Nightmare Revisited 9
After nine rewrites here it is. Still hate it, though.
Title: Nightmare Revisted
Fandom: Resident Evil
Genre: Horror, Romance, Action
Pairings: Wesker/Claire (main), Chris/Jill
Rating: M
Warnings: Sexual situations, blood, guts and gore, and a little bit of high school level biology.
Summary: Claire never thought that the poison from Antarctica would come back to haunt her. She never realized what it and its antidote were slowly doing to her body. Now she finds herself in the hands of a man she considers the devil himself wondering if she can ever be normal again.
Chris stood as the others sat around Barry’s dining room table. The man had been kind enough to volunteer his house when it became apparent that Chris’ apartment would not accommodate everyone for any length of time. Ever since Leon had gotten that video he had been unable to stay still. All he could think about was the last time Wesker and Claire had gotten together. The memory of the terror he felt when he saw Wesker dragging his sister around by her hair was fresh in his mind. The one question he could not get out his head was why he gone after Claire and why she was in the military base in the first place. He knew the viral monstrosity that had once been his captain didn’t so much as blink without it being a step in some kind of plan.
He bit his lip, a habit both siblings had picked up from their parents, as he began to pace. The only use he could up with for Wesker to have interest in Claire was the fact that she would be close to the perfect bait for him. He had practically raised Claire himself after their parents had died, and they were as close as siblings could be. The idea that something could happen to her was agonizing. It didn’t help that he was completely unsure of Wesker’s intentions towards her. Surely, if it had been about baiting him, Wesker would’ve made a move by now. It wasn’t like him not to use a resource presented to him.
“Chris, you need to stop,” Jill said from her seat at the table. She looked almost as miserable as he felt. She had started staying over at his apartment in order to make sure that he ate and slept. “You’re making me nervous.” Chris let out a sigh and ran his hand through his hair.
“None of this makes sense,” he said as he pulled out one of the oak chairs and fell into it. Barry grunted from where he was fiddling with a speaker phone they had stolen from one of the BSAA conference rooms in agreement.
Carlos had called in a few days ago with a phone number of someone who supposedly knew where Wesker was. It was going to cost them more money, though. Money none of them had-which was why Leon sat in the corner glaring at them all, though he clearly wasn’t really directing it at them. Leon had ties to the Kennedy family that he never liked talking about or exploiting, but this was an emergency. So he had been forced to visit family he liked to pretend he didn’t have, in order to secure the family checkbook. Chris could only guess what that had been like. Apparently, Leon was the black sheep of the family.
“I mean,” he began as Rebecca walked in along with Billy both carrying snacks. Barry’s wife’s response to crises was to make sure everyone was well fed. Even now he could smell the homemade food she was cooking. “If he took her to get to me, shouldn’t we have heard something by now? Why send the video to Kennedy? What was Claire doing at that military base? Those uniforms looked an awful lot like our guys.” Chris put his head on the table when all Jill did was offer him a half-hearted smile in response.
“Don’t worry, Chris,” she reached across the table and ran her fingers through his hair. “We’ll get her back. She’s like a little sister to all of us.” He lifted his head enough so that he could see the determined nods from the others. Despite everything a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. There was a reason that they all had survived this long.
“Thanks guys.” There was a sound of triumph as Barry finished hooking the speaker phone up. They had stolen it so that everyone would be able to hear the conversation with whoever this contact was. Rebecca and Billy put the food on the table and took their seats.
“If you would do the honors,” Billy said as he pushed the phone towards Chris. He pulled the scrawled number from his pocket and pushed the button to turn the phone on. He waited until he heard the dial tone before he punched in the number.
She sat in the warm sun of the tropics, skin that was naturally pale turning golden brown in self-defense. She had no fear of sun damage or any other harm coming to her body. Long bright yellow hair was pulled up in a French braid that would reach her ankles if she stood. A black pinstripe pantsuit looked like it would unbearable in the heat, but not a bead of sweat showed on her skin. A pair of thin shades sat on the bridge of her nose over a naturally smirking mouth. The sound of a cell phone going off was startling against the backdrop of tropical forest life. She reached one manicured hand into her pocket to retrieve it, a full smile blooming on her lips as she saw the caller ID.
“Mr. Redfield” her voice was thick and honeyed, the light Southern accent announcing that she was American even in the foreign setting, “I’ve been expecting your call.” She crossed her legs and waved away the servant who approached her with a cocktail.
Chris looked at the speaker phone in surprise before looking around the room. Just who the hell was this woman and how the hell did she know it was him? Even if she had caller ID it would display Barry’s number. He cleared his throat, wondering just how he was supposed to go about this.
“How did you know it was me?” he asked and a tinkling laugh was heard.
“Honey, information is my business. How would I make any money if I didn’t know who was in need of my services?” the voice sounded amused and for a second Chris had a flash of another coldly amused voice. “The only question I have for you, is what piece of information do you want? You can only afford one, after all.”
“What do you mean?” it was Leon who asked.
“I know this call is about the whereabouts of Albert Wesker,” the way she spat out the last name left no doubt in their minds that she was likely not on good terms with the man. “But aren’t you curious as to why he would even be interested in Claire Redfield? Why he would break into a secure U.S. government facility to get her?” Everyone in the room’s eyebrows rose at what she said. The tinkling laughter was back. “You didn’t know that? Dear me, let’s just consider that one a freebie. The next one will cost you.”
“How much?” Jill asked raising her hand to stop any other questions. It had been a long time since she had done something like this. The last time she had truly dealt with someone who deals in information was when she was still leading a life of crime with her father. She knew this woman was trying to distract them, getting them to pay for the wrong piece of information so that they would have to pay more for the one they wanted. It was a standard practice.
