"Sir." The young man saluted when the salt and pepper head lifted to acknowledge him. "I was listening to some chatter, and I thought I should bring it to you. It seemed like what you'd requested."
The General held out his hand for the transcript and began to slowly peruse the document, the lower ranking officer standing by patiently. He took his time, scanning the text. There was a great deal of expletives and cut off phrases, but as he kept reading the pieces all fell into place.
"Has the BSAA authorized a retrieval of the subject?"
"From what I've gathered, sir, they haven't officially reported it yet. Though I suspect Kennedy will have to divulge some thing to his superiors."
The General nodded. Family could be so hotheaded and foolish, and it would work in his favor. "Keep an eye out for when he does make the report. I want our people to replace whatever team they'll put together. If half of what's in here is true, we may have just hit the military jackpot."
"Yes, sir."
"Dismissed."
Claire lay quietly, but she wasn't tired. Not anymore. Even the pain was passing quickly now. She didn't even feel the need to scream anymore. And that frightened her more than anything. The pain had anchored her to her humanity. If it was slipping away, that meant she was becoming something that wasn't human.
It meant that it was too late.
No one would come. Not in time. That moment was long gone.
"Feeling better today?"
Claire rolled her eyes toward the sweet voice. It had started triggering something in her. Something that wasn't disgust, hate, or fear. No it was more like closeness, bordering on tenderness. She fought the feeling, because it wasn't real. She could still drudge up anger at that invasion. It was a violation of the worst kind; mimicking a bond she had always dreamed of forging with her own child some day.
Anger was good. It helped bring up the hate and kept the fear at bay. She could use it to get through this.
"I'm not hungry anymore." It was the most civil thing she could come up with without giving too much away. She needed to seem docile enough so that Alexia would begin to trust her. Only then would the lunatic child give her enough of an opening to make an escape.
"Good!" The angelic teenager beamed, sliding closer into Claire's visual range. "That is an excellent sign. It will start to come back eventually. Every living thing needs some kind of fuel, of course. Thirsty at all?"
Claire licked her lips, her tongue feeling only a hit of dryness there. She hadn't had anything in countless hours. She'd asked, of course. Hell, she'd begged at one point she'd been so deprived she felt her stomach would eat itself and her tongue would shrivel. But the blonde psycho had only ever patted her cheek and told her to be patient.
"A little bit."
The smiling face left her vision, but Claire could still hear her moving around the lab. She'd learned not to bother asking what the girl was doing. She wouldn't get a straight answer. So Claire had had to rely on her ears to give her something to go on when she wasn't alone.
She hated being left there alone. It was worse than any moment spent being poked and prodded and cut by the deranged child genius. Because when she was alone, she'd begun to think of horrifying things. Anyone in her situation would naturally think of revenge. But the images that would flash into Claire's mind were terrifying. She would sit there and imagine pouncing on Alexia and cutting her open. Making her scream for hours and hours while Claire broke each bone one by one, and slowly flayed the flesh off. She'd cauterize the wounds as she went of course so the little monster wouldn't bleed out on her or regenerate too quickly.
Admittedly, she'd told herself that it was normal; dreaming of torturing your tormentor. Revisiting every pain back on them with interest. But she drew the line when her mind had strayed to fantasies of eating the girl. That way was the way of a monster, and if every other part of her humanity was stripped away from her, by God she would at least be human in her mind.
Claire was surprised from her thoughts when a straw touched her lips. "Sip slowly." She obeyed, taking the plastic straw between her lips. The water wasn't cool, but room temperature, and it did the trick of washing away the dust in her throat. When the straw was gently pulled away, she wished for more, only because it was something to have.
"You're very nearly done. And they'll be here soon." Claire didn't bother to ask who was coming. She'd guessed that someone would be looking for her. But she didn't know who Alexia was really expecting. She always said "they" like a large group would be arriving. Never "he" or a name. If she had, Claire could have speculated that her brother was closing in on the trail, or maybe even...
She squeezed her eyes shut and avoid thinking about him. Doing so had become increasingly difficult, like a physical pain. She had, at one point, worked herself into a panic attack just by thinking about him. Alexia had been delighted. And then she'd sedated Claire with enough elephant tranquilizer to kill 10 grown men. The fact had made her feel queasy.
Alexia's cool hand rested on her forehead, a soothing gesture. "It'll be all right in the end, Momma. Don't worry."
