All the Right Reasons
Ada!
Your friend likes to play hard to get. She always been like this?
Those voices that echoed through the warehouse; he knew one of them, but couldn't decide whom it belonged to as he made his way through the area.
"Don't lose her!" That one was easy. It belonged to Chris. Even though agitated and out of breath, the voice of his Captain was unmistakable, and he would follow his orders blindly no matter what.
"I won't!" Piers shouted as his feet kept sprinting after their target. They were close, so close. They'd had Ada Wong so near that they could have strangled her had they just stretched out their gloved fingers a little further, but even after she'd gained some distance, that woman had nowhere to run to.
The pending structure that led them across the complete warehouse, below its glass ceiling with the most impressive views ever, was about to meet a dead end. With his heartbeat pulsing the adrenaline fast through his moving body, Piers prepared mentally for the jump and hopped off the platform, analyzing during the fall where exactly he would land.
"There she is!" He heard Chris command and his eyes scanned the surroundings, spotting the shadow in the same shades of blue and red that had eaten themselves deeply into his memory. Ada Wong, just as he remembered her; with the same dress code for a cold European winter's day as for a moist, Chinese summer night; with a cleavage that tried to reach her belly button and a red scarf that didn't cover shit.
She would make such a beautiful corpse once they got her.
"Cut her off!"
Strong legs propelled him onto his feet again, and he was about to corner the fugitive.
"I've got her!"
And just as he said that, he released a string of bullets from his MP-AF, cutting the path of the chased one. Ada looked up as that damn victorious smile of the evil vanished from her face and she exhaled as she turned to Chris, who was keeping her in place with his barrel pointing directly between her eyes.
Game over. Many dead soldiers and civilians, six months of uncertainty and one rampant chase through the night of Wayip had come to an end and Ada Wong, now in the hands of the B.S.A.A., would never cause harm again. Piers shot her a glance of hatred as his breathing normalized and his heart only beat in expectation for the upcoming moments. He wondered what Chris would do once he got the chance to decide over her life. Never had he seen his Captain; usually serene and calm; so uncontrollably furious, and he wasn't sure how he himself would react, if he would be able to stop him, if Chris decided she had lived long enough. The burden of the choice was taken from him rather quickly.
It looked like fireworks at first, the bullets Chris' assault rifle sent into the column behind the woman when someone jumped into his way. Piers, caught between the shock about the attack and the determination not to lose sight of the woman in front of him, didn't catch more than glimpses of the battle based on flying fists, elbows and knees. It was a man, clearly; strong and trained; not as gracile as a female would be, but very quickly back on his feet after Chris grabbed his arm and tossed him over his shoulder onto the ground.
The two figures came to stop, with their handguns drawn at each other and short, shallow gasps rocking their bodies, and they stood in the shine of the city lights of Lanshiang like some superheroes in a comic strip. The unknown attacker stood protectively between Chris and the traitorous bitch in the blueish dress.
"Chris," the familiar voice mumbled.
"Leon?" Chris shouted and revealed the identity of the dark shades of blond, causing Piers' teeth to gnash together in anger. Of course, it was Kennedy. It had to be Kennedy. Kennedy would follow him wherever he would go, even to the farthest point on the other side of the planet, not respecting such insignificant details like borders or competences when it came to fucking with his job and his mind. "What are you doing here?"
A brunette woman stepped into the scene; a girl of a tender age, with big eyes and bigger boobs; who actually looked like she knew better than to follow Kennedy around like a puppy, but who was, nevertheless, aiming her gun at Chris' back.
Piers saw Ada shift and turned his attention back to her, lifting the gun to remind her that Kennedy wasn't able to distract more than one of her hunters at once.
"Put your gun down, Chris," the agent said, himself far from doing the same. "She's a key witness, we need her."
Key witness? Was that how the government called the bad guys now? Piers spotted Chris shake his head in hesitation.
"A witness?" he growled. "She's the one who did all this!"
One thing he had to admit; Kennedy was cool enough not to move when Chris Redfield began to roar. The agent stood still until the Alpha leader had stopped shouting.
"No," he said, his voice calm. "It wasn't her— it was Simmons, the national Security Advisor."
