Pandemic: Resident Evil VI

Chapter Thirty Four: Clarity

As much as Chris wanted to be strong and brave in front of his wife, a hug from Amelia along with the memories of Finn's final moments, was enough to make him start crying uncontrollably into her shoulder. It was just too much… fifteen years of fighting zombies, mutants, majini, and… and losing so many people along the way… yes, the Captain had been closer to some of them than he had to others, but now it seemed like the weight of everything that happened since the Spencer Estate was crashing down onto him.

Before that everything had been normal; the world and everything else made sense until that night in July of 1998 when Chris had his first encounter with Umbrella's BOWs, and… and his STARS unit had lost people from both Alpha and Bravo Teams. Before that he was just another Air Force washout, moving to Raccoon City with his little sister in tow, and becoming a police officer because it was supposed to bring some stability and normalcy to his life… oh God, what a joke that turned out to be.

"Finn was just a kid, Amelia." Chris said, trying to keep his voice from breaking. "This was his… this was his first mission, he wasn't… he wasn't even as old as I was back in Raccoon City, and now he… now he…

"It's gonna be okay, darlin', shhhh." His wife replied, holding him tighter. "Chris, honey, I know you're hurtin' right now, and I hate to see you like this… Chris, look at me for a second."

He didn't want to stop holding her, but seeing Amelia's beautiful face never failed to make Chris feel just a tiny bit better, so he moved back just enough so that they were now face to face. She kissed him, saying that she loved him, and the Captain immediately returned the sentiment while his wife placed her hands on the sides of his head, but then all of his senses were suddenly scrambled like an old Television that went to static… leaving a sharp, burning pain as the only thing that he could still feel.

Let's rewrite history… let's rewrite history… let's rewrite history… the words that Chris had barely heard being whispered as Amelia touched his head, were now flashing through his mind, each one tearing through the Captain's thoughts with the ferocity of a lightning strike, and sending a new surge of pain as if it was the thunder that followed. But the strange part was that with each repeat of that phrase about rewriting history, a new series of memories would suddenly burn its way across his mind… things that he had never experienced before, and yet… and yet he remembered them happening.

A wave of cold wind flickered through Chris's nerves as he remembered Antarctica, watching Alexia Ashford explode into pieces from that special weapon, while at the same time he was unable to stop her from getting away in that airplane… what? Now the smell of sea salt as he remembered the Terragrigia Panic when he had to fight off half a dozen Hunters to protect Amelia, while at the same time she had been the one to dispatch them all with… by conjuring flames while he… while her skin turned green?"

Tasting stale air now, and feeling confined as the next memories brought him back to the sunken Queen Dido, where he had used all his strength in a life or death battle with the mutated Jack Norman… while at the same time Amelia snapped her fingers, causing the leader of Il Veltro to spontaneously combust. Now a moment of relief when the next lightning flash brought the Captain back to his own apartment, where he learned once and for all that Albert Wesker was a damn liar when he said that Amelia was really Alexia Ashford all the time… she was his loving wife and he was a lucky man… but at the same time Chris remembered her flat out admitting to it.

Finally, the static started to clear up just in time for the Captain to realize that he had fallen onto the floor. There were still a few flashes of memories coming, but now they were mixing with the images of Finn's death and all the other people that had been lost while fighting… while fighting BOWs that were just like his own wife. It was impossible to get a clear thought out of the mess that was his mind… one minute he knew that she was Amelia Ashland, the woman Chris had fallen in love with and married, and the next all he could see was Alexia.

"Oh, shit!" His wife exclaimed with a different accent, moving toward him. "Chris, I need you to listen to me, okay? Listen to me, and stay calm."

"Get away from me!" The Captain screamed in a cracking voice as he scooted backwards. "You did… my mind… Alexia!?"

