While looking through my old notes for this story, i read somewhere early on that I would like to get 400 views that chapter.
It's been many Chapters later, and...
WE ARE AT OVER 2,500 VIEWS! :D
Thank you so much to everyone who has either just visited or stuck around and has been keeping up with it this while time!
I know that I have been very busy, but I realize that success on here cannot be measured by myself without your constant support. I am eternally grateful. Thank you!
...
1-7: The Venom
Ashley was really starting to feel like a cool secret agent now that her adrenaline kicked in. They had both keycards needed to enter the security room. From there, hopefully the emergency power and supplies here would be enough technology for maing contact with the outside, opening up the doors and getting the heck out of dodge... before they loose their lives... everything... in the firebombing of her old home away from home: Camp David.
...Exciting!
Their most recent near-death experience with a cobra hunter was so adept; it had eyes on the back of his head... literally...
Now Leon and Ashley moved swiftly back down the corridors with their backs against the wall. At every corner, one would peek out with the end of their gun and check for any possible "hostiles," basically any body they could see (very difficult through he dense fog-like gas of the virus) that wasn't infected or not already burned with Leon's lighter. Then one or the other would motion for the other that it was relatively "safe" to move up and on.
"Does Leon always feel this awesome!?" Ashley thought jokingly. She looked up and over at her idol and protector as they made their way back up the stairs from whence they first had fled up when this nightmare had all began. His game-face meant that he was totally in the zone and din't notice her.
"He looks so manly," she thought with a smile.
Slowly as they stopped briefly, he would wipe the sweat from above his...bloodshot... eyes and onto his forehead, up into his hair... Making it shed a bit... With his free arm... that was purple and infected.
Ashley gulped when he realized that with her noble and once deservingly-perfect hero, was looking more or less like anything but a human.
"maybe a little too bit in the zone..."
Every now and then, despite the stress of the situation and the need tokeep one's gaurd up at any moment, Leon coupd not help but look down at his arm.
It was almost like Leon HAD to...
Fighting these monsters...
...these...other...monsters...
...he would "loose himself."
Finally, they arrived at the security room.
With a keycard in each hand on opposite sides of the mahogany red metal-plated double doors, they swiped at each reader simultaneously.
*Beep*
*growl*
"oh shit!" Leon exclamed.
The rusles of the undead could be heard exhoing their cries around the hallway.
"So much for being quiet." Ashley thought.
as they rushed into the room, the gas swept in the control room like a vacuum in space...
RAAA!
Bringing a messy zombie with a bullet in his head suddely to life.
The skinny lank of oozing flesh dove out from it's fetal dead pose in the corner of the room and towards the two survivors.
With quick thinking... and inhuman reflexes, Leon reached for Ashley's arm as his fingers coasped her...all three of them.
"Aoh!" Ashley yelped in pain as the scaily arm pulked her in the room and to the side They were away from the monster, Leon's other arm just grazing the tip of its' fingernails.
It's nails were purple...and despite Ashley pumping a round in and swinging her hero's knife at it, both wounds instantly seeped in upon itself and were gone. Only the hole between its' eyes that ended its' life remained open and exposed as the doors closed mechanically behind them.
Leon had shoved it out across the hall with such brute force that it cracked the wall opposite as he sealed the door.
...
Leon would continue to fight naturally with all of his might to protect Ashley and get her put of here. Even...especially... at the cost of his own.
He shot with impeccable accuracy...
He punches could destroy a boul...err... match his friend Chis Redfield's strength blow for blow. ...at least his left hook...
He snuck around like things that creep in the night, and he struck without any warning and terror! He was like a...
...he was a monster.
It was different killing before.
He felt more humanity.
He felt more compassion.
He felt more dirty.
Now it was like he didn't care. At this point he would kill of shoot anything he felt the need to... the desire to... The pleasure to.
Was it like this before? Was he just being a survivor? Or was this arm turning him more and more into something else.
At first, he thought of this as paranoia, but then he realized...
It was all that was keeping him sane.
He needed to keep reminding himself o what he is... No... WHO he is!
The second he stops thinking... The instant he fails to recognize what his own body was doing... it could be over.
Then again, if he dwells on this, it could be life and death for Ashley. He needed to be ready, but he needed to keep sane.
Was this in itself insanity? Or was true intelligence recognizing the issue and focusing on what he is fighting for.
Freedom...
Peace...
...Ashley.
Right now, looking into death's right eye out the corner of his own, halfway through the threshold... all that was left to do... was save Ashley.
He remembered Ashley on her rescue:
How scared she was as a "little girl."
She desperately attacked him at first...
not knowing who he was...
...not knowing what he was...
...just like earlier tonight.
Both Leon and Ashley had technically been infected before, though by a parasite rather than what virus is derived of it. He was scarred at what else could be done with people now that infection could be manipulated and dispersed so easily...
...
Suddenly, Leon wasn't feeling to good. At least the pain meant he was still human... he thought.
Things began to spin as his mutated hand leaned against the wall.
"Leon!?" Ashley cried out, not in fear like she use to but in concern.
