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Tie the Noose Chapter 28
It was funny how quickly things could fall apart, Daniel Carter thought as he watched Rebecca, standing across from him, her Beretta pointed at him in her shaky hands, her eyes wide with desperate, pained panic. She was gasping, her breath heavy and uneven, her chest heaving as her hands shook from the raw wire of adrenaline hammering through her. He could see it, like a pulse under her skin, ragged and cutting, and all he could do was watch her.
Beside him, Chris was still trying to catch his breath and Barry was groaning, curled up around his brutalized insides, and Jill lay unmoving behind him. He’d tried to be gentle, as much as he could. The three had boxed him in, and he’d reacted poorly. But they didn’t understand. Not the three insensate STARS, not Rebecca, none of them. He wished he could explain it to them, show them something, but it was too late. It was always too late, and now…? Now it didn’t matter.
“P-please, Danny, get down on the ground.” She couldn't hide the slight quaver in her voice, thick with pain and shock and worst of all, fear. Fear of him. Fear of what he could do. What he did do. “Don’t make me, Danny, please…”
He took a step forward, and she took a step back. He took another, and she staggered back again. Step, step, slowly closing the distance, as he looked into those wide, terrified eyes and saw someone staring back he didn’t recognize. He was close, so close, and he could see her finger tensing on the trigger, yet he took another step all the same.
“D-damn it, Daniel Carter! I s-said STOP!” She shouted, trying to blink the tears out of her eyes as he stepped closer. He could feel the tenuous string between them, tense and taut like a rope coiled around them, choking them.
“I’m sorry, Becca. I can’t do that. No matter how much I wish I could.” He said almost a whisper. Her hands were shaking badly, now, the barrel of the gun going everywhere, as he took one last step. Her back hit the railing, and her eyes widened. The rope snapped.
Watch it fall.
She pulled the trigger.
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72 Hours Earlier
Danny sighed tiredly as he rubbed his eyes and stared at himself in the mirror, bloodshot and worn down to something he barely recognized. The days had grown long and cold this late in February, the light outside thin and colorless by the time he noticed it fading. It had been a rough, rough month ever since the shooting, and the weight of it clung to him in ways he couldn't shake. He wasn't haunted, not by what he'd done. Killing a zombie, and it was a zombie, he knew them by sight, was old hat for him. But it had woken him up, to both the games Umbrella played and the fear that somehow, some way, he'd set things in motion early, that a rotting tide would wash over the city any day now. It hadn't happened, and he'd been hunting for the signs, but it still lived in the back of his mind all the same.
Rebecca didn't look at him the way she used to, though. Not any more. She was quieter now, more distant, and sometimes there was something like fear flickering behind her eyes when he caught her watching him for too long. It was subtle, easy to miss if he hadn't been paying attention for it, but he had been. There were moments when she looked at him as though she were trying to reconcile two versions of the same man and couldn't quite make them line up.
He couldn't blame her for reacting like that. Without the context, the understanding...? All he did was shoot a man who wasn't much of a threat at all. Still, it hurt. The distance between them settled under his skin and refused to leave, like an echo of a draft that made his bones ache with an unseen pain. It made the apartment feel larger and colder than it was, and it left him standing there in front of the mirror, staring at a man who looked increasingly unfamiliar even to himself.
And then there was that bastard Wesker. He'd gone to pains to avoid the man in the last month,having dropped most of the extracurriculars and varying his route up, yet the fucker kept showing up on his walks. He knew that he had to be being surveilled, but damn if he knew how. He'd started taking serious efforts to obfuscate his trips to and from the hideout, and Albert hadn't yet shown up there, but he was wary. It was making him paranoid, but what else was new? It wasn't like he had any good options for dissuading the man, much less getting rid of him altogether.
He'd been trying to put some semblance of a plan together, some ideas, some thought into how he was going to handle it all. Most were fantasies and pipe dreams, though. The limit of his ability to scheme, he found, ended at the barrel of a gun, and that would have brought down the sun on him, far as heat went. It all felt so, so out of control. He didn't know what to do, and he felt it in his waking hours, the stress, the exhaustion, the increasing anger and rage. Things were getting bad, or maybe they always had been, and he just hadn't had the perspective to notice the noose around his neck.
He really threw himself into his training, trying to offset the stress in the only way he knew how. He added extra rounds with John, pressing the man to take the kid gloves off, and pushed through drills long after his body begged to stop. Fighting John helped, if only because it demanded everything from him. There was no room for spiraling thoughts when a fist was coming at his jaw. There was no room for doubt when he had to slip, pivot, strike and counter in the same breath.
The feeling of the mat under his bare feet grounded him in a way nothing else did. Canvas rough against his skin, the faint scent of sweat and disinfectant in the air, the dull thud of gloves meeting flesh and through it all the thrumming pain of progress that was the only thing that seemed to warm him up any more. The wraps on his knuckles tightened his hands into weapons, the blood on his knuckles a stark reminder of how much farther he had to go, and a benchmark of how far he'd come. When he drove a cross into John’s guard and felt the shock travel up his arm into his shoulder, it was clean. Simple. Cause and effect. The fluidity of movement, the way his body responded without hesitation, reminded him that at least this part of him still worked exactly as intended.
It helped him lose himself in the purity of violence. In the ring there were no conspiracies, no hidden agendas, no moral calculus about who deserved what, and no deep, dark, miserable labs full of nightmares and abominations. There was only distance, timing, leverage, and reaction. Pain was immediate and honest. If he got hit, it was because he had made a mistake. If he landed clean, it was because he had earned it. Bruises bloomed across his ribs and shoulders in dark, ugly patches, and he welcomed them. They were a different ache, a new ache, to carve away at the frigid thrum in his soul.
