Chris flies out to rescue Claire, but will he get the result he wants, or the fate he is dreading?

So this has been on paper for over a year and it's only now I'm finally putting out the second chapter. I know I said I'd do it AFTER Remember Me, Remember You was done, but I need a bit of variety in my writing life x'D

My advice is to go read the first chapter again, it's been way too long since I released it, but I promise it won't be another year before chapter 3 hits, in fact I'm already a good chunk through it.

"Barry, hover in position two hundred metres from here."

Chris heard Jill's voice over his headset, but to him she was just another noise amongst the chopper blades and crackle of static in his ears. How were they even this far out to sea? That boat didn't come all this way out in so little time, surely? But…

"Sure," replied Barry.

Chris turned his eyes towards Jill and found that she was already looking at him with a sad, solemn expression. He blew sharply out of his nose and closed his eyes; he had hoped to be able to clear his mind as soon as his eyelids connected, but all he could see etched into his mind was of the Tyrants towering, of Claire's huge shoulder wound…of her look of defeat on her face…

"Hundred metres," came Jill's voice.

Chris sniffed once and slowly tilted his head back. She'll be ok. She'll have gotten out, gotten hold of something to float on. Did she have flares on her, she must have had flares on her, she didn't forget all of her equipment.

"Fifty metres."

They'd see the smoke from her flare as she clung to a piece of wreckage, they'll winch her up, he'll hug her and tell her he was so worried about her, they'll clean her wound and zip on back to HQ to have that wound properly cleaned and stitched up-

"Twenty five."

She'll be off work for a week or two and certainly wouldn't be doing field missions any time soon, but some painkillers and good rest and she'll be good to go and-

"Here, Barry. Picking up the rest of her details, should come up in a few seconds..."

Chris twisted in his seat and gazed out of the chopper's side door, hoping, praying that a speck of debris was bobbing about with a very injured young woman clinging to it for dear life, waving a smoke flare frantically.

But there was nothing.

Nothing but rough winds and choppy waves as far as his eyes could comprehend.

"X and Y axis is about right, but the Z axis…" said Jill as she stared at a laptop on her lap, and Chris knew already what was on the screen, he had seen the BSAA tracker profiles many times in the past.

He just never expected that one day his own sister's tracker was going to be on that piece of shit laptop.

Chris again could see that she had glanced at him with sad eyes, and he focused back onto the vast, inky expanse of ocean.

"What's the Z, Jill?" Chris asked sharply.

"Chris…"

"What's the Z, Jill?" Chris repeated, even sharper this time, but his voice betrayed him with a faint quiver to his tone. Jill shuffled in her seat and coughed lightly, as if her own voice was joining his in their rebellion to function.

"Twelve hundred metres, Chris…"

His heart plummeted, far down into the depths below him, his pulse thumped in his ears and his mind thickened into a foggy blur, forcing his eyes to meander.

"There's diving equipment on board this chopper, I'll-"

"Chris-" Jill tried to interrupt, but Chris continued without a pause in breath.

"I'll go down there and-"

"Chris-"

"We'll get the bathysphere, the diving team, the mini sub-"

"CHRIS!" shouted Jill, and the Redfield man jumped at the sudden tone in her voice. She twisted her laptop to face him, and he observed upon that screen what he had wanted to deny for this entire chopper journey.

The lines ran flat, and the numbers were perched solidly at zero.

No pulse. No blood pressure. No beats per minute.

"She's gone, Chris…"

He stared at the screen with dilated pupils and ice in his veins. With rapid blinks he twisted and reached under his seat, and began ripping open the attache cases.

"I'll get a suit on, I'll call HQ, I'll get her I'll-"

"Claire's at the bottom of the ocean Chris," spoke Jill softly, not much more than a whisper over the chopper's propellers, "She's gone. You can't save her and you can't retrieve her. I'm sorry."

Chris shook his head rapidly.

