# Arc 1 – Claire's Last Investigation - Chapter 5 - Death and the Beginning

The days after Claire's death blurred together.

Chris didn't leave her bedroom for the first thirty-six hours. He sat in the chair beside her bed, staring at her face. She looked peaceful. Almost asleep. He kept waiting for her chest to rise, kept listening for a breath that would never come.

But her skin grew cold. Her fingers stiffened. And the stillness in the room became absolute.

On the second day, he finally moved.

He wrapped her body in the bedsheet, carefully, gently, like she was just sleeping and he didn't want to wake her. He carried her down the stairs of their apartment building at three in the morning, when the streets were empty and the only witness was a stray cat that watched from beneath a parked car.

He drove her to the woods outside Raccoon City.

The spot he chose was a clearing she had shown him years ago, when they were kids, a place she called her secret thinking spot. She'd sit on the mossy log at its center and sketch the trees, or read, or just think. She'd brought him there once, after their parents died, and told him it was okay to be sad here.

He buried her there.

No coffin. No priest. No marker.

Just earth and leaves and a quiet prayer he barely remembered from childhood.

"Please," he whispered into the dark soil. "Please don't let her be forgotten."

He stood there until dawn, alone.

---

The apartment was worse after that.

Every corner held her. Her jacket hanging by the door. Her coffee mug in the sink, still stained with her last cup. Her notes spread across the kitchen table, a chaos of photographs and maps and handwritten observations.

Chris sat at that table and stared at the evidence of her obsession.

Six missing persons, her notes read. All connected to Umbrella. All cases closed too fast.

Below it, in fresher ink: T-Virus. Human experimentation. Wesker. Tyrant Project.

He picked up one of the photographs. A blurry image of the warehouse interior, captured just before her camera died. Dark shapes. Broken cages. Something moving in the shadows.

She had seen it. Touched it. Fought it.

And it had killed her.

The virus didn't transform her into a monster. That was the cruelest part. It just …