Uroboros: Resident Evil V

Chapter Seventeen: Never Forget

The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon when Chris opened his eyes, and it took him a second to remember where they were as the airboat glided its way across the water. This was the marshlands, nothing but water with green grassy plants sticking out of it for as far as the eye could see. The journey from the village waterfront where they fought the giant took several hours by airboat just to get to the border of the marshes, so Chris and Sheva had taken turns driving while the other one got some sleep.

It was still going to take a long time to get to where Delta Team would have parked their own airboats, so the Agent took out the satellite phone in order to give another situation report to Headquarters; telling them that they had reached the marshes en route to assist Delta Team, and asking if there had been any update on the Intel about Jill, but leaving out the part about trying to jump a military grade Humvee over the canal. Unfortunately, there was no update on his old partner, so at the moment Irving was still their only lead.

"So what happened?" The young woman asked once the report was finished. "To your old partner, I mean… I understand if you don't want to talk about it, but the BSAA listed Jill Valentine as dead two years ago."

"Yeah, we all thought she was." Chris replied, looking off into the distance. "You ever heard of Albert Wesker? That asshole's been a thorn in my side since 1998, and two years ago we actually got a solid lead that we hoped would lead us to his location. Unfortunately, it did."

Now the memories started to flow again as he described heading to a place on the coast that was basically a replica of the Spencer Estate that had been destroyed before the Raccoon City outbreak. The target in that instance was a man named Oswell Spencer, one of the original founders of Umbrella, and a known associate of Wesker, who they hoped had the information they needed. Turns out that the tip was a good one, since just before midnight when Chris and Jill arrived at the mansion using a thunderstorm for cover… they walked into Spencer's study just in time to see the Wesker execute the old man by punching right through his chest.

"Wait, he just punched through the rib cage with his bare hands?" Sheva asked, turning the airboat a little to avoid the thicker plants. "I heard Albert Wesker was strong, but that seems… insane."

"You ever seen that movie The Matrix?" Chris asked, looking back at her. "You know the part where those computer guys are moving so fast they can dodge bullets? Imagine that with blond hair, and a lot less fun to be a part of."

The Agent had gone into that place having already seen Wesker in action since his upgrade back in Antarctica, but now the guy was somehow even faster, to the point where he and Jill hit nothing but air even though they emptied their entire clips at him. In only a matter of seconds the two agents were out of bullets, and it was like Wesker was toying with them as he would vanish from sight for a second, and then come back with some kind of overly exaggerated martial arts kick or something similar.

The blond man tossed him and Jill around the room like they weighed nothing, choke slamming Chris right through a hardwood table, and then punching the Jill in the stomach so hard that she partially destroyed a bookcase several feet away when she flew into it, only to vomit after collapsing to the floor. The Agent tried to fight Wesker off on his own, but the short version was that his attempt didn't work, and soon he was seeing white flashes with every punch as the blond man beat him into the floor.

Next thing he knew, Chris was being lifted off the floor by his throat while Wesker pulled back his fist to kill him in the same way as Spencer, but then Jill came out of nowhere. Distracted by what he was doing with Chris, the blond man was unable to do anything as the running woman locked her arms around his waist to tackle him like a football player… and then there was the crash of glass shattering as the two of them went right out the window into the storm, along with a hundred foot drop straight down to where the waves were crashing against the rocky shore.

A search was conducted, but Jill's body was never found, and after a couple months she was declared dead, which… the Agent didn't take so well. He started drinking more, got into fights at the bar for no reason at all, and honestly if not for Amelia Ashland, who had been his rock ever since Terragrigia, Chris might have gone off the deep end for good. So he did the only logical thing available in his position: He took a couple weeks off work, and then married Amelia in Las Vegas.

"You became a drunken asshole, then ran off to Vegas to marry a billionaire?" Sheva asked, unable to help laughing a bit. "You've got one hell of a grieving process, Chris… let me guess… the Elvis wedding?"

"Shaft, actually." He replied taking off his glove to show the gold ring on his finger. "They even had an Isaac Hays impersonator, he was like; 'who's the man gonna take this fine young lady's hand? Chris… your damn right, he's a bad mother-watch your mouth'."

