Checkmate

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"Day one hundred and twenty...seven." Jill let out a heavy sigh as she checked the date off on the calendar. It was a sickeningly adorable kitten calendar Claire had given her, as though baby animals made her unofficial imprisonment any better. Since returning from Africa Jill had been under what was basically house arrest. She was driven to her shrink and doctors appointments, then brought right back home again with an agent stationed in an all too conspicuous car on the street outside. Her apartment was beginning to feel tiny, like the walls closed in another inch each time she managed to sleep. Sleep... that was yet another punishment. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Wesker's face sneering down at her, taunting her that she would never see her precious partner again. That she was the weak link in the pathetic operation. The only time she truly slept was when she took the pills the doctor had given her. He had promised it would be a dreamless sleep... he couldn't have been more wrong.

Jill held the bag close to her chest, a bloodshot eye simply watching Rebecca with a defeated expression. "I couldn't. Chris." She told the younger woman simply. "If I didn't comply, or I told him what they were doing... They would hurt him. I heal quickly, this is all I could do to keep him safe..."

"They've sent Chris to Europe. Sherry too. Someone was trying to make super soldiers..." Rebecca could hardly speak. "The BSAA found Wesker's son." She paused again, trying to dig in her purse for a tissue to dab at the blood coming from Jill's eye. "What the hell is going on here? I've been away learning about cell groupage for a six months and it all goes to hell...I signed off that you were fine. Who changed it?" She asked, turning down a barely visible driveway. "And Tricell? Alex Wesker? Jesus... I feel like I've been asleep!"

Jill shook her head, trying to use the previous night's memory to shake herself from the depressive funk she was in after today's test. "I wish I had something to tell you." She breathed. "I'm under house arrest, Chris isn't even allowed to visit. All I know is that most of the tests are done under the authority of someone named Pendergast." She took the tissue from Rebecca and blinked a few times, the injury in her eye seeming to suddenly stop bleeding. "They're been cycling through the different viruses. So far i know I haven't come up against anything post Raccoon City, until today. Today they threw in the T-Abyss, and I don't know why it suddenly changed."

Rebecca sighed deeply as she stopped the car and came around to open Jill's door. Before the light came on she threw a blanket over the other woman's head. "Hurry inside." She whispered. 
The tiny woman held her gun at her side as she ushed Jill into the cabin she'd had built years ago. It was her haven. The place she'd once told her captain she dreamed she could once raise a family in. Now she lived in it alone.
"I've been opening shit on BSAA all day. Damn thing has turned into an Umbrella somehow." She whispered as she got them inside and locked the door. "This is going to destroy Chris."

"Rebecca... You can't tell him." Jill breathed, blonde and brown hair sticking up at odd angles once she pulled the blanket off. "You're right, I will kill him. We need to figure this out first... I don't want to go to him without answers."

"Someone left a file about you in my apartment. Otherwise I wouldn't have known." Rebecca said as she pulled a med kit out from under her couch and began to tend to Jills wounds. Not that it was really necessary. 
"I think we need to head to Europe and make sure Chris is okay. Sherry too. What happens if they find out I took you and think he had something to do with it? I wasn't exactly subtle about it."

Jill allowed Rebecca to treat her wounds; it was a distraction she needed. "I saw your handiwork... I guess your time in STARS really did teach you a thing or two." She teased gently. "Alright, so we're heading to Europe, shouldn't we tell Claire?"

Rebecca looked up at Claire with a strange look in her eyes. "That's the problem. I can't get ahold of her." 
For the next several hours Rebecca caught Jill up on what had happened at the bar the night before and the things that had been happening even before. She was worried that the people who wanted Jill free were trying to use her for themselves. "That's the reason I brought you out here. Hopefully to keep you safe until we could figure out a plan." She finished, feeling as if she'd spoken more now than she had since waking up in the Raccoon city hospital.

“We can’t stay here.” Jill was already on her feet and pacing. “If Claire is missing, she’s priority one.” She announced. “Isn’t she at Leon’s?” She asked as an after thought, no one having told her that Claire and Leon now lived very separate lives.

