"Sergeant Harbour, Wexford Police Department." The man on the other end of the line sounded weary and unenthused.

"Good afternoon, Sergeant Harbour." Chris and Jill stood together at the payphone just outside the back entrance to the RPD. They had just clocked out for the day, and wanted to catch the sergeant as close to the beginning of his shift as they could. Jill leaned against the warm, brick wall while Chris did the talking. "My name is Chris Redfield, I'm an officer with the Raccoon Police Department in Raccoon City, Wisconsin."

"Quite the ways away. How can I help you, son?"

"I was told you're the one who found Bill Rabbitson?"

A bit more interest crept into Harbour's voice as he responded, "I was."

"I would like to go over some details from the case file."

"Alright. File the proper paperwork, and we'll get back to you once we've had a chance to look it over."

Chris was getting more nervous. This was a bad idea. "It's a bit more urgent than that."

There was silence on the other end of the line, then, "Look, not to be rude, but are you new to this? I can't just give you case information without going through the proper channels. It's against policy. What's the urgency?"

"Sergeant, I'm going to level with you," Chris said, knowing the plan was a long shot. If it went wrong, he reminded himself, the worst he would get was another ass-chewing from Irons. He could handle that. "I was Bill's best friend. His mom doesn't believe he would've done this to himself, and made me promise I would dig around. Guess she thought my badge would give me better access. I'm not expecting to find anything, but a promise is a promise. If all you tell me is it's a suicide, case closed, I'll drop it." Let's hope my gamble pays off.

This time, Harbour didn't say anything for so long that Chris thought he might have hung up the phone. Then he heard a sigh. "Do you really want the truth?" Harbour had dropped his already gravelly voice even lower, clearly trying not to be overheard.

Chris hadn't expected that, but scrambled to uncap his pen with one hand anyway. "What do you mean, 'the truth?'" Jill, next to Chris at the payphone, looked at him questioningly. He pointed at her notebook, which she handed over to him.

"Listen, I didn't tell you any of this – and I'm doing this as a favor, one cop to another, got it? Don't screw me over."

"Yeah, I got it," Chris replied, trying not to sound impatient. He flipped to a blank page clumsily with his thumb.

"Good. I've seen a lot of suicides by hanging. Used to work in the city – you know how it is." Harbour didn't wait for Chris to answer. "My partner and I had to cut your friend down, and I noticed that the contusions on his neck didn't match with the thickness of the electrical cable he used, or the angle it was at around his neck. The skin also looked like it had been abraded through pretty bad from struggling. You don't get that from smooth cable – at least not that I've ever seen. And it was only on the front of his neck. It's been bothering me since I noticed."

Chris' penmanship had become more erratic as Harbour continued. His hand was wrapped painfully tight around phone receiver and his head was starting to spin, nauseous from picturing his friend like that and feeling the rage begin to well up at the implication that Bill's death had been at someone else's hand. Jill had noticed and placed a hand on his shoulder. He had to admit, it helped calm him down a little.

Chris breathed in and out through his nose once, slowly, keeping his composure. "So you don't think he actually killed himself?"

"It's… look, I'm no coroner," warned Harbour. "But if I had to go with my gut, someone killed your friend and posed him there like that."

"Who was the coroner?" asked Chris.

"Medical examiner, actually. Doctor O'Neal. I don't know him, not personally anyways – he just started. First time I'd even heard of him actually. Didn't seem really big on words, either."

Chris scribbled the name down and circled it. "Where's his office?"

"Ashford Memorial Hospital, here in Wexford."

The Raccoon City Public Library was even quieter than usual, probably due in part to how nice of an evening it was. Other than a handful of college students perusing the shelves, the place was empty. Jill saw that the three computer terminals, along one wall, were all unoccupied. Perfect.

She strode over and sat at the one closest to the corner and logged in with the information from the back of her card. The computer took a moment to think, then brought up the desktop. She navigated to AltaVista to search out the phone number for the hospital in Wexford – Chris had forgotten to get it from the sergeant he had talked to.

