The truck bed slammed, and the force of sound caused a clapping echo to bounce back from the mountainside near the temporary estate they'd been occupying for months now.
Eric Garza Levitow had been in Mexico since 2006 when the Mexican military began to intervene in the rising conflicts for the U.S. Border entries. At the time, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence and slow the productivity of the local and foreign cartel trade.
All it had done was provide more desperate and impoverished men the opportunity to be bought by the higher bidder and the highest bidder was always the drug trade. Thus, the cartel's influence grew in numbers and also in military power.
Garza stood watching the rest of the remaining men of Los Ántrax move up the driveway while he thought.
Jill had killed two of them back at the home they had invaded, and Garza wouldn't admit it out loud, but he wouldn't miss either of those men, or the one that El Chapo killed within the estate. He'd shed no tears over any of these men, but he'd keep up the farce until the job was done.
In its history, Los Ántrax was a gang that operated in the capital city of Culiacán, and in Sinaloa where its members conducted homicides and violent attacks for El Chapo. Led by a different man, all answered directly to El Chapo under strict contracts that had been in place for years. Los Antrax was the Sinaloa Cartel's largest and deadliest enforcer unit, and their skull symbol could be viewed at different places throughout the city streets.
A warning to those who would try and disrupt the territory. A promise of death that he had been carrying out for years now.
For them, he thought back toward his mission here and why he couldn't afford to balk now. However, where his purpose in this mission was one part of his history, an older one called out to him.
Garza's eyes turned from the garage entrance and settled toward the south side of the city.
Toward where they had left Jill Valentine hanging.
The military efforts of Mexico hadn't been enough to dissuade the greed that came along with poverty. One couldn't convince people to do the right thing when some of them had lived without basic necessities for so long. Honor, justice, and the pursuit of something larger meant nothing to the man whose belly was finally full.
"Garza," his superior's voice cut his focus back to the driveway and he met the dark stare of El Chino in the light of the early morning.
"Get the truck cleaned up; we're leaving in a few hours," Chino said while he watched him impassively.
Despite the void of his expression, Garza wasn't fooled. Chino hadn't trusted him in the span of four years, and it was that fact that kept Chino in higher regard than the boss still inside awaiting the details.
If Chino was smart, he'd never turn his back on him.
Because Garza wouldn't give him a second opportunity when it came time.
"Got it," he answered with ease. His voice betrayed nothing of his inner thoughts.
When the last sight of Chino had disappeared from view, Garza's hand touched the door handle of the truck while he looked south once more.
He hadn't known who they were dealing with once the video from the South American outpost had arrived at their door. Even the knowledge of it being a woman wouldn't have prepared him for the detail that would stare out at him on that lonely stretch of road when they had pulled over Carlos Oliveira's truck.
After the meeting in Ayacucho, Peru, Chino had seemed more on edge as he reported the severity of Valeria Rhamnusia to the rest of his men. But even men like Chino wouldn't have known a danger like her—Like Jill Valentine.
Once in the truck, Garza threw the gear into reverse before he began to pull towards the backend where the sheds lay. Tucked into the fitted pocket of his bulletproof vest, his fingers slid over the earpiece that lay within. Eyes darted up toward the rear-view mirror before he put the device in.
Immediately, the clicking sound of a call connecting reached his ears.
"Garza," the melodic male voice greeted him.
"Need information," he said softly while he pulled the truck up to the hoses connected to the side of the house.
"On?" the voice beckoned.
"Jill Valentine. Survivor of Raccoon City." Garza put the car in the park and waited.
A deep silence came from the other side of the line, and he resisted the urge to touch the device in his ear. Had the call disconnected?
"Where did you hear that name?" The normally serene voice was sharp as he'd ever heard it before.
Garza's eyes narrowed before he opened his mouth to speak. He paused around the words—around the history he'd never speak of, and he once again looked south.
"I'd know that name anywhere," Garza spoke so softly he was uncertain the man on the other end heard it.
Day 7: Freedom
When she became aware of the clinking sounds around her, she also became aware of the voice she heard murmuring to her while fingers pressed to her skin in different places.
She'd been here before—In the in between of life and death. A grasping tether to life she hadn't bargained for but was still granted by the hand of someone else.
Truth be told, she believed herself to be there again, with the towering blonde tyrant just beyond the eyes she couldn't seem to open. Trapped again by the crawling skin that wanted to shutter away from his clinical touch. A prison of history in her that wanted to cry out to the captain she used to trust.
"Wesk—" she tried.
She'd tried to speak a few times now, but the air came through wrong in her throat and the hacks that followed caused moans to follow.
Fingers on her neck, a palm to her forehead, soft murmurs in a cadence she didn't recognize; a mercy she couldn't answer.
For days or hours, her eyes refused to open, and the leftover portions of the world were in fragments that came and went.
When she finally managed to open her eyes, a bright light caused her to squint at the faded tan sheet that fluttered back and forth over an open window.
A shadow passed before it and the dim figure moved toward her. Her hand moved on its own accord and caught the arm reaching over her.
"Is she awake?" a feminine voice called from somewhere in the room.
Jill's brows scrunched in confusion as she tried to blink her swollen eyes.
"I'm not sure," the strong male voice said above her. "Hey—" He was speaking to her now, his arm frozen under her strong grip. "You're okay. I'm watching over you. What's your name?" The Spanish accent was strong and of a city dialect.
"Ji—" Another round of coughs. "Jill."
