Author Note: Some of the timeline will be off for this one, but I was not planning on following the script of Resident Evil but instead using the characters you all love and making my own story line. Please, enjoy, be courteous, & review (I do take constructive criticism). I will try my best to do the same for you.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Characters, but a girl can dream right?

Without further adieu…here comes Chapter Sixteen (Be ready for a surprise!)

B

Update Dec-08-2015: As I prepare to add more to Calm Before the Storm I figured I should go back and look over what I posted almost two years ago to the story that started it all. This way I can make some editorial changes while also refreshing my memory on what things I left off with in the end.

Chapter Sixteen

- Claire - Three days later -

As usual she was an early riser and today was no exception. She wasn't able to sleep, not since she found out about her brother and Jill shaking up together. It wasn't the fact that Jill was her brother's newest fling, or that she was a real contributor to the crew, there was something else keeping her up at night, something she had not even told Alice about yet.

She hated to admit it, but Alice was right about wanting someone like Jill on their side. She could relate to Jill's memory lapse, a bit jealous that Angela was on board to help her piece together some of the missing links Alice was unable to fill in. The whole group finally got to hear the first hand account from Angela on what happened four years ago. It was heartbreaking, the story of Umbrella operatives storming their shelter, killing innocent civilians in a desperate search for Jill, Angela, and most importantly Alice.

Jill had forced the girl to hide in a cellar as she went out, guns blazing to fight back with a few angered survivors. Angela watched through the slats in the wood as a blonde haired man dressed in a long black trench coat and slick sunglasses shot Jill with a tranquilizer gun. Everyone in the room knew she was referring to Albert Wesker. She watched, crying as men carried Jill's unconscious body to an awaiting Umbrella helicopter, satisfied with getting one of the three fugitives during this raid. After Angela recounted the story, Jill excused herself from the room, unable to cope with the tragic tale. Claire went after her, remembering how it felt to have your life in pieces that you needed to painfully pick up piece by piece. To a point, she was still doing that herself.

She caught up with the blonde, seeing the tears on her cheeks while leaning against the railing, staring out at the ocean. Anything to clear her head.

-\-

"Are you okay?"

Jill turned to see Claire at her side. The spunky redhead was the last person she expected to of followed her from the bridge. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, blonde hair flying in the wind. "What do you want Redfield?" She asked defensively.

"I want to help you. I know what you're going through, I've been there myself." Claire confessed, leaning on the railing noticing that caught Jill's attention.

"No one knows what hell I'm going through. I feel like I'm being pulled in ten different directions and Angie's story, it should have filled holes, but instead it opened up so many more questions." Jill looked out at the ocean again, "I remember bits after Umbrella took me. I was cold, deprived of food and water for days, their way to break me down into talking. They questioned me every day, hours at a time, asking the same questions over and over again like a broken record."

Claire remained silent, listening, remembering that she could have been in the same position two years ago. If she didn't fight off the Umbrella operatives who stormed the beaches in Alaska she would have been interrogated and tortured as well. Instead, a Medusa bug was slapped on her chest just before she escaped into the woods, leaving what remained of her convoy to be taken to the Arcadia and used as guinea pigs.

"I was a coward. I left my convoy to rot at the hands of Umbrella when they came for us in Alaska." Claire sighed, "They got the last laugh though,"

"Yeah, how?" Jill asked.

"You're not the only one whose memory's been wiped clean. I had one of those mechanical bugs on me too, and if Alice didn't keep her word and found me in Alaska months after my convoy was ambushed, I wouldn't be here today."

Jill turned to Claire, seeing the pain in her eyes, "Does it get better? The guilt?"

Claire narrowed her eyes, "I wish I could say it goes away, but for me, I live with the darkness every single day."

-/-

It was true, the guilt of what she did while under Umbrella's control stuck with her. There was no one to tell her what happened, no one to fill in the blanks of those months alone in the Alaskan woods. She was alone, somehow surviving, hunting animals and evading the infected. Alice had kept her promise, and after she got the bug off her chest, she filled in what gaps she could. The Nevada desert, her convoy of survivors, even her name, but no one will ever be able to tell her what happened while she was a drone to Umbrella.

Claire glanced over at where Alice would normally lay. The spot was empty, Alice said she would take the overnight watch, had done so for the last three nights, ever since Claire's blow up in her face after catching her brother and Jill in the bridge. She grabbed her journal from under the mattress, pulling out the pen that was chewed on the end, a horrible habit, Claire could feel the ship swaying in the ocean current. They were still heading due south, decision made yesterday by the crew to by pass the Southern tip of Mexico close to Tapachula, next stop being Central America.

She skimmed through the pages in the journal she found almost a year ago in a backpack that once belonged to a young child. It was probably their school bag, the only memento from a life before the world went to hell. The notebook was a quarter full, and she contemplated on removing the childish writing done in crayons, complete with pictures of stick people, both dead and alive. Instead, after reading a few entries, Claire began to live vicariously through this child. She used this book as her journal, detailing events that happened around her.

January 5th, 2013

Today Daddy found me a teddy bear. It was dirty and missing a button eye, but I didn't ask him where he found it. I have a feeling it once belonged to someone like me who is no longer here...

Flipping to another page, Claire ran her fingers over the dried blood that speckled the aged paper. It looked like someone had coughed, or was residue from a gunshot. There was a picture at the top of a family of stick people. The Daddy figure was laying down, X's for eyes and a frown on his face. That was the child's way of depicting he was dead.

January 12th, 2013

Today I really miss Daddy, but Mommy says I'm sick and I might not get better. I guess, I'll get to see Daddy real soon...

