Hello dear readers,
We meet Steve. No ClaireXWesker scene this time. Sorry :(
On a lighter note, who loved the "roguishly handsome" Wesker with his absolute smexiness? And tell me honestly, is anyone too OOC (except Claire who I think is having a tad more spark in my stories) And with Claire inspecting every nook and cranny ... wouldn't you be like that if you had just been attacked by some random guy in black? (Hypothetically let's say you weren't attacked by smexy Wesker and by some weirdo instead) Also I'm sorry if I made Steve a bit of a douche-bag when the two meet.
REVIEW: Shadow, the characters are horrible.
ME: Shut up you!
So, I don't own any of the characters or the basic plotline and dialogue of the games used in this fan fiction. However, the blending of the two games and this story in general is 100% mine. I wrote it!
Claire's Chronicle
Chapter 2
Claire snuck a look over her shoulder as she was heading outside for good, and sadly smiled when she saw Rodrigo take a few of the pills she had given him and watched him move the lighter closer to himself. This would probably be the last time she would see him again and turned away to exit her prison for the last time.
She didn't want to start to feel overly sorry for someone who worked for Umbrella, but she reasoned with herself as she opened the door, he probably had no choice when it had come to Umbrella. It wasn't long until she found herself in the same courtyard where she had encountered and been attacked by that bastard in black.
She had her Glock out again, checking each and every corner where an enemy could be hiding twice or three times. Once she had reluctantly decided that it was safe, she cautiously took a step forward and then another. Her eyes swept suspiciously over the truck, as motionless and lifeless as it was before with no sign of foes.
Breathe girl, she told herself, forcing in a deep breath and then exhaling deeply as she kept walking before coming to a dead stop in front of the dead end. It looked pretty normal, a stone wall with bricks of various shades of grey and blacks.
Stone lamps served as decoration and were on the four corners of the courtyard. All except two, which were directly above her, one to the left and one to the right. That was extremely strange, and probably had some weird thing going on.
She lifted a hand out and ran it over the cool stone bricks of the wall, her brow furrowing in question when she encountered a slight dip in the wall. Bringing up her other hand to investigate, she found that it was the shape of a square cut into the wall. She stopped briefly in confusion before remembering the square shaped mystery item that Rodrigo had given her.
"Won't know until I try." she mumbled to herself before fishing the key out of her jacket and slowly fitting it into the space. It was a perfect fit and there was a clunk of a switch activating.
Claire chuckled and stood back as two gates that had been cut from the wall swung open slowly and in a grand and majestic manner, "Open sesame."
.ShadowForceSilver.
Claire slowly walked through the gateway when the two stone gates had finished their open path and had silently stopped. She took a cautious step and her gaze darted nervously around, like a prey animal scouting for predators.
The next area was paved with basic concrete slabs and was surrounded by high walls, leaving nothing but a narrow alleyway which was deserted apart from a few drums of oil and broken crates. At the very end of the alley on the left was a large red shipping container, its metal dull and almost transparent.
Taking another slow step, she checked the ruins of the crates closest to her, feeling most disappointed when she found that there was nothing of use to her. She let out a groan of annoyance before getting back up to her feet and walking down the alleyway.
Her footsteps echoed off the stone walls, making the hairs on Claire's neck stand up. She snuck a look over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't being followed and was relieved once she had reached the end of the shipping container which would hopefully lead her to a more open area.
What it did lead her to was an attack. As soon as Claire's head had appeared from behind the shipping container and when she had appeared in the bright flood light, a storm of bullets rained down on her, forcing her to roll backwards.
Taking a few deep breaths, she slowly looked around the corner so she wouldn't expose herself to the gunfire and scoped out the area.
The gunfire was coming from a shack on stilts, kind of like a cubbyhouse turned guard tower. The large gun in the centre of the large open window kept shooting, and Claire wondered in a confused manner, how much bloody ammo does that thing have?
The shooter himself or herself was quite small, especially for an Umbrella guard who were usually large and bulky, especially with their uniforms on top. Still, if they were shooting at her, they were probably some Umbrella nut-job.
Deciding enough was enough; Claire lifted her own gun and aimed at the shack, pulling the trigger twice. The first bullet hit the flood light, plunging the dirt area into darkness while the second bullet produced a metal pinging sound, obviously hitting the back of the guard tower.
The shooting stopped momentarily as the light disappeared, and Claire decided to let them know that nobody shot at her and got away with it by releasing another bullet which resulted in another metal pinging and a swear from the shooter, obviously too close for comfort.
