scream at him to get away from her, the same as with Ravenna.
"Ali, don't go scaring these guys," a man scolds her lightly from her other side. He has the look of a soldier, standing at the same height as Lennox, and dressed similarly to the man dancing with Ravenna, only with a forest green tie rather than red.
She smirks at him. "I can't help it, Carlos."
"Ali," another woman sighs, this one with red hair and light blue eyes, wearing a purple version of Ravenna's dress. "Really, you're worse than Chris or Leon."
"I take offense to that," a man walks up, wearing jeans, combat boots, and a leather jacket over a white button down. The soldiers, however, immediately notice the fact that he wears a shoulder holster under the jacket, putting them all on edge.
Ali rolls her eyes. "Can we please just go get your niece and Claire's brother and go, before Ada shows her traitorous ass?"
Sighing, Carlos hands the barman cash for the drinks, then they all leave together.
Ironhide later reported that none of Ravenna's companions were registered on any database.
Lennox and Epps show up at her house the following weekend, Ironhide and Bumblebee as their backup.
Leon opens the door, frowning at the two men in uniform and openly armed. "Can I help you?" he asks tiredly, casually sipping from a mug of coffee.
"We're here to speak with Officer Abernathy," Lennox answers quickly, noticing the hardening of the other man's eyes before they are allowed entry, albeit rather reluctantly. "Thank you."
They get a nod in return, and follow the man into the kitchen, where they find Ravenna standing at the sink, staring into a water glass blankly, hair dripping onto her mostly bare shoulders, wearing a sports bra and jean shorts, revealing a plethora of scars littering her upper body.
She turns to them with wide eyes as Lennox clears his throat, not that they see it with her sunglasses on once more. "Major? Master Sargent?" she asks in a somewhat weak voice, sounding younger than she is, unknowing that she reveals she had been run through and should not have survived. "What are you doing here?"
"We need to know who everyone with you at the club was," Epps answers carefully.
She frowns at that. "Why does it matter who I spend time with?"
Lennox returns the frown. "It wouldn't, usually. But old 'Hide found out none of them are in any database."
She winces at that, and Leon sighs. "It's a long story, and we have a good reason… it's just that it happens to be a little more than Black Ops level Top Secret. Even you don't have clearance."
They almost growl. "What the hell did you do to get involved in this?" Lennox asks softly, suddenly seeing the little girl she had once been.
She shakes her head. "They're family… or close enough they might as well be," she answers quietly. "Sir, I… I understand if you don't see fit to trust me anymore, or even fire me… but believe me, you'll know about it sooner or later. Whether or not I'm alive to confirm everything is uncertain," she finishes off bitterly, pouring out the water and leaving the glass in the sink.
The following year, she barely speaks unless she absolutely has to, remaining distant to all those on base except for Optimus, in whom she confides that she doesn't know what to do. They spend hours talking some nights when she can't sleep, and he only understands that she feels like she will betray NEST in the long run from prior loyalties.
He learns of a world of chaos, death, and a father's betrayal.
She learns to trust one of her superiors.
Neither share what they learned of the other as she reaches the end of her second year of working for NEST, at the end of November 2012, when everything begins to make sense.
It's during a mission debriefing months after the incident in Chicago when the second global hacking occurs, every screen on the planet showing a young girl in a red light with a deeper red background addresses a handful of people.
"Project Alice, Raven Wesker, the Owner and the Father are coming. Intercept at the emergency entrance of the HIVE and the surrounding city. You have until midnight at the end of the Mayan Calendar before they arrive. Do what I failed to ten years ago."
The brand new tablet Ravenna held slipped from numb fingers, shattering on the floor and bringing all attention to her in that instant.
"Find the antivirus and release it into the atmosphere, but remember, doing so will kill all beings infected with all variants. You must not allow Umbrella to win!"
Eyes wide and hands shaking, she turns to leave the hangar when security stops her. "Get out of my way, boys. I don't wanna have to hurt anyone else," she whispers to them, pleading for them to move.
"Abernathy, what do you know?" Lennox asks from beside Mearing, whom nobody has realized is just as tense as her.
She turns to face NEST, finding all weapons aimed at her, and lasers lined up to her chest. "You've seen what they did to me," she answers clearly, coldly. "I think you should know by now we've been lying to you for a long time, yet done nothing to harm you or your allies. If you let me go, I won't have to hurt anyone here."
Lennox stares down at her, eyes wide with sudden fear as his instincts scream for him to run. "What do you know?" he asks, trying to keep his voice level.
