Leon felt a hand on his forehead. Someone said his name, but it sounded so far away that he couldn't tell who it was. The hand left his forehead and the murmuring went with it. His eyelids wouldn't obey as he tried to push them open. The hand was back gently pushing his hair off his forehead.

He groaned this time his eyelids obeyed and opened only for him to slam them shut again against the light that barraged in, making his eyes sting.

"Ada?" He asked seeing the dark feminine figure leaning over him.

"Not even close." Claire's voice colored with amusement came back.

Leon reached out and gripped her arm. "Claire? How did you find me?"

"Well, you have both yours and Jake's trackers on you." Chris's voice came from the right. "And you gave them to us because the DSO is shady. It was pretty easy. Where's Jake? Sherry?"

Claire pulled Leon up into a sitting position before resting him against a tree. He groaned again and felt his jaw. Jake had given him a good sucker punch. But in all fairness, he'd literally asked for it. He'd give the kid hell about it later. If he remembered, and they both survived. Leon had looked in the mirror lately and noticed a few lines of grey popping up here and there. A reminder that he wasn't immortal and couldn't do this forever.

Beyond Chris, Jill sat watching him, studying him. Her pale skin and hair were a reminder of her time as Wesker's captive. He shifted his focus back to the current situation.

"He was taken," He flicked a glance at Claire wondering how to explain fully. Claire who had been watching him lifted an eyebrow. She didn't miss much.

"I sense a but in there..." Claire shifted to a sitting position, her hand resting on her knees and her chin resting on her hands as she looked at him.

"They took Sherry first; we were overwhelmed by J'avo after rescuing her. We had to hide in a basement from the fire."

"Yeah we couldn't get in because of that." Chris pulled out a water canteen and handed it to Leon. He took it gratefully gulping down a few mouthfuls before continuing.

"When we got out we didn't make it very far. We had her...." Leon paused to take another drink. "And then the J'avo showed up. They took her, Wesker's clone was there. Trying to get Jake to join..." It was the wrong way to phrase it and Leon mentally kicked himself as soon as the words came out.

"He went." Claire's voice was flat. Her expression matched her tone of voice, as if she'd known it all along. Claire normally saw the best in everyone, it was where Sherry had picked up the idea, but whereas Sherry could look past Jake's parentage, probably because of her own parents, Claire had lost a lot to Wesker. Jake was a living reminder that Wesker had existed. A reminder that she couldn't let go of. His physical resemblance to Wesker was too much for her to bear.

"He had to." Leon responded glancing at her. "They had Sherry. He said he would execute us, but he was taking Sherry anyway." He reached over and grabbed Claire's hand. "It was my idea for him to go. We needed a man on the inside. He was perfect for the job."

Claire only sighed but Chris nodded. He had seen Jake protect Sherry even before realizing how close they were. Jill herself was nodding. Unlike Claire, Jill saw no resemblance between the two men. Jake didn't even faze her.

"Anyway, I told him to hit me..."

"HE did this?" Claire was surprised again. Leon cursed under his breath as she pushed himself up higher against the tree.

"I told him to..."

"He didn't want to do this either I suppose."

"No," Leon's voice was firm. "He didn't. He's my partner Claire, not some megalomaniac psycho with a hard-on for world domination."

"Ok enough," Chris had listened to the exchange as much as he could stand. "What is our next move?"

"Did you at least locate the base?" Jill glanced around the burned-out forest, glad they hadn't brought too many guys with them. Chris didn't want anyone seeing what she was capable of, but between the two of them, Jill with her abilities, they probably wouldn't need them.

"It's here," Leon said twisting to look around. Most of the place had been burned out, surprisingly there were a lot of trees still standing, charred but standing. He hadn't noticed it yesterday when those explosions had gone off.

Chris grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. He stood and after taking another gulp of water handed the mostly empty canteen back to Chris who hooked it to his belt.

"It's here," Leon repeated himself. He glanced around, "We thought the bombing destroyed everything but we're standing on it." Chris nodded. Somehow it wasn't as much of a surprise to him that most of the labs had been underground.

"Why would they come back here?" Claire asked, goosebumps rising on her bare arms.

"Sentimentality?" Leon grunted. His jaw ached. He'd get Jake back later. Right now, he had better be working on the best way to make Jake look like he wasn't a traitor. He suspected Claire was going to be the hardest to convince. But he wasn't sure how Hunnigan, or even the higher-ups back at the DSO would take this. Hopefully, they didn't know anything yet. Jake had to maintain absolute loyalty to the government, otherwise, he would always be suspect. While he knew Jake could manage always being loyal to Sherry, the government was a different story altogether. Even Leon was having trouble with the idea that there was a leak and had been since they'd brought Jake back. He'd have to find it eventually when he wasn't too busy chasing Wesker's cloned prodigy all over the place. The man was crazy, but he was also brilliant. A high IQ didn't always equal common sense.

"Chris can you even be here?" Leon asked looking over at him. "Noticing the lack of back up."

"I'm on vacation," said Chris grinning. He was armed to the teeth. Leon looked down at his vest, checking his own arsenal. His knife was still on him, surprisingly his 9mm remained where it was on his hip. They must have simply left him there in the dirt.

"You pick the worst vacations," Leon said grinning.

"The way I hear it, so do you." Chris laughed referencing Leon's trip to the ESR. Leon was supposedly on vacation but since war could start anywhere anytime and people found all kinds of uses for B.O.W.s his vacation had been cut short.

"Glad you're here anyway, my helicopter kind of roasted in that fire before we could get back to it." Leon shrugged. He was messy, but he got the job done. Otherwise, he wouldn't still be on the job.

"Won't your boss be mad?" Claire only looked amused. Leon breathed a sigh of relief. A smile was better than her staying angry the whole time. He hated playing buffer between them.

"I've got a running tab..." Leon smiled back at her. They knew what to expect. They dropped him in and he figured things out. They expected him to do the job even when they told him the mission was canceled. They had to cover their own asses anyway. He was insurance. If he found nothing he probably would lose his job. But he had never not found anything, no matter how many times he'd been told to stand down.

The burned-out forest wasn't giving them too many clues to work with about what lay beneath.