Shakahnna did not know why she had come back to Lynn Valley, as she knew it was clearly the structure owned by Umbrella as a safehouse for VIP's. Regardless, though, here she was, walking up to the front door, and wishing there were some steps between the asphalt underneath her feet and the doorway which she knew led to the scene of several executions. At least then, there could be several more seconds for her before she walked through the space beyond the lone entryway.

Already the redhead had noticed that the car with the two dead guards in it was removed, all traces of its existence gone. So twisting the doorknob, the nervous gamine held her breath and entered the house, reaching the living room in little time.

Unlike outside, though, the interior of this safehouse wasn't cleared at all. In fact, the teenager gasped in surprise as she saw Albert Wesker there, the older man dressed in a black executive suit, missing only a tie, but otherwise appearing as if he belonged in a board room. He wasn't alone, either, as the man in the sunglasses barely acknowledged her presence since he was busy dealing with six more uniformed guards.

Desert Eagle in hand, he eagerly spun from one human target to another, being brutally efficient with the handful of moments spent as he moved clockwise. Shooting the first guard, Wesker proceeded to the man who was closest to that dead adversary, the better to preserve his time, and quickly repeated the process, firing his handgun and killing his way through those six Umbrella employees.

As he did, Shakahnna's eyes bulged and her stomach knotted in horror as she witnessed that each dead man who was being dispatched by the former RPD captain had his skin melting off the corpse, in a more gruesome recollection of the cleaners who had visited her jailcell. Each layer slowly sizzled, before boiling and twisting downwards to the ground. Disgusted, and still unable to get the older man to stop his massacre, the teenager partly turned away from the scene and covered her eyes. She wanted to stop looking at the dead Umbrella guards, especially after their shiny red muscles were now melting off, stripping backwards a ping as they torn away, leaving a dirty skeleton which were still screaming in pain even after they had landed dead on the floor.

Why were they still yelling out long after Wesker had shot them in the head? Morbidly curious, the young woman snuck a peek past her hand as she had previously kept it in front of her eyes. She spotted the six skeletal remains as their palms were pressed against the floor, the heads still flopping back and forth on the carpet as death didn't stop the pain they were experiencing.

But there was a variable even worse than the impossibly horrific scene she was witnessing now, and that was the demeanour of the man in the sunglasses. Standing several yards away from her, and coolly unaffected by the screams of the bodies he had shot, Albert Wesker comfortably laid against the wall as the firearm was already holstered. His arms crossed in front of his chest, the shades lowered towards his nose by a fraction of an inch, and a self-congratulatory grin on his face. There was something in his body language that temporarily distracted Shakahnna from the living corpses there, and looking into the older man's relaxed face, she initially didn't know what it was.

Until it suddenly came crashing down on her. Wesker's body was too relaxed and comfortable, with his face carrying an appearance of contentment, as if nothing in the world was wrong for him. It was a far cry from the former RPD captain who was always frowning about the evils of the world and his personal inability to correct them. That STARS leader had broken into the Umbrella compound with several followers in a search for her, and whose body language was tense constantly because of the stress he constantly experienced.

Contrary to that captain Wesker, this man in the black suit was happy. It was then that Shakahnna understood what was causing the anxious pain in the pit of her stomach, as the last time she had seen him that content was when she was being subjected to his experiments in that hellish Umbrella compound.

Seeing that she finally noticed his presence, Wesker's ulterior personality moved with the swiftness that she had seen his body to be capable of before. In a flash of colour, he was in front of her before she could move, and was holding her chin with one hand and the back of her skull with the other. He quickly dragged her towards a mirror on another wall of the room, one that Shakahnna hadn't seen before, and firmly held her face in front of it, daring her to look at her own reflection.

No form of struggling got the redhead out of his grip, as pulling at his hands or stomping on his feet didn't work. The restrained position eventually forced her to see the image in the mirror, even while she was gasping in terror and struggling to free herself from the antagonist whose grasp just wouldn't loosen.

