Once the two girls got back to the lower level, they had to stop in their tracks. Right in front of the door to the lab, a Licker was sitting on the broken vent that it had crashed through before. Claire closed the door to the hall they were hiding in and began searching her pouch.

"What are you looking for?" Veronica asked, voice in a hushed whisper.

"Something to throw. I need to distract it so we can get by."

Veronica dug through her own pockets and found the heart diamond key still in her possession. She handed it to Claire who nodded a thanks. When she opened the door again, the Licker had moved a bit closer to them, but Claire took that moment to toss the key in the other direction. The loud clang it made caused both Lickers to screech and jump towards the sounds, giving the girls time to get to the lab unscathed.

Once safely in, they walked back into the actual frozen lab and up to some machines in the middle of the room. Veronica couldn't find it in her to talk as shivers wracked her body. Picking the only working machine that looked like it could do the job, they inserted the cartridge and watched as it began to work its magic.

"Cooling sequence in progress," the machine said robotically.

As they waited, Veronica managed to score some more gunpowder but didn't move much to search more with how cold she was. Man, I could really use a long hot bath right about now. Seeing her friend curl into herself, Claire reached over and surprised Veronica by wrapping an arm over her shoulder, bringing her close.

"I'm sorry I still don't have my jacket," she said while rubbing warm hands along the sides of Veronica's arms. It was very reminiscent of the beginning of the night when Claire tried to warm her up at the station. My how things have come full circle.

"I-If you had your j-jacket, I'd make you wear it. At least I k-kind of have my flannel," Veronica tried explaining through chattering teeth. She couldn't help but lean into her touch by laying her head on Claire's shoulder.

"I run warm so I'm doing fine. You on the other hand," Veronica shivered intensely as if to prove her point, "could use all the help you can get."

"Still," Veronica whispered and decidedly shuffled closer till she stood in front of the other.

Claire took this as an opportunity to wrap her in her arms till they were hugging for warmth and comfort. Then to her surprise, Veronica leaned in and pressed her lips to the skin on Claire's shoulder.

"I don't want you getting cold either."

It wasn't meant to be a kiss, as she breathed hot air as a small way to give her warmth. But instead, she lingered, keeping them in place before doing it again nearer Claire's clavicle.

The younger girl shivered slightly and not because it was cold. Her breath hitched as another was pressed closer and closer to her neck. Veronica felt like she was in a trance as she kept going.

She didn't know what prompted her to do any of this, but she couldn't find it in herself to stop. Again and again, she did this till she was close enough to have Claire's arms tighten slightly around her. She pressed one final time at the base of her neck and this time actually kissed the skin there.

Claire gasped softly and wasn't sure whether to stop her or hold her closer. She was about to reach up and lace her fingers in the other girl's hair when the machine beside them made a loud whirring sound.

"Cooling complete," it announced causing both girls to part in surprise. Veronica felt all the blood rush to her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she hissed in embarrassment as she finally caught up to herself.

For once Claire seemed speechless as she watched Veronica grab the solution and speed walk out of the freezer. After a second, she got her legs to finally work and jog after her to catch up. She could hear Veronica muttering to herself, 'oh god why did I do that!?'

"Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a sec," Claire called out before the other girl could walk too far. She was able to get right in front of her to stop her in her tracks, but Veronica kept her eyes on the ground.

"I-I'm sorry. That was too much, I didn't mean-," she tried explaining but Claire stopped her by putting both of her hands on either side of her cheeks to lift her gaze up to meet hers.

"Vee, I need you to relax. I'm not upset," she softly explained. "Was just a bit surprised is all. But I didn't stop you, did I?"

"No," Veronica squeaked out.

"Didn't push you away?"

"No."

"Exactly. You didn't do anything wrong."

"But I-"

Veronica was too cute. Claire decided to do the one thing to prove it was all fine. She titled Veronica's head slightly then leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss on the side of her neck to mirror the affection. Then to be a bit more playful she lightly grazed her teeth along the skin and kissed again to soothe it. Veronica felt like she was blowing steam out of her ears.

