"Leon, wait!"

Ashley Graham's cry makes the young STRATCOM agent stop.

Leon Kennedy chides himself, as he turns his steps back to the girl who bends over, hands on her knees, and struggles with her breath.

"I'm sorry, Ashley. How are you feeling?"

Leon watches her as his hand touches Ashley's back. Pale skin, cold sweat, she's still in shock.

They both just survived a painful, yet non-invasive, medical procedure that involved UV radiation concentrated as lasers firing at their innards to kill the parasites inside them.

If they're in a hospital, they would be given time to recover and heal.

We're still on this island, in danger, it's getting dark, we don't have the time for this, Leon thinks to himself.

Ashley picks up on Leon's frown and stands straighter.

"Not better until we're a thousand miles from here. Until we're home."

Leon nods, "Okay."

He walks at Ashley's pace; his eyes and ears scan their quiet surroundings for any sign of trouble.

He hears the howling winds that presage a storm, and these brought the salty scent of the sea. Also, the smells of diesel fuel and rubber.

Their path leads them to a construction site.

Leon looks at the gigantic structure of concrete floors and frames, still-visible steel beams, exposed metal platforms.

He can make out two, no three tower cranes that look at least twenty years old.

"Now what is this for?"

"Factory? Laboratory? Fortress?" Ashley suggests then shrugs her shoulders.

"Doesn't look like a luxury resort, I can tell you."

They move towards a boiler hoist, a temporary elevator or lift for the construction site.

"Top level could be a good spot to call in some air rescue. Then again, it's a good spot for an ambush."

"Leon, with our luck..."

"Yeah something's not right," Leon agrees. "Ashley, better you stay here while I scout up ahead. Make sure it's safe."

Leon hands Ashley the TMP automatic machine gun.

"Watch the weight. It has a fully loaded clip. Remember to..."

"Fire short rounds. Then run for cover. Fire. Repeat."

In spite of Ashley's exhaustion, the First Daughter smiles as she brandishes the firearm with competence that reassures Leon.

He steps onto the boiler hoist's platform.

"When I hear gunfire, I'll come running."

"You better. Leon..."

"I'm coming back, Ashley. We're going home. Together."

As he presses the lift button, Leon locks eyes with Ashley until he ascends out of view.

On the rising platform, Leon checks his pistol.

A bullet in the chamber. A full clip.

He still has an extra clip.

A couple of hand grenades.

The Broken Butterfly .45 caliber revolver, that Ashley found in Salazar Castle, still has three bullets.

He still possesses Krauser's knife, a cruel bastard of carbon and steel.

"This would have to do," Leon sighs.

He inhales a deep breath and internally takes stock of his physical condition.

Sore torso. Bruises on both shoulders, right leg, ribs. Possible fracture on left wrist.

Some cuts and nicks. Despite bandaged, these still sting.

What do you fight for, my comrade? Krauser's question echoes in Leon's mind.

Leon remembers his response, my past.

As he exhales, Leon flexes his muscles and joints. Spurts of pain come from frayed nerves, but he manages them.

And you, Krauser? What did you... die for?

Witness My Power! Krauser had shouted when his fighting arm transformed into a monstrous wing of living blades, that almost tore Leon into pieces.

Leon shudders at that close shave, it took all of his skills and most of the arsenal he scrounged up to take down and survive Krauser.

The hoist takes roughly a minute to bring Leon to the site's top level.

Leon holsters his pistol within instant reach then poises himself for whatever fight lies ahead.

The figure that hangs from the crane hook first catches Leon's eyes. At first, Leon thinks it's a corpse, a victim of the island's cruelty.

A second look makes Leon realize the blood-red evening dress...

"Ada!"

Leon rushes out of the open cage then stops to study Ada's still form.

A thick cord binds the infiltration operative's wrists and arms behind her and around her waist, the very same cord suspends Ada from the crane hook above the floor, just beyond Leon's reach if he tries to jump.

