A/N: Many thanks to everyone who followed, favorited and reviewed this story. It means so much to me.

Beta-Read by the amazing Riot Siren.

She couldn't get the blood off.

No matter how hard Sherry scrubbed at the stain with the old towel she'd found, she couldn't get the blood off. Her hands shook, and her breath was coming in gasps that were too quick to be healthy. Her mind was racing, and she wanted to piss, puke and scream her heart out, but…she didn't. She attempted to keep what minimal composure she still possessed. She just kept scrubbing, trying to catch her breath and exerting more air in her effort than she was taking in.

She had never understood exactly what was so horrible about war. After what had happened to her as a child, she always thought that war would've been a vacation by comparison.

Sherry shook her head, strands of blonde hair falling into her eyes. She kept scrubbing.

Her ears were still ringing with the explosion that had knocked that helicopter out of the sky. She could still hear and see the B.S.A.A. soldiers, screaming for their lives as they went down in a fiery blaze. Her heart raced, and her vision was blurry.

I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here.

The house, the shack, they sat in was abandoned, had probably been abandoned for years. It was too quiet. The silence seemed to press in on Sherry, and despite how much she hated the unbearable sound of war outside, she loved it like a sister compared to the silence.

Jake sat nearby, and even though she felt like death, she thanked God he was still alive. The click of more rounds being slid into his spare magazines wasn't nearly enough sound for Sherry, but she was grateful for it anyway. She had to wonder what was going through his head, though. He hadn't even looked at her since they'd entered the shack.

"What did you say those...things were called?" The volume of his voice was suddenly so thunderously loud that Sherry's whole body seemed to clamp down. Her arms tucked in, her head flinched down, her hands clenched into the tightest and most painful fists she'd ever made.

"Ja…J'av…" She took a shaky breath. "J'avo."

Jake finally looked over at her, and Sherry saw his eyes visibly widen when they met hers. He moved far too fast in front of her, and she instinctively pulled away, her eyes on her gun before remembering who he was.

She registered him taking her hands, the warmth of his fingers on hers, but she didn't truly feel it. Her mind was moving in a cold, clinical rotation. She wasn't feeling anything at all.

"Look at me. Sherry, look at me." She forced her eyes to meet his. "You're going to be okay," he said.

She shook her head furiously, and all at once, the hot tears came. Unbridled hatred possessed Sherry, but it wasn't hatred directed at anything other than herself. She was supposed to his protector. She had a job to do. She was supposed to be skilled and quick and sure and perfect, not breaking down in a god-forsaken shack.

"You've never been in war, have you?" His voice was soft, and despite everything else rushing through her head, Sherry thought it was the strangest sound. She'd never have imagined he could have such a soothing voice.

She brought her eyes back to his. They're so much brighter than mine.

A bitter laugh bubbled up through her throat. "Is it that obvious?"

"A bit, yeah."

"I'm sorry. I'm…I'm holding us up. We need to move." She made to get up, but strong hands found her shoulders. Normally, she would've fought to her feet if she had to, but her lack of fortitude made such a feat impossible.

"We can afford a small break, I promise." It was at that moment that Sherry noticed a small amount of blood oozing down his pant leg, right below the knee.

"You were shot!" She exclaimed, worry for her mission suddenly throwing her into gear.

"I was grazed. I'm fine."

"Let me see!"

"No."

"Jake! Let me see it."

They locked eyes once more. Tension seemed to bubble in the air as their immense wills bared down on each other. For a moment, Sherry thought that she could almost see Wesker's influence in his son's eyes. The same eyes that could crush another person to dust if he willed it. Red and blue...

I shouldn't think like that. He could be a very different person.

Jake finally lifted his pant-leg. Sherry wasn't foolish enough to believe that she truly won that, whatever that was, but she still took pride in her small victory.

Won the battle, still fighting the war. The symmetry of her careless thought wasn't lost on her.

The graze was minimal; short but deep. What worried Sherry however, was that the gash was continuously weeping a rivulet of blood. Reaching into a pouch of her belt, Sherry pulled out a Band-Aid.

"No fucking way."

"You need to keep it covered so you don't keep bleeding, and with your pant-leg down, no one will see it," she insisted.

"It's pink."

"It's Hello Kitty, which is awesome and it has Neosporin on the pad, so shut up and hold still." Sherry had to fight a smile while she smoothed the bandage over the wound, and her patient's overly dramatic sigh didn't make it any easier.

"Y'know, in all my time as a mercenary, I've never been given an actual Band-Aid for an injury. I've cauterized wounds with hot submachine gun muzzles, and I've stitched gashes together with inch-long sewing needles and floss." Jake's voice was incredulous.

Sherry chuckled a bit, pulling out two more of the little pink bandages, "Well, I like to be prepared for anything. And I have an actual needle and stitching thread if you get banged up any more."

"What? Not in case you do?"

Sherry pursed her lips, running her thumb over the last bandage, smoothing the edge down. "I…make sure to avoid getting hit."

Could that have sounded any more evasive?

Sarcasm dripped from his voice. "And what, I don't?"

"Clearly not." She gestured to the now bandaged wound.

