Chapter 3: Timeline Drift
Another half second passed.
The silence stretched just long enough for the adrenaline to loosen its grip. Not gone. Just enough for my thoughts to come back online.
I looked at her properly for the first time.
Mud and blood marked her boots. Rain still dripping from her jacket. Her stance was steady, weight balanced, arms firm on the weapon. Like her condition was separate from her function.
She didn't holster the gun, but she lowered it just enough to signal I had maybe cleared the first round of whatever checklist she was running in her head.
I chose to count that as a win.
"Since you have been in here," she said, "have you seen a police officer? His name is Chris Redfield. He is my brother."
A short pause.
"That is why I came."
Oh.
Oh no.
Chris Redfield. The so-called boulder punching legend. Umbrella's least favorite problem. Somewhere in Europe right now, completely unaware that his sister had walked straight into a city that had already collapsed.
She came here for him.
I kept my expression carefully neutral.
"No," I said. "I haven't seen him."
"I see."
She nodded once. Controlled. Like she had already accepted that answer before asking it. The disappointment was there, but contained. Locked down.
I felt genuinely bad about it.
Then something else surfaced.
A missing piece.
I looked past her toward the reception area.
The couch was empty.
Where was Marvin Branagh?
He should have been there. Injured. Bleeding. Sitting on that couch like a fixed point in the timeline.
But he wasn't.
A dark blood trail still led away from the area, disappearing toward the West Wing shutter.
"Did you see a cop when you came in?" I asked. "African American, older, mustache. Lieutenant uniform. Goes by Branagh?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"No. Why?"
"No?"
That wasn't right.
He should have been here. That was how this was supposed to go. Injured but conscious. A known point in the sequence.
So where was he?
Or worse.
What had already changed?
A cold, quiet pressure settled in my chest. Not panic. Something more dangerous. The realization that the map in my head might not match the building I was standing in.
I held the thought for a second longer.
Then I looked around the hall.
Dark corners. Blood trails. Broken silence.
Right.
I pushed it aside.
Marvin was not solvable from here. Standing still would not fix anything. It would only make the next mistake easier.
The priority was simple.
Stay alive. Stay mobile. Stay with the only person here who could actually function in this situation.
Which meant I had one rule.
Don't be a liability.
My attention shifted.
The revolver in her hand.
Standard issue. Limited capacity. Slow reload under pressure. Fine for single targets. Not fine for what this place would eventually throw at us.
I exhaled slowly.
"That's not going to last," I said, nodding toward the gun.
Her grip adjusted slightly. Not defensive. Just alert.
"What do you mean?"
"Low capacity. Slow reload," I said. "If more of them rush us at once, it becomes a problem fast."
She didn't interrupt.
Good. She was listening.
I tilted my head toward the west corridor.
"There's a section through there. Offices, storage, lockers. If this place was evacuated in a hurry, supplies are still going to be left behind."
A pause.
"Ammo. Speed loaders. Maybe something with better capacity than what we have now."
Her eyes stayed on me. Measuring.
"You sound pretty confident about the layout," she said carefully.
There it was.
I shrugged once.
"Or we stay here and hope for the best."
Silence.
She glanced toward the dark corridor. Then back at me.
The calculation finished.
She shifted her stance and lowered the gun slightly.
"You first," she said.
Not trust.
Not yet.
But not a refusal either.
I nodded once and moved toward the corridor.
Good enough.