That was the last entry the little girl made. After that, Claire began to recount her own life, dating the pages as often as she could. It was hard to tell what day it was, let alone the month so instead, she numbered the entries. This one would make number thirty. Her entries started in April of 2014, over a year since the little girl had died, and now she was left with only a few blank pages.

Journal Entry - #30
Dear Journal,

Another day aboard this rust bucket of a ship. I want to get out, to explore my surroundings, to feel the power behind my gun as I blow off the heads of more creatures that plague this earth. I want to be out on the front lines again, a soldier in the resistance instead of a crew member on a doomed ship. We're running low on supplies, and with the stunt Alice and I pulled with the lifeboat a few nights ago, I'm not sure how we're going to survive. We have no way to rescue more people, or refill our supplies. We might need to abandoned this place we've called home for a month, or starve to death before Umbrella attacks again.

There's no real way for me to forget how we got here in the first place. I'm in love with the person who's stuck in the middle of it all; Alice.

I love her, infatuated really. She is my whole life, and if she dies, I die. Since learning more about her past, being an operative of Umbrella and all that, one would think I'd be scared. That I would want to put as much distance between her and I as possible. Instead, I need to be by her side, her champion. She'd never admit it, but she needs someone in her corner. I let her past roll off me because that's not who she is now. Alice has been trying to take these assholes down longer than any of us, and I'll be damned if I'll stand in her way. She's amazing, brilliant, beautiful, and above all, a real ass kicker.

I live and breathe Alice, there is no escaping it. At times it feels almost suffocating, but at the same time I never want it to end. My heart races every time she and I kiss, it's electric, magnetic even. Being with her is the only time I feel something. It's the only way we know we're still human, that all of this is real.

Sometimes, when I reach for her though, I fall short. Alice is a complex woman. Her true self is always hidden, hiding her weaknesses from everyone else. I feel honoured, privileged even, that she's shown her true colours to me and only me. The problem is, is that she guards herself too well, closing everyone off, sometimes myself included. I wish she would open up without me having to pry. I'm not the enemy she should fear, but the enemy we all fear is just outside our walls, waiting for the perfect opportunity to knock on our door once more.

I know she's plotting something. I can see the wheels turning in her head even if she isn't saying anything out loud. The guilt she has for what has happened to the world, it weighs heavy on her shoulders and I wish I could do something to make it all go away. No matter how many confessionals or heart to hearts we have, it'll not change the blame she carries. It would not surprise me if Alice was plotting a way to attack Umbrella before they attack us, her mind, tactically, always ten steps ahead of the rest of us. I just hope she doesn't plan to do it alone. We're a couple, we support each other in everything we do, and I want to be by her side, storming an Umbrella facility and helping to achieve the revenge she deserves.

My dreams are plagued by her, she is everywhere and also no where. I don't even remember what life was like before we met. Is that what true love really is? You get so caught up in your own fantasy that you forget the grim reality? Learning more about her, meeting people from her past life, it's exhilarating, like a breath of fresh air. Our date was a little unconventional, but still a nice introduction into the young Alice I wish I knew as a child. It wasn't how I pictured our first date playing out. A little slow at the beginning, but ending with a bang, literally I might add. It felt almost normal.

I just want this battle for survival to end. All this death, destruction, and the foul smell of despair to just disappear. Give us humans a chance to rebuild, and recreate what we lost so long ago . My dream is to find a paradise, a Utopia if you will, where there is no fear of the undead, no fear of loosing the one you love, and no global corporation pulling the strings. I know this'll probably never happen in my life time, but a girl can dream right? I hope that us staying aboard this ship, that going down the coast in search of survivors is not a wasted effort. I hope that we'll be able to have a future, move on from this life and create a better one.

...If only...

If only, the most over used statement constantly floating through my mind. If only I had more time, if only the world was different, if only I could learn to let go of my grudges, if only I could accept my brother and Jill together, if only I could end Alice's suffering. I know, I sound like I want to play God and fix everyone and everything that is broken, but that's just not possible. I've come to accept Jill as a friend and ally, someone that I would go to battle with when the time comes. We've talked, just the two of us, about our connection. Call me paranoid, call me crazy, but Alice made a comment before about her and I being similar. At the time I refused to listen, it angered me to be compared to someone who was once our enemy. Someone who was the embodiment of everything we were fighting against. Now, after the conversations Jill and I have been having, I'm beginning to see what Alice foresaw.

Something is happening to me. I feel different. It's hard to explain which is why right now no one, not even Jill, knows about it. I don't know if the same thing is happening to her, if it's dormant side effects from being drones to Umbrella, but whatever it is, it feels dark and sinister. Like something that reeks of Umbrella's filthy puppet master skills. It's quite possible it's happening to almost everyone else aboard this ship. We were all drones to Umbrella at one point or another. This whole ship could be in danger of destroying itself while Luther and Chris, the only two who have escaped Umbrellas wrath, will be caught in the cross fire.

I honestly fear, every night when I go to bed, that this could be the end. This could be it for the human race...

Claire Redfield

Fin

So...as much as I want to write more...this is where this story will end. The rest, well it will follows in the continuation "Calm Before the Storm" which is also currently on ff and in progress. Please hop over to that story if you liked this one to see how the epic story continues and contribute with your own ideas/opinions/thoughts etc.

I want to give a heartfelt shout out and Thank-you to my avid followers & reviewers.
You kept this story alive with your comments & words of encouragement to hear more of what will happen to our Umbrella renegades.
I thank you so, so much! :)

xx

B.