What was inside actually transpired to be very little. It was a maintenance
station with little to it other than a small office with a radio and a
heater for the chill. They took full advantage of this, after Leon smashed
the window of the door with his elbow. They pulled their shirts off and
flung them on the heater. Leon couldn't help but blush slightly as Rebecca
removed her own shirt. Okay, so she wasn't his girlfriend but he was still
human, and her slender, well-proportioned body wasn't unpleasant to look
at; she was nineteen after all. By the same token, Rebecca wasn't entirely
displeased with the sight of Leon's bare chest as he removed his shirt. He
had survived Raccoon for a reason, and Rebecca had an unobscured view of
his muscles.
Rebecca and Leon both looked away, however. Rebecca knew they had to survive a great deal, and a possible tryst with someone whose heart seemed to belong to Claire Redfield...well. It also wouldn't please Claire a huge amount if Claire happened to have interest in the young cop, and found that Rebecca had also developed something of a crush on Leon. Which to a slight extent, she had. Now was not the time to consider anything like that of course.
"Um..." she said, chewing her lip "...you don't feel awkward doing this do you?"
"Oh, you mean the..." he pointed awkwardly at her and then at him "...bare skin thing."
"That's it, yes." she said.
"Well, let's look at this situation realistically" Leon remarked, making a mental note of some spare technician zip-up suits hanging on the wall "Friends is good enough for me, and considering we don't know where we are or what we're doing here, the last thing on our minds should be our respective bodies."
"Yeah." Rebecca considered this "Okay, let's just get changed then long enough for our clothes to dry off a bit."
There was a pause.
"Well" Rebecca added, a tad sourly "Are you going to ogle me whilst I change? I saw the technician suits too"
"Jesus, okay!" Leon snapped, turning around. Things were back to normal, and he turned around. "Although it's not like you didn't look at me..."
"What?! That's bullshit!" she exclaimed, in outrage; it was true that she had taken a good look at him, but because it didn't sound like typical of her behaviour, she decided on outrage.
"Did so"
"Did not!"
"Did-look, how old are we?"
Rebecca grumbled, and zipped up the suit.
"Okay, I'm done. Your turn."
They sat as close to the heater as they could, despite its main function, which was to at least partially dry their soaked clothes. The hunters weren't of any real interest anymore, as they had lost interest in their prey. At least so it seemed, but there were no sounds coming from the door anymore. A quick search of the office had revealed a staff log, a map and a key ring, and while they decided they would keep the key ring it was decided that a study of the map might reveal where they would actually need to use it. Leon spread the map out, patting down the corners and weighing them down with a red stapler and a paperweight.
"Okay..." Leon murmured, as he studied the layout "...we're in this hexagonal compound here, at least that's what the map tells us."
He tapped part of the map. Rebecca peered at the peculiar shaped of the compound, sketched out in scaled lines. It was labelled in clear stencilling 'Detention Compound'
"Oh great" Rebecca groaned, "We're still in jail. All we did was get out of our cell."
Leon shook the keys in front of Rebecca's eyes.
"See. Keys. Doors. Locks."
Rebecca did not particularly appreciate being on the receiving end of Leon's cynicism, especially when all she wanted to do was get out of the place.
"I know Leon, but the place is surely more secure than that? What about key-cards and the like?"
"If there are any, I'm pretty sure we'll find them" Leon said, then decided to look at the map in a larger context "Where the hell are we anyway?"
"Looks like another island" Rebecca groaned "I swear, Umbrella probably own all the off-shore islands in the world."
"This one..." Leon said, studying a small printed label on the ocean "...is about two-hundred miles east of Australia. Great. Miles of fucking water on either side."
They sat there, glaring at the map as if it somehow was responsible for their own situation. Naturally, such an environmental position narrowed down their methods of escape to one by plane and another by boat, although whether or not they would last long enough to get to either was something else entirely. That was if escape was the first thing they should do. What kind of an island was this anyway? Leon took a casual look at the name of the island, written in clear red print over the ocean. The Proteus Labs.
Leon felt his blood freeze as he read the title. The Proteus Labs.
"Rebecca, look where we are" he said, pointing a chilly finger at the words.
She followed his finger, and her face slowly transformed from one of a stubborn sulk to one of fear and surprise.
"My god" she said "We're only in the belly of the beast, aren't we?"