Claire lowered her gun a little, and her eyes narrowed as she spotted the little bastard basically jumping down the ladder and retreating into the shadows. Deciding that some answers were due and an Umbrella employee would give the best ones, she pursued the fleeing figure.
.ShadowForceSilver.
The dark blue waves rolled over each other, leaping up as wings of water in a fantastic display before doubling over and diving back into the watery abyss of the ocean. Fingers of sea foam reached towards the sky as they crashed with a cymbal crash. The waves launched an attack of their own on the flaming island.
Two planes soared overhead the numerous buildings and courtyards as they surveyed the activity below. One of the pilots squinted at a flash of colour he thought he had saw below, but shrugged it off and increased the speed of his plane, the engines whirring at a faster rate and creating more noise.
Down below, the young man didn't bother to see if the planes overhead had spotted him, he just had to get off this island now that they probably knew he was out of his cell. He skidded to a stop and caught his breath as he turned around looking at his surroundings.
He had short red-brown shaded hair cut into a boyish but somewhat adorable looking hairstyle. He was dressed in a bright yellow t-shirt, dull pants and sneakers, complete with a prison vest with an identification number. One would wonder what he had done to get thrown in prison at such a young age.
He was in a graveyard slash courtyard of sorts, with the green earth turned over into mounds and dotted with headstones of various heights and sizes. A few of the graves were freshly turned over, and the stone markers on top of them weren't as faded as the older gravestones, signalling freshly decaying bodies.
Creepy, he thought before tugging at the choker around his neck and growling to himself in an annoyed tone "Damn it. Which way?"
He turned around to gaze at the one of the exits before feeling the barrel of a gun being pressed into his back and the sound of a safety trigger being turned off. Whoever this was meant business.
He quickly raised his hands to his hand and spoke in a quick and panicked tone, "Don't Shoot!"
He sensed the hesitation from his unknown attacker and quickly continued to use it as an advantage, "I wasn't trying to escape, really! It's just there were explosions and tremors ... the alarm sounded and-and the doors to my cell opened so... I just got out of there to-to-to..." He didn't know where to turn to then. He was after all doing nothing but trying to escape.
"Rockfort Prison. Detainee 0627." said an amused feminine voice before continuing as she slowly pulled the gun away from his back, "Huh. Doesn't look like you're one of Umbrella's then. I'm Claire Redfield."
He let out a silent sigh of relief before preparing to turn around, chuckling "Damn girl. You scared the-"
But he was met with the gun again and a sharp order of, "Eyes forward. I don't like being shot at repeatedly."
He had his hands up again and quickly told her, "Hey, I thought you were a zombie or some weirdo at least. My name's Steve."
Claire or whatever her name was let out another amused chuckle and raised the gun away from his back again, allowing him to turn around. Steve looked her over; the most important thing was that she was wearing civilian clothes, like him and not a uniform.
"You don't look like one of them Claire. They catch you too?"
Claire let out a sigh and lowered her gun until it was pointing at the ground, "Yeah, I guess you can say that." Steve shrugged and turned around, "Well nice meeting you. I'm on my way out once I find some keys."
Claire yelled "WAIT!" for two reasons. The first was obvious; two heads were better than one and would get them out of here faster.
The second was more complex; "I don't think it's safe for anyone to be wandering around the island by themselves."
Steve made a "so what" gesture with his hands and said slowly, "Well, the island is crowding with zombies."
Claire rolled her eyes. Men. "I know that. What I'm talking about is that guy."
That stopped Steve short from turning away, and he came back to her, "Do you mean the guy dressed in black?"
Claire placed a hand to her neck and winced; she would have a bruise there within long, "You've met?"
Steve gave a short bark of laughter and shook his hand, "You kidding? I saw him, he was on top of a wall back there, looking all prince-of-darkness like before leaping off the wall. I would be very surprised if he didn't break his neck."
Claire shrugged her shoulders, "I shot him in the chest and it didn't slow him down at all." That made Steve think twice and he hastily agreed to team up.
.ShadowForceSilver.
"Who's that?" Steve asked as he leaned a little to the left to peer at the computer screen.
Claire glanced over her shoulder and quietly said "My brother Chris."
The two had been pretty lucky since their team-up. Along the way they had found plenty of ammo on corpses and a Luger. Claire, deciding that she was more comfortable with a Glock or more preferably a Beretta, let Steve have the weapon. He had proved quite useful in getting rid of obstacles in the form of zombie hoards.
When they had entered another building, Claire refused to go anywhere else but to a computer. When she had found one, she had hacked into it and had scanned the records without uttering a single syllable.