"There. Now we're even. Was that too much?" she murmured in Veronica's ear.

Said girl shook her head ever so slightly and it made Claire hum in delight at how the body in her hands shivered almost uncontrollably. If they were under more private and safer circumstances, she would love to take this girl apart in her hands, but now wasn't the time or place. Not to mention they still had dates to go on first.

"C'mon sweet thing. This is something we can talk about later. We still have some plants to destroy," she said sweetly while pushing some of Veronica's hair away from her red face. Her eyes were glassy and wide, which she had to snap out of before following her out the door. Oh, she was definitely in trouble now.

The way back to the control room was quiet, but mostly because Veronica still felt a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Yes, they had been intensely flirting all night and promising kisses to come, but when it comes down to actually doing it… What she did was no peck on the cheek.

But she also couldn't stop replaying the feeling of lips on skin for either of them in her head. She could only hope to do more of that when they get out of there. Claire couldn't stop thinking of it either but decided not to push Veronica into talking.

Once they got to the machine that they got the cartridge from, they reinserted it back in and watched patiently to see what would happen. It beeped in success meaning that they did everything right.

"Dispensing solution now," the automated voice said over the intercom.

The plants outside were sprayed over and then began to droop and shrivel up as it weakened. The pair watched in amazement as the body of the scientist, with the chip that they needed was released by the plant and fell onto the floor with a loud thud. They grinned excitedly at each other then ran out into the greenhouse. All of the Ivys were lying on the floor, clearly stunned by the solution

"So much for the weed infestation," Claire joked as the girls ran towards the body.

"Warning: You have dispersed a dangerous solution without authorization. Your actions have been logged and you may be subject to disciplinary measures."

They shook off the voice and continued on. Once there, Claire picked up the fallen ID chip and inserted it into her wristband. As she was doing so, Veronica turned at the sound of lots of clicking and gurgling to find the Ivys slowly getting back up. The solution did indeed work, but not for long.

"Claire we gotta go!"

Realizing they didn't have any time left, the girls ran back the way the came. Veronica had to use her fire rounds a couple times just to get the surrounding Ivys out of the way, but with how much she had, she was ok with that. Just as they ran back into the control room, they were unexpectedly caught by surprise as an Ivy seemed to come from nowhere right in the doorway.

Veronica shouted as it grabbed her, its head already splaying open. Luckily for her, Claire managed to stuff a knife into the mouth in time and pull Veronica away before it could sink its teeth into her. They ran out of that place so fast without looking back.

Now that they had the blue chip, they could finally go to the West area and get the antiviral agent. Getting across the bridge and opening the next one was easy and quick. Hopefully meaning that the next area would be too. But they knew better than to get their hopes up.

"We gotta find that antiviral agent soon," Claire muttered more to herself.

"And we will. It's gotta be there."

"I know. I'm so sorry, Sherry…This is taking forever."

Walking through the door to the West area they were met with a dark hallway that led to a small lab. In the hallway, there was another body of a gas-masked soldier lying on the floor, truly dead. At his feet amongst the pool of blood were another VHS tape and a grenade.

"Another one?" Veronica questioned as she shined her light into the other room. "Claire! There's a VHS player over there!"

The power was out, but luckily for them, there was another breaker box on the wall and they still had the modulator. With some fine-tuning, they inserted the box and watched as the lights flickered on above them. Looking around, the room was filled with more lab equipment, but now they noticed the doorway they had walked in from was stretched out as if something large tried to squeeze through.

The pair looked at each other in worry then down at the tape now in Claire's hand. Now that the power was on, the small T.V worked, so they inserted the tape and watched as the screen flickered to life. The footage playing looked similar to the one they had seen in the sewers.