Well, shit, that was a joke, right? Piers remained calm as he went through the recent happenings. They had repeatedly spotted Ada Wong in the zone; she had been followed— or escorted— by those J'avo things, and yet Kennedy was saying she wasn't the culprit?
"I lost all my men because of her!"
That was true, too. He had been there.
"And I lost over seventy thousand people, including the president, because of Simmons!"
Piers swallowed, assuming it was Tall Oaks Kennedy was speaking about. They still hadn't gotten any details, but it seemed that the agent knew important facts about the attack on the city where the president got assassinated even before he could give his planned speech. He wasn't sure how their paths would find a way to meet, but maybe it was time to put the differences aside and work together with the almighty, headless US Government, the everlasting thorn in their side. A bright, white ray of light shone through the windows behind the man and Piers could see the doubt on his Captain's face, meaning that Chris, too, was trying to hold himself down.
"She's working for Neo-Umbrella," he said quietly as the gun in his hands seemed to twitch as though it tried to come to life and kill the woman. "You know what that means?"
Kennedy, still panting, nodded.
"Yeah, I do."
Chris grunted in response, obviously disliking the answer he'd been given.
"And you're still going to protect this woman?"
It took Leon a while to reply, and Piers believed he even saw some sort of regret— or maybe shame— in the agent's moves.
"I am."
Silence followed, one so big it seemed capable of consuming the downtown noises and the bombs around them, and Piers couldn't stop his eyes from jumping from the target to his Captain. Another headlight shone through the window, bathing the two men in a beam of white, and he spotted all the terror in Chris. This wasn't just about Ada or what she could've done to their unit. This was about a million lost battles and lives, about two fronts on a similar side, about the heart of a sister and the one of a partner. Claire had mentioned the obsession that tied Leon Kennedy to the Asian woman they had been chasing and, by his reaction, it was obvious that Chris knew about it, too, just like he knew about all the other bonds that indirectly related the agent to himself or to the women in his life.
With the scene of the somehow legendary confrontation keeping him captivated, Piers turned his attention back to Ada when the drop of the flash grenade couldn't be avoided anymore.
"Captain!"
Lighting shot through the night as the grenade hit the ground. Kennedy had just turned around to Ada, being the first one to be involved by the spreading veil of light. Piers had gotten to cover his eyes right before the beam hat blinded him, but when he put his arm back down it was already too late for him to stop the woman from flying away, pulled off toward the ceiling by some sort of hookshot. Eyes following her closely, he bent over the railing to see her land on the lower floor and pointed the gun at her.
"Freeze!" he yelled.
She didn't. She smiled at him and started sprinting, avoiding the bullets he sent after her, and even though it would have been easy for him to kill her, he failed. After a short look back over his shoulder and seeing how the other three people still struggled with the effects of the flash grenade, he decided to run after the woman, soon hearing their voices behind him.
Helena!
He's gonna kill her!
No, he wasn't. Had he wanted to kill her, he would have shot her long before. That didn't mean that he wouldn't enjoy torturing her once he caught her, slicing off pieces of her— one or two for every fallen B.S.A.A. member— until she talked and confessed all her darkest plans and sins, until she regretted being born. The voices faded, and when he jumped off the metal structure and landed on the ground below, he was alone. Before leaving the warehouse, he spotted Chris, Kennedy and his partner standing close to each other, but there was no time to wonder what the agent was telling his Captain. He had to follow Wong.
The red sports car was already driving off on squealing tires when he exited the building, and a single string of bullets wasn't enough to stop the woman from escaping, it seemed. Approaching footsteps behind him made him spin around, meeting the dark look of his Captain as he jumped after his lieutenant.
"She's making a break for the harbor," Piers reported, pointing at a light military truck next to them. "Get in!"
He ran towards the driver side, ready to resume the chase.
"Hey, Piers!" Chris called out as he climbed onto the tonneau and grabbed hold of the gun attached to it. "What you said, about me hiding from my past."
Piers, with the open door in his hand, stopped moving and took a moment to listen to his Captain's musings.
"You were right."
He arched a brow at the man. Had the meeting with Kennedy provoked that sudden revelation in him?
"Captain?"
Chris smirked softly.
"How is Claire?"
