37. Chris

"That boy is good…" Jill mumbled to Chris as they watched Wallace work with the BSAA computer techs. She was carrying some cups of coffee that she distributed between Chris and Barry. "Where did she find all these talented people?"

Chris had to admit that Jill was right. Appearances could be deceiving. The first time he had met the man, he had thought Wallace was just a security supervisor with little sense of responsibility; the second time, just a boy who liked video games; but as the saying goes, The third time's the charm. There he was, saving what was left of one of the BSAA bases all by his own.

Jill was right. Claire sure knew how to choose her team.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Chris said, "Hiwamura is a talented doctor, then there's this guy, and I am guessing Sanaya is good at her job, as well."

"Well...now this is interesting…." Wallace said, amused.

Chris and Jill turned to him, surprised.

"Whoever programmed this thing knew what he or she was doing. They left some nasty bugs in here."

"Can it be fixed?" Chris asked, walking towards him and looking at the screen. All he saw was a black screen and a bunch of white letters.

"Fix it? Pff, of course, I can fix it. Who do you think I am?"

"Not the master of modesty, that's evident'..." Barry snorted, "Enough talking, kid, show us what you got."

"Well, they put in several worms here to mess up with the files, so I'll have to purge the system to get rid of them first. Then I can try to restore them, but depending on the damage, I am not sure if they'll be back 100%."

"Anything we can do?"

"Hah, stand back, Reddie, and let the master do his work."

Wallace smirked and began typing as crazy. Chris, on the other hand, walked back to where Jill was standing with her cup of coffee and an amused look. He had never been good at standing idle, but things had been quiet for the last few weeks. Mobius hadn't tried anything since the cyberattack, and judging by Leon's reports and Claire's complaints, she was safe and sound.

"Not good at feeling useless, huh?" Jill asked, amused, "I take being useless as a good sign."

"Just for now. Those bastards will show their faces soon. I can feel it."

"Let's not call upon chaos, shall we?" Jill said, patting his back.

Chris rolled his eyes and took a sip of his coffee.

"How's Claire, eh?" Barry asked, "Is marriage treating her well?"

Chris glared at him and said nothing. Barry had turned the whole Leon and Claire marriage thing into an excuse for teasing him. The worst thing about it was that the more he saw those two pretending to be married, the more he realized they looked like a real couple.

"Oh, I saw them the other day when I went to the DSO," Jill said, "they were well. Claire was a little pale, but Leon was hovering over her like a good worried husband."

"Hah...looking like a lovey-dovey couple, I betcha…"

"Ah...for god's sake...why do you enjoy torturing me like this?"

"You can't consider it a torture unless you agree that they are really well together…" Jill smirked.

"Ahg… it's not the time for this."

"Yeah, no time to discuss Kennedy's romantic life with your sister…" Barry snorted.

"Pretended romantic life." Chris clarified.

"Yeah...you keep telling yourself that, Chris…" Barry said, drinking down his coffee, "but believe me, I've lived enough to know when there are sparkles."

"Sparkles?" Jill laughed, "What the hell, Barry…"

"What else do you want me to call that? Sexual tension?"

Chris choked with his coffee and began coughing.

"Ah...bingo…" Wallace's voice broke through their conversation, and Chris was happy for the distraction.

"Did you make it?"

"Please...not only did I make it, but I managed to track down the IP of the ass, who sent you this baby."

"You what?"

"Hah...the asses thought they could hide using a damn VPN. What a bunch of noobs, but hey, I'm a pro. I'm tracking the exact location of the IP, right, now, you can thank me later."

"How did you do that?" Jills said, impressed.

"I told you. I am a genius," Wallace winked at her, "Your server is back up...but I'll need a few days to put a decent firewall. The one you had sucked, and then I'll build a nice security system. Your old one was, well, let's not talk about that."

Chris gave him a frown, but before he could tell him anything, Jill let out a groan.

"The IP location...it's…"

Wallace made some drums on the table as he waited for the map location to show up.

"Shit...it's in Washington…" Barry roared.

Chris's eyes widened in shock. Washington? That was far too close to Claire for his liking. All this time, they had speculated that Mobius's base was somewhere in Europe, and now it turned out they were just across the street.