There was a pause in the man who she couldn't make out yet. With uncertainty slinging through her, she released the arm before he finally said, "Rest, Jill. You're safe until nighttime."
What happens at night? She found herself wondering before she fell back into whatever she lay on.
Whatever it was, she knew one thing.
It was nice to hear her name again.
Consciousness and dreams were heard to discern from as the memories blended in with the tinkering sounds of her environment. Portions of her body would jerk every now and then and if she was on the upper half of consciousness, she could sometimes hear a soft gasp from somewhere near her.
"She shouldn't be here—" the feminine voice from before hissed softly sometime later.
"Mel, enough," the male voice answered before a pot clanked from beyond.
"They're going to find her here and then we're going to be dead—" The pot slammed downwards and cut the girl off from one thought before she moved to another. "She should be dead! It's not right—you know that, papa—Look at her wounds! They're closing!"
"Mictēcacihuātl," the man said quietly in response while feet shuffled over the wooden floors that creaked. "Lady of the dead. She heals and she will rise."
Even in her half state, Jill thought that may be the best description of her yet. Wherever she went in the last decade, death seemed to follow but it never seemed to take her with it.
When Jill finally opened her eyes again, the cracked-looking ceiling of the home she now occupied came into view first. Her head was tilted backwards and when she tried to lower it, the pain rippled up through her skin and woke her up further.
"Hey—" the girl uttered with the rustling of fabric announcing her movement in Jill's ears.
When she managed to sit up, the two tan faces of a young girl in her late teens and an elderly man stood watching her with anxiety in their eyes.
Not knowing how to put them at ease as she swallowed the pain from her injuries, she whispered, "Thank you." Her hand rose to her neck and felt the barely scabbed portions of healing skin. "Thank you for cutting me down."
"We didn't cut you down," the man said as he reached for an armchair to his left without taking his eyes from her. He sat down carefully before he continued. "I found you in the river." He gestured toward one of the walls, toward whatever direction she came floating from. "I couldn't leave you there, I saw your neck—" the man cut himself off and covered his mouth before he looked away.
"Who are you?" the girl asked while stepping in front of the man as if to protect him from his actions.
"I was taken by the cartel." Jill decided the truth was better at this moment. "I wouldn't kill for them."
The old man nodded quietly with a look crossing his features.
"So, they killed you instead," the girl finished while her eyes dropped down to Jill's throat. "Or tried to."
"Or tried to," Jill parroted with a crossing look of anger passing her features.
The clap of gunfire interrupted them, and Jill whipped her head toward the window with the blanket hanging over it. The pain from her neck was immense but she swallowed a scream after the action.
"It starts at night," the man said, drawing her attention once more.
"What does?" she inquired before she winced at the pain that twanged in her throat.
"The ongoing war," the man continued, watching her carefully. "War lives in our streets every day, but they strike most at night." The older man dropped his eyes to Jill's wounded form before he turned toward the girl and continued, "Get her cleaned up, she looks like she could fit your clothes."
"Papa!" The girl's voice was pure admonishment and Jill felt those titles circling her mind once more.
Forastera.
"It's alright," Jill uttered as she made it to her feet.
The older man cried out as he too made to stand to try and help her.
"Your wounds," the girl spoke, fear clear across her petite features. "They close on their own."
"They do." Jill kept her eyes locked with hers. "I mean you no harm." She looked at the old man. "Either of you. I just need to know where the border is."
"Which one? The U.S. Border?" the girl asked.
"No," Jill said softly before she smiled. "The Guatemala–Mexico border."
"You'll never make it," the man said with his hands wrenching. "At least not right now. You can't go out there."
"Come here," the girl finally said before she turned for a narrow hallway with colored beads hanging over the hallway. "If you're going to go, you need to clean up and put on shoes."
With one last look into the terrified eyes of the man before her, Jill turned to follow the girl when she gave the man her back.
How could she explain what she was and what she still had to do?
She'd make it back to Carlos or she wouldn't, but either way, there wasn't a force that could stop her from finding the men back at the estate.
From the justice that was coming for them all.
The shower was lukewarm, but it didn't stop the tears of gratitude from filling her eyes while Jill ran her hands over the scar-wrought body she possessed; bruises of all shapes and sizes lined her skin. The gunshot wounds weren't as bad as it could have been and when she dug the remaining bullet out with shaking fingers, she wept while she watched her abnormal body begin to close the wound behind it.
The clothes the young girl had given her didn't fit perfectly, but the black jeans and black long-sleeved shirt would help hide her in the darkness. The shoes the girl had provided also didn't fit but when the man came out with military boots that were too small for his feet, Jill saw the wounds in his eyes.
"Who's were these?" Jill had dared to ask.
"My son's," the man said in such a harrowing voice that she turned her eyes away before she took the two pairs of socks the girl had given her. The boots were too big, but they'd do for now.
"Thank you." Clean once more, her hair was swept back in her customary low ponytail.
Something about the shower and the fresh clothes did something for the hope in her chest, and she thought the two generous people in front of her could see it while they stared at her—at her neck that was a line of fresh scar tissue now.
Her voice was a permanent rasp and Jill wasn't sure if that would entirely go away or not.
More gunshots rented the air and this time it was on the street just outside of the window. Screams echoed out from another home and Jill watched from her peripheral as the older man got down near the side of his chair while the girl ran to turn off their lights.
Jill remained standing.
"Get down," the older man hissed with panic in his features.
