"Howl, seven days to the wolves

Where will we be when they come?

Seven days to the poison

And a place in heaven

Time drawing near as

They come to take us"

The hardest part for this chapter was making it a decent length (ayooo) and finding a song for it!

Anyhoo, it's here, please enjoy!

The grandmother clocked pierced the silence with its pendulum swings as the adults, scattered about the living room and dining table, gawked at each other. Chris looked back at Rebecca, to her equally surprised face, to the laptop screen before her, then back to Claire over by the couches. Thor lay on one of them, alert to the awkward realisation between them all, and he snapped his jowls once.

"Dave Brown? Dave fucking Brown?!" Chris snapped, launching a hand into the air. He couldn't fucking believe it. That skinny ass, tea sipping weasel that supplied Claire with her illicit drugs back in 2009?!

"Why though?!" Rebecca shook her head. "Wait, when did he get out of prison?!"

"No idea, I can't even remember how long he was locked up for." Chris replied. Meanwhile Claire was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes wandering as she chewed her knuckles. Chris quickly paced over to her, closing that tensioned gap between them, and grasped her forearms roughly. Her blue eyes swivelled to meet his own, and he gave her a gentle wobble, loosening her fingers from her teeth.

"Keep it together, Claire, you hear me? Look at me." Chris cupped her chin and held his face close to hers. "I can't find her alone. I need you, sis. And I need you to clear your mind as best as you can. Can you do that for me? For Chloe?"

Claire stared at him wordlessly, and Chris gently pressed his fingers into her jaw, not as a form of intimidation, but as encouragement. Rebecca cleared her throat behind them.

"He was locked away around about the time when Chloe was born, right? Maybe a few months before? But…" Rebecca tapped at her laptop, "I can see news articles, local and regional, they all say that he was sentenced for far longer than fifteen years."

"So he should still be inside, right? Surely he wasn't released early?" said Chris. Rebecca looked at him and shrugged wordlessly. "I know he's a Brit, but the jail times here aren't as fucking lax as the UK!"

"Is he on the run? Why come back here? Why take Chloe?" Rebecca wondered, and she looked between the siblings. Claire sat on the couch and traced the cushion stitching with a slender, teeth marked finger.

"He has a vendetta against me." Claire spoke quietly, softly, probably the softest tone Chris had heard blow beyond her lips all day. "He hates me, wants to get revenge on me. His drug dealing was discovered because of me."

"No, come on, why would he?" Chris half shouted, not at her, but in his own disbelief at such a ridiculous prospect, and Claire raised her head at him, but he spoke before she could respond. "The cops were given a tip off from elsewhere, not you. He'd have no reason to be getting back at you, Claire."

"But what if he doesn't know that?" Claire's quiet tone morphed into that of fury, "What if he thinks it was me, or you, that reported him to the cops?"

"Claire, I was in Edonia, it definitely wasn't me. I doubt he would've escaped from a fucking prison to come back to a city that he was a wanted criminal in, to an apartment block where the residents know his face, to THEN take a teenager that he's never met from her own balcony. There's got to be something else that we don't know about."

"Like what? What reason does he have? Random chance or what?! This can't be a random kidnap, Chris!" Claire bellowed. Chris breathed in at her outburst, and fuck, he seriously considered shouting back at her, but louder. No. This was no time for raised voices, it wouldn't solve anything. He could see that her expression had changed significantly, like every other time. That unusual, seemingly facial morph that was impossible to explain. It was only a tiny change, but he could see it.

"I'm not a mind reader, Claire. Perhaps we could find out if he was actually released from prison. Might be a good start."

"I want to know where my baby is! I want to know that she's unhurt!" Claire whined, and her foot stomp reminded him of a toddler sister that he used to have from decades gone by. A toddler sister whose only irritation in life was a tiny hand void of cookies, or her little, pudgy body deprived of big brotherly embraces.

"For God's sake, Claire, stop shouting." Chris said calmly, his voice still cool, his mind level-headed. "I want to know too, but we'll need to dig for answers."

