Disclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil , Capcom, Nintendo or anything else.
Please read and review!
It started with a creaking below the bed. Claire not so quickly dismissed it as someone checking in late at night downstairs.
She reassured herself. It's just had to be a dream.
Since her time in the world of bioterrorism, the number of nights where she had been rudely awakened by remnant memories of rotted hands reaching for her, or monsters that defied logic, had dwindled considerably with the weekly visits to the school Psych Office.
But something gnawed at her dragging her half asleep mind into sensing something amiss.
Her friend hadn't gone anywhere, curled tightly in his sleep as if he forgot how much small his body really was since his transformation back into a human. He snored softly and peacefully and Claire can't help but smile.
She spent a few seconds in limbo before she hears a crack.
A white jolt of electricity from below. Was it just someone checking in downstairs or something more sinister?
It shocked her wide open to inky blackness and cold sweat on her brow, a visceral reaction to danger time on the battlefield had ingrained in her.
Upright in an instant; hands already gripped around metal and she finds comfort in the cool touch of Chris's handgun at her holster never left the redhead's body even as she slept. It doesn't take long before she's out of bed pacing about the room, scanning for danger.
She knew something is wrong for certain. Her gut wouldn't leave her alone. A moment of guilt seized her as she needs Steve awake, and shook his shoulder. "Someone's here."
He looked at her in curious detachment before a shot pierced the air, an arm creaked out from under the bed aimed at Claire. She narrowly dodged to the left. She was secretly thankful to the shitty box spring bed that alerted her to danger.
Their assailant emerged knife in hand as he charged the young woman. Steve's nerves are left crackling, his ear popped at the loud unwelcome noise. A scream comes from upstairs or somewhere. He can't tell for a few seconds.
The brunette however sprung into action with as much movement as his injured body would allow, over a landslide of pillows and blankets before he blindly tackled the guy in the dark, bringing him to the ground in a clumsy heap of bedding.
The knife and hand appeared, and ripped the fabric holding it, but Claire kicked the sharp object out of her attacker's hand. A head appeared out the same hole. Steve dived in and punched the man hard with uncontrolled strength making sure he was out.
"What the hell? Can't we do this after breakfast?" Steve quipped, sprawled on the ground. Claire can't disagree though, her whole body felt raw and achy despite the adrenaline push. The two tossed on their leather jackets, and Claire helped her injured partner throwing his arm over her shoulder. Then she winced as the movement irritated the fiery pain of the shoulder which had been dormant that night.
They slowly made their way down the stairs, Claire had the sensation that they were being watched. Then she spotted the source, a blonde woman in a purple dress at the vending machine at the bottom of the stairs.
Staring at them too long for comfort. She looked down at some kind of device then furtively glanced at Steve and Claire. "Yes, it's them. We're going to need backup."
The undercover agent pulled a knife from the bottom of stiletto and Claire practically has to drop Steve to the ground in order to defend herself. The shots rang out from her gun were almost like warning shots as the woman anticipated their path and dodged them.
Claire was left more on the defensive, parrying blows. This lady was good she'd give her that, maybe even better than Chris. She could have taken her evenly if she hadn't been slammed violently and dragged against a wall by a giant eagle.
She wanted to forget the raw searing sensation in her shoulder just for this moment, but her body would not forget.
The redhead could no sooner think that then she found her back against the railing, and in the next minute the world went out spinning out of control as she got hurled off onto the ground below. Claire was left seeing stars and Steve was left defenseless.
The brunette, pushing past the limitations of his own injury lurched after the woman to defend himself from the end of the knife. Without as much effort as he thought he grabbed the woman's arm watching the color darken as she yelled out. She pulled out a gun with her other hand pointed it below at his temporarily unconscious companion, and he kneed their enemy in the stomach before she could use it, with his vice grip around her wrist feeling her go limp.
Claire, who had recovered enough looked on in shock and awe to see someone she was struggling against go down with such ease. That was way too much strength for someone injured like he was.
The woman wheezed on the ground, barely holding onto consciousness. "Just what I'd expect out of a monster like you. At the rate it's going I might not even need a second dosage of T Veronica . I'd just say that you're a monster in a human mask. You may have been fighting the virus now, but judging by the progress it'll take over again soon enough. At that point, we may not even have to kill Claire Redfield you'll just do it for us."