Tilting her head toward the man, she turned before she squatted down beside him and reached for his hand. The man jerked slightly at her touch—at the touch of a monster he couldn't name—but Jill hid it in the silo she possessed.
"Whatever you hear," Jill said softly before she glanced over at the girl. "Don't come outside."
"Don't!" the old man pleaded when she stood and moved for the door.
A coat rack was nailed to the wall near their front door, and she paused when she noted the black poncho hanging there. Fingers were curling into the fabric before she took it down and quickly shrugged the garment on. When the hood came up and over her head, she turned to look at the two people who had offered her shelter and she took a deep breath.
The air in Mexico was still muggy from the hot days that would eventually turn a bit cooler in the coming weeks. Car headlights down the way lit the trash lined street on what appeared to be the outskirts of the homes near the U.S. Texas Border.
Shouting voices in Spanish drew her further. The screams brought her to a run.
The man in the truck didn't see her coming when her hands came up and brought him out of the cab with the quick snap of his wrist. Her elbow into his windpipe choked out the words of warning she assumed he was going to make in his next breath. The gun he'd been holding was a Beretta M9, and she checked the weapon over with a quick work of her skilled fingers before she made her way toward the screams.
In the house, a man was held on his knees while several more men stood around him with their guns to his head. The words they screamed mattered not to Jill when her eyes took in the crying woman who was currently fighting off one attacker while she lay on the kitchen floor.
Something on the stove was burning.
A child who was no more than four years old screamed in the corner.
Her hand twitched and the slumbering creature that was her wrath opened its eyes in her chest once more.
She felt no remorse when the first man fell from the neck she snapped. Their screams echoed out from the house while Jill worked through them as nothing more than a blur in a poncho.
Honed for the fight, her captain had taught her well.
A killing machine personified, she danced through the space and allotted the evil of man no time to consider their options. When one of the last of the men fell, she nearly laughed when one tried to flee.
"Do you know what you were before I found you, Ms. Valentine?" Wesker's voice called out in her mind when she caught the last, fleeing man. "One from whom there is no escape from. What you are now, is only evidence of your transcendence."
When Jill returned to the house of the man and the girl that had saved her, the old man clutched his last surviving child when Jill pushed open the front door.
The blood on her boots—on the man's son's boots—was a dishonor she wouldn't return to him, but Jill set two guns down on the floor of the home while she remained on the threshold.
She wouldn't sully their home with her actions, but she would repay the debt.
"Protect yourselves," Jill bade quietly from beneath her hood. "Don't let them take the one you have left."
She didn't express the full thought, but when her head turned toward the girl, the man seemed to understand fully before he nodded and took the guns from the floor.
When he rose back to his full height with the guns in his hands, Jill watched those fingers tighten over the weapons.
"I will," the man said quietly.
"What's your name?" Jill asked before she took a step back.
Back toward what lay next for her.
"Joseph," he said. "Joseph Salamanca."
She would memorize their faces and she'd never forget the kindness they showed while their very lives were in the balance.
"Protect what is yours, Joseph." Her boots crunched over the rocks in his front lawn in her departure.
"Mictēcacihuātl," she heard Joseph whisper the title again from the doorway. "She who swallows the stars during the day."
The truck was decently stocked when Jill fished the keys from one of the bodies. The whispers of the family she had saved reached her ears and when she looked, the faces of the man and woman looked on at her from their doorway now too.
Voices from all around were rising, and Jill paused to see the people now standing in the street. The faces of those who had been tormented in their very homes.
The woman who had been beaten on her kitchen floor previously was near the truck now and she was praying. Through the bloody lips of the survivor, the woman blessed Jill while she clutched something in her fingers.
Jill could still hear the prayers even after she drove away.
"Help her to be strong in the Sun with a firm fist. Let it be soon, O my jaguar mat, you who lie opening your mouth toward the four directions. You who are very thirsty and also hungry. The one who is vengeance is coming."
The men of Los Ántrax had made a mistake when they hadn't assured her death. Many in fact.
One of them was allowing her to observe the drive from the estate and into the city.
The blood from her hands was drying on the steering wheel when Jill pulled the truck toward the hills that surrounded the estate. The stars and moon above were her guiding light when she killed the headlights and pulled the truck to a gentle stop a mile from the home.
With the handgun in the back of the black jeans the girl had given her, Jill Valentine utilized her knowledge of infiltration when she crept quietly through the terrain and made her way toward the glowing lights of the home.
The hilt of the knife had grown warm in her wrathful hands when she located the power box near the northern side of the estate. The cameras surrounding the property were of decent stock, but they had been so very easy for her to put out of commission.
There wasn't any movement from the home while Jill worked through the cameras, but the shouts were something that made her smile when she finally cut the power to the home.
The men of the warehouse had taken what was hers, and they paid for it in blood when she found the bodies of the children they slew.
The men of the estate hadn't taken anything from her but her choices.
And they would pay for that too.
The second story window was simple for her to scale, and she did so without a noise disturbing the chirping crickets surrounding the home.
El Chapo was shouting from somewhere in the house and that wrathful creature in Jill's chest opened its mouth at the fear she heard in his timbre.
Six of the men were in the main room she had occupied previously when Jill took the first step inside. Her knife flew from her hand and one of the men dropped. Before his body could fully hit the floor, Jill did a series of flips before the gunshots disturbed the peace of the surrounding hills of the tucked away space near the estate.
