Guys, in this, the latest chapter in my Illumination sage, I make reference to a theme I call the double-edged sword. This can summarize the contents of both this chapter in a nutshell...as well as the experience I had writing it.

The main reason in particular this chapter was so hard for me to write was because I had finally gotten Ashley's part down perfectly before and woven into Leon's "acid trip." (Lol) ...and then somehow I lost it. :(

Don't worry; this nee material is now in a different file placement, so it wouldn't happen again. I'd like to think I learn from my mistakes. Don't we all... Or wouldn't all of us like to believe that anyway. That our struggles, efforts an even our successes are not in vein.

Hopefully this does not fall on deaf ears... or rather an audience that is no longer with me. :(

Anyway, here's where my theme comes into play: I wanted to hurry up an write the next chapter and say the heck with Ashley's part, but I wanted the quality to be there still.

So, for those of you still with me, first of all: thank you. It's all because of your interest that I still do this. And secondly, I am so very sorry for the long wait. Times have been very stressful for me, and I had to rely on inspiration striking me and taking advantage of it at the most random and inconvenient times... In this case 4 in the morning before clean-up week at my town.

I try not to be greedy, but it would mean a whole lot to me if we could at least get the total number of views to 3,000. That way I know you guys are still with me and hopefully new viewers will come and the old ones will return.

That being said, the best way you all can help encourage me to continue is to COMMENT AND FOLLOW. It really means everything to all writers. Trust me.

Anyway, lastly I thought I would go ahead and say that I DO NOT OWN RESIDENT EVIL... because that's what everybody else on here with a blog seems to do. Bot sure f I have to or bot to get views, but I may as well. Capcom still does, but at least things are starting to pick up again with it.

Well, enough from me! You have waited a long time for this; so have I. Let's finally after a log hiatus get back to Resident Evil: Illumination withe the (hopefully) very highly-awaited sequel to the last chapter:

…

The Venom - Part 2!

…

Things are always more complex in real life than they are in fiction. To anyone watching that could see her now, Ashley Graham would have one thing on her mind and one thing she was doing: saving Leon.

How?

Well, since the events of Raccoon City, government buildings such as Camp David have been outfitted with countermeasures to acts of bioterrorism. When this horrible outbreak first began, Leon were the only two survivors that were able to take shelter in the Panic Room. There, Leon and herself found everything from first aid spray an even advanced gas masks similar to those confiscated from Umbrella. Among several other items, there was one in particular.

This was no mere simple medicine or vaccine; this was arguably literally another strain altogether... Meant to be used only on a life or death situation to ensure the survival of the President or another in a high position of power.

It would spare their lives at least temporarily, but at a terrible cost: essentially ones virtual humanity...

...this was an anti-virus!

Leon explained this once before to Ashley, and it was burning in her mind as she raced through hell, once said by her dad to her when he first took office to be the safest place she could be, to save his life.

Just like many had before...

...

Leon remembered Ada: the one thing he literally could not live without, despite everything that has happened between them. Even despite what has not.

Was he even a friend to her?

Was he less? Was he more?

Now more than ever in the end, it doesn't even matter, but Leon would never know.

All Leon knew was he would not be alive today if it weren't for Ada Wong.

...if that even was her real name.

...at least he got to know her for who she really was deep down. She was there with him... briefly... one last time...

...even if she didn't actually see him.

Could she?

Suddenly, things got blurry...er... He literally seemed to forget literally around him. And yet it almost seemed the same. It was still a monitoring room, but all the screens were huge and he could see her!

She walked up to him in the parking garage...

Leon heard movement behind him.

She had a gun to his back in the castle...

He couldn't bring himself to react.

She was kissing him in the Umbrella Headquarters...

Leon heard it coming closer.

She had a gun to his head on the island...

He heard a faint moan

She was running after Claire in a hallway...

He could see a blood-trail in the mirror.

She was being chased by Helena and Himself.

"no..." he said to himself "...that wasn't her...that couldn't be...

**AREAUUR!**

"...could it?"