Another strange sighting, which was that her reflection wasn't being forced to stand there at all, but was a normal image of herself. Except that her face in the glass slowly began decaying, with the skin turning grey, the hair on her head falling out, and wounds with maggots inside them appearing over her features.

Shakahnna heard herself screaming as the zombie with her face reached towards herself through the mirror. And the next feeling she experienced was that of waking up in Chisholm's bedroom as she was lying in bed and next to the young man. She struggled to sit up, reflexively pushing the blanket off her due to remembering Wesker's figure behind herself in the dream, and saw that Chisholm was peacefully asleep at an arm's reach away.

It took the young woman several moments to catch her breath, and it was only after she could hear her heart rate calming back down to a normal beat that she decided to lie back down. Covering her shoulders with the blanket, she snuggled to Chisholm's back and held him close to her, still unable to shake the multitude of nightmares she had seen in the dream.

"Chris, stop, please!", officer Valentine's voice was heard echoing through the second-floor hallways of the RPD, "It was an accident! He didn't mean it!".

It had been less than an hour into the new shift at the RPD, which was much too early for the scene that most officers inside the station were witnessing. Not that there was a good time to see agent Redfield criticising, yelling at or threatening any employee who said or did anything wrong. But most staff members already knew that they were witnessing yet another event, as was the norm since STARS had returned from their blunder in the city's forest, and just sighed to themselves in annoyance.

While that occurred, officer David Elran staggered out of the STARS office, not bothering to pick up the mug of coffee that was on the floor, as he was busy covering a swollen left eye. He hurried past Shakahnna Warren as the redhead had been slowly and carefully making her way towards that same office once she heard the commotion, and the teenager gasped at seeing her colleague's state, as it was clear Elran had been punched.

She looked at the lightly wounded man, then at the enraged STARS marksman who was marching after him with the intention of dishing out more punishment. Finally, the young woman noticed an emphatic Jill Valentine who was trying to pull the aggressor back into their office, the female member of STARS threw a glance behind herself, and soon got agent Burton's cooperation as the largest man there joined her efforts.

"He didn't mean to spill the coffee on your file, sweetie! Come on!", Valentine had one of Redfield's upper arms gripped before Burton grabbed the other one and coaxed the angry officer back into the STARS office.

"How's your social life now, you ugly fuck?!", Redfield exclaimed back at the person he had assaulted even while he complied with his associates' request, "At least now all those women won't be bugging you for dates any more!".

Seeing the three isolated agents disappear back within their secluded room, Shakahnna had stopped walking towards them, unsure how to progress further even if one of them had just assaulted one of the officers she was on good terms with. Her reluctance to interact with any of the surviving STARS members hadn't decreased in the last several weeks, not when she knew that they were the one group of individuals who knew as much about Umbrella as she did, though not as much about Wesker. How could she balance a conversation under those circumstances? With deception, she told herself, that was how, and lots of lies. She did not fancy it.

The redhead was about to turn around and return to filing some of the many pieces of paper that pertained to the last few days of work in the still-strange Police department. After all, things would get better when Chisholm and Donnelly returned from their hearing in court. However, she ceased her departure and instead found herself frozen in place as Redfield's continued screams were heard from the open doorway. Clearly, any agitation on the short run was opening a much deeper rage in the marksman.

"Who the fuck does he think he is, coming in here like that?!", Redfield kept ranting as neither Valentine nor Burton were responding, "He's lucky that's all I did to him, that little pipsqueak!".

A break in his shrieks, presumably because Valentine was saying something which Shakahnna couldn't hear.

"Fuck objectives, Jill! And fuck his eye!", Redfield screamed back as a dull thud indicated he had punched a desk or a cabinet, "You think I'm gonna have any one of these little nobodies be in our face? I'm not playing any bullshit games with them here. The next time any one of them pulls this shit, they're gonna receive what that fuck Wesker should've gotten from me, OK?".

Shakahnna's body tensed at the mention of the former captain's name, the teenager held her breath, and then intentionally exhaled after she reminded herself that none of the STARS member knew that Wesker was alive. No reason to fear that they would be hunting him down.

