Notes:- Oops. Just checked and realised that it's been two weeks since I posted the last chapter! Sorry to keep people waiting!
The Facility Aftermath
Chapter Six
He felt his knees hit the hard concrete floor first, swiftly followed by both of his hands as he sucked in air, trying his best not to vomit. The pain stabbed relentlessly and he could hear that he was groaning now. Thundering footsteps, getting louder, like someone running towards him and then a strong arm on his shoulder, a hand rubbing his back soothingly.
"Leon? Leon! Speak to me"! It was Chris and he could hear the worry and desperation in his voice. Leon gulped in air, his stomach heaving, twisted in knots. "What's wrong"?
"Pain…" Leon spoke through clenched teeth. He turned his head to the side and vomited. It came out in a rush, vile and acidic, over and over again, his back spasming, his stomach muscles heaving. Chris was rubbing his back, his hand moving in slow circles and he was muttering soothing things but Leon could hear the fear spilling into his voice.
He dry heaved for a while and the pain began to ebb away. Chris helped him into a sitting position, his back against the corridor wall, away from the small puddle of vomit. Leon was breathing heavily as he felt his body and breathing slowly return to normal. He opened his eyes and saw Chris squatting beside him, brows knitted together in anxiety. He knew what the older man was probably thinking. Head injury. Concussion. Leon knew different. He'd had head injuries before, suffering various concussions in his short but eventful life in the Secret Service. No, this was something far bigger than that. It was the Plagas within him, growing and making its presence known. He'd read the case files that had been stored on the USB. The egg inside him was in the process of hatching. Soon he would be coughing up blood and then…well, he didn't want to think about it.
"It's the virus isn't it"? Chris asked, his voice slightly shaky. Leon closed his eyes and nodded. Stupid idiot! Of course Chris would work it out. He frequently didn't think but the older man wasn't stupid.
"I know what you're gonna say…" Leon wiped his mouth and accepted the water bottle that Chris thrust into his hands. "But I'm going through with this. If you're finishing Wesker then I'm gonna be right there with you"
"I wouldn't dare argue with you" Chris replied. He pulled a slightly crumpled stick of chewing gum out of one of the pockets of his combats and handed it over. Leon accepted it gratefully. "But we need to try and find this anti-virus. Fuck Wesker for now. This is more important"
"Fuck Wesker"? Leon got to his feet with Chris' help. "It's a little early to be thinking about threesomes don't you think"? He felt a little wobbly but otherwise back to normal, or at least as normal as he could be with some alien creation living inside of him. Chris offered him a smile but it disappeared quickly. Leon knew that he was more worried than ever but there was little he could do to change that.
They moved onwards down the corridor, occasionally passing doors and kicking them open to reveal that they led onto the upstairs catwalks of huge warehouse like rooms, filled with conveyor belts and manual cranes that seemed to lift heavy crates. Whatever was packed in them was anybody's guess.
"None of this seems to indicate any sort of research and development," Leon said after they'd closed the door on the third warehouse room. "And I don't know if you've noticed but there doesn't seem to be anyone about"
"It'll all be part of his plan" Chris replied darkly. "It'll be in case some civilian stumbles across it. No-one would expect anything out of the ordinary"
"There are security cameras everywhere." Leon noted, looking up towards the ceiling. They'd been one camera every two or three meters along the corridor and in all the rooms. He looked over at Chris when the older man didn't respond. "Chris! What the hell are you doing"?
Chris had undone his belt and unzipped the fly of his combats. Within seconds they were down by his ankles and he was exposing his naked rear to one of the cameras, waggling it from side to side. Clearly tattooed on his right cheek was the BSAA symbol. Leon felt a blush creep onto his cheeks.
"Just in case he's watching," Chris replied.
"There is so much I wanna ask right now," Leon said as Chris zipped himself back up and grinned widely at him. "Number one. Why the hell did you do that? Number two. Why get the BSAA symbol tattooed on your ass and number three, where the hell is your underwear"? He pressed his face into his palm. "That was so not how I imagined seeing your ass for the first time"
"And you loved it"! Chris shot back, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "Bet Wesker did too," He added after a moment's thought." He looked at Leon and the smile instantly disappeared. "Are you feeling better"?
