Wildfire:

Chapter One:

A Change in the Wind

Raccoon City

October 1st - 1998

The empty tunnel dumped sewage onto the ground. It stank like shit and stagnation. It was putrid, in the way of such things, and left to swell against the senses in the early morning light. Dawn broke, beautiful and pure somehow, lifting like a promise over a sky turned black with smoke and destruction.

Carlos stood in the field and urged, "You sure? You fucking sure this is what you want?"

Jill gave him a determined nod. "It is. Thank you for everything; I mean it. But I gotta do this on my own."

Carlos glanced back at the helicopter behind him. "I can fly you anywhere, Jill...staying this close to ground zero...it's a mistake."

Jill shook her head in response. "I have to, Carlos. If there's even a small chance that anyone else listened and took that route through the sewer...I have to try."

Carlos flicked his eyes over her face, back and forth, trying to see anything but steady determination on her. There was nothing. She was going to stick. It was just who she was. Their handful of days together had taught him one very simple thing - Jill Valentine didn't do anything but finish what she'd started. When she'd encountered Kevin Ryman and that ragtag band of survivors he'd had with him; she'd sent them out the sewers through the basement of the R.P.D. to try to spare them.

When the city had blown, she'd nearly lost heart. She'd already lost so many she'd tried to save in that necropolis; he was hoping like hell some of the group with Ryman had made it. He wasn't sure she could handle another complete loss.

Jill glanced back toward Wombat Junction, zeroing in on where the sewage line emptied. Carlos offered, "I can stay and try to help. Maybe if we-"

Jill touched his arm and denied him. "No. They're already looking for you. You know that. You gotta go; now."

"What about you?"

Jill gave him a sad smile. "They think I died in that city. Why wouldn't they? Nicholai reported that I had thinking it was over. He didn't expect to lose. No one's looking for me. I promise you."

There was something sad in that statement. Why wasn't anyone looking for her? Why was she in that city alone like that to begin with? What had kept her behind when she'd known so much about the fall beforehand? She had to have balls of steel or be a complete glutton for punishment to have stuck around when she should have fled. He was betting it was the desire to save who she could. She just didn't seem to know when the battle was lost, and it was time to run.

Carlos gave it one last shot. "I could wait a distance away, cross over into Oklahoma - hunker down outside of Broken Arrow. Maybe you could meet me."

Jill denied that too. "You gotta go as far as you can. Dump that chopper somewhere in South America, Carlos. Cross the border, get away. It's the only chance you've got."

Carlos looked like he might argue again, so Jill encouraged him. "Go. Now. I got this. Thank you again...for everything. I won't forget it."

She hurried away, leaving him to watch her in the coming sunlight. Whatever else was true about her, she was unstoppable. She simply didn't know how to quit. And she always put everyone else before herself.

The tiny sliver of hope that Ryman had made it with his crew kept her running in the dying grass. Summer had hit the midwest hard, roasting and causing a drought. Fall was here, but it was flagging under the strains of Indian summer, the vestiges of its ugly melting grasp still burning without the rain they desperately needed. Last night, the rain in Raccoon City had barely scratched the surface of what was required to fix the void left by weeks without it.

The nasty heat coiled around her and caused the sewage to smell like death. Jill raced toward the main tunnel, easily big enough for people to have made it through. She prayed as she ran, feet pounding the soggy earth.

As she reached the tunnel, she saw no sign of others. She almost gave up the last of her hope before a backpack caught her eye, bloodied but still functional. It was tucked against the side of the tunnel, waiting for someone to retrieve it.

Jill moved toward it and crouched, pulling the zipper to see what waited inside. The pack made a metallic hiss of released pressure. It sent a plume of compressed air into her face as she stared into the swirling fog of cold at what waited within - a little purple tube packed in dry ice.

She wasn't a scientist. She'd never been. But she'd seen the fucking lab in the Spencer Mansion. She knew what she was looking at. It was a sample of a virus. Which one? T? Her pulse sped up as she pulled the zipper shut on the pack and rose with it, looping it over her back.

She started to turn, and a voice commanded, "I don't fucking think so, girly. Drop it."

Jill froze and returned in a calm voice, "You always go hiking around sewage dumps with lethal viruses in your bag?"

"You always go walking in the morning and steal other people's shit?"

"Is it yours?" Jill wondered, listening as the voice behind her shifted through the muck. Female, young, pained, and uneven. Wounded, no doubt, based on the splashing squelch that signaled she was heavily limping. "I thought you stole it from the Birkin's."

The footsteps paused. "What do you know about the Birkins?"

Jill shrugged a shoulder, her hand slipping to the knife strapped to her chest and the vest she wore. "Bad news, infected the city I grew up in - killed everyone I know. Not on the best of terms, the Birkins and I."

