Partners

 The next four years have a lot of highs and lows.

Umbrella's influence over the United States government turns out to go further than anyone had ever guessed. The President steps down in disgrace, a lot of officials and politicians suddenly retire or disappear or commit questionable suicides, and Umbrella becomes the subject of an international boycott. The interim President issues a suspension of business decree, thousands of lawsuits are filed, and Chris wiles away more than one cheerful evening watching Umbrella executives squirm on basic cable.

In a way, it's like being in California right when the Gold Rush started. Both Umbrella's competitors and the U.S. government are paying well for information that can be used against the corporation in court. There are fugitives to find, labs to find and dismantle like they're bombs, smuggling rings to bust, and sooner than anyone would've liked, black-market bioweapons dealers to track down. Chris was investigating the company three months before anyone else, and that puts him and Jill ahead of the pack.

The organization Jill puts them in touch with doesn't really have a name. It's a bunch of embittered ex-Umbrella employees funding a number of independent investigation and strike teams, which range in membership from people like them - former soldiers or law enforcement officials who have been genuinely fucked over by Umbrella at some point and are out for revenge - to a rogues' gallery of career mercenaries who're strictly in it for the paycheck. Either way, they're a useful bunch of people to know, and the financial backing is, for a couple of former cops, unbelievably generous.

He spends a lot of time on the road and in airports. He's often on a different continent every week, visiting the worst places on Earth. They usually have a small crew with them, which may or may not include Barry or Carlos, but Jill's always with him, everywhere they go.

"It's just common sense," she says at one point. The four of them are on their way out of Cairo at the time, Carlos behind the wheel of a rented jeep, heading to an isolated test area that was secret until very recently. "Everything's FUBAR wall to wall, but when you or I run off on our own, it seems to get a lot worse."

"Minimize the damage to just one place, huh?"

"The last time I left you alone," Jill tells him, "you blew up Antarctica. You're stuck with me now."

 Jill's relationship with Carlos doesn't last long. They both seem to know and accept that it's a fling, and soon, she's as calm and professional towards him as she is towards Chris. It's the old STARS rhythm all over again, but with higher stakes and cooler toys.

It doesn't take them long to run across Wesker, or at least the signs of his passage. He's not making himself easy to catch, but he's not being particularly subtle either, and he's doing as much damage to Umbrella as they are. A half-dozen branch offices and shipping facilities across eastern Europe and northern Asia are trashed by the time they get there, and Wesker's done everything but leave a mocking note for them in the ruins.

They get obsessed. It's about Joseph Frost, Enrico Marini, and all the other dead STARS; it's about Wesker building them up, giving them both good work and a place in the world, and then throwing them all away. It's about how every time they think that's it, that's as bad as humans get, Umbrella turns out to have sunk just a little lower, like a matroyshka doll made out of sociopaths and serial murder. For most of the people they work with, up to and including Carlos, fighting Umbrella is a lucrative and necessary job, but just a job. Even for Barry, taking down Umbrella takes a back seat to his family. For Chris and Jill, it's something like a crusade.

At some point, they reached an unspoken agreement to keep things professional between them, and it's been in place for maybe six months before Chris notices it's there. It's surprisingly easy to treat her like he did when they first met, where Jill's gender is at most a practical consideration, but there's always a "what if." It's there when they go to separate hotel rooms in strange cities at the end of the night, or when they've both just come through something dangerous; it's a lot of meaningful glances, half-comfortable silences, and people they've just met assuming they're a couple.

Chris does a better job these days of keeping in touch with Claire, because she's proved that she's almost as good at getting in trouble as he is, and she thinks the whole thing is hilarious. "Your whole job," she says, "is going out and fighting monsters. Big, scary monsters that actually eat people. So naturally, the only thing you're scared of in the entire world is telling a woman how you feel about her."

He'd like to argue with her on that, but he can't.