disclaimer: i own nothing Resident Evil related on this fanfic, just my own ideas for somewhat of a story, all characters and possible brands citations are property of their own respective owners.

Monsters in the Shadows I

Getting back to his room, Chris couldn't help sitting on his bed, and then lying back down. He felt exhausted not just from what was going on, but he was already getting ready for whatever Jill was planning on doing. He didn't know for sure what she had planned, and he did tell Claire that Jill would probably be reasonable, but he knew better then to fully believe that. That and the suspicious message from BSAA.

"Too early for it to actually be "not that important", even more so if they need me to check on it today…" He thought to himself idly for a moment. "Well, First things first." He said getting up and picking up his phone. Few moments later his call connected.

"Piers." Chris said briefly.

"'Morning. Captn. Chris. Sir." Piers mumbled still not really awake and surprised by the sudden early call.

"I'll give you a moment to get a clear head. I need a favor, off the records." Chris added.

"Thanks." Piers mumbled on the other side of the phone, taking a moment to get up and clear his head, shaking off most of the drowsiness. "Ok, I'm good. What do you need?"

"I need you to put a tail on Jill for say…the next 2 days."

"Jill? Did something happen? Did she…" Piers didn't finish the question, it wasn't something he was comfortable asking, nor did he actually know if the rumor had any merit, but still, he couldn't help wondering.

Chris sighed.

"Piers…that's just a rumor. There's no reason to even consider that a possibility."

"Sorry. But why then?"

"To make it short, things happened, and now I'm worried she might do something stupid, so I need some eyes on her. I would do it myself but have to go in today."

"Today? Anything happening?"

"No idea yet. We'll see. So, can you do it or not? Need to be fast here."

"Odd. Uh, sure, yeah, I can think of a couple of guys I could get to tag her."

"Remember, only need them to have a general idea of where she is. Make sure they don't get seen and don't interact or interfere with her in any way. Anything happens, call me."

"Got it. Anything we should keep an eye out for?"

"If she heads out of town or If she heads to any BSAA facilities… nothing too specific comes to mind honestly."

"Got it, anything else?"

"Just that, make sure they keep out of sight Piers." Chris reaffirmed.

"Sure…anything you are not telling me?"

Chris sighed before answering.

"It isn't exactly that, but treat her as a dangerous target, but the danger isn't what she is doing, but what she might do if she finds them."

There was a moment of silence before Piers continued.

"And she is one of the best recon we have…great." He complained with a sigh. "Okay, ok. We`ll figure something out."

"Thank you Piers. Sorry for the sudden request, a hard one at that."

"No problem." He paused for a moment, his mind getting to work on figuring things out. "Anyways, anything else? If not, I should start working on this."

"No, just that. Thanks again. Have a good one Piers."

"You too, sir." Piers answered already turning off the phone and starting his other calls. He got a couple of friends, formerly from the FBI, that were now working as intel agents for BSAA. "They aren't exactly great at physical confrontation if things come down to it, but they are pretty good for surveillance, and that's the priority now." Piers wasn't so confident on asking them to do it since they wouldn't be able to handle Jill if she caught them, but they were his best option of not getting detected to start with. A couple hours later the two guys were sitting on a rented room a couple blocks away from Jill`s apartment, public security cameras and few private ones tapped on, feeding them various images to keep track of her.

After getting off the phone Chris stretched himself and headed into the shower. Few minutes later he was done and dressed, then he headed down the stairs. Rebecca had changed and was standing by the table, looking out the backyard while drinking coffee.

"Hard day ahead huh." She said without turning back. "Got in touch with Piers?"

"Yeah, he should have his people keeping an eye on her for the day and part of tomorrow."

"Right, right…and you'll see her later?"

"Soon as I'm done with whatever they want me to check on back on BSAA, yeah."

"…Just make sure it's not too late."

"Yeah…hey, Rebecca, Claire still around?"

"Yup, she's taking quite long to get ready, probably trying to cool off her head."

"Listen, Rebecca, can you-"

"I'll keep an eye on her. Already called in sick. Doubt they'll actually buy that though, especially if they are keeping us under surveillance, but not like I was expected to go in today specifically anyways."

"Yeah… Well, thank you. I'll head to Jill after I check in on BSAA."

"…Any idea of what they might want?" Rebecca finally turned, with a puzzled face.