She clicked the link to the hospital's website, which was at the top of her search. The website was surprisingly well put together. At the top of the page, she saw the logo for the Umbrella Pharmaceutical Corporation.

Feeling a bit of curiosity and seeing as Chris wasn't out of the bathroom yet, Jill opened another browser and searched for information on Umbrella's presence in Wexford. She went to a number of pages, including news articles that had been uploaded to various websites. That's interesting. It seemed that, much like Raccoon, Umbrella had moved into Wexford in the early '60s and begun funding infrastructure projects, eventually leading to a population boom in the late '80s. Also similar to Raccoon General Hospital, Umbrella owned and operated Ashford Memorial.

Chris walked up behind her and she stopped her side tangent, closing the second browser window. "Any luck finding the number?"

Jill scrolled, looking for the digits. "Sorry, I got a little bit distracted."

"No worries."

There they were, near the bottom of the page. She pointed to them and Chris jotted them down.

"Thanks, Jill. I'll be back in a bit."

Chris took off for the door, rummaging around in his pocket for quarters as he went.

Jill logged out and got up from the computer, heading for the shelving section that she knew housed a whole slew of true crime books. She didn't have much else to do while Chris was working his magic on the phone. Many of the books she'd already read – a few times, even – and some people found it odd that she'd want to come home from her day as a police officer and read about more crime. But still, she found them interesting. Fiction had never really been her thing.

Loud bootsteps approached hastily. Jill looked up from the back cover she was reading to see Chris come around the end of the shelf, eyes wide, clearly distressed, possibly confused.

"You look like you've seen a ghost. Did you get ahold of them?"

"Oh, I got ahold of them," he said, and leaned up against the shelf next to her.

She put the book back. "And?"

"They don't know about any Doctor O'Neal." He stared at the opposite bookshelf, and Jill could clearly see the gears turning in his head. "As far as they know, there never was a Doctor O'Neal."

"What?"

"Yep. And the body is already gone, hopefully loaded on a plane back to Truckee, but who knows at this point. The real medical examiner never even saw Bill. The records are falsified to say he did."

"How is that possible?" she asked, starting to pace in the limited space between walls of books.

"I have no fucking clue, Jill." Chris was struggling to keep his volume down. He massaged his forehead with one hand. "Let's go. I need a cigarette, and I don't think we're going to get any further on this tonight. I'll take you back to the station to get your car."

They didn't say much on their drive back. Chris was stewing, and Jill was trying to wrap her head around the fact that they may have actually stumbled into some sort of conspiracy. It was unreal. Chris had mentioned Bill saying that there was a lot more to the murders, and that he was on the run for knowing too much about it. She wondered how – or if – it all tied in together.

The RPD parking lot was mostly empty. Chris pulled into the spot next to Jill's hatchback, giving her enough room to comfortably go between cars. She didn't immediately get out, though.

"Chris… are you planning to tell the rest of our teammates about Bill? They're going to wonder where you are this weekend."

"I'll just say it's a family emergency." He focused on the steering wheel. "It feels like I'm gonna jinx the recon if I tell them what's going on beforehand."

"Not even Barry? You know he's worried enough about you that he asked me what was going on today. He's your best friend."

Chris looked at her pointedly, forcing a weak smile. "One of my best friends. Besides, if you think the old man's worried now, it's only going to get worse when I explain myself."

He was probably right. She got out of his car and located her keys.

"Jill?" He hunched down in his seat so they could make eye contact. "I couldn't do this without you backing me up."

"You'd do the same for me." She lingered for a moment longer, a dozen things she wanted to say floating around her head. Instead she settled for, "I'll see you in the morning, Chris. Get home safe."

"You too."

Very little happened the next two days.

Enrico had Bravo Team studying structures and other man-made features in their operation zone in an effort to familiarize themselves with possible routes their killer (or as appeared more likely, killers) might take. It was fairly easy work. The STARS had all spent plenty of time in the mountains, looking for lost hikers or retrieving the occasional skier who had gotten in over their head – sometimes literally. Richard was parsing through a stack of records on the old Lindgren Sanitarium.

Forest nudged at his shoulder with one fist. "Hey, did you know Umbrella owns that mansion up north?"