Leon nodded in agreement. The Proteus Labs were something of a legend in Umbrella lore; they'd seen references to it in the records they had successfully stolen from other Umbrella labs, but nobody, not even some of the high-ranking officials of White Umbrella knew where they were. It was uncertain if even Wesker knew. This of course would make it doubly difficult for anyone to find them; there was also the problem that the labs may have taken a fair pounding from the bombing the island had been receiving. However, the chance of finding out what lay deep in the Proteus lab complex was too tempting even for them. The rumours they had heard said that the Proteus Labs weren't simply viral research buildings, but the black heart of Umbrella's genetic manipulation directive. Their human experiments; the original concept lab for the Tyrant and their attempts to create genetically modified soldiers, everything the anti-Umbrella resistance could do without. It was also, the stories said, the most advanced of all of the labs Umbrella possessed – its isolation reflected just how far Umbrella liked to keep it from reconnaissance. And in a massive twist towards the ironic, both Rebecca and Leon were there, formerly prisoners and now almost free to go about the complex.
"Of course there's going to be hunters and Cerberuses loose" Leon said "So we'll have to keep an eye out. I also don't doubt that the T-Virus has been spread by some of the carriers."
Rebecca shook her head in wonder.
"Man...wow. This is just too weird. It's unreal; who'd have thought this place even existed, it's like King Solomon's silver mines"
"Well, we'd best..."
Leon paused. Then he winced as a keening began to sound in his head.
Rebecca looked at Leon's pained expression.
"Leon? Are you ok-?"
Then she felt it too, a squealing whistle that cut through her brain like a buzzsaw. Rebecca gasped at the sheer intensity of the sensation, clutching her head as if it was about to burst open with the pressure.
"Fuuuck...!!" Leon exclaimed, gritting his teeth in pain.
White out.
Proteus...
Proteus...
Proteus... Picture the largest computer you've ever seen, picture two men standing beside it making notes. Picture red stencilled letters.
Lab Proteus 1.
"Okay Xavier, let's go over those results one more time" "Yes sir..." A pause. A faceless figure turns to face him. "Hello, what are you doing here?"
Another pause. The men are dressed as scientists, both holding clipboards. Everything is fuzzy, like a bad quality black and white movie. The room is vast, almost cavernous; it's a computer metropolis, like a single mechanical organism. The scientists are standing by a console with a vast glass screen in front of them. "Hey guys, you're not supposed to be in here; go on, play somewhere else. Then the face of a little girl with pigtails, a small chubby face bunched up in a sulk. "Aww, don't look like that, go on, you can play in the staff room" One reaches down...
Leon's eyes snapped open as the pain suddenly stopped. Rebecca stared back at him.
"Did you see that too?" she asked, quietly.
Leon nodded, rubbing his head.
"As clear as day...what the hell was that?" he said, still staring at her.
"I don't know, but either way we both felt it" she replied, looking at the tips of her shoes "It was like a dream. But it wasn't a dream because...it felt too real."
"What did you see?" Leon asked, leaning forward.
Rebecca furrowed her brow.
"I saw two scientists, they were doing some routine work...I was staring up at them, they spoke to me."
"Same here" Leon said, sitting back up before staring up at the utility grey ceiling. What had that been? It was as if him and Rebecca had just shared a joint...well...for lack of a better word 'flashback'. Where this flashback could possibly come from and why he and Rebecca saw it was something that he couldn't explain. Leon was hoping it was just a one-off.
"Come on" Rebecca said, standing up "Let's shove our clothes in a bag or something and get going. I want to get into that Proteus lab."
Leon nodded. He just wanted to get in and out as soon as possible, it was clear Rebecca didn't want to experience anything else like they just had; it had left both of them shaken. Leon didn't want to tell her, but he had a suspicion that wouldn't be the last time they'd feel that.
Leon secured the kitbag he'd found in one of the lockers to his back, and turned to Rebecca.
"Ready?"
Rebecca loaded the second tranquilliser gun and handed it to Leon. The guns had also been in the locker, although they had been dismayed to see there were no pistols or rifles designed specifically for the kill. The tranquillisers however, as Rebecca estimated from the dosage printed in very small print on each dart, were extremely potent.
"I'm ready. There's about seven rounds, so make it count. Expect quick results, that stuff's powerful enough to knock an elephant on its ass in about a minute flat."
Leon whistled, looking at the shining black tranquilliser rifle.
"Strong stuff. How long does it last?"
"Let's just say long enough; I don't know who they loaded all this stuff for, but its definitely got some of the most powerful animal sedatives I've ever seen; I'd be boring you to death with the contents, but it's a strong cocktail. So make sure you don't hit me, okay?"
