The chopper rocked back as the arm holding it was severed, but again, their pilot proved his mettle. He righted them and got them turned about and sailing away, probably faster than Chris himself would have been able to – and he'd done some serious chopper training in the Air Force.
"That was for our fallen brothers," Sheva said, glaring wearily, but defiantly back at the site of the explosion. Chris did, too, and marked the location in his mind's eye. Two rockets to the head while standing in a pit of lava? Yeah, after everything he'd gone through, he wasn't ready to assume Wesker was dead quite yet. He was still calling in the biggest strike he could get on the place as soon as he got in contact with HQ…which would no doubt go smoothly, considering how long he'd been intentionally ignoring them.
He noticed Jill had come to kneel to his left. Her face was dirty, and she looked a bit fatigued, but going by the look she gave him, it seemed like she was okay. They got the door closed. Chris stepped up to thank the pilot, and was very surprised to see Josh Stone in the cockpit.
"Hey," Chris said.
Josh smiled tightly. "Hey. You two alright?"
"Right as rain."
"Sheva?"
Chris nodded. "Give her some time to recover, and she'll be just fine."
Josh nodded, looking at least mildly relieved. "Good. Now – a hospital."
Chris shook his head. Now that the fight was over, his mind went back to what he had left behind. "We can't yet. We have survivors back on the ship. We need to pick them up before we head home."
Josh's expression darkened, but it was Jill who answered. "Unless any of them are critically injured, we don't have time," she said tensely. "We have to get to a hospital now."
He looked back, not understanding the urgency, and that was when he spotted the chopper's fifth occupant – or rather, what was left of him.
Sheva saw him, too. "Oh, God," she gasped, kneeling beside the other injured soldier. Both of the man's legs were stumps below the knee. "Who…oh, no. Doug?"
The man did not respond, but he must have been alive, as Jill was busy trying to get him situated comfortably. He'd been badly jostled by that final assault.
"As I said, unless the survivors are in immediate mortal peril, we do not have time to go get them," Josh called back from the front. "Can they wait for extraction, or not?"
Chris pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't know how to answer. "I don't know," he said. "When we left Alyssa, she wasn't breathing." He thought through this a little more…and came to a dismal conclusion. "Either she just got her breath knocked out of her and she'll live until she can be rescued – assuming she isn't found by any leftover Majini – or she's already dead."
"Alyssa?" Jill asked, cocking her head. "Who is that?"
Sheva fielded that one. "Yesterday, when we were at a warehouse in Kijuju, we received a radio transmission," she explained. "A young woman, who identified herself as Alyssa Legend, put out a call for rescue. She said she and some others had been kidnapped and held as test subjects for Tricell, and they needed help. We'd managed to rescue another agent on this mission, a spy named Reynard Fisher, and HQ ordered him to go find Alyssa while we continued the mission."
"Reynard?" Jill said. "I've met him before. Been awhile. Is he alright?"
"Hopefully," Chris said gravely. "We left him behind, too, and haven't heard from him in a while. Now that I think about it…"
Reynard had gone silent right after saying he'd found a computer to drag for info. They'd gotten into a pretty big string of fights right after and hadn't thought about him since, but he would have touched bases again whether he'd found something useful or not. If he hadn't…
Damnit, Chris thought tiredly. Reynard's gone…Alyssa probably won't make it…hell, if that David kid survives, it'll be a miracle at this point.
"You know, now that I think about it," Sheva said. "I believe you spoke to her once. You were the one who told her about the PG67A/W, weren't you?"
Jill looked up from Doug, shocked. "She…wait, are you saying she actually found you?"
Chris nodded dourly. "Yeah, and nearly got herself killed doing it. In fact, when we were fighting Wesker, she was the one who got him injected – loaded one of those puppies into a dart and tranq'ed him from fifty feet. Then he went after her, and…"
God, replaying that scene in his mind, seeing her crash into the railings like she'd been hit by a truck, he'd been sure her spine had shattered. He thought he may have seen movement in her feet while setting her down, but he couldn't say for sure. And she hadn't been breathing…
And we left her there to die alone.
"Sounds like…this young lady…needs help."
They all turned to the new voice. The soldier, Doug, who had been unmoving throughout this conversation, had suddenly spoken.
His eyes fluttered open, and Sheva leaned down. "Doug," she said, half relieved and half dreadfully worried. "It's alright, we're going to get you help as soon as we can."
The wounded man sucked in a rasping breath. "Ey there, little sistah. I ain't going anywhere…if it means leaving a pretty girl behind. She is pretty…ain't she?"
"Not sure," Chris replied as Sheva took one of Doug's hands in hers, clasping it to keep it warm. "It was hard to tell under all the grit. She went on one hell of a wild ride with us. But 'pretty' is a pretty safe bet, I think."
"Ah, even if she ugly, we oughta go pick her up. You hear that, Josh?" he called up front. "If you can manage to keep this bird out of the ocean…you head back and pick up Chris's little friend."
"Doug, you need medical help now."
"What I need is a competent pilot!" he called back. He grunted softly in pain as he said this, then shook himself off and continued, as spirited as his weak self was able to manage. "Honestly, what were up to earlier, bumpin' around like that? You learn to fly by playin' GTA? We ain't in no video game!"
"We were being man-handled by a super-human monster! I did the best I could!"
"Why you lettin' some monster grab my chopper, ey?"
"I didn't let it do anything! And the helicopter is fine, just a few scratches! Oh, though I may have gotten it a bit close to the lava."
"If you melted off my paint job, I'm gonna kick ya ass!"
"You are not going to be kicking anything, Doug! Look down!"
He did, and yelped, "Oh, shit! Where the hell did my legs go?!"
"It was a rocket launcher," Jill replied softly. "You caught the blast while getting me and Josh to safety. I'm sorry."