Again, his wife tried to calm him down, but since Chris was unable to form any complete thoughts, the only thing he could manage was to turn around while scrambling to his feet, and then stumbling almost drunkenly toward the door. As he shoved the door open with all his weight, there was someone right behind it, a nurse who was carrying a tray of food that went all over her after being struck with the door. She fell to the floor and maybe screamed, the Captain wasn't sure, but he couldn't look back.

Chris had to get away… he had to get out of the building and escape… he couldn't let anyone stop him… had to run away… had to escape… had to run away… had to escape… had to run away… had to escape…

Waiyip, China

June 30th, 2013

The sight of flames was what finally brought Chris back to the present, blinking his eyes rapidly and looking around as one of the other BSAA Teams, Charlie maybe, torched the cocooned hostages with flamethrowers. Instead of a creature bursting out of their backs, there was a muffled shrieking sound as the whole crystalized form collapsed, and at least now the UN workers could rest in peace. Was that creature that emerged from Finn back in Edonia the mutated form of the kid, or was it a separate entity? There was no way to know.

One thing the Captain did know, was that the sight of these same kind of cocooned people that he had seen in Edonia was somehow solidifying his memories, like… like seeing proof of one of them allowed his mind to figure out what was real. And if the sight of Finn turning into one of those things had been real… then so had his wife's attempt to erase that memory… and if Amelia really did have those kind of psychic abilities, then… then there was no doubt that Amelia Ashland-Redfield had really been Alexia Ashford the whole time.

For the first time in months, Chris's mind was coming into focus as this realization verified even more of his memories; Alexia had escaped Antarctica, she had killed Jack Norman, and she had changed his memories after being confronted with the revelation of her identity by Albert Wesker just before his death. But what could he do about this? At the moment… absolutely nothing. Alexia was powerful, and if that special weapon from Antarctica was fake, then he didn't even know how to hurt her… and part of him didn't want to.

Amelia had done nothing but make him happy since they met in Terragrigia, and as evil as Alexia was, Chris had fallen for her head over heels in Antarctica, and his biggest regret in life was having to kill her. Even now with the memories becoming clear, the Captain didn't want to have to fight her… part of him still loved her, and that realization disturbed him deeply. So he forced it all from his mind, acting with the new sense of clarity, and choosing to focus for now on the one problem that he could solve.

"Hey, Captain, you all right?" Piers asked, coming back up to him. "I just talked to headquarters, and they're, uh… not happy with how the mission went, so they want an explanation on…

"Fuck headquarters!" Chris yelled loud enough to make all the other soldiers stop and look at them. "Get them back on the line, and then you tell two things to whatever pencil-pushing son of a bitch isn't happy with the mission. One: Unless his name is Barry Burton, he better be damn careful how he speaks to me or my team. Two: Get me a location on Ada Wong, and get it for me now!"

The Lieutenant was clearly a bit confused by this sudden change of attitude, but that was okay, especially since a lot of the soldiers around them nodded in approval before getting back to work. Anyway, as for wanting a location on Ada Wong, the only other time that the Captain had seen people get crystalized like the UN workers, was when it happened to his old team back in Edonia. Logic would suggest that she was somewhere nearby, whether or not there was direct involvement, and with as upset Chris was at his wife right now, taking down a different bitch who had hurt him was going to feel pretty good.

"Good news and bad news, Captain." Piers reported after finishing on the radio. "Intel shows that Ada Wong is somewhere in the city, but she's suspected of having ties to something called Neo-Umbrella… I'm not sure what that is, but we've been ordered to pull out by the US National Security Advisor."

"The US National Security Advisor?" Chris asked, raising an eyebrow. "Piers, last time I looked, we're in China right now, and the Chinese government invited us here. So no, we're not pulling out."

The other BSAA teams were already starting to pack up after receiving the same order, and each of them had their own Captain making decisions, so there wasn't anything he could do about that, but he did have some pull on his own guys. There would probably be trouble after everything was said and done, and the Captain couldn't order them to break the rules like that, so instead Chris gave them a choice: They could fall back with the others, or join him in stopping a major player in the world of modern bioterrorism.

Not a single man on Alpha Team left with the others.