"Ashley, I can't believe you came all this way," her father said, meeting her embrace as she ran to him. They didn't hug often, even before there had been a distance that had developed after her mother passed and she went off to college. Since her change it had been even larger, a gulf that their common blood no longer seemed enough to bridge.
If that could even really count now.
But she'd barely believed him to be alive in truth, running more on a stubborn denial and instincts, not all of which she internally admitted were wholly normal, to keep stepping forward, one clawed foot after another till she found him. She allowed herself to finally relax, wings drooping slightly on her back as tension left her shoulders and she inhaled the scent of her father. No bitter taste of the Plagas, just human. No matter what her new instincts might tell her, the parts of her brain where the so-called Reptilian Brian had been fundamentally altered to interact with her more insectile body, she found this scent relaxing. That same part of her told her that it was weak and different and not her…
But it was home .
"God, Dad I thought you were dead," she said into his shoulder, her mandibles catching on the torn threads of his suit. Pulling back she looked him in the eyes, seeing the slight redness from lack of sleep and injuries. He was so old now, the presidency and aging him as much if not more than his wife's death. Though her own… issues probably had something to do with that. Which reminded her, as she stepped back and looked him up more closely. "Why did they want you? Was this really just about me and… all that?"
He shook her head, meeting her multi-eyed gaze with his own. "No, if that was it they'd have just assassinated me properly to begin with. I think they wanted to use those damn parasites to try and try and get information out of me. Not sure why they'd bother, they'd have a hard enough time blackmailing the DoD with information on old Umbrella contracts after this stunt."
He gestured towards the screens, showing the small town below, the surviving population quickly transforming from addled, if still infected people, into completely mindless slaves of the Plagas. Ashley moved over, her body freezing as her antennas perked up and her eyes saw one screen after another all at once.
That poor man with a dog leash and no dog…
Those people she'd ran by as she was chased through the city, unthreatening and drugged into compliance…
Sam's mother and brother and-
"Sam… his whole family is going to die if I don't do something." She slammed her balled up fist down onto the console's side and jumped back. She needed a plan. There had to be something. Something she could do…
"Ashley, what are you doing?"
Her father was speaking to her, but all she heard was a slight droning hum at the moment. The same one that had almost overwhelmed her with inhuman instincts before when she'd ran into those other, feral and mindless versions of her own kind in the mines. The Plagas allowed to run rampant, untreated as it mutated and wrung out their humanity along with their minds… too much of it too fast so there was no healthy homeostasis such as she had miraculously found. If only they had a way to slow what had happened until real medical treatment could arrive.
Her eyes fell on the elevator shaft she'd arrived in, antenna perking up and twitching as she did.
Maybe she did have a way to help. If she worked fast…
"Dad, this is going to sound crazy… but I have an idea."
Leon looked out from behind the brick wall cautiously. His approach into Ravenscroft had been slow so far, avoiding the wandering infected civilians that were still out. Signs of the Plagas clear in them, US born and raised Los Ganados without a doubt. It made his hand twitch, jaw set tight as he thought of those nightmares from before and the sort of mad lunatic it would take to want to see them come about again. It had been bad enough finding out that some of Saddler's laboratory assistants had taken anything they could hold and ran. Clearly they'd been cowed into submission without the need for infection and he'd felt it unnecessary to implant the Plagas and risk losing their medical expertise at the time. With his death or perhaps just a bit earlier as he shot through the labs and facilities, Ashley behind him, they must have seen the writing on the wall and escaped before everything got blown to hell.
Unfortunately that had included most any research or material that might have helped treat Ashley's condition… thankfully it had stabilized and Sera's treatments, while not good enough to save her humanity they had at the very least saved her mind, inhibiting the spread of the Plagas and the mutagenic component that its infection would take when a non-dominant strain was allowed to integrate into the host.
Though whether he'd be able to save her life again, what of it that remained-
"No, don't think like that Leon." He stepped out from behind the cover stalking forward, pistol at the ready and face set with grim determination. He'd avoided her for too long, especially when he was perhaps one of though few people in the world that truly felt no fear or intimidation when looking at her. Frankly he'd seen worse.
And he knew that real monsters seldom looked so plain about it anyway. They wore suits and smiled with perfect white teeth as they shook his hand and didn't even have the honesty to show all the blood on theirs. Compared to them Ashley was just an innocent young lady with an odd skin condition and a lot of issues with buying sunglasses.