“One-point-eight million wired to an account I’ll give you,” she purred through the phone line. “And that’s for every piece of information I give you minus the aforementioned.” Chris felt his eyes reach the size of dinner plates. That was four times what they had paid in order to get the phone number. Jill frowned. The figure was above what she had expected, but she had been out of the game for so long she had no idea what was reasonable and what was not anymore.
“One,” Jill counter offered. The woman clicked her tongue over the phone.
“I fear you don’t realize just how dangerous even talking to you is, Miss Valentine,” she said her voice thick with false fear. “However, I understand your limited resources: one-point-six.” Everyone in the room looked at her, Leon’s hand hovering over the check as he waited for them to decide on a figure. Jill brushed a piece of hair out her eyes as her mind worked.
“One-point-four,” she gritted out praying that the woman wouldn’t hang up. She held her breath as she waited for her response.
“Done,” came the firm response from the other end of the phone. “Now what do you want to know? I’m a very busy woman.” All the eyes in the room went to Chris. The man took a deep breath.
“Just where he is,” he figured that they could find out the why after they found Claire. There was no telling what that madman was doing to her while they sat around bargaining with some woman over the telephone.
One corner of a perfectly sculpted mouth lifted in a smile as she gave him the address of the laboratory and house in Arizona. While the information Ada had given her on Chris Redfield and the others was correct, she knew he was far smarter than Albert gave him credit for. The account number rolled off her tongue, knowing that these people’s sense of honor would assure she was paid. They might even use her number again someday. Not that they would if they knew who she was. She hung up the cell phone, and the servant who had been hovering just out of earshot approached.
“Is there anything else you’ll be needing, Mrs. Jackson-Wesker?” the man asked his voice heavily accented as English was not the first language he had learned.
“Have them ready the jet,” she said as she sipped the cocktail. “I will be needing to return the states. It seems my brother’s little side project has had some interesting results, and I have a feeling I’ll soon be in a position to reap the benefits.”
Claire rubbed her hair with a towel in one hand as she walked into her bedroom. Oddly, since the kiss in the kitchen things had gone back to some semblance of normal. Wesker still didn’t return to sparring with her, but she knew that this was due to some project he was working on on-top of the work he was doing on the serum, not him actively avoiding her. She had stopped by the lab room a couple of times over the past few days to give blood samples and the sheer amount of paperwork piled neatly around the place was startling. He had almost seemed distracted as he took her blood. It was unlike him to be so untidy. She had actually thought about trying to filch some of them, before common sense told her that he would likely notice if anything was a hair out of place.
She let out a sigh before frowning as she saw a box on her bed. She threw the towel over a chair as she approached it. Cautiously, she pried the lid off, almost like she was afraid that whatever was in it would hurt her. She pushed tissue paper aside to find a pair of black ballet flats. Little black jewels went around the top and she had little doubt that they were real gems. Ribbons trailed from them in order to secure them to her feet. She studied the shoes for a moment like some kind of great puzzle trying to figure out what was going on.
The brunette finally gave up and put the shoes back in the box before picking the box up. Why was she going to spend all her time trying to figure out why Wesker was giving her ballet shoes when she could go downstairs and ask him?
Wesker decided that Russians were not people he was going to actively seek out to work with again. They were all almost as paranoid as he was from the combination of the Cold War and the stranglehold the KGB once had on the country. It made negotiations crawl. The only good news was that he had managed to perfect the serum for Claire and decided that he was going to use the Gala in order to test it. Testing had shown that the virus would overcome the serum, which meant she would likely be on doses for the rest of her life if she wanted to ‘live normally’. It slowed down her healing to a virtual crawl and her strength and speed were greatly reduced. But it would cheat any test done for the presence of T and its variants.
There was a knock at the door to the control room and his attention went from the data streams Red Queen was sending him from Russia that were being printed out, to another monitor that showed Claire standing outside the door a black box under her arms. A frown danced across his features. Things had been getting better since the incident in the kitchen. He had come to the conclusion that whatever had happened in there had been nothing more than the result of too much time spent together and mutual frustration at the situation.
The shoes had been his way of getting her attention without actually having to talk to her. Whatever conclusion about the mess he had come to, it had not changed the fact that that odd feeling that was anger but not appeared whenever she was present. He had not had time between his projects to examine it enough to come to any kind of definite conclusion, so he had decided the prudent course of action would be to avoid it. This was why he did not answer the door himself but allowed the computer to do so. He turned in the chair, so that he faced her as she walked in.
“Can I ask what gave you the impression I was a ballerina?” Claire asked sarcasm heavy in her voice as she stepped inside. It always felt to her like she was entering some villain’s lair with the way he kept the lights dim in order to see the computer screens better. His scent was thick in here, the smell of rock candy and ozone easing tension out of her without her consent. A hand unconsciously went to her belly, only for her to realize it as Wesker’s eyes followed the movement. “Well?” she asked drawing his attention away from a topic that seemed to mostly result in the two of them brawling or doing other things she wished no part of. She was no less determined to escape, watching for an opening.
“They match the dress,” the blond said simply leaving her more puzzled than when she started. Sometimes it astounded him how dense she could be.
“What dress?” she went back over her mental picture of her room, making sure that she hadn’t overlooked it. “And why would I need a dress?” Claire was not a dressy kind of woman. She had always felt more at home in a t-shirt and jeans or the occasional bit of biker gear. Dresses always made her feel like she was a three year old playing dress-up with her mom’s clothes. She knew she was not the most beautiful woman, but hoped that someday someone would like her for her personality. But that was before this had all happened. She was going to have a child and due to the nature of her infection, the very idea she could find someone to settle down with was ridiculous.
