"We're taking you to a safe house tonight," Chris Redfield said. He turned so that she could see his face in the cabin lights of the car that smelled like old leather and Pinesol. "We're gonna see about getting you out of the country tomorrow. Could be on plane headed back to the States by this time. That would be nice, yeah?"

He was sitting in the front passenger seat; his partner was driving. Sherry watched her. She had dark hair, pulled back in a neat pony tail, hidden under a ball cap. She was a pretty woman, but unconventionally so. Large, wide blue eyes that were neither warm nor cold, and a nose that had been broken several times. She'd introduced herself, and her name had been the only thing that she'd said for over half an hour. Jill Valentine. Her name was Jill Valentine, and she drove just above the posted speed limit in the suburbs of Paris.

He clicked the overhead light button and the car went dark. The windshield wipers thumped in the spring rain.

"You want something to eat?" he asked Sherry.

"We can't stop," Jill Valentine said. She flipped the turn signal. "You can call it in. Parker is on until midnight. He can bring something."

"Come on… the girl's been interrogated all day."

"Nope." She glanced In the rear view mirror to be sure the assisting B.S.A.A. agents were still behind them. Jill Valentine's tone told Sherry that she was afraid, that she believed Chris should be afraid too, that perhaps they should all be very, very afraid.

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Sorry, kid," he said.


"I have a surprise for you," Wesker said in a teasing voice on the eve of her eighteenth birthday.

At seven that night, the guard in the lobby called the apartment. She listened - he told the doorman in German to let whoever it was through. He tossed her the cell phone and went to the grand entryway. She sat up and leaned over the back of the couch, her curiosity piqued. He waited there, smiling broadly, his hand on the door knob, the locks already undone in preparation for whatever would be on the other side.

They waited forever, it seemed. Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest.

Finally… three hollow raps on the heavy door.

He looked slyly at her, and then opened it.

Her godmother, Alex Wesker, in immaculate white, stood on the other side, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

Sherry couldn't help but gasp.

Alex arched a perfect eyebrow and spread her arms for her brother.

They stepped cautiously towards each other and embraced in the doorway. They fit together in slow motion, two pieces of the same mysterious puzzle, and they stood in that place, cradling one another, for a long moment. They possessed the same lean body, the same golden crown. Sherry watched Alex bury her face in his shoulder, her fingers spreading out over his back.

When she withdrew and stepped away from him, she looked directly at Sherry.

Their gazes met. Alex's hand came to cover her own mouth, and tears welled up in her eyes.


"Why don't you show me this gorgeous place of yours?" Alex asked, turning herself in a circle, a glass of red wine already in hand. She laughed at the enormity, the obscenity. "Good God! These ceilings!"

Sherry looked at Wesker. He was assembling ingredients on a bamboo cutting board, slicing the long green top off a big pink and white radish. He glanced up and nodded in the direction of his sister. "Give her the grand tour now or we'll be listening to that all night," he said, half a smile on his lips.

But she didn't want to show Alex around - she wanted to watch him. She always watched him when he made dinner. She loved his capable hands, loved how his pale fingers delicately peeled and carved and ladled and arranged. Her thoughts turned dark - Alex's clever eyes would see. Alex would figure out the love that she had for him. She would know the unnaturalness of it.

The thought of discovery terrified Sherry.

"Oh come on… Let's go have a girl talk. He'll be fine by himself - trust me," Alex smiled conspiratorially, taking a sip of her wine. She blinked her enormous violet eyes at Sherry over the rim of the glass. "The only thing he's better at than cooking is being an complete ass."

"Quickly, Miss Birkin… my darling… before I poison our guest," he said and stabbed a little paring knife into the cutting board so that it stood on end, quivering.

Alex said something to him in Russian - something that must have been clever or disarming, and brother and sister beamed at each other affectionately. She took Sherry's hand in her own and led her down the hall to the suites, raving the whole way about the crown moulding.


"I wouldn't leave that bathroom. The tub! I can't believe that tub! Divine!" Alex laughed. She moved the glass of wine from hand to the other, jangling the thin gold bracelets on each of her wrists. Her fingernails were painted a deep garnet and they glittered in the warm light of the villa. Sherry watched her graceful hands move - animated and smooth as she babbled away - and wondered if they were a distinctly Wesker trait.

