Eve of Destruction
Raccoon City, New York
December 2014–
Chapter Twenty-One:
The Time to Choose
11:09 p.m. - Lower Laboratory C- The Hive - Raccoon City Hospital
He's in the snow had morning meaning than she'd been prepared for.
Rebecca and Quint Cetcham were both the type of nerds that never tired of the basic joy of new discovery. They had had one single date when they'd first met after coming to work for the BCU. One.
Quint, as it turned out, was too nerdy even for Rebecca who had a great love of the odd and unusual.
He stood over her shoulder now with his magnification spectacles perched atop his skinny nose on a face that was often described as resembling a ferret. His balding hair, having fled his genius head when he was much too young, was graced with a contraption similar to a headlamp for assembling small parts. He used both to watch the reactions of both viral and mechanical fusion.
At the moment, they were both looking down at the mystery and miracle of science at work as the blood of two different infected souls mingling in the Petrie dish before them. Rebecca watched the strange sparkling cells split, fuse, and attack the others as if a great battle were taking place within the confines of a tiny piece of plastic. You could almost see them spark as they struck and ignited an electrical reaction.
She breathed in awe, "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?"
Quint, lacking a filter, answered, "The face of the first girl I got off as she came maybe."
Rebecca gave him a bland look and rolled her eyes. "You know what this means?"
Quint nodded, his buck teeth flashing a big grin, "Somebody is the powerhouse there, huh?"
Rebecca gave him a wolfish leer, "Oh, yeah. Quint? I think I know what's happening. What's better? I think I can stop it."
Quint patted her back hard enough she choked on the coffee she was drinking, "You're a smart cookie, Dr. Chambers. You ever want to merge our two mental giant mitochondria, you let me know. I don't like kids, but I'll make one with you anytime."
She rolled her eyes again and leaned back over the disk. Aloud, she instructed, "Go get Ryman, would ya? I think it's time to talk about the big cheese."
Quint gave her a wide-eyed look, "Who's the big cheese? The Stinky Cheese Man?"
Rebecca waited to see if he was serious. He was. It was kinda embarrassing for him. So she clarified, "The boss, you clown. I meant Leon. What's your IQ again?"
Quint giggled and snorted, hee-hawed somewhat adorably, and hurried to go find Kevin.
After he was gone, Rebecca messed with her data to see what happened when she merged DNA. It was more habit than actually expecting something to happen. When she clicked on a file from Leon from just after he'd returned from Spain, it opened his old blood work. She scanned it perfunctorily and almost closed the file with a shrug when her eyes zeroed in on the type.
AB negative.
A pretty rare blood type. That part wasn't the surprising part. She clicked on her files from the blood she'd taken a few days ago.
She clicked on her files she'd had imported from the database after Tall Oaks.
She clicked on his last physical with George Hamilton, and his first one with the good doctor in 2002 and she compared it to the blood she'd taken from him a few days before.
When Kevin came up behind her, she turned her head toward him and said, "...well...I think you better sit down for this."
It turned out? Sometimes they wore masks without evening knowing it.
11:25 p.m. - The Hive - Central Security Station
Bo loomed above the security guard like the wrath of god, "You better be kidding me right now, son. She was in a goddamn coma."
The pale faced guard shook his head. He cowered but he answered, "I don't know what happened, sir. I swear to god...she just-she-she-asked. She just asked to be let out. And I did it. I let her out. Why did I do that!?"
Bo glanced at the video feed to see Melissa Pearce walking out of a heavily guarded ward without a single person stopping her. She just...left. He shook his head, "What the hell happened here?"
From the doorway, Kevin answered, "I think the opera singer just discovered a new power."
Bo looked at him in disbelief, "Mind control!? You fucking kidding me?"
"I wish I was dude. I think you should call in the big gun."
Bo gave him a cold look, "I'm not calling him. I'll break my foot off in his ass...speaking of him...where the hell is Aya?"
Kevin stopped sucking on the Blow Pop he'd tucked into his mouth in an attempt to quit smoking and they both shared a telling look. With frustration, Kevin cursed, "...you gotta be fucking kidding me!"
Bo answered, "I will shove his head so far up his own ass, he has to wear himself as a hat."
That made Kevin snort as he turned and grabbed one of the guards in the hallway, "Lock this goddamn place down. Secure those comatose patients upstairs in a secure unmonitored room. Cameras only, no guards inside the room. You hear me?"