“The dress being delivered to the hotel room,” Wesker said clearly annoyed. He couldn’t afford to play twenty questions with her right now, so it was better just to explain things in simple terms. He had forgotten how like her brother she could be when she wanted to. He had been known to forever ask mundane questions. “You should pack an overnight bag as we will be leaving in a few hours. We will be attending a party that a friend is throwing.”
Claire looked at him in disbelief. They were going back out after what had happened last time? Was he insane? Yes, a voice in her mind responded, he very likely is. But she wasn’t going to say anything. This was likely the opportunity she had been waiting for. The party meant civilization, and civilization meant a chance to disappear and find her brother. Her thumb traced over her lower stomach as she thought. She was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Fine,” she said with a shrug. She watched curiosity light in his exotic eyes and she moved to leave. It would be better if he didn’t ask her any questions. She had a feeling that she would be hard pressed to come up with a lie he would believe. That and the more amount of time she spent in his presence the more she remembered the feel of his lips on hers and the passion in that single kiss.
Wesker watched her walk out, puzzled. He had expected more of a fight after what happened last time. He knew that she was adamantly opposed to the idea of harming others in her attempt to stay out of the government’s clutches, and that, while she hadn’t said anything, the night they had spent in Phoenix had bothered her. So then, why had she given in so easily?
He blinked slowly as a thought came to him. Perhaps she saw this as a chance to get away from him. He knew that their argument was likely far from finished in her mind, and that she had likely only appeared to have given in in order to plan something. She was not her brother and understood the concept of planning doing what brute force could not. But, surely, she was not going to try to take off. She could not be that foolish.
Chris looked at the weaponry spread out across his bed. Most of it was legal, he had the permits to prove it, but there were a few that he had modified himself. His S.T.A.R.S. issued handgun was one of them. He picked it up, pushing the button to slide the magazine out. He checked it to make sure it was empty before putting it on the bed. He slid the slide back to check the chamber before checking the sights by looking at a tree outside the window. All of this was habit- a practice developed from years spent moving from one viral crisis to the other. The fact that this was to go after his sister didn’t change it. Chances were good that he was going to encounter Albert Wesker and he didn’t want a gun to stall because he missed something an inspection could’ve caught. He heard the snick as the door behind him opened and he lowered the gun as he turned.
Jill leaned against the doorway, her brown hair was pulled back in a low pony-tail pulled through the back of a black baseball cap. She wore a black long sleeved shirt and jeans. A thigh holster wrapped around her waist and right thigh, the gun missing at the moment in response to her own preparations and her jeans tucked into a pair of steel-toed work boots. She waited until she was sure she had his attention before she walked inside.
“I figured I would come and give you a hand,” she said with a little shrug as she made her way to the bed.
“Checking up on me, now?” Chris asked as he watched her walk her fingers down the barrel of the shotgun. He wondered if she did things like this around him intentionally or if it was all subconscious. Because, despite his sister being kidnapped by a madman, he still found Jill attractive enough to make him forget for a split second just why he had all the weapons spread across his bed.
“We worry about you,” she said looking back up at him before moving so she could rest a hand on his upper arm. “I worry about you. Besides Barry, you’re the only member of this team who has someone to lose. What will you do if we’re too late?” Jill hated to even suggest such a thing, but knew with Wesker it was a very real outcome. Even if Claire was by some miracle alive, there was no guarantee she was Claire anymore. He could’ve turned her into some kind of mutated monster and the only peace they could give her would be by killing her. She knew her former captain was more than capable of being just that cruel, especially when it came to his former team members.
“Don’t say that!” he ground out from between clenched teeth as he shrugged her arm off. “We won’t be. Claire will be fine and we’ll finally kill that bastard.” The look he gave her made her heart contract. He was well aware of just what they might find at the desert address they had been given, but he couldn’t let himself believe they would find anything less. She nodded firmly, letting him know without words that she was behind him.
“Well then, let’s get this stuff packed up,” Jill said as she grabbed the shotgun off the bed. “Carlos should be back tonight and Leon just called to confirm that he got us a ride. Unofficially, of course,” which meant Leon had called in more favors with the people in the military he knew. He wondered what he would do without his friends.
“Thanks,” he said with a smile. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and actually surprise him this time.”
Claire watched him work. They were on the flight to wherever the party was going to be held. Wesker wouldn’t tell her, and she had spent most of the drive to the small private airstrip in sullen silence. The second they had climbed into the plane he had opened up a little black laptop, making a point of the fact he had things to do and would not be dealing with her childish attitude. Whatever. She was bolting the second they hit the city streets. But with his ignoring of her in favor of his work, and the fact that she was too wired with adrenalin from thinking about her upcoming escape, meant she couldn’t sleep. This meant she was reduced to staring at him, as it was cloudy so there was nothing to see out the window, and letting her mind wander.
Her eyes mapped his face, the sunglasses gone in favor of the natural light filtering through the cabin. He didn’t look a day over thirty though she knew he was in his mid-forties. She also couldn’t deny that he was handsome in that cold almost statuesque way. There was no doubt in her mind that the greats would have killed to get their hands on him. She looked at the small downward turn to his lips and couldn’t help the flush of heat in her veins as it summoned the memory of the kiss in the kitchen. For those few seconds there had been no virus, no child, no years of hate stretching between the two of them. There had only been passion, pure and simple. She had never felt that kind of passion before, and had a feeling she would never find it with anyone else. Why did she have to find it with her worst enemy? Why couldn’t it have been with some normal man? Did God really hate her that much?
A sigh escaped her lips and the sound of typing ceased as those liquid fire eyes rose to look at her. She felt heat rise to her cheeks under his scrutiny, knowing that she had been caught, but she refused to look away. She couldn’t afford to show weakness, not if she was going to protect this baby.