"Then get a fucking bulldozer and dig faster, you jerk!" Claire screeched at him, posturing in his face, but he didn't rise to it. He stared her down, but her eyes wandered, they shifted to behind him, back to his face, and the corner of her lips twitched. Her fists were a marriage of clenching and quivering, both acts battling for the hot, sweltering limelight spot like a badly scripted, poorly directed stage drama. One wanted to punch him, the other wanted to rake the nails attached down his face in pure biled loathing. He'd seen it often enough in her eyes to know that the shadows that haunted her were looming behind him, posing no harm to his own consciousness. Or Sanity. He had seen the indecisive tremble of her hands in front of his own eyes too many times to know that this was beyond her self control. He was even becoming convinced that they weren't just ghosts that she was seeing anymore.

Claire Redfield would never knowingly or deliberately hurt her brother.

But the relentless monster within her relished in the pain and anguish of others.

Claire Redfield would never hurt anyone. Never has, never will.

"Claire." Rebecca spoke up, and judging by Claire's sudden and surprised reaction, she might as well have forgotten that Rebecca was even standing there by the dining table. "Chris is right. No shouting will bring her back any faster. We need to begin making enquiries. We need to find out what his motive is and his destination first before making any rash movements."

"Right." Chris agreed. "Wherever she is, she's too far out for Thor's nose. She's being taken somewhere probably outside of the city, and in a vehicle. As for the whys, we simply don't know."

"So who can find out if, when and why he was released?" asked Claire.

"Can't exactly call the cops about that, can we?"

"The public can't access those records, it seems." Rebecca sighed, and Chris looked over her shoulder to an 'access denied' screen. "And I'm not a hacker."

"Shit." Chris sighed, and he pushed the balcony door open, lighting a cigarette. The scent of petrichor flowed into the room as rain danced on the balcony's rails, and the earlier loud rumbles of thunder were now merely soft purs in the blackened distance.

"I know someone who might be able to find out." Claire stated monotonously. Both Chris and Rebecca looked over to her, waiting for her to continue. Without another word she walked over to Chris' pc in the corner, pulled her own slimline laptop out of its case by the side of the desk and began starting it up. Chris smiled thinly and held the cigarette in his mouth.

He knew who she meant.

Voices sounded so close yet so far away, the world seemed so focused and so blurred.

Chloe felt like she weighed a thousand pounds as she made a weak attempt to lift her head.

Spinning yet still, panicked yet tranquil.

She weighed a thousand pounds yet she was floating.

No.

She was being carried.

Against her back she felt something soft, like foam, and her clasped hands were laid slowly onto her belly. She rubbed her wrists together. They were bound.

Eyes open, just a little, all she could muster.

Shadows.

People.

Voices.

"...main target…elusive…took opportuni…sorry she's not…better than nothing…"

A metal squeak drew out for several seconds, painful, her eardrums.

A bang and twisting metal.

Sick. She felt sick.

She forced her eyes open and pushed for energy to take stock of her surroundings.

A metal box, no windows. No people. The air tasted thick and stale. She flexed her foot, but felt resistance against another bond.

Her stomach writhed and rolled and burned.

Her crawlies itched and ached under her skin, threatening to burst and tear forth.

Stop.

Stop the crawlies.

Keep them inside.

She tried to focus.

But so tired.

Voices, further, muffled.

She rolled her head until her cheek touched the soft thing under her whole body.

Eyes, not focusing.

She lay still, she couldn't move.

An eternity passed.

Rumbles below her, around her.

Forward momentum.

Consciousness failed her.

Chris leant against the wooden frame between the kitchen and living room, his huge arms folded against his chest as Rebecca stretched and yawned by the window. He focused his ears on the foaming gurgle coming from inside the kitchen, but he couldn't take his eyes off his pc screen. They had muted themselves to his screen, discussing that phone call that he had with them. The one that he couldn't possibly tell Claire about, or Chloe. He nervously cast his eyes to the back of his sister's head, silently praying to anything that could possibly listen, praying that she didn't try to put two and two together. No. While his plans with his old squad weren't for another few nights after being delayed, it would sound highly suspicious out of context. The coffee finished preparing, and he shoved himself into the kitchen. His track history of keeping plans from others was immaculate and often lethal, but still…

No, he'll keep it from her.