Chris felt as though frustration had been his life for the passed six weeks. Since Leon had told him the news about Claire being kidnapped, he'd tracked every minute lead he could get his hands on. He'd harangued Jill until she had nothing left to give him. Hell, she might have even run out of sympathy for him after the way he'd talked to her last time. And all of it had lead him absolutely no where.
If Wesker had been a ghost, then Alexia was a wisp of smoke. And even his tenuous contact with Sherry Birkin revealed very little about the monster child and her movements. Apparently, Alexia had fooled everyone. Except Sherry, who he'd gathered had felt a distinct rivalry, and thus suspicion of the Ashford since her "rebirth".
He punched the blank computer screen and watched the old fashioned glass monitor spiderweb under the impact. He couldn't let his mind dwell on those horrible details. Or the fact that his sister effectively lied to him for ten years.
Post traumatic stress disorder, she and the doctors had claimed. She'd fooled them too. They'd believed it and hadn't tried to probe any deeper. After all, who the hell would have even guessed at the idea of his little sister ending up in bed with a man who had gleefully attempted to kill her, stole her friend's corpse, and then tried to kidnap her.
It made his stomach turn just thinking about it. The worst part was, in his rational mind, he honestly could understand. She'd had no choice, no chance to defend herself against the enemy that was hiding inside her very body. She'd been controlled and used by a mad scientist, child mind or not. And she hadn't thought she could trust him with the knowledge. And that fact stung deeply.
"Hey, ease off the hardware. It's shoddy enough without you banging on it." Sherry Birkin's mild admonishment was delivered as she stared at a complex code on another out of date machine. It had taken everything Chris had not to beat every scrap of information out of the twenty something year old when they'd first met. If it hadn't been for Jill and Leon, he might not have contained himself at all.
But he had to eventually admit that without the girl, they're search would be less than nowhere. Sherry had amazing hacker skills and a wide knowledge base on who they were tracking. She'd grown up with the little psycho after all. But even so, Chris couldn't help but view her with suspicion. They'd track a lead, and she'd pop in to do the computer work. She'd give them the info and then left them until they could piece together the next lead from what little data they had.
Where did she disappear to? He'd asked, and none too nicely. And all he'd in response was "Home, I do need to sleep and eat you know." It was all off, like he was being lead on a merry goose chase. Or more likely, the Birkin girl was using them for their resources. The death of her "guardian" had likely left her with very little assets of her own. But Chris couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for her. Wesker had deserved to die, and she was still more than just a little bit suspicious.
But until he could prove anything, he had to work with her. So he let out a long sigh and ran his hand through his choppy hair. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. I might not even need that console. This baby is about to crack and give up all her secrets." She grinned as she spoke, her deft fingers tickling the keyboard in an elegant frenzy.
They had retrieved several of the computers from the tanker in Africa. It had been a pain in the ass but they'd extracted them and hauled them back across the ocean so the girl wonder could work her magic on them. She'd absolutely refused to travel overseas with them and work on them on site. She'd said it was a trust issue, and Chris hadn't missed the pointed look she'd given him. It was fine, he didn't trust her either and actually preferred having her in a more controlled environment. It was easier to keep an eye on her that way.
They'd struck a compromise. Chris, Leon and their small team would retrieve the computer systems and bring them to a neutral location. No official buildings had been another stipulation. After her initial contact with Leon, she had again flat refused to step back into any federal building. She was smart, watching her back. But her seeming need for it just raised his suspicions more and more. The girl had something up her sleeve. And if he didn't figure it out soon, she'd blind side them all with it.
"Got it!" She pumped her fist in the air, bring Chris out of his scowling thoughts. "Downloading to the slave drive now. I think we've got some of her journal in here."
For a moment, the two of them were on the same level. Both of them were looking at the little blue bar on the monitor with a feeling of hope.
A/N: Whew! That took a long while. But yay! For my muse returning. You can thank my new fiance for this. He gave me the biggest Wesker boost of my life at Acen. I don't want to go into details about it because it feels like boasting. Anyway, we're moving right along here because I hate an abundance of detail work. I like to leave that to your imaginations. If the timeline is confusing at all, I do apologize but I am trying to make it vague on purpose.
Okay thanks a lot for hanging in there guys! Please review!
-Eve