++++++ Thought I'd get in a chapter before bed.

I hope you enjoy.

I do not own ++++++

Two

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

Aside from the slow, unsteady squeaky movement of a chain hanging from the roof, it was the only sound that echoed throughout the empty gym. Her bare feet slapped soundlessly against the floor beneath her, moving in a pattern akin to a dancer following the directions of an experienced choreographer.

She struck out in front of her like a deadly cobra, delivering what would be a lethal punch to any normal person in a repetitive motion. It had been almost four years to the date since Raccoon City, four years since she'd faked her death and lost those which she held most dear. Granted it hadn't started out as a fake death but when the opportunity presented itself, she jumped at the chance to keep her loved ones safe.

"Christina! Don't let me go!" she cried.

"Terra! I can't hold-Leon! Claire! Somebody help! I can't hold her…TK!" she screamed as she slipped through her hands. "TK!" Her body hit the water with a solid thud, the overhanging balcony followed suit, crashing into the water below right where she'd landed. A red stain spread out from underneath the twisted metal and stone…

Closing her eyes, Terra 'TK' Kennedy gripped the punching bag until it stopped swinging. She lay her head against it, listening to her own heartbeat. "I'm sorry, Chrissie," she whispered. "Every single day. More then you'll ever know."

"When everyone says that you talk to yourself, I always say they're over-exaggerating. However I think they may be right." The voice behind her belonged to her acting Unit Commander, Justine Fells, formerly British Intelligence. "Insanity isn't a good colour on you, Terra."

TK cocked an eyebrow but remained silent.

Justine Fells frowned. In the time she had TK's handler and then unit commander, she had known the girl to be incredibly silent unless spoken to. Justine was one of the only four people within the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance that knew the circumstanced behind TK's membership within the agency. Justine was also one of the only four who knew that the twenty-six-year-old used to be completely and utterly, one hundred percent loyal to the Umbrella Corporation.

"What do you want?" TK finally questioned. She walked over to one of the benches against the gym wall and sat to start removing the tape around her feet and her wrists. "You've got orders for me?" In the years TK had worked for the BSAA, she wasn't really one for letting loose and having a good time.

Justine dropped a file on the bench beside TK. "Everything's in there that you need to know. You'll be travelling to Romania to take out a laboratory in the Carpathian Mountains. Satellite imagery has the small cabin near a well-travelled tourist road. Intelligence suggests several farms may have also been taken out adding to your problem."

TK picked up the folder, she ran a hand through her ebony hair to get it out of her face. Christine had always adored her ebony curls growing up, not quite straight but not curly either, hair most girls would kill to have and she hated it. After faking her death, the hair was the first thing to go, replaced by a short pixie-bob. It was longer than what she was used to but getting the time to leave base was out of the question most days. Time away from work allowed her to think and thinking brought up painful memories that she wanted to forget.

She did too much of that in therapy twice a week.

"Rendezvous is just outside a town called Vatra Dornei," Justine informed her. "A chopper will pick you up where you'll return to HQ for reassignment."

"Reassignment?" TK frowned. "Reassignment to where?"

She shrugged. "Some place in America. I don't know. The higher ups feel it's better for you and your skills to be put to better use back in the US since Umbrella no longer hunt you. I only deliver the message, TK. Remember?"

TK got to her feet with a frown on her face. She waved Justine off, heading back to her quarter were a bag was already to go. She took her time to go through the bag, checking her ammo and supplies, not wanting to be caught out even though it almost always happened when it came to dealing with Umbrella's pet nasties. Once she was done, the last thing to go in was an old picture of two young girls wearing matching necklaces with stupid grins on their dumb faces.

The back of the photo read Chrissie and TK, grade twelve.

That was the last photo of them and the one thing that TK took everywhere for luck.

Growing up, Terra Kennedy and Christina Burnside had been the best of friends, ever since their first day of kindergarten they had been inseparable. They went through everything together. If it wasn't TK in trouble it was Christina, both girls had been as bad as each other growing up. Living only streets away from each other, Christina was always at the Kennedy household or TK was always at the Burnside residence being followed by her annoying little brother, Steve.

At seventeen, TK left Raccoon City to join the army devastating Christina to tears. They were going to join the police academy together, only TK changed her mind at the last minute and left little over a week later. The two girls tried to stay in touch until eventually any letters Christina sent to her friend were sent back. TK and a bunch of other soldiers in her unit had been snatched away by the Umbrella Corporation two years into their assignment.

So when Umbrella agents were sent to Raccoon City during the outbreak, TK went along willingly. Everything just blew up from there.

TK shook her head and tucked the photo inside the bag. She needed a good shower and then she would come back and properly read what was going on in Romania. If she was right, there would be very little time to get this right and that window was closing fast.

-XXX-

Standing far behind the gathering crowd, she never realized how many friends she actually had. TK's supposed that one never knows until their funeral. She was to be buried with full honours-well the body inside the coffin was to be. She had never been so blessed then to have been found by the US Army before.

It had taken weeks, if not months for her broken bones to heal and only after being declared MIA was she swooped up for her skills and experience with the un-dead.

Through the crowds of people, she could see the auburn head of her best friend, Christina resting on the shoulders of her brother, shoulders moving as she sobbed.

A gentle breeze flowed through her hair, moving as she ran in a steady motion down the road. The smell of decaying flesh forced her to breathe through her mouth and not her nose. It was never a smell the soldier would ever get used to no matter how many years of experience.

She could hear screams and shouts for help ahead of her.

When TK burst through the tree line her emerald eyes widened in horror at the sheer chaos of what was happening before her. The initial report said no more than twenty infected but this…this was far more than twenty.

TK moved for her knife as movement shuffled just in the corner of her eye. She flung her fist out and struck the infected right through its eye socket, straight into its brain. Turning her head, TK noticed that there was something particularly different about this particular zombie, it had no teeth or hands-they'd been surgically removed.

She wrenched the knife free, letting the body drop to the ground before she advanced on the buffet ahead of her. In amongst the decaying flesh, a familiar scent of fruity floral perfume somehow wafted into her face.

"Christina?" she whispered. TK broke out into a run and in the distance there she was, smashing one of the infected head in with a tire iron. TK bit her lip, could she risk it, she wondered as she looked through the small sight of the SIG 556. Her mind made itself up as four of the undead turned their attentions onto Christina, hunger the only thing on their minds.

TK gently squeezed the trigger, not once, not twice but four times in rapid succession. Four loud shots rang out across the valley, almost drowned out by the sound of screaming.

One by one, the foul creatures fell to the ground with a sickening crunch and a splatter of blood, covering Christina's boots. She could see her friend freeze in terror. In that moment, it perplexed TK as to how the former police officer had made it into the Department of Security Operations.

"Come on, Chrissie," she whispered, seeing a zombie come up behind her. "Duck, duck, goose." TK grinned when she saw the years' worth of instinct and training kicking in as Christina ducked. TK fired a fifth shot taking out the creature behind the girl as she ran forward.

"Christina! To your feet!" TK ordered, running at her friend.

Christina gasped when she heard her voice. Her hand went straight to the necklace she wore as TK pulled her to her feet. "TK!" she gasped. "How?" All the colour had drained from Christina's face.

TK stared into her former friends lavender colour eyes, in her right hand she held out her Beretta 92FS, loaded and ready to go. "Follow me and don't fall behind!" she ordered. Spinning around on her heals, hunting knife in one hand and rifle in the other, TK ran her path through the undead preying that Christina was right behind her.

The fight, she hoped, was all that was in their way towards freedom.