Leon exhales in relief as he sees Ada stir at the sound of her name. Pain flashes on her face when Ada opens her eyes. Her position puts her in a realm of discomfort.

"Leon..."

In the split between seconds, Leon registers Ada as bait for a trap, with the hunter close by in Leon's blind spot.

On cue, the man who began all this havoc, the mastermind who found the ancient, buried nightmares, who revived and modified them, and who made use of them to make monsters of men and women, steps forward.

With his living Plaga pet-staff swirling its eyes and tendrils in the air, seeking for prey, the self-called prophet but actual bio-terrorist leader Osmund Saddler thrusts his free hand, palm forward.

His unblinking, dead-eyes stare toward Leon.

Inside Leon.

Leon recognizes the forceful gesture, which would have made his heart stop and twist and turn as if Leon was inside a tornado.

Now, nothing but calm.

Leon steps forward and shoots a smirk at Saddler.

Leon's demeanor affects Saddler, a hard slap across his creased face.

"Better try a new trick. That one's getting old."

Leon dares Saddler and raises Krauser's knife as a challenge.

He shifts his aim then throws the knife at the taut cord between the crane hook and Ada.

The knife's edge nicks the cord, but it's enough.

Ada and gravity do the rest.

Ada drops on a tarp-covered stack of boxes, which softens her fall. She sits on her side, quick and free from her bindings.

Leon calls to her. "You okay?"

Ada reassures him with a soft smile. "I've been better."

Leon bites back a grin.

How many times is it now? You saving me. Me saving you.

A low chuckle cuts through the moment between him and Ada. Leon turns to the source of that irksome sound.

Saddler.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, I think you know," Saddler walks towards Leon.

"The American Prevailing... is a cliche that only happens in your Hollywood movies."

On Saddler's staff, the adult Plaga's eyes and tendrils move in a frenzy. It's excited. Aroused.

Leon's nostrils flare at the smell of smoke and ash, which triggers a recent memory of a barn on fire.

Saddler stops, shows a smoker's stained toothy grin.

"Oh, Agent Kennedy, you amuse me."

The Plaga slithers from Saddler's staff onto Saddler's arm to the bare, exposed flesh of his nape.

"To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of cliches!"

Saddler's jaw falls open wide, Leon can't help but be reminded of how a snake unhinges its jaw to devour food.

From deep down Saddler's gullet gurgles a roar.

A giant, tumorous eye emerges and fills Saddler's expanded maw. Its malicious glare aims at Leon!

"Ada! Stay back." Leon warns.

Ada gets to her feet and joins Leon.

"Let's go, Leon!"

"No, I'm gonna give you cover and time!"

Leon takes out his pistol.

"I'll power through. Just find Ashley. Keep her safe. Tell her... I'll catch up."

Ada takes a breath. "-Okay, I'll tell her. So, you better."

Then she's gone.

In mere moments, Saddler achieves a transmogrification that revives Leon's torturous memories of a city of the dead and gives birth to new phantasms he will struggle through many sleepless nights to forget.

Saddler's neck extends and expands with volatile movement and girth of an adult anaconda's.

Identical elongated limbs burst out of Saddler's collar, grow huge and hard with bruise-colored muscles.

Their surfaces get dried out in the open air and appear like thorny shell.

On the "knees" of these giant limbs, blinks out jaundiced eyeballs that roll in random directions with mad energy.

A protrusion of tendon and bone burst and grow out of each side and from the bottom of Saddler's jaw— jointed, jarring— the deformed but deadly mandibles of a giant mutant ant.

And what remains of the man Osmund Saddler?

Everything below the neck withers, limp and lifeless, save for the left arm and hand that has fused into a thick, purple tentacle.

The still-attached remains and robe of Lord Saddler dwindle to the worth of a wart or a flap of flesh.

Leon observes this abominable rebirth. In the back of his mind, he wonders —

H-How do you get back from this?

You don't. This is you. This has always been you.

You fused with the Plaga. They fooled you by making you think you had control.

And now it's free. This bioweapon.

In the war to become this planet's dominant species.