Piers felt his heart sag into his bowels when he heard the redhead's name. Kennedy was a motherfucking idiot.
"What?" he asked incredulously, considering that if Chris had to punch his face for anything related to his sister, this was not the right moment. They had to go after Ada Wong.
"My sister," the older man replied with a nod, as if it was the most natural thing to ask and an uncommon name on top of it. "Is she okay? What about Jill? Or Barry Burton and his family?"
Piers took a deep breath as he realized that the Captain wasn't asking about his secret relationship with his sister and he felt his grip relax around the open door of the truck. Chris had suddenly remembered the concept of family and friendship it seemed, concerned about the well-being of his closest friends after six months of disappearance, and he deserved something to hold onto.
"They're fine, as far as I know," the younger man confirmed with a nod. "They're all back home, waiting for you."
Chris rewarded him with another warm glance and smirked as his head gestured towards the nearby road.
"Can you catch up to her?"
The young man, relieved to get to live a little longer and glad that his Captain seemed to have recovered some sanity, let the grin grow widely over his face.
"Won't stop until I do."
He was, after all, the best driver the B.S.A.A. got.
"Perfect, thank you Chung-sun," Claire whispered before cutting the call and putting the phone away while Moira, on the other side of the desk, was busy jotting down names onto papers. The two women had turned Barry's multimedia room, where the man stored his computers, DVDs and video games, into a makeshift office from which they could operate.
"The team around Tall Oaks is moving back," the younger woman explained with a tilt of her head. "The psychologists are still there, but everyone and everything that could have needed medical attention or cures after the outbreak has been eradicated along with the rest of the city." She sighed. "I can't believe this is happening. It just feels like Raccoon City again."
"Or Terragrigia…"
Claire closed her eyes and let her forehead drop into her palm. No, she wasn't believing it either. The news that slopped over from the Chinese territory little by little seemed to indicate that the two outbreaks were indeed related, but although Lanshiang, unlike Tall Oaks, was still standing, the infection kept spreading firmly across the territory and soon all life would be drained from the complete province. Also, Jill had advanced that Chris and Piers had, apparently, started a willful chase after Ada Wong.
Where would this all lead to? Claire rubbed her temple to make the throbbing pain go away, unsuccessfully, as so many previous times. Her eyes jumped to the clock on the wall, the hands of it telling her that she had spent the whole morning on the phone and that it was already past midnight in China.
"You should rest," Moira suggested, but she didn't want to rest. She wanted to help.
"I'm fine," Claire said and grabbed her phone again. With ten percent of battery remaining, she wouldn't get to make many more calls, but before she could get up to get her charger, the device began to vibrate in her hand again. "Jill! Any news?"
" Yes ," the blonde whispered in a depressed tone. " It's bad, Claire. A missile with virus spores has been released to the city of Tatchi. Our troops there report that the people in the whole area have been infected. "
Claire sucked in a breath.
"What?"
" It's airborne, Claire. The mutation is quick. We lost many men already ."
That was bad indeed. Was there anyone left for them to place their hope into?
"Chris…?"
" He's outside the area. He apparently tried to stop the missile but… " A sigh. " He failed. "
She exhaled again, giving in to the nightmare the whole situation had become. This wasn't just another outbreak like Raccoon City, where she'd had to fight for her life herself; neither was it like Terragrigia, an island from which the virus wouldn't have spread that easily. It was China, the most populated country in the world, which was enough to make it a very dangerous origin for an outbreak. They were lucky that the virus couldn't be transmitted through body fluids like saliva or blood, but the zombies had been declared extremely violent and hungry, and the millions of infected needed to be contained or they would eradicate half of the world's population in a matter of days. Normal civilians had no chance against them.
"Tell me what I can do, Jill." Her pleading came out like a cry for help itself.
" Contact your team in China. I heard they set up their tents in Tatchi. Is that right? "
The ground under her seemed to dissolve and her knees trembled.
"Fuck!" She put the phone down and turned to Moira. "Get me Chung-sun back on the line."
" The borders of the complete province of Lanshiang have been closed. All B.S.A.A. branches are there, we have military support from Russia and most European countries, but I fear it won't be enough. "
Claire nodded, feeling the world begin to turn around her.
"I think I know what to do. Thank you, Jill."
