Resident Evil: Red's Warning
WARNING: Before ya read this one, try reading the previous fic "Red's Alert", it explains a bit more about the character!
A maddeningly hot day in June, a single figure hurried down a side street, her destination a looming grey office building not far ahead. Hidden down the sidestreet, it was an often overlooked building, but with its purpose in mind, the building was perfect. Secret. She picked up her pace, panicing at the fact she was several minuites late already, her heeled shoes tapped out a rythym on the cool concrete paving as she scurried along. Sunlight glinted off the buildings glass windows as she strode towards it, and she stopped momentarily, raising a hand to protect her eyes.
After a second to let her vision adjust, she started to move again, then stopped. Something was hiding in the shadows. She squinted at it, it looked like a human figure. But by now it knew she had seen it, and whoever it was ducked out of sight, but not before she'd caught a glimpse of blonde hair, and sunglasses...
"HEY!" she dashed towards where she'd seen him, but by the time she reached the spot, the figure was long gone. She stood there, frowning, wondering if the summer heat was messing with her mind. Eventually, with the realisation that she was gonna be late for work, she hurried into the building.
Her aim was to get to her desk before she got spotted and told off-
"Yanmark! Finally decide to show up I see."
She groaned, turning to face her fellow officer, Colonel Lance Schneider. Part German, part british, he was a brilliant officer, but with a bad habit of treating people with an unusually large amount of arrogance.
"Good morning to you too Colonel" she answered snappily, annoyed at being rumbled. Lance just smirked slightly, knowing he'd annoyed her, but he wasnt done yet. "That chopper you've been fussing over is finished," he added calmly, "they applied the final coat of paint this morning, its ready to go."
Yanmark, or as her full name was, Leiutenant Rachel Yanmark, grinned happily. She'd been overseeing the chopper construction since the beguinning, otufitting it with the best weapons she'd developed. The end result was two machine gun turrets, with teflon-coated bullets, and a rocket launcher on its underside. RRA0015, the replacement for its predecessor 0014.
Thinking about 0014 made Rachel fall silent, as she drifted off into a memory from only a year and a half ago...
RRA0014 had gone missing, and she'd gone to look for it on her own, assuming the simple spanish town it had landed in wasn't going to be a danger. How wrong she'd been. What had followed had been a hellish nightmare, filled with paracites, explosions, and geneticly enhanced mutants.
But she hadn't been alone for long. Not long after she'd arrived there she'd run into an american special agent called Leon Kennedy. She smiled, remembering the brief partnership, and the amount of times he'd saved her ass. Plus the girl he'd been out to rescue, she recalled her too, Ashley Graham, the Presidents Daughter. And a strange woman in a red dress, Ada.
"-Lieutenant!!" Lance's sharp voice interrupted her thoughts, and she was forcefully pulled back to the present. Lance was frowning at her. He'd noticed she'd been acting strange since she'd come back from that mission, when she'd brought the news of the two pilots deaths. She had been pretty badly hurt, and was taken off work for two months to recover from the psycholiogical shock of the horrendous mission. The things she'd described in her report sounded so far-fetched as to bealmost fanciful. The only bit that had sounded beleivable was the details abut the "Illuminados" cult.
"Sorry..." she muttered almost sulkily. They walked the rest of the way down to the aircraft hanger in silence, Red too annoyed at Lance to bother talking to him, and Lance simply couldn't be bothered to drag the reason for her silence out of her.
But she soon cheered up once they entered the hangar, and qickly forgot her annoyance at the Colonel. In front of them, its new paintwork gleaming in the light, was the new chopper.
"She's lovely!" Rachel smiled, scooting over to get a look at her, checking the gun turrets, and even peering under it to see the rocket launcher.
"Wonderful isn't she Lieutenant?" Standing back up she came face-to-face with the technitian in chrage of building it. She smiled "it's as perfect as i had hoped, has anyone signed it yet?" This was a running joke in the department. "Signing" the choppers generally involved one of the staff sticking their hand in a bucket of paint and leaving a conspicious hand-print somewhere on the fuselage. Then fingerpainting their name underneath. And somehow, despite this going on for years, the superiors had never remarked about this wierd ritual.