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."
"And somebody get over to Riker's Island and check on Birkin!"
Bo gave him a narrow look as he went for the elevator. "Where you goin?"
"...to put his ass back on the wagon. Hold down the fort here, would ya?"
The elevator doors pinged shut as Kevin muttered darkly under his breath. Idiot. The damage was probably already done.
Somewhere in the snow...
Fear seized in her chest. It hurt like she was dying. She stood with her back to the column and listened. In the snow, footsteps crunched.
Close.
Too close.
The gun in her hands was cold. Her breath fogged out. It was white and bright somehow. The person came around the column and she grabbed their hand. She jerked, they flew forward and landed on their hands and knees, and she put the gun on them before they could turn and rise.
"Turn..slowly...now."
It wasn't her voice.
It wasn't her voice at all.
It was...Leon's.
The person on the ground turned, slowly as commanded, and she caught the reflection of Leon's face...in her own eyes.
Before she could speak, her doppelganger did. "...it's me. It's me. Don't. Please."
And Leon's mouth returned, "...there's no mercy in me for you."
Trapped in his body, Aya felt the panic. She tried to stop him. She tried, but she had no control. She was just visiting. She was just seeing. She couldn't stop anything.
He pulled the trigger on her. It echoed. The bloody hole in her forehead spilled red to the white snow beneath her as she walked in Leon's body over to stand above her corpse. The face reflected back in her empty doll like eyes was his - sorta- but it was empty. So empty. Who was he? She tried to see the man she knew in the stranger before her.
He lifted the gun on her body and pulled trigger again to guarantee she was dead.
11:09 p.m. - Kennedy Residence - Master Bedroom
She awoke with a gasp. She sat straight up in bed. The sheet tumbled around her breasts and left them pale sweaty in the moonlight. Her hand slapped to her chest to feel the thunder of her heart.
Alive.
She was alive.
She was...human.
But for how long? How much of what she saw was real? How much of what she saw was past? How much was future? Did she glimpse the future to stop it? Could she?
Eventually, the others would awaken. Could she protect him from them when the time came? Could she...if she stayed asleep? Was the dream telling her she'd lose him to whatever was in him if she didn't hold on?
Aya rolled to find Leon asleep on his belly beside her. Her hands touched the thick rope of scars that streaked down his lower back onto his left buttock. What had caused it? It looked like claws. Something had tried to slice him open.
He'd survived so much. Would this thing inside of him be the end? Would it lead him, like a pied piper, to death while the music played?
She had to tell him. He had to know. They would all awaken. They would all come for him. He was the key. She might be the gun...but he was the bullet. How could she protect him? What would it take?
Her hand slid down his back and she whispered, "Leon? Are you awake? I need to a-"
He caught her wrist and jerked. The covers spilled as she let him. He reacted like a warrior wakened by the enemy. His hands bound hers over her head. He kicked her feet apart and held her down. It was a handful of seconds.
His harsh breathing was loud in the quiet night. Her pulse thudded roughly to match his. They held eyes from inches away. They'd kill him when they were done with him. They'd use him up and destroy him.
The man with the dog who ate pizza. The man who wrote music and mourned family that had died decades before. The man who was a legend looking for peace after a lifetime of war. The man still holding on to hope in the middle of the madness. The man that joked when he was hurting and held you when you were scared. The man...she was in love with.
She'd given over her body and lost her heart with it. She was in love with him. What good was it? She was the girl in love with the legend after a handful of days.
What would she do to stop them?...no...what wouldn't she do?
His eyes were pale silver above her. The blonde of his hair blended against hers where it touched on her face. Shades darker, it made hers look white by comparison. She wanted to stroke her thumbs over his eyebrows. She wanted to feel the pulse in his throat speed up when he touched her.
She wanted him to look at her like she was more than a thing in his world out to use him.
He could feel her breasts against his chest rising with her shallow breathing. He could feel the line of her abdomen against his. He could see the sympathy and hurt in her eyes for him. Her face was pale and beautiful in the shimmering shadows.
He didn't see Sherry when he looked at her. He didn't see Ada. He couldn't see anything but her. He wanted to know what she'd feel like around him. He needed to know what it would be like to be inside her.
She whispered, "...I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I shouldn't have -"
He put his hand over her mouth to silence her. When she was still, he reached over to grasp at the nightstand and the over turned box. Her heart sped up. The package crinkled.