Only the soldier, named J. Martinez, was recording it was up in a ceiling vent looking down on a man who looked like a scientist. He was digging in some sort of scientific equipment and pulling out tubes of liquid and putting them into a suitcase.

"Got eyes on the G-Virus," the soldier said in a low voice. The screen flickered as he began getting into position.

"We're going in," another voice radioed in.

The soldier in the vents watched as other soldiers ran into the room with guns aimed at the scientist. Martinez used something to push the vent out of the way then he jumped down into the room to join the others.

"Dr. Birkin, you'll come along with us quietly." The pair realized this was the rest of the recording that they had heard earlier.

"You think I didn't know you were coming?" the scientist, Dr. Birkin, retorted as he slowly slid a hand into his coat and held onto the suitcase for dear life. "This is my life's work! I'm not handing over anything!"

"We have our orders, Dr. Birkin," the leader of the squad told him. "I'll ask you one more time." Dr. Birkin breathed in, then quickly tried to pull out a handgun.

Only he was never able to. Instead, Martinez saw the threat and shot Birkin down before he could. Veronica could only look away, too horrified to look anymore.

"Stop! Hold your fire!" the leader shouted.

Looking back at the footage, they watched as Birkin lay in a pool of his own blood, his body riddled with bullet holes. Another soldier moved forward to check his pulse only to pull away with a shake of his head. The leader turned to Martinez, pissed.

"What the fuck were you thinking!? Our orders were to bring him in alive!" He pulled away and it sounded like he radioed into the man behind the operation.

"We're in, sir, but we had a snafu," he said then turned to Martinez, still angry. "Target resisted, we had to take him out." He paused as whoever he was talking to responded. "That's correct, sir." Another pause. "Roger that. Just the sample then." The man standing over Birkin crouched down and picked up the suitcase. "Let's move!"

The leader said before walking past Martinez, the other men following. Martinez took one last look at Birkin's body then the footage was cut out. The man's lifeless face and blood dripping out of his mouth imprinted in Veronica's mind. The face…that face…

"Isn't that…?" Veronica began.

"William? I was just thinking the same thing, only he looks so…"

"Normal," both girls said in unison.

"But how did he become such a monster? I mean clearly the G virus got into him, but he was clearly attacked here."

"And why was he attacked?" Claire questioned.

From the corner of her eye, she could see a computer screen full of visible emails and the name William Birkin immediately caught her attention. She gave it a nod and had both girls read over everything.

It was a slew of emails from Umbrella. They had accepted his work on G only to take it out of his hands completely. It seemed like Dr. Birkin wasn't about to let that happen.

"It sounds like Umbrella wanted G for themselves, but Birkin was too proud to let them take it. Maybe those soldiers work for Umbrella, and they were hired to take G from him, only…" Veronica trailed off and nodded to the tape.

"Shit hit the fan real quick. Man, it's almost as if, if they hadn't tried to steal G none of this would have happened!"

"Let alone creating it, but you have a point. All this just because of a power struggle over a stupid virus."

"Then let's stop this virus from taking one more victim. We have to be getting close!"

The two left the room and walked through a small lab, a hazmat room, and a decontamination area only to end up in a giant bioreactor room. It was huge, the ceiling looming over them with the Umbrella symbol right in the middle. They were up on a platform bridge that looked over a bunch of machinery and servers. On the other side of the bridge was another door and through it another small decontamination area before hitting the juicy stuff.

The room split in two directions. One led to an office while the other led to what looked like some sort of lab work containment. However, what made them both uneasy was along the far wall were three large test tubes showing off what looked like half-baked experiments of G.

A giant bulbous mass with two large glowing red eyes in them, a mutated arm, and to be honest, Veronica was unsure what the third thing was. Possibly a heart? It was too deformed to tell.

The containment section seemed more important as the case of it was closed, so they checked there first. There was also a computer terminal on the side which had Veronica curious as to what it said while Claire looked at the main box. Skimming over the many diary entries had her sick, but the sudden slam of Claire's hands on the cylindrical tube scared her from reading.

