Los Angeles, CA

2329 Hours (11:29)

The phone rang.

Who's calling at this hour? Rebecca Chambers looked up from her studies and brushed her brown bangs to the side, eyeing the phone with not a little distaste.

"Hey, this is Rebecca. I'm not here right now so please leave a message. Thanks!" Her machine said.

"Rebecca, pick up the phone." A deep, male voice came through the speaker, the voice that belonged to a friend she hadn't seen in six years. "Rebecca?"

Leon...

Rebecca jumped off her bed and damn-near sprinted to the phone, almost tripping over a chair in her way. She snatched the receiver up off the cradle, almost making it fall off the desk it was on.

"Leon?!" Rebecca almost-yelled into the phone.

There was a small chuckle on the other line. "Hey, Rebecca."

Her heart fluttered with excitement. "Leon! Where did you go? Six years and not even a ph-"

"Hey, HEY. Rebecca. Calm down. I need your help."

"Oh, um. I'm sorry. I just..." She mentally kicked herself, embarrassed.

"Yeah, I miss you, too. Listen, we can catch up on old times later, but I'm in a situation here, and I need your help. You aren't doing anything serious right now, right?"

Rebecca looked mildly over at the book she was reading. It had fallen to the floor in her scramble to the phone. "No, not at all. You said you were-" She stopped, seeing the clock that was next to her bed. "Wait. What time is it for you? And where are you?"

"It's, ah, 2:30. And I'm in Raccoon."

Raccoon?

Her blood ran cold. Raccoon City, the place that had been infected with the T-Virus. Ground zero. What the hell was Leon doing there?

"I know you have a million questions, but some serious shit's going down right now, and your expertise could come in handy. Remember that chrome cube we stole from Umbrella back in Nevada? Do you still have it?"

The replicator. Of course I do. She stole it back when she, Leon, Chris, Jill, and Barry were in the Anti-Umbrella organization. It could replicate small things like glasses or bottles, but the idea had never developed past the two identical boxes that they found. Umbrella lost all their funding when the Raccoon incident was uncovered.

"Yeah, I do. You want me to turn it on?" She asked, already rooting through a cabinet for it.

"Hold on. First, put on some gloves and get to a sanitation room. I've got blood I want you to look at."

"...Infected blood?" A spike of adrenaline flooded through her body, filling her with both excitement and fear from the possibility.

"Yeah. A new strand of the virus. You ready?"

Not in this lifetime, I'm not.

"Let me get down to the safe room. What do you know about it so far?" Rebecca was already heading down to her sterilization chamber, phone and cube in hand.

"Well, it's called the TC Virus. It turns the host into a super being... thing..." Leon trailed off. "They can run, jump, see, and smell everything better than a normal person could. I need to know how contagious it is."

"But no zombification?"

"No. Well, it doesn't seem like it. There's more aggression for sure, but he's not really trying to rip me apart right now."

He?

"Alright. Send it through." Rebecca said, pressing the button on the metallic cube. The shine melted away and it turned a dark red before going transparent for a few seconds, returning to sight as the usual chrome color.

"I got it." She spoke, forcing herself to become calm as she opened the cube by its center hatch, revealing a hypodermic needle with fresh blood inside. "Great sample. This'll take me a little while, fifteen minutes for the most basic information. Want me to call you back?"

"Sounds good. Be careful with that stuff, Rebecca." Leon replied, his voice soft but serious.

"Be careful yourself, Leon. And when this is all over," She began.

"Yeah, I know the drill. I have some serious explaining to do."

"Damn right you do." Rebecca turned off the phone and sighed, steadying her hands before digging in.

---

Ugh, I've got the flu, and I should be resting, but here's chapter seven. Happy birthday.

I'm going back to bed.