Chapter 1
-Meeting Chris Redfield-
The heroes were having a bad day. Nathan and Peter Petrelli, Matt Parkman, Noah and Claire Bennet, Mohinder Suresh, Sylar, Danko, and three of Danko's agents suddenly found themselves standing in the foyer of what appeared to be some sort of mansion. Upon noticing each other, friends and enemies alike, accusations began to emerge. Each side blaming the other until finally they each began to realize none of them had the power to do such a thing or a reason on top of that. It was Noah Bennet who decided to take charge.
Bennet took the initiative and said, "Okay everyone remain calm. We just have to figure out where we are and the way out. It's simple so nobody needs to panic."
He looked around him. There was a large staircase leading up to a second floor and a door to his left and right. Turning and putting his back to the stairs, he noticed a third set of double doors straight ahead. He pointed it out to the others. "There. That certainly looks like a front door."
As if on cue, the door burst open and a team of men ran in. The last one in slammed the door behind him and then rested his back against the door, completely out of breath. By their clothing, they were clearly field agents of some kind and they were all heavily armed and equipped. A man possibly in his early to mid-30's was the first to notice the dozen or so people standing around the foyer. He signaled his men and the other four members quickly raised their weapons at the group. The man who had taken notice of them did the same with his handgun, eyeing them suspiciously.
"Identify yourselves!" he commanded. "What are you doing here?!"
Having had enough of this confusion, Nathan spoke to the armed soldiers.
"We don't know how we got here. We just are. All of us are just citizens, regular people who ended up in this house. I was in California before and my brother was in New York. We don't know how all of us got to this place but we mean you no harm."
The man frowned. "California? New York? This is Colorado."
"What?" Nathan breathed with disbelief.
The confusion and surprise was mirrored on the others' faces as well and the soldier took their reactions in.
"The Arklay Mountains to be precise. Raccoon City used to be just a few miles from here," the man continued.
"Used to be?" Mohinder asked.
The soldier looked saddened for a moment before he quickly covered it with his tough face.
"Yeah, the government blew it up to cover what happened there."
Nathan didn't look like he wanted to believe such a thing. "What? What happened there to cause them to blow up an entire city? That's impossible."
The man smiled sadly. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
He searched each of them over one more time before lowering his weapon. He motioned for his teammates to do the same. They seemed reluctant to do so but followed their commander's orders. Turning back to look at the odd assortment of people gathered in the foyer, he introduced himself.
"My name is Chris Redfield and I'm with the Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance. These are my teammates David, Josh, Martin, and Ethan."
He pointed to each member in turn as he supplied their names. Chris turned his gaze on Danko who was eyeing him hostilely.
"What agency do you work for?" Chris asked him.
Danko stared at him. "What makes you think-"
"Your buddies in the back with the assault rifles for starters." Chris quipped.
"That's classified." Danko finally answered. "But I also hunt terrorists."
Chris took interest in this and asked him, "So then you know about the Uroboros virus?"
The blankness in his expression clearly gave Chris his answer.
"I would be very interested to know what you're all doing here but right now there isn't time. You should stay here as a group." Chris turned his gaze back to Danko. "You and your men should keep alert until my team and I return."
Bennet didn't seem keen on this plan. Apparently he didn't like staying in one place for very long wherever he was and he disregarded Chris's orders.
"No thank you. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm taking my daughter and getting back home. The door is right there and we'll find our own way back," he said to Chris.
Bennet started for the door, Claire trailing slowly behind him. She seemed reluctant to leave the others behind. One of the armed men was quick to step in front of the door, blocking their exit.
"Move out of the way." Bennet demanded sternly.
"You don't want to go out there." Chris informed him.
Bennet narrowed his eyes at the younger man. "And why not?"
"Skinless dogs," the one named Ethan answered for Chris.
As if to prove his point, he rolled up a sleeve to show them all a rather nasty looking dog bite on his forearm.
"Quick as hell and vicious bastards." Ethan added, pulling his sleeve back down.
Claire seemed curious. "Why would they attack you?"
Ethan answered her. "They used to be the guard dogs for this mansion. Then the T-Virus leaked and infected them. Damn dogs escaped from their cages and had their first taste of human flesh. Been eating it ever since cause it's the only food they got. These days they're especially hungry seeing as the only meat around here are the rotting zombie fucks and they don't taste very-"
"That's enough!" Chris yelled at him.
He could see that Claire was getting frightened by Ethan's talk.
"Zombies?" she asked slowly. "You're joking right? Those don't exist..." she trailed off uncertainly.
Chris looked sympathetically at her. "What's your name?"
She lifted her gaze to look up at him. "Claire."
This brought a smile to the agent's lips. "I have a sister named Claire. She's much older than you though but she was only 19 when she escaped Raccoon city. Claire was one of the few who did make it."