"Much" Leon nodded. His stomach felt strangely numb and his abdominal muscles were aching after the powerful heaves but at least the pain had subsided.
There was a door at the end of the corridor, which lead into a vast cylindrical room, which appeared to reach way above the surface and far below. Leon vaguely remembered seeing the outside of the building when the plane was crashing. It was impossible to count how many floors that the expansive building contained as it seemed to go on forever. Above them, there was a huge gash in the curved wall letting in a blast of freezing cold air and a few massive chunks of bluish grey concrete were strewn on the catwalk where they stood. They walked slowly and carefully around the curved path. Leon held onto the rail as the sight of the drop below had made him feel a little dizzy.
The catwalk ended in a set of metal stairs, which lead downwards to a door on their left. They opened it and Leon peeked through to see a bunkroom that had shelves and lockers at the far end of it. He stepped to one side and allowed Chris to look in. Chris seemed to stare at the room for a long time before he shook his head in disbelief.
"It's pretty much the same as the facility I went round in 1998" He explained. "Looks like he's had it rebuilt," He continued as he closed the door.
"At least it means you'll have a good idea of where we're going" Leon replied.
Chris nodded but he couldn't help but feel uneasy. He knew that Leon had a point, being able to navigate the place easily would be a plus point but at the same time he couldn't help but think that Wesker was beginning to up his game. They pressed on, down more stairs, to a metal double door on their left. Just as he'd expected, when they opened the double doors, they revealed a slightly warmer flight of stairs, the width of the doorway, which were a very bland, bluish stone and lit by florescent lights. They bent halfway to the left and at the bottom was a carved wooden door, which seemed out of the place in the warehouse like building. Along a narrow offshoot to their left was another single door.
"We'll take this one" Chris said, nodding at the wooden door. He pushed it open and Leon followed as he entered the room. Just as he'd expected, it was a dead end. An office furnished in a traditional warm manner, full of exquisite wood and leather furniture with display cases. Each item familiar from the last time and doing nothing to help his feelings of weirdness.
He leant against the desk, struggling to recall where to go next. This wasn't something that he would've ever thought he would have to relive. But, like the mansion before it, the facility's lay out slowly came to him. Unfolding in his mind like a well stored map. They left the office and he led Leon down the offshoot, to the next door.
"There should be another massive room behind this door, like the other warehouse rooms we saw earlier." He said. Back in 1998, the room had been flooded and the whole bottom floor had been trapped beneath a frozen lake of water.
"It's a lift door." Leon pointed out, motioning to a control panel
"Hmm. Thought it seemed a bit too easy" Chris muttered to himself. He hammered the lift's call button. "So much for something going right for a change" He added as the lift door slid open and the pair of them got in. It started to descend without them having to press any buttons, which didn't really help Chris' suspicions. He wondered when this was all going to end. He was exhausted and felt like he'd spent half of his life chasing Wesker around facilities and messed up places. He wanted a break. He wanted to lie in bed all day and eat crap. He wanted to do normal things like go to the cinema or just play video games in his pants.
"Do you ever miss the normal things"? He found himself asking. Leon looked as exhausted as he did. There was a slight bruise flowering from underneath the gauze.
"All the time" Leon answered. He leant against the lift's smooth wall. "What annoys me the most is that I didn't choose to do any of this" He sighed. "I thought I had it all planned out. I was gonna be a cop and maybe rise through the ranks. Not too much though. I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck behind a desk. I was gonna settle in Raccoon, maybe find the right guy, start a family, the usual stuff."
"I thought you chose to work for the Government"? Chris said. Leon laughed. There was no humour behind it, only a hint of bitterness. He didn't really expect Leon to continue and it came as a nice surprise when he did.
