Eve of Destruction


Raccoon City, New York

December 2014 –

Chapter Seven:

The Trojan Horse


2:22 p.m. - The Statue of Liberty- Raccoon City, New York- Main Observation Deck


The trench coat felt very Humphrey Bogart as she moved toward him. It was all such a film noir moment, from her sunglasses to her seemingly conspicuous smile, to the file she held out to him.

From behind both sets of sunglasses, they shared a similar cool gaze.

Aloud, she said, "It's all in there. Everything I can find on the Bakers. You know what this means, right? You understand how complicated it is."

He tucked the file against his side and smiled at her, but it wasn't warm. It was cold. As he was cold. As the air around them was cold with the fluffy fall of coming snow. "Even better than you do, I think. You're sure? Completely?"

"Oh, I'm sure. Are you? Louisiana? It's nothing but bugs and bad weather."

His laughter always made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, "You let me worry about Louisiana, Ms. Wong. You handle Raccoon City. Things will likely turn in the next few months. When they do, let them, encourage them. The sooner the world is watching the fall of a city, the sooner I can sever the chains that bind us both."

Ada nodded, shifting to look out over the ocean that had once brought the poor and the tired to the shores of a new world with hope. Would it turn red with blood as the world burned? What would she do to break free of what bound her here?

Would she watch Raccoon City become Troy? Would she send a horse filled with death into the midst of the innocent and damn them all?

Birkin was the architect of his own destruction. He'd overplayed his hand in an attempt to save his own family. A fool. A failure. A fantastic waste of genius. There was no hope for it.

The only way to break free was to bring the world down around them.

She glanced back at the man in front of her. The heavy black wool coat and the thick white scarf complimented the shock of blonde hair. Cut military short, it left you aware of the strong lines of a painfully handsome face.

There was no way to really know the evil that hid behind that perfect smile.

Ada nodded and felt the first tug of guilt for all the people that would pay the price for her freedom. "Consider it done."

"Good girl," He shifted toward the exit and glanced back over the rolling water himself for a moment, "...I've always thought of winter as a time of slumber. The eve of...a new beginning."

He shrugged a shoulder and turned away to keep walking, "It's time for Raccoon City to have a wake-up call. Don't stop Birkin. Let her awaken. Let William lie in his own bed. What he's done...there is a reckoning for it. Let them show him how Dr. Frankenstein died. Be sure it goes according to plan. Finish it. I will see you in Louisiana. Ada."

"...Wesker."

"A pleasure."

Was it? Nothing with him ever was. He was just another creation. He was just another creature. He was just another parasite. And he was going to leave behind the city he'd helped consign to death...on the eve of its destruction.

Hesitating, she called anyway, "What about Kennedy?"

He shrugged as he walked and answered, "You're sure he'll perform?"

She closed her eyes and drew a sharp breath, "Yes. He won't deny himself for long."

"The girl?"

"She's...his type."

He laughed, "Of course she is. She looks like you, I hear. And yet...it took you how long to slither your way into his bed?"

Ada licked her teeth at the tug of jealousy, "She is..sweeter. Softer. He'll...respond to her."

"Too sly for him after all, weren't you? Sometimes you overplay your hand, Ada. Remember who you're opponent is in the future. Get what you need from him and finish him off. It's fortuitous that you resisted the command the first time around. It turns out, he was necessary after all. Don't come against me again, Ada. I warned you in Spain. I don't usually offer second chances. The good news for you? I think you've earned one.."

"...will you release me when it's done?"

He didn't answer. She called again as he was swallowed into the fog and the snow. "Albert! Will you release me!?"

Of course, there was no response. She had no hope for it anyway.

She stood in the cold snow and let the guilt be her only ally. Was she even human anymore?

Whatever else was true, she was bound in chains to the monsters.


3:12 p.m. - Apple Inn- Boiler Room


It was twice in purple highlighter as it might have been in the light.

No lecture on earth could prepare you for a licker in person. It was faster than anything she'd ever seen. It scuttled, making a chittering sound that reminded her of a stir of echoes.

Aya watched the thing leap. It hit the other wall and skittered down the backside. She had no doubt it was trying to sneak up on the erstwhile warrior that waited to end its existence.

She lifted her gun to end it instead and save him, and Leon's hand slid gently over hers, lowering her weapon. His mouth next to her ear tickled as he whispered, "No need. Wait. Watch. Learn. Cover me."

He shifted forward. He'd been behind her the whole time. Was that why she couldn't see him?