It'll spread. It'll control. And it'll breed.

It'll win.

It will replace all of us.

Just as it's replaced you, Saddler.

Leon knows now and accepts.

I can't run now. I won't escape this.

Not like in Raccoon City. He's not the rookie cop, who's way over his head and been luckier than most. Not anymore.

I'm an agent. I'm trained. I'm tried and tested.

He's done this before. Leon's stopped an outbreak in the middle of the South American jungle.

And I will do it again. Right now.

Not by luck.

But by skill he earned. And grit he proved.

And by the choice he made.

I am a weapon.

Leon's a weapon, of living flesh and blood and will.

My past. I'm sick of it.

Being afraid and powerless.

I'm sick of running.

Leon grins as he grips his handgun and dashes to make good distance.

"I'm gunning for this fight!"

The Plague creature moves with unsteady steps, possibly still in a daze from its violent metamorphosis, unfamiliar with its new form and its surroundings.

Like any babe, Leon muses as he makes good space away from the Plague.

Earlier··· when Leon arrives through the lift on the top level, as he spots Ada suspended in mid-air, the STRATCOM agent scans the top level.

While he needles Saddler, Leon notices the rusted red fuel drums, the octane smell lets him know the drums are not empty.

Leon has seen on low platforms the remote switches that connect and control the old crane towers, which still have hoisted heavy loads of massive

metal beams.

Traps.

From past experience, Leon knows that for human, beast, and in this case— mutant monster— the eyes are always vulnerable.

Weak spots.

And the dinner-plate sized eyes on the monster's legs.

The tire-sized eyeball in what was once Lord Saddler's mouth.

Easy targets.

Pistol aimed and ready in his dominant hand, Leon palms one of his remaining pair of grenades, pulls off the pin with his thumb and lobs the incendiary low at the fuel drums.

Just as the Plague stumbles nearby.

BOOM goes the grenade.

The drums erupt in a cloud of fire and smoke.

The Plague gets caught in liquid heat, force, and drum shrapnel. The monster recoils.

One leg bends in broken angles, badly torn.

Fire catches on its flesh. The Plague writhes in sudden agony.

Leon fires his pistol, five rounds into a knee eye and in the big, gross eyeball.

Somehow the Plague manages to scream, more like a high-pitched groan, even without a visible mouth.

Tremors vibrate its bruised carapace.

Leon knows that these monsters regenerate and recover in no time, so he doesn't wait.

He runs, climbs up the low platform with the remote switch console.

He checks the tell-tale signs that it's on and operational. Tiny green LED lights.

Leon makes a quick test. The crane tower, he expects, moves.

Leon switches it to stop.

Trap's set.

In no time, the Plague rebuilds its torn leg and moves better and faster than before.

With purpose. With intent to kill.

Leon makes his estimates beforehand and if the trap misses, he readies his last grenade in hand.

Leon watches as the Plague crosses an imaginary bright line.

Now. Leon flips the remote switch. The crane tower moves and its hoisted cargo of beams travels in an arc of descent with speed and force...

The metal beams collide with the Plague. It almost pushes the monster off the edge.

Leon jumps off the platform, and crouches low as he sees new clawed and fanged tendrils belch out of the Plague's body in a spray of charred brawn and bilious liquid.

They swing and extend in all directions in the hopes of hooking and snagging Leon.

Leon runs across the level, to make space between him and the Plague.

In his years of combat training, Leon worked hard not only to hone his battle-skills but also make his senses keen.

In martial arts, speed in action and reaction is essential to secure victory.

And Leon conditioned his combat senses to be primal, that of the prey slash the predator.

When his body feels the urge to move, Leon's mind doesn't confirm or question. It sits back as the passenger and lets the body drive until it finds a safe spot.

Leon feels the urge and rolls down on the floor low just as a metal beam hurl pass him and falls in a reverberated crash!

He continues to fire-roll away towards some construction materials and equipment for cover.

More beams get hurled towards where he's taken cover.

Thrown like bars. A couple like javelins.