It was easy to see by the way Chris's face fell that he did not like talking about Raccoon City much but Claire just had to ask him.
"What happened there?"
Chris didn't seem to like the idea of answering her but all of the others in the room were now watching him intently, eager to know themselves. Even his teammates had never heard him tell the story and looked at him in anticipation of finally getting to hear it.
The man sighed and nodded. "Okay, I suppose you have a right to know since you're all in this mess somehow," he reasoned. "I should start from the beginning. Ten years ago I was a member of the STARS unit which stands for Special Tactics And Rescue Service. Strange murders had been occurring in the area just outside Raccoon City and the victims were apparently eaten."
He paused when several of his audience winced at this, Claire especially. He continued anyways.
"STARS was sent in to investigate the forest where most of the murders had taken place next to Raccoon City. Bravo team was sent in first but we lost contact with them so by helicopter Alpha team went in to investigate. I was a member of Alpha team along with Barry, Jill, Brad, Joseph, and Wesker. We found Bravo's helicopter had crashed in the middle of the forest and it was after that the nightmare began. The dogs got Joseph..they were just ripping him apart and eating him alive..I'll never forget the screams..Then our helicopter pilot Brad panicked and abandoned us, flying away before we could reach the chopper."
It was obvious to his listeners that as he told his story Chris was also reliving it and they knew he wasn't lying. The haunted look in his eyes told them all it was the truth.
He continued. "So we ran from the dogs, ran for our lives. We found this very mansion."
Chris suddenly chuckled but it was one full of irony. "We thought this mansion would be shelter for us. To protect us from those skinless abominations."
The man laughed again. "We were wrong. The mansion was a nightmare full of its own abominations. We were foolish and split up, thinking we could cover more ground as we searched for our missing comrades. We did find them..or at least the bodies."
Chris squinted, trying to think back for the details. "Kenneth was the first Bravo member discovered inside the mansion. Walked in a room to find a zombie feasting on his body. Richard was nearly dead of poisoning from being attacked by a giant infected snake, I made it to him in time but he was later eaten by an enormous shark."
His listeners were staring at him in stunned disbelief. Sharks? Giant snakes? In a mansion? As if zombies and skinless dogs weren't hard enough to believe in the first place.
"Forrest was pecked to death by infected crows and awoke as a zombie. I had to put him down. God..poor Forrest..." Chris trailed off.
Claire spoke softly to him. "You don't have to explain how your friends died if it's too painful."
Chris shook his head. "No, they deserve to be remembered." He went on with his tale. "As I searched the mansion on my end, I learned that this mansion was built by a man named George Trevor. But the mansion was actually a cover for something much bigger. A pharmaceutical company named Umbrella which was founded by a man named Oswell Spencer, had actually built underground laboratories here. The pharmaceutical company turned out to be nothing but a title to hide what Umbrella was really doing."
Mohinder seemed extremely interested now. "What? What were they doing here?"
Chris told him. "Experiments. They were trying to engineer bio-weapons. They were using something called the T-Virus and there was an accident. The T-Virus leaked and infected the workers who soon became zombies and they roamed all throughout the mansion, decaying, and with their sad soulless moans..but they weren't the worst of it. Many of their animal test subjects escaped from the cages, the ones I remember most were the hunters. I won't even tell you about how deadly they were..the name says it all. The one monster that I will never forget..was Lisa Trevor..she was human once. When the mansion was first built sometime in the 1960s, the architect, Trevor, accidentally discovered the underground laboratories and Spencer grew paranoid the man would expose their experiments. Spencer invited Trevor's wife and daughter to the mansion, Lisa was only 14 then...Spencer locked Trevor in a secluded room where he left the man to die. Then he used Trevor's wife and daughter as test subjects in their experiments. I had to kill that little girl. She'd become a hideous monster, living underground and killing..." He broke off where he was headed. "I'm sorry. I'm getting off subject."
No one said anything. They were all still reeling from the fact that this company had done so many horrible things. Infected people against their will, illegally testing things on animals and humans and then to have the virus leak like that... No one wanted to think about it. Even Sylar appeared a little disturbed about what Chris was telling them had happened ten years before.
Chris went on. "So I learned about Umbrella's experiments but I also learned something else. There was a traitor among the STARS. My captain, captain of the Alpha team, Albert Wesker, was working for Umbrella all along. He led our teams into the mansion on purpose. We were to be test subjects so Umbrella could see how their bio-weapons held up against trained soldiers."
The agent clenched his fists tightly as his face became filled with anger at the thought of the traitor.
