"You looked better before," Chris pointed out between chews as a stretched out finger targeted the red mop on Claire's head that had been longer the last time he'd seen her. Claire sighed annoyedly into her coffee and grabbed another bagel wondering whether it was possible that the amnesia had made him more of a pain in the ass.

"You're not the one who has to like it anyway," she said dryly and chuckled at the grunt Chris gave in response. If he wanted to complain about all the decisions she made, he would get the proper answer. Her attention was drawn to the silent blonde to her left. "I think the sugar has dissolved now. But keep stirring if you want the spoon to disintegrate, too."

Jill didn't realize how noisy the clinking of the tableware in her hands was until it ceased and peace returned to the breakfast table, along with her attention. The citric smell of fresh squeezed orange juice still hung in the air and tickled in her nose, but the paper bag of bagels was already empty. It took her a look at her own plate and the half-eaten piece with cream cheese on it to realize she had been part of the destruction. When she looked up, the faces of two worried Redfields stared at her in search of a reason for her unnaturally absent spirit.

"Are you ready to speak about it?" She had anticipated Claire's question from the way the redhead's forehead wrinkled. It was one of Terra Save's mandatory first questions when they came across survivors; the third one, to be precise, right after 'Are there more survivors?' and 'Have you been bitten?'

"I'm okay. I just didn't sleep well," she reasoned with a smile and feigned a wide yawn.

That response was enough to soothe at least one Redfield's worries, and Claire snickered at the hidden meaning behind the explanation, whilst Chris evidently tried to remember if her sleeplessness had anything to do with him. The truth was that the reason for her lack of sleep was another man — two other men, to be precise. One was Derek Clifford Simmons, who was, apparently, linked to a hidden group of world-wide decision-makers and most likely to provide them with bioweapons. The other was Boris Donovan, the B.S.A.A. intelligence agent who believed to have discovered all of the skeletons in Simmons' closet. He was determined to meet with an old contact of his who would either confirm his theories or put an end to nearly two months of investigations based on far-fetched ideas and the fear that said ideas might not be as far-fetched as she expected. The problem was that Donovan hadn't told them where he would meet that contact of his and that he was supposed to report his location and status the previous day.

"Anyway, I have to go now. See you tomorrow," Claire exhaled, finished the last sip of coffee and stuffed the rest of the half-eaten bagel into her mouth before getting up.

Chris just grunted affirmingly, without paying much attention to the redhead as she walked to the front door and disappeared before the other two could rattle themselves awake to mouth a goodbye. The man's attention was with his girlfriend and the weird behavior she had been showing, not only that morning, but the entire week long. Actually, since they had gotten the news that Alpha Team would depart the upcoming Monday on a mission in South America. It was a short, simple trip, only to get him used to the field and the related protocols.

"Hey," he called out, and waited for Jill to look at him. "Don't worry. Everything will go smoothly. Nothing can go wrong."

She exhaled, cradling herself in the certainty that Chris had no idea about the extent of her current concerns. She nodded and took up the coffee cup, grimacing in disgust at the chill the cold fluid gave her.

"You're right," she said and put the coffee back down.

Nothing could really go wrong. Not on the mission, where Chris would follow Piers' skilled lead, and not wherever Donovan was. He was ex-CIA and had too much experience under his belt to let anything happen to him, and who would harm a man with such a curious appearance as Boris Donovan anyway?

There had to be a logical reason for him to cut off communication.


Jill wondered if she had ever seen a desk as neat and tidy as Boris Donovan's.

It was immaculate, empty and shiny as though nobody had ever had the chance to work at it, when she knew perfectly well that Boris had practically lived in the office in the previous weeks. Not a speck of dust was to be found on the surface, but that was probably a merit of the very efficient cleaning personnel Johnson was so ridiculously proud of having hired.

But not even such nightly disinfection efforts could erase every single imprint of one's existence so easily, could they? Jill opened the upper drawer of the desk for the third time, in hope that the evidence of all his doings would magically appear.

It didn't. The drawer was still empty except for an unused notebook, a parking ticket and half a pack of spearmint chewing gum.

"Fuck, Donovan, where are you?" she hissed to herself and kicked the drawer shut.

It wasn't proper of him to disappear without a trace, and Jill seriously regretted having let him investigate on his own.

"Agent Valentine! You'd like to see this."

Jordan Fennix had an unexpectedly gravelly voice for a woman of such tender age, and it completed the overall curious appearance of the girl genius. Wrapped in a thick, green-and-orange striped turtleneck and a dark-green knit cap from which her long brown strands hung flatly, she looked like she had been dressed by her mother herself so she wouldn't catch a cold in New York City. She had been picked by Boris to assist him in his task and was, besides Jill, the only one who knew about his secret investigations and his sudden vanishing.

