One hundred and twenty-seven days had passed since Umbrella's Tokyo headquarters blew up. In that time, Alice had been searching for any remaining signs of life outside of the supposed safe haven known as Arcadia. Real life, that is. Survivors. So far, there were none. Every death-filled wasteland she flew over was leaving her more discouraged than the last.
It was nearly a decade ago that things initially started going to shit.
Nearly a decade ago that things went down in the Hive.
That Alice failed and let the first domino tip over. She would say that the only thing keeping her alive was her burning desire for revenge, but really, it was the virus. She should have died way back during that helicopter crash in Arklay.
Well. She did die. And then she came back. Because for some unknown reason, she was "lucky" enough to bond with the virus in a way nobody else had. Very recently, the abilities that resulted from that bond were entirely neutralized thanks to Wesker. He hadn't intended for it to be something she'd be glad about, but it was. She felt more human than she had in a long time. However, given the life she was leading, that wasn't saying very much.
Alice also felt more alone. She had been mostly on her own for quite a while, but it wasn't until after her brief stay with Claire's convoy that her attempts to push the feeling down stopped working and began seriously eating at her.
With a sigh, she reported her daily findings—or lack thereof—and ended her video log. She was going to need to find somewhere to land for the night. The area below was foresty, but...
...
Was that...?
It was!
Alice began to change direction. There was a junkyard occupying a large portion of a clearing. Inside the fenced-off yard, she could see a tiny orange glow. A bonfire was burning. That meant there were people around. It had to.
After a bit of circling, she managed to land her borrowed Fuji T-7 in the small field beside the fence with only a slight bump into the trees and a few snapped branches. Maybe more than that.
Night was already beginning to blanket the area as she quickly climbed out of the pilot's seat, hopped off the wing, and began to make her way over to the gates, which were heavily barred with chains, pipes, and a wrecked pickup truck. No surprise there. You wouldn't want anything nasty getting in.
Alice scanned over the area past the chainlinks. The fire was visible, but she couldn't make out anybody near it. She hollered, "Hello?"
No response.
She continued to strain her eyes against the darkness. Still nothing.
Taking a deep breath, Alice got a good grip on the fence and started scaling it. It was an easy climb for her, and she was dropping onto the other side before long.
"Anybody out here?" She made her way further into the maze of junk. "I don't mean any harm."
There was a distant clang! Alice's hand found one of her holstered revolvers. Even if she wasn't looking to use it, that didn't mean she wouldn't need to. Living people didn't necessarily mean friendly people. She hoped it did.
BANG!
That noise was louder. Alice was going the right way.
Thamp, thamp, thamp, thamp.
She whipped around, catching sight of a shadowed figure making a run for the ramshackle building in the back. They made it inside long before Alice could close the distance.
Slowly, she pushed open the entrance the person had used. The space that greeted her was an old office area of sorts. It was about as dark as the outside. Sans the sliver of light coming from under the door of an adjacent room, that is.
She took a few steps in.
CRACK! A blow was delivered to her right temple, sending her straight to the concrete floor.
...
Everything faded out.
...
...
When Alice began to come to, the first thing she processed was her new pounding headache. Whoever punched her clock was certainly a hard hitter.
The room was empty. She was lying on a worn-out sleeping bag with a bunched-up jacket as a pillow. Her legs were unbound, but her wrists were zip-tied together at her front. She had no weapons.
Biting back a groan, Alice sat up and got herself back on her feet, immediately searching for something she could use to free herself.
There were a few backpacks stacked in the corner. Not far from the sleeping bag, there were a couple of large duvets and shredded blankets that appeared to serve as two other beds. A lit lantern sat atop a crate beside a small stack of notebooks, a pack of cigarettes, a radio, and a mill file. It wasn't too bright, but it felt that way to Alice. She grabbed the file and quickly worked away at the ties, thinning them to the point of breakability.
Just as she snapped them in half, she began to hear someone approaching. She pressed herself up against the wall beside the doorframe.
The door swung open.
Whoever was on the other side paused without crossing the threshold. "...Oh, shi—"
Alice pushed off and swung the toe of her boot straight at their stomach. They made a half-successful attempt to catch her foot and staggered back with a winded "Oof!"
She wasted no time in advancing and slammed her fist into their jaw. They flailed a bit as they tried to regain balance. She caught one of their wrists with both hands and yanked their arm straight before twisting it, pinning their bicep against her with one of her own and forcing them to bend over.
"Agh! Jesus christ, I was only gone for a minute. Guess I should've known better than to leave you alone."
It was then that she recognized the voice. Believing she must've been mistaken, Alice steered the person into the light and got a proper look at them.
"Kaplan?"
Chad Kaplan, a former member of Umbrella's entirely deceased commando unit known as Sanitation, was right there in Alice's iron grip. He looked over his shoulder in an attempt to meet her eyes, giving her a nervous and slightly pained grin.