"That's what they'd like you to think" He replied. "They picked me up a couple of miles outside of Raccoon. Said they could use someone like me. I guess it's not every day you can recruit someone who's been through something like that but I wasn't flattered. It was probably so they could keep tabs on me. Make sure I didn't go telling everyone and anyone who'd listen about what I'd seen in there. You know what it's like. The media got hold of the story but none of them were in there. Just us lucky few. The government didn't want to cause mass panic by letting some survivor spill his guts to the papers so it was their way of keeping me quiet. Give me a job and make me sign shit loads of papers promising I wouldn't ever talk about it"
"Wow" Chris whistled. He'd had no idea. He'd assumed that after the horrors of Raccoon, Leon had joined the government agency out of a need to stop something similar happening again, not because he'd been forced to.
"Don't get me wrong" Leon continued, reading Chris' expression. "I don't want you to get the impression I'm here under sufferance. I do enjoy what I do and I know we're doing a good thing, but if I was given the chance to do something normal again I'd take it like a shot."
"I can't wait 'til we get back to America" Chris replied. "I'm gonna take you out for the biggest meal ever! Then maybe you might wanna come back to my place"?
"Ugh. Only if I want to catch something"! Leon screwed his face up in disgust. "My place is nicer," He added with an uppity air. "Less chance of being closed down by the health department"
"Whatever gave you the impression that I'm an untidy slob"? Chris asked teasingly. He loved moments like this. Moments where he and Leon could lose themselves in banter and forget where they were for a while. It provided him with the brief respite he needed to make it through everything that was happening.
"The state you left your room in when you left Spain was a big clue" Leon answered.
The lift stopped suddenly and the door opened into a tight dark passage that stretched off to the left. Directly in front of them stood a rust coloured metal door. Chris pulled and pushed at it but it didn't yield. He cursed and gave it a swift kick. They were going to have to go the other way, to their left. The pair walked forwards down the dark passage and found themselves in what appeared to be a strange courtyard or playground. To their immediate left was a pond with an ornate stone fountain, water slowly trickling out. The noise of the moving water, something Chris would've normally considered calming, seemed sick and twisted in such odd circumstances. Perhaps even more perverse was the small merry-go-round that stood beyond the fountain with two garishly painted wooden horses on it. They were surrounded by a high stone wall as if they were in somebody's back garden.
Chris almost didn't want to look to his right. He knew perfectly well what he was going to see. It was an exquisitely carved double door, surrounded by Hellenistic pillars and a mantle, with rows of windows stretching off to either side beyond the garden in a wall that seemed to extend further than he could clearly see.
"What the hell"? Leon was looking at the fountain, the horses, the doors, with a look of disbelief on his face. With a bitter laugh, Chris explained.
"Part of the Spencer Mansion was re-created in the original Antarctic facility." He said. "It looks like that was one particular feature he thought I could do with seeing again"
Leon tried to read Chris' expression and for the first time since he'd known the older man, it was impossible. His face was a passive mask, unyielding to what he was really feeling. He reached out to try and grab his partner's hand but Chris was already striding towards the double doors. Leon watched him stalk away for a brief moment before following. If Chris was going to walk back into his own personal hell then Leon was going to be right there beside him. Chris pushed the double doors open with enough force for the sound to reverberate around the whole of the hallway that they stepped into. He stayed by the door, almost as if he was waiting for Leon to take in their new surroundings.
Leon had heard about the Spencer Mansion. The day before he was due to turn up in Raccoon City, he'd done some digging around into the case. He'd been hoping that he'd see or read something new. Find some significance in something seemingly benign. He couldn't see why the S.T.A.R.S, a highly respected branch of the RPD would make it all up and yeah, he might've been a naïve trainee, his ego stoked by his Academy tutors singing his praises, but he wanted to be the one who got the S.T.A.R.S reinstated.
The descriptions and faded photos didn't even come close to actually standing in what was essentially a perfect replica of the Spencer Mansion's main hall. It seemed to stretch out forever, dwarfing him and Chris in what was probably once intended to be opulent splendour. Except it was far from warm and welcoming. In fact, it was the complete opposite. Cold and oppressive with a ghostly atmosphere that could've made you shudder if you thought about it for too long. The marble flooring shone as if someone had just recently polished it and the red carpet that ran the length of the grand staircase in front of him looked plush and expensive. He half expected a young debutante in her best ball gown to come down those sweeping stairs that were surrounded with a deep mahogany banister and balcony. Ornate candelabras stood either side of the staircase, white candles emitting their soft glow. Paintings lined the walls in various elaborate frames and polished, deep redwood doors reminded Leon of an art gallery or an old library.