A few seconds of silence passed, and once she'd pulled his pant-leg back down over his knee, she looked up at Jake. A small smirk played on his lips.

"What?" she asked.

"Feel better?"

It was true, Sherry did feel better. Her hands stopped shaking, her vision had cleared, and the silence followed by speech didn't cause her ears to ring.

"I…yeah. How'd you…?"

He waved a hand dismissively, "My mom used to get panic attacks too. Not like that, but...still. I can read the signs."

"Well...thanks."

Jake shrugged. "I didn't do a thing. That was all you."

Sherry smirked, chewing on that for a moment. It was true, all Jake had done was tell her she was okay, and beyond that, her own "mother hen" complex had kicked in.

Well, that's embarrassing. Fuck PTSD treatments. Just give me a cut-up merc and a Band-Aid and I'm good to go.

Dusting her knees off, Sherry stood, holstering her gun. They weren't anywhere near extracted yet and she had already wasted more than enough time for the both of them.

"We need to keep moving before more J'avo show up."

"Yeah, about that," Jake said. "I charge $200,000 up front. Another $200,000 at the end and B.O.W's are extra. A grand extra. Each."

"I'm not here to hire you, Jake." Surprise registered on his face, and his self-satisfied smirk turned south.

"Then what are you here for?"

"Your blood." Sherry always hated being laughed at, and she especially hated it when it came from handsome mercenaries with whom she'd just shared her limited supply of Band-Aids.

"What? For the Red Cross or something?"

"Yep! That must be it. I flew half-way around the world and into a war zone because I need blood for the Red Cross. I have orange juice and cookies back in my hotel room too," she snapped, voice sharp as a knife. "Remember the antibodies I mentioned earlier? Your blood is the key ingredient to a vaccine against a very dangerous mutagen-based virus called the C-Virus. That's the same virus that infected your platoon and which you just took a syringe full of."

Well, that got his attention.

The realization seemed to dawn on Jake. Sherry pretended not to notice the small whirl of fear that passed through his eyes while he clutched at his neck.

"You mean...this isn't an isolated incident?"

Shaking her head, she answered him, "No, it's not. Right now, we are racing against a global bio-terrorism attack and we've needed a vaccine for months. At this point in the game, Jake, you are currently the most valuable person on the planet."

She wasn't expecting the spark of avarice that lit up his features. He walked a few steps away from her, and Sherry knew that she'd hate whatever it was he said next.

"50 million."

"Are you out of your mind?!"

"If you don't want it, tell me now and I'll go to the first country that does."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. 50 million dollars? The very idea of such a large sum being charged for a theoretical cure was baffling to Sherry and yet…she knew she shouldn't have been surprised. She also knew that Simmons would've expected something like this.

"I…personally, can't promise that. But…let me talk to my boss. I'll see what I can do. That doesn't matter right now, though. We still need to get out of this place alive. Do you know a way out of here?"

The greed that filled his eyes sickened her, but Sherry kept her composure. She was an agent and she would be perfect. His asking price wasn't her concern; it was making sure he was alive enough to have an asking price.

The mercenary turned to look out the shack's only window, his hand scratching at his chin. "Maybe. We can't leave through the main loading docks where my platoon entered. The B.O.W's will be swarming all over that place like fuckin' locusts. But through the canyon, there's a small warehouse. We'll have to go through the compound's old workers' quarters to get there, but the warehouse empties out into the town proper. You think you could radio in from there?"

At Sherry's nod of approval, they both cocked their guns and headed back outside and back into the hands of war.

She's getting better.

Jake could see it in the way that she moved, the way that she clutched her gun with a finger always less than an inch away from the trigger. She'd started out rocky, not a stranger to death exactly, but it was plainly obvious to the mercenary that she'd never been in this sort of situation before.

Sherry had better aim than him. He hated to admit it, hated how he felt shown-up every time she pulled the trigger, but it was true. He could fight, he knew he could, but his aim would never be on her level. Jake wondered if it was her training or just natural talent. He had a feeling it was more than just a bit of both. That was one of the things that confused him. She had extensive training. He could see it in the way Sherry carried herself, the way she seemed ready to throw herself in the way of a bullet to complete her objective and yet, she was still so green.

And that was the other thing that he'd noticed. Jake had dealt with—hell, he'd killed American agents before—but they'd always had standard-issue weaponry. Well-made, of course. A bullet from an American gun did the job as well as a bullet from anything else. But her gun...

It was a prototype Beretta machine pistol, good fire power, accurate and expensive as fuck. Jake knew because he wanted one, tried to buy one under his channels a few years ago when he'd first heard about them.

Maybe she's lying. Maybe she's with some sort of black ops division?

Jake knew that to be false before he'd even completed the thought. If she were working with something as covert as a black ops division, she'd have seen combat like this before. And if he was as valuable as Sherry said he was, no covert division would send someone so new to the game to find him.

The thought that her panic attack was an act to get him to trust her had crossed Jake's mind, but he dismissed it. No, he'd seen her eyes; he saw the shaking hands. It was an exact replica of what he'd seen his mother go through countless times. It was the real deal.