Once the call was ended, Claire began to type into her phone again, her finger missing one number after the other as she tried to reach the head secretary. They wouldn't let her move more people to China, and it was surely irresponsible to feed more colleagues to the undead when only about twenty percent of their members had military experience and therefore a real chance to defend themselves against minor B.O.W.s. The others were medical staff, lawyers and translators who made the intervention possible, and many normal, mortal civilians, who volunteered for the job because of personal trauma and to make a change. Only those with the most experience were sent into critical zones before the B.S.A.A. had officially declared an outbreak under control .
She needed to prepare the teams for the move to China in the upcoming days. She needed to speak to the PR department to send out warning messages for the people in nearby zones. She needed to contact Jay Eccleston and remind him of the time he had promised her to take her call whenever she needed money. Because she needed money now; a lot of it.
And then, there was Piers, and Chris, and Leon, and the members of Terra Save who were likely to have become zombie food, if not zombies themselves. She leaned back in her chair for a second and breathed, as the feeling of asphyxiation was slowly numbing her. When her phone beeped tragically, she decided that the charger was a luxury that couldn't wait any longer and after tucking her loose strands behind her ear, she pushed herself onto her feet to get it.
Her knees gave in the moment she let go of the desk.
Looking at it more closely, Barry had chosen a beautiful color for the wooden flooring in his man cave.
Had all the things that could have gone wrong that day been items on a bingo card, he would have won the prize already. Chris ignoring the mission and obstinately following Ada Wong; all members of Alpha Team dead again; Leon Kennedy fucking up their plans; Ada Wong escaping to a freighter from which missiles would be sent out to infect the complete coast; Chris and himself trying to avoid said catastrophe and failing; and now, on top of all of the shit they had to bear already, they were going to rescue the son of the world's most dangerous terrorist ever.
"There's irony for you," Piers said as he anxiously stepped through the elevator cabin that would take them to the underwater laboratory where Neo Umbrella held Jake Muller captive. "A man who spent his entire life trying to destroy the world, and now his son is the only one who can save it."
The good thing about it was that Sherry Birkin was with him. The cute blonde, a friend of Claire's, wasn't exactly a sublime agent, Piers could tell by the times she had gone missing and been captured, but so far she had avoided that someone—Ada Wong or Derek Simmons— had killed the young mercenary, and Claire would be happy to hear that the girl was alright. Chris frowned at his comment, the thought gnawing visibly on him.
"And here I am coming to rescue him."
Piers nodded once and turned away to continue his path across the cabin.
"The man who killed his father," he said and looked back at his Captain. "Like I said — irony."
"I don't know," the older man replied, letting the weight of the situation nearly suppress his voice. "Maybe it's fate."
Well, wasn't that funny? Did a man like Chris Redfield really believe in fate? After all the shit he had seen going on around the world, was there really anything he still put his faith into? The elevator shot farther down and the opaque walls of the shaft around the cabin turned transparent, letting the massive blue of the ocean unfold in front of their eyes. It would have been beautiful, Piers thought, hadn't it been the location of an underground lab and prison of Sherry Birkin, and the thought reminded him of Claire again. She had certainly heard of all the happenings in Asia and, knowing her, she was trying to move the world in order to help. He couldn't wait to finish this mission and get back to her, tell her about all the adventures he had lived since they'd last met. Piers kept staring into the blue, analyzing how much it resembled the one of Claire's eyes, when Chris suddenly began to speak.
"It's been three years since I killed Wesker," he said, and Piers didn't have the guts to tell him that it had actually been almost four. "I can't let this war follow me forever."
He held his breath as his Captain turned to face him, holding his weapon like a shield.
"After we rescue Jake, I'm turning in my gun."
Piers's head spun so quickly he heard his neck creak.
"What?! Wait a minute…" he advanced toward Chris, the shock rushing deeply. Chris was the B.S.A.A., what would be of their project without the mighty Chris Redfield leading them? They were lost. They were doomed. He couldn't leave the B.S.A.A. Over his dead body!
"It's about time someone took my place," the older man muttered, his aura filled with the resolution he had only shown on the field. "And I'd be honored if it was you."
