Remnants

Author's Note: Final chapter, people. Hope it satisfies everyone sufficiently. This was a lot harder than I initially thought, being that I'd never written a fanfic before. So I hope I didn't do too badly, and that you all enjoyed reading it. There can never be enough Resident Evil!

Chapter 9

Chris took a running leap at the door to the 'Garden' and kicked it as hard as he could. The door splintered around the lock and leapt open, Jill aiming into the newly opened doors warily waiting for something to pop out and get shot by her. When nothing did, the two nodded an affirmative and cautiously sidled into the garden.

It was big – very big. Not necessarily big in circumference, but it was rather tall. The room itself was roughly round in shape, but at least two stories high, with exotic plants filling it, many rising to the roof's full height. Several paths lead through the garden, but neither Chris nor Jill could see where they lead to. There didn't seem to be any real purpose to the garden; it was just a garden in the middle of a huge lab and testing facility.

"How the hell are we gonna find a tiny little keycard in here?" Chris complained.

Jill just looked at him and shrugged.

"Fine…you go left, I'll go right." Chris muttered, and they both went their separate ways.

Jill walked along carefully, minding the plants. There was something about them, something that didn't feel right. Perhaps it was because they were plants in a Tricell testing facility, but they made her nervous, so she kept her distance as best as she could. Occasionally a large fern would stick out in her path, and a little lizard-like creature would jump out at her from it, but they were all harmless, and so she didn't care. After batting away what had to be the twentieth fern, she saw behind it what looked like a safe.

"Chris!" She yelled. "I found something!"

After about twenty seconds, Chris' beefy form appeared to her right.

"Four numbers, huh." He grumbled.

"I thought we were through with this puzzle crap in nineteen-ninety eight." Jill said, arms folded across her chest.

"Same here…well it's got to have some significance. I'm willing to bet the other keycard's in there, and I'm also betting the code has something to do with it as well."

"That's how it usually works…" Jill trailed off, thinking.

Jill thought and thought, but nothing relevant came to mind at all. What numbers had they passed on the way here? She couldn't think of anything, except…

"Chris, what about the other keycard?"

"What about it?"

"Remember the other card reader had one different number to the ones on our card?"

Chris' brain ticked over, and he finally understood what she was getting at. He pulled out the keycard and inspected the numbers.

"Oh yeah! Hotel, Sierra, dash zero two, dash zero one. The other reader had a two at the end…let's try that."

Chris entered zero, one, zero, two into the safe's digital combination lock, and a small red LED flashed above the display.

"That's not it, then…" He said, inspecting the card again.

"Try the other way round." Jill suggested.

He entered zero, two, zero, one into the display, and again the red light flashed at him.

"Dammit!" Chris said as he thumped the safe half-heatedly with his left fist.

Jill snaked her way delicately between Chris and the monster fern towards the safe.

He's gonna hate me for getting this, she smiled to herself, and made sure she used her most seductive look as she glanced back at him. She bent over the safe deliberately so that Chris could only see her ass, and entered eight, nineteen, zero, two into the digital combination lock, and the little LED flashed green. She opened the safe and removed the little keycard, instantly pocketing it before looking over her shoulder with a somber look on her face.

"What happened? Wasn't it in there?" Chris asked desperately.

Jill looked down at her feet, inwardly smiling, and slowly turned to face him. She stepped closer to him, still looking down, then pulled the keycard from her breast pocket.

"Great!" Chris said, and tried to take the card as Jill held it in front of him.

Jill pulled it away and held it in front of her chest, smiling at him.

"C'mon, Jill. You're hurting me a bit here." Chris said, trying not to look. "So how'd you get it, anyway?"

"Easy." She smiled. "H is eight, S is nineteen."

Chris made a 'just missed it' face that showed more embarrassment than he actually felt, then Jill smiled again as she brushed the keycard against his chin.

"Let's go, we've got to stop that freak from causing another biohazard." She said, suddenly all business.

She put the keycard back into her pocket and took off for the north door, leading towards the hangar, leaving Chris spellbound.

I thought I was the one who was trying to be serious…

He blinked a few times, trying to figure out what had just happened, then gave up and took off after her. Just as they reached the exit and were about to open the door, it opened for them. Jill gasped as she watched one of the most horrible things she'd ever seen enter the door.