"Dammit!" Claire hissed out in frustration.

"What?!"

"It's in here! But it's locked up!"

"Shit. What do we do?"

"I don't know. Anything on that computer you were looking at?"

"It's all lab entries about how G responded to patients. Subject 628 was mentioned, Oliver. Just…these people are sick."

"Unbelievable. But any notes on how to open this thing?" Veronica checked again then shook her head.

"Nothing."

"Fuck!"

Veronica walked over and took a look at the container and through the small windows she could see two vials sitting on large circular rack. She looked over the whole mechanism and noticed a weird imprint at the bottom. It looked strangely familiar.

"Claire, have we seen this before?"

Claire looked over it for a moment before her face lit up in recognition. She dug into her pocket and pulled out Sherry's locket. On the back of it was the same image of the triangle with the two snakes.

"Oh, look at that," she pressed the locket into the small circle in the middle where it fit perfectly. It clicked into place with a snap. "Alright." Then the doors to the container slid open allowing them access.

"Hell yeah!" Claire grabbed the vial containing the antiviral agent. "Got it."

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Veronica whooped while shaking Claire's arm excitedly. "That was almost too easy."

"Thank god. We gotta get back to Sherry."

"She's gonna make it, Claire."

They took a moment to raid the office quickly, in case of any extra supplies, but only found gunpowder and a framed picture of Sherry sitting with her parents. They didn't particularly look friendly, but Sherry's smile was very sweet. Without really thinking, Veronica broke the frame open and took out the picture to give to Sherry. She doubted the little girl would want to leave it behind.

Once done they ran back out into the bioreactor room, but only made it just across the bridge. As soon as they got to the other side, a loud crashing sound from above caused both girls to turn sharply.

To their shock, the giant monster that was William Birkin had fallen through the ceiling and landed onto the platform behind them. It stumbled in pain and throbbed disgustingly, but both girls had had enough. They both lifted their guns at the ready.

"Your ass again!?"

"Bitch doesn't know when to quit!" Veronica huffed.

From behind, the sound of the door opening and someone running up to them stopped them in their slightly, they found Annette Birkin in the flesh limping towards them with a gun in her hand. Her clothes were splotched in blood and she looked like she had been through hell like all of them.

"William!" she shouted. She lifted the small gun and aimed. "This end NOW!"

She shot what looked like an acid grenade as the skin it had made contact with began to steam and fizzle. The creature screamed out in pain and stumbled to the floor where it laid and didn't move. When they thought it was safe, they all walked closer to check.

"What the hell is this thing?!" Claire asked while kneeling beside it.

"The truth this time," Veronica added. Annette frowned but looked at the mass of flesh with sadness in her eyes.

"That was my husband."

"So, it really is William."

Annette recounted how she found William Birkin, somehow still alive after being shot down. Before she could stop him, he injected himself with his own creation, not only saving his life but also turning him into a monster seeking revenge on those who took his work. She even tried to stop him, but hesitated.

"I should've killed him while I had the chance," Annette explained. She lifted the gun into view, regret in the tone as she spoke. "I don't know why…I just…couldn't do it."

"He was your husband," Claire responded in understanding. Annette turned to her and sighed.

"Honestly…we were more married to our work than each other."

"But what about Sherry?" Claire stood now starting to get upset. "How could you just leave her all alone? And while Raccoon City burned to hell."

"She's just a little girl," Veronica added. "She should have been kept safe."

"I couldn't let my daughter grow up in a world with the G-virus in it," Annette tried to explain.

"But that's no excuse to leave her-" Claire was cut off as a giant claw reached between them to grab Annette and lift her in the air.

The girls were so wrapped up in their conversation, they didn't realize William was still alive and had woken up. The other duo backed away in shock as they watch it squeeze Annette painfully in its grasp. She cried out and gasped in pain as the sound of cracking bones filled their ears. Then with a solid toss, he threw Annette at the wall across the platform where she fell to the floor in pain.