"I'm going to get her, I'm-"

He lurched forward towards the open door but Barry wrenched him back. With both of Barry's hands pressed into Chris' shoulders, he pushed him into the metal wall of the chopper; Chris saw that Carlos had overtaken the controls.

"You can't, Chris! At that depth you'd become jello!" Barry bellowed at him, and Chris felt something within him snap, like a thick hot wire had been pulled and jerked and twisted until it came away. He shoved Barry away, flew to the opposite wall and slammed his fist into the metal.

"It should've been me! I should be down there! It should have been me!" yelled Chris, and he swung his other fist. His knuckles burned from the contact, but the pain was merely an annoyance in comparison to the agony in his heart.

"Chris…" whispered Jill, but her tone did not touch the grief within him.

"This was MY turn! MY time to take a mission!"

"Then you'd be dead in her place, Chris!" Barry yelled back, and Chris spun with rage, his nostrils flaring at the older man.

"I'd rather that than her!"

"So instead you'd want to let her be left without you?!"

"So her being left alone in this world is tragic but not when it's me?!" Chris again shoved at Barry, and this time Jill slipped in between the two men, her brown ponytail swinging as she placed her hand on Chris' arm, "My little sister is dead, Barry!"

"And that is NOT your fault, Chris!"

"Jesus, will you two calm down?!" Jill raised her own voice, and she, with surprising strength, pushed Chris back into a seat. He stared at her, as if she had just slapped him across the face, but she had already turned her back to face Barry.

"Barry, you're being far too harsh for the situation and Chris has every right to react as he is."

Barry said nothing, and Jill pivoted on her heels to face Chris. She knelt down in front of him, but he couldn't look at her, and simply cast his eyes down to the metal floor at his feet.

"I'm so sorry, Chris. Really. I can't begin to imagine how you're feeling right now."

Chris turned his hands palms up, his fingers quivering, stomach churning, bile building in his throat.

"She's gone, Jill…" he choked out, barely exhaling the words.

She softly placed her hands into his own and squeezed her emotional support into his fingers, and as tears rolled down his cheeks, so too did they fall from Jill's eyes.

No more words were said inside that chopper, not even when Carlos began the journey back to base, not even when they approached land again, not even when they descended onto the BSAA HQ helipad.

Chris' lips were both numb and dry, his heartbeat thumped painfully in his ears and his mind strayed far from anything close to sound cognition. His hands were clasped together, his fingers entwined as if in some kind of prayer, except he wasn't praying. Not anymore.

His prayers hadn't been answered; Claire was over a kilometre below the surface. He didn't know if she had drowned, if she had escaped but couldn't get back up to surface, he didn't know how she met her demise. He didn't even want to consider it, though the pain of the unknown cut deep like a butcher's blade. Instead he only forced himself to face the truth as cold and dark as the depths she lay at.

Claire, his little sister, his one remaining relative, was well and truly dead.

Visions of their childhood, of piggy backs and laughter and chase games flickered through his mind like an old film cassette. Of when he clumsily wrapped a bandage far too loose around her knee after she came off her tricycle and he was too scared to tell their parents, of trays of badly buttered and nearly burnt toast and orange juice when she had a cold, of their reunion in Antarctica. Of the day they helped give birth to the BSAA, of successful missions bringing down bioterrorists to their knees.

He pulled his arms into his chest, suddenly feeling so vulnerable and so alone…so alone.

His one light in life had been snuffed out like a candle by an open window.

With a gentle shake of his shoulder, Barry ushered Chris out of the now silent chopper, and Chris followed blindly as if in a dazed trance. Down the stairs into the offices and down corridors the other BSAA operatives lowered their heads or turned away at the sight of him; clearly the word had gotten around quickly, and no one knew how to react or approach him.

With Barry on one side and Jill on the other, and Carlos following silently, he was led to the Director's office, who was waiting with closed eyes outside of his door. Clive O'Brien thinned his lips at Chris, patted his arm, and offered him a seat, a glass of whiskey and a set of ears the the now sister-less man.

I can tell the quality isn't as good as others I've done in this chapter, but just bear with me, it will get better :)