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Not twenty minutes into their mission is Leon separated from Chris and Jill. Figures. Even the strings of fate have designated him the lone wolf. The three of them are skulking, guns raised, through the halls of the latest mostly-defunct bioweapon-manufacturing facility needing to be cleared out, Leon trailing behind his two comrades, when the floor beneath his feet disappears, and he’s falling.
It could have been faulty construction or a built-in trap door—you can never be sure what secrets hide in a structure built by bioweapon scientists. Regardless, in an instant, Leon is sprawled out on his sore ass fifteen feet below the surface that Chris and Jill still stand upon. He's usually pretty good at landing on his feet, but even Leon doesn’t have the reflexes of a cat.
Two heads peek over the lip of the hole to peer down at him, and Chris calls down, “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Leon says, climbing to his feet. He swallows a groan. One of the relatively lighter injuries he could hope to receive on a mission, but he’s still not looking forward to the ache radiating from back to ass awaiting him tomorrow morning. Better than a gunshot or a parasite attached to his central nervous system, he supposes—though the night is still young. “Did anyone happen to bring a rope?”
“Not me,” says Jill, who looks to Chris.
“Afraid not,” he answers with a wince.
“And I thought the BSAA was prepared for anything,” Leon mutters to himself with a sigh, patting his pockets as if some tool that will help him propel fifteen feet into the air might appear.
“Do you want us to jump down?” Jill offers.
“Don’t bother. I’ll find my way back up. Just—” Leon stops to look around; the only light shining the way is that which leaks through the gap in the floor—now his ceiling. He doesn’t even know what this area is supposed to be—a basement, a cellar, a dried-up sewer, a twisted and snarling B.O.W.’s hunting grounds. It wasn’t on the schematics of the facility provided for them, but the floorplans of secret labs running illegal experiments don't tend to be the most detailed. Leon kicks dust up on the concrete floor, runs a hand over smooth, metal-plated walls. Cold, dry air fills his lungs-–probably not some kind of sewer system then.
It strikes him odd that the tunnel exists at all without any kind of overhead lighting. Whatever traverses these subterranean halls, if anything, does not require a lightsource.
“Keep going. Focus on the mission. I’ll meet back up with you. I have my gun and my flashlight,” he says with a charming smile that neither of them can see. “I’m all set.”
“Are you sure?” Chris asks.
Leon rolls his eyes. The mission, despite this minor bump, remains simple. A team before them already evacuated and arrested the facility’s staff. The BSAA sent the three of them in for a final sweep to make sure nothing dangerous survived the purge that could escape or be found and do further damage down the line—a B.O.W., a virus hidden in a vial, or lab notes detailing plans of world domination.
Leon only got involved at all because the lab’s head researcher landed on Leon’s radar for selling one of his viruses to an enemy of the state, and by the time he’d tracked the guy down, here, the BSAA had already wrangled him. Leon offered to help with clean-up, always one to make himself useful; and he secretly got a kick out of running into the BSAA on missions of his own. They’re not his coworkers, technically, but when you can only consider a handful of people worldwide a colleague, the occasional camaraderie is sorely welcome.
“Positive. I’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Chris relents. “Keep your comm on.” That last bit comes out in his Captain Voice, and Leon two-finger salutes in response. The two heads disappear back beyond Leon’s line of sight. He pulls out his flashlight and flicks it on, examining the surrounding darkness. He finds his pistol that he dropped on the way down a few feet to his left. He decides to continue walking in that direction, back towards the entrance of the building.
His best bet is to find a ladder that leads him back to the first level, so that’s what he keeps his eye out for. He walks with his flashlight pointing forward in his left hand, the other gripping his gun and balancing it on his wrist. He sweeps the light back and forth with every other step, rolling his feet heel-to-toe to keep them silent. He doesn’t know what to expect, so he expects everything.
A total absence of sound winds his nerves tight. No water drips from excess moisture; no whistling drafts brushes past his skin. The walls of this eerie tomb enclose him completely, the tinnitus ringing in his ears interrupted only by the calls of Chris and Jill on his comm, who seem to be clearing out rooms above with ease. No B.O.W.s have appeared. Living ones, that is. Occasionally Leon hears one of them note the location of dead B.O.W. remains for later extraction by the biohazard team.
Each time he comes upon an intersection, he continues his straight shot, figuring there’s no sense in descending deeper into a potential labyrinth. Only about twenty minutes had passed exploring the lab when he fell; at some point, he’ll find the entrance, and part of him is banking on the hope that with it will come escape.
Soon, however, these tunnels take the option from him. The walls slowly start to curve to the left, leading him further into the facility despite his best efforts. Leon prides himself on his sense of direction, but suddenly in the dark and the silence and without a map, he hasn’t a clue where he could be relative to the floor plan hovering over him.
“You still good, Leon?” Jill checks in after–Leon glances at his watch–seventeen minutes.
Leon pauses his trek, tucks his flashlight into the crook of his neck to free his hand, and presses the button on his comm. “Still good,” Leon says.
