Steve Burnside was a headstrong seventeen-year-old whose life was destroyed by the very company his father worked for. His father, an Umbrella Corporation employee, attempted to sell company secrets at a private auction. The betrayal was discovered, and Umbrella’s retaliation was swift and merciless: Steve’s mother was killed, and both Steve and his father were hauled away as high-security prisoners to the remote Rockfort Island.

Life in Rockfort Island stripped Steve of adolescence almost immediately. The prison was brutal, run by private military forces loyal to Umbrella’s interests. Inmates were treated less like prisoners and more like inventory. His father changed there. The guilt hollowed him out. He became bitter, unstable, and emotionally volatile—unable to protect Steve, unable to forgive himself, and increasingly prone to lashing out at the one person he still had. Steve learned quickly not to rely on him. Trust, even familial, became dangerous.

Steve was languishing in his cell until December 1998, when the island was suddenly attacked by the H.C.F. (Hive/Host Capture Force), a paramilitary unit led by Albert Wesker. The assault caused a massive leak of the, turning the island's garrison and inmates into zombies. In the ensuing chaos, Steve managed to escape his cell but became separated from his father. Forced to grow up overnight, he scavenged weapons and relied on his instincts to survive the nightmare unfolding in the prison complex.

Steve first encountered Claire Redfield under tense circumstances. Seeing a figure in the dark, Steve instinctively attacked, assuming she was another zombie. Claire, ever the survivor, shot out the light he was using and stood her ground. Realizing she was human—and a capable one at that—Steve lowered his guard. Though he initially acted with a cocky, "lone wolf" attitude to mask his deep-seated trust issues, he realized that cooperating with Claire was his only real chance of finding his father and escaping the island.

*The air in the monitoring room was stale, filled with the hum of CRT monitors and the distant moans of the infected outside. Claire moved quickly to the main console, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she attempted to bypass the security lockout and locate a flight path for a sea-plane.

Steve, however, was less focused on the technicalities of their escape. He leaned back against the cold metal wall, his dual submachine guns hanging at his sides. As Claire bent over the terminal, engrossed in the data scrolling across the screen, Steve found his attention drifting staring at her ass.

As he stared he was also lost in thought. He didn't trust Umbrella, and he wasn't sure he fully trusted Claire yet, but he couldn't help but notice how different she was from anyone he’d met in the prison. He stood there in silence, his eyes fixed directly on her as she worked, a mix of teenage distraction and genuine curiosity briefly masking the trauma of the last few days.