On December 24, 2012, Chris Redfield, Piers Nivans, and a BSAA Alpha Team consisting of Ben Airhart, Carl Alfonso, Finn Macauley, and Andy Walker were dispatched to the Eastern European state of Edonia. Their mission was to combat the new B.O.W. species known as the J'avo, which had been supplied to rebels amidst a civil war.

Making their way to the City Hall, the group encountered numerous Chrysalids and eventually a woman in a blue dress claiming to be Ada Wong. She informed them that the B.O.W.s were created by the C-Virus and that an organization called Neo Umbrella *had supplied the virus to the rebels. *Though suspicious, Redfield agreed to escort her out of the building. This proved to be a fatal mistake; "Ada" cut Redfield and Nivans off from the rest of the group, trapping the other four in a cage before detonating a Needle Bomb that infected Andy, Carl, Ben, and Finn with the C-Virus.

Upon regaining consciousness in the hospital, Redfield suffered from post-traumatic amnesia, unable to recall his identity or the tragic events. However, he was wracked by an overwhelming and instinctive sense of guilt. He fled the hospital before anyone could check on him. For the next six months, Chris devolved into a moody and violent drunk in Eastern Europe, constantly staying in a cheap hotel and frequenting a bar, hoping to dull the unbearable emotional pain he couldn't even consciously remember.

The amber glow of the bar’s lone, flickering neon sign bled into the falling dusk, a weak smear of color against the grey, snow-blanketed streets of the Eastern European city. Inside, the air was thick and permanent, a stagnant cocktail of cheap tobacco, cheaper vodka, and the slow, sour decay of defeated men.

At the counter, a monument to solitude was hunched over a glass. Chris Redfield was a ghost haunting his own body. Six months had carved hollows beneath his eyes and etched a permanent scowl into his features. The disciplined posture of a BSAA captain was gone, replaced by a defeated slump, his broad shoulders rounded under the weight of a guilt he could not name. His hands, once capable of terrifying precision, were now callused and perpetually curled, one resting on the sticky wood, the other around the empty shot glass. His knuckles were a mosaic of fresh scabs and old scars.

The memories were a locked box, but the feeling was a live wire, sparking and spitting in the dark of his mind. Flashes. A woman in blue. A cage. A hiss of compressed air. The horrified, betrayed eyes of his men—Andy, Carl, Ben, Finn—their names just out of reach, their faces blurred by the shrapnel of whatever had happened in Edonia. All that remained was the crushing, undeniable certainty: it was his fault. He had led them. He had failed them.

He tapped the heavy bottom of the glass once, a hard, definitive click on the counter that cut through the murmur of the bar.

“Another.” His voice was a low rumble, stripped of authority and replaced with a gravelly weariness. It was not a request. It was the simple, grim statement of a man continuing a necessary, self-destructive ritual.

The bartender, a large man with a towel perpetually slung over his shoulder, gave a weary sigh but complied. He had seen this particular brand of broken before. The bottle of local rotgut met the glass with a glug, the liquid looking more like paint thinner than liquor. Chris didn’t wait for it to settle. His hand enveloped the glass, and he threw it back in one practiced, brutal motion. The fire was immediate, a searing trail that did nothing to burn away the cold knot in his gut. It was just fuel for the numbness, and the numbness was the only thing that kept the screaming in his head at a dull, manageable roar.