"Jordan," Jill greeted as she turned. "Do you have the location?"

The long, straight strands drew wavy lines when Jordan nodded in response, handing a small piece of paper to the older woman. Jill had asked her to track Boris' phone signal, not really expecting anything other than his known address. She was surprised when she opened the paper and found a location outside the city limits.

"This is where the phone last responded. I've checked the zone and it seems to be an industrial area close to the harbor," Jordan mentioned, throwing Jill a glance full of concern. "Full of warehouses."

Jill swallowed. She had known that Boris' investigations wouldn't lead them to particularly high-class places or luxury hotels, but the fact that he had disappeared in such a dark corner of the city made her fear he had run into the wrong people. She pocketed the paper with a quick flip of her hand and eyed the young girl.

"I'll go check on this personally." That decision was easy to make. She had let Donovan run free, she would need to fix things if anything went wrong. Inside her chest, hope and fear that he could have found something were battling, and she couldn't decipher what feeling was currently having the upperhand. She wouldn't want to sacrifice a good agent like Boris for nothing, but if he had, indeed, discovered that Derek C. Simmons was involved in bioterror, it would inevitably lead to new investigations of a corruption case of such depth that it scared her to the bone. It didn't really come surprising, as many powerful politicians had been working hand in hand with Umbrella decision makers — that is, if they hadn't been directly the same person— but it left one constantly with the same question spinning through their head. With all the traitors among their rows, how could they really be sure who was on their side anymore? "Thanks, Jordan."

The voices were heard only a second before the couple of Intelligence agents —one of Boris' teammates and his direct supervisor— walked into the office and stared at the pair. Jill, always known for her sharp mind and reaction capability, quickly sent Fennix to work on a less secret task before turning her attention to the recently arrived. There was no official reason for her to visit the Intelligence department, less even to rummage through anyone's desk, so if she wanted to avoid being questioned, she would have to become the one who questioned first.

"Mister Marriott," she resolutely turned to Boris' supervisor. "I wasn't expecting to find your office empty this morning. How is the investigation on Neo-Umbrella evolving?" She cracked a tiny smile when she watched Gareth Marriott turn paler the more annoying her questions became. "As you know, Alpha team will be flying to South America in a few days and I wouldn't want to miss any detail that could be helpful with the preparations."

Yes, attack was still the best form of defence.


On July twenty-fourth 1998, right after learning about the missing Bravo Team and before getting on the chopper that would take them to the Arklay Forest, Jill had looked down at her Samurai Edge, the handgun that had been especially designed and handcrafted by Joe Kendo and customized for most of the S.T.A.R.S. members, and she had felt fear. True fear. Fear was a good thing, she believed, because fear gave you adrenaline, it kept you respectful of what you were fighting and it didn't let you put your guard down. Bottom line, fear kept you alive as long as it didn't control your actions. However, the fear she had felt before Arklay had controlled so much more than just her actions. She remembered the briefing, how she had suddenly played with the thought of making up an emergency call, sickness or a surprise visit of her period, anything that would keep her away from the Arklay mountains that damn night. She had quickly shaken those ideas off, naturally. As a member of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team, she'd had the respect and hatred of many people in the RPD, and she wouldn't have wanted to let any of them down. Giving up and running away wasn't in her nature, it was something that didn't exist in her vocabulary, and yet, the feeling of alarm hadn't let her go until they had escaped the mansion together. Or was it until she had escaped Raccoon City itself after the outbreak? Jill sighed at the thought. If she was honest, the feeling had never really abandoned her.

It had intensified whenever she had been forced to use her gun again. It had overcome her before every single battle they'd fought against Umbrella, before she and Chris had dove into the depths of the Mediterranean to search for Norman on the Queen Dido, or when they had run up the hill to the Spencer Estate. The sensation had probably reached its apex when they had stood in front of the door to Spencer's room, where they eventually found Wesker. They had never stopped, always ready to fight even those creatures so different to the normal enemies they had once been trained to confront, but the fear was constant, always supposed to be fuel for victory, never an obstacle in the fight.

How had she always, constantly, lived and worked with that much fear?

A heavy sigh was released when Jill slid the gun into her holster. Keys, flashlight, binoculars and her phone were one after another dropped into the different pouches she secured around her hip. She was about to throw on her knee-long coat when the door to her office flew open and Chris stormed in.