Leon smirked at her. "Don't bet on that" Rebecca put on an expression that said 'oh Leon that was back-breakingly funny', and clicked the safety catch off of her own weapon. The plan was simple, Leon knew; a dash for the entrance to the compound, lock the entrance behind them and then find their way into the Proteus Labs. He flinched as those words went through his head; they were for some reason, oddly familiar. Not in the manner of a remembered conversation, but as if it were some ancient parasite that had awoken in his memory to haunt him. Leon paused as the flashback ran through his head again and again and again. It was like a distant memory, faint but frighteningly vivid. What it meant he didn't know, but what he did know was that neither had been completely honest with the other. The little girl Leon had seen didn't remind him of anyone he knew, and Rebecca's failure to mention it suggested she was somewhat timid to remind him of what it was she had seen. If she'd seen the same girl.
Right now however, he thought as he clicked off his safety catch, it wasn't important. The urge to stay alive was what was important. "Okay. The map says there's the main compound entrance is just beyond the gate at the end of this intersection. A dash or two should get us there. If we get any hunters following, we don't look back. Got it?"
Rebecca nodded.
"And remember, if a hunter checks in..."
"...it doesn't check out" Rebecca finished.
Leon turned, and with a strong kick that packed just enough force per square inch to send the opposite door of the small building tearing open, he bolted out, followed closely by Rebecca into the dark, dangerous night.
The floodlights were working, so their path ahead was illuminated like a runway, rain gleaming on the concrete. They ran, snarls echoing in from the darkness beyond the chain-link fence as they dodged packing cases and didn't stop to look at sprawled corpses that littered the ground, but kept their eyes focused on the small metal door up ahead that was rapidly growing larger.
The snarling all around them grew louder into an angry roar; Leon felt his heart jump as two dark shapes sailed out of the darkness, landing lightly some distance behind him as he ran. With their familiar blood- hungry baying, the two creatures tore in pursuit of them.
Leon turned briefly and pulled the trigger on his rifle, in the hope the sound at least might slow them down. The vicious crack seemed to alarm the hunters little, although he did notice that the dart had sunk itself deep into the hunter closest behind them. Leon didn't stop however; his heart was in his throat, blood pounding through his veins in the knowledge something that could kill him messily was directly behind him. In a desperate attempt to keep them as far away as possible, he turned and fired at the other one twice, one of the darts missing by about a foot, but the other sinking itself by a hairs breadth into a muscular green arm. Rebecca had edged ahead of him, and was nearly at the door.
One of the hunters suddenly lurched and toppled to the floor, the tranquilliser kicking in as the creature grunted and fell unconscious. The other was still going however, and it wasn't making things any easier on them, particularly when Rebecca got to the door. She scanned the lock. To her horror, it was not a conventional lock. There were six different keylocks, with a small warning written on a sign that effectively informed them that if they didn't make the correct combination of lock bypasses, then the door would not only seal itself permanently, but it would also activate a flamethrower that would most certainly burn Rebecca to a crisp, and sure as not kill Leon too. Rebecca read the words with dread in her heart, and felt panic start to spread through her system. Leon arrived beside her, breathless.
"The hunter's not far behind" Leon gasped, turning to look at the sign "Why's the door not open?"
"I don't know!" Rebecca snapped, "There's a key combination!"
"Work on it!" Leon replied, turning to see the Hunter stalking towards him with a primal hiss.
"What the fuck do you think I'm doing, Kennedy?!" Rebecca snapped, studying the lock "I was trained as a medic, not a locksmith"
"You're not picking the damned thing, surely there's a logical combination?" Leon said, edging along the fence as the Hunter who didn't appear to care much for Rebecca, and instead grinned at Leon with its enormous jaws and fangs.
"Hang on, hang on!"
Leon cursed, because he couldn't hang on for long. He made eye contact with the yellow-eyed creature from hell, staring into its eyes as it snarled angrily at him. Leon saw nothing apart from raging anger and bloodlust; he'd have to play his next move carefully.
The creature bellowed an ear-splitting sound, then it leapt at Leon. He hurled himself to one side as it crunched into the railings, but then immediately kicked off the metal supports into the air. It landed heavily in front of Leon, and with a snarl brought its mighty claw downward. Leon rolled again, feverishly readying the tranquilliser for another shot. He fired awkwardly, but due to its point blank range it wasn't likely to miss. The creature shrieked in annoyance at the stinging dart, and prepared itself for another lunge. Leon noticed the earlier dart lodged in its arm.