And yet all the same, he still felt half himself. Even as his body moved with mechanical precision, something behind his eyes felt dulled, like he was watching his own performance from a step removed. The anger fueled him, but it burned too hot and too fast, leaving ash in its wake. When the rounds ended and he pulled the wraps off his hands, the quiet came rushing back in. The doubts returned. The weight settled again. Frustration, disgust, disappointment, longing, loss, love, all of it, like a flood that was slowly drowning him. And the thing was, he didn’t know what to do about it.
For the first time since this whole fucked up thing started, he was at a loss. Fighting Umbrella, that was easy. They were the bad guys, he was the good guy. It should have been simple and straightforward, but none of it actually meant anything. None of it seemed to have purpose. And the drive he'd been burning with ever since he woke up on that fateful day in July? Those embers were finally starting to die, and with them the shadows that hid the enormity of everything finally began to show the true depths of the hell he was in.
He'd been having trouble sleeping, even more so than normal, and with Rebecca pulling away, he didn't have the safety net he'd come to realize he'd relied on so much. Not anymore, and that hurt. It hurt more than he wanted to admit. But that was just how things played out, wasn't it? It was a bitter thought and tasted like ash in his mouth. But he couldn't blame her. He wasn't the person she knew, and she was starting to realize it.
Maybe he was just as much of a monster as Umbrella was, just carved from a different mold. The thought had started as something fleeting, a sharp edge that brushed against him during his quiet moments alone. Now it lingered, slowly twisting into the part of him that didn't recognize the man in the mirror. He couldn't pretend that he wasn't a killer, even if he'd reconciled the truth of it on his own. He told himself he was fighting a war, and Umbrella's jackboot's were just the enemy's soldiers, coming for him. It was true enough, and he knew that they were going to kill him. But it didn't change the fact that he pulled that trigger, intentionally, deliberately, and purposefully. He had justified it. He had cataloged the reasons. He had told himself it was necessary. None of that erased the simple truth that he had become very good at hurting people.
But he couldn't stop now. There was no stopping. If he stepped back, if he allowed himself to retreat into whatever semblance of a life he could cobble together, Umbrella would continue unchecked. They were still doing their dirty deeds, running their experiments, all while crafting their tailor-made plagues and bioweapons in the dark while the city went about its business. All completely unaware of the hell right under the pavement, creeping in the sewers, and dragging people off the streets. If he quit now, then he was just as complicit for everything that came after, and that was as sure a death as a bullet to the back of the head was.
And yet, for all the monsters he'd faced, the relationship he'd sacrificed, the blood and death he'd slogged through, one underground, the other a green nightmare made real, he had nothing to show for it. No proof. No documents that would hold up under any kind of scrutiny. No names but from what he remembered from a fucking video game two decades ago, and no path forward to finding anything more. What little he had was garbage, fragments and technical jargon that meant nothing without mountains of context. He had risked his life for scraps. Alyssa's fabled contact still had not gotten in touch with her, and each day that passed without something meaningful felt like another confirmation that he was a dead man chasing ghosts.
Worst of all? The thing that had started whispering to him in the back of his mind in those long, empty nights? It was the creeping horror that it wasn't if he might fail. It was that he might succeed and still not be able to live with what he had become in the process. He couldn't deny that truth anymore. It sat in his chest, heavy and undeniable, and he had no idea how to force it down without letting it hollow him out completely.
It felt like such a waste of time just standing here, waiting. But that was all he could do. Wait and train and train and wait, all while the woman that he suspected he was beginning to love kept pulling away, kept distancing herself, and he couldn't even blame her for it. No... he had made choices. He lied. He had deceived. He had obfuscated. And that was all coming home to roost. But what choice did he have? The truth was more insane than the fiction, and even trying to explain it had been a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
And that was the joke, wasn't it? No idea what to say or how to say it, trapped in a never ending cycle of lies to protect the people he loved, and at the end of the day, what was the point of it? He still wasn't any closer to accomplishing his goal. Fuck, he wasn't even in the same goddam city as it. But... he would figure it out. He had to. Umbrella wouldn't wait for him to waffle and flail his hands and hope someone else would come and save him from his own fuck-ups.
But it still hurt. It still ached.
Danny splashed water in his face and stepped back from the sink, droplets running down his jaw and soaking into the collar of his shirt. He needed to get out there again. He needed to do something useful. He was going to patrol the city again and take more notes, retrace some of his old routes, and confirm what he thought he knew. Start getting his head back in the game, and off those thoughts. That was what he needed to do. If he kept moving, maybe the dark whispers in his mind would shut up for a little bit longer, and the ever-twisting coil in his chest would stop for a few more minutes.
He had gotten into the bad habit of bringing his notebook home with him, all his notes and descriptions and details he'd found out about his targets. He used to leave it locked away, kept it hidden, but what was the point? Rebecca wasn't staying over any more. Now it sat on the kitchen table some nights, open beside a cold cup of coffee and a half eaten sandwich, forgotten in favor of memorizing the thin lines of text in his increasingly messy handwriting.
Thinking about her sent an old, familiar pain through him. He had seen her maybe a handful of times in the last month, conversations shorter, smiles thinner, the old comfortable silence between them now scared and hostile. He was strong enough to admit that he'd started avoiding her too, but too weak to remedy it. He hated that look of wary concern she had taken to wearing, and that hurt too, because it was just one more reminder of how things had gone so wrong.
In the end, it was fine, so he told himself. It wasn't like it mattered anyway. None of those notes would mean anything to her. None of them would mean anything to anyone but him, and that was the point. Besides, this wasn't the old days, where going to the hideout was just something he could casually do. Now he was wary. Now he knew better. No, it was safer to keep it on him.
Besides, having it on hand was comforting to him. Proof that he was on top of things, even as his own sense of urgency screamed at him to get up and do one more thing, prepare one more stash or escape route, plan one more ingress. It was the only thing that relaxed him enough to sleep any more, anyway, as insane as it sounded. How fucking pathetic.