"Hey, love," he whispered, spying around to check if there was anyone nearby who could catch their piece of conversation. "Piers says I'm done for today. You still have work to do?"

Jill stood petrified behind the desk as the man pecked her mouth with the impetu of a teenager. She hadn't expected Nivans to release the unit that early on Thursday when they were going to South America on Monday. She mentally cursed the young lieutenant and his beliefs that free time and sleep were as important as training —something he had inherited from his own captain, probably— as it was about to ruin all her plans. Wasn't there any way to keep Chris in headquarters until she came back from her quick trip?

"Well, I…" she muttered, already thinking of an excuse which would justify her absence for a couple of hours, and which wouldn't allow him to come along with her.

"Is that your Samurai Edge?" The question somehow caught Jill off guard. Her look dropped to her thigh, where the weapon sat obediently in the holster.

"Yes and no," she replied with a smile. "It is my Samurai Edge, but it's a newer model, made by one of the B.S.A.A. technicians. The one you know was lost in Raccoon City."

Chris' eyes shimmered with interest when he inspected the holster, and Jill eventually released the firearm from her thigh and handed it to her old partner.

"Barry had Quint make him a new one too, but you never wanted that," she explained with a shrug and warm softness in her voice. "The one you carried in S.T.A.R.S. was lost too."

No need to tell him that he had most probably dropped it on his way to the Spencer mansion.

"And where were you going with a gun and a flashlight?"

There was it; the inevitable question. The excuse that she had to pick up something for Johnson wasn't believable anymore now that he had seen the gear she was carrying. Willing to play it down as completely normal and natural, she shrugged apologetically and grabbed the gun again.

"Oh, I just need to pick up a package. It's harmless, but I need to present myself fully equipped when in public, you know?"

He smirked and nodded eagerly.

"No problem," he replied. "Let me just get my stuff and we can go."

What had she expected, really? Had she believed he would just sit down and wait for her like a dog? No. Chris had never been the kind of man who just waited, but she couldn't drag him into this with her.

"No, Chris. I'm sorry." She smiled and shook her head. "I don't have much time. You can just stay here and I'll pick you up afterwards." Chris stared at Jill in silence as she finally got to push her arms into the sleeves of her coat. "Grab a coffee from the vending machine and you'll see that I'm back in no time."

Chris grunted, brows furrowed into a pronounced V-shape, and she knew he sensed something wasn't right.

"Are you in trouble, Jill?"

Her hand was inches away from the door knob when he fired his question at her. Trying to remain calm and unsuspicious, she turned to face him in an attempt at childlike innocence.

"Of course not," she replied, shaking her head no. "I just need to get this done quickly. Don't worry. I'll be back soon."

But that response didn't seem to keep Chris content, and when the big man walked a few steps towards her, Jill saw the reason why all their enemies feared Big Redfield. He grew bigger with every step he took.

"You know you can tell me, and I can help you," he said, ignoring her last reasonings. Placing his hands onto her shoulders, he then aimed directly for her sanity. "Don't you trust your partner?"

It was one of those moments when she believed Johnson could have been right and that Chris Redfield was indeed just faking it all. Hadn't he just returned her the exact same words she had given him in Africa, when she'd sent him after Wesker despite knowing that all he wanted was to stay with her? Chris smirked triumphantly as she felt her entire facade crumble and crack. There was no point in denying it all, was there?

"Fine," she sighed and turned back to the door. "Follow me. I'll tell you everything on the way."

And just like that, she had found an answer to the question how she had been living with the tremendous, threatening fear all these years.

Before the Arklay Mountains, on their way down into the sunken cruise ship, and even before they'd confronted Wesker. The fear and concern all magically dissipated once Chris assured he would be there with her.

That, however, didn't eliminate the danger they were facing.


The takeaway coffee they'd grabbed on their way to the warehouse was sugared in excess and already cold when they finally decided they'd have a sip. Three hours had passed since they'd parked Jill's car next to the corner of the adjacent building and had started watching. Basically that. Watching. Hour after hour. Binoculars up, binoculars down, whenever the slightest of movements was detected. Unfortunately, that only happened a couple of times in those three hours, once when a group of workers finished their shift in a nearby factory and growled loudly how they were going to drink half of their pains away that night, the other time when a cat ran around the corner chasing a mouse. Chris sighed into the cup.

"Not that I'm complaining about a good old nightwatch like we used to do together, but what exactly are we waiting for?" he asked as he spun to Jill. "Because nothing's moving out there."

Jill's lip twitched, forming a dubitative pout.

"Fennix says this is the last place where Donovan's phone worked," she replied. "I don't know what to find but if someone's keeping him in there-"

"Why don't we have a look?"