You . You meant him . Him meant Lieutenant Piers Nivans. His breath began to flicker in his windpipe as he searched for the right words to say, wondering if there was the chance for him to make the tables turn and make Chris reconsider.
"I… I don't think I'm ready for that."
Claire would agree, wouldn't she? She knew that he wasn't ready, that he was a better player following orders than giving them. Sure, he had taken over the rest of Alpha Team during Chris' absence, and even from a long distance, he had kept everything under control, but he was missing the experience, the knowledge and the thick skin Chris had. His eyes jumped back to his Captain's face, meeting the same sad, depressing glance he hated so much when he found it in Claire.
"You've made it this far, haven't you?"
He had, yes, but never alone. Chris had always been his guide, his mentor, the man who had saved him from himself and his family pride; and when Chris had been gone, there had been Claire. Claire had given him the confidence and spirit he needed to keep fighting, and from where he stood, it seemed obvious that he would always shine the brightest next to a Redfield.
The elevator trembled when it hit the lower floor, and the two men pointed their weapons at the doors as they slid open loudly.
"All right." Chris said as he adjusted the rifle in his grip. "This is it!"
Tick, tick, tick. The room was warm, the light was low and there was an unfamiliar ticking in the background. Her head was aching and her stomach burning when she began to move, and she noticed that she was lying in a bed that wasn't hers. Besides the ticking, which she attributed to the clock on the wall, there was silence, and she felt like she hadn't enjoyed such a peaceful moment in a very long time.
"Mom! She's awake!"
So peaceful that she hadn't even seen Moira sitting next to the bed. When the young woman dropped to her knees in front of her and leaned against the mattress, everything around her began to tremble.
"Claire! How are you?" she held three fingers up. "How many fingers do you see?"
Claire sighed heavily, unwilling to follow any instructions until Kathy arrived.
"What happened?"
Now she recognized the surroundings. She was in Moira's old bedroom, the one her friend stayed in when she visited her parents' house, and it smelled so intensely like sandalwood incense mixed with red berry candles that it gave her nausea.
"You fainted," the girl told her and took her hand in her cold fingers. "How long has it been since you last ate properly?"
Claire blinked at her friend's face before the clock on the wall caught her attention again, and she mentally tried to count the hours that had passed since the meager breakfast she'd gobbled down that morning. The counting was forgotten quickly when Kathy came running into the room, the tray in her hands barely enough to hold the huge sandwiches she'd prepared.
"How do you feel, sweetheart?" she asked as she gently pushed Claire back into the cushions and placed the tray onto her thighs. "We were fucking worried about you. Eat something. I'm sure you're hungry."
Claire chuckled, taking up one piece of the tasty tuna sandwich. As soon as she began to chew, she felt the forces return to her limbs.
"I think you're right. I was hungry." After eating another bite, she suddenly remembered what she had been doing when she'd lost her consciousness and turned to Moira in shock. "Oh god, the outbreak."
The girl put a hand onto her shoulder and smirked comfortingly as she said, "don't worry. I made all your phone calls and Barry's in contact with Jill. Everything has been taken care of."
She wanted to believe it, but the voice in her head told her to finish her meal as soon as possible and get back to work. She took another big bite of the sandwich when Kathy handed her the bottle of water she'd brought.
"Drink when you've finished," she ordered and Claire didn't have the guts to complain. Kathy was the closest thing to a mother she had, and it was relieving to be the one who was looked after for once.
"I have to get back to work," she eventually said and put the tray away to remove the sheets.
Kathy didn't oppose, smiling warmly at the redhead.
"Okay, go wash your face and you'll feel better soon," she said before turning to Moira. "Darling, tell your father that Claire will come out in a minute, okay?"
The dark-haired girl winked and made her way out of the room, leaving her mother and her friend alone. When her oldest daughter was out of reach, Kathy pulled out a small, pink paper box, careful that she wasn't caught by anyone's curiosity.
"When you're in the bathroom, you should take this."
Claire's eyes widened in surprise when she realized what the older woman was handing her.
"Oh god, Kathy, what do you want me to do with this?" She laughed the tension away as she shook her head, but the other woman didn't let her reaction unsettle her.
"You take the cap off and pee onto the sick," she said with a laugh and pushed the box into Claire's hand. "You have the instructions on the package insert, as well."