Alice's expression hardened. Her disbelief and skepticism was palpable. "You died. Years ago. I saw it happen."
If Umbrella had cloned her, who was to say that they didn't have the DNA to clone Kaplan as well? This must have been some sort of sick trick, an attempt to lower her guard by presenting her with a familiar face.
"No, you saw me get pulled out of the train," he corrected. "I didn't die down there. I can—ow. Can I have my arm back?"
A few beats passed. Alice released him, her guard no less high.
"Sure, I got a chunk taken out of me... Alright. A few chunks." After taking a moment to cradle his jaw, Kaplan pushed up the sleeve of his cargo shirt, exposing a portion of the scarring he ended up with after that night in the Hive. The marks ranged from pinkish-red to colorless white and were quite deep in various places, leaving very little of his skin untouched. "But I was dropped fairly quickly and I made it. Barely. Sorry for, you know." He tapped his temple with his finger. "You were mistaken for Umbrella personnel."
"What was with these?" Alice lifted her arm, indicating the broken zip ties.
"I, uh, didn't want you to shoot or stab me the minute you woke up. Even if I maybe deserve it." Kaplan pointed to one of the desks in the cluttered office space. "Your weapons are over there."
She finally seemed to soften a bit. She reholstered her guns and resheathed her short blade. "For what, exactly?"
"For letting you and the others down," he answered matter-of-factly. "For insisting we finish the mission and cutting off the power to the electronic locks in the process, unleashing every nasty thing in the process."
"Hey. You were kept in the dark. Umbrella didn't even give you a real map. You couldn't have possibly known what was waiting for us down there." Alice gave his shoulders a comforting squeeze, letting her hands linger. "If anybody's to blame—aside from all those cold, corporate assholes—it's me."
"You couldn't even remember your own name when we showed up," he argued. "How could you possibly be expected to—?"
"I wasn't careful enough meeting with my mole. I let Spence grow suspicious and overhear us, which triggered everything else. It's my fault. You were only trying to do your job." There was a brief, heavy silence. "It's good to see you again."
"...Yeah. You too."
Suddenly, they were interrupted by slow, steady, room-shaking footfalls. Alice didn't need her T-virus sensing ability to know that whatever was heading their way was infected. She instinctively reached for her shotguns, but Kaplan hastily gestured for her not to do so.
"No, no, don't! It's okay. They won't hurt you."
Her countenance morphed into one of confusion. "Who?"
A hulking figure ducked through the entryway, turning to the side to fit his broad-shouldered frame through.
It was another smack upside the head, really. One even more intense than the last.
"...Matt?" Alice's voice came out as nothing more than a whisper.
It was him as he had been back during Raccoon City's final hours. An almost skull-like visage with exposed teeth and gums, staples closing a big surgical cut going down his head, leathery skin marred by numerous splits, and a pure blue eye deep-set within his visible eye socket. Gone was the leather uniform issued by his captors, though. Instead, it was replaced by a shirt and pants made of random pieces of fabric stitched together haphazardly.
Alice saw Matt get crushed by a helicopter, and he couldn't have gotten out of RC before that missle was dropped. Surviving a licker attack was far more plausible than a falling aircraft and a goddamn nuke. His regeneration abilities must have been far more powerful than hers were.
"Ah-lys." The skin around his mouth twitched. Like he wanted to smile but wasn't capable of it anymore. "Long tine no see."
"Tougher than a TNW, huh?" she murmured dazedly.
"Darely ethen thelt it," Matt managed to joke. There was a bit of shuffling from behind him, followed by a vaguely annoyed huff. "Sor-ry. Guess I'n locking the way in."
A pair of almost skeletal hands appeared on his shoulder. Yet another familiar individual came into view as their owner expertly pulled herself up, perching on him momentarily before dropping down in front of Alice and Kaplan.
Alice's heart skipped a beat. "Rain?"
Rain was clad in a pair of slightly shredded cargo pants and a tank top. Alice wondered how much of the damage was from normal wear, and how much was from the spiky, bony protrusions that were growing through her limbs and the upper part of her torso in patches. Most of the sharpest parts appeared to be either filed away or broken off. Her eyes were the same milky blue color they had been when she turned. Like Matt, she had a deep split on her face. It went straight down her forehead, and through the space between her nose and right eye before curving onto her cheekbone. It was a scar, though, and not fresh-looking like his.
She regarded Alice with her usual flinty expression before the corner of her lips quirked up ever so briefly. She gave a short nod in greeting. Then, she let out a sort of apologetic grunt and clenched one of her hands into a fist.
"She's sorry for hitting you," Kaplan explained when Alice didn't quite seem to understand.
She absentmindedly rubbed the incredibly sore spot on her head. She hadn't noticed earlier, but someone tried to patch it up. "So that was you."