"It's really something isn't it"? Chris asked with no hint of awe or amazement. He shook his head in a disgusted manner before stalking off to one of the dark redwood doors to their left. "Stay here" He ordered.
"Like fuck I'm gonna"! Leon shot back. He shook his head at his partner's unbelievable stupidity.
"It could be a trap," Chris argued. "I'm not having you getting hurt again." He added firmly. Leon however, was far from convinced.
"Oh please" He replied sarcastically. "Don't give me that crap," He continued dismissively, waving his hand. "I'm a highly trained Secret Service Agent. Anyway, maybe me staying here on my own would be a trap. Did you think of that Mr Smartass"?
"I guess I didn't" Chris said, suitably cowed. He had the good grace to look a little ashamed. Leon sighed heavily. He knew Chris wasn't trying to go out of his way to annoy him, he was obviously just concerned and for that, Leon couldn't blame him one little bit. He knew that if the circumstances were reversed, and Chris was the one who was carrying around a rapidly maturing Plagas, he would do everything in his power to make sure that the older man was alright.
Following Chris' reluctant lead, he stepped through the door and found himself in another elaborate room, this time a dining room. A long table, enough to seat probably twenty people took up most of the space, draped in a pristine white tablecloth. Delicate lace placemats were neatly arranged, facing mahogany chairs with luscious red cushion seats. Immaculately polished cutlery reflected the light from the brass lamps built into the wall. Exactly like the main hall, a balcony ran the entire length of the room and Leon couldn't help but look up and remember when Wesker had shot him from the gantry in the Spanish facility.
The ticking of a well-maintained antique grandfather clock reverberated through the room, so loud in the silence that Leon could feel it in his chest. An understated white marble fireplace stood at the other end of the room, an emblem consisting of a wooden shield and crossed swords on the wall above it. In the right hand corner was an oak door and it was then that Leon noticed him.
The man.
A gasp from Chris told him that his partner had noticed it too. The pounding of Chris' hiking trainers on the marble floor joined the ticking of the clock as he ran over to the door.
"Chris! Wait"! Leon shouted. "It could be a trap"!
Chris ignored him, crouching by the body of the man that was sitting, slumped against the oak door. Leon could see the blood glistening from a distance. He hurried towards Chris who had got back to his feet, glaring down at the body. As Leon got closer he could see that the man's throat had been brutally torn open leaving a mass of shiny pink and red gore, almost luminous against his dark skin. Blood was soaked around the collar of his yellow t-shirt and spattered across his khaki green Kevlar vest, making dark patches on his black combats. His eyes were open, expressionless and staring, his lips parted in a silent scream that probably nobody had heard. There was a hip pack on a brown leather belt around his waist, matching the brown leather knife holster strapped across his front. Secured to this was a piece of white paper. Leon plucked it from the body and read it aloud.
"Now he's become a mere shadow of his former self…"
"Kenneth Sullivan" Chris finished for him, staring down at the body with a mixture of shock and disgust. Without warning he savagely kicked out at the body and Leon took a step back as the body slumped to the floor emitting a dull sounded hollow thwack. "A dummy" Chris added, turning away from it as Leon continued to stare in horror, allowing the piece of paper to slip from his grasp.
"He was…"
"A member of Bravo Team" Chris interrupted. He was leaning against the fireplace, staring into the empty grate. Leon opened his mouth to say something but Chris pushed himself off the marble frame and starting to stride back towards the main hall, his eyes looking anywhere but at the dummy representing his dead friend and colleague.
CHAPTER BREAK?
"I can remember the shortest route out of here" Chris said when they went back into the main hall. His tone was business-like and to the point, almost verging on short. Leon knew what he was doing, he recognised that behaviour. Hell, he'd done it himself. When you were faced with something so horrific, all you could do was draw on your training and get the job done. Now was not the time for personal feelings to come into the equation. Chances were that if you stopped to think, you'd break down. Chris had obviously snapped himself into that frame of mind to try and deal with being thrown back into the events of the Spencer Mansion.
