What Waits Behind the Silence
Walking into dead silence was somehow both welcoming and horrifying. To his relief, he was not met with the shouts of outraged militia, the electric crack of a stun rod, or the whizzing of a flaming arrow past his head. But silence, now a terrible foe, had replaced Ashley's panicked cries, and he no longer had her voice to guide him through the maze of hallways and ranks of Plagas-infected Ganados. Taking quick advantage of the opportunity presented to him, the agent shifted his rifle to his right hand, reloading the vital weapon distractedly as he devoured his surroundings.
Two options: doorway to the left, stairs on the right. If he wasn't mistaken, and if he'd taken careful observation of his progress, the rust-covered passage to the left simply circled around to earlier rooms, back where he'd already come from. --Stairs. Yes, they were the favorable option. He'd find Ashley this way. With a confident step forward, Leon Kennedy replaced the rifle back to its position against his shoulder and stealthily began his ascent up the series of stairs. When only silence followed and greeted him, Leon allowed himself to further survey the corridor.
It was dark. Not surprising. It was nighttime, the entire complex seemed to be experiencing perpetual power failure, and only the moonlight that filtered through the spider web of cracks in the windows chased away the shadows. Up ahead on the second level, splintered bulbs flashed a dull glare of yellow, flickering on and off with their wan light that seemed as if it might fade away at any moment. He conquered the stairs-- to the right was another hall that led off to many others, guarded by a cage gate...Ahead, a wall and a sign that read "Operating Room," beside a black arrow that pointed left. Quickly making up his mind, Leon resolved to check there first, before confronting the other branches that led to who-knew-where.
As he jogged over the last step and rounded the left turn, he slowed to a halt and wearily leaned against the wall, swallowing back the thick, heavy air that grew more and more oppressive farther down the corridor. The humid atmosphere was seeped in a distinct, overwhelming odor: dried blood, rotting flesh, and a sharp chemical reek. It was a familiar smell, so terribly familiar...
Raccoon City. Umbrella Corporation. October 3rd, 1998. The scent...it was identical to the smell of the labs, of the police department, of the entire city. The smell made the memories resurface, brought back the images that he had spent six years trying to suppress and forget. And here, this mission had thrown him back into the plot with Umbrella, had summoned the nightmares from the dark corners of his memory, had reminded him of the horror that he had survived and might not survive this time around. ...The horror that he had survived and she had not.
Ada.
Those nightmares...there had been so many of them after he had escaped. They were torment, forcing him to relive the witnessing of countless deaths of innocent citizens, the times he had narrowly evaded dying with them, the battles against the T-Virus-afflicted monsters. But none of the hellish dreams had ever recurred or haunted him more than one--Her fingers slipping out of his grip, her composed features as she accepted her fate and told him to live before letting go of his hand, succumbing to the dark void.
Ada had died. But not once; he had watched her die again and again and again in the six years that followed. He had watched her die, had been there when Annette's shot had pierced her shoulder and had sent her toppling over the railing to plummet to her death. And even after Ada had died, he had believed in her--through all of the lies and deceit, he believed in her, knew she was truly a good person and that she had never wanted to hurt him, felt her loss more than anything else during his escape from Raccoon City.
As she died, Ada had said that she wanted to escape with him. She had been sincere. He had believed her--those words simply couldn't have been more of her lies, they couldn't. She hadn't wanted to hurt him.
But Annette Birkin was the one who had been telling the truth, and the truth was that Ada had done nothing but lie to him. Ada. Dead. She wasn't dead. Six years of watching her die again and again and the truth was that Ada was alive and working for Wesker. She was working for Umbrella and Albert Wesker.
So she had lied. Again.
And yet...he, still so much like the naïve rookie cop from six years before, believed that she wasn't so vile as her dishonesty suggested; he still believed in her. If her motives rested solely in the revival and restoration of Umbrella, why had she demonstrated so many times that she was willing to sacrifice her own life to protect him? In the chaos of Raccoon, she had betrayed her employers to help him, save him, even when she could have easily disposed of him all along. Even now, six years later, Ada always seemed to manage to show up just as he found himself in a fatal situation...only to disappear again without a word, his ever-watchful, ever-present guardian. Whether it was a letter of advice with her scarlet lip-print signature or a gunshot to a particularly brutal Ganado, Ada was always somewhere nearby...Watching, waiting, protecting.
Leon knew that the woman in the red dress would show up again, and he knew that he would probably never understand Ada-if that was even her real name-or the complete truth behind her. But he would let it rest at that, since trying to uncover the truth about Ada Wong was simply impossible.
Drained, the agent pushed off from the wall and straightened, fatigue making every limb and muscle ache in protest. Leon lifted a hand to brush away his unruly bangs, absently taking note of the dried crimson caked on his fingers and clothes. Ignoring his exhaustion, Leon again relied on the adrenaline-induced energy, the only source of power that kept him from collapsing.