“Any luck finding a way back up here?” Chris asks.
“No such,” Leon replies.
Chris lets out a sound between a grunt and a growl. “You should have stayed put while we found a way to pull you up.”
“Hindsight is twenty/twenty, Redfield.”
Her tone odd, Jill asks, “Anything of note down there?”
Leon looks around himself like something might appear and give him a different answer. Nothing but the same bare, cold walls. “Not yet.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Oh.” Leon hadn’t realized he was doing that. He keeps his voice low anyway when he says, “I don’t know. It’s just really quiet down here.”
Silence rings again until Chris says, “Maybe you should turn back. Wait for us to finish up, and we’ll come get you. There really isn’t too much to clean up up here.”
“Yeah, alright,” Leon relents easily. He may be stubborn, but he still has some sense, and there’s none in continuing to wind further into the depths of this strange maze. “I’m sure you’re glad you brought me along on this one. Tons of help I’ve been.”
Chris surprises him by chuckling. “Your sunny disposition is all that’s required, Kennedy.”
Leon’s lips twitch into an unexpected smile. “Right,” is all he says, effort required to keep his voice even.
“Alright, turn back,” Jill orders. “We’ll meet you soon.”
“Aye, aye, Captains,” Leon says, and turns on his heel to retread his steps.
He keeps his steps silent and his gun raised despite the fact that nothing has threatened him yet. He’s learned over the years to trust his gut, and his gut doesn’t like this place.
He passes one intersection, then two, then the beam of his flashlight lands on something confusing, something that stops Leon in his tracks. It’s a wall. A wall like all the others–smooth, cold, metal–but perpendicular to the walls of the tunnel, and, crucially, it blocks Leon’s path back to the place where he started. It had not been here ten minutes ago. And how had it appeared without Leon noticing; how did Leon not hear this wall coming down? Maybe it happened while he was talking to Jill and Chris, but still it unsettles him.
Holstering his gun, he examines the wall with his flashlight. Seams down both sides and along the bottom indicate that it descended from above, but sliding his hand across the smooth surface, he finds nothing that he could use as a grip or handhold to lift the door himself. He bangs his fist against it; a tinny echoing sound of flesh against metal follows, but it holds solid.
Nothing is ever easy. He drops his hands to his side and sighs, allowing himself just a moment of defeat before reaching for his comm.
“Guys, we have a problem,” he says, careful not to let any of his nerves into his voice; a touch of irritation, however, he allows.
But there’s no answer.
“Jill? Chris? Do you copy?”
He waits. Nothing.
Leon has no way to know whether his comm signal can’t reach theirs or if something happened in the last five minutes up top that rendered the two of them unable to speak. One thing Leon is sure of, though: he’s alone down here.
And someone or something wants it that way.
Staring at the wall that he can’t help but feel has sealed his fate, Leon weighs his options. He could stay put and wait. Assuming Chris and Jill are not dead or incapacitated, they’ll be coming after him. Where he stands is the closest he’s capable of being to the place they last saw him. Conversely, he could keep exploring. He didn’t get all that far before he turned back; bioweapon scientists would never create a trap they couldn’t escape.
Inaction never sat well with Leon. He unholsters his gun and once again continues down the path from whence he came.
He kicks up his pace a bit, and about ten feet past the nearest intersection, he almost runs face first into another newly sealed passage. He checks this one, too, for any weaknesses, but finds none.
He’s being herded. Towards what, well–he’s sure he’ll soon find out. He checks the chambers of the pistol in his hand and the rifle on his back, steels himself with a roll of his shoulders and a tightened grip, and moves further into the depths of this underground funhouse, feeling like a rat in a maze–aimless, unmoored, in a way that makes his skin itch.
If it weren’t for the watch on his wrist, he’d have lost track of time.
He keeps his footsteps silent. Every five minutes or so, he tries his comm again but receives no answer. He does begin to think that it’s him and not them who was cut off, which doesn’t put him at ease, but it is ideal. On one hand, it means the two of them are up there looking for him; but on the other, it means he is being specifically targeted. By what or for what, he doesn’t know.
He continues this straightforward trajectory until each dead end forces him to turn down a hallway. He thoroughly examines each closed pathway for any sign of vulnerability before surrendering to the path intended for him. They promise no escape, each sealed tight and impenetrable. Any time he turns back, just to check if the way behind him has closed, he meets another freshly fallen barrier.
He can’t help but feel like he’s making the wrong choice, that every step forward will reveal a mistake down the line, but he literally can’t turn back now. The decision has been made for him. He reflexively checks his chamber as he breaches another dark passage.
He’ll never admit it to anyone, especially not Chris, but he fully flinches when he hears it. As quiet as it is, it’s a shock to his system. So used he had gotten to the silence, he’d forgotten the emptiness of it, how hollow the space around him felt without sound.