But no. The second he slid in front of her, she felt but didn't see him. He shifted into a low crouch and moved. Aya kept paced behind him. When he stopped, she stopped. There was a snarfling scuffle of the licker trying to find the whistleblower.

And a low metallic sound.

The licker halted, raising its head. Its tongue slid along the stones, slurping like a frog looking for a fly.

It found Leon's boot and looped, happy, so happy...Aya almost warned him, but there was no need. He knew. He let it. It looped, he rose, and his other boot smashed down on that tongue. The licker reared, roaring, and he stuck the knife in his hand hilt deep into its ugly brain. The death was comic even as it was scary.

Out loud, Leon told her, "Never, ever, waste ammo or reveal yourself if you don't have to. Stealth is sometimes your only ally against these guys."

It flopped, it gurgled, it grunted and jerked - and the moment it died, she couldn't see it anymore.

Incredible.

What did that mean?

She could see mon-

Leon turned and his chest...his chest was purple. His chest was purple and split by something that might have been a cockroach or something. It was the size of a fist. It was looped at his...heart? What?

He stepped toward her and Aya put the gun in her hands against his sternum to officially become the first woman in history to get the drop on Leon Kennedy.

He froze. She froze.

Aya snarled, "Stealthy enough for you...clone?"

His laugh was harsh in the dark, "Are we back here again? I'm not a clone."

And she hissed, "Liar. I asked if you were the real. I asked if you'd really survived."

Quietly, he avowed, "I am. I did."

She shook her head, grinding that gun against his chest, "You didn't. You're a monster. What the hell is in your chest?"

His breathing was harsh, loud, and close. She couldn't see his face, but she didn't need to. She could see his parasite. He answered her, calmly, "I can explain."

"Can you? Really? You kill him? You kill Kennedy in Spain and take over his body? You been living in him all this time?"

She was fucking smart in a way that might get him killed here. She was paranoid, but that was to be expected with what she'd been through. But she was smart. He replied, "How can you see it?"

"Does that matter? I can. Apparently, I'm a parasite too."

He finally spoke, coolly, "...not yet. Neither am I. We're just both carrying pieces of one."

Jesus, it was a good point. Aya glanced to her right. The boiler beside her was stifling hot; steaming, offering plumes of it into the air. But the shimmering steam did what she wanted - it reflected her image back at her.

Purple.

She was purple.

Because just like Kennedy, she was some kind of monster.

Softly, Aya said, "I don't know what to believe anymore."

"Yeah, you do. You just don't like it."

In this moment, she didn't much like him either. She stared at the thing in his chest and watched it wiggle. Jesus. They were both screwed. Maybe it was better if they just sealed that door and died in this room together.

She dropped the hammer on the gun. It was so loud in the dark. A long moment passed in tense silence.

Voice cold, Leon asked, "You gonna fire that thing?"

"...I'm thinking I should kill you now. You sure I shouldn't?"

His hand slapped the wall beside them. There was a chug of sound and a spark of electricity as the lights turned on. With a pop, they could see each other again.

He kept his hands up, open, beside his face. The dead licker at their feet was seeping dirty blood on the cold stone floor. "Not like I used to be. But killing me won't solve anything."

She shook her head, "Won't it? If they can't get to you, they can't use you for whatever your purpose is. You're infected with something like I am. Whatever that is...it's something that these organs want. It matters."

That phrase when he'd met her. It played in his head like a broken record: What matters...he wasn't sure he knew anymore.

She pressed the gun harder into his sternum, "Maybe killing you is how we stop them."

"Killing me just guarantees they'll win. Even infected, I'm still their worst nightmare."

Her head shook, lightly, "You're so arrogant. How can you be sure?"

He arched a brow...and he proved it.

There was a reason he was the best in the business. One moment she was holding her gun on him, the next and he was holding that gun on her. He kicked toward her knee. To avoid it, she had to back up, just a hair. Just a touch. Just enough.

As she shifted, he swept his forearm and elbow into hers. It pushed the gun out and away, it hyperextended her arms. He dropped his elbow, hooked his other fist at her face and forced her to duck to avoid being hit, and knocked her gun right into his grip. As she rose, he caught her wrist and jerked, spilling her back to his front.

The gun in his hand pressed to the side of her temple as he mused, "You wouldn't be the first woman to try and fail, sweetheart, I promise. I don't die easy. And nobody's getting a damn thing from me that they don't take by force."

Aya considered that, leaned fully back against him and sighed, "...you feel good."

It was too fast. The change in mood too swift. He reeled, trying to find his balance, and that was entirely the goddamn thing inside of him.