"Is this your room? May I?" Alex asked, flipping her perfectly curled hair over her shoulder.

Sherry gestured. Go on.

Alex balanced the wine in one hand and felt the wall for the light switch, just inside the tall doorway.

"I hope you straightened up in there," came Wesker's doubtful voice from the kitchen.

Sherry and Alex rolled their eyes at the same time.

She flicked the switch, once she found it, and the room was flooded with the same flattering light as the rest of the flat. A large fan set into the tray ceiling spun slowly around; its blades shaped like great leaves. Alex walked to the center of the room, surveying it. She nodded to herself and took a gulp of the wine.

Sherry's bed jutted out from the farthest corner, on an angle. It was supposed to be a fantastical four-post canopy piece, but she hadn't gotten around to hanging the drapery and so it was dressed in humble white sheets and a goose-down comforter. There was a bookshelf too, populated with a few of her textbooks and an odd art piece, and was pushed to the adjoining wall. Sherry's lighted desk was in another corner, close to the enormous bay windows.

"Well, you're both certainly sticking to the um…" Alex waved her hand. "Modern look. It's very modern. Abstract even… in it's sparseness. Yes. It's abstract."

She looked around again and spotted Sherry's walk-in closet. Her eyes lit up and set her glass down on the art desk. The red wine sloshed dangerously close to a large sketchpad; Sherry had to stop herself from cringing.

"Oh, you have to let me see your wardrobe… you must," Alex demanded.


She stood in Sherry's closet, the toe of her red platform tapping. She browsed through what seemed a million blouses and and sweaters and cardigans, commenting on each. Alex pushed another hanger down the rod; she held out a sun dress to inspect its full length. It was a jewel-tone blue, as deep as midnight. She hummed to herself, running her hand down the front of it reverently. Sherry climbed up onto her tall royal bed and sat cross-legged.

"You picked this out?" Alex asked.

Sherry shook her head, tearing at her already painful nails.

"Ah." Alex nodded, returning to the dress. "He always did have such exquisite taste in clothes…" She trailed off, parting another row and studying a hand-sequined tank top. "He must love seeing you in all this. His sweet little doll."

Sherry looked down, thinking for the first time that perhaps she disappointed him with her plain style, her average looks. She hid her body away with big t-shirts and baggy jeans when he clearly wanted her to be as well-groomed as he was. She felt a daughter's guilt, for squandering all the gifts he'd given… and a lover's shame, for failing to attract him.

"My friends would come over, when we were young…" Alex inspected a blouse with scalloped sleeves. "And if he was home, it was like I didn't exist." She sighed. "Where's your brother? I want to show him what I'm wear-ing," she said in a nasal, mocking tone.

She emerged from the closet, smirking like Wesker himself, and joined Sherry on the bed. They were quiet together for a moment.

"How long has it been since I've seen you? Ten years?" Alex asked.

"Six," she replied in her cricket's voice.

Alex sighed. "Six years… You were so small and scared then. How time flies." She reached up and took a section of Sherry's long blonde hair in her hands. She absently combed through the thick waves with her fingers. "Look at all this hair," she said. "As light as theirs… lighter, maybe. Lovely."

"Thank you," Sherry whispered. She swallowed, made nervous by the attention.

Alex separated her hair into three sections and gently pulled them taut until they looked like three cords of shining gold rope under the warm light. She began to lazily braid. "Do you have a boyfriend? Tell me - is he an absolute angel, just like you?" Alex asked.

"No," she said.

"A girlfriend then? I've always preferred girls myself," Alex smiled, leaning close and nudging Sherry's shoulder. "They're so soft and beautiful and willing… and they taste like heaven."

"No," Sherry smiled too, blushing. "I don't have a girlfriend either."

Alex frowned while her fingers continued to braid. "No one? My poor Sherry… Does he allow you to date? Is that it? He won't let you?"

Sherry took a breath and held it, thinking. "I've never tried. I don't know… what he'd say."