There was something becoming abundantly clear to her when she kicked off the fireplace mantle and planted her feet into the vest of one of the men. A twist of her thighs around his neck had the cartilage giving before she landed resolutely on her feet.
She'd never be able to go back after this.
Back home to America. Even if she wanted to, she had taken to killing simple men and this wasn't honor bound as it had been for the military.
This was something much more different and justifying it as just something for the citizens of Mexico would have been a lie.
She would kill all of them to protect Carlos.
To protect that village and to protect what was hers.
Four of the six men were down when Jill turned to meet the gaze of Chino and Garza standing beside El Chapo.
The gunshot to her abdomen was blocked by the bulletproof vest she had taken from a body in the city street. The wound to her thigh hurt but still she moved forward in fast strides.
Had there been someone there who could have attested to what she became, they would have told her whom she looked like. The laughing image of her captain flashed through her mind when she smirked from beneath her hood.
Chino fired off two more shots and finally Jill could see the fear in his eyes when she tore the weapon from his grasp and struck him to the floor with cartilage that crunched beneath her wrath.
He had no more leverage over her now.
None of them did.
"What are you?" El Chapo stood behind Garza now. His terrified voice rising above the cries of pain beneath her boot.
Little did she know, she was a sight to see for the two men before her. The blood on the visible portions of her skin was a mixture of hers and the men she had slain this night.
She would give them them what they feared.
"Shoot her!" Chino's voice bubbled wetly from the blood now pouring from his mouth.
Never again, her mind raged when she put her boot on Chino's chest.
Never again would she be a slave.
Never again would she be someone's puppet.
Never again would she fail to protect what was hers.
Never again, never again, never again.
The glimmering object caught her eye to her direct right, and her fist was clamping over the jeweled sword she had seen on her first night in the estate.
"Shoot her, Garza!" Chino's fingers slipped against her boot as he tried to push her weight off.
"These are your last words," Jill seethed the words back at Chino with the blade hovering over his neck. "Make them worth the wait."
"You bitch—"
The blade slammed home through the neck of the man who had owned her spirit last and the thunk of the blade meeting the wooden floor beneath rang out with his last bidden word.
Chino's hand fell away when she yanked the sword out and held it out at her side in a death warrant while she stepped toward Garza and El Chapo who now remained.
The doughy features of El Chapo twisted in fear and Jill watched when he spun toward the hallway to flee.
"You knew my name." Jill tilted her head and considered the last man standing.
Garza hadn't let the men of the boat rape her.
He had spoken with her, tried to shield her modesty, and when he beheld those scars on her back in the showers, she believed she saw the real man beneath.
He carried her gently when Chino had beaten her in the dinner hall.
And when she broke last as they dragged her from the truck, he had called her back from the edge of hysteria.
Called her name like no one in the country could.
"My wife…" Garza's gun was at his side, and he hadn't lifted it the entire time. "And I were from Raccoon City. She worked in marketing for the Umbrella Corporation." His throat bobbed.
She paused her approaching steps.
"She was just a grunt who helped create advertisements for an evil none of us knew. I had been away on business—I was always away on business." His eyes shuttered before he looked down at the bloody sword in her hand. "She died there when they nuked that city. When our government failed to stop what they knew was happening. I saw your name with a few others when it was over. You committed your life to fighting bioterrorism and you fought for victims like my wife in court until Umbrella was destroyed."
The sword lowered at her side and Jill knew her seconds were ticking to capture the man who required death last.
For one moment she took in Garza who knew the loss of the shared city before her.
Then she moved. Moved around Garza before her hand touched his shoulder when she passed. A kindness and a mercy between them both.
"Don't interfere, Garza," she spoke before she was bounding down the hall and toward the garage mechanism she could hear opening.
When Jill stepped out into the garage it was nearly all the way open while the frightened face of El Chapo looked up at her from behind the steering wheel.
The shots she dispatched hit the tires of the vehicle before Jill smashed the driver's side window. The engine gunned but the frightened man before her hadn't put it into gear.
"Get out," she hissed with the gun in one hand and the sword in the other. "You'll die on your feet, and it will be the only mercy I allot you!"
The crickets outside of the estate went quiet at her command.
As if they knew too; knew the message beneath her promise.
Never again.
It echoed through the land while the now sobbing man slid from the vehicle with his hands up. Jill heard him speaking but she wasn't paying attention when she lowered the gun and lifted the sword to point at his chest.
"Stop," a voice ordered behind her.
A glance over her shoulder showed Jill a new man.
One she had seen before.
The same man who had been smoking a cigar while he had stood on the second floor on her first night in the estate.
"I was wondering when you'd show yourself," she called while she kept El Chapo in place with the point of her weapons.
"And why is that?" This new man's voice was smooth. He held no weapons in either hand.
"Because whoever you are, you're in charge," she stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Correct," he stated simply. "Come back inside, Rhamnusia. We should talk."
"I find that I am out of words as of late," she bid in a single breath.
"Find them." His tone reminded her of Wesker before he turned back into the house. "Your little village in South America depends on it."
Gritting her teeth, Jill jerked her head at El Chapo and stepped back to allow him to pass. The world-renowned drug distributor looked less than human while she tracked his shaking form with her eyes.
She couldn't tell who he feared more.
His boss or death.
El Chapo didn't take his eyes from Jill when he passed. From the wounds that bleed freely from the gunshots to her leg and her arm. When Jill bared her teeth in the heat living in her expression he turned his head forward.