"Impressed?" It boomed.

Jill almost hurled where she stood. It looked like a man, or what used to be considered a sort of man. It was at least nine feet tall, and muscularly proportionate. But instead of joints, it had eyeballs. Big, yellow, bloodshot eyeballs. And every part of its body was dripping and tearing on its own accord. Flesh was peeling off, then re-growing at a frantic pace. The eyeballs were dripping some kind of mucussy fluid, and everywhere the creature stepped, it left a trail of gore. It looked like it was constantly mutating, and the eyeballs never stopped moving. Then she noticed the wispy grey remnants of hair.

"You can't be…Michael Browning? That's impossible!" Jill yelled, her handgun now aimed at what passed as the creature's head.

"Not anymore. Now I am legendary. Never before has the world seen such a perfect product of viral weaponry displayed." Browning boomed in his newly unnaturally deep, organic sounding voice.

"Perfect? You think a self-salivating body covered in eyeballs is perfect? You're out of your mind, Browning. Just like Birkin and Wesker and all the others that came before you. You've lost it." Chris taunted.

"WESKER WAS A GENIUS!" Browning roared, and stamped his right foot down, making the ground shake beneath them, each eyeball growing slightly redder and more bloodshot as his anger rose. "Because of YOU, Wesker's perfect world never got the grace it deserved! Because of YOU, all of this wretched humanity still walks the earth, imperfect and uncontrolled! You are a slimy, pathetic piece of shit, only worthy of my time because of association! I'm going to enjoy ending your existence, Chris Redfield." Browning spat Chris' name like he'd just eaten raw ginger.

Chris just laughed under his breath.

Another one to put down. This never gets old.

"Good thing you don't remember me, then." Jill sniggered, and fired a round from her shotgun right into one of Browning's several eyeballs.

Leon counted his remaining fifty-caliber action-express rounds: five spare clips and five bullets in his current one, forty in total.

"Gotta make these count, Claire. I haven't got much ammo left."

"Ditto, I've got fifty-eight left, and judging by what we just faced, I'd say they won't do much to help."

They shared a defeated look before Leon picked up his game.

"Come on. We have to find Chris and Jill, they might need our help. We don't know what to expect from Browning now, he could have pitted anything against them."

"Right."

Claire snapped her current clip back into the H&K and followed Leon down the hallway leading to the hangar. There were no more enemies along the way, which made Claire nervous.

"Something's wrong here."

"Yeah, I feel it too. If Browning was trying to stop us from doing anything, why haven't we been attacked yet? He knew we were coming."

"Maybe he's just really arrogant?" Claire suggested, but not quite believing it.

"No, I don't think so. He's too smart and too calculated for something like that. He'd know."

"So, what now?" Claire stopped walking and put her hands on her hips.

"Well, my instincts tell me that something nasty's waiting for us in the hangar."
"What do your instincts tell you about Jill and my brother?"

"They tell me something's wrong with them, or we'd be hearing gunshots or something."

Leon flicked on the safety on his desert eagle and stroked his chin with it thoughtfully. It made sense, but it seemed unlikely that in the short amount of time they'd spent fighting with mutated Amy that Chris and Jill, two of the best in the business, could be overwhelmed by anything. If Chris could take on Wesker – albeit with help from Sheva Alomar – then surely he could at least last a few measly minutes against anything else.

"Leon, let's keep moving. If something has happened, I don't wanna keep them waiting too long for our help." Claire said, interrupting his careless thinking.

"Sorry, you're right, we should really-"

Just as Leon was about to say 'get going', a massive eyeball poked through an air vent above them.
"Whoa! Not one of those again!" Leon uttered in surprise. "What are you looking at?" He yelled to the huge eyeball.

"Oh, that's disgusting! It's dripping everywhere!" Claire exclaimed.

"Lesson one: don't stare. It's rude." Leon said, then fired off a magnum round into the pupil of the huge eyeball.

The eyeball closed quickly with a sickening slurp, blood pissing out from between the closed eyelids, then the eye retracted back into the ventilation shaft.

"Let's go, before something else pops through-"

Leon yelled in pain as a long, slimy tentacle stabbed him through the left shoulder, bits of the tentacle's flesh falling off and splattering to the ground as it raised Leon through the air vent. Leon kept yelling as he was torn through the roof, the hole much too small to fit his whole body through unscathed. Claire watched in horror as he was dragged into the dark ventilation shaft, listening to the sounds of Leon's protesting boots kicking at the sides.