“It’s impolite to stare, dear heart,” he said closing the lid to the laptop and setting it aside. It was hard to concentrate on his work with her staring at him. There was a considering weight to her gaze and he couldn’t help the curiosity as he wondered just what it was she saw. Did she see a monster? A God? Or something else entirely?
“It’s also impolite to drag people across the country without telling them where they are going,” Claire snapped as she crossed her arms, letting the anger cover her mild embarrassment at being caught staring at him. “I do believe they have even gone so far as to make it crime. Kidnapping I think is the term.”
“What difference would knowing where make? You would end up going either way,” Wesker said leaning back in the white and cream chair as he folded his hands together in front of himself. Claire felt her temper flare. This was part of what they had been fighting about at the kitchen. He just expected her to follow him around doing whatever he wanted like some kind of deranged pet, offered a treat if it was compliant.
“I’m not one of your lackeys, Wesker,” she hissed moving so she was sitting on the edge of her chair. “You don’t get to tell me to jump and expect me to say how high. I’m not something you can control like an experiment! I’m a person.” She made sure her eyes were locked with his as she said it. She wanted no misunderstanding.
The blonde raised an eyebrow at her response. Clearly, the extra hormones in her blood stream where affecting her judgment. He had best calm her down before she ended up trying to take him on physically-the plane was not built to handle that kind of damage and he did not enjoy the idea of having to walk all the way to their destination along with the fall and its results.
“I’m perfectly aware that you’re a person, Ms. Redfield,” he began but she cut him off with a scoff.
“Really? Sometimes I don’t even think you know what anything you can’t put into one of your predetermined boxes is,” the sneer in Claire’s voice was unlike her, but she was so tired of this, of everything since she had found out about her infection. Wesker was just the closest target, but that didn’t stop her. “I bet you don’t even know why’re keeping me. Oh, I’m sure you’ve figured out some way to justify it in that twisted mind of yours, but it’s not the real reason and you know it. Does it eat you up knowing that in some twisted way you need me?”
The words had not been meant to leave her mouth. They were far too close to voicing what she had seen in his eyes that day. Claire knew that once he figured it out, she would either end up dead or never see the light of day again. Such a weakness would either be destroyed or locked away where no one would ever have a chance of finding it. She had to get away before he got to that point. Had to.
His temper flared to meet hers at her words. He had no name for the feeling she inspired, had no rational reason for the fact that he could not bring himself to fatally harm her. It was slowly driving him crazy. The only thing he could think to do was to prove her wrong. He was in front of her in a flash, tossing her onto the floor of the cabin, and pinning her down. She struggled, a fist connecting with his lower jaw before he managed to capture her wrists and pin them to the floor above her head with one hand. His other one was around her neck.
“I don’t need anyone, Claire,” Wesker told her, nose inches from her own. “You’re something rare and intriguing that is rapidly becoming more trouble than it’s worth. I would advise you not to become so troublesome you lose all worth.” He tightened the hand around her throat as he spoke, those defying eyes staring up at him.
Claire was not ready to give in just yet. One leg hooked around his thigh, and with a twist she reversed their positions. The shock of the move left him momentarily stunned and she was fisting her hands in his dress shirt, bringing her face close to his in an instinctual need to try to intimidate him.
“That’s why you’re alone, Wesker,” they were close enough he could feel the breath from her lips as she spoke. “Never needing anyone or anything. Tell me, do you ever wonder what you’re life would’ve been like if you let that ice thaw a little bit? If you asked instead of ordered? If you had someone waiting for you on the other side of that lab door? Or are you so cold, that no one could mean anything to you beyond what they could do for you?”
He wanted her to stop talking. She was giving voice to questions he had been shoving away for a long time-things he had labeled as irrelevant in his quest to perfect the virus. Then there was the fact that she had the unique ability to drag these things he had put to rest in his mind to the surface and force him to think about them. That damn feeling that was not rage was back and he was moving with a single purpose-he needed her to stop talking. A shift of his body weight, a flex of his muscle, and she was once more underneath him.
Claire had a split second to read the intent in his eyes before his lips were on hers again. It was violent, as much an extension of their fight as if they were trading blows. This was so wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be yanking the short strands of his hair in an effort to get him to do as she wished. She wasn’t supposed to be sucking his tongue into her mouth, delighting in the feel of it. She wasn’t supposed to be locking her legs around his waist so she could get as close to him as possible with clothes on. She was supposed to be pushing him away as his body molded to hers. She was supposed to be protesting as one of his hands slid under her shirt. She was supposed to be fighting as his lips moved towards her neck.
A sound escaped her lips when he found the pulse point on her throat and he cradled it with his lips, teeth, tongue. He didn’t know what this was. He had never experienced a lust this all-encompassing before. It was like their anger was fuel, feeding the need to touch, to claim. He wanted her. He wanted Claire Redfield writhing underneath him, he wanted all the sounds she made, and he wanted her to want it. It was like an ache settling into his bones, into his very being, and it frightened him.
He paused, her pulse dancing under his lips, one hand on the small of her back pressing her into him. Then he was moving. He left her like she had burnt him, feet carrying him to the bathroom. He didn’t care that he had left her sprawled wantonly on the floor, that his body was protesting adamantly, that it might look like he was running away from her. What he cared about was that damn feeling coursing through his veins-the sheer intensity of it. Wesker had felt very little even when he had been human: ambition, anger, desire, curiosity, triumph, the occasional bit of contentment when things went his way. But none of them held the sheer power of this feeling.
He ran one hand through the mess she had made of his hair, forcing it back into place, as a thought hit him with all the force of a runaway train. Was this affection? Was this that petty emotion humans wrote such drivel about? Was this the thing that brought men low and nations went to war over? A sneer twisted his face at the thought. If that was so, they could keep it. Albert Wesker had much more important things to do than deal with an affection.