It echoes from somewhere far off–though not far enough–deep within the winding labyrinth. A growl, low and wet–resonant like the throat it emanates from could swallow Leon whole.
Something to kill, something to find at the end of this maze, an end in sight. And Leon knows himself capable of ending it, even on his own. Spain had proven that if nothing else.
Leon continues his journey with renewed purpose, and with it his nerves settle; his focus sharpens. He stops looking for an escape, sure now that bringing this monster down is his only way forward. He readies himself. The pistol in his hand, the rifle on his back, both fully loaded, along with three clips of ammo for each stored in his tactical vest, and two combat knives tucked into twin sheaths at his hips. It will have to do. He didn’t bring anything explosive along, regretfully, and he doesn’t expect to find a mysterious merchant lingering in these tunnels.
His blood sings in anticipation as the animalistic echoes swell. The groans and growls seem to morph and overlap, as if falling from many mouths at once. A lightsource beyond his own begins to illuminate the way forward as he nears the final passage. He wishes it felt more like a godsend than an omen. The light glows dimly but after so long trapped in the dark, it appears like the sun in winter, alien and blinding. He tucks his flashlight away now that he can see without it, knowing he’ll soon need both hands.
The mouth of the tunnel system that has held Leon hostage for what feels like ages opens into a cold, grey, cavernous chamber, fluorescence bright enough that Leon can just barely see the far wall. He’d estimate the space at fifty feet deep and thirty across. The tunnels’ paneled metal walls end at the entrance; instead, roughened cement rises up towards a rounded ceiling, another thirty feet high.
Stooped and slouching towers the grumbling B.O.W., fixed upright by long arms, meaty knuckles braced against the floor. Gouged down its soft middle, standing out against its pale, grey skin, glistening red and slightly pulsating flesh exposes a potential vulnerability.
And the thing is headless–kind of. Its wide torso continues past its shoulders into something of a bulbous mass with no neck, the flesh constantly shifting as if something inside is trying to claw its way out. Affixed to the makeshift head is not one face, but many–or parts of many. Up to ten haunted faces at any time, morphing and shrinking back into pale meat as another face forms in its wake.
Leon tucks his pistol into its holster, swings his rifle over his shoulder, and aims at its unguarded weak spot. He steps through the doorway and, expectedly, it shuts behind him, sealing him inside.
Not one to kill indiscriminately, Leon waits. He edges closer, circles the beast. All conscious thought falls away from him, replaced by instinct and adrenaline. The thing hovers absently in place, its growled breaths vibrating through Leon’s tense frame.
He jolts when the thing finally moves.
“There it is.”
An arm soars through the air. Leon rolls out of its reach, shoulder connecting hard with the floor. He re-aims his rifle and shoots, emptying the chamber. The B.O.W. absorbs the bullets like nothing, undeterred.
It charges. Leon dives between the thing’s legs, rolling to his feet as the monster flounders. He empties two clips into the creature slowly gaining on him again before it finally staggers, falling back a step.
The beast recovers fast–its arm swings once again toward Leon, too close and quick to avoid. Back against the wall, Leon blocks the attack with his rifle, bracing the length of the gun against the overlarge hand trying to pin him. He locks his elbows, arms straining against the pressure, shoulders bruising into the stone behind him. With a flood of strength and a desperate shout, Leon ducks and throws the rifle overhead. The monster’s flat palm slams against the wall into the empty space Leon just escaped. He takes advantage of the creature’s confusion, creating distance and pulling out his pistol.
Gunfire ricochets through his frame, his arms turning to jelly as his dwindling ammo disappears into the B.O.W. like rain into the ocean.
He dives out of the thing’s path again as it rushes him, but this time its whirling hand meets him. Breath rips out of him as the fat palm crashes into him and throws him across the room. He manages to recover with another combat roll, buzzing with the distant burn of injury as he stands.
Chest heaving, Leon points his pistol at the B.O.W.’s pulsing torso. He pulls the trigger. The gun clicks.
He forgot to reload. Rookie fucking mistake–unbelievable, really, and he won’t be telling Chris about that, either.
It only takes Leon’s practiced hand a single second to reload his pistol, but it’s too long. By the time Leon is ready to fire, the beast is barreling toward him again. He runs.
Turning again, Leon surrenders his last two clips to the beast.
At last, it pauses. So close to releasing a breath of relief, but he’s not so lucky. Leon stares dumbly as the B.O.W.’s many mouths converge into one long slit cutting across the wide face. It opens, revealing its cavernous mouth, and screams. Impossibly shrill, an intentional assault on Leon’s eardrums. The sound crescendos until it forces Leon to drop his worthless weapon and throw his hands over his ears. First his knees collide with the floor; then his forehead as he curls into himself.
Sharpened knives slicing through raw nerves. Ceaseless vibration rattling down to his bones. He might be screaming, too, but he can’t tell, can’t think, can’t remember his own name.
It stops.