"Annette!"

They ran over to help her while William was still getting his bearings. Looking over, Veronica realized that he had changed in the short amount of time that they weren't looking at him. He had grew in size and now he had two sharp claws on each arm. He looked more dangerous then had ever been. They helped Annette to her feet who somehow still was trying to save the day.

"I got this," she groaned out while reloading her gun.

She stumbled a little closer to the bridge and aimed. As she did, he had mutated out two more sharp claw like arms from the back of his shoulders like wings. The original head of William had disappeared into it's flesh and was replaced entirely by the new head on it's shoulders.

"Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me," Veronica said under her breath.

"I'm sorry, William," Annette cried before pulling the trigger.

The acid had hit him but only seemed to stun him. When Annette gasped out again in pain from her injuries, Claire had seemed to have had enough. There was a control panel just in front of them that seemed to lower the bridge to down below them. She pressed the button and sirens began to go off.

"No. I got this," she said before walking over to Annette. She handed her the antiviral agent. "You should take care of Sherry."

"Claire, what are you doing!?" Veronica asked worriedly.

"Taking care of business," she said before winking at her then dropping on the slowly lowering bridge. "Go with Annette. I can handle this." Veronica looked at her then at the monster. She hated that she was going to do this.

"Uh, as if!" She turned to Annette quickly. "Sherry is in the office in the North Area. We barricaded the door, so she should be safe." Then she jumped down to land next to Claire.

"What are you doing?!" Claire turned to her, eyes wide in surprise.

"What? Like I was going to let you face that thing alone and get all the credit. Not happening!" she grinned. The adrenaline running through her sure was helping the confidence. "You don't have to do this alone. I got your back, always."

"And I got yours…You're lucky you're pretty," Claire chuckled with a shake of her head.

"You're lucky I care."

"You guys don't know what you're up against!" Annette shouted at them.

"We have a damn good idea," Claire responded.

"This isn't exactly our first rodeo here lady!" Veronica added.

"Whatever you do, don't stop until it's finished."

"Trust me," Claire started while taking out her machine gun. Veronica followed suit with her grenade launcher. "This ends now." The platform finally landed at the bottom and lights lit up what was basically an arena.

"Let's do this, Claire-bear."

"Who knew our first date would include fighting a monster to the death."

"How romantic."

Despite the flirting and confidence…

Veronica was shitting her pants.

"[Class A] breach detected," an automated voice called over the sound speaker. "Lab quarantined until target is neutralized."

"Oh we'll neutralize it all right," Veronica called back sarcastically.

Birkin roared as it geared up to seemingly attack, but Veronica had another idea. She grabbed her flash grenade and tossed it at the feet of the monster. In a flash, it was blinded and stumbled back in surprise. The girls used this moment to their advantage.

"Avoid those claws! Those are the killers here!" Claire shouted as they ran around it on either side.

They were pinned to a corner and needed more space. Once they reached the middle of the room behind it, they began spamming the creature with whatever ammunition they had. At first the fire grenades were doing a handy job in burning the flash and keeping the monster at a good distance, but when they ran out, things began to take a turn.

Whatever round they shot at it didn't seem to do anything as it began stalking them with giant claws at the ready. They managed to bob and weave each long strike and since there were two of them, Birkin didn't seem to know who to go after next.

"Ugh! Nothing's working!"

"There's gotta be a weakness somewhere. Keep to your side! He's getting confused!" Veronica yelled back.

As she was reloading her launcher with acid rounds, the creature decided to set its sights on her. It got on all fours, shimmied almost like a cat ready to pounce then did just that. Veronica didn't have enough time to back away before it launched at her, knocking her down.

She shouted in pain from the ginormous pressure of one of its gross feet pinning her down to the ground. Eyes went wide as she watched helplessly as it raised its claw above its head. This was it. She was going to die!