The new man was stepping over the bodies of his men when Jill entered back into the main room with El Chapo in front of her. The man lit his cigar once more and smoke lifted from the sides of his lips while he watched her from his position near the fireplace.
"Sit," he commanded.
"Speak," Jill countered. "You're on my terms now."
"Very well," he said simply. "How this turns out depends entirely on you."
"You have no more bargaining chips with me anymore." Jill turned her eyes down toward the fallen men. Garza was missing from the room.
"Not even if I told you I'd pull my operations out of South America?" he asked before he snapped a finger at El Chapo and pointed to a chair. The infamous drug lord did as beckoned and was silent except for the shuttered breathing he bid.
"Who the hell are you?" Jill asked.
"Ismael Mario Zambada García." The name rolled from his tongue before he took another puff from his cigar. "They called me El Mayo, but I don't care for the name."
"Your word is worthless to me, El Mayo," Jill laid the words before him while she waited.
"I can understand," Ismael declared thickly around the smoke. "However, my orders are resolute should I give them. I will pull my operations from the country, but I cannot control those who remain and believe me, Rhamnusia, they will take the opportunity."
"Why would you make the offer?" She grabbed the sheath for the sword on the wall and placed the weapon back in its place before she hooked it through her belt loop.
"Until they find a cure for human nature," Ismael said while he watched her work the blade into place. "A man must stand with his people."
"Curious statement from a man who profits from the misery of others," Jill said as she walked toward the side. Never allowing either of them from her sight.
"Why do you fight so hard for the Bolivians? The South Americans?" Ismael asked while he watched her walk.
"You tortured my people," she answered instead as she paused her steps, and pulled the handgun from her jeans once more.
"They're not your people," El Chapo said, speaking up finally.
"You tortured my people." Her voice was a rising wave in the night. "You allowed the capture and sale of children." A righteous anger with no beginning or end. "And you transport the people you take like animals in the heat before you force them into a new reality." Eyes that burned like a dark star. "Peonage, forced labor, and involuntary servitude are only the beginning of your crimes."
"You wouldn't understand. Didn't you get a taste of the free land, American?" Ismael asked, ignoring her truth. "Away from your country's laws and jurisdictions? You are the very symbol for what we cultivate here. Instinct that returns to man when we embrace the rules of survival."
"You didn't seek me out for the freedom of the spirit," she retorted with malice. "And I am no man."
"You're right." He tilted his head at her. "But you do have the instinct…and something more." His eyes went to her wounds that no longer bled.
"What's to stop me from killing you both here and eradicating the problem you so graciously offer in exchange?" Her hand twitched at her side.
"Killing us won't stop the operations." Ismael gestured toward a window—toward the city she had just come from. "It is much bigger than you think. Through many different parts of Mexico my word reigns, however, there is always someone to take my place and they will, Rhamnusia."
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"Simply this…" Smoke leaked from his mouth when he smiled with his teeth. "Let us go."
The handgun lifted and the bullet through El Chapo's head was a justice Jill felt no guilt for.
"You may go," she breathed when El Chapo's body fell from the chair. Ismael screamed when the next round found its home in his leg.
"Know this, El Mayo…" She stood over him when he fell to one knee. His eyes were angry when they turned up toward her voice. "You will keep your word and remove yourselves from South America. Anyone else who comes to that village will meet the same fate as the rest of your men. If you decide to come for us—if any of you decide to come for us, I will be waiting."
The gun lowered and Jill found herself still clutching the sword when she slid into the driver's seat of the truck a few minutes later.
Dust kicked up from behind the vehicle when she began to drive.
She would return to the city to grab supplies and then she would go home.
…
If only it had been that simple.
The overhead ceiling fan in Detective Diego Reyes' office squeaked on every fifth rotation and he was beginning to fantasize how to dismantle it when a soft rapping on his office door caught his attention.
The newspaper in his hand slid from his fingers and onto the reports he had received only a few short hours ago when he had woken from the nap he took on his office couch.
"Come in," he beckoned in a dry voice that never seemed to change cadence anymore.
When the door to the Chihuahua State Police Detective's office opened, one of the biggest men Detective Reyes had ever seen pushed through the threshold.
"You Detective Reyes?" the man asked in English as he stepped into the office.
"Says so on the door," Reyes answered as he leaned back in his chair, not bothering to stand for the American.
"So it does." The American shut the door behind him, and it was the winter-colored gaze that the Detective tracked next.
The department had notified him yesterday of the liaison that would be traveling across the border to aid in his investigation. The credentials had been strange and weren't from a sector he knew well of from the United States allies he'd worked with previously.
Even more so, the nature of the assistance had confused the Detective.
Most investigations involving the two countries were complicated by the rampant corruption and general apathy among the Mexican authorities and the violence of the powerful borderland drug cartels. American politics played their hand in most assistance and the detective found he didn't have much of a stomach to play the game that often came with American agents tracking fugitives across the border.
Although, the last few days had been an anomaly that had the potential to make him reconsider.
Which is why the American stood before him now.
"Are you aware of what's going on in this city?" Detective Reyes waved toward one of the chairs in front of the desk. "Of the war that's been ongoing?" His tone was a bored drawl before he lit a cigarette and blew the smoke to the side.
"1993, Drug lord Amado Fuentes, known as "The Lord of the Skies" used airliners full of Colombian cocaine to fly into Mexico, took control of the Juarez cartel in the city, and smuggled tonnes of narcotics over the border deep into the United States," the American answered.
