A/N: Inspired by evolution-500's Heir to the Throne.

Here Be Monsters

Part One:

The Devil's Legacy

Chapter 1:

Rebecca's Lament

1998

A curl of smoke snaked around an aquiline nose topped by a perfect face and two very blue eyes. "Leave it exactly as I've written."

The man in the suit shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. There was something in that direct gaze that left you simultaneously terrified that you felt elated for the individual attention. He nodded brusquely and suggested, "Should I alert the recipient to it's location?"

"...no. Leave it exactly as I've written."

The lawyer nodded again and typed up the final piece of the will. He offered it to the man in black sitting at the desk before him. Blue eyes perused the copy, brow quirked, lips pursed. Finally, the blonde nodded and offered it back, "Follow the letter of the first part to imparting the knowledge to her. Do you understand? No one else. It is to be handed directly to the girl."

The lawyer bobbed his head sharply, "Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Should I include a personal note?"

The blonde considered this and returned, "...tell her the answers she seeks can be found when the music stops."

The lawyer worried his lip and didn't ask the obvious explanation of that cryptic remark. He simply tucked all the papers into a file, secured them inside of a case with a lock, and offered it to the other man to impress his fingerprint. Bio-metrics would protect the case from anyone without the right DNA. It was encoded with the highest level of security available.

It seemed, honestly, a little unnecessary for a simple will and execution of estate, but he'd had more eccentric clients in his time than this man. When you worked with criminals and those of ill repute, you gained a little knowledge of the weird and unusual. The man in question wasn't even the oddest duck to ever grace his doorstep.

He rose now and the lawyer kept the case. As he moved for the door, the lawyer confirmed, "I will have it secured as you instructed."

"Good." The blonde hesitated and finally finished, "Tell her to look for her truth."

"Her truth?"

"She'll know what I mean."

The door clicked shut.

An odd man, mused the lawyer, but the rich and eccentric often were.

He set the case on the floor and forgot about it.

He had no way of knowing that the fate of the world was written on nothing more than twenty six pages.

2009

Her hands were shaking on the glass she lifted to her mouth. This was it. It was her moment. It was her final chance to prove she was more than a lab rat or a medic or a second string survivor.

It was her chance to shine.

She was terrified. She wasn't some rabbit! She wasn't going to run or wait for someone to save her or hide out in the shadows. She was a fighter! She was tough! She was strong and capable and determined!

She could handle anything!

The voice of her professor announced her as their guest lecturer. Her heart tumbled into her tummy and made her dizzy. She was about to vomit and make a liar out of all her healthy affirmations.

Instead, she channeled bravery and stepped out into the hot spotlight.

Her file touched the podium and her mind pictured all of the people in the audience in their underwear. It helped, as much as it was a crutch, and made it easier to start speaking. She did, her voice squeaky but determined, "Bioterrorism is a global threat."

She clicked and behind her the screen aroused with a terrible display of a village over run with the T-Virus - Harvardville: the site of a detrimental terror attack that had ended nearly fifteen thousand people.

She spoke about the lack of a vaccination for them. She spoke about politics preventing on site emergency distribution of the vaccine. She spoke about the need to be able to provide not just a preventative, but a cure. She referenced Curtis Miller - a man who'd used the death of many as a means to propel him to attempt to steal a G-Virus sample and make those responsible pay. An activist turned zealot, she told her captive audience, who'd later injected himself as a means of bringing the truth to the world.

She informed them, "He slaughtered nearly forty troops during the ensuing battle. No one, you see, was educated on how to fight a G-specimen."

A voice piped in, "No one?"

"No one. It was the collapse of the facility that fortuitously facilitated his demise. Otherwise? He'd have walked out and been among us even now. Soldiers aren't trained, you understand, for battles against bio organic weapons."

Squinting into the bright light, Rebecca returned, "The Golgotha Virus was said to have been eradicated with the fall of Raccoon City. The only living specimen died with William Birkin, but speculation provides that several other samples may have escaped before sanitation. These were pedaled, it seems, on the black market by arms dealers looking for viral weaponry."

A voice sounded again, "Any way to track the purchases?"

Rebecca shook her head, "That's already been handled on a SOCOM level. It's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the need for exposure in training for bio organic weapons...or B.O.W.S."

"...is there no one whose fought one and survived?"