Claire sighed before continuing, "He has been missing for a while now. I was in Paris looking for him, and I broke into one of Umbrella's labs. It didn't take me long to hack into their system, but was pursued and got caught before I could find anything useful. What about you? What's your story?"
Steve waved it away, "Nah... it's ... it's dumb."
Claire let out a small laugh; she told her story and saw no problem that prevented him from telling his version, "Just tell me."
Steve sat down on the table behind him with an angry sigh, "It wasn't even my fault. Some other jackass screwed up and landed the two of us in this freaking hell-hole."
Claire stopped typing for a few seconds to stand over her shoulder before a beeping noise attracted their attention back to the computer.
She pressed a few more of the keys on the keyboard before stopping action all together as she stared at the computer screen which displayed the form and photo of a young man with dark brown hair. They had everything on him; his full name, his date or birth and age, the fact that he was an orphan and his medical and fitness reports.
She wondered on how they could have gotten that before she spotted the S.T.A.R.S logo on his profile. They had probably hacked into his personal records from the Raccoon Police Department database as easily as she was hacking into their system.
Thankfully they didn't have the name of his sibling or dead parents, which was good for her or his current location which was defiantly better than good for his own well-being. "Umbrella doesn't seem to know where he is either. They lost track off him in... Russia. I don't remember Chris mentioning that to me."
She typed something else and the picture of a young woman with shoulder length brown hair appeared on the screen, listing her numerous details but lacking her location also "They don't know what happened to his partner Jill either. It says here that they lost the locations of the two of them in Umbrella's Russian base where they destroyed some of their B.O.W.s and destroyed the facility." She turned back to Steve and let out a sigh.
Steve quickly turned his glance away and pretended to be occupied with checking out his weapon. He smirked and spun in his hand for a few seconds before catching it again and pretending to shoot it, like a cowboy out of an old western movie.
Claire had turned back to the computer screen, "They don't know where the rest of S.T.A.R.S. are either, or where Leon is."
Steve let out something between a chuckle and a scoff and turned to Claire, "Maybe you should send your brother or this Leon a message asking them to come help you." He turned away and didn't expect Claire's answer.
"Great idea! I'll do exactly that. Leon will hopefully know where Chris is."
She turned back to the keyboard and started rapidly punching in letters as she found the email system, easily hacked into.
Steve scoffed and lifted his hands up in the air, "Uh hello? I was joking! Neither of them would ever come here." That made Claire fire up a little and she hit the SEND key with a little more force than what was necessary.
She whipped around to face Steve and told him, "Don't say that! Of course my brother or friend would come to help. You don't even know them."
Steve became angry too, "No they wouldn't! You will never get far in life if you rely on others! Believe me, I know from personal experience."
Before Claire could respond to his outburst, he had wheeled around and ran out the door, his footsteps echoing in the hallway before disappearing completely.
With her finger hovering over the keyboard, Claire asked herself out loud in a confused and slightly irritated tone, "What was that all about?"
.ShadowForceSilver.
Crouched low on a high wall, the black-clad stranger blended in perfectly with the stormy and dark coverage and the two prisoners below him didn't bother to look up at all.
He spied the fire-haired girl and felt his lips twitch into a smile and turned to observe the boy that accompanied her. He looked to be about eighteen years or nineteen at best, and didn't look extremely confident with that gun in his hands.
It took him a while to recognize the name that went with the face. Steve Burnside had been on this island for a long time, and it looked like he had finally found his out-of-jail-free card.
He watched the two of them as they broke down the door to one of the offices and waited patiently for them to reappear once again. They were probably looking for the nearest hanger or dock where an escape vehicle could easily be accessed. He turned away, uninterested.
What brought his attention back was the sudden shouting. First it was a high pitched but still masculine shout that was obviously angry and frustrated and that voice was answered with a second more feminine voice that was clearly offended and possibly upset.
There was a final shout on the boy's part before it was silenced with a loud slam from a door. The boy quickly reappeared, running away in a fit of anger, again not noticing that he was being observed.
His dear heart reappeared moments later, staring after the boy before slowly shaking her head and leaning back on the door frame, her mouth forming words that he had strain to hear due to distance and wind, "What would give a person such little faith in family?"
She shook her head again before sinking to the floor. Watching her for a few more minutes, the shadow turned backwards and jumped down from the wall, landing firmly on his feet.
He continued walking immediately after his descent, despite the height. It didn't take long for him to completely melt into the darkness.
Claire's head snapped to the left, sure she had heard a crunch of gravel and then some footsteps but soon dismissed it and turned back to staring straight in front of her before burying her face in her hands, wondering what the hell she would do if Chris or Leon didn't come to her aid and left her for dead anyway, just like Steve said they would.