Her thighs trembled into the pregnant silence. The thing in his chest was...undulating? It was in there just having some kind of party or something. She knew, without him saying a word, that it was snapping at the tenuous tether of his control to ride his body like a demon he couldn't exorcise.
The glimpse of moonlight and shadow on his face showed the tightness of his jaw. The tremor in his hands as he simply held the condom made them both aware that he was nervous. Nervous and angry and...what? Why was he always so angry to want her? Would it never end?
Aya kept her hands where he held her. She didn't resist. Hadn't he figured that out yet? She wasn't going to resist him. She didn't want to hurt him.
She didn't want him angry at the attraction between them.
Her voice cracked a little as she whispered, "...why are you so mad when you look at me?"
He couldn't answer. He didn't know. He'd awoken again with that burning hunger for her. It hurt him, almost physically, to crave her like this.
She whispered, "Is it me? Or what's in you?"
It was her. That was the problem. It was her. He needed her out of his system. He only knew one way to do that. He didn't know how else to free himself. What did they say? Free yourself.
Maybe this is what his body had needed all along.
His hands curled around her throat. Her eyes flared. He told her, "Grab my face."
She did.
Hoarsely, he told her, "...I'm sorry."
Why? She started to ask-
And he shoved into her. Bare. Desperate. Aya gasped and arched toward him. She was so warm and snug that he was fairly sure he'd only last a moment anyway. With feeling, he grunted, "...shit. Don't move."
He lifted his ass to pull out. Her body squeezed him like she'd keep him there inside her. He was shaking like he'd run ten miles in high altitude. He snapped his hips and surged back into her, hard.
She keened. Her body resisted. Almost instantly. He couldn't blame it. He'd slapped forcefully down into her. He couldn't be easy. He just couldn't. He told her hoarsely again, like a man drowning or something, "...I'm sorry. You can hit me- if you want...but I can't."
Can't what? She was trembling with need for him. She was full of him - in all ways. She was aching for the pain on his face. Why would she hit him?
But he showed her.
Without waiting, he pumped deep and hard into her. Not delicate. Rough. Her legs tried to open wider and take him. He was so hard the bed creaked and jumped. It hit the pleasure and pain centers in her body and smashed them together. It hurt. It felt amazing.
She slapped his face against the pain and gripped his ear with the other hand to kiss him hard and hungry. His hands slid down and jerked her hips up at an angle. The pleasure and the pain finally stopped fighting. It was just pain now. Too sharp. Too hard. Too deep.
Aya's hands dropped to shove on his chest as she gasped high and loud, "-yes!"
But it didn't matter. She came. One minute, great pain and ache, the next the most intense orgasm she'd ever had. She screamed into his mouth with it. He swallowed that and kissed her, claiming her body and her mouth together.
His left hand curled around the base of her throat to hold her humping body down. He threw the covers off him and his other hand jerked her head back by her hair to kiss her. While she almost sobbed with need, he told her, "...touch me. Now -Aya."
And she did that too. She put her hands on his back, grabbed a fistful of muscle and had him spurring on like she'd whipped him into motion. Too hard. Too much. The tears on her face excited him. Pain? Pleasure. Her open mouth and humping hips to meet him said both. Both. Like his for her. He wanted to drop his mouth and bite her neck like a vampire or something.
He could already smell the copper in her and then he realized she'd clawed her own arm to try to get some release from the pressure in herself. He understood it. He needed it. He was dying for it.
He started to slow down and let her recover, but her pelvis lifted and smacked into him to make him grunt.
And then she cried, "Don't stop!"
Her left hand caught the side of his neck and the top of his shoulder with her nails. The grasping pain hit the greedy pleasure and burst all over them both.
She slapped his face again and he laughed darkly. The hand on her throat tightened. Hers on his back gripped so hard it flashed warnings of too much around him. Her mouth opened on a string of filthy words shouted in a hoarse battle cry. She thrust up to take him as hard as he threw it down to her.
He scented his blood and hers and he just..gave up. Her cumming body seized around him and he answered it. He hammered her through it as he filled her up. It felt like he blew a nut doing it. But it was good. It was great. It was what he'd needed all along.