Come on, work, work...he thought. Finally, someone answered his prayer. The hunter paused in its attack, then with a growl, it sank face-down onto the concrete, out like a light.
Leon held his breath to make sure that that was the end of it. When the hunter didn't move, he kicked it. It rocked, but didn't stand up. He sighed, and turned to Rebecca, who was still fiddling with the lock.
"Any luck?"
Rebecca turned to him, looking unimpressed with the question.
"No?"
"No. Unless by some ridiculous twist of deus ex machina, we're not going to get this door open in a hurry."
There was an odd grinding noise followed by a high-pitched hiss. The fact it was coming from beyond the door gave Rebecca cause to step back with a deeply concerned expression on her face. As they both recognised the smell of gas, they saw beyond the fence, one of the slow burning fires caused by the damage of the bombs. The fire flickered ominously close to the gate.
Leon opened his mouth, but he didn't have time to form a syllable; there was one intensely loud explosion, a ball of ignited gas propelling the gate from its frame and sending it spinning across the compound. The roof of the gatehouse erupted volcanically, fire streaking into the sky like a comet. The sheer pressure of the explosion had lifted both Rebecca and Leon off of their feet, and they rolled across the ground as the thundering firestorm raged, and then stopped. All that was left of the gatehouse was a charred frame and what looked like a bonfire settling comfortably into the dirt of the ground. Leon gasped, and looked up with stinging eyes.
"What the hell was that?" he managed. He looked at Rebecca, who shared his facial collection of sweat, dirt and smoke.
"I...dunno" Rebecca choked "By the...sound of it...a gas canister must have exploded..."
They helped each other up, and staggered through the choking smoke and into the compound on the other side. The carcasses of several high-pressure oxygen cylinders lay spent on the ground, Rebecca and Leon staggering back from the sheer heat.
"At any rate" Leon said, looking at the keys "I doubt we'll be needing many of these anymore..."
The explosion had temporarily blinded the camera, but it resumed working operations a minute later. Dr. Larson watched the slightly fuzzy image with particular interest; he was waiting for something specific, something he knew would appear...
And it did. The two figures stumbled out of the fire, choking on smoke. His eyes gleamed. Larson had heard the rumours that Umbrella had stuffed some prisoners into the detention centre and then got out before their capable military systems could respond – it had transpired as true, but Larson felt undisguised glee at their absurd miscalculation. He captured an image of the two figures, faces luminescent in the night-vision camera. It was them alright. He smiled as he looked at the frozen image; a smile of satisfaction.
The last two alive, and Umbrella had delivered them with a bow. He transferred the image to a disk, and slipped the disk out of the drive. Larson pushed his chair back, and left his office to find Dr. Peterson, his supervisor. The corridors were clean, metallic and almost empty. The staff was a skeleton, the only large scale employment in the private army bunked up in the barracks in the inner compound. They were well-paid men and women, and kept the staff 'safe' in a sense. Neither force really met unless there was a real emergency, like some of the escaped animals in the outer-compound areas had somehow escaped. The inner-compound was almost impregnable. Of course, sacrifices had had to be made. The extensive bombing of the outer buildings had killed a lot of staff members, and the survivors were killed by an assorted menagerie of Cerberuses, Hunters, Lickers and maybe zombies, depending on the strength of the T-Virus flowing through the creature's blood.
Not here though. It was small, but astonishingly well defended. He walked at a brisk trot, whistling as he reached a turn in the corridor. It was a brief trip to the laboratory computer room, which was abuzz with activity and the thrumming of supercomputers. At the forefront of this technological hub stood Dr. Peterson, a man in late middle age who was nearly a decade Larson's senior; he certainly showed it too. Wrinkles were starting to pinch at his worn face, and his hair was thinning on top, but his eyes burned with a ferocity that belied his age.
He approached with little hesitancy.
"Dr Peterson?"
Peterson twisted his head slightly to eye his younger subordinate.
"Well?"
It was a statement and less of a question.
"It's them sir. We're positive now."
Peterson was visibly pleased by this information. He smiled a genuine smile of...Well, Larson guessed it had to be pleasure. It was an odd display however, one cut between nostalgia and satisfaction.
"They've come home" Peterson said simply, still smiling in that odd way "The children have returned home."
He turned to face his subordinate face on for the first time.
"I want them to be met by a squad of our finest. Remember, nobody must die. If anything, I want the troops to escort them voluntarily."
Larson nodded.
"Okay, I'll make sure they're not killed."