Detective Reyes' hand paused as he went to dump his ash.
"1994, Mexico joined the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada and opened hundreds of factories in Ciudad Juarez as an export boomed. The city's population jumped as workers from across Mexico sought jobs, but many new arrivals were unable to find work and were then sucked into the drug trade," the American continued before he took a seat in the chair that creaked beneath his weight. "You'll find, detective, that I am very well informed as of late."
Detective Reyes inhaled the stale air of his office deeply while the cigarette burned slowly in the hand that now perched itself on his desk.
"For years," Detective Reyes finally started. "This war has been waged for the land and for the right to seize control of the corridor into the United States. My citizens die every day in the name of greed." The hand holding the cigarette gestured to the many reports in front of him. "And they all have names."
The American agent was quiet when the detective stamped out his butt and reached for the reports.
"The most truthful response came not from the book pages in the press but from real incidents in the streets. The girl who was quietly reading to her companion on a bus in Partido Romero, and finally stood up and read it aloud to all the passengers before she was shot in the face for speaking against the conflict." Her autopsy picture was tossed down in front of the man sitting across from him. "The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of the Ignacio Allende bloodbath with her children in tow." Another picture tossed. "They don't let people review what I write in my reports anymore because I write what I see, American, and what I see is death."
"You've been seeing something new as of late." The American hadn't glanced down at the photos, but instead kept his eyes on Reyes'.
"Yes," Detective Reyes confirmed when his fingers touched the newspaper he had been reading not too long ago. "The bodies haven't stopped arriving, but now…"
"Now, justice had found a way into your streets," the man with grey-blue storming eyes leaned forward as he spoke. His strong jaw seemed like a force that never stopped clenching.
"And why does your agency have interest in her?" The newspaper was the last thing Reyes set down between them both.
"They don't but I do." The American stood.
"You'll never reach her if she's still alive," Detective Reyes said as he stood too. "Our department has pulled our units for the area. The gun fight has lasted two days, and the death toll is mounting."
"She hasn't killed your officers," the American pointed out.
"No," Detective Reyes agreed quietly. "No, whomever she is, she…"
"Is saving them," the other man finished. "I won't take up any more of your time, detective."
"Redfield," Detective Reyes called before the man could reach the door. He hadn't thought to address him properly before, but a begrudging respect was building. "Who is this woman?"
Christopher Redfield of the United States Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance glanced at him once more before he said, "She's someone you don't want to hunt."
"I'd rather offer her a job," Reyes muttered. "They call her Mictēcacihuātl on the streets. The reports claim that…" The detective shook his head and pushed the tall tales from his mind.
From the woman he had met only a day before.
When he told Agent Redfield the address she could mostly be found in, he found his gut rolling with the possibilities that the American may find in his tour of the land. He'd stick out like a sore thumb. However, as the detective watched the American turn without another word, his eyes glanced down at the woman on the front of the newspaper once more.
The woman of death, they called her. The one who didn't die.
It would be one he'd never forget.
The ceiling fan squeaked above him once more, and the detective found himself moving for his gun holsters before he made to follow the American agent out.
Day 9
What Jill Valentine observed in the two hours of touring Juárez was not entirely what she expected.
If her previous experiences with the cartel members had fortified anything, it was expecting charred buildings, soldiers with automatic weapons everywhere, empty streets, and people skulking around in fear.
To be sure, there were signs of danger — and a fair number of automatic weapons. Areas once shining with the glitz of fancy restaurants and clubs fat with the cash of tourists who came to enjoy the famous nightlife were deserted.
Homes in the ritziest neighborhoods sat empty and were listed for sale. Both were the economic side effects of the drug war but in many parts of Juárez, there were also people determined to remain. To do their best to live in their homes as normally as possible; almost thumbing their noses at the cartels who ruthlessly ruled this place.
When her stolen truck pulled up to the curb of a local store, she had the mind to get in and out as quickly as possible. Planning to obtain enough food and water to last her through the dangerous drive, she would need to get toward the South American border as quickly as possible.
Although she did not have her passport, or any of her necessary documents, she did have names. Names with power in the resistance. Not entirely sure how it could be pulled off exactly, Jill's mind centered on Carlos and Tatianna Rani.
A shout had drawn her attention and before she could even reach for the grocery store's door handle, the glass in the window before her shattered as a round tore through it.
Diving in front of her truck parked near the sidewalk, Jill ignored the screams that began to rise around her as more rounds slammed into the backend of the vehicle. Shouted orders from voices she couldn't discern were rising along with the screams.
It seemed that one of the cartels had spotted her.
Whether it was the Sinaloa Cartel, or the local one for Juarez, she couldn't be sure, but at a point it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
The running forms of Juarez's citizens were rushing through the street around the truck's grill she crouched behind. When she turned her head and took in some of the fresh bodies that lay in the street, that was when Jill understood that the cartel didn't care much for who they hit in the altercations.
The fallen form of an older woman was closest to Jill when her eyes locked with the gasping woman's gaze. A pool of blood had begun to form around her, and in the panic of the crowd's wake, no one took the time to stop and grab the woman from the fray.
At the clatter of boots approaching, Jill kept her eyes locked with the woman's as she reached into her poncho and took out the handgun. Her jaw was set when she leaned out finally and began to return fire at the approaching men.
When the shadows began to grow long, the numbers of bodies in the street would begin to grow longer. With the stolen blade as her secondary ruling, Jill Valentine fought through old streets and became the names she was given.