"Wesker shot and killed Enrico, the captain of Bravo team because Enrico had learned of Wesker's betrayal. In the end the remaining survivors of my team headed for the helipad after finally making contact with our pilot Brad, who had returned to the area searching for us. Wesker woke up the sleeping human experiment labeled the Tyrant, to kill us but ended up being killed instead. Our team managed to kill the Tyrant and we escaped on the helicopter before the mansion blew up and don't ask me to explain how the mansion is here if it blew up because I have no idea, not in the slightest. Jill, Barry, and myself were the only ones from Alpha team to make it out and Rebecca was the sole survivor of Bravo team. Our pilot Brad survived as well obviously but..he didn't make it out of Raccoon City."
It seemed to pain Chris a great deal to be remembering all their deaths but he was definitely determined to give them all the facts.
"We tried to tell them, we tried to tell everyone what we'd seen in that mansion but no one believed us."
Chris shook his head angrily. "They called us crazy and suspended us from STARS. Our teammates had died in vain!"
The experienced soldier quickly regained his calm and finished his story.
"A few months later, Raccoon City was infected. The entire city's population became infected by the T-Virus. There were people who hadn't been infected or changed yet but they were killed by the ones who had turned into those zombie creatures. My teammates Jill and Brad were still in the city and they tried to escape while a creature named Nemesis tried to kill them. Nemesis was a monster created by Umbrella specifically designed to kill STARS. It got Brad but Jill managed to escape alive before the government blew the whole place all to hell. Or at least that's the story. Some believe it was Umbrella who nuked the city to cover up the fact that they had another facility underneath Raccoon city where they were experimenting with something called the G-Virus. So anyways, after the mansion incident and what happened in Raccoon City, myself and the other surviving members sought to expose Umbrella for what they had done. We finally succeeded but that victory was short lived. Once Umbrella saw they were going to be ruined, they sold their viruses on the black market to the highest bidder."
Chris shook his head. "A lot of evil bastards out there I guess."
Claire glanced at Sylar when Chris said this and Sylar took the insinuation to heart (not).
"Why Claire, I'm offended." Sylar said to her, his words coated with sarcasm.
"You're a murderer," she told him bluntly.
"I don't make them suffer..long." Sylar said as he smiled creepily.
Chris eyed him as if trying to read him before turning back to his story.
"I won't get into details with the rest of what's happened up until now but my captain from STARS, Wesker, he didn't actually die in that mansion incident. Well, he did die. The Tyrant killed him, I saw it myself. But apparently Wesker managed to inject himself with an experimental serum known as the progenitor virus before he died. The virus allowed him to resurrect and it also gave him superhuman abilities. This is the man I'm looking for. He's planning to infect the entire population of the world with a virus called Uroboros. Wesker's completely insane and extremely dangerous which is why you all need to stay here and-"
He didn't get to finish his sentence because suddenly the radio on his belt crackled to life.
"Chris?" a female's voice said from the radio.
"That's the other team on this mission, Delta team." Chris said to answer their curious gazes before responding on his two way radio.
"Sheva, this is Chris. What's the situation?"
"We've found how Wesker plans to disperse the virus. There's an airfield on this map I found and I'm bettin' he's going to use an aircraft. You can get to it through some sort of underground passageway in what looks like a large residential building."
The female voice on the radio had some sort of accent, Bennet guessed some African variation in origin most likely.
"Yeah it's a mansion. I'm there now."
"Roger that partner. We'll catch up with you-Randall look out!"
The radio went silent and looking alarmed, Chris tried to get a hold of her with no luck. After a few moments the radio crackled and the female voice came back on. When she spoke she sounded frightened and her breathing was fast and rough.
"Chris! What's going on around here? The people living in a small town nearby were trying to kill us. For no reason! There's something wrong with them. I don't understand."
"I know. We ran into some of them too. They're acting like those Ganado detailed in the Kennedy report."
"Oh God..you don't think that's happened here too, do you?"
"I don't know but we've got to find Wesker and stop him. Contact me when you make it to the mansion. I'm going to try and find the passageway to the airport."
"Roger that..and Chris?"
"Yeah Sheva?"
"I'm sorry about what happened to your last partner."
Chris's eyes flashed with pain and deep sorrow. He hesitated before responding.
"What happened to Jill wasn't your fault. We're partners now Sheva and I don't regret it, okay? Now focus on the mission or you'll get yourself killed."
"Right. We're partners to the end."
The radio went silent and Chris put it away. He turned back to everyone but didn't get anything out before a grinding noise sounded from behind the large staircase. A tall man with slicked back blonde hair and dressed entirely in black (black boots, black pants, black shirt, black gloves, a long black coat, and black sunglasses) came walking ever so arrogantly like, from a room none of them had noticed before. He didn't seem to take any notice of them at first, instead walking right past where Sylar, Danko, and his men were and heading for the stairs. He made it to the fourth or fifth step before Chris pulled himself out of his shock and shouted the man's name in anger.
"Wesker!"