Leon slumps, loss of sensation so great he loses motor control along with it. Slowly he struggles to push himself up on wobbly arms. A heavy hand presses him back into the ground, bones creaking against the pressure. Fat fingers curl around him and lift him into the air. A moment of disorienting weightlessness, and then he’s thrown. Skin tears against rough concrete as he slides across the floor.
Footsteps tremble the earth beneath him, minute tremors that reverberate from his toes to his skull.
Leon’s hand finds his knife at his hip. That cursed fist tries to grab him again, and Leon plunges his blade through the palm, a wrecked shout tearing from his throat. The blade rips through flesh, muscle, bone. It could hardly be more than a splinter to the thing, but it pulls back as if scandalized by Leon’s stubbornness. It takes the knife with it, flicking its hand to dislodge it.
Not without effort, Leon bounds to his feet, unsheathing his second knife–his last defense, his Hail Mary. He locks himself tight into an offensive position.
With a running jump, both fists wrapped around the knife’s grip, Leon drives the blade into the monster’s sternum. Staggering from the momentum of the attack, the B.O.W. stumbles. Balancing itself against the ground with its good hand, it reaches for Leon with the other and Leon, still hanging from the beast’s middle, catches it before it can make contact, ripping out the knife and plunging it too into the beast’s chest. Leon uses the leverage gained with both knives to slash one down through its soft flesh, vivisecting the thing from chest to stomach. It swats at Leon like a pesky fly, but its movements weaken, and Leon hangs on.
Finally, the beast collapses–if not dead, at least subdued. Leon can carve out its heart, if it has one. He can tear his knives through viscera until whatever gives this thing life is decimated. He can cut off its feet so it can’t stand back up.
He can take five seconds to breathe.
“You almost had me,” he mutters, letting his hands fall to his knees. Giddy relief floods through him as oxygen hits his bloodstream. Close calls never fail to unnerve him. Five seconds, then he’ll box it up and keep moving.
But then—that strange, clawing force inside the B.O.W. awakens, bubbling sickly, frighteningly alive. Leon backs away, bloody knives clutched in hand. Its skin shifts; bones snap; those many, nebulous faces melt away; and that makeshift head caves into the mass of the beast’s fat body.
The gnarled wound that Leon tore through its center widens impossibly as if by trained muscle. Out reaches a hand. Human-looking and pale, pale white. An arm follows, then a head, and then the rest. It slithers out of the monster’s cavernous, viscous insides. Another follows soon after, two at once, then three, all clamboring for escape. The corpse of the defeated B.O.W. withers into a deathly pile of skin and blood as these new creatures are birthed from it.
So white they are, and they wear the sullen faces that shrunk into their sire’s fallen body. Leon doesn’t notice the distance he has created between them and himself until his back touches the wall. He wields his blades in a defensive position, gathering his resolve. He counts fifteen of them by the time they’ve all drawn themselves up. He’s fought off more with less–probably. Maybe.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
Hands reach him quickly. He fights them off–kicks, stabs, ducks, punches. He downs one, two, three of the monsters, but they get clever quick, begin to surround him. Fingers close around his throat, his arms; he wrenches wildly out of rotten grasps. His blade sinks wetly into another skull, the resistance as he rips it free grounding.
Over the horde’s inhuman clamor he hears a long, deafening buzzer. Some kind of alarm, and then behind him, a hiss, like the release of air. Slashing forward with his knife, he cautions a look behind him to see that the chamber’s entryway has opened.
Escape, not fifteen feet away. Without thinking, he drops. The zombies stumble above him with the loss of mass, and Leon desperately wriggles himself out from under the horde, between shambling legs. When he reaches free air, he shuffles to his feet and darts.
He has to sheathe his knives to sprint effectively. The B.O.W.s are quick, hot on his heels. He shuts off his brain and runs, navigating the familiar tunnels on autopilot. He barely registers the fact that the way has opened entirely to him, so focused he is on keeping distance between himself and those dead, wanting hands.
His heart hammers wildly in his chest; blood rushes in his ears, so loud it nearly drowns out the snarls caught in his wake. Every short breath burns his throat; every pounding footstep jars his overworked muscles. He knows somewhere he can’t reach that he’s beat to shit and bleeding, but he can’t feel it, can’t feel anything beyond the urgent need to escape.
As if inevitable all along, he stumbles. He doesn’t even hit the ground–just loses his footing for a second–but it’s enough. One of them catches him by the collar, and he reels back. A hand closes around his throat, around his arm, the fabric of his shirt. He coughs, struggles, but there’s no fight to be had.
They drag him to his knees, then push him to his stomach. A hand presses against his neck, shoving his face in the ground. The cement abrades his skin as he squirms; stings against already wounded flesh. Knees on the backs of his thighs, a foot on the small of his back. Moans and gnarls drip into his ears, drowning his senses.
He desperately scrabbles at the ground with blunt nails, gaining no purchase. His captors restrain him at his biceps with unforgiving strength. The pressure is suffocating, the constraint violating. He wails hysterically as the fight drains out of him. The hand on his neck squeezes. He can’t fill his lungs; his eyes burn with unwanted tears. Coherent thought tunnels into nothing.