The Rhamnusia.
Mictēcacihuātl.
Outsider. Stranger. Foreigner. Forastera.
In 1998 she had been introduced to the evil men created in their labs. In 2006 she had endured what a betrayal looked like at the deepest level, but over the course of the last few weeks, she thought this may be the worst of them all.
The citizens of Juarez remained untouched by her. Terrified upturned faces met Jill's sight, and her justice remained for the men who killed without reason. For the men who could not be reasoned with.
When the evening found the tip of her blade at a countless throat, the flash of a camera bulb caught her eye, and she glanced from beneath her hood to see someone duck back into a shot-out shop. The red lights of the club behind her only made the blood in the street more iridescent, but still her wrath wasn't complete.
It was then she noticed she was being followed. A figure that kept out of sight but not out of her notice. Whomever it was didn't interfere as she engaged with the next streets. They became an awareness alongside her growing exhaustion. A companion to her loneliness that she allowed to shadow the actions she wasn't sure she'd escape with.
A quiet moment found her walking quietly up behind a man that hid in an alley in between two homes she had been fighting nearby. The street was still for the moment, but it wouldn't stay that way.
The man held a gun he held loosely in his hand, his slicked back hair slightly mussed from the running he had been doing to keep up with her.
The badge at his hip gave her pause and Jill's hand slid away from the sword hilt tucked into her belt still.
The local authorities had stopped responding to this neighborhood at some point in the history. It wasn't a tactic that she could say she knew all too well. Even in America, police officers were still charged with responding to the areas they could. However, in higher crime rated cities, there could also be a scenario in which there would be more crime than units that could respond.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Detroit, Michigan had been prime examples of this.
However, that wasn't the case in Juarez, Mexico.
The police weren't responding to this particular part of the city; Jill hadn't seen one in hours now.
"They will kill you," she said as a way of greeting, her voice rasping around the deep scar of her throat.
The man, a detective or a task force agent from what she could tell, whipped toward her with his gun half raised.
The buzzing back alley light would highlight her many wounds. The bullet holes in her skin, and the blood-stained fingers she had used to yank the lead out before her body would begin to slowly heal it.
The bloody stands of pale hair that poked out from her hood, and the unsmiling mouth she knew she wore like a curse now.
The gun lowered when the plain-clothed officer said, "Who are you?"
As a response, Jill simply shook her head and looked toward the right side of the alley when she could hear the further approach of vehicles.
"The cartel run from you," the officer continued in front of her before Jill looked back toward him. "You're fighting them. Why?"
"I find the reasons don't matter so much anymore," Jill finally spoke before she began to walk toward him.
His wavering gun vibrated in her hand when she placed it on top of the slide and lowered it for him when she passed.
"Now it's more about what is just and not so much about what is the law." She walked toward where she heard the engines roaring closer.
"Are you going to tell me the difference, Mictēcacihuātl?" he asked, behind her now.
"Me." Jill drew her gun and pulled out the sword once more. "That's the difference. Go back to your precinct, officer."
She would walk the last of the wasteland that had become her reality; a truth disintegrating within her.
A story incomplete.
The hours would stretch her further than the miles she currently was from home. No matter what tactics she tried, Jill could do nothing but seek new ground as more and more men came to contend with the wrath that was the war in the streets.
After the first 24 hours, desperation found her running toward a two-story home on one side of a small bridge. The area in the east was completely cut off by a rock range that led into an industrial zone. In the west, an overhanging balcony was her area of operations while she kept a newly acquired sniper rifle positioned off the railing.
By the second day of defending her position, Jill was running out of bodies to scavenge, and the ammunition was becoming low. It was then she knew they would have her in a matter of hours.
The bottom portion to the building had been barricaded decently; she'd be able to funnel them through the stairwell when it came down to the last bullets.
It was the exhaustion that may end up taking her first.
The hallucinations too.
Somewhere in the 40th hour of intense focus, Jill had begun to see movement at the corner of her eye when she pulled back from the sniper rifle's scope.
A smattering of black with a bit of blond.
"So, you've made it this far, Valentine. Too bad you won't make it much further." When she would turn her head, the captain was gone.
Another round tore through the leg of a man who had begun to dash across the bridge towards her position. The sunlight shimmered around the edges of the scope, and she blinked hard as she let out a hissing breath for herself to focus.
"A journey at its end," Wesker's voice sounded off once more. "You could have run and yet you stayed here to protect these people who do not belong to you."
"Shut up!" she hissed as she reloaded the mighty weapon in her shaking hands.
"But no one belongs to you, do they, dear?" Lips at her ear like he had done so in the past. While she lay strapped to that table. "Untethered as you were. You were falling long before you took me out the window with you."
A commotion near the far end of the bridge had Jill squinting while she listened to the echo of her consciousness fade into disorder.
"You belong to me, Jill, and I think you always have." A familiar slope of shoulders appeared around one of the buildings and Jill snapped the scope closer to her eye. "Are you listening to me?"
Another concussive round of shots beckoned into the atmosphere, but the shots weren't aimed at her this time.
It was at the new figure running across the bridge.
"Christopher," she uttered.
"Another one of your hallucinations, hm? You were always prone to them," Wesker bade in her mind.
"No!" she uttered and lifted the scope.
The crosshairs lingered on his chest; on that face she knew so well.
"Yes."
