Chapter 4: In Which Leon Still Doesn't Find Ammo

Cold stone walls to the left, cold stone walls to the right, a long, damp passage before him, and on every side the same bas relief of a weeping angel repeated ad nauseam. Wesker had been wandering this maze for the past 15 minutes, and oh, how he pined for a ball of string. If he had known the west wing's ground floor held nothing but this damnable maze, he would have taken the upper floor and made Leon search here instead.

He sank against the wall for a minute, slipped one hand inside his shirt to feel his chest. The flesh burned beneath his fingers like a live coal. His lips curled into a snarl. Every B.O.W., save the once immortal Lisa Trevor, had limits on its regeneration. After enough damage, the virus would either panic-mutate the organism into a nonfunctional mess, or the healing rate would slow more and more until it could no longer outpace the damage, leading vital systems to fail.

Wesker was no Lisa Trevor. In terms of sheer stamina, he would not even rank in the top ten. His apparent invincibility was only a carefully constructed mask, aided by his body's tendency to heal the surface before knitting the insides. The heat gave him away. Rapid cell growth was not without its waste energy.

That trap had strained him more than he wanted to admit. If Leon had thought to break his arms rather than free him from the spikes, Wesker could have died there. Yet, as far as he could tell, the thought had not even crossed the agent's mind. His one concern had been saving Wesker from the moment he had entered the room. Was he so short-sighted? Or did he suffer a crippling overabundance of compassion? Wesker tried to imagine his other enemies in the same position. The younger Redfield might have done as Leon had. Chris, he might have persuaded to hit the trap reset button. The lovely Jill Valentine? A toss-up. His own allies at H.C.F. would have put him down with a grin.

Leon never failed to surprise him. From the moment he'd first learned of the man's existence, his name had been attached to two astonishing facts: first, that he'd survived the nightmare of Raccoon City. Second, that he'd destroyed G, William Birkin's finest creation. Every glancing encounter since then, Leon had outpaced his expectations, sometimes with disastrous results. So long as the agent continued to stubbornly draw breath, Wesker needed to learn how to predict him, before he ruined something truly important.

Speaking of the devil, his earpiece crackled to life.

"I've cleared the upper floor. No sign of anything suspicious. I think you're right, the last key must be somewhere in that maze."

"It will take some time to search," Wesker said. "It seems quite extensive."

"Alright. I'm heading back towards the great hall."

He ended the transmission.

Wesker pushed off the wall. Even in this state, he was far superior to a human. By the time he rejoined with Leon, he should be back in top shape. Three dead ends and five minutes of frustration later, Leon contacted him again.

"I found the place your dead men wandered off to. Looks like I missed one hell of a party. Blood everywhere, couple limbs. No bodies."

Wesker snickered at Leon's obvious irritation. The agent had been very annoyed when he backtracked all the way to the monitor room, only to find that Wesker's men had already reanimated. He must have been very desperate for resources if he was going to such lengths for ammunition. Wesker had less than a clip left himself, and had resorted to seizing carriers by the head and pulverizing their skulls against the walls. Messy, but it did the trick.

"Something probably ate them," he told Leon. "Perhaps you should try cutting open the belly of the next large B.O.W. you find."

"Think I'll pass, thanks."

Leon cut back out. Wesker turned a corner to another dead end, sighed, and retreated to his last turning. Something snarled behind a wall. If only the walls didn't stretch all the way to the high ceiling, Wesker could have jumped up on top of them and cheated. He was not yet frustrated enough to break through them.

Yet again, his earpiece came alive. Three times. Three times in 10 minutes that Leon had contacted him. What had happened to the wary, standoffish behavior of half an hour ago? Had watching Wesker survive a lethal trap somehow lessened Leon's fear of him? Perhaps he should not have talked so much. Teasing Kennedy had been the one bright spot on a mission more irritating than the debacle in Antartica. It was like poking a desert rain frog to watch it puff up and yell. Now even that was denied to him.

"Hey, Wesker. You still in that maze?"

"Yes."