"How long have you tried to make contact?" Chris asked his sister as he set the coffee down at her side. He turned to face her, partly hoping that she would look at him, but she simply sat with dark circles under her eyes staring at her laptop screen on the couch, her fingertips between her teeth. As for the dark circles; it was 3am, she was probably tired. He hoped that that was all it was, at least.

"Too damn long." Claire responded, still staring at the screen. She groaned aloud and tapped at the finger pad for the twelfth time. "It's the middle of the day where he is and he's not even working right now, come on!"

"Anything so far, Cap?" came a voice from Chris' pc, and he turned back in his chair to face the screen. As well as his own face in the corner, there were three others, all of them members of his former Hound Wolf Squad; Dion, John and Emily. Canine, Lobo and Tundra in their unit.

But not all of the Hound Wolf Squad was present at his late night urgent video call.

"I'm not a Captain anymore, Dion."

"You'll always be our Captain, shut up." Emily spat.

"For fuck's sake! Why didn't you answer the first time?!" Claire shouted at her screen.

"I wanted to see how desperate you were." came the silky, suave voice through her laptop, and Chris immediately wanted to punch the source of the voice until their nose was tickling the back of their skull.

"Desperate, very desperate!" Claire seethed, but she couldn't hide the stammer in her voice or the shaking in her body.

"What's wrong, are you ok?" The voice went from smugly suave to concerned rather rapidly, and Chris could see that Claire's words failed her. He held a hand up to his own screen, gesturing to his former squad before walking over to Claire. He leant over the back of the couch and squeezed her shoulders, shifting his eyes to that face that he wanted to punch.

There he was.

That swishy haired government pretty boy. Leon S Kennedy. Chris could almost smell his conditioned hair through the laptop.

"Hey, Chris. What happened?" Leon nodded curtly at his old friend's brother, and Chris briefly returned the gesture.

"Chloe's been kidnapped. By a guy who used to work for TerraSave." Chris relayed to him. Leon's blue eyes widened and he slumped back in his seat.

"Oh, shit, sorry." Leon murmured, and he looked back and forth between Chris' sour face and Claire's breaking emotions.

"And we need your help to track the guy."

"He's not on the TerraSave database?"

"He is, but it's just his generic employee stuff, not the intel we need." Rebecca hollered across the room.

"Oh, Dr High Hopes is there too? Anyone else?"

"No." Chris said sharply, and Leon sat back in his seat, rubbing a hand through his far too conditioned hair.

"What do you need me to do, Redfields?"

"We need to find out if and when he was released from prison, firstly. Find out if he's an escapee. His name is Dave Brown, a British guy." Chris began explaining, but Leon shifted towards his camera.

"Wait, isn't he the guy that…" Leon looked at Claire, all curled up and silent besides Chris. In a rare moment, she was visibly vulnerable. "Alright. But I don't have access to anything useful right now. I'm flying back to Washington in twelve hours. In the meantime all I can say is to try and find anything that is accessible to your eyes."

"We need to go after her." Claire snapped. Both Leon and Chris shook their heads at her.

"How can you when you don't know where she is? She could be anywhere, Claire." Leon explained softly, but Claire stood up and slapped at the laptop screen.

"Claire…" Rebecca whispered.

"No one fucking CARES! Let her fucking rot then!" Claire raged. Rebecca moved to approach Claire, but Chris thrust his arm in her way.

"You know that this isn't you, Claire. Fight it." Chris commanded, but over his own voice he could hear the gasps of his former squad over on his pc. Of course. They've seen this behaviour before, and Chris had mentioned her outbursts in confidence to them previously. Claire sucked air in through her teeth and punched the couch's backrest. Leon began to talk to her, reassuring her that Chloe is still alive, and that he would do his best to help once he was back in America.

"Chris, may I?" Rebecca enquired coyly. Chris said nothing, but turned to her and smiled.

"Chris…" Rebecca lowered her voice to a mere whisper, allowing Leon's voice to mask hers, "I think she really does need another test to be run. A specific test. This is too much like Mia in Louisiana."

"But it still doesn't make sense." Chris breathed back, carefully watching his sister, "she's never been in contact with Mold. Is this not some mental illness that hasn't yet been diagnosed?"