He felt the bandages just below his knee pull sharply at his leg hair.

And who the fuck uses Band-Aids in a situation like this?

The more he thought about her, the more she seemed like an enigma, and Jake hated being in the dark. She had expensive, potentially illegal prototype weaponry, panic attacks during the carnage of battle, and she thought Hello-Kitty was top-notch entertainment.

But still, her nerves were improving. He could see it. She was learning the ropes of war.

"How're you holding up?" Sherry's voice was light and airy, and Jake would be lying if he said he didn't like it. It wasn't the sort of sound he was used to hearing. It was exotic almost; her voice held a certain innocence to it. It fit her.

"All right. You?" he replied.

She gave him a nod of affirmation while a shiver visibly rocked through her. Jake had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. This was Edonia, and in the middle of winter, no less. Surely she'd known where she was headed before buying such a thin coat. And yet, Jake felt a pang of sympathy. It was clear that she didn't ask for this. This was just a mission she was ordered on. But the notion that she was somehow the best person for the job was lost on him. Who'd ever send her?

While lost in his thoughts, Jake ended up walking straight into Sherry, jostling them both.

"Watch—" His complaint died on his lips when he saw that she had barely even felt his touch. Her eyes were wide and stared horrified out over the valley, to the bridge and town.

Now, that's a war zone.

"Guess the B.S.A.A. encountered those J'avo." He whistled, almost entertained by the sight. Thick, black pillars of dense smoke rose from the ruins. Fires burned, bright enough to see even from here. The sound of war was a low, threatening rumble that spread over the whole area. It was fucking chaos and Jake had to admit, it looked like the B.S.A.A. were giving as good as they got.

Her voice was only a hair above a whisper. "And we have to go in there?" It took Jake a moment to realize that the slight shaking in her unusually smooth voice wasn't some vocal quirk. It was fear, visceral and brutal fear.

"We'll be fine," he lied before pointing towards the bridge. "B.S.A.A.? Not so much. Last I remember, my employers had a tank parked on the other side of that barricade. If the B.O.W.s have appropriated it, those sons of bitches are done for."

"You don't know that!" Sherry shot back, the acid in her voice surprising Jake. "They're more resilient than you know. If anyone can pull through that," she gestured out towards the town, "It's them."

"Fair enough, but we need to keep mov—" Jake was cut off by a machete gleaming in the sunlight, swinging for both their necks. Slinging his arm out, Jake pushed Sherry back while bending back as far as his spine would allow. The blade passed mere inches from his face.

But you swung too wide, you fuck.

Kicking the hand holding the weapon, Jake caught the twirling machete straight from the air, driving the blade into the chest of the J'avo. Its multiple eyes widened at the prospect of its death, and it screamed foreign profanities at Jake. Forcing the creature back, he let go of the blade, sending the creature to the ground. Jake stepped clear of the mess, ready to grab Sherry and make a run for it.

And then the monster's chest simply exploded.

The machete was forced out as bone-like growths erupted from the wound like some sort of vile animal. Snaking over the blotched and bloody chest of the person it used to be, the mutations coated the flesh of the creature, turning hard like stone.

They both watched with wide eyes as the J'avo screamed as if this was the most brutal torture ever inflicted—and for all Jake knew, it could've been. On shaking knees, the thing pushed itself to its feet, brandishing the discarded machete against him. It new armor glistened with blood, pus and ichor.

The J'avo rushed him, quicker than Jake could react. He tried to go for his gun, but the holster's straps got in the way. The horror of dying on a blade was the last thing that snapped through Jake's mind before the creature's head broke apart in a spray of blood, bone and brains.

It was only after he felt the droplets of gray matter strike his face that he registered the gunshot.

He hadn't been prepared for that.

He hadn't been prepared and had nearly paid with his life, and she saved him. She'd seen past the horror of whatever the fuck just happened. She'd pulled her gun and acted when he stood frozen. She'd done her fucking job and he'd stood there, shocked into paralysis.

The irony was nearly too much.

Sherry's hands were shaking again and Jake could hear her breath quickening again, rushing in and out of her lungs and he knew that if she kept that up, there was every chance she'd hyperventilate and pass out.

He turned to her. "You okay?"

Sherry nodded, moving her head in quick, spastic jerks. "Fine, I'll be fine. Just…give me a sec."

Jake watched as, though by will alone, she managed to return her breathing to normal and her hands slowly stopped their wild vibrating.

"What. The fuck. Was that!?" he demanded.

"Mutagen-based virus, remember?" Sherry said. "A J'avo will mutate when exposed to non-lethal stimuli."

"Which means?"

"If you wound them but fail to kill them on the first try, they'll mutate in a way that makes them even harder to kill."

"Well, fuck that!" Jake turned back to the disintegrating body, as Sherry moved to his side. Flames erupted from the remains of the corpse, as if its blood had caught fire. Despite how macabre it was, both Jake and Sherry were grateful for the heat.

A/N: The song this chapter is titled after is Hurricane by 30 Seconds to Mars. The symmetry between the writing and the lyrics is just too perfect. And remember, I love music suggestions. My writing playlist is becoming filled with so many great songs from you guys!