In all actuality, she knew exactly what he would say, but it didn't matter. She would never so much as think of another man as long as he lived.

"Well, he should let you date… You ought to be out with people your own age." Alex said, braiding more quickly as she came near to the ends of the hair. "You shouldn't be cloistered away with a stodgy old man like my brother." She finished her work and rested her chin on Sherry's shoulder. "Even if he thinks he's still really cool."

Sherry nodded because she wasn't sure what else to do, and looked at the flaxen braid that Alex laid over her chest.

"A little bird told me that you're a real artist now." Alex hopped off the bed. She walked over to the desk in front of the windows and picked up her wine. She took a deep sip and then licked her cherry lips. "Show me. Show me everything." And her eyes sparkled.


She paged slowly through the portfolio, letting each different-sized sheet, or canvas, or watercolor paper fall from her fingers into a careful pile. She would stop on occasion and drink, or make an admiring sound. Sherry knelt near her and watched, with her nervous little hands in her lap.

Alex stopped on a portrait of Wesker in profile. Sherry recalled the day, and the reason she had chosen to capture him that moment. He had been looking through his phone, both thumbs busy with the keyboard and the scrolling ball. He had been frowning and then laughed suddenly, loudly, until his eyes teared up. He had been so joyous.

"You study him often," Alex finally said as she reluctantly set the portrait on the pile with the rest of her work. Her voice was flat.

Sherry's heart pounded; her racing pulse throbbed in her temples.

"I suppose he's easy enough to draw… with all those sharp angles. What do you call him?" She asked smoothly.

Sherry stuttered. "I… I'm sorry?"

"What do you call my brother? Albert? Dr. Wesker?" She laid another picture down. "Or do you call him Dad, just to make things simple?"

Her breath hitched. "I don't know… I don't… I don't call him anything."

"Hmm." Alex regarded her thoughtfully. "I used to call him Albie. It drove him crazy." She grinned.

Sherry giggled, unsure. Tension knotted in her lower back.

Alex stroked the next piece of Sherry's work. "And who is this?"

"A model. From here, from Germany." Sherry looked over Alex's shoulder.

"Oh… what a cock," Alex hissed, nearly choking when her eyes found his groin. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Sherry smiled - a big, open-mouthed guffaw. "He hates these," she whispered, glancing up at the open door.

"I bet he does." Alex lifted the picture high in the light. "The boy is huge. Are you sure this is to scale?"

Sherry laughed and covered her face with her hands. "Yes," she said sheepishly.

"You weren't exaggerating for dramatic effect, were you?"

Sherry looked at her, wide-eyed. "I swear."

Alex shook her head in wonder. "Jesus." She held up her mostly empty second glass of wine, as if to toast. "I've decided… that this should be your boyfriend, Sherry. Cheers, and good luck."

They leaned into each other, laughing.

"So much fun being had without me," Wesker said. He stood in the doorway, wrapping a dish towel around his hand.

"Brother dearest, just in time! Miss Birkin was showing me her art collection." Alex quoted in the air. "She said this is your favorite." She smiled and flipped the sketch so he could see. Sherry snorted.

"Christ," he groaned, turning away from them. He snapped the towel and then hung it over his shoulder. "Dinner is ready. Not that either of you deserve it."


Sherry dragged the rolling suitcase up the narrow staircase of the safe house, and to the middle of the tiny room they'd assigned her. She laid the suitcase down, facing up, and unzipped it, stopping to gather her hair. With one hand, she held the messy bun in place on the back of her head, and pulled the rubber band off her wrist with her teeth. She wrapped the tie around the bun twice and tucked the stray ends under. She sighed and rummaged through the clothes she'd been allowed to bring.

Chris Redfield knocked softly on the door frame. She stopped, a pair of flannel pants balled up in her hands, but she did not turn to him.

"Hey… I'm sorry to… There's um, Chinese downstairs. If you're hungry. You've gotta be… starving."

She listened and waited.

He stepped across the threshold into her room, and she could feel his weight on the creaking floor boards of the old French farmhouse. He didn't stand behind her, but someplace off to her left, mindful of the space between them, aware of his own presence and violation it might be to her.