Oh shit.

CLANG!

Claire looked up at the source of the noise, and saw Leon's desert eagle drop through the air vent and clatter to the ground noisily. She bent down and picked it up.

Thanks, Leon. Don't worry, I'm coming.

Claire raced off down the hall, desert eagle in her right hand, H&K forty-cal in her left. Then she almost slipped over as she stopped in front of the doors to the hangar. She steadied herself against the doors, then looked down and saw what she had slipped on: two keycards. She picked them up and investigated them as quickly as possible.

Double keycard lock system…brilliant. There's only one of me…

Remembering Leon, she holstered both handguns and quickly swiped one of the cards through the left reader, then the other through the right. A light on the right reader went yellow for a split second, then disappeared.

Shit, not fast enough.

Panicking, she tried again, this time going as fast as possible…and fumbled the second card and dropped it. Annoyed at her clumsiness at such a critical time, she bashed the bottom of her right fist against the thick double doors.

That's not helping, Claire. Gather yourself…

She took a deep breath, felt her chest rise and fill with precious oxygen, then exhaled. She brushed a wisp of long reddish hair behind her left ear and prepared to try again. This time, she held the left keycard at the ready while holding the right one out in preparation, and looking at the right reader.

Now.

Without looking, she swiped the left keycard and jumped to her right, the right keycard falling nicely into place into the reader slot as she landed. The light went green, and the double doors began to open outwards towards the hangar. She quickly ducked behind the right door frame, still in the corridor, and pulled out the H&K. After taking another deep breath, she peered around the corner into the hangar, leading with the handgun. The whole hangar was dark; she couldn't see anything at all. Deciding it didn't matter, that Leon was the priority here, she stepped inside.

The first thing Claire noticed was that the sound of her footsteps echoed almost frighteningly. On top of that, it was so quiet that she could hear the leather of her boots squeaking thunderously as her ankles flexed.

I purposely wore these boots because they don't make much noise.

A tiny click from somewhere at least a hundred metres away broke her concentration, and she instantly aimed at the source of the noise. Then the entire hangar was bathed in blinding unnatural light. Claire shielded her eyes and squinted, still aiming the handgun, but now in any direction. It didn't matter, she couldn't see anyway.

"Welcome, Claire Redfield. I was wondering when you would arrive. Your friends have been waiting for you." Came a massive, bassy baritone from near where the click – obviously a light switch – had come from.

Claire looked up, still squinting, then opened her eyes wide in horror. Approximately one hundred and fifty metres away, between the still bodies of Jill, Leon, and her brother Chris, all tied to metal posts, stood the ugliest creature she had ever seen. She would have puked, but she'd seen something like it before.

William Birkin.

"I know what you're thinking, Claire. You're thinking about how powerful I must be to have captured three of the vigilantes responsible for the destruction of everything I've ever worked for."

"No way!" Claire shrieked. "Not a chance, you G-virus wannabe freak! Let them all go! Right NOW!"

"After you just insulted me? I don't think so. This is no G-Virus, you stupid girl. This is far greater than any single Umbrella virus. Don't you understand? I've taken what I did with the Liberados, and made it omnipotent! It's glorious!"

"You're sick!" Claire screamed, not able to take her eyes off the monumentally disgusting pile of rotting tissue building up beneath it. And the stench made her want to rip her nose off of her face.

"YOU'RE sick. All FOUR of you! You've spent your entire lives ruining mine! And for what? Freedom of choice? What do you people do with your pathetic freedom anyway? You start wars? We even made them better, more efficient, and you still call us sick! Not today, little girl. Today I put you four to good use! Today is the day that Michael Browning achieves what so many have failed, even the great Albert Wesker!"

With that, Browning raised the same glass syringe he'd escaped from the testing facility with.

"This, my dear, sweet, ignorant little girl, is the Plaga parasite, infected with the G-virus. But unlike Birkin's attempt and subsequent failure at improving the T-Virus, this IS perfect. As you can see, I'm in perfect control of my new abilities, and soon I'll be in perfect control of the masses as well."