"I think I found a map for it."

"That would have been very helpful before I entered it."

"Just need to figure out where you are. Any distinguishing features nearby?"

He let the question hang in the air for a moment so its sheer stupidity could sink in.

"Walls," he said.

"Ah. Right." Leon quieted for a moment. "Have you passed the spike trap yet?"

More spikes? Wesker took his hand off the button so Leon wouldn't notice his convulsive shudder and hear the sharp inhale that came with it.

"I have not," he said, the picture of calm.

"Hmm. OK, how about the crushing ceiling?"

"No."

"The cage of..." he trailed off. "I can't tell what this is, but it's got tentacles."

"No."

"The flamethrowers?"

"You wouldn't be making up traps just to put me on edge, hmm, Kennedy?"

"What? No! Who would do that?" Leon replied with such shock and immediacy that Wesker was tempted to believe him. "Wait, have you...?"

"You've gone out of your way to spring every trap I've warned you about," Wesker reminded him.

"Hey. I had my reasons," Leon protested. "If you haven't run into a single trap, then I think I know what route you must have taken. How many 4-way intersections have you passed?"

"This is ridiculous," Wesker muttered to himself. "I wasn't keeping track." The thing behind the wall snarled again. "It sounds like there's something alive and unhappy nearby."

"Hmm. OK. I think I know where you are. The path ahead of you, are there two openings nearby? One to the left, and one to the right farther down?"

"Yes."

"Take the right turn."

Wesker didn't move. Instead, he stood still and scowled, mind whirling. If the agent wanted him dead, he'd already passed up his opportunity. Yet, that was no guarantee of future behavior. Humans were fickle, irrational creatures with changeable minds, and nothing made their actions more arbitrary than ephemeral concepts like 'compassion' or 'morality.' Leon could be regretting his earlier choice, and hoping to correct his previous lapse by leading Wesker into more traps.

"You're awfully eager for me to get out of here," he said, to cover his stalling. He lowered his voice to a purr, "Missing me?"

"I, uh." Leon cleared his throat. At least one thing could still rile the agent. "Like a stake in the eye. Sooner you find that key, the sooner we can get out of here."

Wesker hummed in reply, stepping closer to examine the openings. Both looked the same, of course. Truthfully, the intent behind Leon's helpfulness was not even the major issue. The real question was whether the agent could accurately guess Wesker's location based on such sparse information.

It was a crap shoot no matter how he looked at it. Ultimately, he took the right turn, if for no other reason than to keep Leon from rubbing it in should he encounter any traps. Leon guided him with confidence, describing each turning with such detail that gradually his doubts eroded. It still came as a pleasant surprise when he set foot in the center of the maze without encountering so much as a trapdoor. A small smile tugged at his lips. The agent was proving himself quite useful.

He could see two other paths leading into the central square. One had a cage of something yellow-eyed and writhing at its distant end, the other appeared innocuous. In the center of the square stood a raised fountain. The key was there, latched to the statue of—what else—an angel that frowned sorrowfully into the basin of water.

"Does your map mention any traps around the key itself?" he asked.

"No."

Convenient. Wesker didn't trust it for a minute. He paced around the fountain, examining it from every angle for anything that looked out of place. A pinhole, for example, in which an electric eye might be hiding, or a discolored tile which could disguise a pressure plate. The water could have been poisoned with any number of substances, assuming it was even water.

He pressed a hand to his chest, noting the skin had cooled from hot coal to feverish. Caution could be left to frailer creatures. He had other ways of dealing with these situations. After lining himself up to the angel's side, he dashed across the space and then sailed over the stairs, snatching the key from its perch as he passed it. He skidded a few feet after landing, safe and sound, key in hand.

Nothing happened.

Torn between enjoying victory and paranoia, he looked over the fountain one more time. No, nothing had changed, other than the missing key. The beast had not been released from its cage, either. He snorted at himself and headed towards the opening through which he had entered. The twisted architect of this place had clearly missed an opportunity, and he wasn't about to complain.

