The Antarctic chill never truly left her. Claire Redfield felt it some nights, a phantom frost creeping into her bones—a stubborn echo of Alexia Ashford’s frozen hell. In the years that followed, she traded the cold steel of a gun for the sterile white of a first-aid kit. Hunting Umbrella had been a crusade born of vengeance, but witnessing the aftermath, the broken lives scattered like shrapnel, had reshaped her mission. She found a new purpose with TerraSave, an NGO that ran toward the bio-disasters everyone else fled from. It was a different kind of war, fought with medicine and supplies instead of bullets. In 2005, a ghost from a life she barely recognized walked back into it. Elza Speyer, her old racing partner, found her at a TerraSave fundraiser. The scent of motor oil and the memory of screaming engines felt like a dream from another world.
2011 – TerraSave Headquarters
The clinking of glasses and the low hum of conversation felt alien. Claire, nursing a glass of sparkling water, scanned the room at the welcome party. Tonight was supposed to be a celebration, a rare chance to breathe. Her eyes landed on Moira Burton, leaning against a wall with a defiant slouch that screamed her parentage. Barry’s daughter. Sharp, cynical, and barely twenty. Claire had promised the big man she’d keep an eye on her, She was halfway across the room, a smile ready for the new recruit, when the world fractured. The lights didn’t just go out; they shuddered, buzzed, and died. The music choked into silence, replaced by a collective gasp. A split second of stunned stillness, and then chaos erupted. The floor-to-ceiling windows imploded, raining down crystalline shards. Black-clad figures rappelled through the empty frames, their movements a blur of terrifying efficiency. Smoke canisters hissed, flooding the room with a disorienting haze as the pop-pop-pop of silenced firearms punctuated the rising tide of screams. Claire’s focus narrowed to a single point: Moira. She shoved through the panicked crowd, her hand outstretched. “Moira, get down!”
The soldiers were a black wave, swallowing everything. They weren’t killing; they were capturing. Staff members were slammed to the floor, zip-ties cinched around their wrists with brutal precision. Claire reached Moira, grabbing her arm just as a soldier spun on them. She saw the rifle swinging, a dark cudgel against the flashing emergency strobes. She tried to pull Moira behind her A concussive impact slammed into the side of her head. The world dissolved into a smear of red light and screaming static.
Darkness took her.
Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a violent jolt. A throbbing, relentless ache pulsed behind her eyes. The air was thick, heavy with the metallic tang of rust and the damp, earthy scent of decay. Cold. The floor beneath her was unforgiving stone. She pushed herself up, her muscles protesting, a wave of dizziness washing over her. Something was clamped around her left wrist. She stared at it. It was a thick, metallic bracelet, seamless and cold against her skin. A single, dark lens pulsed with a faint, sickly green light. A monitor. An electronic leash.
A loud clank echoed in the oppressive silence, followed by the hydraulic hiss of an electronic lock. The solid steel door to her cell slid open, carving a path of dim, gray light into her tomb. Claire rose to her feet, every nerve ending screaming. She moved through the opening with practiced caution, her body low, her eyes scanning the shadows of the derelict hallway. Water dripped from a corroded pipe overhead, each drop a percussive beat in the symphony of dread. Then she saw her. A splash of color against the grimy stone wall—a figure, slumped and barely conscious. Her breath caught in her chest, a mixture of profound relief and chilling fear. She rushed forward, the hard soles of her boots slapping against the wet floor, and dropped to her knees beside the girl.
“Moira?”