He stormed out of the bathroom, angrily, frustrated with himself, with the world, with his own failings, as he grabbed his coat and checked his pistol before he left the apartment behind. He spared a sad, tired glance at Rebecca's door. He still had the key, but he was too much of a coward to actually go and knock, see how she was doing, see if she even wanted to talk to him. No, instead he just turned away and stomped down the stairs, wondering if the city would clear his head anyway. It gave him something to do, something real.
And he could use more real in his life, these days.
000
He looked like hell.
That was the first thing Rebecca thought when she saw him. He didn't notice her. She was too far away for that, half hidden by the flow of people between them, but Danny wasn't looking too good, and she felt her heart ache at what she saw. He looked older somehow, not in years but in wear. The lines around his mouth were deeper, his eyes shadowed and hollowed out as if sleep had become a stranger to him.
He was gaunt, his broad frame not thin so much as drained, like something essential had been siphoned out of him. His shoulders, once square and easy, carried a faint hunch she had never seen before, a subtle inward curl that made him look smaller despite his size. It wasn't weakness, not exactly, but it was a weight. An invisible, relentless weight that seemed to pull him down in a way that she hated to see.
He looked empty, like a guttering flame chewing through the last of its fuel, the wood charred and blackened, the embers glowing weakly in a bed of ash. The small perpetual smile he always seemed to carry, that easy warmth that had once drawn her in without any effort, was gone. In its place was a hard line, his face carved into a dark frown that didn't quite fit him. It was the absence that frightened her most, the sense that something bright and familiar had been scraped away, leaving only a deep strain and a smoldering anger behind.
Things had been tense in the last month. Tense and stressed and difficult ever since the shooting incident, like a wire pulled too tight and never allowed to slacken. The air between them had changed after that day. Conversations that were once so easy now felt measured, the silences felt heavier, more awkward, more strained, and the two had never quite managed to find their rhythm again. She kept telling herself it was just shock, just her processing it, that it was something that would fade with time. But it never did.
She tried to justify it, tried over and over to make it make sense to her. Even with Captain Wesker calmly assuring her that it had been a justified shooting, a good shooting even, that it was textbook self-defense, she couldn't quiet the doubt gnawing at her. It was all the right words, all the right reasons, and the logic was sound. Nothing had been done wrong, and Danny had been cleared in his entirety. Hell, he even was commended by the department and by the Captain personally, but it all felt hollow. Performative. Empty.
She couldn't get the look in Danny’s eyes out of her mind. The same cold, empty stare that he had used when he disassembled Kevin Ryman, clinical and detached, like he was solving a problem instead of executing a man. She'd told herself that it was different. That it had been necessary. That had been him protecting her from a threat that she just... hadn't seen. But in those quiet moments, when she was alone, she saw that same expression again, directed not at her, but close enough that she could feel its edge, and something inside her recoiled.
It wasn't the rage that frightened her. In fact, it was the absence of it, or any emotion, or feeling, or panic, that stood out to her. The lack of hesitation, the way his face seemed to harden into something impersonal, stripped of warmth or doubt. The trained, precise, exacting actions of a machine performing its function with brutal, perfect acuity. That was what she saw, and it terrified her in a way she couldn't articulate, because it suggested that there were parts of him that she'd never seen. Parts that she didn't know existed, hidden under the friendly Aw Shucks demeanor that she had come to trust, like a leviathan under a placid ocean, just waiting for an unsuspecting ship to pass.
Because the truth was that Danny had been getting worse. She knew that in the quiet, unguarded part of herself that she couldn't lie to. The signs had been there for weeks, subtle at first and then impossible to ignore. Shorter temper. Longer silences. That restless, coiled energy that never seemed to bleed off no matter how much he walked or how long he vanished, coming home smelling like gunpowder or covered in new bruises. And that last incident, that shooting, just threw everything into stark, merciless contrast. It was like someone had taken a harsh light and aimed it directly at the cracks she had been pretending not to see.
Rebecca didn't know what to do about it. She ran through the possibilities in her head over and over and came up empty every time. Trying to talk to him felt like stepping onto unstable ground, where the footing underneath her could fall out at any second, but ignoring it felt worse. Like she was giving up on someone she knew needed her. She just couldn't handle it on her own anymore, though. She couldn't carry the weight of what she suspected and still smile at him like everything was fine. Because deep, deep down? She knew it wasn't.
So she started pulling away, and it killed her to do it. She hadn't meant to, hadn't even realized it until it had been days since she last saw him, and that had been crushing. It wasn't a decision she'd made, but rather it was smaller than that. Quieter. She just found excuses. Extra shifts. New outreach work. Nights when she claimed she was too tired. Found ways to keep some distance so she could breathe, so she could think, telling herself she was just finding her balance, but it was a lie. Each step back felt like a betrayal, and she hated herself for it, but she didn't know how else to protect either of them from the incessant, crawling fears that had branded their way into her waking thoughts.
And a consequence of that was that she wasn't there for him. She hadn't seen him in weeks, not really, not in any way that mattered. Passing glimpses in the hallway, a brief exchange of words that meant nothing, the rare, occasional meal, but the long nights? The cohabitation? The gentle air between them? It was all gone. All that was left was the fake byplay that let her pretend everything was fine while avoiding the truth.
And when she finally did see him properly, standing still long enough for her to take him in, the shock of it nearly stole her breath. His eyes were sunken, dark crescents carved out of bloodshot marble. His hair was unkempt, limp, uncared for and unmanaged. His knuckles were a bloody, bruised mess, the skin split and healing over in layers, fresh scabs overlapping older ones. The swelling distorted the shape of his hands, the hands that used to cup her face so gently, now looking gnarled and grasping. But that wasn't the worst of it. He wasn't even trying to hide the bruises anymore, his body a rictus of dark marks and pus-yellow splotches. They were just there, raw and unapologetic, as if he no longer cared who noticed.