Rebecca cleared her throat, "Few, but enough that they've done what they can. The Bio Security and Assessment Alliance, or the BSAA, and the sub division of USSTRATCOM work in tandem to attempt to corral and prevent outbreaks. Combined with efforts by relief organizations like TerraSave, there's some movement on the front of helping after exposure...but we need to stop it on the front line. We need to vaccinate, educate, and inoculate herds of humans to avoid outbreaks."

There was a murmuring in the crowd as Rebecca went into talking about vaccines and the production of a cure. She showed DNA strands and data, she went over the outlying factors of exposures limited by amputation and the spread of the virus from airborne to inhalation to direct contact. She talked about the use of personal protection equipment when handling samples and the rare possibility of a less than one percent immunity.

"With all the good fortune in the world, we still know we can't stop it in countries that can't even inoculate against Tetanus let alone T-Virus. So we have to begin to work together to train men to fight in a post exposure situation. Chris Redfield with the BSAA organizes training sessions for those looking to join the fight. He does what he can, but we need more. We need more men, more heavily trained combatants, and we need them now. If we can inoculate them, we can then teach them to survive. It's a simple truth that a specimen carrying T or G in their blood is mutated to possess strength that is well beyond human limitations."

A murmur of the crowd again and someone called, "You saying you want us to fight...what? Monsters? You want me to pick up a gun and go toe to toe with something like that?"

Birkin's G form was on the screen behind her now. Rebecca, aware she was losing the crowd now to fear, called back, "It's-I can't...it's not nearly this bad. Most specimens are simply necrotic human corpses amplified by simple response mechanisms in the brain."

Another person bellowed, "...wait...what? You saying they're zombies!?"

Jesus.

She was floundering here. She wasn't handling this at all. She was a goddamn scientist, not a public speaker! Rebecca returned, "They're slow! They're stupid! They're easily contained and eliminated! Avoiding their bite is just a matter of disabling the brain!"

"You want us to fist fight zombies!?"

"It-it's easier than it sounds!" Her voice squeaked.

Someone shouted, "You crazy lady?! You want me to try to get close enough to shank a drooling dead guy in the brain!?"

Rebecca started to answer and a voice called out, "Nope. We want you to shoot them in the goddamn head."

Rebecca shielded her eyes as the crowd parted to allow the person crossing to the stage. She waited, eyes wide, as Leon Kennedy leaped onto the stage to join her. She'd never met him, of course, but you didn't swing a syringe in their business without seeing his face on reports. She'd lied apparently, there was someone who'd fought G Specimens and survived. It was him and Claire Redfield.

Claire didn't battle anymore, but Kennedy did. He was in the thick of it. He was the poster boy for bio warfare.

When Rebecca went to greet him, he laid a hand on her shoulder and made her fall silent as he addressed the crowd. "By the way you're all bustling, I know you know who I am but for the record I'm Leon S. Kennedy. I'm the only man on Earth whose trained to fight G-Specimens in a single person combat situation. They sent me to back up Dr. Chambers on her education and request for participants in a new program designed to prepare agents for battle against things bigger than a man."

A voice requested, "You gonna show us how to kill shit that can rip our heads off?"

Leon laughed, lightly, "Absolutely. You think I stand there and trade blows with the damn thing?"

Rebecca started to speak and he squeezed her shoulder. Right. Stay silent. That was the best course here. Leon added, "The training starts on how to properly handle firearms. It's about what rounds you use and what moves you make. First we let Dr. Chambers inoculate you, then we teach you how to fight back. You want proof?"

He moved over and spoke quietly to the man in the shadows. The screen behind her lit up as he remarked, "This is video footage collected from the security cameras within the hive where Frederic Downing was secretly preparing the G-Virus for sale. As you can see, Curtis Miller mutated into a G-Variant quickly and slaughtered the surrounding men who were ill prepared."

Rebecca, like the rest of the world, watched the video footage reveal the wonderfully entertaining battle between man and monster that ensued. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, a well oiled machine. He leaped and rolled, fired, fell and came up swinging. He was beautiful somehow, like a war machine in a dance with death. She watched him tumble and catch the girl who fell beside him.

He spoke, the words lost in the footage, and fired a single bullet to spare the woman whom held onto him for dear life.

The room was silent as it finished. He hadn't even watched it. He was too busy going through papers on the podium where Rebecca had lectured. She turned back to look at him and finally he filled the hall with one more statement, "...that's how you survive. I can teach you the moves, I can't teach you the drive, but if you have it...the rest of it is just about determination."

He was a helluva motivational speaker, she had to give him the credit for it. The video, the nearly arrogant determination, the sheer belief - it radiated off him in a wave that made you want to follow him. He was a natural born leader.

