Leon and Claire stayed the night with Sherry. She had packed for the trip; Chris and Devon left earlier to prepare their unit for immediate departure.

Leon sat on the couch. He grimaced when he heard Sherry moan from her room. Eventually, the moaning would turn to screaming. He also knew better than to interfere. He knew Sherry was having the nightmares again. He took a shot of the whiskey in his cup.

Claire sat across from him in a chair, a tear dropping down her cheek as she heard Sherry start to scream in her sleep. And then shouting, "No!"

"I'm going to wake her," Claire said, standing up and starting for the door.

"Don't," said Leon, leaping up and grabbing her arm. "They will start all over again if you do." He was still holding on to her arm, and after an embarrassed glance at Claire who'd lifted an eyebrow, he released her and sat back down.

"She remembers them?" Claire sat down too, folding her hands in her lap. It had been a while since she'd visited with Sherry. Claire felt guilty about that, but with the resurgence of bio-warfare all over the world, she'd stepped up her presence with TerraSave. Not that it seemed to make a damned bit of difference.

"Yes." Leon didn't mince words. He took another shot and listened to Sherry.  Whatever had happened in China was worse than taking samples. 

"Is she going to counseling?" Claire pushed into his thoughts.

"Yes, she was." Said Leon. "That didn't help; how do you get over the things they did to her?"

Claire shuddered, hugging herself. She herself had had her own nightmares to deal with after escaping Raccoon City with Sherry and Leon. But she knew it was nothing compared to what Sherry had gone through after she'd gotten out.

"That's what they did to her in there...that's what our own people did to her here as well. Although I don't believe they cut her open quite like what happened in China. She told me when she got back. I don't think she was expecting the nightmares. When they were running she and Jake didn't have time to think about what had happened." Leon paused for a moment. "I don't think Jake ever knew. He just got her out. There is no telling what he went through there."

"She felt it." It was a statement from Claire, not a question.

"Of course she did. It was torture." Leon sighed. "Jake was there to get her out of so many scrapes. I think he was the first person to not see her as an experiment really. They stood shoulder to shoulder; he protected her, stayed behind even when she told him to run. They were close. She thought she lost him in there, and then he got her out again. But I don't think he knew about her experiments there."

"Why did he not come back with her?" Claire asked as the cries began to subside.

"And let the whole world know about him?" Leon shrugged. "Sherry thought it was for the best. Believe me, she knows more than any of us what would have happened to him. But with this new development, he's in even greater danger now." He listened to the quiet for a moment. Sherry's dreams had subsided. "Get some sleep. The sooner we get to Jake; the sooner we can take the fight to them."

Claire nodded and stood to take the spare room across from Sherry's while Leon stretched out on the couch. She hesitated and looked back at Leon as he closed his eyes and put his arms under his head. She'd always thought him handsome. Somehow they never ended up together unless they were shooting at the undead or something worse that crawled out of someone's laboratory. She sighed and went to her room. He'd once asked her to have a cup of coffee with him, on a normal day. They'd bumped into each other twice since, in the midst of yet another outbreak. She was getting tired of reading headlines screaming that the apocalypse was nigh. So much for that normal day.