He was in pain. She could see it in the tightness of his jaw, in the way he shifted his weight as though every movement pulled at something sore beneath the surface. And she didn't know what to do about that. She didn't know how to reach him without pushing him further away, and the helplessness of it lodged deep in her chest and refused to move.
But that wasn't the worst thing.
It had been two, maybe three weeks now. She'd been working with Barry in the armory, the heavy steel door sealed behind them, the air cool and dry with that faint metallic tang that clung to stored weapons and oiled machinery. He'd been going over the inventory with her, methodical and patient, getting her acclimated to all the equipment, all the tech they were using, walking her through each system as she might use it. When they came to the breaching charges, he shifted tone slightly, more serious, more precise. He explained how they worked, the explosive force, the shaped charge design, the way the blast directed its energy forward instead of outward, and the minute technical details that would keep her alive if something went wrong. Where to place it, how far to stand back, what angle to avoid, so if she ever had to use one, she didn't accidentally blow her hand off.
It had been fun, almost, in that focused way new knowledge always was for her. Interesting. Engaging. She'd been absorbing the information like a sponge, asking questions, filing away the mechanics in the part of her brain that loved understanding how things fit together.
And then the smell caught her.
It was pungent, sharp enough to cut through the sterile air of the armory. Unpleasant but not sharp, exactly, but distinct. She remembered wrinkling her nose and asking what it was. Barry had smiled faintly and told her they used something called C4 in their blasting charges. He had even let her get close enough to identify it safely, describing it in that calm, instructive tone of his. It had an earthy scent, almost like nuts, almonds specifically, but layered with a chemical bite and a faint undertone of fertilizer. Something organic twisted with something artificial. It lingered in the back of her throat, tickling her memory as they moved on.
At the time, she had nodded and stored the information away like any other fact. She hadn't understood why her stomach had tightened, why the familiarity of it had prickled at her memory. It had only been a smell.
Until it wasn't.
At first, it hadn't really registered with her, that smell, just that it was something she'd smelled before, but she couldn't put her finger on where. And then she realized why it seemed so familiar. That day, the day of the date, Danny's apartment, it reeked of a smell not too dissimilar from that.
But that couldn't be right. She denied it. She tried to convince herself otherwise, but she couldn't shake the feeling. She wanted to ask, wanted to confront him about it. Surely it couldn't have been that. He wasn't that kind of person. He wasn't... he hadn't lost it like that. He couldn't have. He was Danny. He was her boyfriend. He was someone she loved.
But she couldn't shake it. She couldn't lose the fear that had taken root in her chest and refused to loosen its grip. So she started pulling away more, spending less time there, telling herself it was temporary, that space would bring clarity. The long nights that they had spent together were gone, replaced by polite goodnights and early exits. The quiet evenings, the easy laughter, the… the passionate… She couldn't even complete the thought without her throat tightening.
She didn't know what to think, but she kept telling herself that it was impossible, that it was… she was wrong, she had to be. That she was letting stress and imagination twist coincidence into something monstrous. She repeated it like a mantra in the dark, clinging to the hope that if she said it often enough, it would become true.
But then she found the notebook.
She'd never seen it before, not when they had been spending their time together, when the apartment had felt shared and open and warm. But with her gone, with the distance widening between them, he'd gotten more comfortable somehow with just leaving these things around, like he no longer expected anyone to question them. And she didn't, she couldn't, she told herself she wouldn't cross that line, but she did. Her fingers hovered over the cover for a long moment before she picked it up, the weight of it heavier than it should have been. She opened it. She read it.
And the information didn't make sense.
It was in his handwriting, unmistakably so, the sharp slant of his letters, the firm pressure of the pen biting into the page. But the content was something else entirely. Notes. Diagrams. Complex layouts of the hospitals, all three of them mapped out in obsessive detail. Arrows marking entry points. Circles around stairwells. Timelines scribbled in the margins. Other places followed. The police station. City hall. Warehouses she didn't recognize. Dozens of locations listed with times and annotations that bordered on obsessive detail, built up over weeks, maybe months, she couldn't tell.
Why would he be going there? Why would he be spending his time like that? The questions pressed in on her, each page turning, tightening the knot in her stomach. But then it hit her why this felt so off. This wasn't a casual observation. It was structured. Intentional. Methodical. The kind of preparation that suggested he'd been preparing something, though what she couldn't begin to guess, and that was what frightened her most.
And yet it all painted a picture. A bad picture. A haunting picture.
Rebecca didn't want to contemplate it, didn't want to think about it, didn't want to believe it. But as the days ticked by and turned into weeks, a gnawing sense of dread started to consume her thoughts. Danny was paranoid. He was afraid. He was capable of horrifying levels of violence that she'd never even imagined. He was driven.
And he was dangerous.
God, did she hate thinking about it. Thinking that he was capable of something like that.
But as the hours passed in the dark, alone, she had begun to accept what she had been resisting: he needed help. Real help. The kind she wasn't equipped to give. The pattern was there, and it was worsening, and she hated herself for not recognizing it sooner, for explaining away the warning signs as stress or pride or simple stubbornness. She could trace the shift now with painful clarity, see the steady slide she had tried so hard not to name.
She was afraid of where that slide might end. Afraid that one reckless decision, one misjudged escalation, could turn into something catastrophic. The thought of him hurting people, of lives shattered because she had hesitated, made her chest tighten until she could barely breathe. She had to stop him before it reached that point, before something irreversible happened. But the truth pressed in just as hard: she didn't think she could carry that burden alone.
And that's what broke her heart the most. She kept asking herself, why? Why did this happen? Why did it get to this point? How had she missed the signs? How had she-
No. She couldn't think like that. That wasn't constructive.
But she couldn't just turn on him. Not like that. The thought of turning him in, of watching the light go out of his eyes when he realized she had been the one to do it, made her stomach twist. He'd never forgive her. He might never understand that it had come from love and concern in equal measure.