"I have the key," he told Leon.

"Finally. Now you just have to get back out of there."

"There's that eagerness again."

"Look, I need you up here, OK? Can't open that door with only two keys."

Wesker added another tally in his head to the number of times Leon had said he 'needed him'. He would point it out once they reached around ten.

A grinding noise from the other path stopped him in his tracks. Part of the floor swung open, exposing a pit of spikes. The trap was so far away it was almost comically nonthreatening.

"That's a delayed reaction," he muttered to himself. "Unless something else...?"

A loud and panicked curse from above ripped his attention up to the ceiling, where a familiar form plummeted from a new opening. Wesker smirked to himself, crouched, and jumped upward with all his considerable strength. It was a simple matter to snatch the body out of midair and then catch on to the wall, dragging their momentum to a stop with a single hand and his feet.

"Nice of you to open a shortcut for me," he said, and twisted his head up to look through the square of golden light above. "I didn't realize you were so impatient."

"Was in the area," Leon said in a strangled voice. He let go of some gadget on his belt and seized Wesker's shoulders instead, his legs swinging freely in the open air. The position seemed to disturb him a great deal, to Wesker's amusement. He wasn't about to drop the agent. It would be wasteful to prematurely dispose of a good resource.

"Wh—how are you holding on to the wall?" Leon demanded.

"We all have our little secrets," Wesker replied.

He kicked up from wall to wall until he launched up out of the hole in the ceiling and landed neatly beside its edge. They were back on the upper floor, not far from the great hall, standing beside what had been the center of a suspiciously ornate floor panel.

"Here I thought you would know better than to trigger such an obvious trap," he said as he set Leon on his feet.

"What can I say?" Leon replied. He had that sparkle in his tone that made Wesker's eyes narrow in anticipation. "It got the drop on me."

Wesker stepped closer.

"Consider, Leon, just how wise it is to make terrible jokes when it would be so easy for me to throw you back down that pit."

"Sheesh. Grow a sense of humor, would you?"

"I have one. It does not respond to awful puns."

Leon shrugged and turned to the side, neither shameful nor worried in the least.

"Anyway. You got the key, right? Then let's get through that door and catch up to Angelus."

His earlier assessment was wrong, Wesker mused as he looked over his eager and bright-eyed companion. Leon was nothing like a desert rain frog, nor any small, shrieking animal. The man was a goddamn puppy. He had just needed to relax enough to show his true nature.

Wesker took the lead once more, only to be surprised when Leon fell into step beside him. When Wesker glanced his way, Leon met his eyes and shrugged, as if to say, "Yeah? So, what?" Wesker snorted and broke the stare.

The great hall seemed to echo their anticipation as they reached the barrier. Leon put his one key in the left hollow while Wesker inserted the two he'd collected at the top and right side. With a clunk, the mechanism activated, the lamprey mouth arrangement of spears retracting in neat order until the path was clear.

"How long do you think it took to engineer that?" Leon asked.

"Far more than it's worth, I'm sure," Wesker replied.

No other obstacles ambushed them as they climbed the stairs to the double doors. Leon pressed himself to the wall and signaled his readiness. Wesker showed no such caution. He grabbed hold of the door handles and hauled them open, determined the next room empty of hostiles, and waved for Leon to follow him.

Here the interior took another sharp departure in its decor. No mirror-bright tile and golden accents here, nor white marble and blue carpet. This was the oldest part of the estate, the original core around which all the additions had been built. It was built up of old, weathered limestone mixed with wood, and lit by flickering candles placed low on the walls. The dim silhouette of a second floor balcony stretched above them, crossing the upper reaches of the room too high for the poor light to reach. He could see no way to access it from the ground.

"Is it just me, or is the atmosphere in here kind of...sick?" Leon asked beside him.

"Old and rotting," Wesker agreed. A light, foul odor permeated the room, a sharper scent of decay than that of the surrounding swamp. Maybe it was the wood. He clicked on his shoulder-mounted flashlight, piercing the gloom with its strong circle of light. The ground floor held two doors, and nothing else of interest.

