4. Chris

The chain of events that had suddenly taken place fell on them like a chaotic storm. A minute Chris was standing in the doctor's office, hearing her explain his supposedly deceased sister's situation, and the next, he found himself running behind a group of alarmed nurses. He could make out the sound of footsteps following behind him and guessed that his companions were not too far behind.

When they finally stepped into the room, the view made him stagger. Claire was on the floor. A crimson pool of blood had formed under her, and her once white robe was now stained in red. He saw the woman flinch the moment they broke into the room; her thin body pressed against the wall behind her almost as if she was hoping it would swallow her whole.

At that instant, all doubts he had harbored about the identity of this woman vanished. With or without the DNA test they had planned, he already knew the answer. Call it a brother's intuition, but the moment he saw her face, he knew it. The look of fear and panic in her eyes was a look he hadn't seen in years. It had been when their parents had just died; he was 15, and she was only 9. She had woken up from a nightmare, and she had come into his rooms, crying due to a nightmare; the look had eventually disappeared as she grew older, and, as her brother, seeing her broken like this for the first time in years, broke him.

Despite her injuries, Claire struggled, kicked, and pushed away any attempt of the nurse to reach her desperately and this was all he could take. He stepped into the room, broke through the group of nurses, and, with a quick movement, caught Claire's fragile body in a gentle hug. She had stopped struggling. He didn't know if it was because it was him or because she was shocked, but he didn't care. His brother mode kicked in by default, and he found himself humming softly into her ear as he used to do when they were younger, and he gladly found that, despite the years, the trick still worked. Claire was slowly calming down; her breathing was starting to even up, and her muscles relaxed.

However, nothing could have prepared him for what happened then. Claire had stared into his eyes, confused and sad.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

And that was it. The oldest Redfield felt his heart sink as the words had left her lips in an almost inaudible whisper. This was Claire; his Claire; his baby sister. Not a damn clone created by the damn virus. This was his beloved sister, whom he had believed dead for eight months.

A bright and cheerful woman who had no reservations about teasing him and teasing him when she could, bicker with him and shout at him when he forgot to call her too many times. The one who would run into a city full of zombies only to find him or infiltrate a high-security facility for him.

And she couldn't remember him.

Chris swallowed hard, trying to keep his temper from flaring up. He didn't want the already sensible Claire to think he was mad at her because he wasn't. He was furious with the bastards who had done this to his sister. He didn't care who they were, was it Neo-Umbrella or any other terrorist group, all he wanted was to find them and make sure they had a painful death.

He picked her from the floor and gently left her on the bed. Claire was still staring at him, trying to understand, perhaps trying to make out who he was.

He caressed her cheek effectively, noticing -to his relief- that she wasn't pulling back.

"It's okay. You are safe now. I am here, and I won't let anyone hurt you, alright?"

Claire hesitated and then nodded.

"They want to help you, so I need you to let them, okay? I promise I won't let them harm you."

She nodded again.

"That's my girl."

Chris stepped aside to let the nurses do their job, and he reluctantly walked out of the room. Jill, Barry, and Leon were standing in the corridor with quizzical and concerned looks. He didn't say anything. He was still trying his cool. His fists clenched so hard that his knuckles were white. He could feel the anger building up. He'd been furious when he had lost Jill to Wesker to find her as a foe later on. He had been furious when he had lost his men to Ada Wong's doppelganger in Edonia, but that anger was nothing compared to what he was feeling now.

Barry could tease him all he wanted with his sister complex, but he would not let the people responsible for Claire's current state walk away unscathed.

"Chris?" he heard Jill whisper, and he felt her hand resting on his shoulder.

"What….happened?" Barry asked, "Is Claire, alright?"

Chris didn't reply immediately. The last thing he wanted was to snap at them. He took a deep breath before answering.

"She's Claire…" he whispered, " I just know it is her."

"Well… that is awesome!" Barry said, but noticing Chris's grave look, he instantly knew something wasn't right, "Chris?"

"She...didn't recognize me."

"What?"

"It is hard to explain. It's like she knows me. She could recognize me, but she didn't remember her face. God, I hadn't seen that face in years. She was broken and lost."

"Chris, calm down. It must be they'll come around…"

"You didn't see her, Jill. They did something to her. They messed her up, and I am going to make them pay. I'll hunt them down and cut them in pieces."

"Chris, please...you need to calm down…"

"I understand how you feel…"

Leon, who had been silently listening to them, finally spoke up. The blonde was staring at him stoically.

"We will find those bastards, and we will make them pay. And count me in when you tear them into pieces, but that will have to wait because right now, our priority is Claire, and she needs her brother, remember him or not. So get a grip of yourself, Redfield."

Chris hated to admit it, but Leon was right. His revenge would have to wait.

"When did you learn to be reasonable, Kennedy?"

He saw the blonde smirk.

"So...memory loss?" Jill said softly, "That sure complicates things. Any chance she may remember what happened to her?"