But she had to stop him before he did something terrible, before he did something unthinkable, before a line was crossed that could never be uncrossed. That truth stood firm no matter how much it hurt. And she couldn't do it alone. Loving him did not make her strong enough to shoulder this by herself.
Barry was the first one she'd gone to. She had sat across from him at the kitchen table in his house, hands twisted together so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, and forced herself to say it out loud. She explained everything, piece by piece, in slow, horrible detail, as if laying it out methodically would make it less tragic. The paranoia. The fear. The nightmares. The flashbacks that left him distant and unreachable. His long days alone, vanished into the city for hours at a time, coming back bruised and tight-lipped and smelling like gunsmoke. The bullet that she suspected had come from a weapon he owned, somehow, some way, impossibly so. The smell of explosives clinging faintly to his clothing. And then there was the notebook.
She expected Barry to interrupt her. To ask her why she'd waited so long, or to accuse her, or condemn her. To tell her all the things she'd told herself, in the dark, alone and scared. Instead he listened, jaw tight, eyes steady, absorbing every word. When she finally fell silent, drained and shaking, the first thing he said was that they needed to involve the rest of the team.
She begged him not to. Pleaded with him. The pulling in the rest of STARS was too much. She just wanted to help Danny. She didn't want this to turn into an investigation. She didn't want to drag him into something that would stain his record or mark him forever. She didn't want to destroy his life over this. She didn't want to destroy him.
And somehow that was enough. Barry didn't dismiss her fear. He didn't brush aside the severity of what she'd described. But he softened. He told her they would approach it carefully, that the goal wasn't to drag him in, it was to protect him. To protect everyone. He didn't promise it would be easy. He didn't promise it wouldn't hurt. But he promised they would try to do it the right way.
Barry told her they needed at least some help, even if they kept the circle small. Maybe, he said carefully, they could persuade Danny to voluntarily commit himself for evaluation, frame it as support instead of intervention. Get him the help he needed before anyone else forced their hand. If they approached it the right way, maybe he would agree to surrender the weapons, the explosives, whatever he was stockpiling. They could take them quietly, dispose of them without the paperwork or the scandal. But first they needed Chris, and they needed Jill. Partially because they were their friends and deserved to know, but also because Barry was honest enough to admit he wasn’t sure he could handle Danny alone if things went sideways.
And the four of them, after a long, uneasy discussion, came to the conclusion that they needed to read in Wesker as well. It was one thing to try to handle it quietly among friends, off the books in spirit. It was another to risk crossing a legal line in practice. Wesker was still their captain. He had authority. He also had a friendship with Danny. If anyone could legitimize what they were about to do, it was him.
Rebecca had braced herself for resistance when they brought it to him. Instead, he listened with that same measured composure he always carried, asking precise questions, weighing each answer. In the end, he agreed. He said it was unfortunate, but necessary. That they would handle it cleanly. Professionally. With discretion. It had been a tense conversation, a difficult one, but between the five of them, they thought it would be enough.
And the plan was simple.
She, Barry, Jill, and Chris would go up together and escort Danny down. Not as officers, not as an arrest. As his friends, who loved and cared about him. Wesker would provide the transportation, something discreet, something that wouldn't draw attention. They would take him to Umbrella General and set him up with the best psychiatric care they could afford, lean on every favor and every connection to make sure he was seen immediately. They would stay with him through intake. They would explain that this was about support, about safety. They would be there for him. They would help him. They would get him back on track, even if he hated them for it at first.
Because they cared about him. Rebecca most of all.
It was agonizing to watch someone she loved unravel in slow motion, to see the strain carved into his face and know she had stood by too long. The thought of him sitting in a sterile hospital room, confused and furious and betrayed, twisted something deep inside her. But the alternative twisted worse. The agony of it, the guilt, the fear, it was almost too much to hold. She could only hope that one day he would understand that this hadn't been an act of betrayal, but of desperate, aching love.
But they'd have to catch him when he was at the apartment, and that was becoming vanishingly rare. She'd stopped by a dozen times over the past few weeks, sometimes early in the morning, sometimes late at night, and he'd been gone every single one. The lights would be off. The parking space empty. Or worse, there would be signs he'd been there and left in a hurry. His hours had gone sporadic, unpredictable to the point of being alarming. He was up at all hours of the night, sleeping at strange hours of the day, if he came home at all. It was as if he were deliberately slipping through the cracks of any routine that might make him easy to find.
So they would watch and they would wait. They would be patient. They would keep an eye on the building, coordinate their schedules quietly, and make sure someone was close enough to respond when the opportunity presented itself. It felt wrong, surveilling someone she loved, but she told herself it was temporary. Necessary.
When the chance came, they would get him the help he needed. They would step in before he could step away. No matter how much he fought them on it. No matter how angry he became. No matter how much it hurt to see him look at them like they were the enemy.
But they would do it. Because if they hesitated now, they might never get another chance.
000
In the end, it's the little things that get you, just like the song goes, Daniel Carter thought bitterly. Across from him stood Rebecca, holding a gun, pointed at him. The fear in her eyes had been crushing to see, the fear of him, of what he had done, what he had become. And he couldn't blame her, surrounded by the groaning, aching bodies of her friends as they tried to recall how their lungs worked, and do more than string two fragmented thoughts together.
It hadn't been anything at all, at first. He'd come home tired and sore after another long day, another session with John that had left his knuckles raw and his ribs aching, followed by hours of roving the city on foot, mapping streets in his head one more time in the endless trek of trying to prepare for the end. Plotting and planning had become routine, almost ritualistic. In truth, most of it was absolutely boring. It was just more spinning of his wheels, retracing the same blocks, studying the same facades, hoping that somehow he would spot one more angle, one more overlooked detail that would finally make some kind of difference. Each night he told himself that persistence would pay off. Each night he returned to an empty apartment with nothing but colder fingers and aching legs. It was frustrating, he had to admit, that same feeling of pointless meandering that had become a constant companion digging into his calm like a screw dug into a cork.. But it was really all he could do, and so that was what he did.