"If there's anything that you… felt like you couldn't tell Agent Flannegan, I'll be here with you… every step of the way," he said softly.

"I don't know where he is," she replied, surprising even herself with her terse manner. She looked at him then, and met his eyes fiercely.

He stood against the louver doors of the closet, his obscenely-muscled arms crossed over his broad chest. "I know. I know you don't know where he is. I just thought… I thought maybe you might need someone to talk to. I believe you."

She looked down and uncrumpled the pants in her hands. She folded them and smoothed the material down almost meditatively.

"He used to do that."

Sherry frowned, not understanding.

"He used to do that to fabric. Always. Couldn't stand a wrinkle." He dropped his arms and opened himself to her, perhaps consciously. She studied him.

"You care if I…" he asked, gesturing the bed. She shook her head and he sat carefully on the edge of the mattress.

She went back to organizing her clothes. She piled a few t-shirts off the side of the suitcase on the floor. "Who are you to him?" she asked without looking up.

He took a thoughtful breath before speaking. She decided she liked that - how he thought before he spoke. "I worked with him. Years ago. He was my captain… in Raccoon City."

She nodded.

"When we… came to get you —"

Her teeth ground, recalling how she'd been forced to her knees, weeping as what seemed the barrels of a thousand rifles were aimed at her… The yelling, the chaos, the helicopters over their villa. She blinked, and memory of the day before was gone. All that was left was Chris Redfield, sitting on a bed that wasn't hers, in a stranger's safe house, at the end of a dark and winding road in the French countryside. He looked at her with watery blue eyes. Kind blue eyes.

"We found the letter, on the desk. With my name, and my contact information," he said, watching her. "Why would he… why me?"

Sherry looked very hard at him. "He said you were the only person he could trust."


He'd made her favorites, in honor of her special day. His piquant shaved celery and radish salad, followed by his rustic penne alla vodka with hand-crushed tomatoes, finished off with a chocolate cake he'd ordered from a bakery they frequented. He'd grumbled at her choices; A meal should have an order, Cricket, it should make sense, and these dishes have no business being on the same table. But she had held her ground, and he gave in, as he was wont to do with her, always.

Wesker and Alex made coded small talk over dinner, and she watched Sherry the entire time; it seemed that nothing escaped her scrutinizing eyes. Sherry, for her own part, remained completely silent.

The conversation between them slowed, coming almost to a stop. Alex bit a piece of penne in half. She'd turned her laser-like attention on Wesker then as he used a knife to move some of the pickled salad onto a fork. Alex's cruel eyes were half-lidded and she chewed slowly.

Sherry fidgeted with a cloth napkin under the table.

"Angel?" Alex asked suddenly. "You'll tell me the truth, won't you?" She paused. "Is my brother in love with someone?"

Wesker sighed, his nostrils flaring, and crunched a mouthful of celery. He pushed back from the table and regarded Alex with a fatigued expression.

Sherry's stomach somersaulted. She thought of the beautiful woman, nearly three years before, crossing from his room to the bath, the sickening smell of her perfume and the sickening smell of something else, something dark. She thought of the nights he spent out, coming back in the early hours of morning, perhaps not daring to bring another woman home as she got older. She was seized with the nausea of panic.

Alex leaned back, crossing her arms. Her lips, somehow still impossibly glossy and red even after eating an entire meal, turned up in the corners, settling in an almost-smile for him. "Don't look at me like that. It's just a feeling… a hunch," she said, teasing. She peeked at Sherry, who was shrunken and small in her chair. "You know, I haven't seen him this content in decades. He seems… like a man in love, doesn't he?"

Sherry sat very still.

Wesker stood, dragging in a deep, tired breath. He took a sip of his water, a few half-melted ice cubes slipping into his mouth. "If there was someone, you would know," he said with a certitude that felt like punctuation. An ice cube shattered loudly between his white teeth. "You'll excuse me for a moment."

Sherry didn't know whether to be relieved or heartbroken.

They watched as he went to the kitchen.