Doug groaned, tipping his head back. "Aw, damnit…how am I supposed to pick up the ladies now?"
Jill smiled a little, and tilted her head flirtatiously. "You did a pretty good job picking this one up, and we're on our way to picking up one more."
"Anyways," Chris added. "The chicks dig a man with some battle scars. So long as everything else is intact, the missing legs will definitely net you some attention."
Doug sighed. "I hope so. Ey, Josh…we are on our way to pick up little miss Legend…ya?"
"Yes," Josh said. He didn't sound entirely happy about it – perhaps he too could hear the way the energy was fast fading in Doug's voice – but the chopper had already been turned, and was now heading back for the bomber. "We'll grab her. But after that, we're getting you to a hospital."
"Fine, man," Doug breathed, lying back again and closing his eyes. "After all this shit, I'm ready to go home and sleep for a year and a day."
"Amen," replied a small, tired chorus.
It didn't take them long to reach the tanker, and Josh was able to land them on the bomber's runway without too much difficulty, though the winds had picked up and buffeted them considerably during the whole flight.
During the ride over, Chris had been hit by a wave of exhaustion, and had nearly collapsed, as had Sheva. Though the pair wanted to be the ones to go get Alyssa, Jill told them to wait there and hopped out herself before either could rise. Chris had been through enough. If this girl had died saving their lives, Jill didn't want them to bear the burden of carrying her back to the chopper. They didn't need that.
She went to the railing to get a look at the deck, and spotted the little mass curled on the ground right away. A short downpour had struck the tanker some time before, and water covered the deck. Because of this, her clothes and hair clung tightly to her skin, making her look very small and bedraggled.
Harsh, chilling gusts of pre-dawn wind ripped along the deck, strong enough to flutter the damp clothing, and Jill approached without much hope. The girl – Alyssa – looked gone.
I can't…those had been the last words Jill had heard from the girl before their transmission had cut out. I can't. Well, she had. But God, it looked like it had taken everything to do it, and Jill felt sick thinking that it had been her orders that had led her to this. Necessary? Sure. But it still made her sick.
She reached the body and knelt beside it, brushing a strand of wet hair out of the face. Pale and slack. No response. She put a hand on the girl's shoulder. Ice-cold.
"Damnit," Jill whispered, though the wind whipped the word away as soon as it emerged. She moved her fingers to the girl's neck to check for a pulse, pressed hard…and blinked.
An adrenaline surge hit her, and she immediately shuffled the girl around and got her into a fireman's carry. She was alive, but she was frozen half to death. The pulse was sluggish. If they'd left her another hour or two, she would not have made it.
Jill struggled back to the chopper and bundled her in, past the questions of Chris and Sheva, and started doing everything she could to get the girl warm.
Within the next twelve hours, Chris, Sheva, Alyssa, Josh, Jill, and Doug were taken to the B.S.A.A. West Africa private hospital for treatment, and Gamma Team had reached the tanker. They all survived, Doug by the skin of his teeth, and were thoroughly unconscious by the time Gamma started clearing the remaining vestiges of the Majini out of the ship. They freed a disgruntled Reynard from captivity, and spent half an hour playing twenty-questions with David, who refused to open the door for them until they got Reynard up there to confirm that it was safe.
"Well anyone can say they're B.S.A.A.," David explained to Reynard, who was in a piss-poor mood from his confinement and wanted to leave as soon as humanly possible. "I just wanted to make sure it wasn't those Tricell guys trying to trick me into opening the door. Haven't you ever read that fairy tale with the wolf and the seven kids?"
"Idiot!" Reynard barked, and knocked him on the head.
They were transported to the hospital as well, though Reynard refused any treatment until he'd made sure the various data files he'd acquired were secured. He got a whole team together and briefed them on the contents of the hard drives before finally collapsing. Even as he was loaded onto the stretcher, he kept shouting instructions over his shoulder until he was finally ushered into a private room and slipped a sedative.
When Alyssa woke up, congested, sore, and slightly fevered, she saw David sitting in a chair with a tablet in his lap, tip-tapping away at the screen.
"Minesweeper?" she croaked.
He looked up, and his focused expression melted into a mix of concern and relief. "Spider solitaire, actually, but oh my God Alyssa, are you okay?"
"That depends," she said, testing out her body parts one by one, stopping to wince when she reached her midriff. "Are we in a Tricell lab?"
A doctor had just opened the door, clipboard in hand. "No, ma'am," he said, adjusting his glasses. "You are officially safe and sound in the B.S.A.A.'s West Africa private hospital. Once you're all fully recovered, we'll put you on a plane and send you over to the main headquarters where you can help us put this whole mess to rest. We'll need your testimony – just an account of what happened, a few answers to some questions we'll have, then we'll get you home to your families. Sound alright to you?"
Alyssa's heart quivered at the thought of this. Her family. Her mom, her two big sisters, all her cousins…she'd been forcing herself not to think about them since she'd been taken. The idea of seeing them again was enough to make her eyes start watering.
"Yeah," she said. "But is there any way I could call them, let them know I'm alright?"
The doctor nodded. "I'll need to give you a quick checkup to make sure nothing's drastically wrong with you – more a psych check, you aren't wounded badly enough to hamper a call – but after that, we'll get you on the phone with them. We've already called ahead to let them know you're alive and safe in our custody. They were pleased to hear that, to say the least."
"Uh, yeah, I happened to be in the room when they made that call," David said. "I don't know who they were talking to, but whoever it was, they started sobbing. Either they were really happy, or extremely disappointed."
She laughed croakily. David was ushered away, back to his own room, and the doctor ran the psyche eval. It was all pretty basic stuff – first, last, and middle name, birthday, relatives' names, previous place of work. They asked her to recount a good memory, a sad memory, a memory of something that made her angry. They asked for her opinions on a handful of topics, and had her reason through the Trolley Dilemma.