His body needed him to fuck her like he was trying to impregnate her. He'd known it. He'd known it all along, but the thing in him was suddenly, intensely, completely silent. Curled in his chest like a contented kitten purring and sleeping.
He kissed her while she opened completely for him. He'd used her. He was an asshole. To soothe them both, he eased his softening length in and out of her. They both liked it. She kissed him impossibly slow and deep.
Their hands wove their fingers together for a moment above her head. He rolled his hips to give her the feel of him bare inside her. They kiss so wetly that it made her tremble. Her liked her shaking. She was twitching and gasping with it. His lips slid down her jaw and kissed over her slamming heart.
After a long moment, he murmured, "I'm sorry...what did you need?"
At the moment, she couldn't remember. He let go of her hands and they slid down his shoulders and stroked his back. Her thighs trembled as she let the comfort of his weight atop her soothe away the dream.
It mattered? What she dreamed...it was important...right?
It was the first real time they'd let go enough to really surrender to whatever it was that bound them. The raunchy, filthy, desperate coupling had sated it completely. She was jerking a little in his arms and he was twitching atop her, but it was like surviving a hand on a live wire while standing in a rainstorm. They both felt elated and alive.
Complete.
She started to tell him about the dream and the house was no longer quiet. They listened to the footsteps with their eyes latched together. His left hand grabbed the blanket to fling it back across them and Leon reached for his gun still atop her.
Kevin just let himself in. That was the gift of having a key to someone's place. You could come and go as you please. Rebecca's words were still ringing in his ears. He just didn't know what to do about it.
He let himself in, let Dante out when the dog greeted him by spinning circles three times and went straight to the bedroom.
It was worse than he'd thought. They weren't in mid-fuck, they were post fuck, mid-cuddle. He wasn't just late - it was over. The battle was done. Angry, Kevin kicked the bed.
"Get up!"
In fairness, he should have expected that even mid-cuddle, the other man wasn't without his faculties. From beneath the cover, Leon told him, "You came really close to having your balls blown out your back before you even kicked my bed. Now? I think I'm about to do it anyway."
The cover shifted enough that Kevin knew Leon had a gun aimed at him beneath them. Impressive. Apparently, the former rookie slept with a gun strapped to his bed.
Curious, Kevin asked, "Where'd you strap it? Underneath?"
Leon shifted until he could sit up and click the safety. "Too far. The wall behind the headboard."
"...nice."
"Thanks. What do you want?"
It was even more curious that he shifted those blankets around Aya as she moved. He kept her covered, like a gentleman, until she was able to rise up on the side of the bed with the blanket around her.
Naked, Leon shifted toward his dresser.
"Well, first off - shame on you both. Apparently, I should have put a chastity belt on one of you to avoid this happening...what the fuck happened to your neck?!"
Leon gave him a dirty look as he pulled on some boxers. "None ya business. We talked to Rebecca. She gave us a green light. For your information? It works. When we..." He searched for the right word.
Aya filled one in, "Copulate?"
"Sure. Yeah. Copulate. When we copulate, it seems to settle down whatever's inside of us."
Kevin rolled his eyes, "Copulate is a nerd word. The right word is pork. When you pork, you feel better? You're kidding!" The sarcasm was thick, "Bumpin uglies makes you clear headed? Why haven't I tried that? It's revolutionary! You feel that way when you were sixteen fucking your first girl, pal? I sure didn't."
Aya rolled her eyes, "What do you want, Kevin?"
"I wouldn't say no to a glimpse at your boobs, but I am a guy so sue me. But second to that, why you two were copulating," He held up his fingers to air quote, "Melissa Pearce pulled a brain meld on security and everyone else and walked right the fuck outta the hospital."
Leon shook his head, muttered a curse, and tugged a gray sweater on over the white t-shirt he donned. "Anyone get hurt?"
"Not so far. She just poofed their brains and left."
"Damn. Alright," Leon gestured with his head so they could step out of the bedroom and Aya could change, "Let's get someone over to Riker's to check on B-"
"Done. And the coma patients are contained. But she's going to Birkin, right? She's answering some kind of call to arms."
"I don't know. Maybe." They moved into the living room so Leon could throw on his coat. The smooth brown leather sighed happily. "Any luck on locating her?"
"You kidding? You ever hear of the needle in the haystack? This is the needle in the needle stack. There's over eight million people in this city, Leon. We don't even know where to start looking."