He followed the hall past broken operating tables and stretchers, past shelves crammed with dusty bottles and nameless medical devices, past piles of destroyed, useless equipment. At the end of the hall, a red light illuminated a set of double-doors, the entrance to the Operating Room. Forgetting his exhaustion, Leon pulled the heavy door open, thrusting his rifle through the entryway before slipping inside in a fluid motion, gun raised to repel any attacks--
--and again there were no enemies in sight, and only the hum of machinery met his ears. Again the peace was accepted with mixed feelings. There were prone to be soldiers wherever Ashley was being held captive, and no Ganados probably meant no Ashley. Disappointed but not defeated, Leon approached the clear glass door ahead of him which, to his surprise, opened automatically with a startling whoosh. On the ground, a broken pipe breathed misty tendrils of white smoke, the hum of the computers grew louder, the room seemed uncomfortably tense. Papers were strewn and scattered over the desks, the monitors flashed meaningless research data...and around the corner, a wide window revealed the Operating Room. Leon approached cautiously, his fingers fumbling for the rifle trigger.
There was something on the operating table.
Before he could even identify the figure, Leon had his rifle raised in an effortless, confident movement, and had slipped into a fighting stance. Hesitantly, he waited for any movement, any noise, any sign of life from whatever it was, and, without lowering his weapon, allowed himself a quick inspection, the gun still aimed for the kill.
It was human, or at least it had been at some earlier time. From his vantage point, it looked dead, its lifeless body a terrifying display of the cult's experiments with the Las Plagas parasite. It was gray-skinned, naked if it was indeed a human...but that was all he could see from where he stood, and it was all that he really cared to see, at that. Concluding that the creature wasn't a threat, Leon softly edged towards the console on his right, punching in the security code, but taking quick glances behind him as he did so. ...Still the creature did not stir.
Finally the computer beeped acceptance and, after taking one last look behind him, the agent stepped through the open doorway...But abruptly halted, the rifle almost slipping from his hands.
In the middle of the small, stuffy room was another operating table, a 'level three' parasite looming over its victim sprawled on the metal surface. The man was frozen in a position of tormented writhing, his mouth gaping in a mute scream, the motionless Plaga nailed through his back with long, jagged spikes. There was blood splashed on the walls, dripping from the ceiling, streaming into sticky, drying puddles on the floor--it seemed as though nowhere in the room had been left untouched by blood or other untold bodily fluids. The room reeked of the sickly sweet scent of the dark liquid, and, Leon noticed, there was a sink at the end of the operating table where fresh rivers of blood dribbled out of the body and swirled down the drain. The experiment was recent.
Overcoming the shock, Leon lowered his weapon and cast his gaze over the room, a pile of papers catching his eye amid the gore that polluted his surroundings. He stepped to the blood-stained table, and gathered the papers off the dirty sheets--they were the memos left behind by the deceased scientist, Luis Sera, with pictures of the gray-skinned humanoid from the other room stapled to the first page.
Regenerator. The thing in the other room was called a Regenerator. ...Regenerator, for its ability to regenerate body parts and rapidly heal from wounds. Leon scanned the mass of papers quickly; with each newly uncovered detail, his nagging apprehension swelled to a sense of insecurity and urgency until it took a great deal of effort to suppress the urge to storm in the other room and unload each rifle round into the repulsive creature. There were five of the Las Plagas parasites beneath the grey husk of skin, leeches in its body that could only be seen with thermal imaging. They were the monster's only weakness--otherwise, the Regenerator could not be killed by conventional means.
Los Illuminados...Umbrella. This rescue mission was almost like a repeat of Raccoon City. The island of Osmund Saddler's "religious community" was to the Los Illuminados what Birkin's labs and Raccoon were to Umbrella--the center of their unspeakable tests, the kennels for the products of their inhumane experiments. The organizations were two of a kind, devoted to experiments, BOW's, power--the Illuminados with their precious parasite and Umbrella with its treasured viruses and mutants.
Frustrated, Leon tossed the mass of papers back to the blood-smeared table and elected to take a final surveillance of the operating room before daring to leave. Even with the insistent anxiousness to get as far away from the Regenerator as possible, the agent was not keen on the idea of leaving anyplace unsearched, and the area behind the corpse had yet to be explored. ...He'd take a quick look, just in case.
The dull tap of his soles on the tiles and the droning hum of the machinery were the only sounds that rang through the stillness, heightening the sense of urgency and imminent dread, magnifying the weighty tension that lay in the silence of the blood-drenched air. Leon shuffled behind the curtains that lined the back of the main operating table and grimaced at what he saw...Another body, probably the remains of one of the cult's scientists. He was slumped against the broken equipment, streams of dark blood dribbling from fresh wounds, his hand gripping what looked to be a keycard. Knowing better than to leave a possibly valuable item behind, Leon crouched in front of the body and worked the card out of the man's fingers. There were the slightest traces of warmth in the pale digits, so whatever happened had been recent, taking place mere minutes before Leon's arrival...And Leon didn't want to stick around long enough to find out what that was. As he rose, he wiped the keycard on his pants leg, took a final look around the room and decided it was best to leave. He tucked the card in the pocket of his vest and started for the door.
