That evening, after setting up camp for the night in an empty warehouse - made secure by Alice and Katie first - Claire sought out Ryan and pulled him upstairs into an upper office, closing the door behind them so they could talk in privacy.
"Hand." Claire ordered, holding out her hand so that she could hear his responses.
Grasping her offered hand, Ryan immediately asked. "Is this about me and Alice kissing each other during the lunch break?"
"Actually, no it's not about that." Claire shook her head. "No, it's about the Iron Maiden."
"Oh?" Ryan's curiosity was piqued, and his golden gaze was locked onto Claire's face.
"I think that something else, like the Iron Maiden, or something bigger is eventually going to attack us. I just want to have you, Alice and Katie at the ready, in case something bigger DOES actually show up. We're all relying on you three... Especially you, Ryan."
"Why me? Why am I the favourite one?" Ryans eyes narrowed, and a frown formed behind his mask.
"Because you know about the B.O.W's from that White Queen person. You have an edge over them, since you know their weaknesses and how they attack." Claire explained, "You're also better suited for dealing with the Infected."
"Explain." Ryan was beginning to wonder why Claire was telling her this. It was true that he was knowledgible about various B.O.W's, but Alice's knowledge of them was easily superior to his own.
"What is more terrifying for someone like me, or K-Mart, or Mikey... a flaming zombie... or one that is being electrocuted?" Claire asked with a stern stare.
"The flaming one... wait! Are you saying that Katie isn't suited for combat?" Ryan quickly noticed the comparisons, and a snarl began to rise in his throat.
"That is NOT what I am saying. What I am saying is that you are the strongest out of the three of you." Claire corrected herself, but that made Ryan even more angry.
"So now you think that Katie and Alice are weak?" Ryan's voice became low and dangerous inside Claire's head, and his grip tightened on her hand.
"No! Ryan, this is hard to say... I didn't mean that at all!" Claire apologized right away, but Ryan released her hand, letting several sparks of electricity travel along his armoured arm before he gestured for her to take his hand again.
"Get some sleep. I'll be outside the warehouse all night on watch. Tell Alice to come get me in the morning after you wake up." Ryan explained before releasing Claire's hand again and walking towards the door, his angry expression hidden by his mask and hood.
"Fine. But just so you know..." Claire spoke up, making him stop with his hand on the doorknob. "What I was trying to say didn't actually come out the way I wanted it to."
Ryan gave a sigh, then opened the door to leave. He walked back downstairs, then out of the highly defensible doorway they'd used to enter the warehouse, and out into the shadowy alleyway between the warehouse itself and a sealed (checked for Infected by Alice) garage.
Walking around the building, Ryan eventually located the roof access ladder that lead to the roof, which gave him a view of the entire compound where they were staying that night. He crouched down beside a ventilation unit and began to hum a simple five note tune to himself, preparing for the long and solitary hours ahead of him.
"I thought that was you I heard."
Ryan instantly went for his G36K hanging across his chest, but a pair of arms snaked themselves around his body and deftly unclipped his rifle from the strap, letting it fall to the roof with a dull clunk.
Ryan turned to see who it was that had him in their grasp, and realized that it was just Alice. He relaxed when he noticed that she had clearly just gotten up since she wasn't wearing any of her gear.
"What was that tune, Itoshii?" Alice smiled at him before giving him a small kiss directly on his mask.
"I made it up. It's nothing special, just to occupy myself while I'm keeping watch." Ryan replied, enjoying the close embrace with Alice after the tense talk with Claire. It felt good... natural... perfect.
"Teach it to me." Alice smiled, trying to imitate the notes she'd heard from him. "Like that, right?"
"Like that, yes." Ryan smiled as well, "But why would you want to learn that useless tune? It's not important to me."
"Because I like it." Alice said in a teasing voice, but then she tensed. "Did you hear that?"
Ryan concentrated for a second, then heard the distant sound of a vehicle door being closed. "Yeah. We've got company."
"I left all my gear inside. All I have is my wrist blade." Alice said as she released Ryan from her embrace.
"Take my Colts. I have an idea." Ryan indicated his dual sidearms, which up until that point, hadn't even been unholstered since he'd gotten them from his uncle's house. "Here. Put these on them as well." Ryan held out a pair of black objects from the back of his gear belt. Alice took them and realized that they were silencers.
"Silencers? I think I see what you're planning." Alice smiled as she reached down to his legs and pulled both pistols free, then attached the silencers to the barrels with her Telekinesis.
"What I'm going to do is use the darkness and my dark clothes as cover to sneak around behind them and take them out, one by one. I need you to stay up here and tell me where any stragglers are." Ryan explained as he began to deposit his M37 and his Beretta on the roof, beside his G36K. "Watch over these. I won't need them."