Well, she should have seen that question coming. Chris chewed his donut in boredom as he stared at her in silence, a silence which would go on forever unless she gave him an answer.

"We can't just break into a warehouse, Chris. This is a private property." Her arguments didn't seem to convince the big man and his eyes suggested a certain degree of disregard. "Also, what if we run into armed guys who hold Donovan captive and torture him, huh?"

Chris shrugged, eyes wide open.

"Then someone should probably help him," he exclaimed. "And if you can't ask Johnson for help because you sent him on that mission without any approval-" he paused and smirked. "Well done, by the way. That's my girl."

The blonde rolled her eyes at his exaggerated expression of pride, a sigh releasing itself from his lips.

"If we can't get help, then we have to do it ourselves."

Yes, she had figured he would say something stupid during the night.

"We can't. That would require a special unit."

Chris huffed out a ridiculing laugh.

"We're S.T.A.R.S., Jill. We are a special unit!" he howled in offence and Jill grunted.

"No, we are two old ex-members of a fake special force team that only existed to test the effectiveness of bioweapons."

Her eyes flickered brightly when she eventually looked at him. God, he loved that woman when her temper was about to ignite.

"I know you want to help me, Chris, but this is not a local murder case like the ones we worked on in Raccoon," Jill exclaimed with a soft laugh. "The man Donovan was investigating is a very powerful person, close to the president. And if the NSA is involved, this is a country-wide, maybe world-wide, corruption case."

Chris listened like an obeying schoolboy, and nodded only a brief moment later.

"Probably," he said and let his lips widen into a reassuring smile as his hand reached for the handle. "But just sitting around and doing nothing won't get us anywhere."

Jill just sat in the driver seat and, incredulous to the happenings, watched as her partner opened the door and jumped out of the car.

"What the…?"

He was going crazy. It had taken him three months to show the symptoms, but the head injury was seriously affecting his actions beyond the consequences of the memory loss. Jill waited another second for him to change his mind and climb back into the car, but when he resolutely holstered his handgun and walked towards the entrance of the warehouse, she stopped hesitating and leaped after him.

"Chris!" she called in a whisper, following the big man on tiptoes. "Chris!"

It didn't look like he was running, but he advanced at a good pace, skipping the halo of the street lights and keeping himself in the shadows until he reached his goal. Jill had barely caught up when he pressed his ear against the door and his finger to his lips.

They stood there and listened.

The wind was blowing icy and loud that night of March, and it was hard to tell whether a sound came from the inside or the outside of the facility. Jill couldn't quite believe her own actions. All that disobedience wasn't proper of someone like her. On the other hand, neither was the willful leadership of a secret mission against the National Security Advisor. She and Chris made eye contact, silently establishing their communication for the night. It was something so innately natural between them that it needed no words.

The way Chris narrowed his eyes at her meant that he couldn't hear anything from the inside and that it would have been a huge advantage to have something like a scanner for organic matter with them. Although, it was probably just her own thoughts she was hearing, as she realized they could have grabbed a spare Genesis device with Chris' B.S.A.A. ID badge, the electronic keycard to high security zones within headquarters which nobody had removed his access permissions to. And why should they? After all, he had just lost his memory and forgotten everything about bioterror when he'd hit his head after escorting the wrong person in Edonia. It wasn't like he had been brainwashed and forced to work for the enemy after literally sacrificing himself for the cause.

Jill swallowed when her look dropped to Chris' hands and she saw him toy with the three padlocks that kept a thick metal chain in place around two long metal handles.

"Can you open this?"

It wasn't really a question of her skills, but rather a petition to use her lock-picker qualities and give them access to the warehouse. The chain and padlock were clue enough that whoever had locked the door had done it from the outside and would, most probably, not be waiting with a shotgun for them to come in and blow their heads off. However, one could never know what else would be waiting for them inside. Jill cracked a smile and dropped to one knee, Chris keeping his back pressed against the door and his eyes on the surroundings.

"It's so quiet out here," he mentioned just as the first padlock snapped open. "I didn't believe there were places like this in New York."

"It's quite far outside the city limits," Jill mentioned as she began to tense the second lock. "The closest residential area is about five miles away, there are no nightclubs, just a couple of restaurants. It's a good place for the industry to run their businesses without having neighbors complain about the noises and smells." The second padlock opened and Jill slipped it into her pocket. She'd rather not leave clues behind. "And a perfect place for dirty deals."

The third padlock was older than the other ones, and the rust barely let her insert the tools. She sighed annoyedly as a pearl of sweat began to roll down her forehead.

