Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews and faves. To answer a question, yes, Sephiroth will be in this and yes, Wesker will be. But I'm not sure about whether they're going to fight yet.

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Chapter One

The building appeared to be abandoned. The hallway had holes in the floor. Faint sunlight trickled through holes in the roof, accenting the dust floating in the air. Claire stepped carefully. The last thing she needed was to fall two stories because of weakened floorboards.

There were signs of old violence. Holes from gunshots and dried brown stains that looked like bleeding bodies had slumped against the walls. When she reached the stairs, she saw the first skeleton lying sprawled at the bottom. The footprints of her friends showed they'd stopped to examine the old corpse before moving upstairs.

If they'd felt comfortable enough to stay with the dead, it probably meant the dead was staying dead. All the same, she drew her handgun and trained it on the yellowing skull until she was well past it.

Then she was outside. The city streets looked like a catastrophe had struck. Rubble from collapsed buildings cluttered the road. Buried here and there were the smashed remnants of weird looking cars and riffraff. Claire followed the trail her friends' made for a couple of blocks. Then without any indication of where it had come from, it vanished.

That must have been when they appeared here. She sat on a large piece of rubble, and looked up, straining to see the whorl of light that both Leon and Jill claimed had vanished from the sky shortly after they fell. As the two of them explained it, they had rescued her from Umbrella, but the building was on a countdown to self-destruct. When the timer hit zero, they were embraced by a green stream of light, which yanked them like an undertow away from the burning building and dropped them here.

And they hadn't been alone. One of the Umbrella scientists had landed as well. Jill described him has an older man with a man's ponytail and a nasally voice. He'd crowed something about "at last" and then scrammed before anyone thought to blast him to hell.

If Claire had been conscious, she would have shot him in the head until she was out of ammo. From the description, she knew he was Dr. Hojo. He'd been one of the key inventors behind the T-virus. Which made every gruesome death caused by the virus his fault.

And to think he'd wanted to breed her. She shivered, remembering his greasy hands on her body. There hadn't been any sexual desire in the madman, just a lust for power. Jenova. That was the virus he was trying to create. Mentally, she shortened it to the J-virus.

From what she'd killed at his lab, the virus created super-fast zombies that had . . . extra abilities. She'd been caught when one had somehow generated fire around her. Real fire. She'd screamed, feeling her skin burn, and rather than curling up and dying, she'd opened fire on the thing, nailing it with five bullets in the vicinity of its eyes. When it fell, the flames vanished and her skin was only lightly burned.

Then one of the zombies had grabbed her in a bear hug from behind. She'd screamed, and it bit her neck before she could struggle loose. And struggling loose was almost impossible. A normal zombie started falling apart immediately, but even then it had unnatural strength. These J-virus zombies were stronger. She managed to get loose with a tie-your-shoe throw that Chris taught her. Then while it was re-orientating, she's pumped the rest of her clip into its head. Because a single shot wasn't enough to put one of them down.

The wound on her neck had green slime around it. In a bathroom, she'd watched the slime ooze into the open wound. She'd quickly soaped and watered the remaining gunk, but even as she did it, the wound closed, leaving not a mark.

She could feel the gunk inside of her though.

Hours later, she finally hit the main underground labs (there had been two subbasement labs to deal with first). Hojo shot her with a stun gun. She woke up strapped to an operating table. Hojo heh-hummed about how her immune system was remarkable for not succumbing to the Jenova cells, and that as a result, he felt she was perfect to use for his breeding experiment.

And now here she was. In the ruins of some long-forgotten city. She pressed one hand to her stomach, wondering if he'd been successful with his experiment. Then she heard the sound of people. She scuttled into the shadows of a building, watching as a couple of men in dark blue suits rounded the corner.

The taller of the two was immaculate. He had a bald head and Wesker-type glasses. The shorter man swaggered, his dress shirt untucked and more or less unbuttoned. The taller man was carrying a body. "Ya know Rude, I could get used to this gig, you know," the redhaired man said. "But then they send us to Midgar to pick up maggots like Pavo there." He shook his head. "What kind of weirdoes hang out in Midgar anyway? It just don't make sense. This place is a ghost town, and –"

"Reno."

"So we get here and we get the guy, and sure enough, he's got the boss's materia. And we whack him. But we can't just leave the body here because of Cloud so we have to lug him over rock and rubble while dealing –"

"Reno."

"With all sorts of surprise attacks from the wildlife. And then, by the time we get done with ditching the body, happy hour will be over and we'll have to pay full price for our drinks. This is Elena's fault –"

"Reno!" Rude threw the body down. "I can't carry him anymore."

"What? Come on, you're kidding me, right? That guy's twice your size. How do you expect me to carry him?"

Rude shook his head. "I don't care." He rotated his shoulders and tightened his tie. "I just need a long break."

"Long breaks are not an option. Once dark hits this place will be crawling with . . ." He launched into a description of an array of things Claire had never even heard of. The entire time he was yammering, he was strolling in a widening circle, swinging what looked like a baton.

Claire moved further into the shadows, trying to keep quiet. They looked like a couple of gangsters. She'd dated a gangster once. It hadn't been the best breakup, and she'd learned to be leery of hired guns ever since.

"And then you have to deal with," Reno said, abruptly stopping and turning directly toward where Claire was hiding, "Rats."

"Rats," Claire muttered. She stepped into view. "Fine, you caught me," she said. "What do you want?"

Reno grinned. "It would be bad form to just leave you here."

She flirted with several possible interpretations of what he was saying and decided that he meant he was going to eliminate the witness to his crime. Nevermind that she didn't know who he killed, why he killed him, or what his reasons were. Of course, she wasn't going to go with the obvious. Fighting zombies was one thing, but fighting humans was another. She didn't have the stomach to head-shot a living, breathing human.

"Thank you so much," she said. She made a show of holstering her gun, and then hugged Reno. "I thought I was going to be stuck out here with the wolves." She brushed her hair away from her face. "My idiot boyfriend got spooked and took off. Without me."

"Ah . . ."

She pulled loose from him. "Claire Redfield. I promise I won't be any trouble. I would have said something when I first saw you, but I thought you were going to attack me." She pulled a face. "But since you're giving me a lift to town, I guess I can help you with the deadbeat." She jerked her head to the body. "There's a crevice big enough to drop him in and deep enough that nobody will be going down looking."

She headed toward the body. Reno and Rude just stared. That was okay with Claire. Better that they stared than attacked her. "Come on," she said, focusing her attention on Rude. "If you get his arms, I'll grab his legs and it'll go faster."

Rude's eyebrows came together, and she imagined that behind the shades his eyes were narrowed. Then he shrugged. "Rude," he said. He offered a hand, which Claire shook. His hand completely engulfed hers, and when he applied pressure she knew that fighting him would have been a very, very bad idea. He was strong as a zombie and not nearly as smelly and creepy.

Twenty minutes later, they sent the unfortunate body on a one-way trip down. Claire felt a pang of regret, but reminded herself that, seeing as he was already dead, there wasn't much she could do to help him. She had to worry about herself.

With the two men she left the city. Stretching out as far as she could see was rough rocks and barren land. Reno hopped into the back of a blue pickup truck, and helped her up. "So, which town you heading to?"

"Any one's fine," she said. "Besides Midgar." She settled down beside him. "I don't really have anywhere in particular to go. Since the boyfriend ran off." She thought about Leon, Jill, and Rebecca, and silently apologized for being the one who ran off. Hopefully they would figure out what had happened.

"You got a job?" Reno asked.

Rude made a weird noise under his breath, and got into the driver's seat. Without a word he put it into gear. And they roared away from Midgar.