"The Spencer Estate? Yeah, they own a bunch of little plots of land around the mountains." He held up a document from Umbrella's purchase of Lindgren. "They bought the old mental hospital too, just after they moved in. Tried to turn it into a research facility, but scrapped the project a few years later and demolished it. Not much left except the foundations, but the company still owns the acreage."

"You ever been out to the mansion?" Forest asked, a wry twinkle in his eye.

"Can't say I have. Don't tend to wander that deep into the woods."

"It's creepy, man. Or so I hear. Place is supposedly locked up pretty tight, but they say anyone who's made it in hasn't ever come back out."

"Uh huh. Then why haven't we ever been called out there when those people have gone missing?" deadpanned Richard.

Forest frowned at him. "C'mon, man. You can't just enjoy a good urban legend?"

"You've got to be more like Frost – actually believe the stories. His aren't any more credible, he just sells them better."

"Ouch. That stings a little." They both laughed.

"You two actually getting any work done over there?" Edward growled from his seat by the radio. There was just enough amusement in his gruff voice to tell Richard and Forest that he didn't actually care that much. Everyone always thought Edward was pissed at them before they got to know him – not helped by the fact that he didn't tend to mince words – but he was actually pretty chill most of the time.

"More than you," Forest shot back. "How long are you going to keep using that radio setup as a desk?"

Edward grumbled something, likely obscene. "I still don't understand why we even have this damn thing in here. The amount of radio waves it puts off, I'm surprised it hasn't fried our brains by now."

Ken looked up from whatever he and Chambers were studying. "See?" he said, gesturing at Edward but looking at Forest with a big, shit-eating grin. "That's a good example of selling your story. It's obviously a bunch of malarkey, but he believes it, so it works."

Forest told Ken to shut up. Edward threatened to throw something at him. Richard leaned in to give him a high-five, also grinning. Rebecca laughed quietly from the corner. Enrico tried to sound serious, but couldn't completely hide his amusement. "Alright you jackasses, let's stay focused."

"Yes sir," they said in unison.

The locker room was busy as Bravo Team got ready to head out. Alpha were up in the office, sans Brad and Chris, who were taking the RPD's helicopter to the tiny, local airport to clear the pad for the Huey. As he sinched up the straps on his Kevlar vest, Forest couldn't help but revisit the thought that Irons was an idiot for not just letting STARS use their own department's helicopter. Waiting for repairs on the sheriff's was a fuckload of time wasted, giving the killers they were after ample time to go to ground. Oh well. We're getting out there now, at least.

Richard slipped the better part of a box-full of 12 gauge buckshot shells into the elastic loops on the front of his vest. The remainder would go into the magazine tube of his shotgun when they got up to the helipad.

Enrico threaded the handset for his radio through his vest and up to his shoulder, where he clipped it into the shoulder strap.

Having taken everything out for a quick inspection, Chambers was methodically stuffing the contents of her medical kit back into its red waist-bag, making sure everything was in its place and accessible.

Ken and Edward checked each other over, making sure they hadn't forgotten anything.

Forest focused back on himself, making sure he had both spare 30-round magazines for his Mini 14. The third was in his cargo pocket, ready to be loaded into the rifle when it was time. He was carrying the most ammunition out of any of them by far. But if there was anything he'd learned from his time in combat, it was better to have it and not need it than the reverse. He'd been lucky enough since joining STARS to have never needed any of it outside of practice and qualifications.

Once they were all ready, Bravo headed up toward the helipad.

"Shit," Forest muttered, then turned to Enrico as they were halfway down the hall, feeling like an idiot. "Cap, I forgot something back in the locker room."

Enrico didn't look happy, but realized it happened to everyone at some point or another. "Be quick."

"Can do."

Forest ran back down the hall, opening his locker and rummaging through it until he found his lucky rabbit's foot. He tucked it securely in his pocket. On his way back, he almost straight into Chris and Jill, who were talking quietly by the door to the STARS office. Whatever the conversation, their faces were grim and tense.

"Sorry, 'scuse me. Didn't expect you to be back already, Chris."