"We want them to be welcomed." Peterson said, flatly. This was not a double-edged statement, Larson knew, 'welcome' defined as 'welcome' to Peterson and not 'meet them with one hundred assault rifles bent on mutilating them'. Larson made sure to notify Major Renfro of this point.
"I'll do that right now sir"
Peterson turned around, smiling at the lab technicians at work in sterilized suits. He had been waiting for this for a very long time; and nobody was going to ruin his plans.
Rebecca and Leon both looked away, however. Rebecca knew they had to survive a great deal, and a possible tryst with someone whose heart seemed to belong to Claire Redfield...well. It also wouldn't please Claire a huge amount if Claire happened to have interest in the young cop, and found that Rebecca had also developed something of a crush on Leon. Which to a slight extent, she had. Now was not the time to consider anything like that of course.
"Um..." she said, chewing her lip "...you don't feel awkward doing this do you?"
"Oh, you mean the..." he pointed awkwardly at her and then at him "...bare skin thing."
"That's it, yes." she said.
"Well, let's look at this situation realistically" Leon remarked, making a mental note of some spare technician zip-up suits hanging on the wall "Friends is good enough for me, and considering we don't know where we are or what we're doing here, the last thing on our minds should be our respective bodies."
"Yeah." Rebecca considered this "Okay, let's just get changed then long enough for our clothes to dry off a bit."
There was a pause.
"Well" Rebecca added, a tad sourly "Are you going to ogle me whilst I change? I saw the technician suits too"
"Jesus, okay!" Leon snapped, turning around. Things were back to normal, and he turned around. "Although it's not like you didn't look at me..."
"What?! That's bullshit!" she exclaimed, in outrage; it was true that she had taken a good look at him, but because it didn't sound like typical of her behaviour, she decided on outrage.
"Did so"
"Did not!"
"Did-look, how old are we?"
Rebecca grumbled, and zipped up the suit.
"Okay, I'm done. Your turn."
They sat as close to the heater as they could, despite its main function, which was to at least partially dry their soaked clothes. The hunters weren't of any real interest anymore, as they had lost interest in their prey. At least so it seemed, but there were no sounds coming from the door anymore. A quick search of the office had revealed a staff log, a map and a key ring, and while they decided they would keep the key ring it was decided that a study of the map might reveal where they would actually need to use it. Leon spread the map out, patting down the corners and weighing them down with a red stapler and a paperweight.
"Okay..." Leon murmured, as he studied the layout "...we're in this hexagonal compound here, at least that's what the map tells us."
He tapped part of the map. Rebecca peered at the peculiar shaped of the compound, sketched out in scaled lines. It was labelled in clear stencilling 'Detention Compound'
"Oh great" Rebecca groaned, "We're still in jail. All we did was get out of our cell."
Leon shook the keys in front of Rebecca's eyes.
"See. Keys. Doors. Locks."
Rebecca did not particularly appreciate being on the receiving end of Leon's cynicism, especially when all she wanted to do was get out of the place.
"I know Leon, but the place is surely more secure than that? What about key-cards and the like?"
"If there are any, I'm pretty sure we'll find them" Leon said, then decided to look at the map in a larger context "Where the hell are we anyway?"
"Looks like another island" Rebecca groaned "I swear, Umbrella probably own all the off-shore islands in the world."
"This one..." Leon said, studying a small printed label on the ocean "...is about two-hundred miles east of Australia. Great. Miles of fucking water on either side."
They sat there, glaring at the map as if it somehow was responsible for their own situation. Naturally, such an environmental position narrowed down their methods of escape to one by plane and another by boat, although whether or not they would last long enough to get to either was something else entirely. That was if escape was the first thing they should do. What kind of an island was this anyway? Leon took a casual look at the name of the island, written in clear red print over the ocean. The Proteus Labs.
Leon felt his blood freeze as he read the title. The Proteus Labs.
"Rebecca, look where we are" he said, pointing a chilly finger at the words.
She followed his finger, and her face slowly transformed from one of a stubborn sulk to one of fear and surprise.
"My god" she said "We're only in the belly of the beast, aren't we?"
Leon nodded in agreement. The Proteus Labs were something of a legend in Umbrella lore; they'd seen references to it in the records they had successfully stolen from other Umbrella labs, but nobody, not even some of the high-ranking officials of White Umbrella knew where they were. It was uncertain if even Wesker knew. This of course would make it doubly difficult for anyone to find them; there was also the problem that the labs may have taken a fair pounding from the bombing the island had been receiving. However, the chance of finding out what lay deep in the Proteus lab complex was too tempting even for them. The rumours they had heard said that the Proteus Labs weren't simply viral research buildings, but the black heart of Umbrella's genetic manipulation directive. Their human experiments; the original concept lab for the Tyrant and their attempts to create genetically modified soldiers, everything the anti-Umbrella resistance could do without. It was also, the stories said, the most advanced of all of the labs Umbrella possessed – its isolation reflected just how far Umbrella liked to keep it from reconnaissance. And in a massive twist towards the ironic, both Rebecca and Leon were there, formerly prisoners and now almost free to go about the complex.
