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Chapter 10. "Ghosts of Veltro."
"I think I've seen you before." Leon said. The figure slowly stood on his feet.
He was tall and had ginger curly hair, he wore a blue vest and a white-long sleeved shirt under it with a black pants. Leon looked to his right then nodded to someone he knew. Even for his size, Leon stood almost a forehead shorter than the other. A small metal hatchet handle shined in the dim light. "Raymond right?"
"DSO," he said with a chuckle. "You're little late don't you think?"
Jill came closer to him, still focusing her gun on him. "What's the FBC is doing here?" she whispered. Though Raymond looked directly in her eyes and laughed, to provoke her even more, a kick to his stomach followed.
Raymond stepped back, and held the railing behind him
Leon shook his head sadly. "Answer the question."
"I don't have to answer anything, DSO agent." he answered with a hint of a teasing in his voice, a tone reminded him of someone who got in his nerves, still he did what had to be done and helped her.
"You have no authority over this." Raymond went on.
Jill lowered her gun and sighed, they were wasting a precious time in this pointless conversation, obviously Raymond won't break and tell them why is he here.
"There is no time to fight, we've gotta-"she shouted, but Raymond Interrupted.
"Give it a rest Valentine. You don't even know why you're here or who you're fighting." Thus he took his gun from the ground, without paying much attention to them.
"Hey stop right there." Leon stated.
Raymond looked at Leon one last time, "Nothing will change, unless you get your hands dirty. Didn't Senator Kennedy teach you that?"
In immediate response, Leon grimaced then looked away.
Raymond walked away from them, to down the stairs. There was no response from Leon and his footsteps just echoed in the hall.
An awkward silence filled the room. "So the FBC is on this ship too, what's going on here." Jill wondered.
Leon holstered his Wing-Shooter, and cocked his head for her to follow him. "We're operating without any intelligence." he stated. "Our best course of actions now is to search this ship for answers. Not that I relish the idea."
Together they went down the stairs, confused and wary, what was supposed to be a rescue mission turned out more then what they expected.
The hallway down had led them to an elevator to the front, they went through the side, and in the wall there was a small photos hanged there. Most of which happen to be scenic landscapes of different locations around the world. Below the painting down under them there was two plates decorated with curves and lines. The lines formed various shapes and animals. Three plates formed a triangle and are obviously decorative pieces.
The center plate wasn't a series of random lines but instead, a series of orange colored eyes. Several of the curving were different and were of different shading. On inspection, they looked like a series of long necks and a multi-headed creature stared back. Jill took an elective in college of world mythologies and the creature looked like a Naga or Hydra.
'Strange.' Jill thought to herself.
"Back in the hallway, I encountered someone, he was standing directly behind me...and he wasn't Raymond I'm sure of it now." Leon whispered.
As he observed the other side of the hallway for anything, and they were faced with two doors, a steel one in the left and a wooden one in the right. "Do you think this person is Raymond's partner?" she asked.
"No clue. It bugs me on how little we know." he took a breath and went to the wooden door.
"If only we could reach HQ, or Hunnigan." Jill gently pushed a door open and it revealed what seemed to be a boardroom.
There was a large table in the middle and chairs in both sides. Leon went straight for the unorganized books and files. While Jill went to search the side in front of the windows, something shiny caught her attention, stuck in the side of the window.
Carefully she touched it and tried to pull it out. 'Come on.' she thought. There was a big chance, the small object will be pulled inside for good.
Several books were moved around and one of them spilled out a series of pages. Leon didn't bother to clean it up but it didn't stop him from skimming the documents. Nothing was of any use since it just memos and manifests for the ship since years before. Anything less than a year ago hasn't been documented. In other words, still nothing to qualify as intelligence. Leon frowned then continued his search.
It took Jill a moment to finally be able to get it out. "Yes," she said raising her voice for Leon to hear. "I found a key."
"Nothing useful here," Leon said and throw the files on the ground. "Let's move."
The pair followed the other end of the hallway to the steel door, to their luck the key Jill found fits the door.
The room there was a small office, in the middle there was a small table and four couches in both sides. There is wooden shelves covering the desk, on the chair they could see an obvious shadow of someone.
"Careful." Jill whispered. Leon went to the desk alone.