"Bigger picture than that, you stupid girl, but I don't have time to get into it. You survived Raccoon, so you're smart. You're here, so you knew this was a secret way out. Meaning you worked in the RPD in some capacity. Based on those boots and that vest you're wearing, you had access to the weapons lockup in the S.T.A.R.S. office, and the only people who had that were S.T.A.R.S. themselves. Seeing as the majority of those bastards were men, you're either Rebecca Chambers or Jill Valentine. You don't look like a pre-pubescent baby, so that means you're not Chambers."

Jill snorted. "You saying I look old?"

"I'm saying you don't look your best, Valentine, but who does after the last few days?" The voice shifted again, and Jill tracked it with her ears, "I'm tired of killing. And believe it or not, I try not to when the job doesn't pay me for it. So, here's what we're gonna do. Drop the bag, turn around, and I will shoot you somewhere. You probably won't die before you can get help, but you won't be able to chase me, either. Don't drop it, and I will shoot you in the back of the fucking skull and leave you to rot. Your choice."

Jill considered and started sliding the backpack off her shoulders. The voice declared, "Good. Good." And sounded relieved that she hadn't had to shoot. There was such strain in the vocals that Jill knew the attacker was pretty bad off. Had she been infected escaping?

That thought alone meant Jill couldn't let her get away. Absolutely not. If she was infected, the woman could run out there, turn, and infect others. Raccoon City would have been nuked for nothing. That futility had Jill's brain either sliding out her ass or overridden by sheer unbridled rage.

She let the backpack fall to the ground and spun simultaneously. A bullet winged against her cheek, an inch too low to take her eye, but it was probably because her assailant was hunched over and aiming. The knife in Jill's hand struck the woman in the shoulder at the same time she fired. It saved Jill's life and put the hurt woman no her ass in the swamp of sewage.

She went down, grunting, shouting angrily, and Jill kicked the gun from her limp hands as she landed. "How about this," Jill mused and crouched beside the woman - pretty, young, Asian, and badly wounded, "I take the sample and you."

The woman swung a punch that Jill deflected, but it glanced against her stinging cheek as it went. As she recoiled, the Asian woman kicked with her good leg, hitting Jill between her own like she might have a man. The bad news for her? Jill didn't have any balls to take out.

They grappled on the ground, the wounded woman fighting like a tiger with sheer survival, Jill meeting her in battle like a woman with nothing to lose. They transformed from two women just trying their best to escape a dying city and became two bitches bent on killing the other. They rolled through sewage, snarling, punching, shouting, and slapping. There was hair pulling and face planting, kicking, attempts at stabbing, slashing, and attempts to drown the other.

Jill figured she'd have lost a long time ago because the woman she was battling was skilled but also badly hurt. She went down on her back as Jill swept her feet and leveled the gun at her face to keep her there.

The woman laughed hoarsely, eyeing Jill with something like respect. "I won't go quietly."

"I figured as much," Jill returned and hit the woman in the left temple with the butt of her own handgun for it.

Jill was tired of her captive after two days in a motel room. Apparently, the captive's name was Ada Wong, and she claimed to be F.B.I. The bad news for her was that Jill had already made a call to verify that, which wasn't even remotely true.

"You're making a huge mistake here," Ada remarked as Jill sat across from where she was bound in the chair in the motel room, "The bureau doesn't take kindly to abuse of their agents."

Jill kept the gun on her and mused, "Oh, I figure they'll be just tickled pink when they figure out I've got a Chinese spy on my hands."

Ada tilted her head. "Am I Chinese?"

Jill gave her a droll look. "Really? Wong? Even if it's a cover name, it's as Chinese as Moo Goo Gai Pan."

Ada laughed lightly. "Bold of you to assume I'm a spy just because I'm Chinese. For your information, I was born in America."

"Uh-huh," Jill cocked her head, "Show me your driver's license and prove it."

"Untie me, and I will."

Jill snorted. "Oh? You keep it in your ripped pantyhose?"

Ada smirked. "You could at least let me bathe, ya know. It's been two days. I smell worse than that fucking sewer I escaped through."

"Good," Jill shrugged, "maybe your own smell will loosen your tongue. Let's try this again - who are you? What do you want? And why did you have the sample on you?"

"It's more likely to make me vomit," Ada muttered and sighed, "I told you. I'm a federal agent. I was there looking for my boyfriend. When I discovered the lab, I took the sample to hand over to my superiors. That's it. That's all I got."

Jill scoffed. "I was in NEST, you lying bitch. There's no way you stumbled upon that shit. You knew. You went there to get the fucking sample and then flee. Who'd you kill along the way?"

"No one, I swear, you've got it all wrong."