A shot rang out and suddenly it roared in pain and backed off and away. The adrenaline didn't give her body time to feel the hurt as Veronica rolled onto her feet and stumbled away. Claire was holding her SLS and looked pissed.

"It's the eyes! Shoot the eyes!" she shouted before turning to run as Birkin set off after her.

"The eyes?" Veronica looked over the creature and noticed there was a small hole in his back that looked like it had been shot at. There was also a bulbous eye on its knee and the huge obvious one on its shoulder. "Weak spots!"

She gazed around for any sort of supplies and found some bullets, a flash grenade, and a health spray. It wasn't much, but clearly someone had been trying to secretly stock up down here. Getting back to her senses, she pulled out her handgun this time for better aiming as she began shooting at the knee eye from the side. When it had turned to look at her, it had a better shot and popped the eye like a blister.

It stumbled again which gave Claire a solid moment to shoot the eye on the shoulder, popping it as well. It roared and fell to its knees and did something the girls didn't expect. It leaned back, exposing its chest to reveal a plethora of eyes. The two didn't even think twice in shooting them. They were able to get half of the eyes gone when the creature seemed to wake from its stunned state.

They backed off and ran towards the other side of the room to give them the space they needed as it rose back to its feet. With a better knowledge of what to expect, they continued to shoot the regrown eyes that sprouted in the same spots on its body. They had made it past two eyeballs when Birkin suddenly got an idea.

On each corner of the room, there were large metal cannisters connected to a bunch of pipes. It decided to stop in front of one of them and grabbed at the sides to try and rip it out of the ground. The screeching metal and the hiss of steam warned that he was succeeding. Claire grabbed Veronica's arm and pulled her to the far corner of the room.

"RUN!"

They had made it out of the way just in time for the cannister to explode upon impact where they were just standing. It was a fiery blaze and suddenly Birkin was running around the corner at them.

"OH SHIT!"

The girls leapt out of the way as it swung its arms around wildly, scratching every surface to pieces. Claire managed to use the moment it swung a heavy arm onto the ground to pop the last eye. But in doing so, gave it one last bit of energy to slash at her before kneeling back onto the ground.

Claire screamed out in pain and grasped onto her own arm. Veronica gasped in fear as she turned to find blood streaming down Claire's arm with her trying to put pressure on it. She ran over while Birkin was still out and looked over the three gashes along her upper arm.

"It's just a flesh wound. I'll be ok!" Claire assured her.

"Not with that bleeding!"

"We'll deal with it later. We don't have time!" Just as she said that Birkin began to get back up. "Can this fucker die already!"

To their luck, no more eyes had appeared, but what did that mean for weaknesses? They split off again as it charged, but this time its attacks were sloppy. It seemed much more calculated in the beginning, but now it was slowing down. The flesh was starting to droop with all of the fire damage, which must have meant it was getting close to dying.

Veronica used the last of her acid rounds and was left to just shooting with the handgun. Claire had used up her machine gun and her strong bullets for the SLS so now it was just the handgun and the Sparkshot for her. They went all in with what they had.

Then as a last ditch effort, Birkin walked over to one of the walls on one side of the where the platform was connected to and pulled at the foundation. There was pieces crumbling and some static electricity sparking then he was holding just a tall giant slab of wall. The girls dove out either side as he threw it all behind him at the floor. If they had been caught in the way, they would have been buried beneath all of the rubble.

Claire looked around where she had ran to and found a grenade lying around. She then tossed it when Birkin was near one of those cannisters again causing both to explode and enveloping Birkin in flames. It stumbled out and tried swooshing his arms to get the fire out, but now had fell onto one of its knees.

"It's weak!" Veronica managed to shout to Claire.

Claire grabbed her Sparkshot and ran over to get a better aim but was knocked down by Birkin shoving debris in her direction. When she fell to the floor, the gun slid towards Veronica's direction. Birkin seemed to realize this and began making his way towards Claire who was still on the floor and trying to get back up.

