Regeneration
Chapter 9: Shock
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Leon Kennedy
I was sitting at an oak table in a rather comfortable chair, across from Ashley Graham, who was wearing a blue shirt and had her hair, which was much longer than I remember it, down to her elbows, I think, in a ponytail. There was a plate of steak in front of me, and pork chops in front of her. It was all very cozy.
"So how has President Cole been treating you?" she asked.
"Cautiously." I said. "He's aware of what happened in Tall Oaks, and that I was involved in it."
"Surely he doesn't think you had any part in it?"
"No." I said carefully. I didn't think I wanted to discuss Helena and Ada and Tall Oaks and President Bendord with Ashley. Or anyone, for that matter.
"Good, I would hope nobody would distrust someone in a manner like that. So why is he 'cautious' about you?"
"Honestly?" I said, chewing my steak. "I think I intimidate him."
"Get out of here! The President is intimidated by you? He doesn't think you're a jinxed employee, does he?" Ashley said, laughing.
"I wouldn't put it past him." I said, a smile growing on my face. "Sometimes I wonder if that's a fact."
Ashley had to stop eating for a second to calm her laughter. "Okay, okay, so I'm glad your work is going well."
"Thank you." I said politely. "And yours?"
"Thankfully, some people come to the bank in the winter. We were closed for about a week until people were just about kicking down the doors. So we finally let them in and started paying for extra heating."
"Great." I said. "You like your job?"
"Very much. Most people never realized it, but I have a real head for numbers."
"Always good." I said. "No one's tried to kidnap you or infect you in the past few years, right?"
"No, but a few guys did mistake me for someone a little less helpless." She said, a grin growing on her face. I was horrified.
"Someone attacked you?"
"No no, Leon," she said hurriedly "I just meant that they tried some pretty cheap pickups on me. And since 2004, I've heightened my standards a bit." She said.
"Ah. Almost scared me for a sec there."
"Believe me, if I'd been attacked, you'd have heard about it. I'm covered by Secret Service agents, as you noticed. I even thought about bringing on your friend Helena. Plus, Dad insisted I take about a dozen self-defense classes."
"Seriously?"
"Yep." Ashley said, chewing her pork. "I'm always ready for half-zombie men to kidnap me at all times." she said. I burst out laughing, almost choking on my steak. "Easy there, Leon." she said.
This wasn't too bad. She'd grown up a lot.
Piers Nivans
Water was everywhere. It was all around me, drowning me. I wanted to die, but couldn't. All I could do was sit there, floating along, while my lungs screamed and begged for oxygen. I struggled, looking for light, for the surface, but everywhere was dark. Then the dark blue turned to black.
Slowly, my lungs stopped screaming. I opened my mouth, but still saw nothing around me. After a while, the complete nothingness started to get disorienting. I couldn't tell which was was left, right, back, forward, up, down, diagonal...what was I even standing on? I looked around me, finally spotting something of substance. It was a mirror, about twelve feet away...maybe? I couldn't judge distance anymore. I walked toward it, my feet thankfully finding solid ground. When I was in front of it, I stared into it curiously.
The face on the other side was me...and also not me. The right half looked like me...but the left half looked like Chris. It was strange, seeing our two faces melded together like that. As I peered into it, the face changed. The right half grew gray, and green, and infected. The right eye went milky white and blind. As I watched, the infection halted at the midpoint of my...his...our face. Then, it slowly started to spread. The face in the mirror began to shed tears as the part of me that was Chris was overcome, and infected.
Then the face changed again. It was neither mine, nor Chris's. It was...white, and strange. At first there was only a head, with no distinct face. But then, a muscled torso, with strange, mutated arms began to show through. Weird...it looked like the arms were made our of human torsos...that would explain the four different forearms and hands I was seeing. The head, which was closer to the mirror than mine, suddenly burst into a rage, and the face showed through. It was a skull-like face, determined to rip me apart or eat me. It was Haos. It was Chaos.
Haos began to grab and claw at the edges of the mirror, trying to get to my side...wait, it wasn't a mirror, it was glass. And the blackness around me was gone, to be replaced by...by the inside of a shuttle. The shuttle I had launched Chris on. This was what Chris had seen just after I'd said goodbye. Just before I'd died.
And then, blinding whiteness. I didn't know why or how, but everything was gone, and I was in pain. Terrible, blinding, surging pain. I could feel my body vibrating from the shock, the electricity flowing through my body. I opened my eyes, but still couldn't see. The pain was killing me.