"Yeah, traffic wasn't bad. You guys taking off already?"

Forest nodded. "Yup. Dooley's gonna have that bucket of bolts here any moment. I've actually gotta run off – had to go back for something and don't want Captain Marini up my ass."

Chris nodded understandingly. "Be safe out there, man."

"I will." He wanted to ask about their conversation but didn't have the time right then. Forest made a mental note to check in on his friends later – the two of them had been acting strange for a few days. "Alright. Well, see you in a couple hours."

Forest managed to make it up to the pad just as the Huey's skids made contact. It was going to be a long day.

Billy Coen heard the distinctive, two-rotor-blade beat of a Huey approaching. It sounded fast and, as it passed over, very low. He wondered who was flying one of those out here. Was he lucky enough that they were looking for him? If only he could see.

"There goes that sheriff helicopter again," he heard the muffled voice of one of his captors say. Martinez, if he'd overheard enough of their conversations correctly.

"That's the second time today." That one was Kirkpatrick. "You think they know we're here?"

"No. Our contact would have told us if they did." That was the third voice. He didn't have a name as far as Billy had heard, at least not beyond "sir." He knew there was a fourth person as well, but they didn't seem to say much.

Billy had found something hard and rough to try to rub through the zip ties binding his wrists behind his back. It felt like a piece of metal. He'd been working at it for some indeterminate amount of time, accidentally scraping and gouging his hands and wrists in the process. It was slow progress, not only due to the durability of the plastic but also the amount of noise it made. And, again, it would be easier if I could see.

They had blindfolded him at some point while he was knocked out. He guessed by the fuzziness he'd felt for the first while after he'd woken up, they'd drugged him too. He had determined he was in a room the size of a closet, with barely enough room to stretch out the one time he'd tried to sleep.

He had no idea how long he'd been there. It had to have been days.

The metal or whatever it was ticked quietly along the edge of the zip tie. He could tell it was close to breaking. Billy sawed back and forth, trying to keep the excitement at how close he was from causing him to speed up and make noise.

The zip tie slipped off the metal, which tore into the heel of his palm.

Billy chewed on his lower lip in an effort to keep from swearing out loud. He could feel something wet and warm running down his finger. Probably blood. He shifted and resumed progress.

Outside, his captors were still talking.

Snap!

He didn't process what the sound or sudden looseness around his wrists meant for a full few seconds. As soon as he did, though, he reached up and pulled the blindfold off over his head as quickly as he could manage while still being quiet.

There was a small amount of light trickling in through cracks in the old planks that made up the wall to his left. He got his face as close to it as he could, looking outside and seeing scraggly plant life.

One of the voices outside urgently announced, "Motion contact at sensor 17."

"Probably another deer. Let's go check it out."

"What about him?" asked Martinez.

"Leave him for now. Our boss wants us to bring him back alive."

Billy guessed they were talking about him.

"Whatever. We'll see if he lasts that long."

"Either way," their leader said, "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Move out."

As he heard their footsteps grow more distant, Billy made sure not to make a sound. He waited a little longer to make sure they were out of earshot.

There was a door, but it was locked from the other side. The wall didn't completely touch the ground, and some of the ends of the planks looked rotten. Upon testing, though, they were still pretty tough. Even if Billy could get the proper angle to kick through, the sound of cracking wood was sure to draw attention. He continued looking for a way out.

Billy's captors' comments on his predicament gave him an increased sense of urgency. He knew he had to get out of there before they got back – he might not get another opportunity. If that helicopter was actually looking for him, he would need to find high ground and a way to signal them. But they'd also said something abut "motion contacts" and sensors. That worried him. If they had some way of tracking his movement, he would have to be careful.

There was a sound outside the door, like a chair creaking under someone's shifted weight.

Fuck.

"Hey," he heard from outside, "the prisoner is moving around again." There was a pause, Billy guessed as his guard waited for a reply on his radio. "Yeah, I'll sedate him again."