"Contact the DSO. Leon needs to know about this."

By the end of the day, the lead had left them empty-handed. The IP belonged to a small café not too far from the DSO offices. The owners were an elderly couple that knew nothing about computers but who kindly gave them free coffee and muffins when they dropped by the place. Chris and Jill checked the security footage, but half of the tape had mysteriously gotten corrupted.

Needless to say, Chris was angry, and everyone in the BSAA- including Jill and Barry-knew that the wisest thing to do was to let him be. No one wanted to end up on the wrong side of one of Chris's mood swings.

It was just lucky that he hadn't thrown his phone against the wall when it's begun ringing.

"What?" he answered, annoyed.

"Hello to you too, dear brother of mine."

Chris felt part of his anger dissipate when he heard the woman's familiar voice.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you."

"It's fine. It's not like I don't know you. Bad day?"

"Could have been better. How about you? How are you feeling?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that? Like literally, Leon's new version of a good morning call is 'how are you feeling'. "

The mention of the agent made Chris grimace, but luckily no one was there to see him.

"We are worried, " Chris replied.

"I know… I know, I'm all good, though. Leon is keeping me out of trouble, so you don't need to worry about me getting attacked or anything."

Yeah. I just need to worry about my sister falling back in love with a flirt of a playboy.

The words had stayed in his head, but somewhere in his thoughts, he could hear Claire's voice defending him and telling him that he wasn't being fair.

"Did Leon tell you about what we found?"

"The IP thing? Yeah. For a second there, I thought he was planning on putting me inside a safe and throwing away the key. You two need to relax. The fact that they were close doesn't mean they know I'm here. It might have just been a coincidence."

"We can't be sure about that…"

"You two are a lost case…"

"what do you mean?"

"What did you put in Leon's head the last time you lectured him? He's becoming like a little clone of you…"

Chris could hear the amused tone in his sister's voice, but there was some reproach in there too. So Leon was acting just like him?

"Did Wallace help out?"

"Yeah, the kid is good. He rescued the server and is now fixing it. I hope you don't mind lending us the kid for a while longer."

"Nah, he's all yours if you need him. Wallace is a dork, but he's good at what he does. It's good to have him on our side…"

"The kid is impressive. Yeah."

There was a short pause before Claire spoke again.

"Well, Chris. You're not usually a man of too many words, but you're particularly short today. What's wrong?"

"It's nothing you should worry about."

"Really...and why do I get the feeling it has to do with me?"

Because it had. Everything was about Claire if it came to Mobius, at least, in Chris's mind. However, the last thing he wanted was to drag her down with everything when she was starting to rise again.

"Chris, we have talked about this. You can't shield me from everything…"

"I know I can't, but that won't stop me from trying."

"As that worked well before… look, we both worry for each other, but if we are going to get with this, we need to start talking."

"Aren't we talking now?"

"You know what I mean."

"Okay, fine. I'm just fucking frustrated that we didn't get the assholes today. After weeks we finally got a promising lead, and that ended up in another dead-end. That's so damn frustrating."

"Nobody expects you to catch them right away, Chris. You need to remember you're not superman." Claire said softly. It was the same voice she would use whenever she wanted to calm him.

"Things are fine now, Chris…."

"Yeah, but for how long? The damn bastards could be living right in front of you, Claire."

"Unless you tell me that Helena is a member of Mobius, I certainly doubt it. "Claire chuckled, "For real, though, the whole building is occupied by DSO. I don't think your fears are reasonable…"

"Last time I checked, it was a gov who caused a fucking outbreak …"

"Don't mention that in front of Leon, okay? Not sure if he's gotten over it yet…"

"Yeah, right."

"Seriously, Chris. You need to relax."

"How do you expect me to relax knowing there's someone out there trying to hunt you down to do, god knows what?"

"To do that, they would first need to get a hand on me, Chris." she said matter of factly, "and considering that I have Leon on my tail practically 24/7, I can promise you that's going to be hard."

"You got caught right under our noses the first time around."

"And Leon caught up and got abducted with me."

"Irrelevant…."