Real monsters were whoever was responsible for putting him in the position of gunning down dozens of infected people once again, none of which had deserved this anymore than Ashley herself, just with the poor luck to be in no position for anyone to save. A thought that only deepened his frown as he came around the corner of the building and saw some of those citizens coming out, grabbing at their heads and screaming. Cries of pain and alarm that clearly showed that the game of normalcy that they'd been forced to play at while the parasite ate away at their brains was over.
"Maybe some sort of subsonic sound trigger… or just the regular 'Leon Luck' in action?" He idly wondered about the timing as the safety was depressed and he took aim at the first and closest. Ready to put them out of their misery the moment they noticed him and only hesitating as he had no idea how many might come at the sound of the gunshot or how long his ammo might hold off before he was forced to try other tactics. He saw the closest turn towards him, eyes clearly red and growing darker as they met his.
"Shit." He aimed down sights, finger on the trigger.
When a horn honked repeatedly from an oncoming truck that was roaring down the road. Swerving out of the way of the people standing in the street and making far too much racket for them to be paying attention to Leon any longer. He was about to aim at the the driver, past experiences teaching how this sort of thing went, but he noticed that the passenger door was open and someone was leaning out.
Almost two meters tall, clutching to the side tightly, something like a stiff cape on their back that certainly wasn't. A long and now ragged and torn scarf about their neck and falling to their waist over a once expensive sweater vest that had seen the better part of one his work days and had the stains and damage to show for it. He saw a set of five eyes. Symmetrically placed on face more befitting some trashy B-movie poster he might have snuck off to see at the drive-in in those last few years right before Raccoon. Smaller, more misshapen version of that face had been on the receiving end of no small amount of violence from him in the past, though thankfully this one was far from that. His own face broke into a smile as he shook his head and quickly holstered his gun. Reaching up to grab the clawed hand that streaked out for him and let himself be pulled up into the truck as it moved further down the street.
"Took your sweet time Leon," Ashley said as she scooted to the side, the truck thankfully a larger military surplus model and big enough to fit her, her wings, her father in the driver's seat and now himself with little difficulty.
He shook his head looking them both over. Ashley seemed uninjured but given how her anatomy had changed and how much she might or might not regenerate that didn't mean too much. Her father at the least didn't look too roughed up, so he'd have to call this mission a success. Assuming nothing unfortunate had happened while he was captured.
"Looks like you had things handled. And glad to see you're doing alright as well Sir," Leon said. Pausing before looking in the rearview mirror at the horde that had begun to follow them. It had to be brought up. "Once we get out of here we can have them check you over for anything that might be injected and-"
"Oh, Dad's fine."
"Ashley, you of all people should know why we need to check on this."
"No, I mean there's nothing in him. If there was, I could smell it."
"Smell it? Since when can you do that?"
She shrugged her shoulders before pointing to make a turn down the main street. Looking back at Leon, her mandibles twitching slightly before speaking. "Since forever maybe? It's not like there were a lot of Plagas infected people around for me to compare to Leon."
"My daughter has had quite an adventure, Leon. Have you managed to call in for backup?"
"Possibly. Hannigan will have gotten through to Simmons at least and the DSO. They're still navigating the red tape about independent contractors having first priority in BOW incidents for some reason."
"Not surprising given Ashley put her foot through Victor Parker's son."
Leon's eyebrows went up at that.
Ashley had a more pronounced reaction.
"What?! That was Director Parker's son?"
Graham nodded, turning the truck as they came near the town hall. Setting the engine in park as he turned towards his daughter. "The boy wouldn't shut up about it. Apparently he pushed to manage that institute so they could have access to you."
"And then what?" Leon asked, the anger boiling over in his voice. Ashley was still shocked at awareness of how deeply a place she'd actually felt safe had been violated. "Use it to make some new strain of the Plagas?"
"That seems to have been the plan. A way to pacify civilian populations for wannabe warlords and dictators. Less invasive than what you dealt with in Spain and easier to control."
"And now we're going to have to kill them," Leon thought with a grimace. Before suddenly glancing at Ashley and the ex-President. "But wait, how would that work? The Plagas is a death sentence, and would just get the BSAA to issue a kill order on anyone that uses it like that as bio-terrorist war criminal?"
Ashley reached into the pocket of a torn and stained jacket she'd put on over her vest. Pulling out a strange vial with an odd green liquid in the tip of the glass portion of the metallic container. Along the side the words Inhibitor Ɣwere printed quite clearly for him to see. "With this. It's an anti-Plagas toxin they made."
"So we wait… are you saying we can stop this?" Leon felt something he rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to experience on jobs like this.
Hope.
Hope that it wouldn't be him looking over dozens, hundreds of yellow body bags, each one emblazoned by a biohazard symbol as they were trucked off for incineration and disposal while he went back home to be congratulated for surviving once again.
