Partners

 He's in London a little under a month later, talking with a couple of guys from Wilpharma who say they have dirt on Umbrella. Chris glances over one of their heads and the muted television in the corner of the pub says "RACCOON CITY DISASTER" on its news ticker. He cuts off the Wilpharma guys in mid-sentence and asks the bartender to turn the volume up.

It's the T-Virus, obviously. The official word at this point is "toxic waste spill," but the associated military quarantine and the declaration of martial law inside the city both indicate it's more than that. Even the talking-head newscaster looks like she can't believe what she's being asked to say.

Chris walks out of the pub without a second thought, flags down a taxi, and gets back to the tiny hotel room he's splitting with Barry. Barry's there already, in his shirtsleeves and watching the news on the room's tiny TV.

"We need to get back," Chris says. "Jill--"

Barry nods. "On it."

 There is a very short list of people in 1998 who are considered "no transport," as the FBI considers them a threat to aviation. The list includes sixteen known terrorists and one Christopher Redfield, who finds out on September 24th that he is not allowed to fly into the United States on a commercial airliner. In other words, Umbrella says hello.

He's left shouting at people in a security checkpoint while Barry moves ahead, and it rapidly becomes obvious that he's both completely out of luck and about to get arrested. It's tempting to roll up his sleeves and really earn that jail cell, hospitalize some of these fucking idiots, but Chris manages to walk away.

That leaves him alone in London, watching the news intently as the Raccoon City situation continues to degenerate. The story changes rapidly and there are often slight differences in it from source to source, but it's not hard to figure out what's actually going on. The T-Virus is out, it's been a major spill, the Raccoon cops clearly can't stop it, and if Chris was in charge of doing something about it, he'd be getting ready to bomb the city flat.

In an attempt to do something worthwhile, he establishes a safehouse, then sends word of its location and existence to Barry and Jill's anonymous email accounts. Chris hooks the place up to the power grid and is there waiting for a call from Barry when a small squad of hired locals tries to kill him.

Then there's a brief exchange of gunfire, a knife fight, and a running brawl through most of the building and the street outside. He hits them with everything he has and everything he can find, and there's a while where he's actually enjoying himself. It eventually ends when the cops catch up to them.

Chris hasn't actually done anything wrong aside from defending himself with extreme enthusiasm. He's in a cell for two days anyway, because random Yanks in the country on sketchy business firing illegal guns in a residential zone really do piss off the London police, and by the time he gets out it's October 3rd. Raccoon City is a crater. There's been no word from Jill or Barry.

The smart play at this point is to assume the worst and drop off the radar. Umbrella's already tried to kill him once and there's a strong possibility that he's completely out of allies. What trips him up is that Chris finds himself completely unable to operate on the assumption that Jill Valentine is dead. He feels like he'd know if she were, which is exactly the kind of stupid gut-instinct decision that tends to get him in trouble.

He sticks to the original plan regardless. Chris keeps talking to people and making contacts, and leaves notes in dead drops and the email account, just as if Jill will show up at any minute and come find him. He keeps doing that for two and a half months, long after it's occurred to him that he's being crazy.