Part 2
Title: Nightmare Revisted
Fandom: Resident Evil
Genre: Horror, Romance, Action
Pairings: Wesker/Claire (main), Chris/Jill
Rating: M
Warnings: Sexual situations, blood, guts and gore, and a little bit of high school level biology.
Summary: Claire never thought that the poison from Antarctica would come back to haunt her. She never realized what it and its antidote were slowly doing to her body. Now she finds herself in the hands of a man she considers the devil himself wondering if she can ever be normal again.
Chris stood as the others sat around Barry’s dining room table. The man had been kind enough to volunteer his house when it became apparent that Chris’ apartment would not accommodate everyone for any length of time. Ever since Leon had gotten that video he had been unable to stay still. All he could think about was the last time Wesker and Claire had gotten together. The memory of the terror he felt when he saw Wesker dragging his sister around by her hair was fresh in his mind. The one question he could not get out his head was why he gone after Claire and why she was in the military base in the first place. He knew the viral monstrosity that had once been his captain didn’t so much as blink without it being a step in some kind of plan.
He bit his lip, a habit both siblings had picked up from their parents, as he began to pace. The only use he could up with for Wesker to have interest in Claire was the fact that she would be close to the perfect bait for him. He had practically raised Claire himself after their parents had died, and they were as close as siblings could be. The idea that something could happen to her was agonizing. It didn’t help that he was completely unsure of Wesker’s intentions towards her. Surely, if it had been about baiting him, Wesker would’ve made a move by now. It wasn’t like him not to use a resource presented to him.
“Chris, you need to stop,” Jill said from her seat at the table. She looked almost as miserable as he felt. She had started staying over at his apartment in order to make sure that he ate and slept. “You’re making me nervous.” Chris let out a sigh and ran his hand through his hair.
“None of this makes sense,” he said as he pulled out one of the oak chairs and fell into it. Barry grunted from where he was fiddling with a speaker phone they had stolen from one of the BSAA conference rooms in agreement.
Carlos had called in a few days ago with a phone number of someone who supposedly knew where Wesker was. It was going to cost them more money, though. Money none of them had-which was why Leon sat in the corner glaring at them all, though he clearly wasn’t really directing it at them. Leon had ties to the Kennedy family that he never liked talking about or exploiting, but this was an emergency. So he had been forced to visit family he liked to pretend he didn’t have, in order to secure the family checkbook. Chris could only guess what that had been like. Apparently, Leon was the black sheep of the family.
“I mean,” he began as Rebecca walked in along with Billy both carrying snacks. Barry’s wife’s response to crises was to make sure everyone was well fed. Even now he could smell the homemade food she was cooking. “If he took her to get to me, shouldn’t we have heard something by now? Why send the video to Kennedy? What was Claire doing at that military base? Those uniforms looked an awful lot like our guys.” Chris put his head on the table when all Jill did was offer him a half-hearted smile in response.
“Don’t worry, Chris,” she reached across the table and ran her fingers through his hair. “We’ll get her back. She’s like a little sister to all of us.” He lifted his head enough so that he could see the determined nods from the others. Despite everything a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. There was a reason that they all had survived this long.
“Thanks guys.” There was a sound of triumph as Barry finished hooking the speaker phone up. They had stolen it so that everyone would be able to hear the conversation with whoever this contact was. Rebecca and Billy put the food on the table and took their seats.
“If you would do the honors,” Billy said as he pushed the phone towards Chris. He pulled the scrawled number from his pocket and pushed the button to turn the phone on. He waited until he heard the dial tone before he punched in the number.
She sat in the warm sun of the tropics, skin that was naturally pale turning golden brown in self-defense. She had no fear of sun damage or any other harm coming to her body. Long bright yellow hair was pulled up in a French braid that would reach her ankles if she stood. A black pinstripe pantsuit looked like it would unbearable in the heat, but not a bead of sweat showed on her skin. A pair of thin shades sat on the bridge of her nose over a naturally smirking mouth. The sound of a cell phone going off was startling against the backdrop of tropical forest life. She reached one manicured hand into her pocket to retrieve it, a full smile blooming on her lips as she saw the caller ID.
“Mr. Redfield” her voice was thick and honeyed, the light Southern accent announcing that she was American even in the foreign setting, “I’ve been expecting your call.” She crossed her legs and waved away the servant who approached her with a cocktail.
Chris looked at the speaker phone in surprise before looking around the room. Just who the hell was this woman and how the hell did she know it was him? Even if she had caller ID it would display Barry’s number. He cleared his throat, wondering just how he was supposed to go about this.
“How did you know it was me?” he asked and a tinkling laugh was heard.
“Honey, information is my business. How would I make any money if I didn’t know who was in need of my services?” the voice sounded amused and for a second Chris had a flash of another coldly amused voice. “The only question I have for you, is what piece of information do you want? You can only afford one, after all.”
“What do you mean?” it was Leon who asked.
“I know this call is about the whereabouts of Albert Wesker,” the way she spat out the last name left no doubt in their minds that she was likely not on good terms with the man. “But aren’t you curious as to why he would even be interested in Claire Redfield? Why he would break into a secure U.S. government facility to get her?” Everyone in the room’s eyebrows rose at what she said. The tinkling laughter was back. “You didn’t know that? Dear me, let’s just consider that one a freebie. The next one will cost you.”
“How much?” Jill asked raising her hand to stop any other questions. It had been a long time since she had done something like this. The last time she had truly dealt with someone who deals in information was when she was still leading a life of crime with her father. She knew this woman was trying to distract them, getting them to pay for the wrong piece of information so that they would have to pay more for the one they wanted. It was a standard practice.