"Good" He replied. "Let's get the hell out of here"
Chris nodded and headed straight for a mottled blue door ahead of them on the wall opposite from the dining room door. He opened it cautiously, obviously expecting a zombie to be waiting behind it, ready to attack. Leon knew the feeling.
Just as Chris had been expecting, they walked into what was effectively a small gallery, decorated in dark shades of blue. It was just as he remembered. Generic oil paintings adorning every wall, each lit by a single spotlight. His attention turned to the middle of the room, expecting to see the familiar plaster cast of Aquarius, a water-bearing woman on a pedestal.
There was a plaster cast on the pedestal but it wasn't Aquarius. Chris felt every drop of his blood turn to ice as he moved closer to the mannequin, a sick feeling churning in his stomach. He'd barely been able to keep it together when he saw the mock-up of Kenneth's grisly death but this was something else entirely.
Dressed in a S.T.A.R.S uniform and streaked with blood, in glorious Technicolor, was a perfect model of Forrest Speyer. He was mimicking the pose the Aquarius statue had been in but instead of eyes, the mannequin had dark, empty sockets, fake blood dripping from them and staining his uniform. On the pedestal at his feet was an immaculately polished golden plaque that read:
"In memory of Forrest Speyer, who gave his life rather pointlessly"
Chris turned away from the statue, resisting the urge to shove it off its pedestal. Wesker was playing with him, toying with feelings that he'd long since tried to bury and move on from. Although Kenneth had been a good guy to have around, Forrest had been almost like a brother to him and when Chris had found his dead body all of those years ago, he'd had to fight to get the image of it out of his mind. Now it was there again, right in his face so there was no way he could possibly ignore it. He knew that if he looked at things logically, this was Wesker's way of weakening his resolve before they confronted him. But it was failing miserably. Far from being weak and broken, these sick sights made Chris' resolve stronger than ever.
"Chris…" Leon's voice filtered into his thoughts.
"I'm fine Leon" Chris interrupted. "Let's just move on"
Taking great care to ignore the statue, Chris stepped around it, faced with the two exits he remembered from the original mansion. The left one a dark hall partially obscured by a heavy red curtain, the right one a plain, wood panelled door with a carving of a sword by the keyhole. He grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, relief setting in when it opened. For a brief moment he'd been worried that Wesker was forcing them to repeat his trek for various keys and puzzle items.
The door opened onto a long, well-lit hall that bent to the left about halfway along, ten metres away. It was exactly how he remembered, the chandeliers dangling from the ceiling, the black and white marble floor underneath his feet. To their right, the row of windows, evenly spaced, black so that it was impossible to tell whether or not they were looking through them or that they were just painted. The row of display cases that Chris recalled were there on their left, like glass-topped sideboards. As they moved down the corridor, they could see the display cases were full of the things Chris had seen all those years ago, bleached bones and skulls, arranged around strips of leather and unidentifiable fleshly blobs in formaldehyde filled jars. Leon was watching the windows, his gun drawn, obviously expecting something to leap through them. Chris wasn't as convinced. Although he remembered Jill saying something about dogs when they'd first escaped the mansion, Chris didn't think they'd find any monsters now. It seemed that this new recreation was nothing but a simple tool to try and push Chris into madness.
The final display case at the end of the corridor contained something entirely different. Arranged neatly and almost with care, a S.T.A.R.S issue Beretta, a uniform completely shredded and covered in blood, Joseph's red bandana, Enrico's warrant card, all as if they were on display in a shop. To finish off the twisted display, a crumpled photo of Barry and his wife and children, all smiling happily at the camera, and the S.T.A.R.S squad photo that had hung proudly on the wall of the S.T.A.R.S office. Chris heard Leon's sharp intake of breath and knew that he'd seen the contents of the case. Chris continued to stare at it coldly, feeling an almost uncontrollable urge to knock the damned thing over. Strangely through, despite the mocking nature intended by the display, he felt as though disturbing or damaging it in any way would be disrespectful to his fallen friends and colleagues.
Instead he turned his anger onto the nearest display case, flipping it over with ease and taking pleasure from the sound of the glass smashing and the wood splintering.