"My God, if you don't look just like your mother and father," Alex said as soon as he was busy in the cupboards.

Sherry jumped in her seat when Wesker forcefully dropped a plate to the marble countertop. Alex looked up at him, unmoved.

They stared at each other for a long, discomforting moment before Sherry intervened.

"It's alright." She cleared her throat. "I know they're dead. It's okay."

He hung his head and braced himself on the bar that separated the dining room from the kitchen.

Alex gazed at Sherry sadly. "I was close to your mother. I miss her very much. Not a day goes by that I don't think about her… that we don't think about her," she said, gesturing to Wesker. He returned to the table with an armful of plates and he set one in front of each of them.

"Sister," he warned in a barely restrained voice. "Let's all try our best to look to the future, especially on Sherry's day." He raised a knowing eyebrow as he sat down and scooted his chair closer to the table.

"Of course. The future. So what did you get for your birthday?" Alex asked, and took a bite of her cake. She scraped her teeth down the tines of the fork, her eyes rolling back dramatically at the decadence of the frosting. "Mmm."

Sherry glanced up at Wesker. His fingers trailed up and down the sweating stem of his wine glass. He nodded.

She held out her hand so that Alex could see the silver ring on her middle finger. A snake, with ruby eyes, eating it's own tail so that it made a perfect circle.

"Uroboros," Alex said, squinting at the ring as she turned Sherry's hand this way and that. "A beautiful gift for a beautiful girl. And now… my present."

Sherry shook her head - you shouldn't have - but Alex was already unsnapping her clutch.

She set a velvet drawstring purse on the table, in the middle of the chaos of plates.

"Oh, Alex…," Wesker scolded quietly. "Still channeling Aleister Crowley, are we?"

She ignored him and folded her arms so that her elbows rested on the table. She looked deeply and seriously into Sherry's eyes. "Would you like a glimpse into that future of yours?"


She instructed Sherry to shuffle the cards and then cut the deck several times. "Think very hard on a pressing question you have, angel, but do not say it out loud," she said, tapping her nails on the wooden arm of the dining chair. And so Sherry did:

Is it me he loves?

Alex took the Tarot cards back and split the deck into three even piles. She pointed to the first. "The past." Then to the middle. "The present." And finally, to the third. "The future."

She turned the top card from the the pile of The Past and laid it carefully on the gleaming table top. Sherry tilted her head to better see. A burning tower, people falling from its windows, crying. Sherry frowned and looked to Alex.

"Don't be surprised, my love," she said. "It's exactly what it seems - a disaster, death, chaos. We all know what happened." She paused. "Would you like me to continue with this… or are you satisfied with the past?"

"It's the past," Sherry said softly. "It's done."

Alex turned down a card from The Present. A disembodied hand holding an overflowing chalice, and a downward-facing dove. "The Ace of Cups."

Wesker sat forward and watched closely, his pupils contracting to slits under the moody lighting of the crystal chandelier.

"This is a welcome card. It tells me that… you are existing in a period of calmness right now, and that you feel… supported, loved, cherished. This is a time of opening your heart. You are safe." She reached for the deck again. "Would you like to know more?"

Sherry nodded.

She flipped another card for The Present. It was an expressionless, regal man on a throne, holding a broad sword. "Hmm." She stared at the card, her lips pursing. "The King of Swords. An interesting card. There's an established male presence." From under her furrowed brow, she cast a dark glance at Wesker. "He will be ruled by intellect. He will be wise and he will give you excellent counsel. But —" She paused. "In affairs of the heart… he will be useless to you."

Wesker cradled his chin in his palm, his long fingers thrumming against his cheek.

"Another?" Alex asked her.

"No," Sherry said, and her heart beat just a little faster.

"Onto The Future then." Alex pulled the first card from the final pile. The image was upside down; an old man with a long gray beard, holding out a lantern. Alex blinked at the card, and without asking Sherry, pulled another. The Lovers. And then the The Knight of Swords.

Finally: The Empress.