"Of course there's going to be hunters and Cerberuses loose" Leon said "So we'll have to keep an eye out. I also don't doubt that the T-Virus has been spread by some of the carriers."
Rebecca shook her head in wonder.
"Man...wow. This is just too weird. It's unreal; who'd have thought this place even existed, it's like King Solomon's silver mines"
"Well, we'd best..."
Leon paused. Then he winced as a keening began to sound in his head.
Rebecca looked at Leon's pained expression.
"Leon? Are you ok-?"
Then she felt it too, a squealing whistle that cut through her brain like a buzzsaw. Rebecca gasped at the sheer intensity of the sensation, clutching her head as if it was about to burst open with the pressure.
"Fuuuck...!!" Leon exclaimed, gritting his teeth in pain.
White out.
Proteus...
Proteus...
Proteus... Picture the largest computer you've ever seen, picture two men standing beside it making notes. Picture red stencilled letters.
Lab Proteus 1.
"Okay Xavier, let's go over those results one more time" "Yes sir..." A pause. A faceless figure turns to face him. "Hello, what are you doing here?"
Another pause. The men are dressed as scientists, both holding clipboards. Everything is fuzzy, like a bad quality black and white movie. The room is vast, almost cavernous; it's a computer metropolis, like a single mechanical organism. The scientists are standing by a console with a vast glass screen in front of them. "Hey guys, you're not supposed to be in here; go on, play somewhere else. Then the face of a little girl with pigtails, a small chubby face bunched up in a sulk. "Aww, don't look like that, go on, you can play in the staff room" One reaches down...
Leon's eyes snapped open as the pain suddenly stopped. Rebecca stared back at him.
"Did you see that too?" she asked, quietly.
Leon nodded, rubbing his head.
"As clear as day...what the hell was that?" he said, still staring at her.
"I don't know, but either way we both felt it" she replied, looking at the tips of her shoes "It was like a dream. But it wasn't a dream because...it felt too real."
"What did you see?" Leon asked, leaning forward.
Rebecca furrowed her brow.
"I saw two scientists, they were doing some routine work...I was staring up at them, they spoke to me."
"Same here" Leon said, sitting back up before staring up at the utility grey ceiling. What had that been? It was as if him and Rebecca had just shared a joint...well...for lack of a better word 'flashback'. Where this flashback could possibly come from and why he and Rebecca saw it was something that he couldn't explain. Leon was hoping it was just a one-off.
"Come on" Rebecca said, standing up "Let's shove our clothes in a bag or something and get going. I want to get into that Proteus lab."
Leon nodded. He just wanted to get in and out as soon as possible, it was clear Rebecca didn't want to experience anything else like they just had; it had left both of them shaken. Leon didn't want to tell her, but he had a suspicion that wouldn't be the last time they'd feel that.
Leon secured the kitbag he'd found in one of the lockers to his back, and turned to Rebecca.
"Ready?"
Rebecca loaded the second tranquilliser gun and handed it to Leon. The guns had also been in the locker, although they had been dismayed to see there were no pistols or rifles designed specifically for the kill. The tranquillisers however, as Rebecca estimated from the dosage printed in very small print on each dart, were extremely potent.
"I'm ready. There's about seven rounds, so make it count. Expect quick results, that stuff's powerful enough to knock an elephant on its ass in about a minute flat."
Leon whistled, looking at the shining black tranquilliser rifle.
"Strong stuff. How long does it last?"
"Let's just say long enough; I don't know who they loaded all this stuff for, but its definitely got some of the most powerful animal sedatives I've ever seen; I'd be boring you to death with the contents, but it's a strong cocktail. So make sure you don't hit me, okay?"