After this one she asked, "Are you just checking to make sure I'm a normal human? Making sure I haven't been infected with a mind-consuming parasite or something?"
The doctor arched an eyebrow. "Well, if you're sharp enough to figure that out, then I think you're all clear. Still, let me just run through the last few so I have a full record. What is your favorite food?"
"Braaaaaaaaaaaains," she droned, reaching her arms out and lolling her head.
"Very funny, but Plaga-infected organisms don't typically exhibit cannibalistic tendencies. That's zombies. As an aside, I'll be sure to note that your sense of humor is intact."
She was a good sport about the rest of the test. The doctor was kind enough to send a memo straight to his higher-ups that she showed no signs of abnormalities and that she ought to be allowed to make her call without further delay. They green-lit the request, and within ten minutes, she was on the phone with her mom.
"Hello, Legend household, Melissa speaking."
"Hey, mom," Alyssa began, but didn't have a chance to get any further before a sharp gasp cut her off.
"Alyssa! Oh, sweetheart, are you alright? Are you hurt at all?"
"I'm fine," she said reassuringly. "Just a little roughed up. Battered and bruised, but nothing serious. I'll be on my feet in a day or two, I'm sure."
"Good, that's great to hear! Have you been through a lot? Are you comfortable there? I asked if I could come down and be there with you, but they said they couldn't allow it for security reasons. You know I'd be there already if I could, we all would, Alex, Jessi…"
"I know, mom, it's alright. It's been rough, but I have friends over here. I'm comfortable, I feel safe, and I can't wait to see you guys. How are Alex and Jess? Are they okay?"
"Your sisters miss you horribly. When I told them you were alive, Jessi just started bawling and Alex…well, you know Alex, she doesn't really cry—"
Alyssa grinned as she imaged her oldest sister's reaction. "I bet she just jumped up and down for a minute, pumping her fist, before affirming that she knew I'd been fine the whole time and she didn't know why everyone had gotten so worked up over me."
Her mom laughed wetly. Alyssa could hear the tears in her voice. That didn't surprise her – she was crying, too. "I'll tell her you said that. She'll get a kick out of it."
They chatted for a while longer, and hearing all about how her sisters had been dealing with her disappearance made it difficult to cut the waterworks. Alyssa leaned over to dab at her eyes with the bedsheet, and when she did, she saw someone she didn't recognize standing outside her room, looking in through the little window on the door. A blonde woman, probably one of the nurses.
"Hey, mom, I've got a visitor," she said, waving and motioning for the nurse to wait a second. "Mind if I call you back in a bit?"
"Oh course, hun, that's fine. I'll be available all day and night, just call me any time, don't worry about time zones. Call me if you get lonely, if you get bored, if you just want someone to talk to…"
"I will, mom."
"And call me if you feel unsafe at all. I know the B.S.A.A. can be pretty harsh. Don't let anyone take advantage of you…"
"It's fine, I won't, I made friends with some of their agents. They're really great people."
"Alright, alright, I'll let you go. Just take care of yourself, okay? You're sure you're alright?"
The door opened, and the woman leaned her head in. Alyssa frowned. She didn't look like a nurse – she looked like a patient. "I'm fine, mom. I promise I'll call back sometime today. Oh, what time is it there?"
"It's eight PM here, but don't let that dissuade you! Call back any time. I'll bring my phone to bed with me and keep it on."
Alyssa rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to call her mom at three in the morning, even if she was feeling lonely. "I'll try to call back in an hour or two, before you go to bed, okay?"
"Okay. Go ahead and visit with your friend. I love you, I'll let Alex and Jessi know you called."
"Thanks, mom. Love you, bye!"
She concluded the call. As soon as she hung up, the woman said, "Hey, sorry to interrupt your call home. I could come back later."
Alyssa waved her off. "It's fine. I'll call back before she hits the hay." And, since she didn't know this woman, she introduced herself. "I'm Alyssa, by the way. Alyssa Legend."
The woman stepped in and grabbed a chair, wheeling it around to sit bedside. "I know. We've talked before, though I didn't get your name at the time. I hear you saved my friend's life."
Alyssa blinked in confusion, racking her brains to try and figure out who this chick was. She had no recollection of ever talking to her, and she wasn't sure who she was referring to when she said 'friend'. "Oh, uhh…um…uhh…"
The woman smiled. "Don't worry, I won't hold it against you if you don't remember. The signal wasn't great. Jill Valentine, Chris's partner."
She held out a hand, and Alyssa finally pieced it together as they shook. "Oh! You're the woman from the radio, the one who told me about that PG67A/W stuff."
"Bingo. According to Chris, you fought your way through a ship full of monsters to get that info to him. And he says you're the one who ended up shooting Wesker. That's not bad. Not bad at all."
Alyssa shrugged. Now that she was safe, all that stuff seemed very far away, and she liked it that way. "I just got lucky. Mostly I ran and hid. I wouldn't have made it without him and Sheva and Reynard."
Jill pulled a water bottle out of nowhere and took a long sip, wiping her lips when she was done. She looked worn down, bruised in several places, and pretty pale, but otherwise fit and healthy. "They wouldn't have made it without you, either," she said seriously. "We all help each other out in situations like that. It's not about who did the most life-saving – what matters is that you stepped up when you were needed, and that's a lot more than most people can say. Honestly, I was shocked when I heard you'd actually gone after them. Seriously, that took some balls, especially for someone without any experience with that sort of thing. You didn't have any special training, did you?"
Alyssa's face colored slightly. "Oh, no. I mean, basic firearm training, but other than that…"
They spent the next hour or so talking. Alyssa told her a bit about the research facility escape, while Jill explained some of what she'd been through the last few years.
"I'm so sorry," Alyssa said, shocked that anyone could have endured so much.