“One-point-eight million wired to an account I’ll give you,” she purred through the phone line. “And that’s for every piece of information I give you minus the aforementioned.” Chris felt his eyes reach the size of dinner plates. That was four times what they had paid in order to get the phone number. Jill frowned. The figure was above what she had expected, but she had been out of the game for so long she had no idea what was reasonable and what was not anymore.
“One,” Jill counter offered. The woman clicked her tongue over the phone.
“I fear you don’t realize just how dangerous even talking to you is, Miss Valentine,” she said her voice thick with false fear. “However, I understand your limited resources: one-point-six.” Everyone in the room looked at her, Leon’s hand hovering over the check as he waited for them to decide on a figure. Jill brushed a piece of hair out her eyes as her mind worked.
“One-point-four,” she gritted out praying that the woman wouldn’t hang up. She held her breath as she waited for her response.
“Done,” came the firm response from the other end of the phone. “Now what do you want to know? I’m a very busy woman.” All the eyes in the room went to Chris. The man took a deep breath.
“Just where he is,” he figured that they could find out the why after they found Claire. There was no telling what that madman was doing to her while they sat around bargaining with some woman over the telephone.
One corner of a perfectly sculpted mouth lifted in a smile as she gave him the address of the laboratory and house in Arizona. While the information Ada had given her on Chris Redfield and the others was correct, she knew he was far smarter than Albert gave him credit for. The account number rolled off her tongue, knowing that these people’s sense of honor would assure she was paid. They might even use her number again someday. Not that they would if they knew who she was. She hung up the cell phone, and the servant who had been hovering just out of earshot approached.
“Is there anything else you’ll be needing, Mrs. Jackson-Wesker?” the man asked his voice heavily accented as English was not the first language he had learned.
“Have them ready the jet,” she said as she sipped the cocktail. “I will be needing to return the states. It seems my brother’s little side project has had some interesting results, and I have a feeling I’ll soon be in a position to reap the benefits.”
Claire rubbed her hair with a towel in one hand as she walked into her bedroom. Oddly, since the kiss in the kitchen things had gone back to some semblance of normal. Wesker still didn’t return to sparring with her, but she knew that this was due to some project he was working on on-top of the work he was doing on the serum, not him actively avoiding her. She had stopped by the lab room a couple of times over the past few days to give blood samples and the sheer amount of paperwork piled neatly around the place was startling. He had almost seemed distracted as he took her blood. It was unlike him to be so untidy. She had actually thought about trying to filch some of them, before common sense told her that he would likely notice if anything was a hair out of place.
She let out a sigh before frowning as she saw a box on her bed. She threw the towel over a chair as she approached it. Cautiously, she pried the lid off, almost like she was afraid that whatever was in it would hurt her. She pushed tissue paper aside to find a pair of black ballet flats. Little black jewels went around the top and she had little doubt that they were real gems. Ribbons trailed from them in order to secure them to her feet. She studied the shoes for a moment like some kind of great puzzle trying to figure out what was going on.
The brunette finally gave up and put the shoes back in the box before picking the box up. Why was she going to spend all her time trying to figure out why Wesker was giving her ballet shoes when she could go downstairs and ask him?
Wesker decided that Russians were not people he was going to actively seek out to work with again. They were all almost as paranoid as he was from the combination of the Cold War and the stranglehold the KGB once had on the country. It made negotiations crawl. The only good news was that he had managed to perfect the serum for Claire and decided that he was going to use the Gala in order to test it. Testing had shown that the virus would overcome the serum, which meant she would likely be on doses for the rest of her life if she wanted to ‘live normally’. It slowed down her healing to a virtual crawl and her strength and speed were greatly reduced. But it would cheat any test done for the presence of T and its variants.
There was a knock at the door to the control room and his attention went from the data streams Red Queen was sending him from Russia that were being printed out, to another monitor that showed Claire standing outside the door a black box under her arms. A frown danced across his features. Things had been getting better since the incident in the kitchen. He had come to the conclusion that whatever had happened in there had been nothing more than the result of too much time spent together and mutual frustration at the situation.
The shoes had been his way of getting her attention without actually having to talk to her. Whatever conclusion about the mess he had come to, it had not changed the fact that that odd feeling that was anger but not appeared whenever she was present. He had not had time between his projects to examine it enough to come to any kind of definite conclusion, so he had decided the prudent course of action would be to avoid it. This was why he did not answer the door himself but allowed the computer to do so. He turned in the chair, so that he faced her as she walked in.
“Can I ask what gave you the impression I was a ballerina?” Claire asked sarcasm heavy in her voice as she stepped inside. It always felt to her like she was entering some villain’s lair with the way he kept the lights dim in order to see the computer screens better. His scent was thick in here, the smell of rock candy and ozone easing tension out of her without her consent. A hand unconsciously went to her belly, only for her to realize it as Wesker’s eyes followed the movement. “Well?” she asked drawing his attention away from a topic that seemed to mostly result in the two of them brawling or doing other things she wished no part of. She was no less determined to escape, watching for an opening.
“They match the dress,” the blond said simply leaving her more puzzled than when she started. Sometimes it astounded him how dense she could be.
“What dress?” she went back over her mental picture of her room, making sure that she hadn’t overlooked it. “And why would I need a dress?” Claire was not a dressy kind of woman. She had always felt more at home in a t-shirt and jeans or the occasional bit of biker gear. Dresses always made her feel like she was a three year old playing dress-up with her mom’s clothes. She knew she was not the most beautiful woman, but hoped that someday someone would like her for her personality. But that was before this had all happened. She was going to have a child and due to the nature of her infection, the very idea she could find someone to settle down with was ridiculous.