"It might be the only she can remember now…" Chris replied bitterly, "Judging by how terrified she was…"

Chris sat down on a bench and began rubbing his face, tired and frustrated. Why did these things seem to always happen to them?

"It'd be a sensitive topic then. We should address it with ...tact…" Leon commented, "How bad was it?"

"You have no idea." Chris sighed.

"We should give it a little time, though. She just woke up in an unknown room. Naturally, she would feel overwhelmed." Jill said, looking hopeful.

"Let's hope you're right, Jill…" Barry groaned.

The door suddenly opened, and Dr. Hiwamure, holding a folder, came in along with Dr. Nolan. Both women seemed to be absorbed in conversation. The Asian was visibly concerned. She stared at them for a moment before finally speaking.

"The test came back."

"Well, that was fast…." Barry said.

"I might have done a couple of things to put them on a priority report," Hiwamura replied.

"So, how is it?" Chris asked impatiently.

"Hemogram show very low red cell counts and low platelets. She's showing signs of anemia and thrombocytopenia, which explains the bleeding. Her white cell count is very irregular, but we can't trust her white cell count…."

"How come?"

"Immune disorders…" Hiwamura replied rapidly.

Chris knew what she was implying. The permanent presence of a viral agent in her body naturally caused anomalies in her immunological report.

"But the infections are under control, so the antibiotics sure did their job. A couple of days more on them, and she should be fine. We should suspend the treatment after that…"

"Oh, of course...if you say so."

"All right, would you mind delivering this to the lab?"

Hiwamura handed Dr. Nolan a sheet of paper. The woman looked at her puzzled and then nodded. She politely smiled at the rest of the present, obviously taking the hint that she wasn't supposed to hear the rest of the conversation, and walked out, closing the door.

" Right. Now to the point..." Hiwamura sighed. She pulled out a sheet of paper," Toxicology report. Claire has large traces of benzodiazepines, an antidepressant. She was under a heavy dosage of the drug, which also means she's probably going through a withdrawal rebound after not taking the meds for the past few days. It's going to get rough…"

"Rebound?"

"Benzodiazepines have pretty nasty effects when the dosage suddenly drops. Symptoms include anxiety, panic attacks, dizziness, and paranoia."

"There must be something that we can do…" Chris said worriedly.

"Yes, of course. I will administer some small quantities of the drugs to try and ease the rebound's immediate symptoms, and then we will work on lifting it off partially. It's not the best treatment, but in Claire's case, it might be our best chance." Hiwamura said.

"Why would they give her antidepressants…"

"Claire was taking antidepressants. No benzodiazepines, though. I prescribed amitriptyline."

"My sister was taking antidepressants? She never… I didn't know that. Why?"

"Well, it was...kind of her idea…" Hiwamura replied as she tilted her head to a side, "It helped control the effects of the T-Phobos. "

"I thought you said it was inactive…." Chris snapped.

"Mutagenically speaking, yes. There was no danger of Claire suddenly turning into a bloodthirsty mutant just because she found a spider crawling under her table…"

Chris could have laughed if he hadn't been so preoccupied about finding out why his sister had been taking psychotropics under his nose. Claire was a brave woman on many points, but she had a ridiculous fear of spiders.

"The virus messed up with her head causing symptoms of insomnia, migraines, and other minor symptoms. It wasn't too bad. She was using herself as a test subject. Something about the mechanism of action of the virus. Virus mambo-jumbo that I didn't pay much attention to…"

"Why would using an antidepressant help her with that?"

"Amitriptyline is used to treat other pathologies besides depression. It prolongs the activity of serotonin and noradrenaline in the brain easing symptoms such as pain, anxiety, and alike. The T-Phobos tended to become an annoyance when she was under a lot of stress, and she eventually figured out that we could treat it as a psychiatric pathology."

And Claire had figured that out alone? What had his sister been doing all the time that he had been away?

"Chris noticed that Claire was showing signs of memory loss…" Leon said, "Any chance she could recover?"

"Mmm yeah, that would be so. Benzodiazepines have amnesia as a side effect. It should wear off once we take off the drugs. But I sent for a tomography, only to be sure that there's not any brain damage."

"So Claire's memory will come back."

"Yes, most likely. Perhaps some will come faster than others. Drug-induced amnesia works in strange ways sometimes."

"But there's a high chance. Right? I mean, it won't be permanent..." Jill asked.

"No, I don't think it is permanent. She is lost, confused, and scared. Even without the drug effect on her, I'm sure she'd have reacted that way after waking up in an unknown place." Hiwamura turned to Chris, "Be patient. If things go well with the "cleansing" treatment I have prescribed, Claire will remember you in a few days..."

Chris's face lit up; his anger was still burning inside him, and he would give anything to kill some bioterrorists, but for now, he was glad to hear the doctor's words. Claire, his Claire, would come back, and once she did, he'd make sure to hunt down the bastards that took her from him.