His movements, despite his size, were still graceful as he moved in and out of cover before returning fire. The steady hand that lifted to his earpiece and lips that moved in the harsh orders that she was the most familiar with.
Her finger froze on the trigger as she watched him sling himself over a hastily made barricade, pivot on his heel, and use that legendary aim of his to put down a man that had been leaned out of one of the windows in the west.
"Christopher..." The sniper rifle clatters to the floor, and Jill can't stop the shake in her battered form as she limped toward the doorway that would take her back into the house.
More than anything, she needs Chris Redfield to be real. To be real as he studies her with that gaze that's been her only real constant for over a decade.
As Jill stumbled down the stairs, she can hear the memory of the helicopter blades the night they escaped the Spencer Mansion in 1998. When her head rested on his shoulder.
Her sore body impacts the wall in her haste when she recalled herself searching through the cruise ship with Parker Luciani.
The door to her makeshift compound shutters as something beyond it rams into the frame when she remembers again his voice calling out to her in Africa.
When the last of the debris is pulled from the door, the sight of winter eyes is upon hers once more.
She can't remember ever having seen a more welcome sight.
It takes him longer than she would have liked to make his way to her. Chris' mouth is working but no sound comes out as she watched him process what is her current state before him.
Jill stood still in the black clothes the young girl had given her two days ago. Multiple holes, and dried blood mark the portions of skin that can be seen through the ruined fabric. Most of her injuries are in a half-state of repair. Her exhaustion and lack of food was more than likely slowing down what her body could now do.
But where his eyes lingered the most was on the scars of her neck that she knew he could see in the sparse light.
Still, even as she stood there and took in the sharp and familiar scent of his sweat and natural musk she knows so well, she's afraid that he won't be real. That she'll reach out to touch him, and she'll find him disappearing along with Wesker.
The gunfire outside of the doors continues on, but as Jill takes the last step toward him, her hand touches his shoulder and when he doesn't disappear, the first sob rips from her throat.
Partner, her mind raged. Safety, her heart screamed. Save me, her soul pleaded.
From the Spencer Mansion to the deck of the Queen Zenobia cruise ship, to the fallen area of Africa, the two of them had always been coming for one another.
Jill's legs gave out when he pulled her forward into his chest and held her up. Steady as he ever was.
"I can't ever go back now." The sound of metal bouncing along the ground stopped her first bidden words.
A flash bang rolled before the two of them.
Jill's hand was wrapping around the strap of Chris' vest at the same time he wrapped an arm around her side. He yanked her through the side doorway, and they fell to their sides as the device went off.
The light created an odd, shadowed halo around his head when she sat up.
"I've killed so many people here, Chris—they kidnapped me, they…" They didn't have time for this. For everything she needed to say. For everything she had started to become even in Wesker's care.
"There's things worse than violence, Jill." His hand was warm when Chris pulled her back to her feet and lifted his gun as the shouts of men got closer.
And even with their current backdrop, they could pick up with one another as if no time passed at all.
She'd never had to explain herself to Chris Redfield.
He always knew.
Skeptical eyes lifted to his when she too raised her side arm.
"What's worse?" Her rasping voice seemed to fill the room.
"Apathy." Chris stared down at her for a few beats. "Apathy is and truth be told, Jill, I don't see that from you now." He winced at his own honesty. "You found something here. Something that we couldn't—I couldn't give you…"
The firefight that ensued became messy, but the one thing that was not was the way Chris knew how to move with her: the marksman and the rear security together again.
No one could get close enough to touch Chris; not with her grapple moves that were cultivated to maim.
No one could stay standing long enough to take a shot at them; not with his keen eyes watching her six.
His words were the last spoken aside from commands for the next hour while they fought through the bridge.
There was no Redfield without Valentine, and somewhere along the way, she'd forgotten how good that felt.
When they made it to the vehicles parked on the street, Chris allowed her to slide into the front to drive. The bodies in the street hadn't been touched, and despite everything, Jill tried not to run them over with the Jeep when she pulled away.
To not dishonor the citizens who had died because of her.
She could feel his eyes on her while the wind whipped through the open flap on the Jeep's roof tarp. At the truth he had laid bare earlier.
And when she began to speak, it was everything she couldn't say to him before. Everything that she needed to say and more.
From what she could never admit to the counselor, to her friends, to him. What Wesker had made her do, what she had steadily become and more importantly who she chose to seek in the end.
Jill had begun to cry when she finally spoke of Carlos.
She hadn't let her thoughts linger on him too long in the last few days. Terrified she'd never make it back.
More terrified if Carlos didn't approve of her actions through yet another country.
With Chris staring at her side profile, she told him of the man she found a home in, a refuge in her heart and mind, and then she told Chris of how they had taken her away from that.
To whatever end, she would protect it—Carlos, his people, her family—until someone found a way to kill her.
When she was crying too hard to make sense anymore, Chris ordered her to pull over on their current stretch of road, and she shook her head vehemently until she understood that she was seconds from finally breaking apart.
Chris' strong arms wrapped around her, and she let out her first wail when he pulled her over the gear shift and into his side. Her head was on his shoulder when he let her break apart safely in his arms.
"I've got you this time, partner," Chris said above her.
And she knew it to be true.
Albert Wesker was dead in their lives but not in her mind and Chris understood what that meant now, or at least had a better idea.
She still had a long way to go to get back to Carlos.
To that way back to being just 'Jill' in her mind.
But she wouldn't be alone this time.