"That homicidal bitch of a computer just gave us a warning, that if we don't heed, will mean a fate worse than death for every living creature on this planet." She looks around the room to see the faces of the toughest men and women she's ever met paling in sudden terror. "And it's not just business… it got personal when I was twelve years old, and I begged my uncle to put a bullet in my head so I would never get back up." Weapons meet the floor all around the hangar, and she takes advantage of that fact to run from the room.
Optimus is the only one to recover fast enough to attempt catching up to her, but she's long gone by the time he makes it outside. "Find her!" he orders through the intercom.
The raid at her home reveals nothing but six DVDs, marked to be viewed only if the labelled person dies before Christmas. They respect Ravenna enough to understand that, since she never wrote up a Will, that this was their way of leaving one.
They don't question it when Mearing vanishes the following morning, but they do when she doesn't make it to the monthly meeting a week after Ravenna disappeared.
They hack every camera around the globe, only managing to catch glimpses of the six people they desperately hunt for, all heading north individually, but slowly converging on a location in the old mining regions of southern New York or north eastern Pennsylvania. To their surprise, Mearing is there, but there is no sign of 'Ali' as they had been expecting.
They too converge on the location, the outskirts of an abandoned settlement hidden in a valley, but overlooked by a mansion, arriving hours after the group.
The NEST soldiers fan out through the ghost town, whipping their guns around at most little sounds, and suddenly wishing they had brought the Autobots.
A snarl and pounding feet fills their ears before a single gunshot rings through the frigid winter air.
Leon holds the gun with the smoking barrel, glaring at the soldiers as he approaches. "I thought you were smart enough to stay away," he growls, pushing Lennox away from the half-rotted body.
"What the hell is goin' on?" he asks shakily as his men raise their weapons against Leon.
"He saves your life, and that's how you thank him?" Claire asks incredulously, stepping out from a darkened alley.
"I told you they were going to follow us," Mearing informs them, following Claire from the same alley.
"Mearing?!" Graham calls in shock.
"Yes and no, boys," she smirks, before her aged features morph into a younger woman, her hair shortening and darkening, eyes fading to the blue-green only a few recall. "My name is Alice, better known as Project Alice."
A low scraping sound fills their ears, and a growl echoes as the grinding stops at the end of the street. The enormous being has spikes driven through its bloody form, a blood-stained sack covering the head, a butcher's apron over rags, and a monstrous, blood and grime covered axe being lifted in its hands.
Terror fills them all, even those with experience. "Run," Alice whispers, turning herself and grabbing Graham.
They turn to find Ravenna standing behind them in a pair of black jean shorts and black tank top, removing her sunglasses as a small army of Lickers, both evolved and not, gather behind her.
Her glowing blue eyes remain focused on the Executioner on the other end of the street. "Go with Alice, gentlemen," she tells them lowly, dropping her sunglasses and shattering the lenses. "I'll take care of this." She gestures lazily with one hand, and the Lickers charge down the street.
"Let's go!" Lennox shouts, going down a side street as the bioweapons clash.
The soldiers of NEST run into the nearest building, charging up the first staircase they find to make it to the roof, chased by a horde of the undead as they do so. The shots they fire almost randomly hardly slow the horde down, but the shots from the unknown group puts them down and keeps them down, giving enough time for the heavy doors of the building to close before any undead can enter.
"Was anyone bitten or scratched?" Claire asks as she discards her heavier winter coat, leaving a reddish leather jacket to cover her arms.
Resounding negatives come from the shell-shocked soldiers. "What the hell is going on here?" Lennox growls, stalking over to Leon.
He earns a glare for his efforts. "You've just walked into the middle of an apocalypse that somehow wandered into a different dimension, one that's lasted the better part of a decade now. Geographically, this is the city where it all started, in an underground research facility called the Hive."
"And Mearing?" Graham asks, glaring slightly at the woman.
Alice shrugs as she casually tosses aside her own coat. "I was the head of security for the Hive, but when I learned of the research going on, I arranged for someone to escape with inside information I personally couldn't retrieve. She wound up dead with the other researchers before she could make it out, when my partner released the virus into the air conditioning system. The Red Queen, the girl who hacked the global servers, is an artificial intelligence who killed everyone in there to prevent the spread of the virus, but she failed when Umbrella sent in a team to investigate what went on." She breathes in and out slowly. "I don't remember much from before all of that, but I know enough that I was trying to bring down Umbrella for what they were doing."
"Just what were they doing?" Lennox asks with dread.
"Researching and developing illegal, viral weaponry," she answers quietly, not meeting anyone's gaze. "I was taken into the Hive with a strike team they sent to deactivate the Red Queen, and watched as they were killed one at a time, until only one other made it out alive, but he was infected on the way out by a Licker, one much like the ones Raven can control. She was infected in a similar way a year later by a mutated version, but somehow mutated enough to heal from fatal injuries and have some measure of control over the Lickers."