A gunshot. Leon can’t move to flinch. Calculated touch falls away to limp weight as more gunshots sound. Leon regains control of his limbs, and he curls into himself protectively, tucking his head into his arms, elbows to his chest.
Sudden silence knells, shrill beneath the blood pounding in his skull. Bodies slip away from him so that his skin meets cold, open air.
Fingers brush his shoulder. Leon strikes out, and they retreat, but he can tell the body attached remains close. He scrambles away, boot heels shuffling across the ground, and clambors to unsteady feet. Stumbling back against the wall, he pulls out his knives, wielding them tightly. He realizes he’s box breathing on instinct.
“Leon.”
It occurs to him upon hearing his name that it’s not the first time someone said it. Placating hands hover in his eyesight; he focuses on them. Human hands, non-threatening, Chris’s. Leon’s eyes dart to Chris’s face–stern–to the pile of zombies–bullet-riddled–to his right, a little ways off, where light spills into the cavern from a familiar recess in the ceiling.
“Leon. Are you with me?” Chris asks, voice softer than his expression.
Leon just stares at him, bewildered. He can’t make himself lower his knives. He feels like he needs to keep running. Chris watches, waits for something.
Wired and detached, a distant buzz—he’s simultaneously trapped in a moment of resistance and a passenger to his own body. He takes stock: his hands are attached to arms are attached to shoulders are attached to his flank. He’s all here. Every piece is still a part of him, alive. He wiggles his toes and counts his heartbeats. He meets Chris’s piercing, brown eyes and trusts that he himself is as alive and real as Chris.
He lets go, and with it, he realizes how tightly he’d wound himself. Immediately the muscles in his neck begin to ache. He sheathes his weapons, breathes out, “Yeah. Fuck. Yes.”
Chris drops his hands with a huff. “Jesus. Fuck, Kennedy, it’s just like you to make a mess of a simple mission. I thought I was gonna find your corpse down here. Christ.”
Leon bristles at the severity of his tone. “What, are you pissed at me?”
Brow pinched, settling his bunched shoulders, Chris says, “I’m not–pissed at you. I’m pissed at the situation. Are you alright?”
Curbing the reflex to answer “yes” without thought, Leon takes a moment to assess the series of aches and pains that compound over each other now that the immediate need for survival has passed. Nothing he can’t handle but bad enough to know he won’t be getting out of bed tomorrow. The worst is the road rash swathed across his back hidden beneath his t-shirt and the couple ribs that are probably bruised, along with the several that are definitely broken.
He looks at his hands, roughened gloves barely holding together and fingertips bruised and bloody, and–
“My hands are shaking,” he confesses slowly. “My hands don't shake.”
Chris squints at him, an odd scrutinizing look that makes Leon squirm. “I think your hands have earned the tremble, Leon,” he says. “Just take it easy. Give yourself a second.”
Leon tries to follow his orders. He flexes his fingers, squeezing them into tight fists. He rolls his shoulders, stretches his neck, takes one long, deep breath. It doesn’t re-energize him.
“Do you need checked over?” Chris asks, reaching out with a cautious hand.
Leon spares a glance to the pile of zombie corpses. He suppresses a shudder. “Up top. I’m fucking sick of this place.”
“I hear you. We found a rope; Jill’s up there keeping it secure.” Chris hooks a thumb over his shoulder. Leon eyes the utility rope dangling limply from above. Well, he shouldn’t have been expecting a carabiner and a harness, he supposes. “Can you climb?”
Not really a question, seeing as Leon doesn’t have another option, so he nods. “What are we going to do about those things? We can’t just leave ‘em.”
“The biohazard team will get them after we get the hell out of here. Come on, you first,” Chris says, and he doesn’t move until Leon takes the lead toward their escape.
Leon finds his hand pressed against his sore side, his steps unsteady. He tries to straighten, but he can’t tell whether he succeeds. Chris’s gaze burns into the back of his neck.
“How did you know to come get me?” Leon asks as they walk.
“After your comm went dark, Jill found these lab notes in a locked office. The trap-door, the B.O.W.–it was some kind of medieval security protocol, I don’t know–Jill hacked into the system and figured out how to override it.”
“B.O.W. is a weird hire for a security guard,” Leon quips, “but I can’t say it’s not effective.”
“You know these bioweapon scientists–they love to make things complicated.”
“‘Complicated’ is one word for it,” Leon grumbles, the memory of a dozen bruising hands still tight on his heels.
Chris meets his pace, now shoulder-to-shoulder. “I’d only just come down to find you when you got overrun,” he says lowly. Some kind of explanation or apology–Leon’s not totally sure why he said it. “You’re sure you’re alright?”
Stock answers run quickly through his mind. Blanket honesty was never his strong suit. “I’m sure,” is what he says.