It was 7:53 p.m., February 27th, when things started to fall apart.
He'd just walked through the door, hungry, tired, and more than a little annoyed. The cold had followed him in like an unwanted guest. It was still frigid outside, and the snow had been slick and slushy, a gray churn of half-melted ice that clung to him and soaked into his boots, leaving his socks damp and his toes numb, and it leached into his bones, leaving him frozen inside. He was really starting to hate the cold, hate the frost, how it seemed to permeate everything, how it turned every walk into a march while he struggled to keep from sliding on the grease-slick slush. And yet for one insane reason or another, he kept going out, kept trudging through it night after night. He told himself it was necessary, stubborn doggedness and refusal to stand still motivating him more than the chance at accomplishing something useful.
At least the movement kept him limber, kept his joints from locking up and his mind from stagnating. It was a kind of warmth, distant and hard-won, but it was still there. He'd take the little win, for all the good it did him. Pointless tiny victories, each one, but at least it tasted like something useful.
He was lost in his thoughts, lamenting, and that was when he heard the knock at the door.
Which was strange. Nobody really visited him. Not that he was particularly welcoming, and not that he gave anyone reason to think he wanted company. The only person who might have been interested, well, she had a key, and lately, even she had stopped using it.
So he wasn't sure what to expect when he looked out the peephole, only to find Chris and Jill there. The hallway light cast a pale glow over them, flattening their expressions into something unreadable at first glance. Strange, but he hadn't seen them in some time, even if they weren't the sort to drop by unannounced. Maybe they were coming to talk some sense into him over Rebecca. Or maybe they were just there to check on him, see if he was still alive, make sure he hadn't finally disappeared into whatever hole he'd been digging for himself.
He lingered at the door for a second longer than necessary before unlocking it, the click of the deadbolt sounding louder than usual in the quiet apartment. He opened the door, let them in, and despite the interior of the building, a brush of icy cold air slipped past them as they stepped across the threshold. He almost immediately regretted it, because could tell something was wrong the moment he saw their faces up close. They were tight and hard, jaws set, eyes steady, like they had prepared themselves for something. It set him on edge, just a bit, but he tried to play the gracious host all the same. Maybe he was just imagining things. Sure.
He wiped his damp palms against his jeans and forced an easy smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Chris, Jill," He said, nodding to them. "what brings you by?" His tone was light, almost teasing, the default mask he wore when he didn't want to show his hand. He stepped back to give them space, inviting them in. They left the door to hang open, as they stepped in.
The two were silent for a long, long moment, sharing a look, pretending to be subtle, but it wasn't. It was the kind of glance exchanged between people who had already decided something and were bracing for the fallout. Daniel could feel the hairs on his neck start to rise, as he carefully slipped back, casually, keeping them in his line of sight. The shift was barely noticeable, but it was one more hole carved into Daniel's calm.
Chris finally asked, "How are you doing, Danny?" There was something in the tone of his voice that was more perfunctory than he'd ever heard from the man before. Measured. Careful. Jill remained silent, watching him with an intensity that felt almost clinical.
"I'm fine, Chris. Why, what's up?" The answer came easily, automatic. The question tumbled from Danny's lips, almost probingly, curiously. Jill stepped closer, almost into his bubble of personal space, pulling his attention from Chris.
"Heard things have been difficult lately for you. Are you sure you've been okay?" She asked, and the question was heavy with subtext, like she was looking for a specific answer.
Daniel glanced at her curiously, before asking, "Yeah, why? Something going on? Did something happen?" And something struck him. "Is Rebecca okay?" For the first time, the two heard an undertone of real concern enter his voice. The question seemed to throw the two for a bit of a loop, but they recovered quickly, sharing another glance.
"No, Danny, Rebecca's fine," Jill said. "We were more worried about you."
"Oh yeah? Why would you be worried about me? I know things have been... complicated between me and Rebecca lately, but everything's been fine besides that." The lie tumbled from his lips easily, smooth and practiced, delivered with just enough casual irritation to make it sound believable. It was something rote and empty, and neither of the two seemed to believe him. He could see it in the slight narrowing of Chris’s eyes, in the way Jill’s posture didn’t soften. But he was too tired to worry about what they thought. Too worn down to manufacture something more convincing.
Looking at them, he asked, "Is there anything I could get you two? Water, maybe? I don't usually get visitors, and I think this is the first time you've come over. Kind of wondering why." He gestured vaguely toward the kitchen as if hospitality could smooth over whatever tension had followed them inside. The offer was polite, almost pointedly normal, an attempt to drag the conversation back into safer territory.
"No, it's fine, Danny," Chris said after a moment.
The pause before he answered stretched just a fraction too long. Chris shifted his weight slightly, jaw tightening, the muscles feathering along his cheek as though he were bracing himself for impact. He drew in a slow breath, centering himself, and then almost seemed to shift awkwardly, which in itself was unsettling. Chris Redfield was not a man who did awkward. He did decisive. He did direct. Seeing hesitation on him felt wrong, and it was enough to tell Daniel something was coming. Something he wasn't going to enjoy.
"Danny, we know something's been going on. And you need to come with us."
The words landed flat and solid between them.
In an instant, the friendly, almost playful smile that had made itself across Danny's face fell away as if it had never been there. The warmth drained from his expression, leaving something sharper in its place. He looked at the two of them more carefully now, really looked, and the exhaustion that had weighed on his limbs moments ago began to burn off under a rising trill of adrenaline. His shoulders squared almost imperceptibly, as he rose from the tired slouch he'd been in to a casual ready.
"Why? Is everything okay?" He asked, before pausing, and in a lower tone, "Am I under arrest?" The question came out terse and harsh, and almost, but not quite clipped. There was an unmistakable edge to it now, suspicion bleeding through his tone as he put some space between them. His gaze flicked briefly toward the hallway beyond them, calculating, noting the casually opened door, and the shadow behind it.
