Escaping the facility was, strangely enough, an easy feat. The man whose name he had recently discovered was 'Leon', found no trouble in picking locks, breaking windows, climbing over and under seemingly impassable obstacles, and accurately shooting down anything that got in their path. The escape was so easy and so fluid that it was mostly a blur to Steve. In fact, his brain didn't even begin to register the fact that they'd made it outside at all, until his bare feet touched the freezing metal of an outside stairwell, literally shocking him into falling back into the building.
From his position in the doorway, his mind drifted away from reality once more, as he noticed that it was lightly snowing outside. It was deathly silent. Peaceful, though. Although it was snowing, there was no wind, leaving nothing but the delicate weight of each snowdrop to pull it to the ground. It was cold, naturally, but there was something incredibly refreshing about feeling the cold air on his skin. The fact that he could feel anything at all, just made him feel alive again.
"Come on. We need to keep moving, or you're gonna freeze."
Leon's hand came suddenly into his line of sight, gripping Steve's wrist and pulling him up from the ground.
"As soon as we get back to the vehicle, we can worry about everything else. But right now, staying here is too dangerous."
Leon continued down the metal steps at a fairly quick pace, occasionally stopping to scope out his surroundings, but otherwise moving too fast for Steve to keep up with him. It was difficult enough just to walk barefoot on uneven flooring. But add on his weakened state, his mild bouts of delirium, and the fact that the grooved metal stairs felt like jagged ice under the soles of his feet, and his movement was severely limited. Noticing this, Leon quickly stopped, coming back up to the previous level and hooking Steve's arm around his own shoulders, taking a lot of his weight.
"C'mon. You can do it. It's not too far."
"That's easy for…you to say." Steve replied slowly, already getting slightly out of breath. He had never felt so utterly pathetic in his entire life.
At this, Leon seemed slightly amused, and chuckled a little, holding onto Steve's wrist by his shoulder, his other arm around the younger man's waist. He may as well have been carrying him down the stairs, but looked as though it took him no more effort than carrying a slightly heavy shoulder bag, seeming just as energetic and swift-moving as he had been before, taking two steps at a time. They reached the bottom of the stairwell within seconds, and when they did, Leon pulled himself away, leaving Steve on the bottom step, holding his arms around himself in a failed attempt to save a little body heat.
"Wait here. I'll drive around and pick you up."
And with that, he set off running, following the wall of the building, and disappeared around the corner.
Steve watched him leave with a slight feeling of fear in the pit of his stomach. What if he never came back? Outside in the current climate, he'd freeze to death within an hour or two. If he was lucky, it would be even faster than that. He tightened his arms across his chest at the thought, gripping onto the thin, slightly stained top half of the off-white medical scrubs he was wearing, watching the corner of the building where his mysterious saviour would, hopefully, shortly return.
In any case, Leon was a very strange character. He seemed so perfectly confident in everything he was doing, that it almost looked as though he'd planned it all out; as though he already knew everything that was going to happen, before it happened. Surely, no regular human being could assess what was, quite frankly, an incredibly bizarre situation, so quickly, and then know exactly what to do in lieu of said situation, down to the fact that he'd been carrying a lock pick. Sure, he seemed like some kind of 'Special Forces' guy and everything, but even so, then he'd need a gun, a flashlight and maybe a GPS, but who carries a 'lock pick' with them? And how many times has he picked locks before to be able to do it that quickly? Maybe he's a spy…maybe he actually works for Umbrella and he wasn't saving Steve at all, he was kidnapping him. Maybe he was working for some other kind of secret underground organisation and they wanted the T-Veronica virus. That would explain how he knew where to find the facility. It would also explain why he would have decided to leave as soon as he found Steve, rather than needing to gather any other kind of evidence or information. Then again…maybe Steve just had an overactive imagination. After all, Leon seemed like a really nice guy. And if he'd been trying to kidnap him, then surely he wouldn't have practically just carried him down four flights of stairs, he'd have dragged him down them by his ankles or something.
Once again, Steve's train of thought was brought to a sudden standstill as he heard the low, rumbling of an engine, and a large, shiny black snow vehicle, with caterpillar tracks larger than the average car, came slowly around the corner, pulling up by the side of the stairwell. From his position in the driver's seat, Leon leaned over and pushed open the passenger's side door.
"Get in."
Steve didn't hesitate to do as he was told, climbing across into the vehicle, while touching the snowy ground as little as humanly possible, closing the door behind him and replacing his arms around his chest in yet another feeble attempt at keeping himself warm. He was now so cold that he couldn't feel his fingers or toes, and was slowly starting to lose feeling in larger and undeniably more important limbs.
"You must be freezing. Here."
Leon leaned over into the back of the truck, which seemed to be a large storage section, pulling forward a black, weatherproof jacket and some leather gloves, and, even though he wasn't wearing either himself, he gave them freely to Steve, before returning to the back of the truck to rummage some more. Of course, Steve gladly put on any clothing he was given, struggling to pull on the gloves without the ability to move his fingers, watching Leon as he then brought forward a large, thick blanket coated with foil, wrapping it around Steve's shoulders. He didn't immediately feel warmer, but to be honest, he was having a hard time feeling anything at that point.
"You hungry?"
"Yes!"
Steve had never answered a question more quickly in his life, but his heart literally leapt at the offer of food. At that moment, he swore he'd never take a cheeseburger for granted ever again.
"Thought so." Leon nodded, rifling through the backpack in the trunk again and pulling out an energy bar, dropping it into Steve's lap. "But don't eat it all. Your stomach won't be used to it, and you could get ill, so just take it easy. You're gonna have to build up the amount that you can eat over the next few weeks. Even if you feel like you're hungry and you wanna eat more, don't. Take it slow."
Steve nodded a little, feeling disappointed, picking up the thin, rectangular foil shape in his lap and tearing open a small corner, biting a piece off, chewing it slowly and savouring it. It didn't taste very good, and the texture was slightly hard from the cold, but at that point, it was the best thing he'd ever eaten in his life. And it wasn't even the fact that it made him full, or that it tasted good, or even that it made him feel any less ill, because it didn't do any of those things. What it did do, was reassure him that this awful, painful, 'unbearable' time in his life was over. He could eat again. He could drink again. He could walk again. He could talk again, and most of all, he could live again. Even if his future looked bleak, and he had to spend the rest of his life working his ass off in some dead-end job in a thankless city that gave nothing back to him, he'd still be alive, and he'd still be free. And he could say to himself, 'I survived'.
The energy bar was bland as crap.
But victory never tasted so sweet.