"No, as it happens i waiting for you to come down," he held up a bucket of black paint, which would stand out cearly against the choppers red coat. Rachel's grin widened, and Lance could only sigh in annoyance as she proceeded to leave a glaring handprint right by the cockpit window, followed by her Initials.
Yanmark and the tech stood there chuckling at this latest "signing", until Lance finally told Yanmark she DID have work to do and she'd better get her ass in in gear. Rachel reluctantly left the hangar, stopping at the bathroom en rotue to the office to wash the paint off.
Seeing the latest Chopper, or Roflcopter as she jokingly called them, made her smile. Next to weapons, she loved the choppers, and indeed often spent a lot of her spare time eitehr cleaning them or fixing them.
Even this long after it had happened, their investigation into the missing viral speciments that unknown intruders had stolen from the lab was still going on. But so far nothing new in regards to who was responsible had surfaced. Until now.
Rachel didnt get time to settle down to her paperwork, for barely had she and Lance made it to the offices, theirs were next to each other of all the luck, then a junior officer came tearing up to them.
"Lieutenant, Colonel..chief wants to see you right now, he said its urgent!"
Lance and Rachel looked at each other, then just shrugged, and set off towards the chiefs office.
"Reports of a strange outbreak of an unknown virus have been reported around this area...symptoms match no previously known diesease, but similarities to the mutations we noted in our research have surfaced...so far theres only been 5 cases reported, none fatal, but we need to investifgate before it spreads.." "The first reported cases were a pair of kids, Casey and Mick Powell, their mother told the hospital they said they'd been playing around this warehouse here-" He indicated a spot of the map. "Not long after they came home, they began displaying the first symptoms. Anyone who's been near that warehouse could also have picked it up, so we need to seal it off, fast. Primary analysis tends to lean towards the "virus" being spread by blood transmission, such as it infecting an already open cut or wound."
"We've contacted the U.S. Army, and they'll send an agent to meet us at the drop point. Colonel Schneider, yourself and the Lieutenant here will be going on your own. Once you've established what's going on, and if the situation warrants it, a bio-warfare team will be sent out."
The chief indicated a point on the map, and Rachel got a cold feeling of dread in her stomach. This all sounded horribly familiar, a mysterious outbreak? Symptoms that matched the ones that had lured the 0014's pilots to their deaths.
And the spot the chief was indicating was worryingly near a public sector, how could a virus have just sprung up like that? Unless someone released it. She frowned, they'd killed Saddler, destroyed his island, but that woman had escaped with the specimen..could she have done this?
Lance nodded, accepting this deployment calmly, but Rachel was surprised. As a gun expert, it was rare she ventured outside the labs. Unless she had been specificly requested.
But she didn't get time to question the order, for dispatch was immediate, they had a brief amount of time to get equipped for the misison and move out.
In the locker room, Rachel tugged on an almost all-black uniform, with the exception to this monotone disguise being her trademark red vest. She'd had the new one toughened, after how easily the previous one had been torn apart. The newer one, though a fair bit heavier then standard, would hopefully prevent any more near-death accidents. Ones involving bullets anyway. The red vest brought back memories of the nickname Leon had given her..."Red", or "Ballistics Basket-case"...all that seemed like such a distant memory, but one she frequently thought about, when Lance didn't interupt of course. This done, she grabbed her weapons bag, and tore down to where the new chopper sat ready and waiting. She dived into the cockpit, noting Lance was already sat there, no doubt had been for 10 minuites. It had always baffled her how he could have beaten her there, but she didnt bother asking.
Throughout the whole chopper ride to the drop point, the feeling of uneasiness continued to grow. She tried ignoring it, but something just didn't feel right. She glanced down at the papers in her lap. The symptoms had been described as a fever first, then severe vomiting, sometimes of blood, after that, then a strange, mutated rash would appear all over the victims body, causing a lot of pain. SO far it hadnt caused any fatalities, but at the same time, none of the victims had shown any improvement.