Jill behind the table, she saw a map and written in the right corner in a large bolded text, Queen Zenobia. "This should help us, I found the map." She pulled out the thumbtacks and noticed that the map has been folded before.
In a hurry she pulled it from the frame and spread it on the table. Leon came from behind the shelf, and look of disgust is obvious in his eyes. "What did you find there?"
"A corpse, nothing was on him." he shook his head, and focused on the map. He left out the detail of the maggots that wormed around his abdomen.
"So we're right here." Jill said and pointed at a spot in the map. She recalled the shape of the previous rooms to make an educated assumption.
"Look over here," Leon said and pointed with his index finger at a cylinder shaped area. "According to the information, there should be an emergency communication room if we go through there."
"Yeah, we got to go back to the dining hall, maybe the key I have will open the door there." Jill folded the map and put it in her belt.
They went out of the room and down the hall, moving quickly. Once they were back up in the bridge where they found another FBC agent.
"Raymond." she said, her voice echoing in the deathly silent place, and she went through the locker room.
"You heard that name before?" Leon asked, following behind.
"I think my former partner told me about him." she replied.
"Your former partner was an FBC member?"
"Yeah."
To their luck the way back to the dining hall was peaceful, they didn't encounter any corpses. In the other side of the hall, there was a door locked with a sliding gate. After a brief consultation with their map, Jill took the key out and went for the door.
After a seconds of tugging on the lock, she opened the gate. "Great." they noticed the double doors' hinges were loosened. As if something gave a good amount of brute force to be opened. Eventually it broke and the door functioned as it normally would. Jill didn't like it.
Leon walked to his left and Jill took the right so their backs were against walls. At the same time, Jill and Leon opened their perspective doors then aimed into the next area. Once they did, an enchanting golden hall appeared before them.
The cylinder shaped hall had a large golden clock in the front of the stairs, though there was no chairs or anything around the other doors. "Impressive." Leon said as he stood in awe of the beauty before him.
"It's like an Oprah house here." Jill added.
Recalling the task at hand, Leon shook his head. "If I'm not mistaken, the emergency communication room is over there." Leon said and went through the right path, directly behind the large clock tower.
But like the previous one, the door was locked with sliding gate. Leon heaved a long annoyed sigh. "Go figure."
Jill knelt down and examined the lock. A pair of lock picks were taken out of her lower back. Once she held them in front of her. Jill sighed as well.
"What is it?"
"My lock pick broke. I think it happened when I came across one of those Ooze things." Jill stood up. "I must have been caught up in the moment and didn't notice when they broke."
"Got any spares?"
"Outside at the tugboat but we're too far to retrieve them." Jill pointed out as she looked over the map. It would be a major waste of time to do so as well.
Leon shook his head in slight frustration. Then he looked to the ground and noticed a piece of paper. He frowned at it then picked it up. It was a note to the passengers of the ship.
Come to the Permenade deck. We're evacuating there. Stay Safe. –Communication's Officer Eric Carmine.
"I think this could be our best bet. Could be a key and maybe there are survivors there too." Leon showed Jill.
She looked over the map again. "It isn't far from where we are. Let's go."
In a slow pace, they went down the stairs observing their surroundings, for anything. Jill was about to go for the door when she felt Leon's hand stop her. "Wait." he murmured. She rotated her head to meet his wary eyes. "Something's here."
Jill carefully listened, she wasn't sure if there is a sound or it is just the hammer of her heart, though she couldn't see anything unusual in the place.
"Watch it." she heard Leon shout, everything went very quickly for her to response, Leon wrapped his arms around her and jumped to the side. Down the staircase they went and both landed on their sides. Leon grunted as he raised his Wing Shooter.
She bit her lip in pain then looked at where they jumped from. Something must have been there for Leon to want to dodge like that. If this was a joke however, he'll have a bullet in him.
"Sorry," he whispered and pulled himself up. Jill looked to the spot where they were standing and she saw a large weird looking Parasites, they had something sharp coming from what appeared to be their mouth, and they were moving quickly around the stairs.
"What is that?" she asked as she stood up.
Leon took his rifle and focused his view up, in the third floor of the hall. It was close enough that he could see the movement of the creature's clothes, the strange rippling organ.
Another thing was fired at them, it was too fast and Leon stumbled backward. He fired upward into what he assumed where the thing stood at. He didn't know how to explain it but he somehow knew it was a threat.
