28. Leon

The after-dinner chat was enjoyable and so casual that it almost made Leon think this was nothing but an illusion. Barry was the oldest in the group, the father figure, and the one who knew the Redfields the longest, so the man had a collection of stories that Leon found amazingly interesting. They went from Chris's early (and clumsy) start as a soldier to a young Claire kicking a grown soldier's butt from their squad for insulting her art project. She'd been 12 at the time. The story was comical, and Leon enjoyed watching Claire blush.

At some point in their talking, Chris had gotten up and excused himself, saying he wanted to get some fresh air. Leon saw Claire stare at her brother, slightly worried as he walked into the balcony. Barry and the rest of the girls were too into their chat to even notice Claire's concerned expression, but Leon had seen it right away, and since he'd been sitting by her side, it wasn't too difficult for him to whisper furtively.

"Something worrying you?"

Claire was surprised by his sudden question; the worry in her face fell back under her jovial mask once more. She was getting good at hiding her real feelings; he had to admit it, but so was he at reading her. Living 24/7 with her had its perks. He was starting to see the small details that betrayed Claire. Details that, perhaps, only Chris would see.

"Ah? No, no at all…"

"Liar. You're concerned about Chris, aren't you?"

Claire gave up trying to hide it and sighed.

"How did you know?"

"I've learned a couple of things about you the past weeks, like that slight twitch on your brow when you're lying because you don't want people to worry."

"Geez… I feel like you are going to use all that against me one of these days, Leon…"

"Only if you're doing something stupid. So what's wrong?"

"Chris is upset…" Claire replied, "He's probably beating himself about the soldiers he lost in that ship. It wasn't his fault, but Chris doesn't deal well with losses. I just hope he's okay…"

Leon knew what Claire meant. It was probably one of the few many things he had in common with the eldest Redfield; either dealt too well with the losses they could have prevented.

"Why don't you talk to him?"

"You kidding? I guess it may be a Redfield trait, but just like I never tell him things about me that might worry him, he doesn't tell me either…"

The Redfields sure had their way of handling their secrets. They were always concerned about worrying the other. Leon was close to his siblings, but maybe it was the fact that he still had his parents that he didn't quite feel as linked to them as Claire and Chris were.

"I'll talk to him…" Leon offered.

"Huh? You two became best buddies, huh?"

"Not really…" Leon shrugged "but...I guess we get along better now…"

Claire tilted her head and smiled.

"Alright, Kennedy. I'm taking your offer. You're my spy now, so, go get him!" Claire laughed, patting the man's back.

"Anything for my wife…" he winked at her teasingly, and Claire punched his arm softly between chuckles.

Leon grabbed two bottles of beer from the table and walked into the balcony. Chris stood with his back at him; the man's elbows were resting on the railing, and he seemed to be deep in thought. However, Chris was never one to lower his guard, and Leon smirked when the man turned to face him. The blonde greeted him with a glance and offered him one of the beer bottles he had grabbed.

"Got tired of the girl's talk?" Chris asked, taking the bottle.

"Nah…" Leon replied. In fact, he was enjoying Barry's tale. "Thought you could use some company."

"I see. What are they talking about now?" Chris asked, looking at the group of people laughing inside the apartment.

"Something about the Burtons' summer vacation in the Bahamas…" Leon replied. At least that was what he'd last heard.

He looked at the picture inside the flat and, unconsciously, smiled.

"This is so normal that it's almost scary, don't you think?

"Only we can see normal things and be scared, but face monsters like it was nothing…" Chris snorted, "But yeah. Though I wouldn't complain if things could be like this more often…"

"I can see what you mean…" Leon nodded, taking a sip of his beer. He caught a glimpse of Claire laughing at something that Jill had told her.

"You two seem to be getting along well. I thought that Claire would be a little difficult to manage, but you two seem okay…"

"We know each other; that makes it easier…" Leon admitted, "Claire is, by far, the most pleasant person I've ever had to escort."

"She hadn't been torturing you then?"

"Depends on what you consider torture…" Leon smirked. Claire wasn't torturing him in the usual way any other woman would, but she considered that filling up his house and office with exotic plants as torture "She filled my office with carnivorous plants this morning…"

"She what?"

"She had said she was going to play the "wife card" and redecorate my office. I expected some cheesy flowers with colorful petals and ribbons instead. I came to find flowers with teeth that eat flies…"

"Huh, sound like something she'd do…" Chris admitted, "She gave me one once, too. It didn't have teeth, but it was one of those trap one things, the ones in which the insects get sucked or something like that? I had it on my table, and everyone in the office looked at it weirdly. You can't imagine how my neighbor reacted when I told him he should check if it got enough insect supply when I was out…"

"That poor man…"

"Did she name yours yet?"