"No Leon is in Europe as well. So is Ada." Rebecca said curling on the far end of the couch. "My head hurts. So many skeletons coming out of the graveyard..." She sighed. "I can get us a flight in the morning. But that's the earliest."

Jill halted her pacing to watch Rebecca with a suspicious gaze. "Leon is in Europe... with Ada?" She asked, not liking how that sounded.

Rebecca shook her head. "I don't think he even knows she's there. But someone sent her. Because of their relationship. Like I said, skeletons. This whole thing is supper sketchy." Rebecca said. "I mean...think about it." She didn't finish but her thoughts were on Jake Wesker. The child of the man she still loved, even if he was gone. "We have to go to Europe." She whispered. She would save them all as she always did. Even Jake.

"Fucking Europe..." Jill muttered, feeling everyone she cared about was suddenly there. "Convenient that everyone is there as everything start to go to shit." She added, not liking how the pieces were all beginning to fit together. "Are you in contact with any one at all?"

"Not from our core group." Rebecca muttered, her thoughts elsewhere. "But I have a researcher friend named Darius who lives over there. He can meet us close to where Chris' group landed and point us in the right direction. I'm sorry, Jill. I just haven't been much of a social butterfly. It takes Claire an act of Congress to get me to go out."

"Claire would never stay out of contact though." Jill breathed. "Something is wrong... I feel it." She added, finally sitting back down. "So... Darius, can we trust him? Given all the corruption within the BSAA, and that was right under our noses."

Darius Rutherford held his arms out as Rebecca exited the plane. The tiny woman hugged him hard and then kissed him warmly. The well built man clearly adored her. It was obvious by the way he held on just a moment longer than she did. "Jill Valentine, I've heard so much about ya. I was hoping to meet you in the flesh one day." He said, holding his hand out to greet the other woman.

Jill hesitated somewhat. She had never exactly been trusting of new people, Carlos would attest to that, but after the past few months, she had gotten worse. "Darius... You're the one who has been keeping Rebecca safe?" She asked, finally accepting the extended hand and shaking it with the kind of firm grip men usually used to test each other.

Darius gave her a big grin and a slap on the back. Rebecca had told him about her. "My type of woman." He bellowed, his Scottish accent evident. "Bet you could drink me under the table! And no, I don't protect the wee thing. Only from the tiny bugs online. Wish I knew whose got the rest." He said with a life.
"Give me a break you guys. I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself." Rebecca said matter of factly.

Jill’s face was unreadable for a painfully long moment. She glanced between Darius and Rebecca, then finally eased up somewhat. She didn’t trust him, but she trusted Rebecca to know what she needed. “Sure, you can look after yourself. So you’re going to tell me Claire DOESNT have videos of you dancing topless on a table?” She finally asked with a smirk.

"What?"Darius practically tripped over himself at these words.
Rebecca's face turned a deep shade of scarlet as she marched ahead, "We need to get going before we're seen. Did you get a chance to bring the things I was asking for? The files on Mueller?" 
Darius gathered himself enough to smirk at Jill. "All in the truck." He said, glancing at a strange looking man reading book. The man wore dark glasses and didn't even glance up when Rebecca bumped into his knee. It was almost as if he'd done it on purpose. 
But then again the tiny woman never even noticed. She was too busy looking at a sign for coffee and reaching back for Jill. 
"You have to try this place. They make the best chocolate and mocha." She purred. "And you talk about my tits one more time...I'll tell Chris about your drunken wedding in Vegas." She grinned.

Jill had been about to embarrass Rebecca further until the younger woman brought up Vegas. “You wouldn’t dare!” Though she tried to sound amused, Jill seemed to have paled considerably at the thought of Chris finding out about the wedding. “Oh come on, you loved being Mrs. Valentine.” She teased, ruffling Rebecca’s hair affectionately. Chris clearly didn’t remember what had happened, and he had never brought up marriage, so she assumed he was happy with the way things were.

The man watching the group over the top of his newspaper smiled. It was almost too easy. He had thought getting them all here would have been the difficult part… when in truth it had been securing Alex Wesker as director of the BSAA.