"S-shut the hell up!" He stopped in his tracks, cold and paralyzed, as if a snake was wrapping around him, constricting him. His greatest fear brought up again. He felt frost in his veins, and clenched his fists feeling them grow frustrated and hot. His voice raw and exasperated now.
"I'm human! Damn it! " He said so more to convince himself than her, but by then she was out cold. Then it echoed to no one.
Claire meanwhile took the device the woman dropped. It had a map and a red dot pinging dot on it, presumably their location. Had they slipped some kind of tracking into her bags or into Steve's clothes? She could check later, they needed to get out of here before reinforcements arrived.
They took off in a noise that was loud enough to drown out the thoughts of what the hell that woman said which then transitioned to what it might mean for him and Sherry. Claire's bike roared up a dark hill. The high beam searing into the darkness revealing a straight line of trees ahead up the steep curving hill. As she took off faster and faster she was unable to detect the subtle beeping coming from the bottom of her vehicle.
"Claire!" Steve was first to hear the noise as its beat quickened.
"What are you-" Claire couldn't even finish when her companion threw them both off, they tumbled onto the road.
They stopped rolling just in time so Claire could see the reason for the sudden stop drop and roll. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her beloved Harley went up into a blaze of steel and smoke.
\ A tiny black box skittered at her feet. Some kind of bomb. It must have been that woman at the hotel who attached something to the bottom of her bike as a plan b.
She reminded herself that she didn't have time to mourn her bike but the sadness still sunk its teeth into her. Her companion didn't say anything. Both of them were still for the moment, taking in the loss of their only transportation like they were watching an abrupt viking sendoff, the flames licking the night sky. Claire's trusty steed arrived in Valhalla alright, but not when she expected it to die.
The young woman collected herself first, and they continued on foot both acknowledging that it wasn't the best time to make a crappy quip.
After a while though, Claire couldn't hear Steve's footsteps behind her and whipped around.
"Claire." Steve sighed, his voice wobbled. "I need you to tell me that I'm not a monster."
"What? Steve! Why would you say that?" Claire was taken aback all of a sudden.
"I'm just thinking that I'm like Sherry. What if this strength is a sign of something? Like the whole regenerating thing for Sherry? What if I hurt-" He shivered, not wanting to finish that sentence any more than Claire wanted him to.
"Stop it! You won't." She desperately tried in reassurance.
"But if I do," He quietly and hesitantly continues, then shakes static into the air between them. "just put a bullet in me. Alright?"
I've sworn to protect you, always have always will. You matter because you're the only one I have left. He thinks, but doesn't say it.
He knows she'll argue against him. She doesn't need protecting, but his request was made out of fear, fear of what that guy from Umbrella knew and what he didn't.
"Steve, please don't talk like that anymore." Claire wants to object to his plea, but remembers her promise to Chris. A similar one.
She didn't know if he was going to listen to her request though . The clouds shifted over the moon and night obscured his face. They kept walking up the winding hill.
Adrenaline hazed their minds and dulled the pain of their wounds, urging them to stumble forward in a blind dash up the twisting concrete hill in the dark. Claire knows they're walking in the middle of the road, but her body is too tired to do anything about it. She's tired and her limbs feel like hundred pound weights. In the back of her mind she longs for her crappy college dorm with the whole of her soul.
In another fantastic feat of the day, Claire's body moves on its own and she finds enough speed to shove Steve out of the way before he gets swallowed by the light. In the fraction of a second it takes for the image of the car to fade they end up in a sloppy pile of limbs and exhaustion, panting on the side of road. Steve immediately felt a deep rush of embarrassment, and sputtered out a small thanks. Although he grew concerned when she didn't move. The first thought he had was maybe she had gotten hurt, and looked past her head seeing that the rest of her was okay. It took him a minute to realize that her attention was focused toward something more upsetting.
Steve for the very first time saw the horrifying red hot glow underneath his skin. "Ah!" Steve gasped lifting his stained yellow shirt to get a good look at the unnatural glow pulsating in his chest. A sack of bricks dropped into his stomach, he wanted to throw up. Instinctively, he scrambled away from Claire until his back hit the rough metal railing.
It reminded him vaguely of the blinking objective markers in the video games he used to play and brushed away the thought. Then he wondered why the ever loving fuck he would he even think of that.
Claire covered her mouth with her hands, her heart sank, pushed down by a hushed devastated gasp. Observing the thin device in her hand, she connected the dots. "What are we gonna do, Claire?"
She took way too long to answer him. "I-I'm not sure. All I know, is that we have to keep moving."