Jill shook her head. "It's over now. And we'll all have time to heal. Then, back to the fight. Or in your case, back to the family."
Alyssa smiled half-heartedly. The idea of just going back to regular old life after everything she'd been through was a tough one. It just felt like there were a million loose ends to tie up, even though she knew there weren't. She just needed to give her testimony to the B.S.A.A., help them close this case up however she could. And she knew she'd need to see if she could contact everyone's families, the ones who hadn't made it—
A horrible thought occurred to her, and she slapped her waist in an automatic check, even though she didn't have any pockets. "Oh, no. Jill, I had a phone in my pack, it's really important, do you know…"
Her alarm was enough to sharpen Jill's attention. She held up a hand and pulled her own phone out of her pocket and hit some speed dial number. It rang for a sec, then she said, "Hey. Is all the stuff we brought back still being analyzed? Legend brought back a phone, and she said it has some important stuff on it." There was a lengthy pause. "Uh, huh. No problem. They're checking," she said to Alyssa, covering the receiver as she did.
"Thank you," Alyssa said, worry lessening with the knowledge that she had an obviously competent person working on her problem.
Jill's attention returned to the phone. "Yeah? And it's working? Did you get all the data off of it? Uh huh…okay. Will there be any problem getting it back to her?"
She frowned at the reply she received. Then she put her hand on the receiver again and asked, "They need to confiscate it. Is there anything in particular you need off of it? A picture, a recording?"
Alyssa nodded worriedly. "There's a video on there. One of my friends who didn't make it recorded a message to his family before he died. I need to get that to them."
Jill's expression softened. Then she removed her hand and relayed the information to them. There was a hesitation, then she added in a sharper tone that she expected the issue to be dealt with. After another minute…
"Uh, huh. Mhm. Alright, thank you. Yeah, just get me the video and I'll get it all sorted out." Then she hung up and said, "We've got it. They looked it over and decided it wasn't harmful. They're sending it to me now, and I'll make sure you get a copy to relay to your friend's family. I'll also make sure someone is able to get you in contact with them, alright?"
The knot in Alyssa's heart released, though the ache remained. "Thank you. I'd really like to be able to contact everyone's family – Ajay's, Theron's, Kyle's, Ruth's, Mal's…Sarah's, too."
She didn't think Sarah had made it out. And if that was the case, then there was no point in bringing up what had happened between them at the end. It wasn't about Sarah anymore – it was about her family. Her family didn't need to know all of that.
Jill reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "You know you don't need to do that. The B.S.A.A. can handle it. Telling the families…that's not your burden to bear."
Alyssa smiled weakly. "I know. But the B.S.A.A. wasn't there. I was. I don't want them wondering what happened for the rest of their lives. These people deserve to know. And my friends deserve to be remembered."
Jill took another drink of water. She looked tough as nails, but apparently she'd been through a lot, too, because she excused herself soon after to go get some more rest, promising to keep in touch moving forward. Alyssa called her mom back and they chatted for a while more, and her sister Jessi showed up partway through the call and took it over for a while, so by the time the next doctor came in with some meds and a health update, Alyssa had gotten an adequate chance to reconnect with at least one of her siblings.
She took the meds and got the rundown on her condition: a head cold, general fatigue; Wesker had managed to tear her abdominal wall with that backhand he'd dealt, and she had a cracked vertebrae that would require a lot of care moving forward, but would most likely heal quickly enough and leave no lasting damage.
"Will I be able to walk around?" she asked.
The doctor clicked his tongue a few times. "You'll regain full mobility soon, but until the healing process is well on its way, we're going to keep you wheelchair bound – just to be safe."
"That's fine. Can I go visit with everyone?"
"We'll work on getting you mobile tomorrow. For today, we're going to keep you in bed."
"Okay. Got any books?"
Chris opened his eyes and saw the familiar-enough sight of a plain white panel ceiling and heard the familiar-enough sound of a heart monitor beeping nearby. Hospitalized again. Joy.
He began knitting his thoughts and memories together, not bothering to rush. There was always a delay between waking up in a hospital and remembering how many people had died on the mission that had landed you there. And that was almost always what cropped up first – the deaths. The rest of the details, details of success or lives salvaged, only floated to the top later.
Alpha Team. Delta, too. Those were the first things to come back, and they brought with them a harrowing sense of loss. God, that had been a lot of good men.
Another image rose on the tail of that – a pool, reeking of decomposition, filled with enough women and children to populate an entire village. A crocodile swimming up and ripping one of the bodies apart, swallowing the small form in chunks. That was particularly vivid in his head. Nightmare fuel, that. Not that the fire needed any more.
Who else…Reynard? That was still a little murky, but his instincts said 'yes'. MIA at best, but dead was more likely. The rest of the mission was starting to trickle back in, now. Him and Sheva—
Sheva. Is she okay?
Yes, Sheva was fine. He relaxed slightly. At least he hadn't lost another—
Partner.
His eyes shot open wide, and he sat up in bed. About a dozen different parts of his body protested strenuously, but none were loud enough to keep him from moving. He started plucking the patches off and the needles out, and as soon as he disconnected the heart monitor, he heard an alarm go off outside of the room.
A doctor and two nurses burst in about four seconds later to find him kicking his feet over the edge of the bed and trying to stand up, and three pairs of hands were on him instantly, pushing him back down. "Jill," he growled, mind racing. Where was she?
The doctor, a tall, brown-haired man with slim, wire-rimmed glasses pushed him down more firmly. "Please, Mr. Redfield, lay down. That mission took a serious toll on you. You have a few injuries that should not be agitated…"
Chris went slowly, struggling to reign in his impulses, which were yelling at him to go find his partner, to make sure she was alright. He wanted to, but he forced himself to calm down and at least ask a few questions first. Once the nurses had hooked him back up to the important stuff, he asked, "Where's Jill?"