"You shut your mouth. That was not me!" Rebecca wailed. Darius turned back again, only to find the other man gone. He whispered a prayer and crossed himself, hoping whoever was keeping watch over Rebecca was still doing it. 

Six months later Rebecca was sliding through a grate in a lab in Japan. It had taken her this long to find Jake. 
Quietly she set herself onto the floor, trying to avoid being seen. Jake would never know her or what he meant to her but she was going to risk her life for him. 

Darius and Jill were sleeping in a small bunker, still looking for signs of Chris and his team. They had no idea that Rebecca had left. Or that she'd caused them to sleep a little longer than necessary.

Rebecca wasn’t as stealthy as she thought. While the lab themselves had no idea she was there, as always, she was being watched. All the pieces would soon be on the board, and the game could finally begin.

Jill woke well after dawn, her head thumping like she had been drinking Barry under the table again. She groaned quietly, muttering a few colourful words as she groped around for the small light beside the cot she slept on.

Rebecca paused by the young man, her warm fingers resting on his cheek. He looked so much like her Captain and yet...he had a strange hair color and deeper blue eyes. Her maternal heart broke for him as she wondered how hard his life had been. 
Being the child of Wesker she could only imagine. Gently she released his restraints and slid a stinger into his neck.
When she was done she returned to the vent and headed back out, dropping outside the building as easily as she'd come in. She couldn't help herself she did a little victory dance. It was this that got tackled and slammed hard to the ground.

Darius groaned loudly, cursing as he too rolled off the bed. He was so loud it almost covered the sound of the distress call coming from Chris' radio.

Rebecca would find her face pushed cheek down into the dirt, her arms cuffed behind her before hands patted her down and removed all her weapons.

Jill vaulted across the small bunker, diving on the radio as she juggled it trying to turn the volume up. “Red?!” She gasped hopefully, though knew her luck was nowhere near that good.

"Fuck." Rebecca tasted more dirt as she cursed. Enrico would have given her ears a thumping for something so stupid. But this... This was worse. 

"Babe?!" Chris' voice cracked. "They told me you were dead." He breathed. He fell to his knees in the tiny escape shuttle, shaking with exhaustion and defeat and oddly, joy. "You still there? Babe? Don't leave me."

“Yes… fuck indeed.” A silky smooth voice purred, though it wasn’t the person who had restrained Rebecca. “You thought we wouldn’t see? You may be small, but capable you are not.”

“Red? Red?! Oh god… don’t crap out on me now!” Jill practically sobbed. She was unknowingly mirroring Chris, on her knees in the cramped bunker. “I knew you were out there…”

"I don't understand." Rebecca said in Japanese. She was hoping to perhaps convince these people she worked here. 
The taste of the dirt was making her want to gag and it was making her panic. Whether it was wise or not she began to struggle.

"Keep him talking." Darius hissed tapping on the radio board.
"Yeah..." Chris breathed. "I knew it...I keep hearing you..." He went on. "All this darkness. I wonder if you did that too. It's so hard. Knowing I failed you...the kid... everyone. All I keep hearing is your voice."

The voice from earlier instructed someone else to subdue Rebecca. The next time she opened her eyes, she would be in a holding cell back inside the facility. She was in a chair, still restrained, though the dirt had been cleaned from her face.

"Chris, don't say that..." Jill breathed, clutching the radio tightly. "Remember Kosovo? We were pinned down? We thought we weren't going to make it..." She closed her eyes, remembering the memory all too clearly. "You asked me to look after Claire as you decided you would create a diversion for me to escape. You said your dying would mean something if your two best girls were safe. You remember that?" A tear dripped down her cheek, thinking of all the lost time they had. "Well i'm the one who failed. You were always the hero."

Rebecca moaned when she realized that she'd gotten herself in a mess. She felt like she'd heard the voice before, a strange tingling was prickling the back of her neck and raising the hairs there. She should know. But why?

"I got someone killed...they...Jill...you would have...I'm no hero." Chris whispered. "They told me what happened to you. What I let happen. Just like with Wesker. I'm no hero." And just like that their connection was lost.