"Not that she has told me…"

"She named mine...Sandy. I just called it the plant, but whenever she called me, she would ask how Sandy was doing. Before I even realized it, I was calling the thing Sandy as well. Jill and Barry mocked me for weeks…"

"Sandy the bug sucker…" Leon said, "Sounds catchy."

"Wait until she names yours...it won't be that funny anymore…"

The men fell silent for a while; both were busy with their drinks and thoughts. Leon stole glances of Claire now and then. That little story just made him think how strangely adorable Claire could be, sometimes. Being cute wasn't exactly something easy to see when it came to Claire, but in Leon's opinion, it was the kind of cuteness that suited her perfectly.

After a few minutes of silence, Chris was the one who finally broke the silence.

"Thanks…"

"What for?"

"When we found Claire...she wasn't quite herself. She tried, probably for us not to worry, but I knew she wasn't quite herself…" Chris said, taking a sip from the beer, "Now looking at her, she's much more like that original her. Barry was right when he said you'd helped…"

"Claire doesn't quite need help to get back on feet. I just keep an eye on her and try to keep her safe…"

" I have this feeling that things will get difficult soon with the new virus and everything. So either way, whatever you're doing, Kennedy, just keep doing it."

Leon hated the fact that he had the same ominous feeling as Chris. Things had been quiet on his side so far. Mobius hadn't tried anything at them; maybe their plan was working, and the group had no idea that Claire was currently in the USA.

Or maybe they do, but they're playing a heavy strike later.

"I don't think I've done anything other than follow her around," Leon replied, perhaps a little teasing, too, but Chris didn't have to know about that small detail.

Chris took another sip from his beer and looked inside the apartment once more; he seemed to look at Claire with a strange, mortified look.

"What's wrong, Chris?"

"What do you mean?"

"Something is bothering you, and I suspect it has something to do with Claire…"

Chris looked at the blonde thoughtful. Leon knew that look since it was a more intimidating version of Claire's thinking face; Chris was pondering whether to answer or not.

"I am just worried about the virus…" Chris sighed " We have no info about that thing...and we already lost a whole medical center and team by its hand. Shit, I hadn't felt so useless as I felt when Fishburn turned to that thing. Not knowing what was fighting, and you know what's the worse of all? When I was there trying to kill those things off. All I could think was that if Claire were there, we would probably know how to deal with them…"

Leon didn't talk as he waited for Chris to continue.

"...God knows what shit she went through, and all I could think of was...that. She shouldn't know to begin with…"

Leon couldn't think of anything he could say about that. Chris was right. Claire shouldn't know those things at all. It was their fault that she did, and without the new BOW's threat, they would most likely rely on her knowledge to deal with them, but what if by doing that, they were forcing her to revive something painful? Was it worthy? He knew what Claire would answer to that: it was; her suffering meant nothing compared to the many lives that could be spared with that knowledge. The worst thing of all, he knew she was right.

"Let's hope we can get something about that fucking virus soon…" Chris said, taking his last sip of the beer, "It's getting late. We should go. Claire still looks like she could use more sleep."

"Yeah, she might need it."

"We'll see you on Friday, then. It'd be in Claire's lab, right?"

"Yeah. It's the safest place to deal with this…"

"That should be interesting. I admit I'm curious about the place…"

"You'll be impressed."

"I bet. Alright, time to drag those two out of here…" Chris snorted, pointing at Barry and Jill, who were laughing hysterically.

"Chris…"

"Yeah?"

" You can drop by anytime. That would make Claire happy…"

Chris stared at him for a few seconds before letting out a soft snort.

"You're a good guy; maybe Barry's hope won't be as bad after all…"

"What?"

"Nothing...thanks, Leon."

Leon followed Chris inside, feeling dumbfounded. What had he meant with that?

Friday came by in a blink. The meeting would take place in Claire's laboratory; it'd been her idea since she said it'd be the safest place to discuss the new virus, and it'd give a chance for everyone to see the lab and meet the rest of the team.

Claire had slipped into her office almost as soon as they had arrived. Leon had checked up on her a couple of times just to find her looking through complex graphs and notes. The woman had been too focused to notice him watching her with his back leaning against the doorframe.

"That face says it all, Leon…" Helena whispered by his side with a smile, "So, you really got over Ada?"

"What are you saying?" Leon replied, turning to her.

"Why else would you stare at her like that?" Helena laughed, "All lovey-dovey…"

Leon looked at her with a frown, and he even considered glaring at her, but the fact that she had nailed the bull's eye prevented him from doing so.

"Leon…?" Helena said with a smirk, "You know, we are friends, you can tell me."

"I…" Leon sighed, "I don't know. I still need to put my thoughts together. I admit I had a thing for her some years ago, but I buried it away and forgot about it. At least I thought I did. Things seem a little more complicated recently; now, I am not that sure anymore…"

"Not sure about what?"