Leon smirked at her. "Don't bet on that" Rebecca put on an expression that said 'oh Leon that was back-breakingly funny', and clicked the safety catch off of her own weapon. The plan was simple, Leon knew; a dash for the entrance to the compound, lock the entrance behind them and then find their way into the Proteus Labs. He flinched as those words went through his head; they were for some reason, oddly familiar. Not in the manner of a remembered conversation, but as if it were some ancient parasite that had awoken in his memory to haunt him. Leon paused as the flashback ran through his head again and again and again. It was like a distant memory, faint but frighteningly vivid. What it meant he didn't know, but what he did know was that neither had been completely honest with the other. The little girl Leon had seen didn't remind him of anyone he knew, and Rebecca's failure to mention it suggested she was somewhat timid to remind him of what it was she had seen. If she'd seen the same girl.
Right now however, he thought as he clicked off his safety catch, it wasn't important. The urge to stay alive was what was important. "Okay. The map says there's the main compound entrance is just beyond the gate at the end of this intersection. A dash or two should get us there. If we get any hunters following, we don't look back. Got it?"
Rebecca nodded.
"And remember, if a hunter checks in..."
"...it doesn't check out" Rebecca finished.
Leon turned, and with a strong kick that packed just enough force per square inch to send the opposite door of the small building tearing open, he bolted out, followed closely by Rebecca into the dark, dangerous night.
The floodlights were working, so their path ahead was illuminated like a runway, rain gleaming on the concrete. They ran, snarls echoing in from the darkness beyond the chain-link fence as they dodged packing cases and didn't stop to look at sprawled corpses that littered the ground, but kept their eyes focused on the small metal door up ahead that was rapidly growing larger.
The snarling all around them grew louder into an angry roar; Leon felt his heart jump as two dark shapes sailed out of the darkness, landing lightly some distance behind him as he ran. With their familiar blood- hungry baying, the two creatures tore in pursuit of them.
Leon turned briefly and pulled the trigger on his rifle, in the hope the sound at least might slow them down. The vicious crack seemed to alarm the hunters little, although he did notice that the dart had sunk itself deep into the hunter closest behind them. Leon didn't stop however; his heart was in his throat, blood pounding through his veins in the knowledge something that could kill him messily was directly behind him. In a desperate attempt to keep them as far away as possible, he turned and fired at the other one twice, one of the darts missing by about a foot, but the other sinking itself by a hairs breadth into a muscular green arm. Rebecca had edged ahead of him, and was nearly at the door.
One of the hunters suddenly lurched and toppled to the floor, the tranquilliser kicking in as the creature grunted and fell unconscious. The other was still going however, and it wasn't making things any easier on them, particularly when Rebecca got to the door. She scanned the lock. To her horror, it was not a conventional lock. There were six different keylocks, with a small warning written on a sign that effectively informed them that if they didn't make the correct combination of lock bypasses, then the door would not only seal itself permanently, but it would also activate a flamethrower that would most certainly burn Rebecca to a crisp, and sure as not kill Leon too. Rebecca read the words with dread in her heart, and felt panic start to spread through her system. Leon arrived beside her, breathless.
"The hunter's not far behind" Leon gasped, turning to look at the sign "Why's the door not open?"
"I don't know!" Rebecca snapped, "There's a key combination!"
"Work on it!" Leon replied, turning to see the Hunter stalking towards him with a primal hiss.
"What the fuck do you think I'm doing, Kennedy?!" Rebecca snapped, studying the lock "I was trained as a medic, not a locksmith"
"You're not picking the damned thing, surely there's a logical combination?" Leon said, edging along the fence as the Hunter who didn't appear to care much for Rebecca, and instead grinned at Leon with its enormous jaws and fangs.
"Hang on, hang on!"
Leon cursed, because he couldn't hang on for long. He made eye contact with the yellow-eyed creature from hell, staring into its eyes as it snarled angrily at him. Leon saw nothing apart from raging anger and bloodlust; he'd have to play his next move carefully.
The creature bellowed an ear-splitting sound, then it leapt at Leon. He hurled himself to one side as it crunched into the railings, but then immediately kicked off the metal supports into the air. It landed heavily in front of Leon, and with a snarl brought its mighty claw downward. Leon rolled again, feverishly readying the tranquilliser for another shot. He fired awkwardly, but due to its point blank range it wasn't likely to miss. The creature shrieked in annoyance at the stinging dart, and prepared itself for another lunge. Leon noticed the earlier dart lodged in its arm.
Come on, work, work...he thought. Finally, someone answered his prayer. The hunter paused in its attack, then with a growl, it sank face-down onto the concrete, out like a light.
Leon held his breath to make sure that that was the end of it. When the hunter didn't move, he kicked it. It rocked, but didn't stand up. He sighed, and turned to Rebecca, who was still fiddling with the lock.
"Any luck?"