I flew up out of bed, the pain forcing my back into an arch. I struggled with my sheets, screaming bloody murder, and probably swear words. It didn't matter, I just wanted the pain to stop. Before I could figure out which direction was where, I had fallen off of the bed, hitting my head hard on the bedside table. The pain stopped, if only for an instant, but then came back.
I wanted to scream for help, for someone to knock me out. I cradled my arm, knowing that was where the pain was coming from. With what I could muster, my vision flickering between whiteness and the floor of my room, I forced myself to stand. Immediately, the pain grew more pronounced in my legs. It was worse than any muscle spasm I'd ever had. I reached around blindly, trying to find the phone. I grabbed it off the receiver with my left hand, punching my speed dial for the one person who might could help me to the doctor at this hour. The phone emitted sparks from the cord and the sound holes, and the ringing was skewed and haywire.
Then, a respite. I knew I only had a few more seconds before the next attack, and I was grateful to hear the phone pick up. Hearing Chris say "Piers?" kept me standing.
"C-C-Chr..." I mustered, my jaw shuddering and preventing me from forming words. I tried to say 'help', but it wouldn't come. "H-H-h, h-h-h-, hhhnnn, hnnggg..."
"Piers? Buddy, what's the matter? Fuck, man, do you need me to come up there?"
Then my arm exploded in white sparks. Electricity, combined with the burning pain, returned. I collapsed, screaming. I couldn't tell if the phone was still working.
"Piers? Piers?! PIERS, ANSWER ME!"
Chris Redfield
It took way too long to get to Piers' quarters. By the time I got there, I was ready to kick the door in, and that's exactly what happened. I ran through to Piers' bedroom, and what I saw shocked me.
Piers was curled up, naked, next to his bed, sheets tangled around him and twitching. The phone was dangling, dead, from the bedside table. I could smell smoke, and saw that not only was Piers' hair singed, the rest of his body had smoke curling up from it. And his arm...his arm hadn't looked like that the last time I'd seen it. In fact, that was about what it had looked like weeks ago. "Piers?!" I said, kneeling next to him. He didn't answer.
"Piers, I'm gonna get you to the infirmary, okay?" I said, reaching over to pick him up. I withdrew my arm sharply, having been zapped. I got over it, and forced myself to pick him up. It hurt, but I got past that.
Piers needed medical attention now.
Piers Nivans
I woke up feeling warm. Opening my eyes, I realized I was laying on my back, looking up. I winced from the bright light overhead, and tried to sit up, but that hurt like hell. "Easy there, Piers." I heard, a hand pushing me back down. I looked over to see that both the arm and voice belonged to Chris Redfield. "C-Chris?" I asked weakly. Suddenly, I realized I was still mostly naked; the only thing covering me was a thick red cloth attached to the bed I was on from the waist down. I felt self-conscious and looked away from him.
"What the hell happened to me?" I asked. "Your guess is as good as mine." I heard Chris say. "I got your call, and you started yelling, and I rushed over there...you looked pretty bad."
I raised my hand to my hair. Dammit. I could feel my hair, still in a forward spike, but singed and burned. "Fuck..." I whispered under my breath. As I took my hand away from my hair, I noticed which hand it was. Then I noticed what was wrong with it. I sat up again, and yelped. "How did it get like that?! It wasn't like this before!"
My right arm was a mimic of what it had been back in early November, maybe even October. Green, bulging, tentacle claws where my hand was supposed to be. I could feel the electricity flowing up and down it again. As I looked at it, I felt a pang of not only horror, but disappointment. All the recovery progress I had made over the past month, wiped out in a single night.
"The doctors say it's the virus again." I heard a female voice on my left say. I turned in that direction, being greeted with the sight of Jill Valentine, the other co-founder of the B.S.A.A. "Jill?" I asked.
"Yep. They say the virus came back, stronger than before. They've been pumping the antivirus into you for a while, but it's not working like it used to. They think it must have adapted."
"Wha—but...but, they'll be able to fix it, right?" I asked desperately, cradling my right arm. Jill nodded. "They say it'll take time, but with work, they can adapt the cure as well and counteract this."
I looked down. A doctor came bustling over. "And we'll need to keep you here through the night, at least. That virus came back far more dangerously than we could have expected."
"We should have expected something like this." one of the nurses commented. "You almost went into shock for a while. It's a wonder that electrical surge didn't kill you. We're still trying to find out what caused the attack from your arm." she said mournfully.