Not the opportunity I expected. Billy snuck to his feet, getting into position, noting that the door opened away from him. There was a high likelihood he was just going to get shot. But seeing as there weren't a whole lot of other options… You've got this, devil dog. He got ready to pounce, hoping that his guard thought he was still restrained.

The light that suddenly spilled into the doorway from the ramshackle barn was blinding, but Billy threw himself at the door with all his force. It flew open and he impacted his guard. They slammed into the dirt. Billy was rattled by a hard punch to the side of his head, but held on and managed to roll on top. There weren't a lot of places he could strike, he realized as he looked into the glass lenses of a gasmask, panicked eyes staring back at him through them.

The guard struggled and reached for his belt. Billy, however, managed to pin that arm down with one hand while the other clawed at the underside of the mask. He took a knee to the gut and lost grip. The guard got out from under him, throwing Billy to the side. He landed painfully on his shoulder as the guard tried to keep his balance, grabbing his gun from its holster.

Billy kicked off of the wall and tackled the guard to the ground again, trying to wring the automatic pistol from his hands, all the while enduring blows from the guard's free fist. Billy grabbed on to his wrist with both hands and repeatedly slammed the gun hand into the ground until the guard lost grip and the gun skittered away, just out of reach.

The guard tried to shuffle sideways towards it, but Billy planted a knee just above his pelvis, where the guard's bulletproof vest didn't protect him, and palmed the gasmask down. He heard a yell from beneath it as the guard instinctively clutched for his face. Billy smacked his hands away and drove the mask into his face again, then began strangling him with one hand. The guard tried to pull his hand off of his throat. They both reached for the gun.

That's when Billy saw the sharp shard of broken wood even closer. He snatched it up and, removing his other hand at the last second, stabbed it as hard as he could muster into the side of the guard's neck.

The guard let out a gurgling scream and Billy rolled off, grabbing the gun. He brought it up and leveled it at the guard's head. The guard reached out toward Billy with one hand, the other clutching the piece of wood. Blood had begun to soak into the hard-packed dirt around his neck and head.

Deciding a gunshot wasn't ideal and seeing the guard was about to bleed out anyway, Billy climbed back on top of the weakened man and finished the job.

The guard, he noticed, was dressed in the same woodland pattern he'd seen when they had captured him. Getting a better look at the gear, it appeared to be some sort of lightweight chemical warfare suit, like a less bulky version of the MOPP gear issued by the military. There were no insignia or other identifying patches anywhere on the equipment.

Billy heard a twig snap. Realizing he didn't have any more time to investigate the dead man at his feet, he took off out of the barn and into the trees. The more distance he could cover before his captors discovered the body of their comrade, the better.

Rebecca stared out the open side of the helicopter, starting to feel chilly from the constant gust of rotor wash. It was the last run of the day, and the sun had quickly begun to dip toward the horizon. She rubbed her bare arms to try and generate some circulation, hoping that would help her warm up.

The rest of the team was just as ready to call it a day as her. It was surprisingly tiring to sit all day, unable to make much if any conversation over the constant beating of that main rotor. Even with earplugs in, she was starting to get a bit of a headache from the constant din.

Richard sat next to her, staring in the direction of Raccoon as they banked to head back. Rebecca had heard him mention that Bridgette, his wife, had been worried about him spending so much time in an old helicopter. He was probably looking forward to going home to her and his kid in the next little bit. Richard seemed like a calm, even-tempered guy, and had been second only to Ken as the most easily approachable of her teammates early on.

Her thoughts were cut short as the helicopter lurched suddenly. There was a loud thud and the whole aircraft began vibrating and buzzing. Rebecca and Richard shared a worried look. She could see Edward and the pilot yelling at each other, then Edward turned and called something to Marini. He looked like he was about to lose his shit.

Rebecca's stomach did backflips as the helicopter turned rapidly and they began losing altitude.

They began to yaw gradually to the right. There was a clearing below, and the pilot tried to bring the helicopter in as close to the ground as possible as Rebecca found herself looking at the sky, sliding back against the transmission housing.

"Grab onto something!" Richard managed to shout at her.

There was a terrible, roaring crash as the blades of the main rotor caught the dirt and they slammed into the clearing.