Though Ashley's antenna pulled down slightly as her mandibles opened and closed slightly before speaking again. "Not exactly… I read the reports they had one this stuff. This," she held out the vial again, "will kill it, but with the Plagas in them already reacting it will probably kill those infected too."
"Damn. It's always something. I'm never fast enough, never good enough to-"
"So we'll just use this one instead," Ashley said, pulling out another metal and glass cylinder, marked helpfully with the words Inhibitor ?. "It's the one the Crows… those guys from that anti-BOW security company were using so the immature Plagas they were using wouldn't take control. It should put the Plagas back into remission long enough for us to work on something else."
"Huh, so that's why they were infected but didn't act like it." Leon had been wondering about that. Normally that had been reserved for those few that Saddler had given a cloned sample of the Dominant-Plagas to. And those had taken far more than a few shots to the head to put down. He looked at the canister in her clawed fingers, hope returning once more from the brink. Though he certainly had questions about how they intended to dose everyone without some kind of aerial dispersion… or a crop duster.
So he asked.
"She has a plan Leon," Graham added, shaking his head. "But you're probably not going to like it."
That had been an understatement.
"Are you insane Ashley?"
"Wait-you realized you can do what?!"
"They're in the back!?"
But in the end he'd relented, the chance to actually save lives instead of ending them as an act of mercy just too great a chance to let slip by. Even if it meant he was functionally the bait of this plan. Her father had helped her pry open the doors to the town hall, which thankfully had a rather large gymnasium set aside next to it for both sporting events and other things. Such as Annual Buck Hunt still being advertised in a banner across the ceiling. Though given the dates it looked like the infection had caused a cancellation of that. While she she placed the aerosolized dispensers, much like the one Victor Parker Jr. had tried to kill her with, around the room with Inhibitor ?replace the more lethal variant her father went looking for the town radio station that had been listed in the directory as they entered.
She'd disposed of most of the original dosages as she'd collected them as quickly as she could while explaining her slapdash plan to her father.
A strangled hiss from the darkness was answered by her own, eyes briefly shifting red as the other BOWs milled about the parameter.
"That had taken a bit to explain." Though Leon had apparently seen things like this, something about the Plagas, or a strain of it taken by Saddler's assistants out and now being spread through bioweapons labs in Eastern Europe and Russia. Mixed up into Umbrella's original BOW stock as new control method, high price and high risk but when you were willing to engage in WMDs like these you were probably already against the wall and ready to sell your soul for any chance of victory or just making the other side bleed a bit more.
Really, it was weird to think about at the moment, but Parker's rant and the fact that she'd spent the last few years boredly finishing degrees in bioethics law out of a morbid curiosity of it all that made it so easy to see how the war to stop this proliferation, from Leon's missions to her father's policies, had done more to make people feel like they were doing things than to really stop the creation and use of it all. For every incident like Ravenscroft in the US, there had now been dozens like it across the world, easily swept under the rug in whatever already conflict ridden region that it had taken place in.
Raccoon City had cast a long shadow, and even now it seemed like they were still in that darkness.
But now at least she could use them for some good. It was clear to her (and Leon had said as much when she mentioned she didn't plan to dose her makeshift army with any of the inibitors) that their transformation had followed the more traditional mutagenic change into BOW. Total physiological destruction and recreation with just enough brain damage to almost kill all meaningful higher thought that might get in the way of turning a person into a living weapon of teeth and claws. But those that had been quietly taking the weaker inhibitor drugs as part of this test in Population Pacification might still be saved from such a fate.
If they could only get them here soon enough.
She heard the sound of a motorcycle engine, Leon having purloined one and hotwired it from where it was parked in a nearby garage once their roles were set up. She saw the lights flashing as he made another pass about the horde that had started to follow him. Dozens, maybe close to a hundred. Hopefully most of the town.
It probably wasn't.
Ashley took a deep breath, her chest rising as her mandibles shivered and her hands clenched about the trigger device she'd taken from where Parker had dropped it. This would work for those they could save.
It had to work.
She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she found out that so many had died in part because of the poison they had made from her own blood.
"Here they come Ashley," Leon yelled out as he ran the motorcycle up to the steps, hopping off it as he did, aiming his gun off into the empty night sky to fire two more shots to keep their attention fully on him. The horde followed, haphazard, stumbling, but towards them both. She could smell the rank stench of the agitated Plagas, acrid copper and so bitter. They didn't have much time.
"Let's go."
They ran into the building, through the double doors into the main gymnasium. Her lesser minions clung to the walls outside, awaiting her orders. She felt that strange sensation, saw Leon briefly glance towards her as she focused her intent on waiting and not anything more for right now.