The redhead froze, watching in bafflement as Kathy carried the tray away.
"Kathy, that's ridiculous."
Before leaving the room, the mother of the Burton family rubbed lovingly over Claire's head as she said, "if it is, then we'll laugh at it together."
When the other woman had left, Claire's look dropped to the paper box in her palm.
It was really ridiculous.
It had been the longest run of his life. One piece after another, the underwater tunnel that would lead them to the outside was collapsing, swallowing everything inside of it when it sunk into the depth of the ocean. Haos , how the system called the creature behind them, was huge; not as huge as the Ogroman they had encountered in Edonia, nor like Torre dell'ombra from Italy, but it was much more agile and, under water, it clearly had the upper hand. That was, however, no reason for two B.S.A.A. soldiers like them to give up fighting, because if a thing like that was freed into the world, it would cause a global disaster, and destroy whatever was left of tomorrow. When Chris and he slid into the room below the last closing door, Piers felt a breath of relief escape his lungs. It meant they had exactly two more seconds to come up with a plan to destroy the B.O.W.
They had gotten so far. On the lowest level of the underwater facility, they had encountered Sherry Birkin and Jake Muller, had released them from their ties, which had led to an epic encounter between Chris and the son of his archenemy. It wasn't rational that a violent though good-willed kid like Jake would step up against the hero that was Chris Redfield, but he'd been so close to shooting the Captain that he'd almost deserved a bullet from Piers' gun — in the heart, maybe. They could have taken his blood from his corpse.
Then the immense cocoon had broken, and while Muller escaped, Chris and he took care of the ugly octopus B.O.W. with the skull head that had hatched. It was fair. It was what they were trained for. They were the B.S.A.A., responsible for fighting bioterror and reestablishing peace in the world.
He coughed up the salt-contaminated water he had swallowed and looked up to the door, which was already pried open by the monster again, with its glassy, tentacle arms pressing the heavy metal upwards with little to no effort, inserting its crystal body into the sunken fortress. Piers saw it coming, but Chris was still on the ground when the monster reached for him.
"Captain!"
When the beast threatened to whip its enormous arm at Chris, flashes of his time in the army came back to him; of all the times he had found his life was stuck in lazy choices, responding automatically to orders he didn't care about. When Chris had found him, everything had changed and the B.S.A.A. had given him a purpose, a place where his skills were used for the right reasons, and the right reasons were what pulled him onto his feet again and made him rush toward his Captain.
Chris was heavy. Two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle plus the field gear weren't an easy mass to push out of the way of the hand that came down, and Piers believed his wrist broke when he slammed his palms into his Captain's chest. It wasn't until the gigantic B.O.W. grabbed his arm and flung him around, though, when he truly felt something break inside the limb.
Fuck.
From his stable position on the ground, Chris began to fire rounds into the monster's flesh. Surprisingly, blood splatters rained onto the ground, giving away that the thing wasn't made of water and air as they'd expected, and the creature howled in pain when the bullets drilled into its body. What happened afterwards went too fast for Piers to understand it. He felt like flying when the creature convulsed, still holding his arm until it tossed him into the nearest corner with the fury only the undead could show. Something broke, something squealed, and someone screamed, but it wasn't until he lay on the floor and saw all the blood that he understood whose body had just been impaled like a piece of meat on a skewer. One sharp edge had been enough to pierce through his right shoulder and leave his arm immobile.
"Fuck," he cried under his breath when the desperate wish to move his fingers remained unheard. He was stuck there, held captive by a sharp metal shard that had cut through his bone and muscle as though it was butter at room temperature and had rendered him useless. Even if he'd had his gun anywhere near, he wasn't sure if he'd really get to aim properly.
"Piers!" Chris yelled. The unwilling tears the shock and pain had put into his eyes let him see barely a shadow of the approaching man, but even if it could have been someone else but Chris, he would have recognized him by the way his boots met the ground. Chris was coming to free him, so they could finish that thing together, so they could get out of there, so he could bring him back to Claire and tell her about that adventure in which both of them had almost died.
Chris never reached him.