Rebecca turned to him, looking unimpressed with the question.
"No?"
"No. Unless by some ridiculous twist of deus ex machina, we're not going to get this door open in a hurry."
There was an odd grinding noise followed by a high-pitched hiss. The fact it was coming from beyond the door gave Rebecca cause to step back with a deeply concerned expression on her face. As they both recognised the smell of gas, they saw beyond the fence, one of the slow burning fires caused by the damage of the bombs. The fire flickered ominously close to the gate.
Leon opened his mouth, but he didn't have time to form a syllable; there was one intensely loud explosion, a ball of ignited gas propelling the gate from its frame and sending it spinning across the compound. The roof of the gatehouse erupted volcanically, fire streaking into the sky like a comet. The sheer pressure of the explosion had lifted both Rebecca and Leon off of their feet, and they rolled across the ground as the thundering firestorm raged, and then stopped. All that was left of the gatehouse was a charred frame and what looked like a bonfire settling comfortably into the dirt of the ground. Leon gasped, and looked up with stinging eyes.
"What the hell was that?" he managed. He looked at Rebecca, who shared his facial collection of sweat, dirt and smoke.
"I...dunno" Rebecca choked "By the...sound of it...a gas canister must have exploded..."
They helped each other up, and staggered through the choking smoke and into the compound on the other side. The carcasses of several high-pressure oxygen cylinders lay spent on the ground, Rebecca and Leon staggering back from the sheer heat.
"At any rate" Leon said, looking at the keys "I doubt we'll be needing many of these anymore..."
The explosion had temporarily blinded the camera, but it resumed working operations a minute later. Dr. Larson watched the slightly fuzzy image with particular interest; he was waiting for something specific, something he knew would appear...
And it did. The two figures stumbled out of the fire, choking on smoke. His eyes gleamed. Larson had heard the rumours that Umbrella had stuffed some prisoners into the detention centre and then got out before their capable military systems could respond – it had transpired as true, but Larson felt undisguised glee at their absurd miscalculation. He captured an image of the two figures, faces luminescent in the night-vision camera. It was them alright. He smiled as he looked at the frozen image; a smile of satisfaction.
The last two alive, and Umbrella had delivered them with a bow. He transferred the image to a disk, and slipped the disk out of the drive. Larson pushed his chair back, and left his office to find Dr. Peterson, his supervisor. The corridors were clean, metallic and almost empty. The staff was a skeleton, the only large scale employment in the private army bunked up in the barracks in the inner compound. They were well-paid men and women, and kept the staff 'safe' in a sense. Neither force really met unless there was a real emergency, like some of the escaped animals in the outer-compound areas had somehow escaped. The inner-compound was almost impregnable. Of course, sacrifices had had to be made. The extensive bombing of the outer buildings had killed a lot of staff members, and the survivors were killed by an assorted menagerie of Cerberuses, Hunters, Lickers and maybe zombies, depending on the strength of the T-Virus flowing through the creature's blood.
Not here though. It was small, but astonishingly well defended. He walked at a brisk trot, whistling as he reached a turn in the corridor. It was a brief trip to the laboratory computer room, which was abuzz with activity and the thrumming of supercomputers. At the forefront of this technological hub stood Dr. Peterson, a man in late middle age who was nearly a decade Larson's senior; he certainly showed it too. Wrinkles were starting to pinch at his worn face, and his hair was thinning on top, but his eyes burned with a ferocity that belied his age.
He approached with little hesitancy.
"Dr Peterson?"
Peterson twisted his head slightly to eye his younger subordinate.
"Well?"
It was a statement and less of a question.
"It's them sir. We're positive now."
Peterson was visibly pleased by this information. He smiled a genuine smile of...Well, Larson guessed it had to be pleasure. It was an odd display however, one cut between nostalgia and satisfaction.
"They've come home" Peterson said simply, still smiling in that odd way "The children have returned home."
He turned to face his subordinate face on for the first time.
"I want them to be met by a squad of our finest. Remember, nobody must die. If anything, I want the troops to escort them voluntarily."
Larson nodded.
"Okay, I'll make sure they're not killed."
"We want them to be welcomed." Peterson said, flatly. This was not a double-edged statement, Larson knew, 'welcome' defined as 'welcome' to Peterson and not 'meet them with one hundred assault rifles bent on mutilating them'. Larson made sure to notify Major Renfro of this point.
"I'll do that right now sir"
Peterson turned around, smiling at the lab technicians at work in sterilized suits. He had been waiting for this for a very long time; and nobody was going to ruin his plans.