Chris studies him at length, then nods. Leon catches something like distrust in the measured look. It threatens to irritate him, but then a light touch above his elbow urges him forward, and he allows Chris his moment of doubt.
Leon’s steps lag as he and Chris close the gap to freedom. He doesn’t notice until he’s looking at Chris’s back instead of brushing shoulders with him. Neither does he register the reason until he quickens his pace and sharp pain burns a path through his right side–from his hip up to his ribs, across his tender shoulder into his stiff neck. Leon adjusts his gait to compensate.
Leon catches a side-eye from Chris as he falls back into step, but he says nothing. Leon is glad for it. Irritation claws at him the longer he breathes trapped air. Suddenly he can feel every layer of dried sweat, sticky blood, and gritted grime accumulated on his skin and under his clothes over the last several hours. He indulges himself first with the thought of fresh air, then a cold glass of water, and finally a hot shower. All that stands between is fifteen feet of rope–and an injury assessment, if he can’t sneak away in time.
They reach the rope. Leon’s eyes trace the length of it, not the most intimidating threat he’s faced today but possibly his most daunting challenge.
“What are you boy scouts waiting for?” Jill’s voice calls down. “Get the fuck up here.”
“After you,” Chris says with a sweeping gesture.
Leon steels himself, swallows, thankful for the leather gloves on his hands.
Both of their attention is caught by a noise behind them; they whip around as one to face it.
Against the dim light, something shifts. Nothing more stubborn than a B.O.W., life stirs within the heap of bodies. A confusion of limbs, deliberate, animate.
“Oh, fuck off,” Leon bites out.
Intention builds within the horde, and individual bodies melt into one another, reconverging into a single mass.
An inscrutable silhouette draws itself to uncertain feet. Too large to navigate the hallway cleanly, it shambles forward, one overlarge arm compensating for its awkward legs, dragging it along.
“Leon, go,” Chris orders, stern, at the same moment Jill shouts, “Leon, come on!”
A hand between his shoulder blades shoving him forward drives him to action more than the shouted orders. Lack of choice hones his focus. Fifteen feet of rope reorients itself in Leon’s mind from an obstacle to an objective.
That necessity more than strength has Leon hand-over-hand dragging himself to the surface. Heavy-throated breaths and shuffling flesh-against-stone disappear behind the rush in his ears. Absently his muscles burn, but he’s aware only of the screaming pain in his side, a living thing working away at his nerves.
Jill meets him at the edge like a godsend, gripping his biceps and pulling him up onto the floor. Leon flops onto his back and heaves gulping breaths into his lungs. Willpower leaks out of him. His arms sit like stone at his sides.
“Leon, are you good?” Jill asks shortly, hand on his chest.
“Peachy,” he breathes, curling one fist into a thumbs-up.
He thrusts himself upright. Chris is already hoisting himself over the edge. Jill offers him a hand as well. Chris takes it, but he straightens easily. Jill follows him, and then it’s Leon’s turn. Shit.
Chris turns to him, hand outstretched, and Leon grips it, warm and firm, bracing himself as he’s pulled to his feet. Vertigo unbalances him, sweeping cock-eyed under his feet. Quick enough to ignore, though, and he rights himself as the three of them back away from the trap-door.
“Let’s kill this thing,” Jill says. “I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.”
Leon couldn’t agree more.
Chris and Jill ready their weapons–machine guns both, a BSAA classic. Leon falls into position on instinct, hands on his knives.
“You up for this?” Chris asks. His eyes shift from the blades at Leon’s hips to Leon’s face, authority hardening his features.
Again, not a question because it’s never a question–not one Leon asks his body or one the world asks of Leon.
“You know me. I’m up for anything.”
Chris nods once. “Take this,” he says, tossing Leon the shotgun off his back. Not Leon's favorite weapon. It requires a closer range than what Leon would currently prefer, but he gains a little confidence when he catches it cleanly.
The three of them retreat a safe distance from the trap door as four fat fingers curl around its edge. They allow the monster to draw itself to their level. The thing needs killing, and it’ll be easier on an even field.
It rounds on them slowly, a stupid, lopsided thing, the seams of its many conjoined parts unclean. Leon surveys no clear weak spot, but his tactician brain tells him to focus his attack on the thing’s massive left arm, the thing overstuffed and clumsy. He trusts Chris and Jill to have surmised the same.
In its transformation, the faces have disappeared somewhere inside the monster, but it doesn’t seem to need its many eyes as it ambles towards them, its indulgent height straining against the hallway’s fifteen-foot ceiling.
Leon waits, off to the right, wall at his shoulder. Chris and Jill somewhere behind him. He looks down on himself from a distance as he readies his weapon. Finger on the trigger, left hand aiming with the grip, stock brushing his cheek, butt wedged into the pocket of his shoulder. Mechanical. Detached. Beyond nerves, beyond focus.
Its arm swipes across the floor, fist landing hard against the wall. The impact vibrates under Leon’s feet. It slams its flat palm against the floor, the tile coming apart under its clenched fingers. Frustration builds in its movements, no face to express it.