"If this happens again, then we may not be able to manufacture an all-round cure any quicker. You know that right?" Jill reminded the two. They nodded solemnly. "We'll work 24/7 if we have to, Miss Valentine." the lady said, then they both rushed off. "Piers, I have to go now, but we're gonna keep working until you're well again, you hear me?" she said. I just nodded. "I'll check up on you later." she said, then walked off. Chris was oddly silent. I still felt his hand on my shoulder. My infected shoulder. I fought back tears. After a few seconds, I cast around for something to say. "What time is it?" I asked.
"Four thirty in the morning." one of the nurses said as she rushed past. I groaned, sitting back on my bed.
"Chris?"
"Mmm?"
"Will I still be able to get back into the war in three months?" I said, afraid to hear the answer. I looked up into Chris's eyes. He looked back at me, and his face didn't say good things. "They...can't tell this early."
It didn't matter. It might as well have been a flat out no. I closed my eyes, tight, seriously forcing back tears at this point. "Chris?"
"Yeah Piers?"
"Can you make everyone leave?"
"These doctors need to work on you, Piers." Chris said somberly.
"Not for a long time. Just for a little while." I asked, looking up at him. I couldn't hold it back anymore, the tears were streaming down my face.
"Piers..." Chris tried.
"Please..." I said, shutting my eyes tight. "It hurts...it hurts so much..." I said weakly. I couldn't even figure out what it was that was hurting me so bad, the pain from the viral attack, the notion that I would be forbidden from serving under Chris in the war for any longer, or the absolute shame of crying in front of my Captain. It was a mixture of all three.
I think the last one hurt the most, though.
"...Alright Piers." Chris said. "Hey. Everyone out for a little while." he said. I heard protests from the doctors, but Chris asserted himself. "OUT." he said firmly. Not another word was spoken, and I heard people leaving.
"Did you want me to stay?" he asked.
"Please, Chris. Don't leave." I said, shutting my eyes tightly. I pulled the red sheet up over me. "I won't." I heard Chris say. I heard him take a seat next to my bed.
This Christmas was going to be hard.
Leon Kennedy
Ashley and I were discussing the war when my cell phone rang. "Excuse me." I said politely. She nodded and I answered it. "Leon?" I heard.
"Who is this?" I asked.
"It's Jill Valentine, you idiot!" she said.
"Oh, right, my bad." I realized.
"Listen, Piers is getting worse." she said. At least, that's what I thought she said. "Hold on, worse? I thought he was doing great!" I said. I could see Ashley looking at me tentatively. "He was, but the virus mutated and messed him up pretty bad. Could you come over here? Or maybe send someone over?"
"Well, jeez Jill, I'd like to, but..."
"What's the matter?" Ashley and Jill said at the same time. I covered the phone with my hand. "Piers Nivans is suffering from the virus in some new way. They want me to go to..."
"You don't have to tell me where. You can go, just give Mr. Nivans my regards." Ashley said immediately. "Are you sure?" I asked. She nodded. From the phone, I head Jill say "Come on, Leon, you've seen things from the C-Virus we might not have. Your knowledge could help us. And Piers." She said.
"Alright, I'll ask President Cole if I can leave. No promises, though." I said.
"Thanks, Leon." Jill said, then hung up. I closed my phone. "Sorry for cutting this short, Ashley." I apologized. "It's nothing." she said. "You go talk to President Cole and try to get him to let you go...wherever it is you need to go."
"Okay. Maybe I'll see you soon."
"Within the month, remember?"
"Oh right." I said. Then I took my leave.
Piers Nivans
They had turned the lights off. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see the dark shape of Chris sitting next to my bed. His hand was still on my shoulder, where I wished it would stay. I didn't know what time it was, so I didn't know how much time had passed, but I hadn't slept yet. I had finally stopped sniffling a few minutes ago, but that didn't make me feel any better.
"Chris?" I asked for the third time.
"Yeah Piers?"
"Am I weak?"
"No, Piers. You have never been weak, you're not weak now."
"Chris...I was stupid, though."
"What do you mean?"
"This is my own fault I'm like this. I injected myself, this is my price."
"Don't talk like that. You did what you had to. For the B.S.A.A."
"I deserve this."
"You don't."
"I..."
"Piers, stop beating yourself up over this, you've done nothing to deserve it. That's an order, soldier."
My breath caught in my throat. I knew those words were serious.
I concentrated on Chris's arm on my body. It told me that he cared. And out of anyone in the world right now, I wanted Chris Redfield to care. I should probably have been ashamed of that fact, or at least thought more about it, but I didn't.