It was then that Claire noticed the roughly two-dozen charter planes littered around the edges of the enormous square hangar. Then it hit her: the remote control Browning had escaped with along with the glass syringe. Browning was planning on using the Cessna charter planes to inconspicuously and automatically disperse his new disease. Then he was going to inject Chris, Jill, Leon and herself with the G-Plaga. She had to destroy that remote.

Claire took aim and fired, but her aim wasn't as hot as Chris' or Leon's, and the bullet hit Browning in the forearm, doing no perceivable damage.

"Haven't you worked it out yet? There's nothing you can do to stop me. You can't even hurt me. Look what happened to your brother and your friends? They all tried too, but not even they were good enough. What chance have you got?"

Browning started laughing a massive, bellowing laughter that sounded like an entire forest being uprooted all at once. Claire wasn't impressed at all, and she was seething with rage at this creature's insults.

"You're nothing compared to your brother, Claire. I did my research on you, and I'm afraid I'm not worried at all. That's why I didn't capture you when I captured Leon, here. You don't deserve to be a part of my new world. You don't even deserve to share Chris Redfield's name. You're just plain old Claire."

That was it – Claire couldn't take it anymore. She knew how Leon or Chris or even Jill would react: they wouldn't. They were far too practiced and too professional to get worked up over childish insults from an insane beast. But Claire wasn't a practiced professional. She was just plain old Claire.

Plain old Claire who survived Raccoon City. Plain old Claire who survived Alexia Ashford's Code: Veronica. Plain old Claire who survived the Harvardville outbreak.

Claire smiled and aimed once more at the tiny remote in Browning's giant clawed hand.

"Plain old Claire's got a little surprise for you."

With that, she looked down the sights of Leon's handgun, steadying her hand as best as she could, and fired at the precise moment that the remote came in line. The bullet shattered the remote, and Browning's once-human face contorted in rage. New flaps of flesh fell off his rotting body like wet clothing, falling to the floor with several loud splats, covering the area with thick, bright red blood. Each eyeball on his body turned gradually from a bloodshot yellow to pure, seething red, like fleshy fireballs with a nucleus of pure evil. Browning just stood and roared while Claire returned to her all-business posture, removing Leon's desert eagle from its holster and aiming it and the H&K at him.

Browning charged at her with unnatural speed. She fired a few shots from each gun, and each time Browning dodged.

He's as fast as Wesker.

Just as Claire was about to pull the trigger again, Browning was all over her. She shrieked in pain as Browning knocked her with his shoulder, sending her flying backwards a dozen metres, landing heavily on her back. She tried desperately to sit up, but the wind was knocked out of her and she could barely move. She rolled onto her back, trying to get up that way, and felt a slimy hand gripping her around her midriff, raising her into the air and squeezing tighter and tighter. She tried to squeal, but no noise came out; her lungs were still empty.

"Now you die, Claire."

Browning's voice was like a booming echo inside her entire body that filled her being with a kind of dread she'd never experienced before. Struggling to get free, Browning squeezed her tighter, and she could feel her ribs bending in his vice-like clawed grip. Browning hadn't noticed her raising the desert eagle, though – or rather, he didn't care – but it didn't matter. The last bullet to hit him had done less than nothing. Then she remembered Leon firing at the eyeball.

Browning produced a tentacle from his back, and it slowly moved towards Claire's face. The tentacle stopped at her throat and the tip sharpened. Browning's face contorted into what might have passed as a smile back when he was still human. Claire's ribs were burning now, she could feel them getting close to cracking point as she pointed the desert eagle at Browning's right shoulder eyeball. She fired, at point-blank range, and the bullet shredded the eyeball. Yellow slime like jelly flew everywhere, along with copious amounts of bright blood. Browning roared loudly, almost loud enough to make Claire's ears ring, and he dropped her to the ground. Before she'd even gotten her breath back, she started firing off round after round with both handguns into every eyeball she could see. Browning screeched as the eyelids closed all over his body, yellow slime and thick red blood coating the floor around him. He stumbled backwards and slipped in his own gore, writhing on the ground in tremendous pain. Claire took a few steps back and watched as she caught her breath, holding her battered midriff.

Then Browning stopped screeching and started laughing.

"What?!"