The debris had swiped her off her feet and, in the process, nudged the weak ankle she had twisted earlier from the elevator crash. Of course, the one injury she forgot all about. Birkin was slow getting to her, too slow. This was it. Veronica didn't think as she ran over and grabbed the Sparkshot and aimed.

"HEY!" she shouted while tossing a piece of debris at it to get its attention. Birkin turned and slowly stomped towards her. "You lose big guy!"

With the aim she had, she pressed the trigger and watched as needles shot into its chest where the cluster of eyes would have been hidden. His body began to spasm uncontrollably with electricity even as it still tried to step toward her. At the maximum level, the needles exploded with a large burst of power causing Birkin to fall back. She pressed it again and again, each time, the monster seemingly unable to stop twitching.

"C'mon!"

Finally, it roared in finality and succumbed to its injuries. Its body fell to the floor with a sick thud and moved no more. Veronica and Claire were panting in exhaustion as they realized it was over. Birkin was down. Hopefully for good. Veronica didn't waste any time running around the corpse and over to Claire to help her off the floor. Once on her feet, she dove in and wrapped Veronica in a strong hug.

The older couldn't help but hug back all the same.

"We did it!" Veronica whispered in relief.

"Hell yeah we did! That had to have been the most badass thing we had ever done." Claire pulled back and cupped Veronica's face with both of her hands. "Are you ok?"

"Well, besides the trauma," Veronica joked, "And some major bruises which may include a broken rib, I'm just peachy." Claire giggled and rubbed her thumb along Veronica's cheek.

"Very funny."

"And you? You're arm?"

"It's nothing a bandage won't fix. I think I'm ok."

"Here."

Veronica dug into her pouch and grabbed a piece of gauze that they had found in the lab. She looked around for something to keep the gauze in place before looking at her bottom half was covered in sewage, but the top half was still dry.

She pulled at the button placket of her flannel with both hands causing buttons to pop off and revealing the black tank top underneath. She took out her knife and cut a long strip off the placket off her shirt. With it off, she used it to tie the gauze in place tightly.

"There! Not too tight?" Claire shook her head. "Radical. Let's keep the bleeding to a minimum please." Claire looked over Veronica's face and sighed.

"I know we did beat this thing, but you really should've went with Annette. You literally almost died in front of me. I don't know what I would've done if you did. Joining me in the fight, while heroic, was, in the nicest possible way, a stupid idea," Claire explained eyes full of worry at the flashback of almost watching Veronica get torn to pieces. Veronica frowned and grabbed Claire's hands.

"I think me being here was the best idea. I don't doubt you could've taken it on your own, but I'm not sure you had the highest survival rate if you did. Not to mention, you doing this fight in the first place was a stupid idea!" Veronica retorted with a teasing smile. Claire blushed and squeezed the hand in hers.

"It needed to be taken care of."

"Exactly. And I just wanted to help keep you safe while we did…You know," she paused, "you should've given me a warning. I don't know whether to scold you or kiss you for the whole ordeal." Claire's eyes widened as her own words were thrown at her.

"If I didn't know any better, Veronica, I would think you were flirting with me," she giggled in return.

"Well…maybe I am."

She reached up and gently brushed away the hair out of Claire's eyes, allowing blue eyes to meet brown ones. They both found themselves following the strong magnetic pull from before between them as they slowly leaned in towards each other.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she closed her eyes, the distance between them diminishing. Their lips barely brushed together when-

"Target has been neutralized," the robotic voice spoke over the intercom. It spooked both girls from their trance and then a light shone onto a small elevator in the corner of the room. "Ending quarantine. Service lift is now operational."

"I guess that means we have to go," Claire muttered in annoyance.

"I suppose so."

"Gotta get back to Sherry anyway."

"Right. With Birkin gone, we just need to make sure she's ok then we're out of here."

Claire hummed then leaned over to press a small kiss to Veronica's temple. She gave a small wink before pulling Veronica to the elevator.