--Is it possible it's a delayed virus? Waits a few days after infection before slowly killing off the hosts body?--
"ETA 5 minuites..." Lance interrupted her thinking again. She just nodded, wishing her co-worker would shut up when she was trying to think about something. He was so...abrupt. Rude too.
But at last the drop-point came into view, and the Colonel began the slow, careful descent to the ground.
The "American agent" they'd been told about was waiting at the point. And had been for 20 minuites. The figure sighed, wondering what was keeping the people that had been sent to investigate. But no sooner had he thought this, then he heard the sound of chopper blades, and a shadow fell over the area as the chopper moved in to descend. He squinted in the bright light as it touched down, then the door was flung open, and a guy jumped out, then turned to assist his female co-worker out of the chopper.
The agent stared at the woman as she stepped onto the ground, and kept on staring. NO way..
"Rachel?"
At the sound of her name, Rachel finally looked up to see the agent that had been sent to meet them. And couldn't beleive her eyes. One second she was just standing there, the next she ran over and glomped the agent. "LEON!!"
They stood there, grinning at each other. Lance stared, twitching slightly. How did the Leiutenant know this guy?
Leon smiled, shaking his head slightly, he couldn't beleive it was her. Sure he'd known the U.S. forces had drafted in an outside military group, but he hadn't expected it to be this one. Or for one of the two sent to be Rachel Yanmark, who he'd met at the start of his mission, and hadnt seen since it had ended.
"Still got your red-jacket i see.." Red smiled at this comment. "Of course, its my trademark" she chuckled, and they smiled again.
Annoyed at being ignored, Lance decided it would be best to butt in.
"Forgive my intteruption, but who are you?" he asked bluntly.
Leon gave him an annoyed look, before answering "Leon Kennedy, US Special Forces, and you are..?"
Lance gave him another narky look, "Colonel Lance Schneider, and i take it you already know Leiutenant Rachel Yanmark here.."
Red nodded, "that he does, now lets get going." She added, before Lance could stick his nose in any further. She could tell Scheneider didn't like Leon already, but wondered why? Then decided it was just Lance's huge ego surfacing again.
"So how's Ashley?" "Oh she's fine, she still asks if i've seen you at all..."
Red smiled "I'll have to go visit next time i get a vacation, once this incident is over. She looked at him "You heard about the virus right?"
Leon nodded "Sounds pretty weird, almost like someone deliberatly let it loose. But Umbrella's gone, so that seems ridiculous.."
Rachel Just shrugged, she didn't understand it either, it was all so baffling. She'd done plenty of research on Umbrella, read all the details about the Raccoon City incident.
--All those people, blown up by a single missle strike, thousands killed, all because Umbrella couldnt control their virus..--
Soon they were standing in front of the aforementioned warehouse. Despite being known as "abandoned" it looked quite new, like it had been built within the last year or so. There was no indentifing marks on it, no slogan from the company that had once used it. The main door was locked, and refused to budge.
"Who owns it?" Lance quesioned, looking at Leon. But the blonde just shrugged "that's what we need to find out, the searches turned up no new details."
"Oh great..." Lance muttered under his breath "someone else who doesn't know whats going on."
Rachel glared at him, clopped him over the head with one hand, then stalked off to find a way in. Leon couldn't help snickering at the other officers pissed expression.
--One things for sure, she hasn't changed-- he thought.
But before Lance could get any further in bugging Leon for info, they heard Rachel shout. They ran round to the left side of the warehouse, where she was crouched by what looked like an opening. Evidently the kids in the report, or perhaps a bunch of hooligans, had kicked part of the corregated iron wall in and used it as a method to breaking and entering.
Red looked at the both of them, a look that simply asked "Go in or not?". At last they decided it might be worth checking out the inside, check there werent any more kids in there, althought that seemed unlikely since it had been cordoned off.
And with that, the three military personnel squeezed through the hole, emerging inside the cold, dark warehouse...
Had they looked over thier shoulders beore entering, they wouldve seen a strange figure, half-hidden in shadows, watching them. Sunlight glinting off black sunglasses...and a smirk on his face.