**ssss**
As Leon slid his down the side of the wall colapsing, the sound and smell of a sort of acid could be heard and smelled respectfully. His hand was doing all this!?
No, this was something else...
...something even worse that what the C-Virus could be doing to him right now, despite how it seemed to tear apart people's lives...
He remembered Helena;
He remembered the day in Tall Oaks the virus first became airborne... the C-virus...
...all of those people... ...worse than dead.
All because Helena was forced to breach security for her kidnapped sister, just for Debora to transform worse than all others.
He remembered Adam Benford... the last president... whom was gunned down as a zombie by someone he valued most as a friend... Leon.
Not only would the knowledge of Umbrella and Raccoon City be public now, but there would be no small party here at Camp David for the replacement six months ago. An infection would not be here, trapping, killing and changing everyone around him.
Leon lost track of time as Ashley checked his body... his muscles...
She had always wanted to feel them, but oh God! Not like this! Never like this!
Ashley gasped at the real culprate behind Leon's sudden anguish.
Some kind of resedue could be felt on his skin. It reaked of poison even worse than corroding metal on the wall! Ashley instantly thought of the Cobra Hunter they fought earlier.
Normally, this would be okay, seeing it wasn't injested or forced into his blood through biting. (Ashley had been studying up on her biology, figuring she may as well learn what it SHOULD be like not that she had seen what it shouldn't ever do, unless tampered with by mankind. Plus, her dad enjoyed the wilderness (how ironic she would be trapped in rural Europe), and since her abduction she had also asked him more about how to survive on her own and such tasts. Making fire, hunting, gathering, treating injuries... Cuts!)
Ashley's mind flashed back to when they dove into the control room. The scratch!
Claw marks had just grazed Leon's arm... his human arm...
This poison seemed different that what Leon was injexted with similar to the Cobra.
This was more "natural." Only bow it oozed from the creatures very skin. Would direct contact via a bite do this to her? Or would she begin to transform like Leon? She shuddered at what the real venom from its' fangs could do.
Leon shuddered also, but his was a sort of shake caused by chemically-induced shock!
"LEON!" She yelled out to him. He could only hear her like an echo... deep inside his own mind.
**Swish**
Ashley rolled over, moving just barely out of the claw flailing around as Leon... her hero... seung at her, almost in a trance!
"oh God..." Ashley sobbed.
She drew her gun.
"no..." Leon wabbles closer to her. "Not like this..."
"ssss" Was Leon hissing!? LIKE A SNAKE!?
"Ssssyyyyy" Or just mutteing giberish from his current state.
"Ruuuuu" It was like Leon was studdering from the cold he felt of going numb, like that poor cook Pierre. Only this wasn't thermal. It was internal.
"Sssss...ruuuuu" Did Leon want her to run? No she couldn't. She couldn't just leave him to suffer. He needed help! He needed... relief... he deserved for the pain to stop.
...even if it meant in the form of a bullet... she owed him that much.
Plus, she couldn't leave the room before she released all the door locks!
"Sssss...ruuu...ruuuuum!" No! Ashley would not leave Leon! Wait, did he say rum!? A last drink? Or alcohol for the cut!? No, there was something more...
"syyyyyy...rumm" Of course! Ashley got what Leon was saying, cringing and twitching in front of her. Was this him fighting the infection? Or wouls it only make it spread faster!?
"Oh, who cares what it is!?" Ashley yelled at herself mentally "He needs help!"
Ashley knew what she had to. There was no medkit of any kind besides normal First Aid Spray lying around, but ahe knew where to find what ahe really needed! On a keyrack in the room was a way into the small but advanced infirmary there... and Leon's salvation! Albiet a temporary one.
Ashley nodded at Leon, possibly seeing him for the last time, and ran for it! Dodging another swing from Leon... she raced out the mechanical door
...almost forgetting the festering zombie on the other side!
She dove out of the way... but it fell through the threshold of the closing doors!
**Crunch**
Ashley looked back for only a second, but it was enough to make her wanna puke! She was about to be sick after seeing the severed torso of the corpse...
...but Leon was the one who was sick! SHE HAD TO HURRY!
She raced around the hallway, cautious, but as fast as she could make herself go... trying to remember the one toom she knew o in the house she had been "lucky" enough to never have to be in before tonight.
"God," Ashley thought "Where's Hunnigan's voice when you need her!?"
...
Leon remembered Hunnigan.
She would be such a big help right now, trying to use the system to release the security and free Ashley and himself before a firebombing would most likely come and wipe them out. He sure could use someone else watching over him...
**uuuuuaaaaah**
That moan wasn't coming from Leon or Ashley. Leon was leaning with his back on the wall again sitting in a cold sweat from the poison... as he watched something crawl towards him... leaving a bloody trail behind.
Leon grunted in pain, straining his body to no avail...
LEON COULDN'T MOVE!
next time on Resident Evil: Illumination
"CAN THIS DAY GET ANY WORSE!?" Ashley cried out in vain.
**Beep!** "Self-destruct system has been activated. All personel evacuate immediately." **Beep**
8/