Behind Leon, the offense begins, crowding the hall with the echoes of gunfire. The B.O.W. catches most of it in its flailing hand, swatting at it like a swarm of flies. More annoyed than wounded, it still sets the thing back. It recovers between reloads, surging forward.
He fires once. The kickback sends him back into his body all at once. His vision whites out; he loses track of his feet under him. His head throbs to the beat of his heart as pain washes through him so thoroughly he can’t single out any one source of it.
He’s still on his feet when he can see again, his periphery darkened. Fat fingers just feet away reach for him. Panic floods his senses. He yelps as he throws himself back. He lands hard, but recovers with a combat roll that sends his world upside down. Nausea churns in his gut.
The barrage of bullets behind him continues to pepper the beast. It’s slowing the B.O.W., but it won’t take it down. The monster rears back, braces its clenched fist against the wall as it trembles in anger. Leon stares as he retreats.
The joint that connects arm to torso. It tapers along a seam that knits up its bicep and around the shoulder from where the arm hangs.
Leon aims for it and shoots.
He braces this time, but it jolts his injuries anyway. Unsure if time has slowed between blinks or if he blacked out again, he nearly loses his balance when the hall seems to shake around him. With a spurt of black ooze the monstrous arm falls away from the rest of the beast and crashes to the floor.
Fingers twitch and then stop.
Leon holds his breath, that rushing in his ears again. The weight of the shotgun in his hands like another limb. He can’t think to drop it or raise it. Mind numb as he waits for the arm to come alive, for the fingers to dig into the floor and drag the thing toward him, for it to split in half and a dozen living things to scatter from it like ants.
Gunfire. Shouts. Rushing, pounding. It’s loud. Outside Leon’s head, inside too.
Someone shouts, “Move–fire in the hole!”
Someone shouts, “Leon, I said get clear. Move!”
Leon is ripped from his rooted spot and slammed into the ground. His skull rattles. A fire lights under him as his bruised body is shoved against hard tiles.
Then a blast. Heat presses in and rushes over him. His ears ring. Darkness behind closed eyes sparks white as pain overwhelms him. Seconds fall away as time catches back up after the shockwave.
A weight presses him down; he struggles against it as control of his limbs comes back to him. He shouts, shoves at it. It pulls itself off, leaving him cold. Leon squints his eyes open, feeling like the sun waits just on the other side of his eyelids.
Awareness rushes back in before Leon is ready for it.
“Kennedy, what the fuck? Didn’t you hear me call clear?”
“Chris, are you alright?”
“Jill, get off me. I’m fine.”
A hand grips the back of his neck, firm, grounding, pulls him up to sit against the wall. A headrush threatens to tilt him, but the hand keeps him upright. Leon blinks, and his vision clears to see Chris hovering over him, face hard as stone.
“Leon, fucking say something.”
Viscera drips down the side of Chris’s face. Dust settles over his shoulders, shirt torn where it disappears under his tactical vest, along the tense line of his shoulders. To his right, the detached arm, looking notably more scorched than before. Beyond them, the B.O.W.’s mess of a bloody corpse.
“Did you get hurt?” Leon asks.
“What?” Chris looks incredulous.
“Chris,” Jill, in one piece at Chris’s side, says uneasily. “We need to get him out of here.”
Chris seems to ignore her, studying Leon with sharp eyes. “Shit, alright,” he relents, lowering a hand to Leon’s side.
Leon hisses as the light touch reminds him of the pain; he squirms away.
“Leon?” Jill says.
Chris mechanically removes Leon’s tactical vest, gentle despite the tremble in his hands. Leon doesn’t fight him, probably for a few reasons but most pressing is he doesn’t have the energy. A cold chill moves through him when Chris pushes up his shirt.
“Jesus, Leon, why didn’t you say anything?” Jill breathes.
Leon looks down to see his blackened ribs. The bruises start under his chest and slip under his waist band. He can’t see the road rash on his back, but he can only imagine how it looks as Chris’s fingers trace down his back.
Chris doesn’t say a word, and Leon can’t answer Jill, caught in Chris’s stony gaze.
“I can call for a medical evac to meet us when we get out of here,” she says, moving to rise.
That stirs Leon. “I don’t need that,” he says.
“You could have internal bleeding.”
“‘M just tired.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Chris finally says. It sends another chill through him. “Jill, make the call.”
She leaves them.
Chris stares at him. He looks like he wants to keep yelling, but he just takes a breath and asks, “Can you stand?”
Leon looks down at his legs splayed out in front of him. He thinks about moving them, experimentally kicks his feet, but the effort doesn’t go any further. The thought of actually holding himself under his own feet is daunting enough to make him dizzy. “No,” he says.
These long pauses Chris keeps taking before he speaks while his gaze bores into him makes Leon itch, but he can’t look away. He just stares back at Chris as he waits. He wonders what Chris is looking for and if he’s finding it.