His cover holds despite the battery and Leon inches himself out to lay sight on—

The Plague recovers and, with its powerful neck and muscular mandibles, picks up the metal beams that crushed it then throws them at Leon!

It picks up anything with reach: bags of concrete, crates, boxes of tools, then hurls them as projectiles at Leon.

This bombardment traps Leon.

If this keeps going, Leon will die here.

He curls in a fetal position, to prevent injury by the makeshift missiles. He wraps his arms around his head.

Witness my power! Krauser the monster roars.

Feeble Humans. Let us give you our power. Osmund offers.

When you acquire this power, you too will understand. So says The Lord.

You'll soon harbor an awesome power. Saddler promises.

Yet it seems, you would rather choose death, Leon. Saddler shames.

Leon. Leon! Saddler echoes.

"Shut up shut up!" Leon shouts against the continuous din and the debris.

"LEON!"

"A-da?"

Leon uncurls and cautiously stretches out to sight Ada who remains unnoticed by the Plague.

"Leon!" Ada spots him.

She stands from concealment, holds up something by the strap. With Herculean strength Leon always suspected, Ada flings in a hammer-throw the object towards him.

"Take this!"

The object skitters to a stop a few feet away from Leon's reach.

In a heartbeat, Leon pulls out the Broken Butterfly revolver. He fires all the .45 rounds at the Plague.

Each bullet hit the monster: on its main body, on a leg, on its jaw mandible.

The Plague flinches, pauses its barrage.

When the bullets hit their mark, Leon discards the spent revolver and dashes out from cover.

He hears metal scrape against concrete. He doesn't turn to check. His senses know.

More metal beams. Like missiles straight at him.

To bar his way. To crush him dead.

Leon dives. The metal beams crash. Booming clang.

But the beams miss him.

Leon holds the object.

A weapon. A rocket launcher.

In a crouch, Leon aims the launcher's laser scope at the Plague. The monster stands now free from its trap, recovered and restored, bigger in size.

It raises its mandible crown up to the dark sky.

Leon smells it in the wind.

Daybreak.

Witness my power! The Plague appears to say to the coming dawn through visceral vibrations throughout its massive, still-growing form.

Power incarnate. Yet it stills hungers for power.

When the power-hungry prey on and devour the flesh and fates of innocents—

Like Ashley... the villagers... the cops from Madrid...

Manuela...

Claire and Sherry...

And millions of others, those now lost...

Leon chooses to be there for them.

All of them.

When he can't be their savior, Leon will be their avenger.

I AM THEIR WEAPON.

From them, he gets power.

Target locked. Leon presses the trigger-

"You hungry for power?"

And the rocket fires.

"EAT. THIS!"

The missile's laser aims straight and true to its target.

The evil eye of the Plague.

Missile and monster blast together.

A sphere of blinding light, deafening thunder, and devouring hell-fire.

That's how the Plague's destruction seems to Leon.

Leon gets to his feet, moves towards the smoking black remains.

He presses his last clip into his handgun and looks out for any peering mutant eye or any movement.

All that's left are a couple of legs that are now liquefying into an oily sludge. and catching fire.

To Leon's surprise, Saddler's original body remains more or less intact, headless though, and his prophet's Byzantium garment has a couple of places singed by flame.

Leon fires into the body's chest, gut, and the arm tendril for any reaction, but all are motionless.

A shiny object in the garment's pocket catches Leon's eye.

A titanium cylinder. Temperature and pressure controlled. Undamaged. A little hot to the touch.

The cylinder protects a vial of biological material.

Leon experiences the urge to move.

"I'm sorry Leon. Hand it over."

Ada aims her gun at Leon's head, but Leon knows that she can easily shoot his shoulder or his arm, that wouldn't kill him but still would hurt like hell.

Leon surrenders the sample cylinder to her.

"Ada. You know what it is."

He stands to meet Ada's eyes. Ada smiles, then her eyes shift to something behind Leon in alarm.

Leon turns to see ... no danger.