Whatever her game, it worked. His nose actually slid behind her ear like he'd scent her. And she put that weird attraction to her advantage. She jerked his arm, she rolled her shoulder into his sternum, and she used his own momentum to sling him over her back. It was a good move. It was one he used himself, frequently, and proved she knew how to free herself from an armed attacker.

He let her have it. He went over her back, rolled when he hit the floor, and came up to brace his wrists against the kick she launched at him. His hands caught her leg and tugged. She was small and light - size still mattered in hand to hand- and she landed against his front as he rose. He slung her up, spun her around, and shoved her into the wall. She hit, hard enough to steal her air, and he jerked her wrist up behind her shoulder blades again to pin her.

"Agent Brea," Using her title might just remind her where they were,"...this isn't the time or the place to test my authority."

He was right. She wasn't herself. She had no excuse but that. Sheepishly, she answered, "I know. I'm sorry. I'm losing it here. My emotions...they're all over the place. I can't seem to find my feet."

With sympathy, Leon let her go. He shook his head, watching her. "That makes two of us. Trust me to know when I'm at my limit. Things get hairy, I'll run for the hills like Suzuki."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. How did you know about the parasite in me?"

Aya breathed heavily, watching the blood seep around her boot. She glanced at the licker and changed the subject, "The picture didn't do it justice."

Leon glanced down at the dead licker on the floor. It was the first time he'd bothered to look at it. In the ensuing struggle, it seemed irrelevant. But the lights cast an ugly yellow pall on the still-twitching form.

He let go of Aya in surprise and flipped her gun, handing it back to her butt first. He crouched by the form, staring at it. "...that's because I've never seen one like this."

He studied the thing at his feet with a flair of real fear.

The licker was mutated on the hindquarters, looking muscled in a way that implied it was or would be soon, able to rise up on its hind legs like a dog begging for a treat. Its bulbous brain was bleeding and twitching, but it wasn't above a sightless face...it was above a face with one growing eye. Concerned, Leon studied that one eye. It was white, looked blind and dull as if it were a corpse or a fisheye, and stared straight ahead with no iris.

But it was an eye.

The lickers were mutating. They were evolving. They would soon...be able to see.

Horrified, Leon rose. "Jesus Christ crapping on the Pope."

Aya felt her eyes flare open, "Are we bringing up things that are worse than this?"

Leon shook his head, "They're evolving."

Aya glanced down at the licker and back at his face, "What?"

He gestured, "They're evolving, Aya. If they get sight...if they can track us in the dark and the light..."

He didn't have to go on. The horror of that was beyond words. Aya shook her head, "What would cause it to evolve? Didn't the data say the virus was limited to early mutation?"

Leon shook his head, "I don't know. The only lickers I encountered were in the damn catacombs in Tall Oaks. We didn't have enough tissue samples to run full diagnostics. I don't know how the hell one is here, let alone able to mutate like this. We need to go talk to Rebecca Chambers...and Birkin."

Aya nodded, glancing around the boiler room. "Someone wanted to keep this thing contained in here. Why? Why keep it alive at all?"

He shrugged, glancing around, "To experiment on? I don't know. My concern is that this isn't the only one. In Tall Oaks, the ones I found were pack animals. They lived in colonies. I don't like finding just one...because it makes me hopeful that it's the only one...and I know better than to hope for that."

Aya slid a boot against it to roll it to its back. The licker flopped, boneless, and they looked at its chest. They both stared for a long moment before Leon remarked, "...it has breasts, right? I'm not seeing things here."

Aya glanced at his face, "You usually see tits on things that don't belong there?"

"I'm a guy," He shrugged, "And I'm a few minutes behind a set of blue balls here. So maybe I'm hallucinating them."

Since it was her fault, indirectly, for the blue balls he was experiencing, Aya took pity on him and didn't tease him. She tilted her head, "It's tits. Why? Why the hell does a monster have boobs?"

Leon sighed, shaking his head, "To help its low self-esteem?"

She gave him a narrow look as he added, "Maybe it was feeling less desirable around the other freaks. Maybe it needed a boob job to help it deal with its ugliness. Ugly duckling syndrome?"

Aya rolled her eyes, "You're not funny."

"...I'm a little funny."

"No." But she smirked, "...monsters with tits. I don't get it."

Leon tapped his boot, studying it. "Let's call the BCU clean-up crew and get them out here to bring it in. Maybe taking it apart will help us figure out the why."

He put the call in while they stood over the corpse. It seemed stupid to heavily guard a room with one licker. Who'd done it? Why had they? It was time to see Birkin and ask questions.

It was time to see Klamp and demand them.