Chris and Jill shared that awkward look again before Jill answered, her voice softer but no less firm. "You're not under arrest, Danny, but we know what's been going on. You need help, and Rebecca asked us if we would come talk to you, see if you'd come with us peacefully." She kept her tone level, careful, as though speaking to someone balanced on a ledge.
Jill raised her arm to press her hand against his shoulder comfortingly, but he stepped back out of her reach.
"What are you talking about?" The question was not friendly, not even a little. There was a whisper of confusion to it, but both STARS could hear the whisper of panic in the undertones.
"Danny, please, don't make this hard. Come with us. We need you to step outside. We're gonna get you sorted, okay? We're your friends. We don't want you to... to do what you're thinking of doing. Please." Chris's voice was filled with empathy, but there was steel under it. As he glanced between the two, he caught sight of Barry lurking in the doorway.
"So that's how it is," Danny said, with a tight edge to his voice. "You may as well come out, Barry. I see you hiding over there."
Barry stepped around finally, and following behind him, looking small in his shadow, was- "Becca." Danny couldn't quite keep the look of betrayal from crossing his face as he whispered her name. The lack of understanding that slowly bloomed into something she couldn't recognize crossed his eyes as he stared at her. She flinched slightly, hating that look, before steeling herself.
"Danny, please, don't fight. I... I know what you've been doing when you go out. I know about the bomb, the weapons... I know about the plans. I saw your notebook. I'm so sorry." The words tumbled out of her mouth as she pleaded with him, tears in her eyes, "I didn't realize how bad it had gotten, not until I saw it and put it all together. It was just too much for me, Danny. You need help. Everyone needs help sometimes... I love you, and I cannot watch you do this to yourself. Please, before something terrible happens, before you cross a line you can't uncross, you need to come with us." She begged as Barry slipped around to his side, "We can get you somewhere where you'll get the help you need, and we'll take care of the rest. There won't be any record. And when you're healthy again, we can maybe talk about the future. We're all here for you, Danny. Please."
Her voice in that moment was heartbroken, pleading. It was too much, too far, and it hurt so damn much to hear it, hear the disbelief, the loss, the agony in her voice, and something in Danny shattered.
Because he knew. He knew it was his mistakes, his failings that caused her to think this. And now, here, these were the consequences. The consequences of not being good enough, of not paying enough attention, of not being able to separate who he was with who he had to be. It ripped him up inside, knowing that he did this, that he had failed.
But he couldn't stop. Things were in motion now, things that the clock was ticking down. And hell was coming, with all of its horror and all of its monsters, and he knew at that moment that there was nothing he could say to convince them otherwise. The clock had run out before he'd had a chance to try.
He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath as he felt Chris grab his arm, firm, restraining, and Barry grab the other. The big man had been silent, but looked at him with sympathy and pity.
They started pulling him out of his apartment, boots scuffing against the worn floor as Chris and Barry tightened their grips, each man taking an arm like they had rehearsed it. Rebecca hovered close, trying to keep him calm, her voice low and shaking as she whispered promises that she'd be there, that they'd all be there for him, that she wasn't going anywhere, that she loved him and cared about him. Her words tumbled over each other in a rush, desperate to anchor him to something soft, something human, as they guided him toward the open doorway and the empty hallway waiting beyond it.
But whatever they had planned, whatever careful script they had written in their heads, they'd become an obstacle in the process. He hated that, hated it to his very core, but he couldn't think of them as his friends any more, couldn't think of her as his lover. He had to. They had become an obstacle standing between him and the path he was on, and there was no going back.
Chris knew something was wrong immediately when he stopped walking. It was subtle at first, just a change in tension through Danny's arm, a shift in weight that felt wrong. The compliance vanished. The air around them seemed to tighten.
"Please don't fight us." He said it quietly, but there was urgency beneath it, the tone of his voice firm while still begging for him not to take that step, not to force this into something none of them wanted.
Daniel looked at Chris, then at Barry. His eyes were clear now. Focused. A moment passed, a heartbeat that seemed to stretch longer than it should have.
And then he said, "I'm sorry, I can't."
Chris had been prepared for a struggle. He'd braced for resistance, for thrashing, for panic. He was STARS, an expert fighter in his own right, good enough to train the others. He had spent years mastering his craft, had trained and prepared for this exact scenario, and still it wasn't enough. He hadn't been prepared for what happened next. For a split second he almost couldn't believe what he was seeing, even as it unfolded beneath his hands.
The grip he'd thought he'd had on Daniel, the grip that Barry thought he'd secured, dissolved in an instant. There was no wild jerk, no wasted motion, just an abrupt twist of his shoulders, a sharp shift in his body weight, and a violent torque through his hips. Just like that, Daniel pivoted like a lever snapping free, ripping both arms inward and then out, breaking their holds as if they were amateurs. It happened so fast, Chris would have missed it if he'd blinked.
To his credit, Chris lunged to reestablish control immediately, reaching for him again, but Daniel was already inside his guard. His hand clamped down around Chris's wrist with crushing force, fingers digging into bone. Before Chris could react, a knuckled strike drove up hard into the hollow beneath his armpit, slamming into the nerve cluster there. It was a deliberate, targeted strike, one that was designed to shut down someone in their entirety. Pain detonated across his chest, white and blinding, electricity ripping down his arm and across his ribs. His fingers spasmed uselessly as a raw cry tore out of him.
"Chris!" Jill screamed, and came in fast, driving her elbow toward the back of Danny's skull, aiming to rattle him, to stun him. He shifted just enough that her strike glanced past, his body already turning. Those same big hands, scarred and bruised and made of corded steel, seized her upper arm. His elbow came down and in, slamming brutally into her floating ribs. The impact thudded deep and ugly. Jill's breath left her in a ragged gasp as pain folded her forward. She staggered, vision flashing, as Barry surged in from the side to lock him down.