Dammit, a distraction.

Ada runs to the very edge of the top level and leaps over the barricade.

For a moment, Leon believes she could fly.

Ada falls out of sight.

Shocked, Leon follows after her only to be confronted by the swirling winds and loud engines of a helicopter, where Ada nestles inside.

She waves to Leon, the cylinder, her prize in hand.

"Don't worry I'll take good care of it."

"Ada!"

"If I were you, I'd be getting off this island too."

Ada lifts a black mobile device.

From the alarming beeps it sounds off, Leon guesses that Ada just armed something. Something bad.

"She really pushed it."

"Here. Catch."

Ada lobs something that Leon snatches from the air.

"Better get a move on, Leon. See you around."

With that, Ada directs her pilot to fly them away to the open sky.

Leon looks down at the key for a yet-to-be-determined purpose with a bear chain.

"That's cute."

Leon stares closer at the key and recognizes what it's for.

"So that's how you got here , Ada."

He hopes that Ada allowed for sufficient time for him and Ashley to get off the island before the explosives blow.

Possibly five minutes. Likely less.

An ear-splitting detonation brings Leon's notice to the other side of the island.

A fireball rises up to the sky.

Likely less.

The top level shudders under Leon's boots, the seism shakes the site's foundations.

"Leon!"

Ashley runs to Leon as he leaps down from the still-descending platform.

He grips her by the arm and leads her towards a tunnel, the only path left for them to explore.

"We have to get out of this island now. It's gonna blow any moment."

"It's gonna what?"

Sudden explosions in their surroundings and ground tremors explain for Leon.

Down the tunnel, they go. Leon hopes it's the right route that would lead them to the shore, to the sea where they can seek sanctuary from the blasts, fire, and debris.

They skid to a stop as they find themselves on a high ledge, with a metal vertical ladder that descends several meters down the height of a flagpole.

Leon goes on the ladder and promptly slides down.

When he stands securely on the ground, Leon calls out to Ashley, "Come on!"

"Okay!" The girl faithfully leaps down in a half-tucked cannonball.

Leon catches Ashley in his arms.

They run further down the tunnel. Its ceiling and walls shudder from the force of the explosions above-ground but here, Leon and Ashley can escape erupting fire and blasting fragments.

Probably there's no chance for a cave-in, Leon hopes to himself.

His nostrils flare with the scent that spurs his feet to sprint faster.

The smell of the sea.

Then his ears pick up the sound of flowing water.

Flowing water!

He grabs Ashley's hand and pulls at her as he doubles his stride to a run.

The tunnel brings them to a large underground chamber that must have been a natural cave system made larger by men with industrial tools.

Crates, other heavy equipment, and materials stack around the area.

A lagoon of unknown depth lay, with two wide, rushing streams to both left and right directions.

"Leon, where are we?"

"Might have been a smuggler's or pirates' bay in the past. Now they're using it as a pier to bring equipment and stock from the sea..."

Leon points to the left, to the water passage made of natural rock.

"...then ferry it to the other parts of the island through there."

Leon directs his finger to the right, where a man-made water tunnel, complete with an extensive line of flood lights lead in further.

"Leon, look!"

Ashley steps and brings Leon's attention to an idle sea scooter, moored to the shallows of the bay.

Ada.

They step forward only to hear their footwear slosh water that causes them to share a look of alarm.

The water is rising?

That, and the thunderous and heavy rumble rushes from the mouth of the water tunnel, where the floodlights flicker, then short out.

Ashley turns to the tunnel, "What's that?"

"We're not gonna wait to find out. Come on."

Leon brings her to the sea scooter, which they both straddle. Leon takes the driver's seat and turns in Ada's security key to unlock the scooter.

Leon starts the scooter with a push of the button.

He revs up the scooter's engine to full throttle.

"Hold on, Ashley!"

The sea scooter accelerates at a speed that surprises Ashley, who embrace Leon tight, her arms like a vise on his bruised torso.

Leon winces then shuts down the pain with a single breath as he focuses to drive through the natural passage to the sea.