Jill laughed and rubbed a hand at her eyes. "Can we just stop this, please? Whatever you're selling, I ain't buying. I look like an easily charmed penis to you? Can the snake dance and talk, or I swear to god, I will let you sit there until you start to fester in that shit. That wound on your thigh is infected, Wong. You're sweating, meaning you already have a fever from it. You wanna die? Because that happens slowly if you don't get that treated, and soon."

Ada tapped her foot, considering.

Jill arched her brows, "Now...who did you kill to get that sample?"

Since she didn't want to die sweating like a pig on the floor, Ada, dropping the act momentarily, returned, "Whoever I had to."

Jill studied her. "Now we're getting somewhere," She leaned back in her chair, "You had an RPD badge in that bag with the sample. Whose was it?"

Ada rolled her eyes. "Some stupid hero cop. I played the poor me version of myself and got him to help me. He was as eager as a puppy looking for a home until that bitch Annette spilled the beans about who I was. Then he tried to turn on me."

"You kill him?"

Ada sighed. "I couldn't. He was so fucking innocent. A real goody two shoes, just trying like hell to help. Even I have my limits. It would have been like shooting a child between the eyes."

"You don't kill kids?"

Ada gave her a cool look. "No, I don't."

"Ever?"

"Ever."

Interesting.

"The cop make it out?"

Ada shrugged. "I don't know. That bitch shot me, and I fucking fell off the bridge. Hero cop tried to save me, but I knew the way out led through the sewers. I played the reluctant and apologetic victim and made him drop me. The fall put me in the water, which hurt like a mother fucker since I was already wounded in the damn shoulder and thigh, but it washed me through the tunnel toward the egress point - so it was worth it."

"What was the cop's name?"

Ada arched a brow. "Leon? I think. I think it was Leon. Young, handsome, like a damn GQ model. He was practically sniffing my panties before he realized I was a liar."

"Yeah," Jill munched on some popcorn, watching her with the gun on her thigh, and pointed at the woman in red, "Rookies tend to be like that. Sucks for him, seeing as it was his first day on the force."

"He mentioned that," Ada mused and shifted in her seat, "Now...about that bath?"

"Not quite there yet, sparky," Jill munched more popcorn, "Who do you work for?"

Ada laughed. "Please. I'd rather die than tell you that."

Jill shrugged, "Fair enough. You probably will soon. My call to the FBI raised flags, of course, so they're coming to take you in. I figure they'll be here in about three hours or so. You wanna spare yourself torture at their hands? Tell me now, who sent you? I'd reconsider that silence on the issue, seeing as they'll toss you in a goddamn hole and let you rot there."

"And what would you call this?"

Jill smirked. "I'd call this a friendly chat."

"Oh?" Ada tilted her head, "You suck at friendship, honey. I don't know about you, but I rarely tie up my friends and let them die of gangrene."

"Oh, I'm sure," Jill bantered sarcastically, "You just lie and steal from them and leave them behind to die."

Ada snorted, enjoying the back and forth somehow. It had been a long time since someone had bothered. She sighed and leaned in the chair. "I don't know who I work for. That's part of the gig. I do the job; I get paid; I don't ask questions."

"How do they get in touch with you?"

"Messages in the paper, how else?"

"Who's your point of contact? Give me a phone number."

Ada rolled her eyes. "I'll take my chances with the hole, thanks. That's all you're getting out of me. You want more; I want immunity - that's how this works."

Jill shrugged. "Fair enough, wait for your lawyer, have a ball. They won't care, Wong. If you are American, they'll hold you under the Patriot Act - revoking your rights and citizenship, granting them autonomy to toss you around like a football and beat you to death if they choose. You'll be a traitor. If you're not, you'll be a spy engaged in espionage against the United States - and guess how that story ends? Either way, you're fucked here. Lawyer up, it won't help you. And they'll walk right through the Bill of Rights to do it."

Ada tapped her foot again. She studied Jill shrewdly. They arched brows and tilted heads at each other.

Finally, Ada sighed. "I'll take my chances."

Jill shrugged again and grabbed the back of the chair. She pushed Ada into the motel bathroom and dumped the chair sideways into the standing shower. On her side, Ada remarked with respect, "You bitch."

"Woof, woof," Jill returned and jerked on the overhead spray. It hit the woman in red in a blast of water, making her cough and spit. Jill dumped dish soap on her body where it lay on its side, still strapped to the chair, and scrubbed at her with a toilet brush. As she did, Ada couldn't stop the laugh.

"I'm going to kill you, you skinny cunt."

Jill used her free hand to munch more popcorn. "Maybe. But not today, Wong. Today, you get scrubbed down like the shit stain you are."

When Ada was clean, if still covered in soap, Jill sat upright in the shower again and treated the wounded in her thigh. The spy eyed her as she worked, feeling a little roll of interest in the other woman. "You owe them nothing, you know."