"S'not too bad, right?" Rain asked. The sound, same as the others she had made, was strained. It was as though she was trying to speak through razor blades, and she barely got the end of the question out before she began coughing.
"Don't start trying to talk de-cause Ah-lys is here."
She huffed at Matt once the fit had ended, sending a glare his way as she wiped her mouth on her top. Alice could see fresh red spots staining the hem.
If she was being honest, the blow had felt like being hit with brass knuckles. The kind that are tipped off with short spikes. But it was fine. She had experienced far worse, and the ache was the furthest thing from her mind now, anyway. "Don't worry about the hit. And don't speak if it's painful for you. Or I'll have to kick your ass." She received a challenging look for that. She gave one of her own in response. "How did you guys end up finding each other?"
"Rain and I ended up in an Umbrella medical research center in Detroit after we were recovered from the Hive. She saved my hide when I was trying to make my escape."
Kaplan was cornered by about a dozen Umbrella soldiers. Unarmed and outnumbered, he had no other option but to surrender himself. He begrudgingly followed their orders and put his hands up.
Just then, Rain showed up. She came in with all the energy of a rabid, vicious animal and slaughtered every last one of them. If they weren't being sliced into like butter by her claws, then they were being torn open by her fangs. There was an opportunity to run, but Kaplan was frozen in place. He couldn't even tear his eyes away from the gory display before him.
When Rain was finished, her gaze locked onto him. It was apparent from the white—now mostly red—gown she was sporting that she too had escaped from one of the quarantine rooms elsewhere in the facility. Kaplan seriously thought she was going to do him in like the others.
Instead, she rose from her hunched position into a proper standing one, taking on that confident, borderline nonchalant stance that Kaplan was accustomed to from her. She pushed against his shoulder and grunted at him. The intonation of the sound in combination with the slight furrow of her brows allowed Kaplan to pick up the rough meaning: "You good?"
"We decided to stick together and stay off the grid since, logically, Umbrella would be searching for us. Eventually, we risked going back to Raccoon City in an attempt to scope out what happened after..." Kaplan drew a slow breath, "after you had to leave us behind because we started seeing stray zombies around. But by the time we made it there..."
"Everything was already gone?" Alice supplied.
"Yeah. Gone. Nothing but a crater. We ran into Matt while we were hiking back out of what was left of Arklay."
Aside from occasionally having to chase after Rain when she got distracted by wildlife, the second trip through the forest was largely uneventful. When her growling started up again, Kaplan assumed she had caught sight of a deer or similar woodland creature.
But then, he began to hear the thumping. He could feel it in the ground beneath his feet. It was steadily growing louder and closer. A flock of birds took off into the sky.
With a trail of broken branches left in his wake, a massive mutant entered the clearing.
Kaplan fumbled to pull his pistol from his belt.
As she often did now, Rain forwent using hers in favor of taking a more up-close and personal approach. She was darting around much faster than the mutant could keep up with, slashing and biting at every window of opportunity. Though, much like Kaplan's bullets, the effects appeared to be minimal.
"Hey! Cut it out! It's neh! It's-it's Nahtt! It's Nah-tthew!" Finally, the mutant managed to seize Rain by the back of her tattered jacket and picked her up with ease, holding her out at arm's length. "It's Nah-tthew Addison!"
Kaplan paused. "Addison? The cop?"
"Since then, we've just kept traveling. You know how it is. Can't stick around anywhere for too long. Not unless we—well, I. Zombies don't pay them much mind—want to end up as dinner."
This was all so overwhelming. These people were Alice's friends and she had never stopped mourning them. Seeing them again after so many years? After everything? Alive with their human souls still intact? Free from Umbrella's control? As it truly sank in, she found a mixture of relief and elation filling her chest.
But there was something else creeping in alongside it. Anger. And guilt. It burned deep within her. Kaplan, Matt, Rain... Alice couldn't save a single one of them when it mattered the most. Umbrella and their awful virus had been allowed to affect them in such massive ways. To change them. Alter them. Permanently. They were all good people who deserved far better than the hand they had been given.
It...
"Alice?" Kaplan hesitantly reached for her. "Everything okay?"
Tears were welling in her eyes and she couldn't stop it. Without warning, she took him by his shoulders and hugged him. He was stiff in her hold. A moment passed before he awkwardly returned it.
The very second that Alice released him, she grabbed Rain and pulled her into an equally tight embrace. It was, objectively, not particularly pleasant on account of all the hard, jagged pieces that she was pressing herself against, but she paid it no mind. Rain's arms wrapped quite loosely around her waist. Probably in an effort to not unintentionally stab her.
"You too, big guy."
Matt blinked. He seemed a bit surprised but still hugged Alice back, crouching down in order to do so.
She didn't usually get affectionate like that anymore, but— "Sorry, I just..." She missed them.
God, she missed them.