“The dress being delivered to the hotel room,” Wesker said clearly annoyed. He couldn’t afford to play twenty questions with her right now, so it was better just to explain things in simple terms. He had forgotten how like her brother she could be when she wanted to. He had been known to forever ask mundane questions. “You should pack an overnight bag as we will be leaving in a few hours. We will be attending a party that a friend is throwing.”
Claire looked at him in disbelief. They were going back out after what had happened last time? Was he insane? Yes, a voice in her mind responded, he very likely is. But she wasn’t going to say anything. This was likely the opportunity she had been waiting for. The party meant civilization, and civilization meant a chance to disappear and find her brother. Her thumb traced over her lower stomach as she thought. She was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Fine,” she said with a shrug. She watched curiosity light in his exotic eyes and she moved to leave. It would be better if he didn’t ask her any questions. She had a feeling that she would be hard pressed to come up with a lie he would believe. That and the more amount of time she spent in his presence the more she remembered the feel of his lips on hers and the passion in that single kiss.
Wesker watched her walk out, puzzled. He had expected more of a fight after what happened last time. He knew that she was adamantly opposed to the idea of harming others in her attempt to stay out of the government’s clutches, and that, while she hadn’t said anything, the night they had spent in Phoenix had bothered her. So then, why had she given in so easily?
He blinked slowly as a thought came to him. Perhaps she saw this as a chance to get away from him. He knew that their argument was likely far from finished in her mind, and that she had likely only appeared to have given in in order to plan something. She was not her brother and understood the concept of planning doing what brute force could not. But, surely, she was not going to try to take off. She could not be that foolish.
Chris looked at the weaponry spread out across his bed. Most of it was legal, he had the permits to prove it, but there were a few that he had modified himself. His S.T.A.R.S. issued handgun was one of them. He picked it up, pushing the button to slide the magazine out. He checked it to make sure it was empty before putting it on the bed. He slid the slide back to check the chamber before checking the sights by looking at a tree outside the window. All of this was habit- a practice developed from years spent moving from one viral crisis to the other. The fact that this was to go after his sister didn’t change it. Chances were good that he was going to encounter Albert Wesker and he didn’t want a gun to stall because he missed something an inspection could’ve caught. He heard the snick as the door behind him opened and he lowered the gun as he turned.
Jill leaned against the doorway, her brown hair was pulled back in a low pony-tail pulled through the back of a black baseball cap. She wore a black long sleeved shirt and jeans. A thigh holster wrapped around her waist and right thigh, the gun missing at the moment in response to her own preparations and her jeans tucked into a pair of steel-toed work boots. She waited until she was sure she had his attention before she walked inside.
“I figured I would come and give you a hand,” she said with a little shrug as she made her way to the bed.
“Checking up on me, now?” Chris asked as he watched her walk her fingers down the barrel of the shotgun. He wondered if she did things like this around him intentionally or if it was all subconscious. Because, despite his sister being kidnapped by a madman, he still found Jill attractive enough to make him forget for a split second just why he had all the weapons spread across his bed.
“We worry about you,” she said looking back up at him before moving so she could rest a hand on his upper arm. “I worry about you. Besides Barry, you’re the only member of this team who has someone to lose. What will you do if we’re too late?” Jill hated to even suggest such a thing, but knew with Wesker it was a very real outcome. Even if Claire was by some miracle alive, there was no guarantee she was Claire anymore. He could’ve turned her into some kind of mutated monster and the only peace they could give her would be by killing her. She knew her former captain was more than capable of being just that cruel, especially when it came to his former team members.
“Don’t say that!” he ground out from between clenched teeth as he shrugged her arm off. “We won’t be. Claire will be fine and we’ll finally kill that bastard.” The look he gave her made her heart contract. He was well aware of just what they might find at the desert address they had been given, but he couldn’t let himself believe they would find anything less. She nodded firmly, letting him know without words that she was behind him.
“Well then, let’s get this stuff packed up,” Jill said as she grabbed the shotgun off the bed. “Carlos should be back tonight and Leon just called to confirm that he got us a ride. Unofficially, of course,” which meant Leon had called in more favors with the people in the military he knew. He wondered what he would do without his friends.
“Thanks,” he said with a smile. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and actually surprise him this time.”
Claire watched him work. They were on the flight to wherever the party was going to be held. Wesker wouldn’t tell her, and she had spent most of the drive to the small private airstrip in sullen silence. The second they had climbed into the plane he had opened up a little black laptop, making a point of the fact he had things to do and would not be dealing with her childish attitude. Whatever. She was bolting the second they hit the city streets. But with his ignoring of her in favor of his work, and the fact that she was too wired with adrenalin from thinking about her upcoming escape, meant she couldn’t sleep. This meant she was reduced to staring at him, as it was cloudy so there was nothing to see out the window, and letting her mind wander.
Her eyes mapped his face, the sunglasses gone in favor of the natural light filtering through the cabin. He didn’t look a day over thirty though she knew he was in his mid-forties. She also couldn’t deny that he was handsome in that cold almost statuesque way. There was no doubt in her mind that the greats would have killed to get their hands on him. She looked at the small downward turn to his lips and couldn’t help the flush of heat in her veins as it summoned the memory of the kiss in the kitchen. For those few seconds there had been no virus, no child, no years of hate stretching between the two of them. There had only been passion, pure and simple. She had never felt that kind of passion before, and had a feeling she would never find it with anyone else. Why did she have to find it with her worst enemy? Why couldn’t it have been with some normal man? Did God really hate her that much?
A sigh escaped her lips and the sound of typing ceased as those liquid fire eyes rose to look at her. She felt heat rise to her cheeks under his scrutiny, knowing that she had been caught, but she refused to look away. She couldn’t afford to show weakness, not if she was going to protect this baby.