There was more to the personalized Shaft song that the Agent was not shy about belting out while Sheva just shook her head, because now that he knew Jill was alive, this was the first time that he didn't feel guilty about moving on with his life without his old partner. In fact, except for the time he spent with Amelia, which for some reason caused him to be happy no matter what he had been feeling before… weird… this was the first time in two years that Chris was genuinely happy… like there was hope in the world again, and everything would be okay once Jill was safe.

"So, what about you, Sheva?" He asked after the song was finished. "You know my stake in all this, so how did a bright young woman like you end up in the BSAA?"

"We have some time it seems, so I'll tell you the whole story." The young woman replied. "I told you that I grew up in a village just outside of Kijuju; it was a small place with 'none of the fancy stuff' as my father used to say, but the one thing he did have was a radio, and because of it everything changed when I was fifteen."

Sheva told him about how her father's favorite program was Star FM, and that every Saturday he would go down to the only telephone in the village and try to win the weekly contests they used to do. Her father did this for years without even getting connected to the station, but then one day not only did he get put on the air, but he also won the contest by being the first person able to a believable impression of Bill Clinton singing I'm Coming Out by Diana Ross… okay, so the contests were weird back then.

The prize he won was the largest ever offered, a month long vacation for two that would take them to several famous places around the world, and the young woman remembered how everyone cheered for him. So Sheva's mother and father packed their best clothes and promised to bring back all kinds of photographs and souvenirs from everywhere they went, with the young woman eagerly waiting each day after they left for the village's telephone to ring. She received a call from India, and then another one from Japan, and she remembered getting really excited when her father told her that he had gotten a photograph with Denzel Washington in California.

"But I never got to see that picture." The young woman continued, taking a deep breath. "The last time I spoke to my father, he was in South Carolina, telling me how excited my mother was that they were going to spend several days onboard a luxury cruise liner… a cruise liner called the Starlight."

"Oh, my God." Chris replied, feeling a slight knot in his stomach as he realized what she was telling him. "Your parents were onboard the Starlight in 2001?"

Sheva nodded, looking away for a second as if trying to keep herself from crying, and that certainly explained why she had reacted so violently to the mention of Tobias Liquid's name back in the mine. The Starlight had been the sight of a terrible outbreak during Umbrella's last days, in which Tobias and Gillette Liquid infected everyone onboard with C-Spores… none of the passengers or crew survived, and the Starlight was sunk to stop the outbreak from spreading further.

"My father was a very brave man." The young woman continued, sniffling a little. "I am sure that he tried to protect the other passengers, and I like to think that he gave Tobias one hell of a fight before the end, but… my decision to join the BSAA came when I heard that Barry Burton himself boarded the Starlight to save them."

It was too late by then to save her parents or anyone else, Sheva knew that, but Barry defeated the Liquids and stopped the outbreak from hurting anyone else. The lesson that the much younger Sheva took from that whole disaster was that there will always be evil people out in the world, and even if everyone couldn't be saved, the BSAA could at least show criminals like Tobias Liquid that victory will not come easy. And who knows, maybe when they captured Irving, maybe some of the people of Kijuju could still be saved.

Chris wasn't sure what he could say after hearing this story, even though he really wanted to comfort her somehow… God, after all that, it must've broken her heart when it came out that the CIA recovered Tobias and Gillette from the wreckage instead of destroying them… and even more so when they ended up at large again after the incident in Spain. All the Agent could do was assure her that they were definitely going to capture Irving, and then his whole operation was going to be blown wide open.

"Look, there it is!" The young woman exclaimed, stopping him from having to try and think of anything else. "Delta Team's airboats!"

"Delta Team, this is Redfield, come in." Chris said, into the local radio since they had to be in range now. "Delta Team, Captain Stone, do you read me? This is Redfield, what are you guys doing, listening to the football game?"

Even though he tried several times to raise them, so far there was no response at all from Delta Team or their leader, but… but their airboats were right there. There were four of the watercraft, all parked on the shore at the edge of what looked like the old tribal village that Sheva said surrounded this side of the oil field, so where was everyone? The first thing he looked for were bodies in case there was a giant there as well, but none could be seen from there, and… actually, nothing could be seen at all. No people, no fires, no nothing… so what had happened to Delta Team?