"Whatever, man, whatever!", Redfield physically struck another inanimate object in that chamber, this time in response to something Burton said, "At least there's some justice in the world, huh? That fuck Wesker is burning in hell like he belongs. Now all we have to do is make sure that a few thousands of other Umbrella shitheads join him!".

The last statement made regarding Wesker's character was enough to prompt Shakahnna to forget her plans to return to work, and the young woman marched into the STARS room instead. There was something about Redfield that simply created friction within her mind, and not the playful kind like she behaved with officer Donnelly. Chris Redfield was the kind of man she just disliked since the first day she saw his angry demeanour while in this environment, even if his resentment was justifiable. And the marksman's latest comment about the former captain was the figurative straw that broke the camel's back.

Not appreciating the irony of confronting the few individuals in this building who despised Umbrella as much as she did, she slammed the office door behind herself, getting the attention of all three officers there.

"You listen to me!", she glared at the older man there, not making eye contact with either Valentine or Burton for now, "Wesker was a very unwell man. You stand here and totally desecrate his memory. Yet he'd have done anything to save all of you. He just didn't know what he was doing. None of you have any idea how sick he was".

The other two agents stayed quiet, while Redfield's facial expression started with disbelief, as if Shakahnna told him that little curly-tailed and neon-green elephants were flying past the window. Then, the marksman's eyes narrowed and his mouth grimaced as the annoyance he felt towards anyone who didn't believe him clarified in his mind.

"What the hell would you know? Who the fuck are you, to come in here and shoot your mouth off?", he countered, fighting the urge to walk up to where she stood and physically toss her out of the office.

He quickly calmed down, first feeling Valentine's hand on his elbow, and next noticing how young the red-headed cop in front of him appeared.

"Look", he gently withdrew his arm from Valentine's grasp and slowly proceeded towards the rookie, "I'm guessing you're a new here, so you don't know your head from your ass just now, which is why I'm not gonna toss you out of here like I want. But I suggest you try living in the real world for a change, OK? Wesker betrayed us all. And many members of our teams died because of him".

"No! Wesker was not responsible for the zombies", the redhead countered, intentionally not daring him to try to throw her out due to not wishing to create more hassle for Chisholm and Donnelly later, "Not the person you are speaking about".

Noticing that she wasn't going to convince anyone here, and surprised that she had decided to try in the first place, she waved the air in front of her face, as if already counting the STARS members out of the discussion.

"No wonder nobody believes you if you're running around, acting like a thug", she added, in a softer tone.

"That's enough from you", it was Burton who replied this time, coming closer to the teenager from a different side, "You need to leave, and I mean now".

Shakahnna rolled her eyes with a sigh and reached back for the doorknob, happy to follow their demand, rather than wasting more time here.

"Look, we're not against you here", Valentine spoke up before the redhead completely walked out of the room, "Barry and Chris are just being put through the grinder in this department".

Neither man added anything more, though the stern and prepared way they both quietly stared at her was enough to confirm the brunette's statement, as if they were ready for a physical confrontation with anyone and at any time. Did this mean that these three officers had perhaps been assaulted on the job, the same way that she had been after being bailed out of jail?

"I can't blame you for believing Wesker's lies", Valentine continued, still speaking in a noticeably friendly voice, "He lied to us in the same tone, told us about how he was on our side. To be honest, I believed him too. But later on, his actions gave his intentions away. So you should forget about those lies and believe us. We knew him better than anyone else in here does".

For an instant, the teenager considered telling them the whole truth, and then bit her tongue due to the danger that would put Wesker in. So she quickly shook her head several times as she opened the door.

"You just think you do", she whispered as she was walking out, unsure if she was heard. She immediately regretted having said something.

She didn't notice agent Valentine patting Redfield on the shoulder before the older woman proceeded to follow her out of the room's only exit. It was after Shakahnna walked several yards into the hallway outside the STARS office that the Alpha team machinist caught up with her, walking close enough to the teenager that they could talk without being overheard.