The doctor, visibly agitated, brushed a hand through his hair. "Jill Valentine? Ah, let's see…she's not one of mine, but I've been told she's fine. I'm not sure if she's woken up yet, but everyone we've brought back is alive and recovering – Alomar, Valentine, Legend, Fisher, Rancho—"
"Fisher? Reynard made it out?" That was a relief. He didn't know who Rancho was.
"Yes, as did Stone and Myers. We'll get visiting hours on the table soon, but in the meantime, please stay in bed. You have several serious fractures, and they need time to set."
Fractures. Wesker. Fucker. That reminded him…
"Hey, did we send a team to that volcano, make sure nothing in there survived?" he asked critically.
The doctor frowned, then flipped through a few notes. "Let's see…I was told that if you brought up the volcano, to ask if you thought a W87 thermonuclear missile was good enough?"
Chris relaxed slightly. "Yeah, if that doesn't do the trick, I give up. But Jill's okay?"
"Yes, Miss Valentine is just fine. Better than anyone else, at any rate."
"And Sheva, too?"
"Still unconscious, but no signs of permanent injury…" he pulled up his phone at this point, and corrected himself. "Ah, actually, it seems she woke up a little while ago. Do you need to confer with her about anything? I can get you into a wheelchair if you need to head over?"
"I don't feel like I need a wheelchair."
"Well, you do. Daltry, would you please go grab a wheelchair?"
"Yes, sir." One of the nurses scampered off.
While waiting, Chris rubbed his brow. Now that the adrenaline surge had worn off, the rest of the story fell into place. "You said Reynard was alright. I take it you guys sent in another team to tidy everything up?"
"Yes. Gamma Team took out the remaining Majini and recovered Reynard Fisher and David Rancho from the tanker. The team is back in Kijuju with Epsilon, and TerraSave is establishing a perimeter around the biohazard zone and getting survivors to safety now."
"David Rancho…" Chris said, blanking for a moment. Then it came to him. "Oh, the uh…brown-haired guy?"
"With the broken ankle, yes."
"That's good," he said, and meant it. While he'd probably skip visiting hours, he'd never complain about civilians making it out alive. Anyways, the more testimony against Tricell, the better. "And Myers…"
"Doug Myers, Delta Team backup. In bad shape with the loss of his legs, but he'll live."
Chris relaxed even further. That was right. They'd been in a quandary about whether to go back for Alyssa if it meant delaying getting Doug help. And he seemed to recall Jill saying that Legend wouldn't have made it if they'd left her a few more hours. He couldn't count the number of times a bad call had resulted in someone dying needlessly on these missions – it was a hell of a relief to hear they'd made a good call for once.
At this point the door opened, and Chris looked over expecting to see a nurse with a wheelchair. Instead, Sheva was walking in, arm in a cast. Otherwise, she looked good. Tired, but good.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," he replied.
"Excuse me," the doctor said. "I need to go check up on Mr. Myers. Agent Alomar," he said, dipping his head respectfully.
She returned the gesture, then came over and sat down beside the bed as the doctor departed. "So, looks like we did it," she said.
Chris nodded. "Yup. Looks like we did. And we made it out with a lot more survivors than I expected. So, how ya feeling?"
She twisted her head and looked away. "We won. We survived, we stopped the terrorist, and we saved a lot of people."
"Uh, huh," Chris said, waiting for it.
It took a minute for the expression to set in. The heavy, almost lost look. The look that said, 'I don't know how to deal with this.'
"We won," she said. "Why does it still feel like we lost?"
Chris sighed. "Because we did lose. We lost a lot of good people, and killing the terrorist doesn't bring them back. We lost Alpha Team, Delta Team, and God knows how many people lost friends and family to this outbreak. In this line of work, virtually every mission involves loss."
She closed her eyes tightly, and spent a minute breathing slowly through her nose. Chris could relate – she'd probably been through enough that this wasn't affecting her as strongly as Arklay had affected him, but no decent person could live through a biohazard and not be viscerally affected.
When she was a bit more composed, she shook herself off and said, "Well, I suppose that can't be avoided. Things really did turn out better than they had any right to, all things considered."
"Yeah, they did. But it still hurts like hell."
"God, yes. It does."
The silence went on a little longer. Their respective attentions drifted off, and Chris found himself staring at one of the needles lodged in his arm as he thought back on Alpha, and DeChant. Then he thought back on that Delta Team driver who had lived just long enough to see the crushed remains of his team before the monster came for him, too. Ritters. Fuck all, this had been a bad job.
But he'd learned how to deal with bad jobs, and he knew that he'd have more than enough time to grieve, whether he wanted it or not. There would always be another hour preceding the next mission, time in which he could go over all the losses he'd suffered and wonder how many more were on their way. But now, the hours immediately following the losses – now wasn't the time for that.
"You know Reynard made it out?" he said, breaking the silence.
Sheva's gaze, aimed sightlessly towards the far wall, sharpened. "No, I hadn't heard," she said, wrenching her focus back onto him. "I know Doug made it, but…"
"Doug, Reynard, Alyssa, that David guy—"
"Oh, good, you'll have to visit him," she said, a ghost of laughter in her voice.
Already laughing again? That's a damn good sign.
He snorted and continued. "—and Jill, of course. Wesker's dead, by the way. Unless he survived a thermonuclear missile on top of everything else we threw at him."
"Jill…" she said, dismissing the bit about Wesker. "That's good to hear. You ought to visit her."
Chris felt torn. He still wanted to go check up on her, make sure she wasn't alone – God only knew she'd been alone for too long – but Sheva had been his partner for this mission, and he couldn't just take off and leave her with it all. "It's fine," he said, hoping he sounded convincing. "I'm not even sure she's awake yet. And besides, you—"
"I'm fine," Sheva said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I've dealt with loss before. It hurts, but I know how to handle it." She reached over him and pressed the nurse call button.