He went for a full-body restraint, arms spreading wide to crush him in a bear hug, but Daniel dropped his center of gravity and slid free before the hold could close. He pivoted sharply and drove a vicious one-two into Barry's diaphragm. The first punch sent spears of pain through the larger man, the second hammering deeper into his brutalized flesh, and Daniel could feel Barry's diaphragm contract forcefully. Barry's massive frame shuddered as air was forced violently from his lungs in a strangled, choking sound. The blows landed with a sickening solidity, far harder than Barry had ever imagined Daniel capable of delivering.
As Chris tried to recover, tried to come around with a knee to the stomach, Daniel caught it effortlessly on his own, turned, and clapped both of Chris's ears, stunning him, leaving him staggering before one of Daniel's own knee strikes speared him in the stomach. Daniel had grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him into the strike, folding him over his knee. It hit hard enough that the ex-Air Force pilot gagged and puked all over the floor.
Jill charged in again, catching him clean in the jaw with a snapping right hook that turned his head and split the inside of his lip. She followed it immediately with a second strike, driving forward, trying to keep him on the defensive, trying to buy Chris and Barry a second to recover. Her foot swept low for his knee, testing his balance, and when he shifted she drove a sharp elbow toward his collarbone. For a heartbeat it looked like she might overwhelm him through sheer aggression.
Daniel absorbed the first blow, rolled with the second, and let the sweep glance off as he gave ground just enough to draw her in. His hand shot out, catching her wrist mid-strike. He yanked her forward hard, collapsing the space between them, and his forehead cracked down toward hers in a brutal, compact motion. The impact staggered her just enough. That was all he needed.
He released her wrist only to snake his arm around her throat and under her shoulder in a crushing grip, lifting with violent force. Jill slammed both fists into his side, driving short, sharp punches into his ribs, trying to break the hold, but he powered through it. With a savage heave he drove her down, choke slamming her into the floor hard enough to rattle the walls. The air blasted from her lungs in a broken gasp.
She tried to roll, to recover, to kick at his knee as she had trained to do a thousand times before, but he was already moving. He spun with ruthless efficiency and drove a heavy kick into her stomach. The blow folded her, launching her backward across the floor. She skidded into the wall with a sickening thud, plaster cracking behind her as she hit and slid down, stunned and breathless, the fight knocked brutally out of her for the moment.
Barry recovered by then, sucking in a ragged breath through clenched teeth, only to be caught flush in the jaw with a thunderous haymaker that snapped his head sideways. The crack of knuckles on bone echoed off the walls. Before he could reorient, a second punch crashed in from the opposite side, staggering him, knees dipping as his vision blurred. Daniel didn't give him any space to breathe, to get his bearings back. He stepped through the recoil, wrapped an arm across Barry’s shoulder and under his arm, and turned his hips sharply. The throw was violent and clean. Barry’s boots left the floor and his body arced over Daniel’s shoulder before slamming into the ground with a heavy, breath-stealing impact. The air burst from him in a harsh grunt as he folded over, stars detonating across his vision while the floor seemed to tilt and swim beneath him.
It had taken seconds, brutal and efficient, but in that time Daniel had disassembled them. Three expert fighters. Trained, skilled, experienced veterans who had faced down monsters and lived. Reduced to gasping shapes on the floor of a cramped apartment hallway.
Rebecca stared at him in horror. The blank look in his eyes was worse than any anger, worse than any shouting. It was the absence of anything at all. The hard frown on his face carved him into something she didn't recognize. Around him, Chris lay doubled over, fighting to drag air into his burning lungs. Jill struggled against the pain lancing through her ribs and stomach. Barry tried to roll to a knee and failed, his massive frame shaking as he forced himself to stay conscious.
In that moment Rebecca felt fear seize her heart in a cold, merciless grip. She took an instinctive step back, heel scraping against the floor. Her hands moved before she consciously decided to move them. Training overrode shock. Muscle memory overrode love. Her fingers slipped behind her to the small of her back and came away with the weight of her sidearm, the motion smooth despite the tremor in her breath as the gun cleared its holster.
She tried to make him stop, tried to order him, to beg with him, to plead with him, but all she saw was that icy executioner dismantling her friends, killing that man, shattering Kevin, and now, it was coming for her. She reacted on instinct, in fear, in panic, and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was deafening, and for a moment, as the adrenaline in her thundered like a freight train, she blanked. Then she came back to herself, and felt a gentle pressure on the pistol. She looked into his eyes, and saw blood dripping down his face. Dread replaced the terror as the enormity of what she'd done hit her, and her hands loosened. Daniel pulled the gun from her shaking hands, as Rebecca wrestled with the fact that she'd... that she'd almost... that she'd shot him. Had carved a deep divot across his face, leaving a weeping, crimson wound pouring down his face, and in that moment she could only wonder how it all went so wrong.
Danny's hand came up, and she almost wanted him to do to her what he did to the others, but his touch was gentle, loving, forgiving, as he leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead, as she sobbed and tried to breathe through the hiccups and gasping, choking sensation of what he'd almost done to him.
"It's okay, Becca." He whispered into her ear, as he hugged her tight. He bled on her, she could feel the hot wetness on her skin, as he kept his arms around her, "I know you don't understand now, but it'll be okay. It's all going to be okay." Her arms wrapped around him with a desperate, needy pain as he spoke, and he wrapped one around her, "I have to go away, now. I can't stop. It's far too late for that, Becca. But whatever you think I'm going to do, you're wrong. And I know you don't have any reason to trust me, but I promise you that it'll all be okay. Somehow."
She tried to cling onto him as he stepped back, but the strength to do so had left her. Slowly, she sank to her knees as he vanished down the stairs, her Samurai Edge clutched in his hand, and she wept.