"Surprised you can do that," Leon said. "Normally it takes one of those modified Dominant strains they've been producing to control them."
"I think it's because they cloned them from me."
"So would that make them relatives, cousins, or…"
"Leon! Don't joke about that!" Honestly she didn't see the humor in this and-
Though she realized then that she'd been doing something like that since yesterday. Trying to hide her fear with bravado, trying to act like someone that had it under control so she could believe it herself. Was this how Leon felt? Was that the trick?
To just fake it till you didn't have to anymore, no matter how long that took?
The sound of the horde approaching took her out of her thoughts and she and Leon stepped back into the center of the large room. The first of the infected ran in, tripping over their feet as they drew closer. Only the two of them as targets, her father safely secured in the upper floors now, trying to radio in someone while she and Leon dealt with this last problem.
"You think this will work Ashley?"
"It has to," she said, looking down at the control once more. Leon looked from it to her eyes, a slight grin on his face as he gave her a thumbs up and reached towards the rope she'd had dropped down from an open ceiling window as they'd set this plan in motion. He climbed quickly, soon followed by herself. The horde below now starting to ascend as well. But They were faster, and if need be she had wings. Once her claws caught onto one of the rafters she nodded to Leon who cut the rope. Her eyes glowed red as she ordered her followers to slam shut the doors and barricade them with whatever they could find. Chairs, desks, it didn't really matter.
She pushed the button and watched the gas shoot out of the canisters she'd placed around the room. Part of her wanted to wait, see if it would actually put the Plagas into remission, stop the mutation and death that had been fated for everyone below her. But her earlier experiences taught her that even if she'd been mutated too long or otherwise immune to these inhibitors expected effects she couldn't risk it knocking her out or anything close to it now.
Leon reached down and she grabbed onto his arm, careful not to let her claws be too tight as he lifted her up onto the roof beside him.
It was finally over.
"There they are!"
And then the spotlight of a helicopter fell upon them, the sound of a man Ashley had hoped had been silenced when she'd seen him coughing blood and running off with a whole punched into a lung. But the younger Victor Parker sounded healthy, even if his aim was a bit off as the machine gun attached to the helicopter began to spin up and she and Leon ran towards the edge and jumped off. The truck from before was still parked below, Leon ducking and rolling onto the canopy as her wings went out and she landed nearby.
"Damn!" Leon said over the roar of the gun and his own pistol's returning fire. "I can't get a good shot from here."
Her wings twitched. This was risky, perhaps more than anything else so far. Even that creature that had hunted her had turned out to only be her physical superior by margins. But a machine gun was a workable answer against even some of the Tyrant-strains that had been coming out of Russian BOW labs.
It would slice her in half if she took a direct hit, with no more difficulty than if she was still the same scared young college girl with pretty blonde hair and no wings or exoskeleton to speak of.
But unless they found another rocket launcher just lying around it was the only plan they had.
"Leon, I'm going to need your help for this," Ashley said as she leaped onto the wall, claws digging into the edges of the brick work. One of the other BOWs fell behind Leon as she directed while he looked at her quizzically, sliding a new clip into his gun. "I'm going to fly up there and-"
"You need me to draw its attention again?" He slid the camber back, readying a fresh round, a cocky grin on his face. "Don't worry. You just stay safe and clip their wings."
He fired more shots towards the helicopter, the spotlight trailing behind him as it turned to follow. Dropping lower as it did. Ashley back on the roof, her wings buzzing as she prepared to leap off. Eyes shifted from brown to glowing green as the colors of the world faded away and she saw clearly her target in stark hues of black and white. The spotlight would have made her organic night vision tricky straight on, but it was pointed at Leon and the decoy. She'd bet that Victor wouldn't be able to tell that it was naked animalistic BOW with a good deal less human and rather little sense left.
Or male, not that she figured anyone but her could really tell given the infection had been much more thorough than her own in many ways there.
In any case her plan was confirmed a moment later when the machine gun tracked onto the BOW and not Leon, the helicopter dropping lower, only a half dozen meters above the roofs. Her sacrifice ran straight down the street as Leon ducked behind a parked delivery truck and put the engine block between himself and the oncoming bullets. The BOW did not, and was soon eviscerated, blood and bits of exoskeleton exploded across the road.
"Got you!" Victor yelled out in triumph over the helicopter's speakers. Unable to keep from gloating he continued to speak, "Finally. Goddamn insect. Ruined my suit and-"
Ashley didn't hear the rest, drawing closer and closer to the aerial vehicle, wings buzzing as she drew close and grabbed on. The flexible digits of her foot claw enough to slightly grab onto the landing skids as she moved forward. The pilot looked the other way, over Victor's shoulder and down towards the body they'd mistaken as her own. Leon took another shot towards them before ducking back into cover.