Chris says, “You know, when I asked if you were okay to keep going it wasn't for my health. It was for yours. Jill and I could have handled it.”
Leon’s brow pinches, making his head ache. He bristles, almost, on reflex. Thinks Chris is trying to deflect blame, to push his guilt outward onto Leon. Chris wouldn’t do that. Chris loves to blame himself, and Leon wouldn’t blame him anyway.
That leaves Leon alone with the truth of what Chris said, and that, he has no answer for.
Chris deflates somewhat. He surprises Leon by returning his hand to the back of Leon’s neck. His thumb absently caresses the hinge of his jaw. Leon clenches his teeth.
Chris shakes his head. “I was stupid to listen to you when you said you were good. Do you even know how to work with a team at your back?”
“Not really,” Leon admits. His ability to lie, it seems, escaped him somewhere during that second fight.
Leon’s honesty amuses Chris, at least.
“Yeah, we gotta work on that.”
Do we? Leon thinks. Once he’s dragged out of this place, Chris will go back to the BSAA, Leon will go back to DSO, and only occasionally will their paths meet. It’s a nice optimism, though.
Guilt sidles up his throat.
“Shouldn'ta lied.” It slips out without thought, though once he says it it feels weird to call it a lie. It implies deliberateness. A choice Leon hadn’t thought an option.
Chris doesn’t seem to think so.
“No, you shouldn't have. What were you thinking?” he asks–more as a question than a scolding, but Leon winces at it.
He probably isn’t expecting an answer, but Leon thinks, says, “Spain,” and he knows it explains nothing. Chris’s face still softens, and he nods, looking away for the first time since the explosion.
Leon’s little composure collapses under the loss of scrutiny. He closes his eyes, half-asleep in a second.
Jill’s voice rouses him, saying, “They’re sending a chopper.” His gaze sharpens at that, but she interjects before he can argue. “They don’t have anything else close by. Sorry, Leon.”
She looks between the two of them, at the hand that Leon forgot still rested on his neck. It chills his skin when Chris pulls away. She says, “You boys ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Leon says with effort. His injuries have almost settled with his stillness. He’d finally been able to slow down and stop for the first time since he stepped into this place, and he didn’t want to get up again. With this, though, he really had no choice.
The two of them crouch on either side of him and tuck an arm around their shoulders. Leon squeezes his eyes shut and fixes his jaw, but it doesn’t stop him from groaning when they rise as one and lift Leon to his feet. It’s a lop-sided arrangement with the height difference between the two, and the stretch isn’t great on his ribs or his back, but there’s nothing to be done for it. He tries to breathe through it, but the fire doesn’t ebb. No way out but through.
“‘M good,” he says unconvincingly, and they move as one.
Leon tries to help, but they do most of the work. A foolhardy part of Leon expects his strength to return as they get nearer to escape, but instead he flags even more. He can’t think beyond the pain flaring. All he wants to do is curl in on himself. His fist clenches tight around the fabric of Chris’s shirt sleeve like a lifeline. Chris’s fingers squeeze Leon’s hip on his good side.
Leon loses track of time. He lets his eyes slip shut. He abandons the illusion that he’s helping at all and allows himself to fall weightless between his two companions.
Fresh air. Cold, clear in his lungs and stinging his wounds. Day has fallen away to night in the timeless hours spent in that lab. Leon tries to take a deep breath, but his ribs won’t allow it, and somewhere between a bruised tailbone and a grenade explosion, disappointment starts to feel like despair.
The medical chopper waits for them, propellers beating the air. Two paramedics approach them, rolling a stretcher between them. Leon rolls his eyes despite how badly he can’t wait to be horizontal.
“Agent Kennedy?” one of them asks.
“One and only,” he says–or tries to; he coughs when his voice breaks. He doubles over when his ribs seem to crack again, and they waste no more time, pulling him up onto the stretcher.
“Hey, I’ll come check on you when you’re admitted, but I gotta drive the SUV back to base. I’ll see you soon.” Jill pats him once on his good shoulder and then she splits off.
Chris, however, surprises him by following him into the chopper alongside the paramedics.
“Don’t have anywhere better to be, Redfield?” Leon asks.
Chris scoffs. “You think I trust you to let these guys take care of you?”
Once locked into place, the paramedics get to work. Oximeter pinching his finger, blood pressure cuff bruising his bicep, cannula hooked under his nose. A needle slips into the crook of his arm.
“I think you have trust problems.”
“Yeah, well, I think you have a truth problem.”
Leon smiles, frail and tired. “Aren’t we a pair.”
Something unreadable lights up behind Chris’s eyes that Leon might have been able to decipher if he wasn’t so far gone.
He doesn’t dwell. He breathes, shuts his eyes. Unconsciousness closes in on him fast. The banana bag starts to do its work, and there might be some of the good stuff in there, too, the pain starting to disappearing behind a faint buzz.
“Get some rest, Leon,” Chris says, and Leon does.