"The underground Umbrella lab. That was you in one of those blue tubes, wasn't it?", Valentine kept her eyes fixed on Shakahnna's face to notice her reaction and gage what to do from there.

The teenager suddenly stopped walking and visibly tensed up as her head whipped around to look at the taller woman, not having expected that to come from Valentine's mouth. It didn't take her long to regain her composure, but the sudden halt was enough to convince the STARS agent that her suspicions were right.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I mean…", she began denying and stopped.

"Save it", the older woman advised in as sympathetic a tone as those words could be delivered, "See, I remember, vaguely, seeing you in one of those god-awful tubes, when I was being chased by this 9-foot tall thing that Wesker let loose. Barry was there too, except that I suspect he was too busy looking for a way to keep both himself and me alive. By the time Chris and Becca were there, he was too thankful to have me alive, and she was too thankful to have herself alive, to look around. But it doesn't mean I don't remember".

"There's lots of people who look like me!", Shakahnna answered with a believable lie.

"Which is why you weren't baffled by what I asked just now", Valentine proved to be obstinate, "You're the same height, have the same length hair, and have the same nose".

She lightly passed her finger over the bridge of Shakahnna's nose as she finished talking.

"So, anything you want to tell me about Wesker or Umbrella that we don't know?", the older woman continued when the teenager stayed silent, neither keeping eye contact, nor breaking it, making the redhead feel better, "I figure we need all the help we can get, considering Umbrella seems to be in charge everywhere. And here I come across someone who used to be on the inside, and she's insistent that one of their biggest operatives shouldn't be spoken badly of, and I wonder why".

Again, the temptation to tell this officer everything she knew had to be pushed back, as she didn't dare reveal her friend's secret.

"Not here", Shakahnna finally hushed back, and then looked on either side of the hallway to make sure no one else was within hearing range. "No point in be's trying to go through the media. Is a game you'll loose and end up in tragic 'accidents'", unable to keep the disdain from her voice, she continued. "Get away from here or arm up and prepare in private, cause you know it's coming. You can either be screaming about righteousness, honour, justice, or you can win. You've seen… this place just isn't going to be safe.

But you also need to understand. Wesker was my friend and I miss him".

The teenager's sad expression allowed her to speak the truth till the very end, as she truly did miss not seeing Wesker every day, and having to sneak to his cabin on an irregular basis.

"So you know what all this stuff is", Valentine eagerly claimed, "You know what's been going on with us, what we're up against. You shouldn't be wasting your time with the rank and file here. Why aren't you spending your time with us?".

"Look, considering you've been through this, how can you still not understand who, how I mean not who, how dangerous it all is?", Shakahnna countered.

"Oh, I think we do!", the older woman shot back, her face and tone of voice hardening for an instant before it returned to her usually friendly one.

"Jill, my family's here", the redhead explained, "Yours doesn't be, are they? And don't get me wrong, that's a good thing. But I can't afford to be screaming into the silence. And I certainly can't risk, I can't be coming home and finding everyone dead. I just, it's not I can't. Believe it or not, can do more with the whole influence thing when am here, and if I get cut out of the loop now, then I'll lose any chance of getting information".

"We all have people who can be hit by Umbrella!", Valentine asserted, "Whether they're in this city or elsewhere in the country. You don't think Umbrella can hit our loved ones elsewhere in this country, or this world? What option is there? Risk everything and be called crazy to your face and behind your back, or cop out? You're not backing us up when you can".

"You're still not getting this", Shakahnna repeated, "Raccoon City is where it's gonna happen".

"What is?", the older officer intentionally didn't mention agent Aitken's insistence that the city was doomed and should be evacuated by his colleagues.

"I don't know yet", the teenager had to admit, "But whatever it is, it will be here".

She only received a sigh and a rub of the eyes from the STARS officer.

"In that case, I won't tell Chris and Barry about you, OK?", Valentine finally offered, "I'm just disappointed here. You should know that".

"I expect you will be", Shakahnna admitted with a sad smile, "But wow. You know, until now, I thought everyone who was still alive was on the take".