A nurse poked her head in almost instantly. "Would you grab a wheelchair?" Sheva requested politely. "Chris needs to visit his partner. Straightaway, if possible."
"Of course," the nurse said, and popped back out. She wheeled the chair in right after. Evidently she'd been waiting outside with it.
As she brought it to the bedside, Sheva stood up, and Chris tried protesting again. Sheva just shook her head and stepped back towards the door. "Jill has been through far more than I have these last few years. She needs you a lot more than I do. Go make sure you're there for her."
Chris relented. Once the nurse got him adequately disconnected, he stood up, feeling more acutely this time all of the cracked bones the doctor had mentioned. Nonetheless, he got himself into the chair without the nurse's help – mostly – and began wheeling away before she could attach any of the clunky, obnoxious medical equipment to him.
She looked taken aback as he started off. "Uh, sir, the heart monitor?"
"Nope," he said, and rushed himself out of the room.
Sheva was heading back to her own room, and Chris could see that she was walking a little more stiffly now that she wasn't visiting with him. A small smile crossed his face. He knew exactly what that was about. The first time he'd visited Jill in the hospital after Arklay, he'd walked in swaggering, and as soon as he was out of her sight he'd grabbed his crutch off the wall and hobbled back to his room like a cripple, having sustained four cracked ribs from the last fight with the Tyrant. One of the nurses had pulled the clip from the security feed and showed it to Jill later, and she'd laughed herself hoarse and ribbed him over that for years.
He wheeled up to her, and she straightened up against right away. "Hey," he said as he heard the nurse scrabbling after him, medical equipment trailing on the ground behind her. "You'll have plenty of time to grieve, and plenty of time to yourself moving forward. Make sure you spend time with the survivors now. Reinforce the ties you've made. You'd be amazed how much it helps down the line."
Sheva blinked, then cried out in mild surprise as Chris pushed his howling arms against the wheels, jumping forward abruptly before the nurse could catch hold of him. The wheelchair was a great one, low friction and easy to build up speed on, and Sheva's laughter followed him as he started maneuvering comically around the doctors and desks, keeping just out of reach of the nurse as she scampered after him begging him to submit to the portable heart monitor.
Jill, aching and tired and still adjusting to the sensation of controlling her own movements, meandered slowly through the hospital halls, savoring the sensation of freedom and basking in the knowledge that her life was her own again. As much as it ever was, anyways.
I could stop dead in my tracks, lean against that wall, and just stand there daydreaming for an hour if I wanted to, she thought. I could wander off and find a nice balcony to sit on, and just sit and enjoy the view all day if I wanted to. I could take a long soak in the tub, or read a book, or sit down and do a damn jigsaw puzzle if I wanted to.
She probably wouldn't. Well, maybe that bath – it had always been quick, cold, utilitarian showers under Tricell, and she was really looking forward to a long, luxurious soak – but otherwise, she'd probably just sleep off whatever injuries she had, make sure this whole situation got wrapped up concretely, then get right back to training, and missions, and…well, life. Her life.
Wonder who I'll be doing it all with? she mused as she walked, thinking back on Chris and Sheva. Neither had woken up yet, so she hadn't gotten a chance to drop in on them, but she was looking forward to catching up. She'd seen how they worked together when she'd fought them with Wesker; it had been the same kind of flawless synchronization that she and Chris had once shared. that kind of dynamic was rare, and not the kind that was picked up in quick, throwaway teams. She didn't know how long they'd been partners, but it was obvious they'd meshed. And she didn't begrudge either of them that. She was only glad that Chris had found someone to watch his back.
She passed Reynard's room, looked through the window, saw he was still asleep, and moved along. She'd already visited Josh, who was beyond relieved that Doug, at least, had made it out, and was looking forward to visiting everyone else. Apparently he'd lost nearly his entire team, Delta Team, on that mission, so the fact that he had at least one good friend remaining was a considerable balm to him. Jill had sympathized and promised to visit him again later. He wouldn't be a bad partner, at that, she thought.
She walked by an extremely flustered nurse who was red in the face, breathing heavily, and trying to explain something to a very annoyed doctor. "…wouldn't let me put the heart monitor on him, sir, I had to chase him across the entire floor—"
"Why did you let him out of his room at all before attaching it?"
"I didn't! He just – just – zoomed away before I could grab him!"
"He has a broken collarbone! How did he zoom anywhere?"
"It's only a fracture, sir, and it didn't seem to bother him at all…"
Sounded like they had a patient on the loose. Couldn't be too serious, otherwise there would be an alarm going off. She'd just let them deal with it.
She stepped into her room, and grinned widely. Sitting in a wheelchair, facing her empty bed, with a hastily-attached portable heart monitor beeping quietly away on him, was a sulky Chris.
"How long did you make that nurse chase you?" Jill asked as she walked around to get to her bed.
Chris started and turned at the sound of her voice, and the obvious storm cloud on his brow cleared up instantly upon seeing her. He shot for casual, rolling a shoulder lazily, covering the wince – cracked collarbones were a bitch – and saying, "Oh, I only took her twice around the floor. Maybe two and a half times."
"You ass."
"Hey, she probably appreciated the chance to stretch her legs. So, how ya doing?"
He sounded normal, but given the context, it was a pretty heavy question. Still, she went for casual as well – not because she had anything to hide, just because she was too emotionally exhausted to feel anything else. Well, almost anything else.
"Been better, been worse," she said truthfully, sitting on the side of her bed, facing Chris. "I'm just glad to be back."
"I'm glad to have you."
Only a few feet of space separated them, but they were both aware of what really lay between them. Years of grief, pain, and isolation. Was that mendable? It couldn't all be as thin as air, or as traversable. How much would it take to get past it all?