"You got a map of this part?" Leon asked.

"If I guess right, the castle keep should be in that direction." He indicated the left door. Wesker had no maps for any part of the castle. It was simply second nature to keep the rough location of his goal in mind at all times. He had reoriented himself anytime he passed a window, searching out the profile of the large, square keep against the night sky.

"And what do we want that's in the keep?" Leon asked, his eyes narrow. Wesker suppressed a sigh. The agent did not like taking orders from him, not unless he was given the chance to examine the situation and reach the same conclusion—a far from ideal working relationship which Wesker would not have tolerated from anyone on his payroll. He was not accustomed to explaining himself.

"The labs are most likely to be at the top," Wesker said. "I'm sure we'll both have our own business there." He caught Leon's gaze and held it, waiting for the slightest twitch to give away his thoughts. Leon's face did not betray him. The man's mission remained a mystery. Wesker could only guess it would involve Angelus's destruction and the neutralization of any viral threats within the castle.

"How do you figure?" Leon asked, his eyes turning to the door. He did not deny Wesker's last statement.

"Where else could they be? Even this architect couldn't construct a basement in a swamp. Don't you find it suspicious that Angelus installed all those anti-aircraft devices, yet left nearly no defenses on the ground?"

"I guess you have a point. Whatever he's trying to protect must be up high."

"Therefore, the central keep. It's the only place big enough."

"Alright." Leon sighed. "Left it is."

What a hassle.

A layer of sticky grime pulled at his fingers as he opened the door. Beyond lay a long, dim hall, carpeted by rotten floor rugs, adorned with crumbling tapestries, and flanked by many more suits of armor in two neat rows. Wesker smirked down at his uneasy companion, who was eyeing the decorations with grim suspicion.

"They have yet to move," Wesker said.

"Yeah," Leon replied. His expression did not change. They set off down the hall at a brisk, if cautious, pace. "You ever been to Bamburgh?"

"Can't say I have. Sounds English," Wesker said. Perhaps Leon was the type to settle his own nerves with chatter. It would explain a lot.

"It's a beautiful old castle near a sea cliff. They've got a huge collection of medieval armor and weaponry in this really bright, well-kept museum. They let school groups tour it. Duke who still lives there is very nice, real friendly. I visited when I was ten."

"Sounds like a dear childhood memory."

"The teacher had to threaten to carry me out over her shoulder," Leon agreed. "Basically, it was completely the opposite of everything here." He threw a hand out to encompass the entire hallway, his expression vexed.

"I've never understood why people romanticize castles," Wesker said. "They were only military installations, more likely to house soldiers than royalty. You can't go 100 yards in Europe without tripping over one."

"Yeah. Well, they're old. And we don't have any back home," Leon said. "Maybe 1,000 years from now, they'll write fairy tales about missile bases."

"Perhaps. Assuming humanity is still around."

"You're such a pessimist."

"If that's what you want to call it."

Metal scraped over stone behind them, loud and grating, as if someone had just pushed a heavy bookcase across the floor. Both men turned on their heels as one, guns drawn and aimed down the hall. Wesker could see nothing but shadows. He and Leon looked at each other.

"Out of curiosity, when you had your trouble before," Wesker gestured to a suit of armor, "how did you handle it?"

"There were plaga parasites inside them. The parasites hated flashbang grenades."

"I see."

When no further noises came, they resumed walking at a more cautious pace. There had not been a single B.O.W. in this section so far, and Wesker knew that wouldn't last.

"I was under the impression the parasites could not live long outside a host," he said.

"That's what I thought—"

That scraping again, closer now, and still behind them. Its source had to be in the room they had just left. Leon caught his eye and jerked his chin at a door to their right. Wesker nodded.

They slipped inside, shutting the door quietly behind them. The room turned out to be a closet, one so small the two men barely fit alongside the metal shelving unit. Light splashed over their feet from under the door. They held still and listened.