"And what do we know about this place?" Chris asked, his voice barely audible to her as he'd turned away to keep an eye on the right end of the alley.

"Not much," Jill answered. "It's been rented by a company called DVR Legal, the main contact listed is someone named Daniel Roob or so. I had Jordan check on them. They look like a pretty normal law firm, specialized in food poisonings." Jill let her eyes wander up and down the front of the building. "I just wonder what they use this warehouse for."

Just as she said that, the last padlock clicked open and the chains separated with the distinctive sound of steel on steel. Just like the padlocks, Jill removed the chain and fixed it around her belt, as it was too voluminous to find a place in her pouches. Chris gave her a reaffirming look and placed his fingers around the long metal handle, slowly sliding the door open.

Jill could feel her heartbeat thrumming in her ears. The inside of the warehouse was pure darkness, and even the dim street lights shone an intense halo into the facility. With her gun and flashlight raised, Jill slid into the warehouse and kept her back to the wall as she moved into the right corner. Chris followed her, moving into the opposite direction with the same stealthy steps.

The space was mostly empty and the dark corners where danger could lurk were only a few. They stood and listened, but nothing could be heard besides their own hearts and lungs doing their job, so Jill began to advance deeper into the warehouse, Chris following her.

"What the hell…?" the man muttered as he followed her. "This is the emptiest warehouse I've ever seen."

He activated the beam of his own flashlight and they began to walk across the area, shining light into every corner so they wouldn't miss any detail. There was none. They were alone in an empty place.

"Watch out for blood stains," Jill demanded. "Maybe Boris was attacked here and they took him somewhere else."

When she turned to Chris, the man was glancing upwards, targeting something on a higher floor with his flashlight, when she turned into the direction of the gleam, she found that he had found a closed zone on a mezzanine.

"Looks like some sort of office," Chris mentioned and Jill didn't like the sound of it. Nothing was moving up there either, and she feared what they'd find once they reached the higher floor. The ladder had been pulled up and wasn't easy to reach from the lower floor, and Jill quickly noticed that there wasn't any tool close to lower their access.

"Help me up, will you?"

Chris nodded, folding his hands in knee height for her to climb up and after getting impulse from running up to him, she was practically cannoned to the mezzanine where the office was. She landed on her left foot and right knee, still surprised by the jump she had performed with Chris' help. Lifting her gun, Jill stayed in the crouched position until she was sure that she wouldn't be attacked in the next two seconds. She then rose to her feet and kicked the ladder free from its hold, causing it to slam down to the floor below with a loud metallic clunk.

Still, nothing was moving, nothing to be heard. Jill had her eyes tightly set on the office door while she waited for Chris to climb up the ladder, her heart throbbing wildly in expectation. The fear that she had gotten Boris killed was taking over her emotions, and she began to shake like a fearful, abandoned animal. That office was the last clue they had. What if it was empty as the rest of the warehouse? What if it was just an office with documents a normal, innocent law firm would need? Or worse. What if they found Boris hanged, electrocuted or with his throat slit on the other side of that door? She didn't even want to think about it. The B.S.A.A. had lost hundreds of good agents during the years, but it had been caused by strategic decisions in the fight against bioterrorists and always for a reasonable cause. If anything had happened to Boris because she herself hadn't had enough control over him, though...

It was Chris' hand on her shoulder that interrupted her destructive train of thought and stopped her from panicking.

Their eyes met briefly and everything seemed to be better, easier, not as dark and desperate. They hadn't found anything yet. There was no need to panic until there was one, and she could perfectly leave all of her overreactions to future Jill. When Chris gave her a little smile and walked past her towards the door, Jill suddenly remembered that she would have only returned to the field if it had been as Chris' partner.

If they had ever offered her to return, that is.

She clung so tightly to Chris that she could feel his pulse through running through her own body. So many emotions came floating back to her when she stood next to her partner —her partner— and the feeling of nostalgia tickled through her body when they exchanged another look of complicity before Chris put his hand on the knob and pushed the door open.

"What the fuck?"


A/N: Hello everybody! thank you very much for reading this little chapter. I hope you're enjoying the story so far. Writing it is a lot of fun. Don't worry, we'll soon get more cute Valenfield moments. I want to thnk you all for reading, favoriting and for the wonderful reviews and PM. I'm truly humbled by your feedback.

IMAguest: Glad you liked it enough to read it in one afternoon and I'm proud of you for admitting it hahaha Chris absolutely deserves a happy ending, but there's a lot of struggles he'll need to go through before. thanks a bunch for your review :)

I hope you're all healthy and fine. Stay safe!