There was a clamoring of sound. The people were rising to speak with him. Rebecca gathered her graphs and charts and files. Pausing, she glanced at his profile and wondered, "...at the end...when she was trying to open her hand to fall...you wouldn't let her."

Surprised, Leon glanced up from the file he was reading. They locked eyes and Rebecca queried, "...you said something to her...what did you say to make her grab your hand in return?"

His eyes volleyed across her face and he leaned in and confided, "...if you don't try to save one life, you won't save any."

Her belly seized a little, amusing her, and reminding her it was a perfectly normal reaction to a handsome man this close. Of course she was smitten with him. He was designed to make you yearn a little. He was tall, muscular, dressed beautifully in a red silk shirt and black tie over black slacks and boots. He was missing the jacket to go with the rest of the ensemble, but he didn't need it. He somehow blended bad ass and bad ass fashion in a way that made her wonder what he'd been before he'd decided to become a cop in a dirty old city.

She had the strangest urge to touch the sleeve of his shirt and see if it was soft. Amused, she told him, "Is it the face or the facts that has the recruits lining up, I wonder?"

His mouth twitched. He tilted his head. Finally, he winked at her and mused, "...the arrogant part of me wants to say a bit of both."

Rebecca laughed and gathered the rest of her files, "Well, thank you for covering for me. I was pretty sure I was dead in the water there."

"Nah. You just needed somebody to toss you a hand down."

Impressed by the clever repartee, she agreed, "I can't argue with that...after all...you saved my life up here in a way, didn't you? And if you can't save one..."

He laughed. It was nice to hear. He'd been charming and sorta harmlessly handsome before. The laugh was good. It was laced with some kind of layer of real that reminded you he wasn't a model on a magazine cover. It put a dimple to the right of his mouth above that adorable cleft chin he was rocking.

The stage was rapidly filling with eager recruits as Rebecca moved away and remarked, "...it was nice to meet you, Mr. Kennedy. Maybe I can return the favor some time."

Leon watched her go, mouth twitching with amusement. She was more than a cute little lab mouse, that much was clear. She was quick witted under that facade of fearful introvert. He had to admit, he enjoyed the back and forth.

He gave a quiet thanks for the sight of her sweet little butt in that skirt as she left the stage too. He might be a hero, but he wasn't a blind one. Amused, he laughed, "...women."

What would he do without them?

Rebecca was just finishing up filing away her notes on a lecture she'd attended when the knock on her room door drew her toward it. She glanced through the peep hole to find a small sweaty man holding a case there waiting. He kept nervously glancing up and down the hallway. He looks scared and pale. There was a ridge of shadows under his eyes that indicated lack of sleep.

Rebecca mused, "...can I help you?"

He jumped like she'd slapped him and stammered, "R-R-Rebecca Cham-b-bers?"

"...maybe."

Clearing his throat, the man whispered dramatically, "I need to come in please. I-I have...I need to give you this."

She tilted her head, "What is it?"

"...it's...it's from your father's estate."

Her father? He'd died in Iraq during the war or something. Why was she just now getting something from his estate?

"Just leave it out there. I'll get it later."

She wasn't sure why, but this guy made her nervous as hell.

"...p-please? Please. I need to give it you directly."

Sighing, Rebecca opened the door and the man shoved the briefcase in his hand at her. "...ss-seek your truth. The answers can be found when the music stops."

"...wait...what?"

She took the case and the man backed up. He shook his head, "I'm done. I'm so done. Never again, ya know? I'm so done. Seek your truth. The answers can be f-"

The gun went off and sounded like thunder in the hallway. The man's head exploded all over the wall behind him. Rebecca shouted in fear and slammed her door. She backed up, carrying the case he'd given her into the bathroom. She scrambled in her sleeping pants and t-shirt through her suitcase as footsteps echoed beyond her locked room door.

There was a grumble of voices. There was a knock on the door and a rather polite, "...give it to me, and I don't have to kill you."

Jesus.

What was in this case!?

What had her father done!?

Rebecca grabbed the dissembled pistol at the bottom of her suitcase. She scrambled to assemble it, whimpering a little when the voice taunted, "...little pig, little pig...let me in."

Her heart hammered hard, rushing in and out into her lungs and making her light headed. She shoved the magazine into the gun and jerked the slide back, scrambling on her butt back to the bathroom as the door splintered and burst apart from a heavy round. Mewling with fear, she kicked the door shut to the bathroom and shoved over the shelf beside it with towels on it. Her hand shut off all the lights and blinded herself. She scrambled into the tub and squatted below chest level, clutching the case to her and the gun aimed at the door.

