Chapter Text
The door closed with an unnerving smash as Leon S. Kennedy stumbled into yet another abandoned office in the now overrun Raccoon Police Department. This room was small, and it was the work of a moment to glance behind the desk and be sure that it was empty. This done, he leaned against the locker on the wall and slid to a seat on the floor, too gutted by shock and relief to take the extra step to the office chair. Besides, if one of them did follow him through that door, it would be better to have something solid at his back.
He slapped his last full magazine into his gun—training, or perhaps instinct, still held despite the hell around him—before slumping back against the locker with a groan. That last ambush had come at him so fast. He wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but somehow one of those things had caught him by the neck and actually bitten him like some rabid animal. He’d take the memory of those horrifying moments to his grave, even if by some insane chance he did outlive the night.
Now that the first adrenaline had worn off, his whole body felt heavy, and the wound in his shoulder was screaming. Leon put a hand up. His clothes were sticky, wet, and he could feel more blood sliding down his collar. “Fuck.” He closed his eyes, knowing he must only let it be for a moment if he was ever going to stand up again.
Light glowed behind his closed lids. He flicked them open, afraid he had dozed after all.
Golden light blazed in aura around the silhouette of something, someone…yes, as the light faded he saw it was a woman standing over him, though she was dressed very strangely.
Leon’s sister had once dragged him to a renaissance festival, and this girl—honestly, she couldn’t be any older than he was—looked like she would have fit in there. She wore tall boots and a leather tunic trimmed in fur and beads and pieces of metal armor. Blue tribal paint swirled over her cheek, and long red braids fell over her shoulders.
Leon stared at her, bemused. He’d lost blood; he was hallucinating…
“Are you all right?” she asked as if she had expected him to be here.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t sure why it was hard to tell the truth, even to a vision. Admitting that he wasn’t fine would be acknowledging just how scared and unprepared he was. And if he thought about that— He was barely holding it together as it was.
“You don’t look all right,” she said. There was no judgment in her tone; she was simply stating a fact.
“Looks worse than it feels.” Leon sat up, and the motion wrenched loose a gasp of pain that surely undercut his words.
The girl studied him, auburn brows furrowed, clearly seeing past his bravado. From her direct, calculating gaze and her confident stance, he got the impression that she had combat training, and what was more, experience.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Leon.”
“I’m Aloy.” She squatted next to him, and he saw she had a bow on her back, all cams and doubled strings like a serious game hunter would use. What did she shoot with it? (And how the hell was his mind coming up with this stuff?)
“The first battle is always the hardest,” Aloy said, her eyes softer now. “But I believe in you.”
Leon huffed, the sound almost a laugh that she saw his inexperience so easily. “That makes one of us.”
“Hey, you’re joking about it. That’s a good sign.” She touched two fingers to her temple, activating a cone of soft blue light. She scanned it over him, beginning and ending at his bloody shoulder. Then she said, “I’m sure that hurts, but the good news is it’s not serious.”
She opened one of the pouches at her belt and filled her hand with whatever was inside. “These should have you on your feet again.” Aloy tipped the contents of her hand into his palm: dark berries of a sort Leon didn’t recognize. They were dried and slightly squashed, but they smelled sweet.
Because she was watching expectantly, he tipped the berries into his mouth. Chewy and sweet-tart, they reminded him of cherries, though he didn’t think that was what they were. A gentle warmth washed through his body, and he felt…better. The pain receded a bit from his shoulder, and his limbs were no longer dead tired.
“What’re you doing here?” Leon asked.
“Gaia thought you might need some things.” She was fiddling with another, larger belt pouch now.
“Gaia?” he repeated.
“A friend of mine. She saw you while she was monitoring the system and thought you might need a hand.”
Leon didn’t think Aloy could mean the station’s CCTV system; that wasn’t running anymore.
She picked up his handgun, and while something in her appraising glance suggested it wasn’t a weapon she was familiar with, Leon didn’t think he needed to tell her to be careful.
“I don’t have ammunition for this kind of old world weapon,” she said, giving it back. “But these should help.” She handed him a leather pouch filled with round metal objects about the size of tennis balls. “Bombs. Just lob one at your target, and it will explode on impact.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I can definitely use these.”
“You’ve got this, Leon.” Aloy thumped him on the shoulder, and he reflexively flinched, but the injury was already healed.
“Thanks.” He caught her hand and shook it. Her fingers were calloused, strong, and Leon had the feeling that she could have knocked him on his ass as easily as any of his instructors at the police academy. She would be a good companion to have in a fight—that is, if he hadn’t simply dreamed her. “Take care, Aloy.”
Her answering smile was kind, friendly, and just a touch amused. She was pretty, and in other circumstances, he’d have wanted to know more about her. For the moment, he would settle for being perplexedly grateful.
Aloy put her hand to her temple again. There was another flare of golden light, and then she was gone.
Leon sat for a few moments, mentally recovering from whatever had just happened. Gingerly, he probed at the top of his shoulder. His uniform was torn and wet with blood, but the skin was whole underneath. It didn’t hurt.
He still wasn’t sure about the girl, but her medicine had been real enough. He stood, then checked that all his weapons were in their holsters. He attached the bag of bombs to his belt. After a few slow, deep breaths, he moved to the door. He didn’t intend to die here, and that meant he had to find a way out of this police station, starting with finding a way down the hallway outside.
In the corridor, his footsteps sounded too loud as he strained his ears for any warning of monsters ahead. Soon enough, he heard the wheezing breath and guttural moan of—what where they, exactly? Simply infected or truly braindead at this point? It wasn’t worth thinking about, since his actions would be the same either way.
Leon closed a hand around one of the bombs. Its cold surface was smooth with a raised pattern of some sort stamped in the metal.
As he neared the turn in the hallway, the awful wheezing-moaning-gurgling got louder. Perhaps more than one of them, then. A stomp and a snarl, and then a shape lunged around the corner. Two shapes…
As the bomb left his hand, Leon wondered if this would in fact be where he died after a delusion of receiving help from an imaginary girl.
He had only a second to doubt before the bomb struck, erupting in a blossom of flame that engulfed both of his attackers. Leon stumbled back a step, half surprised in spite of himself.
“Shit,” he breathed. The weapons were also definitely real, so that left him little room to doubt about Aloy herself. He couldn’t explain her, but then he couldn’t explain anything else that had happened tonight, either. At least his encounter with Aloy had been something good. He’d worry about making sense of it later. That is, if God or anyone else out there cared if he lived till later.
Well, Aloy had cared. Hopefully she wasn’t the only one.
Leon drew his gun, and weapon at the ready, rounded the corner into the dark.