Wesker felt ridiculous immediately, hiding from danger like a scared schoolgirl. Yet what choice did they have? If this creature was any hardier than a Gouger, then half a clip would not be enough to put it down. He needed to be patient and clever—two things he excelled at, as it happened—and wait for it to waddle past so he could ambush it from behind. For a man of his abilities, lack of ammo simply meant he could not be as bold as usual. All he needed was to take a page out of Leon's book and borrow some weapons from the suits of armor.

The metal scraped closer, louder, and something groaned in a hoarse, ghoul-voice. Wesker's eyes narrowed. That scraping sound—either it was dragging a weapon, or it was armored. He would need to account for either possibility.

His thoughts scattered as a cool body shoved up against his side, and silky hair brushed his nose. He wrinkled his nose to keep from sneezing. Leon had pressed up against him, either too distracted to realize what he was doing or too focused to care. That marked the second time the man had willingly touched him. The agent smelled like blood.

"It's big," Leon whispered. "And it's coming this way."

The door was not fitted well in its frame, a consequence of the uneven floor sinking. Wesker shifted so he was behind Leon, planted a hand on either side of the agent, and leaned up to peek out through the gap.

Leon's breathing stilled, and and his shoulders tensed against Wesker's chest. He must have only just realized his position. Wesker smirked, invisible in the dark, and pressed his eye to the gap. He couldn't see anything. After consideration, he pushed the sunglasses up to the top of his head and tried again.

"You're like a furnace," Leon grumbled.

"Virus," Wesker replied, for it more or less explained everything. Even when he wasn't healing, his baseline temperature was higher than regular humans. But temperature was relative. To him, everyone else felt cold.

The boom of a door bursting open silenced any further chatter. Heavy footsteps stampeded towards them, and a blur of green and gray streaked past with such speed the closet door rattled in its frame. Before Wesker could blink, the creature had hit the other end of the hall and broken through the wall with a tremendous racket of shattering wood and stone. The footsteps and the scraping faded to silence.

"I'd hate to run into that guy," Leon said.

Wesker privately agreed. Speed, strength, and size made for a tricky foe.

"He's long gone now. Shall we continue? Or..." Wesker lowered his head to purr into Leon's ear, unable to resist the opportunity, "Did you wish to stay in here a little longer? You are more attractive company than the last man I dragged into a closet."

Leon did not fidget, or stammer, or give any other delightful reaction to that tone of voice.

"You drag guys into closets a lot?" He asked, bald and disapproving, as if he were commenting on someone's smoking habit.

"It's the easiest place to slit a throat without drawing attention," Wesker replied.

To his credit, Leon did not fling himself outside immediately. Instead, he made a soft noise of disgust and straightened to his full height. The man had a bold, stubborn streak the size of the Grand Canyon. Compelling, that behavior. Wesker could hardly stop himself from playing games when Leon made it so fun. Teasing aside, Wesker didn't lie: Leon was very attractive. He had never denied that. For a long time he'd assumed it was the only reason Ada favored this man, but now he could see there was more to it.

Reluctantly, he pulled away from that train of thought. He had no interest in an unwilling partner, and Leon was still his enemy. So, he folded up the attraction and tucked it away the same way he did any distraction.

"In any case, we had better move before it comes back," Wesker said.

Leon opened the door. Outside, only half the suits of armor still stood proud, their compatriots scattered across the floor. A heap of rubble marked where the wall at the end used to be.

"Let's not go that way," Leon suggested.

"I see more doors back this way," Wesker replied.

They picked one at random, and passed through many damp, dark rooms and claustrophobic halls without event. No traps, no blockades, no puzzles, and the only B.O.W.s lay in broken heaps on the floor, motionless and half-eaten.

"The big guy's been busy," Leon observed as they passed a pile of dead Gougers.

"Perhaps he was set loose to clean up," Wesker said.

"Or he broke out."

If anything, the lack of threats only added to his unease. Their absence did nothing to ease the cloying, oppressive atmosphere of the inner castle. He didn't like it. If anything clever tried to ambush them, it would have plenty of likely spots to do it from. The quarters were close and badly lit. Wesker was not looking forward to trying to fight here.