Leon took a deep breath and looked back at Claire. The woman had gotten up from her desk. Claire stared at the whiteboard on her wall as she tapped her lips with the back of a marker. The picture made him smile.

"I always liked Claire, but maybe I liked her more than I ever dared to admit…" he sighed. It was tough to admit it, but maybe... Maybe he was falling in love with her? It was way too confusing.

"You know...maybe that's good, though." Helena smiled, "You and her, I mean. Why not give it a try?"

Give it a try. As nice as it sounded, the only way that could ever work out would be if Claire was willing to give a try too, and he wasn't sure if the woman would be up to it.

"There sure are two cons at that...one being her and the other her brother."

"I don't know about the brother, but I think you have a good chance with her…" Helena chuckled, looking at the office, "Have you thought of...I don't know, doing it the old ways and...ask her?"

"I doubt she'd take me seriously if I did…"

"You two have joked around way too much…" Helena said, shaking her head, "Guess you'll gotta win her over with actions then, but don't worry… since I am a good friend and partner, I am going to help you," she added patting his shoulder.

Leon didn't know if he should laugh or not, but saying his thoughts aloud to someone else actually lifted a weight from him. He'd been feeling conflicted with his thoughts about Claire, but Helena's unexpected support made him feel ...happy?

"Why are you so supportive of this?" Leon asked with a frown.

"We have been friends for a while, Leon. We have gone through hell together and came back, and you know if I had to pick up a girl for you...that one would be on the top of the list. Let's say I've grown fond of her, too, and you two go well together..."

"You sound like Sherry…"

"Birkin would help out, too."

"Oh, no doubt about that. Sherry has been trying to hook us since she was 12…"

"She did?"

"You have no idea…" Leon chuckled, "I wouldn't be surprised if she founded some sort of Leon x Claire club…"

"That's...cute…" Helena laughed.

Leon smiled, sure it was cute. Sherry had once asked him, when she was about 12 or 13, if he and Claire would get married someday and if when they did if they would take her as their daughter. At the time, he had laughed at the idea; Sherry was the usual innocent child, and at the time, he had no heart to tell her no. Even Claire had told her yes.

"Bloody hell…that hurt."

Claire's sudden outburst made the two agents break into the office in alarm, but all they found was Claire rubbing the back of her hand with a painful expression.

"Now that was English," Helena smirked.

"Sorry…" Claire apologized, "dropped the pen and hit my head with the table on my way up…"

"Careful girl. You need those brain cells…" Helena smiled teasingly.

"Hah...don't tell me. I might have lost some in the course of my life with all the zombie hunting I've done since I was 19…" Claire laughed, "but hey, I still graduate with honors…"

"Are you rubbing your brains on us?" Leon said, faking annoyance.

"Wouldn't dare...I'm just rubbing my luck on your face, well not like I have the greatest luck out there, though. What were you two doing lurking around my office like suspicious subjects anyway?"

"Didn't want to interrupt you. You seemed quite focused…" Leon shrugged " Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be when it comes to presentations…" Claire replied, crossing her arms.

"It's in front of your friends. It won't be that bad, no pressure…"

Claire smiled at him as she picked up a bunch of folders from her desk, and Leon returned the smile.

"Chris and the others should have arrived. Time to go," she said, winking at them,

The conference room wasn't, by far, as big as the one in the DSO or the BSAA HQ, but Leon thought that he preferred it much more. There was something about meeting rooms that always made him uncomfortable, but this room was more...homey. Dhriti was already in the room when they came in. The Indian woman was arranging a vase with flowers on the center of the table, and she smiled, brightly, when they saw them come in.

"Hello again. Tea, coffee, or juice?" she asked, pointing at the beverage table " Help yourselves."

"Thanks, Dhriti." Claire smiled, "Where are Saya and Wallace?"

"Saya was receiving the guests, and Wallace was putting in the permits for their entrance."

"Oh...okay. Cool…"

A few minutes passed, and soon they heard the familiar incoming voices. Chris came in, followed by Jill and Barry; right behind them, Hopkins and Adams walked in along with a short-haired woman that was talking excitedly with Hiwamura. The last person to come into the room was Wallace with his laptop. After the proper greetings and introduction, the group sat down around the table; Rebecca was blabbering about how nice, and impressive the lab was, and Leon heard Chris and Jill commenting positively about it too. Unconsciously, Leon was feeling proud of Claire.

"This is really very impressive, Claire." Rebecca smiled.

"I am sure it is nothing compared to yours, Rebecca."

"Not at all. In fact, I think I'd prefer working here a hundred times better than my office…" the young doctor replied, "So getting back to business. How did you deal with our infamous virus?"