Aya touched one of the forming tits with her toe. The nipple peaked and leaked making them both recoil in disgust. The white liquid was swirled with red as it slid down the naked skinned belly and joined the blood pooling on the floor. "Gross. What the hell?"

With a sound of distress, Leon turned in a circle, swiftly. Concerned, Aya glanced at him. "What? What is it?"

He cursed under his breath and shifted to peek behind the boiler. "Breasts. Mammary glands that release a milky substance. Why would your boobs produce liquid, Aya?"

She shrugged, watching him crouch and look under the boiler. "Infection?"

Leon shook his head as he rose and faced her, "Not just that. Not really. It grew breasts. It leaks from the nipple. Why do mammals do that?"

The horror of it dawned on her. Her hand snapped out to grip his forearm as she gasped, "...oh, god."

"Yeah. Exactly. It grew boobs...to feed it's fucking young."

She knew he was unnerved by it. His language reflected that. He wasn't a man given to dropping the F-bomb like some cops. She started moving around the dark to look with him.

Leon paced the small room, glancing up and down and pushing on stones. "Where's the babies, Aya? Where's the offspring?"

"...I don't know." She looked at the thing on the ground, "What if we're too late? What if they sealed the mother in because they were done with her?"

"Exactly. Because she'd already weened her pups."

"...gross."

"Yeah. Time to clear this place out and sanitize it." He phoned in for aid in an evacuation of the Inn. He called the front desk to get the clerk there to start the process while back up arrived.

He reached into his pocket and pulled free a pack of cigarettes. Surprised, Aya arched her brows. He shrugged as he lit one and the small flame turned his face orange, "No judgment. Sometimes? It's better than running away screaming."

He had a point.

They stood in the swirl of his cigarette smoke, and stared at the horror that meant not only was the virus mutating...something had given it the ability to reproduce.

Leon shook his head, "Wait here for the cleanup crew."

"Why?"

He passed by her toward the stairs, "Something in 304 threw things at us. I want to know why. It wanted us to find that piece and get in here. What could have done that?"

"A ghost?"

He'd quipped that himself up there. Leon shook his head, "Why not? We've seen everything else by this point."

Aya paused and said, "I have an idea. You should stay here. I should go upstairs."

Curious, he cocked his head, "Alright. Why?"

Trusting her instincts, she told him the truth, "Because I could see the parasite in you. In the dark. I could see it."

The thought lit across his face and made him, somehow, more handsome than he'd been just a moment before. Intelligence glistened like a sparkly aura around him. Damnit. Why did he have to be beautiful and smart?

Annoyed, Aya laughed at herself as Leon said, "You want to go upstairs and turn off the lights."

"That's right." Aya shifted past him on the stairs. "Maybe there's something in that room we couldn't see with the lights on."

Leon fell into step beside her as they headed up the side stairs. She arched her brows. "You want to leave a monster unattended down there?"

He lifted his hand to show the founder's emblem in it as he said, "All locked up until help arrives."

"Ah." Aya opened the door to 304 and stepped in. The room was still as they'd left it: pretty and empty. The fireplace was cold and waiting for flames. The walls were soft pastels and paper. The bed was slightly rumpled from where he'd tossed her. Ignoring the warmth in her belly, Aya turned to examine the mantle where the vase had sat.

She gestured with her head, "Could you?"

And he knew she meant to get the lights. So he did, flipping them into darkness again. The moment he did, she covered her normal eye. The other one roved the room, looking for answers. But it didn't find anything but the man beside her.

She stared at the growth in his chest for a long moment. After a drawn-out silence, Leon queried, "Anything?"

And Aya put a finger against his jacket at the breastbone. "Just what's in you. Does it hurt?"

He shook his head, trying to see her in the dark. "Not usually. Sometimes it's like someone squeezing my chest. But usually, it's nothing."

"Hmm." Aya studied the shape like it was a black light inside his frame. "It reminds me of those things in Alien."

Leon stood still as she traced the shape over his coat. "There's nothing they can do?"

He grunted a short response, "No."

Her palm laid flat against his chest, soothingly, "I'm sorry. I really am. How long?"

He shrugged and stepped away from her because the urge to touch her face in the dark and kiss her was painful. "I don't know. Could be days, might be a lifetime. They don't know. The growth has stopped, so what you see is all there is...for now."

"No side effects?"

He shrugged and moved to flip on the lights. "Not yet. The dreaming is the first really besides some indigestion. And that seems to be related to whatever is in you."

"...just me?" So soft.

And he answered, "...just you."

Shit. What did that mean?