A cry from ahead stopped them in their tracks.

"Dammit...! Why won't you listen...get out of...! Don't make me use..."

"Angelus," Leon growled. He unsheathed his combat knife.

"I'm sure he's not out of tricks yet. Stay on guard."

In the next room, they found him. Angelus stood behind a barrier of bars, the fuzzy caterpillars of his eyebrows knotted close with irritation. An elevator gleamed beside him, standing out from the old stone like a pearl in a coal heap. He was glaring at the ceiling. Wesker followed his gaze to a large, square hole in the stone, too dark to see inside. At the sound of their footsteps he glanced down at them, then did a double take.

"What? How? Impossible!" Angelus stabbed a finger at Leon. "I designed my traps specifically so you couldn't pass them alone."

"You should ask whoever built all those death traps for you to give you your money back, 'cuz they sure weren't deathly enough!"

Wesker heaved a sigh.

"Leon."

"I have to warm up, OK?"

"You're always the only..." Angelus trailed off, his eyes lighting on Wesker for the first time. It took effort not to laugh at the way the man's face crumbled into fury. "You."

"Me," Wesker said.

"After all the trouble I went through to warn you about this snake, you're still working with him?" Angelus demanded of Leon.

"Reluctantly," Leon said.

"For now," Wesker said at the same time.

Angelus glared at Wesker.

"Of all the people for the company to send after me, that they would choose you..." His fists clenched. "I had hoped the reports were mistaken, but I see they were not. You will regret agreeing to come here, Dr. Wesker. I'll make you regret!"

"You knew they would send me from the moment you took Burnside."

"But how could I not? He is the last masterpiece of Alexia Ashford, and the company was leaving him to rot! Her work must be shown to the world, that they understand her true genius!"

"...Alexia?" Leon asked.

Wesker only just restrained a grimace. He would have clapped a hand over Leon's mouth, but it was too late. Angelus already had that mad glint erupting through his eyes.

"A Goddess of science!" the old man bellowed. "Unmatched in genius, so regal in bearing, the perfect queen this world deserved!"

"She was 10," Wesker said, in a tone of longest suffering.

"An unprecedented prodigy!" Angelus went on, undaunted. "If only we'd had her with us at Arklay instead of that maniac Birkin—"

That was enough of that. Wesker fired three times, aiming for the center of mass, yet no single bullet reached its target. A web of cracks split the air a foot past the bars, blotting out his view of Angelus's astonished face. Bulletproof glass. Damnation.

"I'm sorry, were you still talking?" Wesker asked, his gun still smoking.

Angelus had jumped backward at the first shot and thrown his arms up, apparently having forgotten about the presence of his own safety glass. He lowered his arms, sweat glistening on his brow, a manic smile flickering over his mouth.

"Ah—aha ha, yes, I forgot you were once a crony of his," Angelus said.

Leon stirred beside him, but Wesker didn't take his eyes off his target.

Though Angelus tried to recover his stride, his hands trembled. So he was not yet so far gone that he couldn't see the danger he was in.

"H-how it must have burned you," Angelus said, "to watch him destroy himself."

Angelus was an old fool and a poor manipulator. Wesker told himself firmly that he was not going to rise to the man's bait, even as the gun creaked under his grip.

"What is it that you want, Angelus?" Leon barked. "Why are you doing all of this?"

"What I want? You! DEAD!" he slammed a button on the control panel next to the elevator.

A piercing electronic wail erupted from speakers hidden in the corners. Wesker staggered, covering his ear with one hand while the other gripped his gun tightly. The noise pounded at him like physical blows, knives to his ear canals. He wasn't the only B.O.W. in the room that didn't like it; a horde of white, spidery shapes dropped down from the hole in the ceiling. They were roughly the size of bulldogs, their eight spindly limbs joined with thick webbing. Their skin had a rubbery texture, more like octopus than carapace.