He doesn't know what lies ahead.

The rumble they heard earlier sounds like it pursues them. Leon glimpses from the scooter's side mirror to see—

— A flood the size of a freight train rages after them in the passage.

"Leon!"

"I got you. We're okay!"

"Waves! Behind us!"

"I know. Just hold on!"

Leon grips the scooter's throttle and locks it at its fullest rotation.

Up ahead he sees the daylight from the mouth of the sea cave's passage.

Almost now, just a little bit further.

A blast that breaks stone seizes Leon when he sees a wide slab of the passage's ceiling, complete with stalactites, break and fall.

The passage's collapsing.

We're going to get hit.

We're going to get trapped then drown!

Before the slab hits the water, it misses the scooter's jet stream by a breath.

The slab's explosive splash propels the water scooter up in the air and out of the sea cave.

The scooter touches down underneath the waves for a brief moment then surfaces.

Its causes a burst of spray that brings out a rainbow which Leon barely registers when he realizes that Ashley has disappeared from behind him.

"Ashley! Ashley! Where are you?"

"Leon!"

Leon catches sight of her as she bobs out of the waves.

He drives the sea scooter closer to her then stops and lets it float.

Ashley swims to the scooter's side and takes Leon's offered hand.

He pulls her up to her seat.

"Come on. Let's go home."

The dip in the sea appears to agree with her, the water washes away her haunted look of Ashley's face, makes her appear free and fresh when she beams.

"Great idea. Mission accomplished right Leon!"

"Mission is to bring you back home safe. To your father."

Ashley's smile dims a bit. Her father being the US President, home means the White House.

With Ashley's arms wrap around him, Leon drives the scooter further way into the open sea.

Eye on the scooter's side mirror, Leon notices Ashley turns and gaze back at the island now blanketed with bright blaze and black smog.

Ashley turns around and catches her reflection in the mirror. She meets Leon's eyes.

Her smile returns, with a plucky cast.

"So, getting back to my place for some overtime is out of the question?"

She leans her head to one side to catch Leon's answer, her face bright with anticipation and invitation.

Leon feels sucker-punched. His training helps him surpassed the many strange and death-dealing encounters in this mission, but it does not cover the scenario when the First Daughter makes an overt advance on him

Leon exhales a laugh and keeps quiet.

Ashley takes the hint. "It doesn't hurt to ask."

Leon checks the mirror to make sure he has his professional face set on.

"Miss Graham, better get some rest. Once we get to shore, I'm gonna call Hannig— STRATCOM for assistance."

He doesn't look back at how Ashley takes his tone, but she quiets down. Despite the growing weight on his heart, Leon presses on.

"There might be still people after us. After you, Miss Graham. But we'll be safe once we arrive at the nearest consulate or army base."

Ashley doesn't respond for a few moments.

Leon thinks to best leave it at that, when-

"But the worst is over, right Leon?"

Leon pauses then before he answers, he gently holds Ashley's hand that holds on to him.

"Get some shut-eye, Ashley."

Ashley nestles her head against Leon's back.

She snuggles closer and her arms' embrace around Leon grows tighter, locked to a lifeline.

Leon slows down the water scooter. They still make good distance at the speed they travel.

He can feel Ashley's breaths get deeper, into a slow yet steady rhythm.

Leon tastes the acridity of his silence.

He can't lie to Ashley, after all they've been through together, but he couldn't tell her the whole truth.

The worst might be indeed over. For now.

In the coming days, there will be trauma—

The invisible wounds. The bad dreams. The dread.

These Ashley would have to deal on her own.

There'll be people who can help her.

Leon would count himself as one.

But Ashley needs to resolve this. On her own terms.

She could make her peace with what happened, then move on.

She could take part in the war against what happened then move on.

Either way, she would have to make the choice. Otherwise, her life would be in Limbo, that's like being the Undead.

A special kind of hell.

She must make the choice.

Like Leon did.

To get back to being alive again.

It's the only way.