Alex relaxed in her chair. "A period of isolation and self-reflection. A long time, perhaps years. You will struggle with yourself, alone. This will be followed by a new relationship, with a young man, younger even than you… a soldier, I think, or some other profession in defense - but it will be a complex courtship, with a lot of… moving parts. And here, with the Empress, we have some sort of ultimate acceptance, and abundance. There will be child, many children maybe."

Alex looked first at Sherry, and then at her brother. "What? It's a good life. Why the long faces?"

Sherry feigned a smile for her godmother, but she saw that Wesker did not.


The little party moved slowly to the dark parlor, all of them drowsy and well-fed. Wesker dropped his iPod in Alex's lap after she'd badgered him to turn on some damn music, and he opened the great glass doors that went out to the atrium, letting the humid night air into the flat. Barefoot, he sauntered around his potted garden, stopping sometimes to examine the leaves of a perennial or a vegetable or an herb. Alex laid on her back, her legs draped over the arm of a comically long couch with one of her red heels half off. She scrolled through his catalogue, the blue light of the device on her china-white face. Sherry curled up in an overstuffed chair and watched them.

Alex chose something and Wesker's sound system clicked on, lighting up in an ornate old curio. "Suddenly I can't remember. How did we dance in Seventies?"

Wesker leaned on the doorframe and stroked the pale petals of a lily he'd picked. He smiled to himself. "Badly. We danced badly."

The Eagles' Life In the Fast Lane poured into the room. Don Henley's voice sounded distant and eerie in the otherwise still apartment.

"He was a hard-headed man, he was brutally handsome… and she was terminally pretty," Alex sang along softly, winking at the end of the lyric for Sherry. She sat up and slipped off her pumps. "Do you remember," she said to Wesker as the song went into its second verse. "How we used to get very dressed up and sneak out of the dormitories, and how we'd drive up to the city in the middle of the night and go to the disco? Do you?"

Wesker chuckled, an embarrassed sound in the darkness. "I do, yes. Unfortunately."

"He was about your age then. He was so young, angel. And he could dance - he was amazing," Alex said to Sherry in a thrilling, secretive voice.

"God, stop," he mumbled, stifling his laughter.

Alex got up and walked to him across the hardwood floor in time to the music. He shook his head at her and dodged when she reached out to him. They laughed breathlessly, brother and sister in a game of cat and mouse; he held her at arm's length, and she twisted herself free, landing playful punches and pinches to his sides until he relented and spun her around in a slow circle. He brought her in then, a hand on her lower back, with the other holding hers. He led her in a dance and she let him.

"He was too tired to make it… She was too tired to fight about it," Alex sang to him, taunting.

Sherry smiled at them.

They finished out Life In the Fast Lane and stood in place, waiting for the next song on the playlist. The opening snare drum of Addicted to Love echoed in the great room.

"And then the Eighties… The drugs were so pure… Our hair was so big," she went on, glancing over her shoulder at Sherry. "He used to help me tease mine before we'd go out - I could never get the back right. How much Aquanet do you think the two of us went through?"

"Oh, we single-handedly put that hole in the ozone layer, no doubt," he said.

They danced closer to a side table; Alex picked her wine up without missing a beat. She took a deep drink, swallowing several times before setting it back down. She broke away from him and tousled her hair so that it fell to her shoulders in messy white waves. He watched her, his lips set in a permanently amused smile.

"You like to think that you're immune to the stuff… Oh yeah… It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough," she purred, crawling up the front of his body. "You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love."

He stilled her flirtatious hands in his own. He grinned. "You're such a slut, Ally."

She pushed him away and laughed, running a hand over her wild hair. "So were you, back then. We all were. Everyone was so much more… alive." She turned to Sherry. "Your father did a ridiculous amount of cocaine, back in the Eighties. Your mother, goody-two-shoes that she was, never touched it. But your father —"

Wesker's smile dropped and he glared at her. "He got sober, once Sherry was conceived. And he never went back."

Alex picked up her wine again. "Yes, yes. I remember. He really turned over a new leaf. He did." She conceded and smiled wickedly, finishing the wine in one gulp. She held the empty glass at eye-level, and seemed disappointed. "Get up, angel. Keep him warm while I replenish."