"Fuck"! He shouted as loud as he could, feeling his anger ebbing away as quickly as it had risen. He stood over the broken case, breathing heavily, feeling a wet trail of snot dripping from his nose down to his upper lip from the force of his shout. With a shaking hand he brushed it off, wiping it on the leg of his combats. He placed his hands, palms flat, onto the wall, using it for support as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, slowly counting to ten. He could do this. He would do this. He would do it for Leon, for Jill, for Claire for S.T.A.R.S, for every single person who'd ever suffered at the hands of Albert Wesker. Arms wrapped around his waist from behind and held him tightly. He continued to count slowly and when he reached ten he turned around and offered the worried looking Leon a determined smile. He kissed him gently on the lips and felt Leon's right hand slowly start to massage the back of his neck.
"I fucking hate that he's doing this to you" Leon said, his voice tinged with anger.
"Well it's good that we're here to kill him" Chris replied confidently, breaking free of Leon's hold.
"Do you even have an idea of how we're going to do that"? Leon asked, kicking aside some of the broken glass. "The man's a monster. I'm sure he's got the strength to match that superhuman speed"
"We'll find a way." Chris answered, hoping that what he'd just said was true. He'd been so determined to kill Wesker that he'd forgotten the importance of having some sort of plan. This wasn't a normal man they were dealing with. They couldn't just knock him to the floor and put a bullet through his brain.
"The virus he's infected with would be the obvious place to start" Leon said, staring at the ruined display case. "Do you think he ever developed an anti-virus? I'm thinking that if he's been infecting himself with all these different things, he'd develop something that could cure them if he needed to"
"It's a possibility" Chris replied, trying to think of something himself. He'd never really had the aptitude for science. He was more of a doer than a thinker. He looked at his partner who was seemingly lost in thought. If there was anyone who needed an anti-virus right now it was Leon. It was what they needed to focus on and if they came across one that might work on Wesker, well, that would be a happy bonus. He was about to say so when Leon continued to talk.
"Or even better an overdose"
"Overdose"? Chris frowned.
"Yeah" Leon nodded. "I'm willing to bet that whatever he injects himself with, it'll be a carefully measured amount. He doesn't want to lose himself completely to the virus like William Birkin, Sherry's father did. He'll want to enhance his powers and he'll still want to retain every aspect of his personality…"
"Oh yeah. He's gotta remain a smug fucker at all times" Chris interrupted, nodding in agreement. Leon flashed him his well-practised shut-the-fuck-up look and Chris smiled sheepishly.
"It's a risky move." Leon added. "Too much of the virus could easily kill him but it could also make him stronger. Then of course is the problem of how we're going to get hold of it. He's not the type to just leave things lying around. I bet he either keeps it on him at all times or has it under heavy guard somewhere. I think it's a risk we have to be willing to take because unless something pops up out of the blue, it could be our only option" He allowed Chris a brief smile. "But since you're naturally a risk taker I guess I don't really have to ask"
"Of course not" Chris replied. "I think we've got ourselves a plan" He added, feeling instantly better now they had a clear idea of what it was they needed to do. "But first we need to get ourselves out of this place" He felt a new determination wash over him. He could and indeed would, in time learn to move on from the sights he'd been subjected to in this new nightmare. He would never forget but it wouldn't matter as much now. He didn't have to go home to America alone and see the whiskey bottle on the shelf in the store. He wouldn't have to fight to ignore its siren song as he filled his basket with groceries. He wouldn't climb into a cold and empty bed and lay there with the lights off, staring up at his ceiling and reliving these hallways and rooms and the horrors within. He had a partner now in more ways than one. They would be there to help each other move on from it all. To move on from the mansion, Raccoon City, Antarctica, Spain, Africa. It was a comforting and strengthening thought to know that he was never going to be alone again.
"Are you ready to move on"? Leon asked. Chris opened his mouth but Leon stopped him before he could speak. "If you do that whole 'born ready' thing again I will seriously lock you in one of those display cases"
"I wasn't going to" Chris replied even though he was. He smirked at Leon before focussing back on their current location, wracking his brains to remember where they needed to go next to get out as quickly as possible. He felt like a lab rat in a maze and that was probably, no doubt definitely intended.