He heard Claire let out an annoyed sigh, and he unconsciously smiled. The rest of the conversation went about random stuff from silly gossip from Leon's office that Chris honestly couldn't care less, but Claire had wanted to fill him up with for no reason, to the update on the prototype ammo she'd been concocting with someone she'd met in the DSO.

Chatting with Claire had surely made him feel a little more relaxed. Barry liked to call it the baby sister effect, assuring that Moira and Polly were just the same. By the time they had said goodbye, the soldier was in a far better mood.

Days passed, and nothing new came up. The new security system for the BSAA was coming up nicely, but it had taken a little more time than what Wallace had told them, but be assured that it was because he wanted to make sure the whole thing was foul proof.

Holidays were approaching. The city was getting more and more festive, and the weather was growing colder. It'd be a matter of time before the first snow began to fall. Chris couldn't remember when was the last time he'd had a chance to celebrate Christmas, but apparently, the lack of activity by Mobius had its good points, after all.

That morning Chris made it to the office just to find the whole place in a perturbingly festive mood.

"Okay...who the fuck did this?" Chris said, looking at the fully decorated room, and someone had set up a tiny Christmas tree on the desk of his cubicle.

"Don't be a grinch, Chris…" Jill laughed, "Actually, it was Claire who asked me to do this. She said you needed some festive encouragement for a change…"

"She what…?" Chris groaned.

"Girl made a good point. It's rare for all of us to be around at the same time. It is a good chance to do some celebration since Christmas is around the corner," Barry said from his desk, "Hell, you know we deserve it after this hellish year."

"A Christmas party? You gotta be kidding me …"

"Chris, honestly, when was the last time you had a Christmas with family?" Jill asked, crossing her arms.

It'd been a long time ago. Claire had not even been a freshman in college then. Time sure flew; the last time they had spent Christmas together, Chris had just gotten assigned to S.T.A.R.S. There were no zombies, no viruses, and no troubles then.

"Your face answers my question. Come on. We can arrange something and have some fun for a change."

"What if there's an attack?"

"We'll deal with it then." Jill shrugged, "Why are you overthinking something that hasn't even happened? It is her wish, do it for her at least?"

"I take Leon is up to it?"

"Even if he wasn't, I'm sure she would find a way to persuade him…" Barry laughed.

"Tch...fine…" Chris answered, rolling his eyes and sitting down at his desk. The tiny Christmas tree was facing him, and he then noticed the little post-it stuck on the pot. He picked it up and recognized the handwriting immediately.

It's not what's under the tree that matters.

It's who's gathered around it.

Even if he hadn't recognized the writing, the phrase itself was enough. It was their mother's favorite quote, and she would always say it when he and Claire tried to snoop through the packages under the tree. A smile appeared on his face as those old memories passed through his head. Their mother had always loved Christmas.

"That's a damn dirty trick, Claire…" he muttered, "using mom against me…."

Chris didn't get much time to think about how cunning Claire was for using the mother card. The alarm at the BSAA building had rung loudly, sending everyone into a chaotic mess. Chris, Jill, and Barry rushed out of the office and headed straight to command. Adams was screaming commands all over them.

"Adams...What's going on?" Chris asked.

"Chris...I was about to send someone to find you. There was an attack in a local mall. The place is already a quarantine zone..."

"An attack? What sort of attack?"

"The usual...not so friendly corpses…" Adams replied in a growl, "We don't know the situation inside, but things are not looking too bright."

"Another attack...right here?" Jill said, concerned, "Why?"

"They're getting closer to Claire…"

Chris had turned pale, but his look was darker than ever. Adams let out a sigh and looked at them sorrowfully.

"I'm going there," Chris declared.

"I couldn't expect less...hush. The faster you get there, the faster we can control the damage," Adams nodded. "The team there will give you more details on arrival. I already contacted Hopkins and he sent out some experimental weapons that they had been developing against the new B.O.W."

"New weapons?"

"Clara's doing," Adams nodded.

"Have they confirmed that the new monsters are in the mall?"

"No, we haven't had contact with anyone inside, but it is a cautionary move, just in case," Adams said, "They're prototypes, but if they work well we might start manufacturing them. God knows we need them if the new monsters are around."

"Understood."

"Chris, Jill, Barry. Be careful."

"Yes, sir!"

With that, the three rushed out.