When Sherry didn't move from the chair, Alex hurried her to standing. She pulled reluctant Sherry along, across the parlor, and then gently pushed her very close to him. They stood nearly nose to nose, their bare toes touching and then retreating awkwardly. Sherry found she could barely breathe. She stared at his chest, watching it rise and fall.

Don't be odd. She told herself, and closed her eyes. Don't be bizarre. You have been this close to him before, a thousand times.

Haltingly, she brought her hands up and around the back of his neck. She had to rise up to meet him, feeling for the first time her breasts under her plain thin t-shirt, pressed against his body. His heat was indescribable.

His hands settled on the sensitive curve just about her hipbones; he held her delicately, as if his hot touch might set fire to her. In the humid room, she felt a blush spread over her face, and every hair on her scalp pricked to attention. He cleared his throat, the sound so close to her that she could feel the vibrations of it, and the next song started.

"Dance!" Alex ordered and disappeared into the kitchen, carrying the empty glass and laughing to herself.

Come to me, run to me, do and be done with me. Annie Lennox's voice seemed to float up to the vaulted ceiling and hang there in the exposed ductwork, like a mist.

They swayed slowly and their thighs brushed together. The sensation, the proximity, forcing the secret place between her legs to bloom, and the unused muscles there fluttered almost painfully in anticipation.

Don't I exist for you, don't I still live for you? Everything I possess, given with tenderness, wrapped in a ribbon of glass.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

She breathed and her mouth was incredibly wet. "For what?"

"I forget… that no one is like us," he whispered.

The word us gave her pause. Her heart ached. "It's okay," she managed.

"It's not," he argued in her ear. "She's unbearable."

Sherry smiled and turned her face away.

Dying is easy - it's living that scares me to death… I could be so content hearing the sound of your breath.

"I thought it would be a pleasant visit… that you might need the company of someone else," he said. "Someone other than—"

"I don't," she replied quickly, quietly. "I don't need anyone else."

Slip me inside of your heart… Don't I belong to you, baby? Don't you know that nothing can tear us apart?

Their eyes met in the dark of the room. He stopped and simply held her there while they looked at each other as though for the very first time.

Telling you that I loved you right from the start... But the more I want you the less I get - Ain't that just the way things are...

Her pulse pounded in her ears at her unusual audacity, her own blood and his thunderous silence threatening to deafen her.

His lips parted.

Winter has frozen us… Let love take hold of us.

Alex returned to the parlor and waltzed in time to the song, alone and satisfied with her wine. "You're supposed to be dancing," she said, and then began to sing. "Catch me and let me dive under… For I want to swim in the pools of your eyes."

Wesker moved stiffly, suddenly awakened, and they danced out of sync with the music. Sherry could not feel her own legs; his hands were heavy and hard on her waist then. She looked down and her chest tightened with humiliation.

Don't you know it's cold… cold… cold.

The song faded and another ballad started.

"May I cut in?" Alex asked, smiling.

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. His jaw clenched, but he released Sherry. His fingertips lingered, hovering just over her hips, and then his touch was gone. He stepped back and Alex took his place, handing him her wine. He seemed frozen to the spot for a moment, watching them with such a haunted expression on his face, but then he faded away to the edge of the room, like a shadow.

Alex held Sherry's hand in her own, and pressed it between them. She pulled her in very close and began to slow dance.

"Happy birthday, angel," she said in a voice so low it was a caress. Her eyes, piercing and clear earlier in the evening, seemed hazy and luminous.

Somewhere in the flat, an old grandfather clock struck midnight.

Sherry cast nervous glances at Wesker as Alex spun her around, so slowly it was as if they were dancing underwater. He watched them from where he sat, his arms spread wide over the back of the couch, an ankle crossed over his knee, the half-full glass of wine in his hand.

"This song… makes me feel so romantic." Alex's slipped a few strands of Sherry's hair behind her ear, pausing to feel the tiny silver hoop in her cartilage between thumb and forefinger. She stared at her reverently in the moonlight that poured through the atrium doors. "You're stunning," she said, and the words were somehow comforting and terrifying.

