I’m only now really realizing how utterly insane the end of RE7 must have been for Chris Redfield.
I mean, he’s an experienced BSAA agent. He’s survived the worst bioweapon disasters his world has known. He’s lost friends and whole squads to monsters straight out of people’s nightmares.
Then one afternoon he gets a report, detailing a horrific outbreak where Tyrant-Class Bioweapons have been making people disappear in the Louisiana swamps. There are reports of explosions, fire, gunshots, screams.
Chris hops into a helicopter, mentally preparing for hell on earth. The helicopter reaches the site, Chris looks down, and sees what looks like a giant petrified tree sprouting out of the ruins of a house, destruction in every direction and there, standing in a little clearing near the collapsed tree, holding a rifle, is a Olive Garden breadstick of a man, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting up to them “hey my wife and I could use some help!”
He’s wearing fucking jeans and a fucking white button down shirt. He looks like a suburban dad coming off of work. He looks like he drives a minivan. He looks like the most excitement he sees is the office Christmas party when his boss hands out free champagne.
He’s blue-eyed and has blonde hair, light skin, he looks like a Sim come to life. Like a mannequin from The Gap.
Chris, still floored, rappels down to the man. He asks his name.
“Ethan,” the guy says with the faintest California accent. He’s smiling exhaustedly.
Chris scans the scene for any monsters. There are none. This fluffy Texas Toast white bread man took out all the monsters? By himself? With a flimsy rifle? That was several years old? While protecting his wife?!
Chris wouldn’t have entered the house without at least three squads. He’s learned his lesson from the mansion outside Raccoon City.
One man. One, regular man. It’s beyond impossible, it’s unbelievable, it can’t be true.
Chris pinches himself to make sure. Yup, not dreaming. “Ethan, are you human?”
Ethan frowns at him like a confused puppy. Chris is reminded of a beagle retriever mix. “I’m pretty sure I am.”
“I’ll check you just to make sure.” Chris runs a scanner up and down Ethan’s body. He looks at the results. “Are you *sure* you’re human?”
Ethan laughs self-deprecatingly. “I did get a lot of that goo on myself but I didn’t eat any of it, pretty sure I’m fine.”
Chris looks back down at the scanner. Incredibly high concentrations of the virus. By all accounts, Ethan should be a morphed bloody mess right now, extra eyes and hands mutating out of his torso, half his face melted. Chris looks back up at Ethan. He’s smiling nervously, happy in his delusion. He reaches up to scratch some dirt out of his hair then winces as he realizes he’s tried to use the arm that appears to have the hand stapled back onto it. Chris googles at it. Regardless of mutations the pain and blood loss from that alone should render Ethan dead. “Why are you here Ethan?”
“I got a cryptic message from my wife who’d been missing for three years. I figured she was in trouble so I went to find her.”
“And when you found her?”
“She’d been infected and cut my hand off with a chainsaw.”
“What did you do then?”
Chris expects Ethan to spin some tale about blundering through the forest and killing an infected tree. Instead, this man looks right at Chris with the eyes of a madman and says “I went and found a cure to save her.”
“You…what?!”
“Well admittedly Zoe did help me out with that. I hope she was out of the house when it collapsed, she was a great friend.”
“The fuck?” Chris muttered under his breath. Most of the people he knew, including his BSAA teammates, would run for backup upon finding someone they cared for had been infected.
Chris himself had made a promise with Claire that if either of them got infected they’d do each other the honor of a mercy killing.
Cures for any virus outbreak were one in a billion. But Ethan had been totally confident in his ability to rescue his wife and cure her of the infection that caused her to cut his hand off with a chainsaw! “Who the hell are you?”
“Well I’m a systems engineer by trade, originally from LA. God the drive down here was so long.”
Chris blinked. Then again. Then again. Still didn’t seem like he was losing his mind and hallucinating. “I have to make a call, I’ll be right back.”
Chris passed the oblivious Ethan off to one of his lieutenants, instructing him to get Ethan some medical attention.
Jill picked up on the first ring. “Valentine.”
“Jill it’s Chris.”
“What’s up? I heard you were sent out to Louisiana. Rough stuff, I hope you’re alright.”
“Yeah…about that. I need to bring a bioweapon into the BSAA as an agent.”
“Are you out of your mind?! They’ll never go for it!”
Chris looked over at Ethan, now waving a tiny green bottle at one of the medics, demonstrating pouring it onto his injured arm. “I think they’ll make an exception.”