The B.O.W., rabid, violent and still colossal, shrieked and grunted, and the next thing Piers saw was the massive piece of concrete wall; probably from the collapsing structure; that rolled into his direction. He knew he would be dead in a second, and as time seemed to stretch to make the ending more torturous, his thoughts jumped back to Claire, her smile, the way she moved, the way she laughed, the way her hair shone in the sunlight. He truly lamented not seeing the sunlight reflected in Claire's locks again.
The concrete crashed into the wall like a lightning bolt, a bone-tearing scream filled the air and dark clouds began to tint the puddles of water on the ground red, and just as Piers realized it was his own blood floating away like jellyfish, he understood he wasn't dead. Not yet, at least. But among the infesting smell of fresh, warm blood, there was that striking pain that pulsed deeply in his right shoulder and spread all across his body, even into his right arm, surprisingly, as he was certain that there was no arm anymore. Heavily panting, he gathered the needed courage and turned his head to look at the disaster the rolling stone wall had caused. It was bad. It was worse than that. The wall was where his right arm had once been, and in the improbable case that he wouldn't bleed to death there, his career was definitely over. Even though it wasn't the dominant hand he'd just gotten chopped off, he still needed the right one to hold his rifle. A sniper with just one arm was useless.
I'm turning in my gun.
I'd be honored if it was you.
Well, it seemed that he wouldn't be able to fulfill Chris' wish anymore.
Piers heard a scream and momentarily believed it was himself, crying over the loss of his future, but when he turned his head back to the monster, he found the struggling form of his Captain, stuck tightly between the very solid fingers of the fragile-looking B.O.W. as the skull screamed dramatically at him.
"Captain," Piers whispered anxiously as he gasped for air. There had to be something he could do; he needed to save Chris or he couldn't keep his promise and so many more than the B.S.A.A. was losing a good person that day. He didn't know where to take the strength from, he just knew that he couldn't leave Claire without her brother. There was still one Redfield whose wish could come true.
He inhaled sharply and released the breath again as he pulled on the rock, screaming loudly to drown both his pain and the gruesome sound of flesh and muscle tearing. For Claire , the thought with every inch he pushed forward, pulling himself free from the bothering member until he landed on the ground. He didn't dare look at his shoulder nor at the rock-like piece of wall that held captive what had once been attached to his body, he had no time to waste with superficialities like this when Chris needed his help. Maybe, just maybe, if he reached his gun he would be able to shoot one-handedly. If he failed, though, it would be the end of both of them— and of the world.
The entire world.
It was like a wink of fate; the tiny ampoule or syringe they had collected from the freighter before, when Ada Wong had dropped it after being shot by suited figures in a chopper. It had escaped from his vest when he'd pulled himself free of the captivity of his arm, and now it lay on the floor shining brightly red and as dangerous as it had always been. Another scream reached his ears and Piers flinched momentarily. It was the answer, wasn't it? Becoming what they had been fighting all along was their only fucking chance to get out of there. They didn't know what it was, but if it was a sample of the dreaded C-Virus, it would provide superhuman strength almost immediately. His view waved back to the monster Chris was trying to fight off. Superhuman like that thing over there.
I seemed the only chance they had.
A/N: Hey guys! I decided to add a chapter because RE6 is so fucking long and there's so much to tell lol I admit, this chapter was probably more interesting to me as a writer than to the readers, but I still hope you had fun... or... whatever you want to call it hahaha
A big thank you to Corpasite for helping me with the structure, especially of the next chapter, and to all the readers, followers and reviewers, also to those of my other stories who are currently waiting for me to update LOL I'm sorry. Secrets needs some love 3
Manu: Cuando leí el rumor del remake de RE4 me puse las manos a la cabeza. RE4 no necesita remake (y menos como lo están haciendo ahora jajaja) pero me encantaría ver a Chris y Claire juntos en el remake de CV. Sobre la historia en español, sigo pensando en ello, pero cada vez que me pongo a escribir fluye mejor en inglés. Gracias por tu review.
Guest Reviewer 1: Never stop fighting... or baking. I just checked how many "quarantine baking fails" posts there are and I laughed so loudly I woke my cat and now he's claiming food T_T I'm the kind that believes that if it's edible, it's not a fail ;) I wish you all the best for future attempts :D Thank you for always being there.
Two more chapters.
T_T