The younger cop smiled wider and extended her arms in front of her, indicating she wanted to embrace Valentine, to which the STARS agents frowned in suspicion. But it only took the Alpha team member an instant before she changed her distrust and accepted that the teenager only wished to make a peace offering.

Valentine ignored how strange it felt to cuddle someone she just met and slightly bent forward while slowly wrapping her arms around Shakahnna's upper back. To her surprise, the teenager's response wasn't an affectionate embrace as the younger cop barely touched the sides of the older woman's torso.

"More than half the cops are Umbrella's. Don't know which ones", the redhead whispered into her colleague's ear, all semblance of light-heartedness gone, making Valentine realize that she wasn't looking for a hug at all, but to pass on a warning, "Tell that to your friends, for their sake. The good ones are not in the majority in this place".

Having finished talking, Shakahnna separated herself from Valentine, letting the taller woman stand back up to her full height, before the STARS agent slowly nodded once.

"You should come by and have lunch with us one day!", the fake smile returned on the teenager's face as she continued, and knew that Valentine got the message to meet up in the future for the sharing of information, "Though I gotta warn you, that my boyfriend's pet is a bit of a hothead".

"Count on it", the STARS officer acknowledged as they locked eyes, "A day out of the office will do me good. I prefer Chinese or Italian".

The older woman turned and headed back to her office. The sooner agents Redfield and Burton knew of this new information, the better.

Shakahnna felt shaky after parting ways with agent Valentine, not happy that she was found to be in possession of some of Umbrella's secrets, even if it was done by someone who was dedicated to fighting the corporation. Granted that the STARS member was one of the very few people around who could have recognized her, as being someone who was inside the labs and still alive, but it didn't change the fact that there was now someone else who knew about her.

For the first time, she understood subjectively, and not just objectively, why Wesker had insisted on Chino not being told of his clandestine affairs.

Regardless, it was fair to assume that Valentine wouldn't betray her, not when the older woman had risked so much in the last few weeks. So for now, the teenager returned to her desk, knowing that much paperwork was waiting for her, and counting the hours till Chisholm and Donnelly came back.

She hadn't even reached her work area, though, when she spotted officer Donnelly withdrawing some items from a locker that wasn't his. Pleasantly surprised at seeing him there, since it meant that Chisholm had returned early from court also, Shakahnna grinned as she tip-toed in his direction.

Donnelly had his head and arms inside the locker container, possibly digging through a gymbag inside, when the redhead screamed and grabbed him from behind on either side of his waistline. The result was that the young man yelled in surprise and accidentally jumped inside the metal compartment, further getting his upper body entangled within the items there. A surprising amount of racing paraphernalia that seemed to be plastered all over the inside of the locker was seen next by her.

Swearing to himself, the officer brought his head out of the locker and angrily turned around to see who had surprised him, and it was only then that Shakahnna noticed this man wasn't Eric Donnelly at all. While both men were the same height and had a facial resemblance, some faint differences were obvious when she was up-close to this person, such as the fact that he had longer hair. Enough so that she knew she had made a mistake.

"Lady, what's with you?", this new officer demanded as he scratched the tangled hair at the top of his head.

The way he spoke was definitely an indication of him being someone else, as Donnelly would never refer to her as a lady.

"You're not Donnelly!", the redhead responded, as if he was partially responsible for the misunderstanding.

"Yes, I'm well aware of that!", the man exclaimed, "Thank you! I'm Kevin. Been here for months now, and all I hear is 'Hey Eric this, Hey Eric that'. So why did you wanna shove Donnelly into a locker?".

"Only because it'd be funny", she explained, expecting the answer to make perfect sense, "But I'll kick him in the nuts for you if it'll make this accident go away".

"Really?", Kevin smiled back, "In that case, let's you and I talk, officer…".

He looked at her name tag for an instant.

"Warren", he finished, "I happen to know quite a few people who'd like to put their name on the petition to get that done".

Shakahnna beamed a large grin as she clapped her hands together in front of her chest in anticipation.

"Let me show you to my desk", her new associate pointed as he closed the locker with his other hand, "We have much to talk about".