The voice called, "Come on, cookie, don't make me hurt you. You're such a sweet little thing...let's have the case and end this nice and quick."

There was a tap, tap, tapping on her bathroom door and the voice added, "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down, little piggy. Nobody wants that, do we?"

There was a crunch as he must have put his boot to the door and his voice turned mean, "Open this goddamn door, you bitch!"

He blew a hole through the door with some enormous gun he had, leaving a hole and his glaring blue eye behind to try to find her in the dark bathroom.

With her one moment of courage, Rebecca shouted back, "No...fuck you!"

The second she saw the whites of those eyes in the dark, she taunted, "...what big eyes you have..." And Rebecca fired. Scared or not, she still knew how to handle a gun. She'd learned that as a child. She'd kept up on it as an adult. In her business, you never knew when you might need to blow something away.

She heard him roar. She heard him rear back and kick the door again. He shouted, "I'm gonna rip out your fucking throat!"

She fired twice more into the hole in answer. He kicked the door so hard it splintered around the base and Rebecca fired again. His screech of rage echoed everywhere. The ruined door finally was finally kicked hard enough to scatter the shelf baring it and smack the wall on ravaged hinges. She fired once more, heard it hit the man somewhere on his massive form, and she ducked under his reaching hands, came up fast, and smashed the case in her hands in his face.

As he reared, Rebecca shot him in the groin, shoved him in the belly, and sent him careering into the tub where she'd been. As he went over, she went out, racing out of the hotel room to the tune of his roaring rage. His shout echoed, "How fast can you run, little piggy? Go find your fucking house of sticks!"

Rebecca hit the emergency stairwell and went down. She whimpered, adrenaline shoving her into a speed like an Olympic athlete, she hit the main floor and shoved at the door. Locked. It was locked. She was trapped in this stairwell by door that needed a key.

She heard the door on the third floor thrown open and the pound of is pursuit. Terrified, Rebecca tucked into the alcove below the stairs and hunkered down. She heard him hit the second floor and taunt, "Little pig, little pig...where did you hide? Did you run out this door?"

He kicked open the second floor door and the sound of his pursuit went silent. The second he was gone, she raced up to the first floor and out the door there into a naked hallway. She ran for it, barefoot and flying. Whatever in this case, was worth killing for. That alone told her she was going to do everything she could to protect it.

She hit the lobby and ran for the main exit doors. On the second floor balcony, a shout made her run faster, "LITTLE PIGGY! You headed to Grandma's house!?"

A vase filled with a beautiful Japanese maple erupted in a spray of shattered porcelain beside her. She screamed, skidding on the slick floor, and felt the sting of her foot being cut from the fall out. People shouted in fear and scattered as she ran for the doors.

She thought, he wasn't afraid to kill innocent people either, as a poor man in a suit took a bullet meant for her as he had the misfortune of herding her toward the doors and being in the back. He went down, he took Rebecca with him by falling forward onto her, and she was trapped beneath his bulk and the panicking feet of over a dozen people. She thought - I'm gonna be road kill in a minute here.

The red dot from the evil man's gun bobbed around on her face. Rebecca whimpered madly, trying like hell to get loose of the body atop her. She shoved at his shoulder and a bullet struck, splattering her in blood as it went into the dead man's back and out his front to hit the floor an inch beside her waist. It was a warning shot, clearly. Why not just kill her and be done with it?

Why did he want her alive?

She grabbed for her gun and aimed and the gun was, literally, shot out of her hand. The bullet grazed her wrist and hurt like hell, Rebecca lost her grip and the body atop her was joined by another as the gun went off and a girl was thrown down on the pile. He was killing civilians now to pin her down. He was trying to trap her, not kill her.

She was going to end up his prisoner instead of his victim.

Terror took on new meaning as another body fell across her already growing pile. She gasped madly, trying to breathe in the crush of it. Her hands shoved trying desperately to free herself.

And the red light bobbed on her chest instead.

She was still trying to get away when he called, "I warned you, bitch...this is why women are only good for fucking."

She was terrified he'd take her and torture her for revenge. She would rather die than fall into his hands. She wanted to shout something clever, instead she just started to cry.

She was going to die, not like a brave heroine in a good book, nope...she was going to die a coward.

Rebecca Chambers - victim.

She wished, just once, she could be Leon Kennedy instead.