"Come on, it's too high up." Jill urged him to run to the double door. "We could deal with it later."
"You two are not going anywhere." a voice echoed in the hall, a loud sound of a breeze of air followed, as if something fell from above.
Jill swiftly took her gun and spun around. There in front of the door there was a man covering his face with a gas mask, but his arm was large, too large for a human and it had what was like a sharp knife instead of fingers. The left shoulder was slanted and looked in disproportion with the right shoulder. Just the shape unsettled her.
The right side of his body, the other arm appeared horribly burned. It appeared to have been welted and the skin was obviously of a darker color. All over it, was red skin and black patches and it looked as if the skin was flaking. Underneath, several gleaming orange bits of skin were spread about amongst the black patches. It was obvious that the arm didn't heal properly. It was engulfed from third degree burns.
"It's been a while, hasn't it Leon?" It said and reveled his face.
Jill fired at the man twice, but he kept moving toward them like the bullets did nothing to him. "What're you waiting for?" she screamed at Leon who was frozen behind her with an unreadable expression.
In a hurry she took a grenade and tossed it. The green cylinder rolled over to the man, then it snickered at her. It reacted accordingly and kicked it far to the side, where it exploded. Jill felt the wind and vibration it caused.
Leon stood several feet away from Jill and still didn't move.
"Leon! What are you d-" Jill was cut off as the man sprinted to her then reversed kicked her at her shoulder.
Jill grunted then immediately leveled her pistol as she hit the ground. She fired several sporadic shots in the general direction she was thrown from. She clearly saw Leon wasn't in her line of fire. Jill tried to fire again, but she found her throat in the embrace of a hand. It tightened and felt herself heave for air. The grip only tightened.
Several sharp pinches manifested at her waist. Then came a wave of pain from there. Jill knew from experience that she was cut by something. Most likely by that blade arm.
She kicked and tried to free herself, but it was no use, her vision begin to blur.
It just took it's time to kill her. So Jill immediately knew this thing was toying with her. Her legs scrambled about in a last ditch effort as she forced herself to stay awake.
At last Leon came back to his senses and fired at the man multiple times, until it threw Jill away like she was just a pebble. "You bastard!" Leon said coldly pointing his rifle at his face. "You broke your oath, you betrayed me!"
Jill rolled around then slowly got herself back up. She rubbed her neck then saw Leon's face. The kind of expression suited for an enraged wolf. He had narrowed eyes and exposed fangs of fury.
Leon couldn't see that move coming, his blade-arm sliced his gun fast like a lightning. And it was turned into pieces all over the ground, too shocked to react he looked at the remains of his gun. "You know what really happened." Leon looked back at him, his eyes glistening with tears and his face was turning red.
The creature took a step forward and all Leon did was unleash his weapon. With every flash of the gun, Leon only grew angrier on every bullet. It was obvious he didn't care about conservation.
Jill didn't understand the situation but regained her composure. She got off the ground then used her knife and aimed for his arm, quickly she took three flash grenade and throw it in front of him. The man noticed it then shielded his eyes. The blade Jill threw bounced off his arm.
A blinding light made the man cover his face and stumble backwards. After several seconds the light was gone, and there was no sign of the two agents.
"I still owe you."
...
Leon was on his knees, while his back resting against the wall inside the dining hall. "I knew he suffered. I knew he did…"
Jill knelt down to his level. "All that metal and fire." Leon started to mutter to himself of stuff Jill couldn't understand.
Gently she put her hands on his shoulder. "I'm sorry Leon, but we have to move."
Jill know he was too fragile to move now, that man would clearly be on their tail. "Stay here, I'll be back." She made up her mind.
With that she went through the double door again, thinking of a plan to distract that man-thing, lead him away.
When the door closed, Leon noticed something in his left arm, his veins are abnormally visible.
His breath quickened as he took one of the silver plates on the table, he needed to see himself.
The reflection was his, but a red eyes stared back at him. "No," he whispered with so much fear. "No."
Panicked he searched his pockets for the medicine. He swallowed few pills with no water and leaned on the table, gasping for air.
"I'm sorry…" Leon rubbed his forehead.
Thank you for reading, reviews are always appreciated, I hope you like where this going so far.
Happy early Christmas everybody :) and happy new year.