"If things were…well, normal, I'd say a mission somewhere, but at this point I really don't know." Chris stopped for a moment, trying again to think what he could be being called in for with such limited information given. He still thought it could be a mission of some sort, which made him worried. "A mission would mean a bioterrorist threat somewhere, maybe even an outbreak, I'd rather that not be the case." He sighed to himself, turning to the door and started heading out.

"Well, I'll find it soon enough, I'll let you know later-"

"'-as long as it isn't classified.'" Echoed Rebecca as Chris spoke, turning back to backyard. "I'll let you know if anything happens with Claire."

"Thank you. Again." Chris said quickly as he left.

Little more than an hour later Chris arrived at the BSAA building. He went straight to the room he was directed to in the message he received, it was a briefing room on the second floor. Inside the room, his superior's secretary was waiting for him, with files resting on the table.

"Connor." Chris nodded as he walked in.

"Chris." Connor nodded back. "These are the files." He said, moving away from the table and motioning with his hand to the files on it.

"…Any idea what's in it? Or why the secrecy and urgency?" Chris asked, already expecting the answer that came.

"Not really, I just know it's something that happened recently and for whatever reason it's all been kept on the hush-hush." He shrugged.

"I see…" Chris said heading to the table, frowning as he did so. "Guess I'll get to it than, do I have an actual time limit or something? Or did they just wanted this done soon as possible?"

"Officially? Don't think there's a limit, but Elliot wanted your assessment of it around lunch time at most. So…" he trailed off looking at the clock on the wall. "About 4 to 5 hours from now."

Connor was about the same height as Chris, but his thin body frame made him look considerably smaller, with shoulder height straight brown hair and hazel eyes, he seemed out of place in this environment, more like a model then a desk worker on a para-military organization, filled with mostly gruff looking guys, and the impeccable attire added to the impression. He did have the training, and needed be, he knew his way around a gun, that coupled with his capability for gathering information made him an excellent addition to the organization, and while his official post was secretary, he worked more like a right hand man for Elliot, handling things when he was otherwise busy or unavailable.

"I see." Chris sighed, this wasn't making much sense. "Is Elliot around?"

Officially, Elliot was the head of operations of this BSAA branch, but in practice, his position above Chris in the chain of command didn't have as much impact as one would think, since Chris was one of the founding members. In the end Elliot did have the final voice in the decisions made, and assignments given, but Chris' opinion still had considerable weight.

"He is, he's on a meeting right now though. Want me to ask him to come here when he is done?"

"Sure, looking at the size of this pile of files this should take a little while." Chris had finally sat down, and started shuffling through the files, just to get a general ideal of what he was looking at it.

"Will do, unless you need something else I'll be on my way now."

"No I'm good, got myself a cup of coffee on the way here so I'm all set. Thanks." Chris answered already starting to read the first files, all in all he wanted to get this done as fast as possible.

"Well then, have a good day." Connor said leaving the room, closing the door behind him.

"This guy still makes me think of a butler." Chris thought to himself as Connor closed the door behind him, before digging himself into the files before him. The first thing that caught his attention was the location.

"Alaska?" He thought, reading line after line, slowly getting through the files and getting a better grip at the situation.

"A distress call from an abandoned mining village…on Alaska?" He murmured to himself, shuffling back and forward between pages. "…Abandoned back in the 1940's no less."

When Chris was about done with the files he heard the door opening, a large blond man walking into the room with a thermal bottle in hand and two large cups.

"Redfield! Chris! Finally, I get to see you, how you've been?" The man said, his green eyes gleaming with joy, his slightly above weight belly shaking along with it.

"Elliot." Chris said shortly nodding. "Good, all things considered." He completed after thinking for a moment. The two men were on very friendly terms, though their relationship was much more of coworkers then actually friends.

"Soup?" Elliot said offering Chris a cup.

"Soup?" Chris answered curiously while accepting the cup.

"Yes, well, you know. The wife has been worried about my weight so…here I am, drinking soup she made for me for some diet or something of the sort, instead of the usual donuts and coffee." He finished laughing at the last bit.

"Oh." Chris said slightly regretting having accepted the cup, from past experiences most soups made for diet didn't taste particularly good.

"And its lunch time already, figured I could share some with you." Elliot said while pouring something on the cup he handed Chris.

Chris hadn't noticed, but he spent nearly the whole 5 hours Connor had guessed earlier going through all the files and rechecking everything. He was about to take a sip of it when something occurred to him.

"…You are just using me as a way to get rid of it faster aren't you?"

Elliot was silent for a moment before sitting down.