Well, conversation would at least get them started. "I've missed you," she said simply.
"Yeah, I've missed you, too," he replied quietly. "We looked everywhere for you. It was only just starting to sink in that you were gone for good when I started hearing hints that you might have survived."
Jill tilted her head. "Hints? That's weird – Wesker said he went to extraordinary lengths to keep me under wraps. Nothing should have leaked out."
As far as the world is concerned, you're dead, dearheart. I managed to scrounge up a recording of your funeral. Your tombstone is lovely. Perhaps you'd like to see?
She'd managed to turn and walk away, having no desire to see her friends and loved ones grieving. He'd laughed and closed the files.
Bastard, she thought now with a tired yawn.
Chris rolled a shoulder again. "Well, something did. A picture of you, injured as hell but obviously still alive, and dated about a week after your fall, was found buried in a data file one of our operatives found raiding a minor, defunct Umbrella lab a few months ago. Your initials cropped up in a few email conversations between Umbrella researchers and various unknown parties, and one time came up listed as an asset on some encoded supplies list we couldn't otherwise make heads or tails of."
"Well," Jill said, brows creasing briefly as she thought all of that over. "Maybe now that we have the other end of the puzzle, we can start to piece everything together, meet in the middle, and find out who the leaker was. It won't have been Wesker, I can tell you that much. Was that what brought the B.S.A.A. to Kijuju, then?"
Chris's expression darkened. "No. I requested additional support to look into your case, but I didn't get a lot. I did what I could, but in the end, the only reason we were there at all was because we got some intel that a man named Ricardo Irving was doing a black market bioweapons sale in the area."
Jill's lip twitched in disgust remembering their last encounter on the ship. He'd tried to get that thing off of her chest, if only to save himself from the syringe she'd been carrying and the orders that Wesker had relayed to her. In the end he'd been unable to, and had died as a result. She couldn't say she really cared.
"Irving. God, I always hated that little fucker."
Chris stilled. "Ah. You knew him, then?"
She nodded, eyes rolling as she thought over all the tedium she'd gone through on his account throughout the years, from the constant nannying to having to play absurd and petty pranks on Excella for him.
She noticed Chris staring at her strangely, as if waiting for her to elaborate, and finally it occurred to her – she'd been in the custody and total control of a variety of evil men for the last few years. He was probably worried about a whole hell of a lot more than pranks and nannying.
She shook her head. "Oh, God, Chris, it's fine. He was just an ass, that's all. Wesker never let him lay a hand on me. He never let anyone lay a hand on me, for that matter," she finished slowly, brows creasing. She still didn't understand that. And if that thermonuclear missile was any indication, now she never would.
"There a reason for that?" Chris asked.
She shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," she said. "He once said he respected me too much for that. And he never did anything to me himself, either. My time there was hell, but to be honest, it could have been a lot worse. A lot worse."
He was staring at her with piercing concern, and she found that his concern – just the concern, nothing else – put her far more at ease than all the doctor's assurance of psychiatric help, therapy, and monetary compensation.
She thought back again on Irving, every memory reinforcing her relief that the obnoxious little lizard was dead and gone. His laugh had been the second most annoying thing about him, right behind his cocaine addiction.
"You know he and Gionne hated each other, right?" she said abruptly. "Those two were like children, and whenever they were there at the same time I knew I was in for a miserable fucking week. They could never get away with pestering each other while Wesker was around – he didn't put up with that shit – so they'd send me to go do their dirty work for them." One of those particular incidences came to mind, one of the more recent ones. "One time Irving wanted me to test out this stupid little prank he'd made, so he had me open this jar. I got a face full of cocaine. He just laughed himself silly, put more cocaine in there, and had me run it to—"
"—the lab on the lower decks of the tanker?" Chris guessed drily. He did not look happy.
She blinked, wondering how he could possibly know that. Then her mouth dropped open.
"You did not," she said.
Chris bared his teeth in a grimace of sheer irritation. There was no way he knew what she was talking about unless he'd found it himself. And if he was this irritated over it, that had to mean…
She started laughing. Not chuckling, not snickering, laughing. She laughed, literally, like she hadn't laughed in years. And it felt good.
"'Excella, keep out'?" she gasped. "'Irving'?"
He nodded, a pained expression on his face, and she lapsed back into laughter. He waved a hand as though to say, Yeah, yeah, go ahead, laugh it up. She did.
"I swear to God, if they do a random drug test on me and I get in trouble for this shit," he began, and she doubled over. Chris, getting high on a mission. Fuck all, at least Irving had given her one thing to laugh over.
"You know I'm gonna hold this over you forever, right?" she asked, gasping for breath.
He rolled his eyes. "Like the I'm-not-injured strut from the Arklay Incident?"
She was petering off, but that made her chuckle a little more. "Yeah. God, that was funny. I hope I still have that recording."
He at last cracked a smile. "Yeah, I guess I can see what you mean. Sheva was doing the same thing earlier. I caught her at it when I was taking off to come visit you."
Jill quieted down and wiped her streaming eyes. "Doesn't surprise me. We all want to make good impressions on our partners. How is she, by the way?"
"She's doing great," he replied heartily. "She dislocated her shoulder, and she's pretty exhausted, but she'll be just fine. Considering that was her first mission, I'm kinda stunned by how well things went."
Jill took a second to process that statement. "First mission? Wait – how long have you two been working together?"
Chris leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs. "I only met her yesterday. Or the day before, I guess. Three days ago? I never asked the doctor how long I was out…"
She looked at him in disbelief. "You're telling me that that was your first mission together? And her first mission period?"
"Yup. She's pretty impressive, isn't she?"