There was a thump and a crash in the other room.
Leon's senses were immediately on alert, the rifle placed in position against his shoulder, adrenaline pumping into his blood. This situation was becoming routine; a Ganado storming in, swinging an axe, chain mace, or hammer. But that wouldn't mean he would get careless. His luck had stayed with him for both Raccoon City and this mission, but it wouldn't keep up if he got cocky--one false move and he'd meet his death. He backed up to the wall to prevent any opening for an ambush, aiming the rifle at the entryway, ready to pull the trigger the moment the automatic door rushed open.
From the other room came an awkward shuffle of steps, not the expected sprint of the commandos militia; a loud, hoarse noise followed that pierced the quiet of the room and gave Leon a fierce jolt of fear. He was calm, prepared--he had seen and lived through more horrors than perhaps almost any other man alive, and he could live through this one, too. But what occurred to him sent a wild rush of terror through his veins, threatening to destroy his fortified resolve.
It was the Regenerator. It had to be. The idea sent his mind reeling, groping for some strategy to kill the unreal beast, refusing to accept that if he couldn't, he would be trapped with the practically invincible Regenerator. There was no source of thermal imaging available, no way to see the Regenerator's weak spots; and he only had so much ammo to use. Even if he could kill it with everything he had, he would be left with nothing for the countless Ganados he would encounter afterwards.
Even as he desperately searched for an answer, the automatic door gave way and the Regenerator slowly shambled in at a steady, unhurried lope, its abnormally long arms dangling at its sides. The loud sound had never ceased. It was a raspy chuckle of breath, choking inhale, and sighing exhale, constant and continuous. The bioweapon's jaw was open, each of its long, pointed teeth protruding from its skull. The dull, sunken pits of its eyes were fixed upon him in a hungry stare, but the creature seemed in no hurry to claim its prey.
The cross-hair floated over the Regenerator's head, swaying as Leon's trembling hands aimed and he squeezed the trigger. The bullet struck directly, the monster groaned and staggered back from the impact. But there was no spray of blood, no parasite bursting from the head as pieces of bone were shattered by the controlling Plaga...It was not a reaction Leon wanted to see--that shot should have killed it, just as it did the Ganados. The Regenerator could heal body parts, but surely it couldn't be immune to a fatal shot to the head--
Trying to edge away, Leon scanned each corner of the room, desperately seeking some means of escape. But by the time he had come to a decision, the Regenerator had recovered. Just as he started to fumble for a grenade, the creature extended its long arms faster than Leon could blink, the limbs stretching far enough to seize him from where he stood at the other side of the room. The cold fingers curled around his shoulders, holding him helplessly as the appendages began to retract, closing the distance between him and the mutant predator.
Leon had only an instant to react. The monster's maw opened in a ravenous grin, a bestial smile of relentless morbidity, and dove towards his throat.
It was an immediate, involuntary response. Leon slammed the rifle against its head before the teeth could meet flesh, every bit of force he could muster thrown into his last defense. The blow was enough to catch the monster by surprise; its grip loosened and it stumbled away, moaning in frustration. Freed, Leon scrambled backwards towards the door, tripping in his haste just as the automatic door opened and the flash grenade was released from his hand. He could hear the Regenerator's groan, but was up on his feet and racing down the hall to the double-doors before the blinding flash had dissolved.
He threw his weight against the pair of blue doors, scooted through the opening, and shut them back frantically. Panting, his heart thudding against his ribs and making his pulse rattle his worn body, Leon sank to the concrete floor and leaned back against the double doors, trying to calm himself and catch his breath. He figured it'd be a while before the Regenerator could get to him...If it was anything like the zombies of Raccoon, it wouldn't even know how to open the door.
He gulped down the acrid air of the corridor, pondering over ways to bind the doors to trap the Regenerator even as he tried to sooth the uneasiness that crept into his mind and to calm the wild palpitations of his heart. His mind snapped out of the false sense of safety, and he was suddenly aware of the surroundings that had once been utter and complete silence...And he recognized the sound of a Regenerator's breathing on down the hallway.
Author's Notes: That's it for my second fanfic, and my first experiment with the horror genre. I really hated that part in the game...It's scary, and you're in such a tight spot...
After I get a few other projects out of the way, I'm planning on starting up some Leon/Ada fanfics, since the Resident Evil fandom is, sadly, very lacking in that area. This couple seems to have no support from fans--none, even though it truly deserves more attention. Although I have seen a few Leon/Ada stories here and there, I don't believe that that's enough for Capcom's intended couple in Resident Evil 2 and 4. People are too busy sticking Claire and Leon together...as unfortunate and terrible as that is. Leon/Ada needs more support!
And thanks go to Emily and Dan for reading and critiquing.