“It’s impolite to stare, dear heart,” he said closing the lid to the laptop and setting it aside. It was hard to concentrate on his work with her staring at him. There was a considering weight to her gaze and he couldn’t help the curiosity as he wondered just what it was she saw. Did she see a monster? A God? Or something else entirely?
“It’s also impolite to drag people across the country without telling them where they are going,” Claire snapped as she crossed her arms, letting the anger cover her mild embarrassment at being caught staring at him. “I do believe they have even gone so far as to make it crime. Kidnapping I think is the term.”
“What difference would knowing where make? You would end up going either way,” Wesker said leaning back in the white and cream chair as he folded his hands together in front of himself. Claire felt her temper flare. This was part of what they had been fighting about at the kitchen. He just expected her to follow him around doing whatever he wanted like some kind of deranged pet, offered a treat if it was compliant.
“I’m not one of your lackeys, Wesker,” she hissed moving so she was sitting on the edge of her chair. “You don’t get to tell me to jump and expect me to say how high. I’m not something you can control like an experiment! I’m a person.” She made sure her eyes were locked with his as she said it. She wanted no misunderstanding.
The blonde raised an eyebrow at her response. Clearly, the extra hormones in her blood stream where affecting her judgment. He had best calm her down before she ended up trying to take him on physically-the plane was not built to handle that kind of damage and he did not enjoy the idea of having to walk all the way to their destination along with the fall and its results.
“I’m perfectly aware that you’re a person, Ms. Redfield,” he began but she cut him off with a scoff.
“Really? Sometimes I don’t even think you know what anything you can’t put into one of your predetermined boxes is,” the sneer in Claire’s voice was unlike her, but she was so tired of this, of everything since she had found out about her infection. Wesker was just the closest target, but that didn’t stop her. “I bet you don’t even know why’re keeping me. Oh, I’m sure you’ve figured out some way to justify it in that twisted mind of yours, but it’s not the real reason and you know it. Does it eat you up knowing that in some twisted way you need me?”
The words had not been meant to leave her mouth. They were far too close to voicing what she had seen in his eyes that day. Claire knew that once he figured it out, she would either end up dead or never see the light of day again. Such a weakness would either be destroyed or locked away where no one would ever have a chance of finding it. She had to get away before he got to that point. Had to.
His temper flared to meet hers at her words. He had no name for the feeling she inspired, had no rational reason for the fact that he could not bring himself to fatally harm her. It was slowly driving him crazy. The only thing he could think to do was to prove her wrong. He was in front of her in a flash, tossing her onto the floor of the cabin, and pinning her down. She struggled, a fist connecting with his lower jaw before he managed to capture her wrists and pin them to the floor above her head with one hand. His other one was around her neck.
“I don’t need anyone, Claire,” Wesker told her, nose inches from her own. “You’re something rare and intriguing that is rapidly becoming more trouble than it’s worth. I would advise you not to become so troublesome you lose all worth.” He tightened the hand around her throat as he spoke, those defying eyes staring up at him.
Claire was not ready to give in just yet. One leg hooked around his thigh, and with a twist she reversed their positions. The shock of the move left him momentarily stunned and she was fisting her hands in his dress shirt, bringing her face close to his in an instinctual need to try to intimidate him.
“That’s why you’re alone, Wesker,” they were close enough he could feel the breath from her lips as she spoke. “Never needing anyone or anything. Tell me, do you ever wonder what you’re life would’ve been like if you let that ice thaw a little bit? If you asked instead of ordered? If you had someone waiting for you on the other side of that lab door? Or are you so cold, that no one could mean anything to you beyond what they could do for you?”
He wanted her to stop talking. She was giving voice to questions he had been shoving away for a long time-things he had labeled as irrelevant in his quest to perfect the virus. Then there was the fact that she had the unique ability to drag these things he had put to rest in his mind to the surface and force him to think about them. That damn feeling that was not rage was back and he was moving with a single purpose-he needed her to stop talking. A shift of his body weight, a flex of his muscle, and she was once more underneath him.
Claire had a split second to read the intent in his eyes before his lips were on hers again. It was violent, as much an extension of their fight as if they were trading blows. This was so wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be yanking the short strands of his hair in an effort to get him to do as she wished. She wasn’t supposed to be sucking his tongue into her mouth, delighting in the feel of it. She wasn’t supposed to be locking her legs around his waist so she could get as close to him as possible with clothes on. She was supposed to be pushing him away as his body molded to hers. She was supposed to be protesting as one of his hands slid under her shirt. She was supposed to be fighting as his lips moved towards her neck.
A sound escaped her lips when he found the pulse point on her throat and he cradled it with his lips, teeth, tongue. He didn’t know what this was. He had never experienced a lust this all-encompassing before. It was like their anger was fuel, feeding the need to touch, to claim. He wanted her. He wanted Claire Redfield writhing underneath him, he wanted all the sounds she made, and he wanted her to want it. It was like an ache settling into his bones, into his very being, and it frightened him.
He paused, her pulse dancing under his lips, one hand on the small of her back pressing her into him. Then he was moving. He left her like she had burnt him, feet carrying him to the bathroom. He didn’t care that he had left her sprawled wantonly on the floor, that his body was protesting adamantly, that it might look like he was running away from her. What he cared about was that damn feeling coursing through his veins-the sheer intensity of it. Wesker had felt very little even when he had been human: ambition, anger, desire, curiosity, triumph, the occasional bit of contentment when things went his way. But none of them held the sheer power of this feeling.
He ran one hand through the mess she had made of his hair, forcing it back into place, as a thought hit him with all the force of a runaway train. Was this affection? Was this that petty emotion humans wrote such drivel about? Was this the thing that brought men low and nations went to war over? A sneer twisted his face at the thought. If that was so, they could keep it. Albert Wesker had much more important things to do than deal with an affection.
Part 2