"Pretty well, actually…" Claire replied. She began typing into her laptop, and a graph projected onto the screen said, "I will skip the methodological aspects of our work and focus on results. Details of the process are noted inside the reports on your folders. If there's any question about it, we can look through it personally. Basically, we ran a genetic typing of the viral sample you sent us and built up a sequence with the fragments. This... is the sequence we managed to assembly…"

The screen showed out a set of lined up letters that Leon could recognize, only because Claire had taught him a couple of things while she worked on it. The different letters had been grouped and classified by colors making it look like a long colorful line; from what Leon had heard from Wallace, it was Claire's personal coding system.

"The virus is a single-stranded RNA virus that, surprisingly, seems to be rather stable. The coloring markers in the sequence signal the origin of the gene. As we suspected, this virion is bioengineered using fragments from other viral agents…"

Claire clicked her pointer, and small bubbles began to appear over the sequence. Each bubble indicated the name of the pathogen, and all of the presents could see familiar names on them.

"So they basically made a jigsaw of all the fucking virus out there, just great…" Barry growled.

" The last bit has nothing written on it…" Rebecca noted, "Is it an original sequence?"

"I'll get there, just give me a second…" Claire answered, "First, I wanted to note something that tells us a little bit about its infectious mechanism and might actually explain why you weren't able to reproduce the virus in vitro. Each of the sequences that you are seeing on the screen is a non-infectious gene from some old known viruses. Curiously enough, the sequences are not complete…"

"Wait...you mean...the virus is...not infectious?" Rebecca said, stunned, "well, I guess that sure explains why none of the cell lines I used showed pathologies, but I don't understand. Why would they have a non-infectious bioweapon…"

"Well, not exactly." Claire shrugged, " This virion works slightly in a very singular way. We'll call it α-V1 for now. The α-V1 infects the host cell through a lysogenic cycle; viral DNA and host DNA enter the recombination process…" Claire explained, showing them the process graphically on the screen.

"So it causes a mutation?" Rebecca asked, "No news in there.."

"Well, yeah. In this case, we will call it a Mute mutation. A genetic variation that has no phenotypic expression," Claire replied, crossing her arms, "The recombination occurs in a non-coding section of the gene; as a result, the cell will get infected, but the host will be completely asymptomatic until something triggers it..."

Claire clicked her pointer again. The screen showed out a set of images of what Leon could only guess were cells moving erratically around the frames.

"A second virion that we'll call α-V2. Now, under normal circumstances, the virus develops an extremely aggressive pathology that induces a massive state of either apoptosis or necrosis. However, the cells that were first infected with the α-V1 develop a mutation. That mutation is recognized by α-V2, preventing the second infection from destroying the cells.

"Like the outbreak in New York? You know, that waterborne and airborne strain of the Animality Virus." Chris asked.

"Ugh, not another of those...I'd never forgotten that…" Rebecca sighed, looking at Chris and Leon, "If it wasn't for Chris and Leon, I might not be here today."

Claire sighed and looked at Rebeca.

"But I don't understand. Do you mean this virus works similarly? I mean, it only becomes notably "infectious" when there's a secondary virus to trigger it?" Rebecca added.

"In a way…" Claire sighed " I don't have enough data to explain the pathological mechanism, but I hypothesize that α-V1 pre-conditions the host to receive the α-V2, and then it causes the mutation we see in creatures like the ones that were in Wales."

There was a long pause as the rest of the room tried to process what Claire had just exposed to them. They were speechless. In part because the news was alarming and in part because they were too surprised by Claire's methodical analysis.

"How do you know all this?" Adams asked

"Well, one should never underestimate a biologist that graduated with honors and has a hardcore boner for genetics…" Wallace laughed.

"Now...that sounded gross…" Dhriti punched him.

"You couldn't guess all that just by messing around with some DNA and letters." Barry said, loudly, "I know you're a brilliant girl, Claire, but how the hell did you figure out a virus out of nowhere…"

Barry's last comment caught everyone's attention. He was right. It didn't matter how brilliant Claire was. There was no way that she could have guessed how a virus worked out of imagination. The thought gave Leon a bad feeling, and judging at Chris's expression, the older Redfield's line of thought, wasn't too far from his.

"Barry is right…" Rebecca said, shocked, "The sample we have is only one virus...where did the other one come out from?"

The room fell silent as the group waited for Claire's answer. The auburn-headed had stopped her pacing around the room, and she seemed to stare at the screen with her back to them, but from Leon's position, he could get a glimpse of the woman's profile, and she seemed sad? No, the most accurate word to describe her face would be tortured-like. The look on her face was enough for Leon to know the answer even before she had opened her mouth.

"We had the second virus…" she said, turning to them, "it is running through my veins…"