"Chris. We all have to make sacrifices." He said seriously before letting a grim take over his lips. "Besides" he started, as he took a sip himself. "it's really not that bad."

"Just not that good either." Chris added after drinking some of it himself.

There was a lull in the conversation, and the silence made both of them change into working gear.

"So, what do you think?" Elliot started, looking at the files.

"Honestly? A trap. But it's too obvious." Chris said resting a hand on the nape of his neck while lifting a page. "I mean, a sudden distress signal from a virtually inhabited area?"

Elliot nodded.

"I agree, so do the intel personnel."

"But…?"

"But the first signal had an actual message with it, the ones after it were in irregular intervals, but the intervals kept getting smaller, then stopped 2 days ago."

"So…you think it's actually a person?"

"Or someone set it up to look like one. We tried to check it with satellite images, but the one satellite we could get access to didn't help much. The whole area is under a snow storm, so that coupled with the small data sample we had from the area…"

"…And we can't be sure of what Is happening there right now. Drones?"

"Not with that weather, if we had more time we could either send some drones or try to gather more data, but timing might be important on this one. Here." Elliot went through the files, pulling a couple of satellite pictures.

"These are from the last 2 months. While we never caught any actual people on any images we could find, there's obviously something out of place."

"…Not as abandoned as we'd though huh." Chris said playing closer attention to the details on the picture. The entrance to the mine had dirt and gravel forming several small paths that seemed to go either inside the tunnel, or come from the tunnels. It didn't seem like there was much activity, but still, there was some activity, and that alone was enough to make things more suspicious.

"Thermals?"

"None that we could find, as you said, abandoned and remote area, nobody would keep that close of an eye on it. The closest city doesn't even seem to know that that mine existed to start with, no records of it."

"Any other suspicious activity on the area?"

"Other than the usual tales of hunters about weird animals or aliens in the forest? Not really."

"...So, this has been going on for about a week? Since the first signal?" Chris added, reading dates on the reports.

"Actually, over a month." Elliot pulled a sheet of paper from the bottom. "We just never noticed it till about 2 weeks ago."

"Wait, what? How?" Chris asked incredulous. "How could something like this go by unnoticed for so long?"

"The signal isn't being sent directly to us, it seemly just happens to be on one of the channels we keep tabs on. Analog radio channels mind you, so even less likely to be noticed."

"The first message?" Chris asked absent mindedly while reading through the page already looking for it himself.

"Here." Elliot point to a line. "Sound quality was terrible, so we couldn't make much of what was being said, but from what we got it was french and it was saying something about monsters and everybody being dead, and they seemed terrified. Familiar, no?" He finished with a grim expression.

"…Yeah. Nothing after that?"

"As far as actual voices? No. Just S.O.S. signals."

Chris sighed.

"The more I think about it, the more I think it's a trap but-"

"But we can't ignore it in the off-chance that there may actually be people there in need of help."

"Or a possible outbreak. Though I guess the mostly frozen area around it would prevent the spread at least for a while."

"Exactly, that's what is giving us a little more time to prepare for it thankfully."

"Who did we get this intel from?"

"Canadian branch. West."

"I see. So, how are we going to deal with this? Assuming we might be in for a rescue mission, or reckon even, we'll probably be using a smaller team?"

"Exactly. Two teams, two entry points. Six people on each team just to make sure, second team will be taking one person from the science department for any sample collection or on site analysis that might be needed."

"I don't like that." Chris added, more thinking out loud then expressing his opinion.

"I don't either, but orders came from above. You'll be leading one of the teams, same usual 5 people on it."

"Got it." Chris waited for a moment but Elliot seemed to be thinking about something else instead of continuing.

"And the other team?"

"Chambers is going on it as medical, Oxton from the lab, and another 3 new agents that just arrived from Europe, Martini, Hiltunen and Kartashyov."

"Rebecca? She's hardly assigned to the field unless she's with me or…"

"Who's leading the team?"

"Valentine."

"What?"

"All her results came back, she is fit for getting assigned back to active."

"That's not…she's clearly not fully recovered-" Chris started exasperated.

"Orders from above Chris. Unless you have a reason to not want her back on the active?" Elliot asked in a clearly more official manner. Chris could tell from his face that he wasn't too happy with the decision either. Chris realized that giving a reason to not send Jill back out might become a reason for them to take her in again, and that Elliot was aware of that.

"So either back to active field duty or risk being arrested, huh."

"No, no particular reason." Chris said resting back on his chair and running a hand up and down his neck and shoulder, tension building on it.