Aya stalled him, softly, "Wait. No lights."

"Why?"

She glanced at the mirror above the fireplace. She was lit up like Leon in the dark. Her face was half darkness, half purple shimmer. She studied it for a long moment, searching for anything that might help them. There was a soft shimmer, a flash really, by the nightstand near the bed.

Aya shifted toward it, kneeling. On the floor behind the stand was a small compact like a woman would use to put on makeup. She rose, holding it, and opened the compact in the dark.

The inside was a shattered mirror that reflected her fragmented face back at her. So she said, "Ok. Lights."

He flipped them on and the broken mirror was flecked in blood. Aya looked back at the floor. Among the fibers, tiny flecks of red could be seen leading toward the wall behind the bed. She arched her brows and said, "Leon? Help me shift this bed."

He did, moving the frame with a grunt. The wall was solid - at first glance. But she knocked on it until it rang hollow. Surprised, Leon gave her a look of appreciation.

"Sherlock Holmes."

Aya laughed, lightly, and said, "You got that knife?"

He shrugged and tugged it from the pocket of his jeans. She flipped it open as he said, "Might have licker brains on it."

"I'll live," She used the knife to slice through the hollow part of the wall. It gave easily until she was able to kick the freed portion down with a single swift move...and open a passageway into the next room.

Quietly, Leon mused, "Hot damn."

Aya crouched down and ducked through the opening. He followed her, rising in a room down in a floral chintz pattern that felt very Gone with the Wind. Aya glanced around the empty room and mused, "Lights?"

He moved to flip them off.

The moment he did, she grabbed him. Surprised, he let her jerk him forward - and missed losing his head.

The thing on the wall took another mad swipe as he pushed them both to the floor. She grunted, gasping, and Leon pulled his sidearm as he tucked her against him and dragged her around the bed. Touched that he was trying to protect her, Aya let him.

But she said, "It's ok. I can see it."

In a tone of command, he urged her, "Guide me."

As the thing came for them again, she said, "Behind you - ten o'clock."

He spun. He shot. He was really quick about it. And he didn't miss. Even in the damn dark.

If he wasn't the real Kennedy - he was doing a damn fine impersonation.

The thing squealed. It fell to the floor. Aya instructed, "Six o'clock."

And he shot it again in the pitch black.

It was faster, she thought, to tell him than to pull her own gun. He blasted the scuttling thing back across the floor. It spun, smashing into the far wall. It made a chittering cricket sound as it hit.

And Aya said, "One more - 9 o'clock."

He shot it one last time as it tried to flee. The heavy round sent it rolling head over ass toward the fireplace where it finally was still. The quiet moved around them.

Sometimes silence is louder than words.

Hitting the lights, Leon said, "You're all kinds of useful."

"Me? How the hell did you do that?"

"Practice, kid. And sheer blind luck."

"Blind, my ass. You're like a bat. You have sonar?"

He shook his head, helping her to her feet. "Me? You see like one."

He had a point. It was kinda like that. Like sonar. She could see without seeing. It was on when he hit the switch. The dead thing wasn't a licker. Not really. Not exactly, but kinda. Which was almost as confusing to see as it was to think.

Leon had put a call in already to have the Inn evacuated. Hopefully, they were the last people in the place. Because the thing on the ground wasn't something a businessman from Tulsa needed to encounter while trying to get some ice.

It had the enormous ears of a bat but the sightless face of a licker. It had huge jagged teeth and no arms. It was the size of a small dog, barely bigger than a toddler in stature. But its hoven feet had nasty nails that would likely enjoy the savage fun of clawing you to death.

Aya mused, "A baby?"

"Maybe." Leon glanced around the room. "How'd it get in here?"

"Someone led it through the passage."

"...if it's here..."

They held gazes over its body. They had the same thought: if it was here...it wasn't the only one.

His phone beeped to let him know the area was secure and that the Inn had been evacuated. The containment team was en route to secure the area and prevent the spread of the hostiles.

Leon glanced at Aya and shrugged, "You want to see if we can find any more of these things? The more we take out before the containment team gets here, the better."

His eyes caught sight of a crumpled ball of paper on the floor nearly beneath the bed. Dipping down to pick it up, he queried, "...what's the likelihood this is an old gas receipt or something?"

"...about as likely as getting out of this Inn without some kind of disaster."

As if someone had cued up the music, somewhere in the hotel, someone started screaming. A few seconds after that, they smelled it - acrid, cloying, heavy and thick - smoke. Something was on fire.

What?

It didn't take long to realize it was the world. The world was on fire.