"Infectors!" Wesker called. The last time he'd seen these, they had wiped out half his men. Leon had already skewered one that had leaped for his face.

Wesker had a last glimpse of Angelus cackling madly in the elevator right before its doors closed. No matter, they would catch him eventually. The Infectors were fast and small, and it took all his speed and concentration to smash them under his boots one by one. Two of them latched onto his leg and started to climb up. No sense wasting his last 3 bullets on these nuisances. He holstered his gun, seized each spider, and ripped them off. Their heads popped like bubble wrap in his hands.

A yell from Leon behind him, followed by the thud of a grown man hitting the floor. Wesker crushed one more Infector under his boot heel and then turned. Leon had managed to stab down five of the creatures, but he was not gifted with Wesker's speed. One Infector, the runt of the nest, had latched onto the agent's neck and burrowed under his shirt. He thrashed on the ground, cursing, frantically trying to knife open his own clothing to reach it.

Wesker fell hard to his knees, skidding slightly over the bloody stone. He braced one hand on the thrashing agent's shoulder, seized the collar of his shirt in the other, and tore open the shirt at the shoulder, one strap of the combat vest popping open under the force. The Infector had its finger-limbs jabbed into Leon's ribs, clinging tight as a barnacle. Wesker grabbed the thing's rubbery head, forced its proboscis away from Leon's vulnerable skin. He bent the head back farther and farther until something in it cracked.

The Infector thrashed madly in its death throes, digging its claws deep into Leon's skin. He yelped, arching off the ground. Wesker went knuckle to knuckle, twisting and snapping, breaking each and every leg in turn. With the limbs broken, it gave no resistance when he peeled off the stiffening corpse and deposited it to the side.

"Ripping my clothes off already," Leon grumbled. "Could have asked me to dinner first."

"I'm afraid even I can get impatient sometimes," Wesker replied.

"Did it break the skin?" Leon asked.

Wesker peeled up Leon's torn shirt, examining the angry red punctures with clinical eyes.

"Not with the important part," he said. "However, it's not a good idea to have open wounds in this place. Have you any medical supplies?"

"Yeah, in my pack," Leon said, jerking a thumb behind him.

Wesker unclipped the pack from Leon's waist and slid it around in front of him. There was very little in the pack—empty ammo boxes, tools for gun maintenance, a handful of fish scales, and a first aid kit. The kit had plenty of bandages, sterilizing wipes, a needle, and two full first aid sprays.

"Ex-Umbrella scientists," Leon groaned. "Always a treat."

"It is as I said. Morons, and madmen."

"So, which one were you?"

Wesker glared at him over the top of his shades, not deigning to reply. He put the needle and thread aside, deciding it was too risky to try to put in stitches here. He paid no notice to Leon's unusual silence until the man spoke again, serious now, almost hesitant in speaking.

"You knew William Birkin?"

"I did," Wesker replied, not looking up from the kit. "We were something like partners, once upon a time."

"Then, you knew him well?"

"Few knew him better," Wesker replied. The first aid spray, first. It was specially formulated to sanitize and hold wounds closed, not as well as stitches, but it would do. He pushed Leon's shirt back up, laying one palm flat over Leon's pectoral.

"Why did he do it? Why did he inject himself with G?" Leon threw out the question with the force of a bullet, urgent yet pained. Almost as if he didn't want to ask, but couldn't help himself. "He had to know what would happen. G was developed as a weapon, not a medicine. He can't have expected it would do anything but turn him into a monster. Did he want to bring the whole city down with him, even though his own family was there? His daughter?"

Wesker let the questions flow over him like water from a burst dam, quietly watching Leon's face. This must have been troubling him for years, maybe ever since the fateful night itself. Wesker hardly noticed his own hands had stilled against Leon's body.

"William never was very good at considering the consequences of his actions," he replied. "Always rushing ahead, living moment to moment, lost in his own mind. I doubt he had a thought in his head other than his own survival—and revenge."

"So he was just selfish." Leon huffed and lowered his head, eyes squeezed shut. "And 100,000 people paid for it."