Claire couldn't believe what she was seeing. Just when it seemed like it was all over, and she could get the others and get the hell out of there, Browning wasn't dying. He was actually mutating. She watched in horror as all her efforts seemed to be in vain. Browning was increasing in size, growing almost twice as big as he was before. Claire's eyes darted around Browning's massive bulk, trying to find some way to put him down or at least slow him down, but finding nothing. All the eyeballs were gone now, and there didn't seem to be any more weak points.

"How does it feel…Claire…to be…totally helpless…watching your death…unfolding…before your eyes!"

Browning's voice came in deep, earthy sputters as his body mutated. His limbs were contracting, sinking into a now oversized abdomen. Several tentacles – Claire lost count at ten – started forming and flailing about. Browning's head had expanded to about a metre across, and what remained of his face was beginning to sink into his skull. In its place appeared a huge toothy maw.

Browning got up. He now resembled a giant, ten-metre insect with close to two-dozen legs. Claire was frozen in fear, unsure of how to move, and even if she could, what to do.

"…in the mouth…Shoot it in the mouth, Claire! THE MOUTH!"

Claire turned to her left, where Jill, Chris and Leon were still tied to metal posts. Chris was flailing around desperately, yelling at her.

"What are you waiting for? Shoot him NOW!"

Claire came to her senses and started unloading handgun bullets into Browning's oversized mouth. Every few bullets the beast would recoil, but that was it. She fired again and again, unloading and reloading, all the while being edged closer and closer to the wall with the door she'd initially come through, and she knew it. Finally, after her index finger was starting to hurt, she heard the inevitable metallic click of the hammer striking where a bullet should have been. She pulled yet another clip out from her belt and tried to slap it in, but it wouldn't fit. Panicking, she looked down to see what the problem was, and realized it was an empty clip for the unmodified H&K USP she'd been using before.

Oh shit…out of bullets…

Just as she realized it, a giant slimy leg swiped her legs out from under her, then launched her over Browning's insect-like body. With a painful thud, she hit the hard ground. Her back was in immense pain, and she could hardly move.

"Claire! Cut me down! Quick! I've still got my weapons!"

She looked to her right, and saw Chris once again flailing helplessly, still tied to the metal post not ten metres away from her. She crawled over to him, trying to stand up.

"Hurry! He's coming back!" Chris yelled frantically.

Claire stood up painfully and slowly, taking her knife out of its holder and cutting at the ropes holding Chris helplessly in place. Just as she was cutting the last bit of rope, she felt another strike at her midriff, hitting her in the side, in the same spot she'd been squeezed minutes ago. She was sent flying once again, soaring halfway across the hangar and into the side of one of the charter planes.

Chris watched in horror as his sister slumped to the ground, this time unable to get back up. She was alive though, trying to roll onto her back, so he put his mind onto more immediate matters. He picked up the knife Claire had dropped when she was hit, and started hacking at one of Browning's huge legs. Chris severed the leg and Browning reared back, giving Chris an opportunity to run underneath him. As he ran underneath, he slashed through Browning's slimy, rotting underbelly. Browning screamed a terrifying insect-like scream as Chris emerged on the other side. He dropped the knife and took out his M500 magnum, and started shooting off Browning's legs. Each bullet severed another leg, and after reloading the gun and emptying it again he'd taken out almost half. Browning was constantly screaming and the rear half of his body was planted on the ground, all of the legs supporting it severed.

Chris reloaded the revolver again, counting eleven more bullets. He took aim again, and noticed that Browning had simply sprouted more tentacles to replace the severed legs.

"Did you really think…you'd win?" Browning's massive baritone taunted.

"Call me a fool, but you don't look or sound like you're winning." Chris said calmly. "In fact, it looks like my sister did a good job of beating you up."

"RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I will NEVER…..lose to that…GIRL!!" Browning's voice came in heavy, segmented rasps.

"Then lose to me."

Chris ran around to the front of Browning's body and unloaded all five bullets in the revolver into Browning huge toothy maw. The bullets penetrated through the his skull and out the top of his huge head. Browning roared painfully and slumped to the ground. Chris wasn't sure though, so he reloaded the magnum again and waited to see what happened. And sure enough, Browning's flesh began to heal itself, though rather slowly.

Claire finally managed to stand, and saw Chris reloading his magnum just as she heard her radio static.

"Claire! Are you there? Claire! Respond!"

It was Rebecca.

"Yeah, I'm here." She groaned.