"You can say that again," she said. Then she fell silent as she processed exactly what that meant. She'd assumed they'd been working together for a while, but if they were only just put into that partnership, it implied that Chris hadn't had a partner preceding the mission. It made her wonder – for how long had that been the case?
She licked her lips, which were dry – this climate was really rough on her – and took another sip from her water bottle.
"Chris," she asked as she put it away again. "How many partners have you had since you lost me?"
He shook his head. "None, other than Sheva. I mean, I'd team up with someone every now and then, but I've pretty much been going solo since…"
He trailed off upon seeing her expression, which was no doubt not encouraging. He'd been going solo for most of two years?
He leaned back, looking away uncomfortably, as she said, "I know you work best with a partner, Chris. And you know I'd have preferred it if you'd moved along."
She didn't like the idea of her death affecting him that drastically. He rolled his head, popping some joints in his neck, and said, "It's not that, it was just…I don't know, I never ran into anyone who could…I mean, after you, it was just…"
He sighed in frustration, and she was straining not to sound as remonstrative as she felt as she replied, "I know it was rough, but we were a team for a reason. We kept each other grounded, and we gave each other the support necessary not just to make it through the missions, but to make it through the times between. This lifestyle isn't sustainable when you go it alone. You know that. So why didn't you find a new—"
"Because I didn't want to lose them!" he broke in, trying and failing to keep his voice level. He was glaring at her, not angrily, but intensely, as though imploring her to understand. "I couldn't go through that again. And I knew I probably would, because the missions just kept getting worse and worse. It isn't as though I didn't look for a new partner. I did, I looked high and low. None of them matched up to you. None of them even came close."
She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. She was at a loss.
"So, yeah, I've been going solo the last couple of years. I didn't find a replacement for you, because no one in the damn world could replace Jill Valentine."
Jill closed her eyes. She was so tired she almost didn't have the energy to react to that. To avoid getting drawn into the whirlpool of emotion and potentially making a fool of herself, she tried changing the immediate subject. "Sheva did a pretty good job."
That did the trick. The fire in Chris's eyes died back a bit. His shoulders, which had hunched up with tension, dropped. He winced very slightly as he relaxed again, which no doubt disturbed whatever injuries he'd sustained. It seemed they were out of the red for the moment.
"Yeah, she did," he admitted. "I think things would have worked out pretty well between us."
"Would have?" Jill asked curiously. "What, was that only a one-time thing?"
He blinked. "Well, I mean, you're back now. I just assumed—"
He stopped and brushed a hand back through his hair, a telltale sign of awkwardness with him, and she quirked an eyebrow.
"I mean, if things have changed, that's fine," he resumed. "Or if you need time to get over all this or – I don't know, I guess I should have asked. What do you want to do moving forward? How are you going to get past all this?"
She leaned forward as he got through this, bracing her elbow on her knee and propping her chin up on her thumb. It sounded like, even though she'd only just reentered his life, he'd already settled on the idea of going back to the way things had been. In his mind, they were still partners.
In his mind, I was always his partner, she realized. And it surprised her that this had never occurred to her before, because in her mind, things were the exact same way.
She thought it over. How was she going to get past all of this? She'd been so absorbed in the present that she hadn't spent much time thinking about the future. Not her future, anyways.
"Well," she said slowly. "I think I'm gonna want to take a vacation, first off."
He whistled lowly. "Same here. I haven't had a week off in years. Maybe I'll try one of seaside resort places. A beach would be nice."
She almost reacted badly to the news that he'd been working himself ragged since she'd 'died'. Then she actually thought about it and decided it was probably a good thing he'd kept himself busy. If he hadn't, he might have ended up drinking himself into oblivion.
"A beach sounds nice," she agreed. "Then I'll probably want to take a lengthy refresher course in B.S.A.A. protocol, and make sure I'm up to date on everything that's been happening."
"Protocol hasn't changed much. I could fill you in on that over a weekend," he offered. Then corrected himself and added, "Or just send you the manuals, whatever works."
She half-smiled, thinking back on all the time they'd spent going over those manuals. In the old days, they'd been the ones who had written them. Nowadays it was the top brass and the administrative dorks who monkeyed with rule changes. "Then…"
"Then?" he pressed.
"Then back to the grind."
Chris arched an eyebrow. "Seems like you've been going solo for a while. Gonna stick with that, or are you going to need a partner?"
She stood up and punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Solo? Hell no. I'm through with that shit."
He grinned, and pushed himself up as well. He was a bit wobbly on his feet at first, but once he'd steadied himself, she found herself surprised by how sturdy he looked. Really, he didn't look all that different from how he had two years ago. A little more weathered, a little more bruised…that was all.
"I've missed you," he said, grin falling into a helpless, lopsided smile.
She swallowed thickly. "I've missed you too."
And because she'd been alone for years, she looped her arms around his waist and pressed herself into his chest. His heart hammered loudly in there as he returned the hug, pulling her close and making her feel, for the first time since she'd woken up, that she was really home. Really safe. All of it was over.
Well, not really. It was never really over, not until they were both in their graves. But this tour of duty was done, and she was looking forward to the next one.
OoO
Hey Rel :) Busy week last week, that's why I skipped the notes. Sorry about that. Probably for the best, anyways. Didn't want to spoil anything.
Still have a little bit to go, now; a few loose ends to tie up, a few questions to answer. Catch you later. Oh, and a warm welcome to VanGuard6, my newest follower, here just in time for the last scant handful of chapters! Probably two or three more. As previous readers like Rel and henie are aware (and real veterans like Steel!), I'm fond of thoroughly wrapping up my fics, making sure all the loose pieces have a spot. Punishments and rewards doled out, final questions answered...and this one was a real tough cookie. What with Wesker's current condition in RE lore and all, I had to study up on the theories and work out a version of events to fit.
Never mind. I'll see you all in a few days!
Best,
The Topaz Dragon