He'd memorized the death toll. How sentimental of him.

Wesker liberally coated all of Leon's wounds with the first aid spray, then began taping bandages in place. It had been a long time since he'd thought about William Birkin. By necessity, he'd avoided the subject for the first couple years after the man's death. Thinking about it, and the whole sequence of things-gone-wrong that had built up into the colossal cock-up that was the Raccoon City disaster, made his vision turn red. The virus had given him a new and dangerous temper, dangerous foremost because emotional stress could have the same destabilizing effect as physical stress. He would not degrade like Alexia. He would control himself.

But he did miss William, not that he would ever admit it. He missed the man's genius at every stumbling block he encountered in his research, missed his company on late nights at the lab, missed the 3 am calls insisting he come over right now so they could follow up whatever crazy hunch William had just had.

Perhaps not that last one.

Most of all, he missed having a partner in crime. And Annette? He had never called her a friend, but she had been useful in her way, an essential buffer and stabilizer against William's darker qualities. Yet, even she had not been enough to keep her husband from his gruesome end.

"How is Sherry?" he asked, taking care to keep his tone light, curious. Leon immediately tensed anyway, his eyes slitting open. Of course, Leon would assume the worst of him. His wariness was amusing.

Sherry had always been an object of curiosity to Wesker. He'd seen the spark of genius in the child, and hoped to one day direct it along the same path as her father. Dear William had thoroughly wrecked that possibility.

"I'm not telling you where she is," Leon warned. "Sherry is...healthy."

Not well. Not happy.

"Your government has her locked in a lab, I suppose."

"Don't even try to pretend you would treat her any differently."

"Her condition requires monitoring. However, I would not be afraid to let her out of the lab once in a while."

"You're the reason they won't risk that."

Wesker chuckled.

"And you think it's better that she spend her life in a box?"

"Look, I don't like it, but it's not like they gave me a choice. They picked us up right outside Raccoon city."

Things clicked into place. Knowing what he did of the American government, it was easy to imagine how things had played out for two unfortunate survivors.

"Ahhh, so it wasn't just altruistic nobility on your part. You were threatened into taking your current job."

"I'd have done it anyway," Leon insisted. "I'd fight my own way. They just didn't give me a choice." He sighed.

"Saw too much?" Wesker guessed. "Perhaps found out something they didn't want anyone to know? You were all over Dr. Birkin's lab, after all."

Leon looked up at him, suspicious and uneasy.

"You...knew? About Dr. Birkin's plans for G?"

"That he was planning to sell it to your government, and they had been ready to buy it? Yes."

"If Raccoon City hadn't gone to hell, they'd probably be using it right now."

"Is it so surprising? Who do you think Umbrella's top client was? Most terrorists weren't rich enough to pay our prices back then. William simply decided to cut out the middle man."

Leon's fists clenched. He subsided into an angry silence. Wesker finished with the last bandage, and sat back.

"I know a thing or two about disappearing," he said. "If you wished to slip yourself and Sherry out of your shackles, I might be able to help you."

"And jump from the frying pan into the fire? No thanks. You're a bit too hot for me to handle," Leon said. When Wesker raised his eyebrows, the other man simply lifted his chin, aware and unembarrassed about his word choice.

Well, it had been worth a shot. Even if he had accepted, Leon would take a lot of tempering before he could be an effective agent. There was that pesky rebellious streak to handle, for a start, and then his even peskier morals.

Leon climbed to his feet and took his pack back from Wesker.

"Angelus?" he asked as he fastened it around his waist.

"Fled. We will need to find a way to reach that elevator."

"Great." Leon looked around at the room, barren of anything else but bars and dead Infectors. "I don't suppose you can bend those?"

Wesker seized a bar and pushed. It did not budge. The only way to the elevator, it seemed, meant finding their way to the door on the other side.

"Great," Leon repeated, nodding to himself. "Back out into Dracula's castle we go, I guess."

End Note: Cheer up, Leon. At least you and Wesker are out of the closet! 8)