Alice nodded and clicked the safeties off his Colts, ready to provide cover for him. "What about Katie? Shouldn't she be ready in case any of them get past us?"
"They won't." Ryan replied flatly before dashing towards the ladder and smoothly slid down, vanishing into the shadows almost instantly.
Alice didn't need to track him with her eyes, since she could sense exactly where he was from his T-Virus aura. But she kept herself low and hidden from sight, watching as a group of black clad figures appeared outside the chainlink fence that surrounded the compound.
She heard the distinctive sound of bolt cutters being used to rip open the fence, and watched as they opened a fairly wide hole in the fence. Then she noticed that Ryan was hidden a few feet away, behind a piece of concrete barrier, signalling to her with military hand gestures.
'Seven hostiles... cover me... flanking left... on my signal.'
"Alice, can you hear me from this far away? Try to talk to me with Telepathy." Ryan spoke slowly and carefully, so that Alice could understand the context of his words if his Telepathy did indeed have a limited range.
Alice heard him loud and clear, so after a moment of concentration, tried to reply. "Can you hear me now, Ryan? Let me know if I'm failing at this."
"Well done. Now that we can communicate, guide me to any of these dumbasses that I can take out in stealth." Ryan smiled happily at Alice's successful mastery of Telepathy.
"Okay. I see that one of them is on their own, at the back of the group. The one with the shotgun. Can you see him?" Alice peered around the ventilation unit, her fingers flexing on the oddly ergonomic grips of Ryan's Colts.
"Got it. Taking them out... Now!" Ryan smiled cruelly as he extended both his wrist blades and thrust them into the back of the man's head. He wrapped his arms around their torso and carefully lowered the body to the ground, to prevent any unwanted noise. "Next, Itoshii."
"Two of them are near Mikey's van. Take those ones next." Alice scanned the compound, watching as the four others split into pairs and began to search the vehicles.
Ryan stalked across the compound, just as his two targets moved out of her sight behind Mikey's van. A few seconds later, Ryan's voice sounded. "Got 'em. Where are the next ones?"
"One of the pairs just split up. They're standing near the M35 and our truck. You choose which one you want to take out first." Alice checked the positions of the intruders again, then heard movement on the ladder leading up to her position. One of them must have been hiding from the start, and was climbing up to the roof to provide overwatch, like she was doing for Ryan.
"Ryan, I've got one coming up the ladder. I'll take him out, just take out the next pair." Alice relayed as she moved to a better position seconds before the person reached the top of the ladder and hauled themself up.
"Copy that." Ryan replied, already halfway to the pair searching around the M35. "Let me know when you're safe again."
Alice smiled, her cheeks becoming slightly pink. Why did that sound really cute to her? She shook herself back to the present situation, and waited until the man was on the other side of the ventilation unit before she started to focus her Telekinesis onto his brain, crushing it almost instantly. All that was heard was a dull fleshy sound from inside his skull and he crumpled to the ground.
"I'm all clear. He's dead." Alice informed Ryan, just as he slit both of the men's throats at the M35.
"Same here. Down to the last pair. Meet me at the bottom of the ladder. I have an idea that you'll like."
"Oh? Enlighten me." Alice sounded amused as she slid down the ladder to already find him awaiting her in a nearby shadow.
"Remember how you've said I sound like a dog when I growl?" Ryan said as he quickly pulled Alice into the shadow and covered her protectively with his body. She was only wearing jeans and a white tank top, so her outfit would give away her position.
"Yes, you're my big guard puppy, Sparky." Alice teased him, keeping a close eye on the last pair of men near their truck.
"Well, let's fuck with their heads a bit." Ryan chuckled darkly. "I'm going to draw them away from the warehouse. I want you take my bow from the back of the truck, and shoot this into the air." He handed her an arrow with a very large cylindrical arrowhead.
"What will it do?" Alice asked, still using Telepathy to talk to him.
"It's a flare that I jerry rigged onto an arrow. Just pull the pin and fire it up into the air, it'll ignite like it was fired from an actual flare gun." Ryan explained, checking over his shoulder to make sure they hadn't been seen yet. "Wait until I draw them away before you grab my bow."
With that, Ryan gave her a curious expression for a second then he said. "Take my armour. You'll need it to stay hidden in the shadows."
"What about you?" Alice asked, watching as he began to take off the heavy body armour he wore.
"I'm still wearing black. They won't see me. Here." He handed her the vest, and she carefully pulled it over her head and buckled it closed. "Ready?"
Alice gave him a nod, then pulled his face closer to hers to kiss him. "Now I am." She purred.
Ryan smiled, then dashed away, leaving her to wait in silence, watching the two men searching the vehicles until she heard Ryan growling to get their attention.