"I don't know, but would it really hurt to find out if she is somehow infected with Mold?"

"I suppose not." Chris shrugged. "What do you suggest?"

"We take her to my research lab in the city, get her tested. Maybe we can move our investigations there too. There's a room with PCs in it that doesn't get used often, and the database would be bigger than what you can find on the normal internet."

"Hound Wolf Squad are scattered across the States right now. Would I still be able to communicate with them there?" asked Chris, pointing at his pc.

"Absolutely." confirmed Rebecca. "We have contacts with the usual groups and NGOs." Chris sighed and nodded slowly before looking back over to Claire. Leon was still talking to her, reassuring her. She was fighting her mind, he could see it. He hated to see it. He knew that she had nowhere near scratched the surface to him about what really runs in her mind, and he couldn't even begin to comprehend how much worse she was than she was letting on.

He felt a hand rub his shoulder, and glanced at it to see Rebecca's concerned face.

"We'll get to the root of it all. Both Claire and Chloe. I promise, Chris."

Chris returned the shoulder squeeze, and turned to his pc. He walked over, towering over the monitor.

"Alright team. Our honorary member of the squad, Luna, has been kidnapped. As it stands, we have very little to go off. Your mission is to assist in uncovering intel, details will be supplied shortly. Lobo and Canine, you're closest to this city, begin making your way to Rebecca's facility. Tundra, you're further out, so stand by. I'll run a deeper brief once I've set up in the facility. Meanwhile, get in contact with the others, give them the run down too. If any of them can get here then tell them to. Understood?"

Canine clapped once on his screen, letting out a woot, Tundra saluted with a huge grin and Lobo fist pumped the air.

"Welcome back, Alpha." Emily smiled. Chris muffled a laugh and shook his head.

"Alpha for the last time, hopefully. Rescue Luna, then I'll reconsider retirement." Chris saluted back to the screen.

"Wait…Chris…" Claire began, and he turned to her. He eyed her lit up expression with confusion and watched her run into Chloe's room. He stood, listening to taps and rummaging. After no more words from her he walked by the couches, softly brushing his fingertips along the back of one, and into Chloe's room. Claire was standing over Chloe's little laptop, tapping away at the menus.

"What are you thinking?" asked Chris.

"I'm thinking…" Claire drew out the last word as she opened a browser, logged into Chloe's personal account, and then a map appeared on screen with a little blue blip, connected with a thin blue line. Claire gasped loudly, but it ended with a choke.

"Chloe has her phone with her. Her location is switched on!" She clasped both hands to her mouth and coughed a cry. Chris stroked the nape of her neck softly, and zoomed the map out.

"She's at the edge of our State? Already? What?" Chris breathed in disbelief, and he refreshed the page. The blue blip appeared again, but this time further into the next State over, to the west.

"Oh God…"

"What, Chris?" Claire asked, her voice melting into concern. Chris zoomed the map out more and followed that thin blue line backwards, until it got to home, then followed it back out again, along the streets of the city and beyond. She had indeed travelled out of the city by that road he was standing on a few hours earlier. He got so far, then pointed at the screen, his finger causing the little ripple effect on the display.

"That's a private airport." He refreshed the page once more and it centred on the blue dot again, much further from the State border, further west. "And Chloe's on a plane."

The song for this chapter is 7 Days To The Wolves by Nightwish

Ok, so it doesn't fit all that much, but there is more meaning (two to be precise) behind the title than one might think. Have a go at working it out, it's actually pretty obvious!

Next chapter I'll upload will be for Remember Me, Remember You, since I seem to have a rhythm now. And while I'm here I will go ahead and announce that there will be another Christmas Special this year! It has no name, it won't be related to any fic I've done, purely a standalone that I first thought about over a year ago.

Not only that, but another Redfield fic that I've been planning for a long time has almost reached the end of chapter 1, however it is the fic I mentioned that won't see the light of day until RMRY and HFE are completed.

Let me know your thoughts about this chapter! And yes! I did indeed hint Leon showing up over on Insta. I'll say now that originally he was never meant to make it into this fic at all!