"I know how you feel, really. And while I do think more time for… recovery might be good for her, I also see no reason to keep her from returning to the active roster, all her results seem good, and the times I've seen or talked to her she seems fine. I'm sure she'll do just fine." Elliot wasn't exactly lying, but deep down he still couldn't fully trust Jill yet. He barely ever had any contact with her, so he didn't know the type of person she was, and beyond that, he didn't know how the mind control Wesker used on her had actually affected her, or if it still did at all.

Chris nodded, trying to convince himself of the same thing.

"And at this point we need her to get back out there, her situation is increasingly becoming a problem for herself and for us as well. We need to show she's actually back with us, otherwise the government might try to interfere."

"And lock her up…got it." Chris added. "As I thought."

"And Chambers being there should make things go smoother." Elliot added.

"Ah." Chris realized Elliot probably added Rebecca taking their friendship into account, that explains why she was chosen even though she's hardly ever on the field.

"So, when are we setting out?"

"We are still gathering the data we can but…all things considered, in 2 or 3 days, depending on the weather. Just enough time to get all the involved notified and prepared. Also give us time to prepare any equipment necessary considering the conditions of where you are going. Everything takes so much longer now that we are under USA supervision." Elliot sighed.

"How long are we just going to sit and let them do that anyways?"

"That's above my paygrade Chris." Elliot laughed. "But I guess until things calm down at least, everybody still seems to be pretty shaken with the whole TerraSave situation."

"Just hope its sooner rather than later. Any of the international branches having more luck?"

"Africa and Asia seem to be mostly on the clear already, and about half of Europe too."

"Central?"

"Euro Central? They've never really stopped, NATO was sniffing around for a couple weeks but let them alone quite fast. But since there's plenty under scrutiny still they've been doing things slower as well, which makes most of other Europe branches nearly come to a halt, since Central is usually the one making the big decisions."

"So, as long as the USA keeps us under their thumb the organization as a whole becomes that much slower." Chris said completing the line of thought. Sighing to himself again he stretched his arms.

"Got it. So, that's all you needed from me?"

"Pretty much. Just wanted you to take a small look at this and hear your input before we moved on with the planning." Elliot said getting up from his chair and moving closer. "Do you think Valentine will be any problem on the mission?" He asked on a whisper.

"No." Chris added.

"Good, good..." Elliot nodded to himself, seemingly relieved at hearing Chris' assessment.

"Well, Chris, that's about it. Unless you have any more questions I need to get going. Meetings and phone calls to make." Elliot said, gathering his things.

"No…everything seems fine." Chris answer without much confidence. The whole thing screamed of trap, and having Jill sent back to the field didn't sit well with him, especially after what happened the last few days.

"Good. I agree with you that it seems like a trap, so we'll keep that in mind, but we can't just risk leaving possible people in need of rescue behind. And we also can't not check it, in case it's actually something related to bioterrorism." Elliot added already heading for the door. "I'll talk to you later Redfield."

When almost out the door Elliot turned back.

"And leave the files with Connor. All in all, this is still somewhat of a hush-hush situation, even if it isn't officially confidential or anything we still have to avoid non-related personnel seeing those files as much as possible."

"Got it." Chris answered, starting to gather his things and the files. On the way out he left them with Connor as asked, and headed outside the building, stopping to look at the sky, which was getting clouded. "Great…now the weather is turning for the worse as well." Looking at his wristwatch he grimaced a little. "Spent much more time than I expected going through those files and talking with Elliot."

He got back to his car, turning on the engine just as stray thin rain drops started to fall. He set off, heading for Jill's apartment.

AN:

Sorry for the super late chapter, it was meant for november, but...gaaaames, and then cat got sick, then christmas, newyears, etc. That on top of me being terrible at keeping proper schedules and actually putting my ideas on paper, on a properly formatted manner (or well, as properly as i can). So sorry if the chapter feels a bit convoluted as well, but i hope its still readable and comprehensive. Let me know if it isn't, i'll re-rewrite it if that's the case.

This one is a little shorter mainly cause...well, nothing much actually happens in it i guess? and its a multiple part chapter, or well, sequence of events. Should have the next one up withing a week.

Thanks for the reviews and kind words, really appreciate it. And also appreciate the people reading, just hope it's keeping people interested despite the flaws and irregular updates.

Ok, i'll stop rambling now. Hope everybody had a good xmas and newyears eve, and a good 2017 from now on too. See you guys on the next chapter