From the bedroom, Aya emerged in jeans and Leon's RPD shirt. She picked up her coat to slip it on over the shirt and added, "I might. She'd go to ground, right? She'd want someplace safe to gestate. If the Museum is out...where else would she go?"
They both gave her blank looks and she answered, "Her Dad worked at the university right? In a city where you need weird emblems to get into places. Best bet? She's there. And if not? It might tell us where to find her."
Leon nodded and started to say they should heard there when Kevin's phone started ringing. Kevin answered it, switched it to speaker, and Bo's voice echoed out of it.
"Social Media just blew up. Guess who's havin herself an impromptu concert at the zoo?"
Surprised, Aya asked, "Melissa? Why?"
"Who knows? She crazy as a shithouse rat, girl. I'm on my way there to stop her."
Horror spread between her and Leon as she gasped, "Bo! No! Are you crazy?! You're not immune. She'll immolate you!"
"Not if I kill her first. Ben was there, Aya. He was there with Lorraine. He was there. I can't sit by and do nuthin. You know that."
Leon answered that in a commanding tone, "Don't be stupid, Bo. You can help him if you're dead. I order you to stand down and go back to the RPD."
"With all due respect, I don't take orders from men who fuck their subordinates. So I think you can save us both the commander and chief act. You keep fucking my girl and let the rest of us handle the mess though, ok? Let me know when you're ready to do the job they hired you for...sir."
He hung up.
Aya ran for the door shouting, "I'll go after him! Get to the university and start looking for Birkin!"
Kevin tried to stop her, calling, "We should go with you! What if w-"
Aya leaped into the SUV parked beside Kevin's in the driveway, "No! You're like Bo. You aren't safe...but he is." She paused, her eyes volleyed over Leon's face and she added, "...protect him."
The engine gunned as she slammed the door and whipped the vehicle around to race into the dark.
There were so many things that needed said here. And never the right time to say any of them.
Quietly, Kevin wondered, "How much you wanna bet she wasn't talking about me?"
Leon shook his head and brought Dante in before locking up the house. They moved to Kevin's SUV as Leon put in a call to attempt to evacuate the zoo. For what good it would do.
As the car zipped down the shadowed highway, Kevin finally asked, "You know what you're doing here, man? I mean, seriously, you thought this through?"
Leon shook his head in the flashes of headlights from oncoming vehicles, "Of course not. There's no way to think something like this through, Kevin. I can't focus when I think about her. I can't even breathe. The only way it stops...is when I'm inside her. I'd like to blame the goddamn thing in me, but I'd be a liar. It's me. It started out something else, but it's me now. I'm starting to need her."
Kevin shook his head with a dry laugh, "Part of me is kinda envious of that man."
Surprised, Leon glanced at him and back at the road, "What the hell for? It's crippling."
"Is it? You seem ok to me. She seems ok too. The thing I see? You two seem to be better together than you ever were apart."
Leon shook his head and Kevin added, "I've never felt anything like that for a girl...ever. What's it feel like?"
Leon laughed dryly, "Like being afraid of jumping out an airplane without a parachute."
Kevin snorted and shrugged, "So not great?"
"Not great, but exhilarating as all hell." Leon agreed and they both chuckled a little.
"...what about Ada?"
Leon glanced at him and again and shrugged, "That's more complicated than I thought. You ready to enter the world of survival horror? You will not believe what we found out."
By the time he broke it all down, Kevin looked like a deer in the headlights. He blinked, was silent, and blinked again. "...Birkin has how many kids?"
Leon shrugged, "We don't know. We don't know anything yet. Most of it's speculation. But it makes sense, right? All of it? It clicks."
"In a gross six degrees of Kevin Bacon kinda way...yeah."
"Has Ada been playing me my whole life?"
With sympathy, Kevin shrugged, "I don't know the answer to that, dude. But I think you do, or you wouldn't be asking."
Annoyed, Leon rolled the SUV into the parking lot of Raccoon University. "...I wanted to be a cop, man. Just a cop. One of the good guys...when did I become a puppet?"
Kevin put a hand on his shoulder, comforting him, "You know the good thing about puppets, boss?"
Leon shrugged, arching a brow, "They're made of wood?"
Kevin snorted and shuddered, "One - gross. Two - super gross...but I'm kinda jealous of you. And three - puppets have strings, Leon. Strings can be cut. Let's find you some scissors and start snipping."