They moved through the door at the end of the hallway and it led, as expected, into yet another long corridor. Chris remembered it to be tight and winding with several blind corners. It wasn't as well lit as the previous one so they were going to have to be on their guard more. The sickening green wallpaper was still there, contrasting with the dark oak floor and fixtures around them. They passed a heavy iron door.
"On your right is a door that led to a backyard" Chris said, adopting his best tour guide's voice as they walked onwards. The hall bent left, passing another single oak door on their right. "And here we have a lovely bathroom" Chris continued, motioning towards the door as they passed it. "Complete with everyone's favourite bath time surprise, a zombie in the tub"
"Is doing that really helping"? Leon asked, his gun raised, still obviously expecting some sort of attack. Chris could tell that Leon was edgier than him, tenser.
"Well it doesn't hurt" Chris replied with a shrug.
They went around more bends, passing another door, which was accompanied by an explanation by Chris. A room with a descending ceiling was behind that door. Leon let him continue, knowing that humour was once again how the older man was dealing with it all. He couldn't quite appreciate it so easily. The mansion was new to him and even though he was with Chris, who knew where he was going, he still felt very uneasy and tense. It reminded him of walking through the corridors of the police station back in Raccoon, wandering around aimlessly when he didn't know where to go. Running into monsters and dead bodies.
Through the next double door, an ornately carved one was a very dark hallway with deep shadows drenching the corners. A couple of doors were on their right, Leon looked at the lock of one of them and saw that it had a picture of a knight's helmet engraved into the brass by the keyhole. At the end of the hallway on the left was another door, almost invisible in the darkness, which Chris told him led to a gallery of portraits guarded by murderous crows. Jill had almost been caught by that trap.
"This is where we need to be." Chris said, pointing down an offshoot their right. Leon hadn't noticed the tight passage before, as it was disguised in a shadowy corner of the hall. They hurried down it and it lead through a rusted iron door into a curved passage with a crazy paving floor. Small arched holes were carved high into the left hand wall, twisted vines spilling in from outside. It stopped at a door, a strange looking plaque on the wall beside it. "This leads into the gardens" Chris said, examining the plaque on the wall. He looked as if he knew what he was looking at. "Four crests…all here…" He muttered to himself.
Leon looked at the plaque himself. It was quite large, probably a metre squared and appeared to have four brass crests set into it. They were only about the size of a fist but they looked heavy. Each one bore a stylised astrology themed image, a star, a sun, a moon and a cloud blowing a gust of wind. He couldn't be sure but it looked as if they were part of a complicated puzzle, probably to open the door.
Chris pushed on the door handle and pushed. There was no give at all, strange for a door, even one which was tightly locked. He frowned at it and Leon had a go himself. It felt like he was pushing into a brick wall. He ran his gloved hands over the door only to find that that was exactly what it was, a brick wall, painted to look like a door. The fastest way out had turned into a dead end. Chris punched the wall, letting out a frustrated growl.
"Now what"? He demanded.
"Search me" Leon replied, a little irritated at Chris' tone. "You're the expert on this place. Not me" He sighed and tried not to let his anger get the better of him. Chris was understandably annoyed and tense and he'd just been forced to relive his colleagues' deaths. "What about heading back to the main hall"? He suggested. "We could go back out through the main door and check out the warehouse rooms again, see if there's something we missed"?
"Better than hanging around in this place" Chris replied. He gave the painted on door one last filthy look before heading back down the passage. Chris was breathing heavily, seemingly seething, and Leon didn't feel any better. They walked back silently and when they came back to the door, they both wordlessly checked their guns before preparing for their trip back to the main hall.
The door opened with squeaky hinges. They moved cautiously back down the dark offshoot, pausing when they heard the sound of a door ahead of them open and then slam shut. What followed was the sound of a heavy, padded footstep, then another almost ponderous footstep.
"Shit" Chris muttered as the steps continued, accompanied by a strange clicking reptilian sound and then, from a shady corner in front of them, it emerged.
END OF CHAPTER SIX.