"What happened to the other person?" one of the younger NEST soldiers asks gently.
She frowns slowly, blinking a few times. "I don't remember it clearly, but he mutated so much that he turned into a monster, strong with incredible healing abilities, but controlled almost entirely by Umbrella's programming. They experimented on us both, infecting me directly with the T-Virus, rather than by a host, causing me to mutate in a similar way, but more of an evolution than a mutation."
She appears to them covered in blood and with a slight limp. "Claire? Alice?" she calls somewhat weakly.
"Up here!" Lennox calls in relief, waving to her from the edge of the building, grateful for the lack of undead swarming outside of their building.
She looks up with a smile, before collapsing as a gunshot rings out, and blood pools under her limp, unmoving form. A blonde man with hair slicked back and stiff, aristocratic features approaches her, and kneels down to turn her over with a gentle hand. "There you are," he growls, before lifting her unmoving form and walking away.
"Ravenna!" Lennox shouts, before a horde of undead returns to the store and they focus their fire on the returned undead, unable to go after the man they can only assume to be Albert Wesker.
"He's got Ravenna," Graham reports to Leon as soon as the last of the horde has been shot down.
Leon growls, and leans against the wall. "He's not gonna let her go easily once she heals, and he has the drugs to suppress her abilities, making her helpless. We can't easily rescue her, and we're miles from the mansion."
"What's with this mansion?" Lennox asks tiredly.
Carlos clears his throat. "It's the emergency entrance and exit to the Hive, where he's likely to have already taken her and the train underground."
"Indeed he has," the Red Queen's child-like voice fills the air, and a small screen lights up with her image. "There's another way in, although Wesker is liable to take control of the security measures soon."
"You're a computer, don't you have final control over everything?" Leon asks.
"No, my programming will not allow me to harm or disobey a direct order from an employee with certain privileges. However, you suffer no such constraints, so I must ask that you work to stop both Albert Wesker and Dr. Isaacs quickly, and release the airborne anti-virus."
Alice nods slowly. "I understand," she acknowledges quietly.
"Do you, Project Alice?" the computer asks evenly.
"There's no other option. Like I said to your sister, kill a few, save a lot, right?" she smiles bitterly, before turning to face Claire. "Let's go."
"What about us?" Lennox asks, knowing that Alice is still his superior.
"Keep the undead from escaping the city as best you can," she answers after a moment. "Hopefully someone will make it back alive."
The bodies of the undead fall lifelessly to the ground just as they seem to overrun the minor quarantine NEST had managed to pull together, and they breathe easier now that the fight is finally over.
Optimus, Ratchet, and Bumblebee put away their cannons with their own mechanical whines of relief. "We should search for the others," Optimus orders the others quietly, heading into the city to find his friend.
"Optimus, what if they didn't make it?" Ratchet asks quietly, not wanting to have his own doubt plague the minds of his human comrades.
"One of them has to have made it out alive, Ratchet," he answers just as quietly, approaching the manor where he sees several human forms huddled together. "There they are," he calls to the humans, who flock to their Cybertronian friends as they rush to the mansion.
They all stop short as Alice's eyes flutter open, only to stare into the lifeless eyes of Raven Wesker.
They bury her a month later with great regret. But as another month passes, a college student visiting D.C. with her high school friends pulls them up short. Her hair pitch black, eyes a soft blue with black sunglasses perched in her hair, and almost impossible resemblance to the fallen medical officer. A deeper search reveals her to have a DNA match at one-hundred percent, but with a full background in order with photographic evidence, which they lacked with Raven.
Ironically, her name is Ravenna Kennedy, raised by a single mom with a runaway dad.
A year later, she graduates with a degree in Cyber-Security, already recruited to NEST and working three days after the ceremony.
She stares at a paper copy of a file with shock, seeing her own face in that of a blonde who died over two years ago in an operation that had been blacked out.
Lennox finds her in the storage room and sighs, knowing he has to say something now. "We noticed the resemblance a year before you graduated," he informs her, catching her attention in the otherwise silent, dusty room. "You have similar backgrounds, the same DNA, and same attitude."
She looks back down to the picture. "Is that why you hired me then, Major? Because I'm almost her?"
He shrugs in return. "It's what caught our attention, before your degree was considered, and the job opened up."
She refuses to look back up at him. "And if I hadn't caught your attention?" she asks quietly.
"I guess we'll never know."
He finds only a letter of resignation on his desk the following morning, and all of her things gone from her desk, aside from the signed Non-Disclosure Agreement and a note to not bother contacting her again.
She never made it home, and was missing, presumed dead, from that point forward.