"What's your situation?"
Claire didn't know exactly where to start, so she just spoke. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Chris acknowledging her, and signaling that he'd stall Browning.

"Um, Browning injected himself with a G-Virus infected Plaga parasite, and he's transformed. Leon and Jill are out of action, and Chris is holding him off."

"Is he really big?"

"What?"

What kind of a question is that? Claire wondered.

"Is he really big? Like twenty metres big?"

"Yeah, I'd say so. Why?"

Claire swore she heard laughter coming from the radio.

"You have one minute to get everyone to the south side of the hangar. Make sure Browning stays on the north side."

The charter planes.

Claire panicked again.

"If you're thinking of blowing him up, then DON'T! There are two dozen charter planes loaded with virus all throughout this hangar! If you hit them, you'll-"

"-We won't blow him up. Just get everyone south except Browning. One minute."

Claire clipped her radio back to her belt and made a mad dash for Chris, who was casually unloading bullets into Browning's mouth, stalling him.

"I can't keep this up much longer, I've only got three bullets left." Chris said.

"We need to get to the south side of the hangar. Rebecca's got something planned for Browning."

"Okay, you get those two, I'll keep holding Browning off."

Claire raced off as quickly as she could in her battered state to cut down Leon and Jill. She picked her knife up off the ground where Chris had dropped it and started to cut Leon down.

He's injured…I'll need Jill's help to carry him.

Instead, she started cutting Jill down. After the last rope was cut, Jill slumped forward and collapsed into Claire's arms.

"Jill!" Claire yelled desperately, lightly slapping the woman's face. "Jill wake up! Quickly!"

Surprisingly, Jill roused quickly and started asking what was going on, then went silent when she saw Browning.

The two women cut Leon down and carried/half dragged him towards the south side of the hangar. Claire stopped as they passed Chris.

"Jill, give him your shotgun."

Dutifully, Jill handed Chris the Remington and a handful of shells from her pouch.

Good thing that idiot Browning wasn't very thorough.

Chris shouldered the shotgun and started blasting away at Browning's mouth again. The shots weren't doing any damage; they were just keeping his regenerative abilities isolated to restoring his weakest point. Chris watched the girls and Leon making their way south out of the corner of his eye as he kept blasting, until he ran out of shells and needed to reload.

Then his eyes went wide as he saw two tentacles sprout almost instantaneously from Browning's giant, toothy mouth. The two tentacles wrapped around him, one around his stomach and one around his neck, and squeezed mercilessly. Chris groaned in agony as he was lifted several metres off the ground, all the while being crushed tighter and tighter by Browning's thick, slimy tentacles.

"This was fun, Chris. But I guess Wesker won after all." Browning somehow whispered.

The tentacles began to pull in opposite directions, Chris' body being ripped apart and crushed at the same time. He tried to scream, but his neck was ringed too tightly. He was about to drop the shotgun and start prying at the tentacles when he spotted what looked like another eyeball inside Browning's mouth. Getting light-headed and started to see spots, he decided not to argue with his instincts, and instead fired the shotgun at the eyeball. Browning instantly let go, emitting a terrible shrill scream and clutching at his mouth with dozens of slimy, rotting tentacles. Thick, lumpy orange slime and soft, mushy clumps bathed in blood came dripping furiously out of Browning's mouth. Chris caught his breath and watched in terror as Browning again started to regenerate.

"That's impossible…" Chris muttered, frowning in frustration.

"Chris! Hurry! Get over here!" Claire yelled at him from the other side of the hangar.

He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to stall Browning, then run. So he bolted as fast as his legs would carry him towards the others, just as he heard an explosion coming from above. When he reached them he looked up, and saw the north roof-section buckling and denting, accompanied by more explosions. The noise was deafening, the metal roof-sections amplifying the noise inside the huge hangar. Then the explosions stopped and were replaced by shrieking, ear-splitting metal-on-metal as the entire roof section came free. Browning was recovering quickly, and looked up just in time to see the roof section come crashing down on top of him.

"I guess you were wrong, Browning. Wesker lost again." Chris thought out loud.

He looked to Jill, who left Claire to help Leon, stepped over to him and wrapped him up in a hug.

"I hope it's for good this time." She said, burying her head in his chest.

For the first time in a long time, Chris Redfield finally felt like things might turn out okay after all.

But then again, this is the fifth time I've thought that…