Alex led her in a wide, dizzying circle to Eric Clapton's hypnotic voice.

"Have you ever been kissed, my love?" she asked, very close to her ear.

Sherry swallowed, breathing hard through her nose. She shook her head, just once. She looked guiltily over Alex's shoulder to Wesker. He stared at them, running his hand over his mouth.

"Would you like to be kissed?" Alex's heady gaze drifted to Sherry's lips, and back up to her eyes. Their fingers, intertwined, tightened at Alex's gentle insistence, and her forearm brushed against Sherry's turgid little nipple, over and over, maddeningly. Alex licked her own red lips and smiled as charmingly as she had all night.

Sherry's head hurt with the tension between; her skin seemed to be flayed, every nerve exposed to the careful ministrations. She felt she must be imagining it, that nothing was real, perhaps it was all a dream… an intoxicating, disorienting dream. She took deep, panting breaths in the darkness.

"Shhh… Don't fight…" Alex whispered, bringing her ever closer, close enough to press the entire lengths of their soft bodies together, close enough to be inside of her, close enough that Sherry felt every word Alex murmured on her own lips, in her own mouth. Everything hurt and everything spun wildly out of control, and still Alex's mesmerizing voice carried on, and Sherry felt she was bobbing up and down on a wave - a wave the shape of Alex's curves and thoughts and scent - painfully familiar and strange. "Shhh… Will you let me, angel? Will you give yourself to me?"

"Enough."

The word split the heavy wet air like a knife. His hand, suddenly pressed to Alex's chest, pushed them apart, breaking the magic hold, and letting a cool rift settle between them.

Sherry shook her head, tried desperately to clear it of the fog. She blinked her poor tired eyes and rubbed them. They came into view then - brother and sister, at odds. Alex stared up at him, petulant and annoyed, her arms slowly coming to cross over her chest. She turned away from him, her shoulders square and defiant.

And Wesker… wore a mask of complete control. His stare never wavered from his sister's haughty face.

Sherry took a breath. "It's okay, it's —"

"Go to bed, Sherry," he ordered. His tone was unaffected, his shining red eyes still boring a hole through Alex.

"She didn't —" she started.

"Go!" he yelled.

She took a step back, her legs nearly giving out in her terror of him… and she fled to the safety of her bedroom.


Late that night, Sherry laid in the safe house bed.

It was an old mattress, and the springs hurt her back. She'd long ago tried every position she could think of but found no particular placement of her body would ease the suffering. She stared at the popcorn-textured ceiling and tried to see shapes or faces or messages in it. Blue light from the street painted squares on the bare walls.

She was too exhausted to sleep.

She missed him, terribly, and she hated herself for the way her chest seemed caved in and gory at his absence.

The gravel driveway leading up the house crunched beneath the weight of a car.

Her heart stopped.

Perhaps… perhaps he had come for her.

She scrambled to standing on the bed, trying to pull herself up so that she could see over the window sill and into the yard. She jumped once, twice, in an effort to peer out.

At the front door, two agents greeted someone in muffled voices. Sherry listened intently for whatever might come next… but there were no screams, no sounds of struggle.

She felt tears welling up in her eyes. It wasn't him… it wasn't him at all.

There was quiet conversation on the first floor among the dozen B.S.A.A. operatives. She could pick out Chris from the group, already accustomed to his sound.

There were foot steps on the wooden staircase.

She held her breath as the visitor drew near.

There was a single, sharp knock. "Sherry?" A woman.

She watched a shadow move beneath the door.

"Sherry?" came the voice again.

She cleared her throat. "Yeah," she replied weakly.

The door creaked open, just a crack. "You might not remember me," the woman continued. "But I drove here from Cologne to see you… I've been driving since this morning."

Sherry reached across the nightstand. She fumbled with the toggle switch on the ugly bedside lamp. The room was illuminated then. She winced at the awful yellow light. "Come in," she said, covering her eyes.

The door opened a bit more… and the woman stuck her head in, hesitant. Her red hair spilled like a mane about her shoulders. "Hey," she said gently.

Hot tears trailed steadily down Sherry's cheeks.