"And then there was one sir-URK"
She silenced the pilot, letting instinct guide her body through savagery she'd probably have nightmares about in the days to come.
Or maybe not. She could still smell the Plagas in them. And besides, that look of utter disbelief on that asshole's face as the out of control helicopter twisted towards the ground was panacea to the blood staining her claws from the pilot's throat. She leaped away, gliding more than flying towards the ground and running as best she could. The crash was not too spectacular, till the whirling blades began to clip into nearby cars. One must have had a full tank, the brief explosion followed by flames spreading out and engulfing the wreck as it tipped onto its side.
"Well that's one way to handle it."
She turned towards Leon, adrenaline and victory making her antenna stand high as she felt a sort of happiness for the first time in over a day.
Maybe longer?
She felt in control. Finally, like nothing else could go wrong.
Then they heard the sound of scrapping metal, part of the helicopter's door being thrown far into the air and landing behind them. Leon drew his gun again and pointed it down towards the crash. While Ashley shivered, antenna lying close.
She'd smelled Plagas… but it had been different hadn't it?
Stronger.
From both of them.
But mostly-
"YOU BITCH!" Victor Parker Jr. shouted, screamed, voice distorting as more teeth than should be grew in and one arm exploded into bone and blades and tendrils. "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO?"
Ashley took a step forward as his mutating body rose out of the flames, the injury from before still showing on his chest, now bristled with taut muscle and growing exoskeleton mixed with muscles bulging in mass. Her mind went back to that conversion in the elevator. He'd mentioned, if briefly, that he'd finally made a proper Dominant-Plagas…
And she'd watched him go back into the labs, nursing a wound that might kill and knowing that his plans would be ruined even if he lived.
"Damn it." Leon might not know the whole story yet, but he could read between the lines just as well. Taking three shots at Victor as he charged, then ducking under the sweep of the bladed right arm which tore through the top of a nearby car. Ashley ran to the side and took to the air again.
"Oh no you don't!" Victor yelled out, his arm extending outward, the blade on a tendril of meat and bone, chitinous growths sprouting and receding into the mix as the full and twisted might of true and active Dominant-Plagas ran rampant through his biology. His other, still human hand, pulled out a small pistol and shot wildly towards her as she dropped down several meters away and used another car for cover.
Eyes shifting from green to red, she let out an angry hiss, feeling about her left arm where some of the bullets had impacted. Too small caliber to go through her body thankfully, but enough to damage wings and knock her from the air if she tried to stay out of his grasp.
"But I'm done running."
Her earlier, inarticulate and inhuman curse of anger was answered by a half-dozen more. The surviving BOWs threw themselves at Victor. His victims risen up from the hole he'd thrown them into to have their revenge. Poetic in a sense.
He cleaved one in half, but another grabbed at his face. Acid and claws peeling flesh away as it regrew, different and mottled black-gray. He emptied a clip into that one, tossing the pistol away as it ran dry and crushing its head under foot. His shoes exploded apart into clawed extremities as he rose up and screamed into the night.
Leon peppered his back with bullets, turning his attention away as another two grabbed hold of his right arm. The muscled and sinewed whip of meat and bone striked out at random. Cutting one's legs off but not knocking it loose.
"I'm done being afraid of this!"
Ashley saw it all, once more in the air, looking down as the last BOW leaped onto his back and held tight. Immature and mutated wings, too weak to fly, its body malnourished and allowed to change into something so much less than the person they had been. But still strong enough to hold Victor in place, to yank his head to the side, showing bulging veins of still human-like skin.
To let her put an end to a real monster.
"And I'm done with the likes of you!"
She dropped from the sky like a predatory wasp, a stringer of man-made toxin in her hand. The spare injector of Inhibitor Ɣshe'd saved posed and pressed to inject the moment it struck flesh. The pressurized contents, semi-liquid, shot out into his bloodstream. Concentrated, this dose designed like the others for aerosolized termination . Even the quarter or less he'd taken was likely twenty times lethal if not more. Ashley was thrown back, landing painfully on her wings. But her hiss of annoyance was nothing, nothing compared to the screams coming from the so-called man before her.
Clawing and tearing at his back, the tendrils of the Plagas shooting out as they tried to escape his doomed carcass. Her followers crushed under his soon to be rotting bulk as he whined pitifully and at last, in mercy that he perhaps did not deserve… went still.
Now.
Now it was over.