"Sounds like a wild dog. Take it out so we can finish our mission." One of the men whispered to the other, who pulled out a knife and began to walk away from the truck.
"Damn it, I wanted both of them to move. Forget the flare, take him down with your wrist blade while I deal with the idiot one." Ryan's voice immediately sounded in Alice's head, and she gave a sigh before silently stalking across the shadows until she was close behind the last man.
"What's taking so long to find a fucking coyote? Where is h..." He grumbled to himself, his sentence being literally cut short when Alice reached up and slit his throat from behind.
"Ryan. He's down." Alice reported, just as she spotted a pair of yellow eyes in a nearby shadow.
"Same with mine. We're all clear. Let's get the bodies taken care of before anyone else sees." Ryan said as he stepped out of the shadow, his eyes brightly glowing in the darkness.
"I'll get your guns." Alice said as she retrieved them from the roof with her Telekinesis. She presented them to him, and he took them from the air with a nod of thanks. He slung them across his back, and slid his - still unused - Colts back into his leg holsters.
A few minutes later, Alice had piled the bodies of the eight men outside of the fence, and helped Ryan to strip them of their gear. It was a few moments before she noticed something unsettling about the bodies.
"Ryan... do these men look... strange to you?" Alice continued to use Telepathy, growing fond of how... natural it felt compared to actually talking to him.
"Yeah, they look very well fed. They're also well equipped. When I was watching them from the shadows, they seemed... far to... professional in their movements. The way they carried their guns, their walks, and the way that their gear was laid out." Ryan said as he unloaded the shotgun that one of them had carried. He piled the shells in the dirt beside several pistol magazines.
"Exactly. And the one that I killed had this R700 sniper rifle." Alice said as she opened the bolt of the rifle and ejected the rounds, one after another.
"I think that we might be under Umbrella's surveillance. They must have a way to track us..." Ryan considered, which made Alice nod her head.
"They used satellites to scan for my location until I disabled my tracking chip they'd implanted in my head... but that was two years ago. And I know for a fact that Katie's devices were both destroyed. So it isn't from her..." Alice explained, thinking hard.
"What about her equipment? Does Umbrella have any methods to track the location of her gear?" Ryan suddenly suggested after several seconds of silence. "That pistol of hers... that's far to well kept to have been scavenged. I'm gonna take a look at it, just to be sure."
"Her knife as well." Alice nodded. "Unless it was something that any of the three of us might have been in contact with when we destroyed the Vegas lab..."
"What method do the devices often use to pinpoint a location? I can sense magnetism and electricity, so if it's one of them, I'll find it for sure."
"Usually it's GPS based. A tracking device of some kind." Alice replied. "Wait a second..." Alice suddenly froze, thinking hard. "Remember those snipers... the ones that shot me?"
"Fuck! I must have taken a bugged piece of their gear when me and Katie looted their bodies. C'mon, grab all their crap here and take it back to the pickup. I'll get the bag of their gear and find that bug."
With that, Ryan sprinted back to the fenceline, then jumped clear over the six foot tall fence in a spectacular long jump thanks to his extremely enhanced running speed. He went straight for their truck, grabbed the dufflebag of gear and returned to Alice in a matter of seconds.
"I can sense a weak electrical energy from the bag. I'm going to run it away from here, find the damn thing, and get rid of it, keeping the rest of it for us to use. I'll be back in a few minutes." Ryan said, surprisingly he wasn't panting after his rapid acceleration and jumps.
"What if it is all bugged?" Alice asked, voicing a sneaking suspicion that had risen in her mind.
"I have one of Katie's Incendiary grenades in my vest." Ryan replied, reaching into one of the small pouches that adorned the upper portion of the chestplate, above the magazine pouches across the stomach. He withdrew one from the pouch, and shoved it into his belt. "If the whole thing is bugged, I'll burn it all. Simple, really."
He threw the bag over his shouldler and sprinted straight into the desert, leaving Alice to finish organizing the equipment used by the strange unit of soldiers. However, not one piece of equipment had any sign of Umbrella affiliation on it at all, even the guns.
Ryan returned a minute later, and judgling by the faint scent of smoke, he'd burned the entire bag.
"Bugged?" Alice asked, gathering all the loose rifle rounds from the R700 in her cupped hands.
"Bugged." Ryan replied, then plucked one of the bullets out of her hands. "Alice... these guys really WERE sent by Umbrella."
"How do you know that?!" Alice asked, nearly exclaiming vocally at the revelation.
"Look at the percussion caps on all those bullets." Ryan replied, flipping the round that was in his hand so that Alice could see the dreaded Umbrella octagon embossed on the back of the bullet's surface.