Jill glanced up at her where she crouched. "Who?"

"The government, you owe them jack shit," Ada looked at the crown Jill's dark head, "Forget this hero crap and let me go...I'll take you with me."

Surprised, Jill looked up at her. "What?"

"What I'm doing...it needs women like you. Smart, capable, balls of steel - there's too few of us. Let me go, and come with me. I'll show the difference between a master with a leash and a master without one."

Jill and Ada held eyes until the former S.T.A.R.S. member chuckled. "Tempting."

"Is it?"

"No," Jill rose to her feet, "I don't flip sides for my own benefit, Wong. That's not how it works when you've seen the things I've seen and done what I've done trying to stop people like you. No thanks, bro."

Ada sighed. "You'll change your mind."

"I won't. But nice try."

"You will," Ada retorted, "We all have a line, Jill, and a big one. Someone will cross it for you one of these days, and you'll have to choose - what's right or what's necessary. Remember what I told you when that moment happens - and save yourself."

Jill held her eyes. "Saving yourself only leaves you alone in a world you betrayed, Wong. Maybe that works for snakes like you, but the rest of us? I'd like to think we do what we can to save those who can't save themselves."

Ada sighed again. "Noble. Stupid - but noble. The thing about nobility, Jill? They died out a long time ago. And all that's left now are the jackals. They'll rip your fucking throat out and make a home in your corpse."

"Maybe so," Jill returned as he headed to answer the knock on the motel door, "but at least I didn't join them in the feast."

Ada sat in the chair and considered that. She shook her head as the agents entered the room to load her up and take her away. What was it like to have strong morals and genuinely believe you could save anyone? She didn't know.

What Ada did know - everybody had a price. And Jill Valentine would find hers one day.

When it came, she'd pay it and fall to her knees like the rest of dine on the entrails of the woman she'd once been.

Washington, D.C. - Holding Cell #3

"You gotta be kidding me." Jill surged against her cuffs on the table, "I'm not a fucking traitor! We're not working together!"

"No?" The man in the suit arched a brow, "That's not what she says."

"Imagine that," Jill laughed angrily, "she's a liar. She's a fucking spy. Why believe a word she says?"

"Why believe you? You're ex-S.T.A.R.S. They were clearly discredited after what happened in Raccoon. Who's to say you didn't institute a goddamn leak at that lab to get back the city that betrayed you?"

Jill stopped tugging on her hands. "Is this a joke? You know who it was. I told you. It was Albert Wesker and Irons. We told everyone. We warned anyone who would listen. Why would I fucking lie about that? You clowns, let this shit happen! And then you bombed a city full of people to cover it up!"

Her voice echoed as she shouted. It echoed and underlined the rage and grief she still felt. It echoed and reminded her of what she'd lost. Everything, it seemed, and now more because they were offering her no options here. Not really.

They were trading one cage for another.

"Serve," the man replied boredly, "give us five years. You do five years; we give you your freedom. That easy."

Jill laughed sardonically. "You kidding? Why the hell would I work for you?"

The man shrugged. "Your other option is to roast in a fucking cell beside your girlfriend out there. If you're not a bad guy, prove it. Serve. Save lives. Pay back your debt to your country for their belief in you. Up to you, but I'd avoid prison if I were you - those maximum security lockups are murder on pretty girls like you. Nothing like a soap dildo up your cunt to make you reconsider your loyalties."

Jill stared at him until he lifted his hands, palms up, and shrugged again. "Or don't. You and Wong are cute together. I bet you're the belles of the ball in there. Do me a favor when the fucking starts, would ya? Gimme a call so I can make a video. I could sell that shit to college guys for a boatload of cash."

Jill growled low and menacing, "Simmons, I'm gonna enjoy killing you."

Derek Simmons laughed lightly, unrelenting his quest to recruit agents to the fight. He'd exploit, blackmail, or force anyone into it; that was his job. And he didn't give a damn who he destroyed to get it done. He had one interest - the needs of the nation that he served. The people within that nation? Irrelevant. Disposable. And in need of bodies to put in the fight, he was determined to win. "I'm sure you will. Is that a no? Should I make it official? I can get the boys in here right now to start the party early."

Jill sneered, her lip curling. "Fuck you, you stupid weasel."

"Tick-tock, Jill. What's it gonna be? In or out?"

With little other choice, Jill snapped angrily. "In, you bastard."

"Welcome aboard. Training starts in the morning. Get some sleep, and see you at dawn."

And just like that, Jill Valentine was blackmailed into serving the U.S. government.

Without any effort at all, Ada Wong screwed two cops without trying - and set into motion events that would create heroes from nobodies. All out of the ashes of a city, that time would soon forget, but those who'd survived would spend the rest of their lives avenging.