**BANG!**

Leon turned back to the half of a zombie on the floor, still there from before.

He didn't shoot him. Did he? Who did? It was a perfect headshot.

He turned back to the screen.

Ada was pointing a gun towards that direction in all of them.

One picture he didn't recognize, with someone in the corner...

"Pff." Leon snickered to himself. How many times had she probably been there watching him, monitoring Leon without him knowing.

Leon pretended to wave in the corner of the room, figuring that somehow the odds were she was probably watching.

At least Ashley didn't see it. She would surely think he was loosing his mind...

...which he basically was...

...wouldn't be long now, would it?

Plus, he could not use his "bad hand" to wave.

God, even of he did retain control of the virus and escape, what difference would it make? Would he even be able to evacuate? Or would the Secret Service neutralize him as a threat on the spot?

He couldn't blame them if they did... but could Ashley?

Even if he could come home and be tested like poor Sherry Birkin, would he be able to ever see the light of day again?

How would that mess with Ashley's...

Oh god...

...

Ashley raced through the hallways as fast as carefully as she could...as fast as she could.

It was a double-edge sword really:

If she ran too recklessly, she was sure to be met by a wandering zombie with a bite to the neck. It would all be over and Leon would die.

If she moved to slowly due to caution, the poison in Leon's veins would surely kill him...or worse. She would surely be doomed without him. Ashley would be trapped; it would be over, and Leon would die.

"Damned if I do..." Ashley told herself around a sharp corner. A zombie was waiting for her!

Quickly, Ashley flung herself backwards, drawing Leon's knife like something from a slow-no scene in a movie and quickly sliced through rotting consumed flesh that was the decaying monstrosity's throat and its' contents, letting the bitten pieces of another man fall to floor to make way for a new corpse.

"...and damned if i don't." She finished her thought, breathing heavily as time seemed to have blurred and things went back to normal.

As normal as it would ever get...

…

Leon remembered Sherry Birkin, the little girl infected by her own father, a researcher at Umbrella in monster form. He was with her when they were rescued. He couldn't see her. He had no idea what happened to her for the longest time.

Would that happen with him and Ashley be his own Leon? Worrying about him all the time!?

Would... they be crazy enough to force him into a life like he had? Just to save another and get infected herself? Would this damn cycle keep going of meeting new people and dragging them into this, doing the same and ruining their lives and others from this damn virus!?

Could he "live" like that? Would he really be "helping" others with the research done by staying alive? Or would a body-bag and a cadaver be safer in the long run than a testube and a heavily-sedated mutant.

What would his friends think if he caused all of this? If he WAS all of this? If he was indeed practically the personification of what the viruses will do to your life?

Was any of it all worth it?

Sherry looked to young in some videos. Others she was much more mature.

Still, they all look about the same. Blurry, like distant memories. But real.

...

Ashley lunged for the metal door with zombies and one of these new Hunters right on her tail.

"Dammit'l she cursed. "It won't budge."

There was no other option right now. No time for random scavenger hunting ad going after keys like a puzzle or rpg game.

Ashley slammed into the door with all her might. It wouldn't move an inch.

She counted down any trie again, this time it went slightly ajar.

Her pursuers were rounding the corner now, blocking her escape. No turning back now!

She breathed calmly and collected herself, "On three" Ashley said reassuringly, able to feel the cold bodies moving towards her, gunning for her life and hungering for her flesh.

"One..." She charged lightly, getting into the motion and leaning into the door. She noticed a crack forming.

"Areaaaaoooouu" she could smell them.

"TWO..." She gave her body a forceful shove at the threshold. The crack busted!

If the undead could breath, she would have surely felt it on her skin by now. They were in arms reach!

"THREE!"

Time seemed to slow again. Ashley felt the dirty fingertips of death just graze her hair as she busted through the wooden doorway!

...with another undead waiting for her on the other side!

She leaned back in reflex, screaming as she felt her body rub against the undead horde.

One bit at her arm! The dress was now torn and stained with blood. She composed herself and forced the remains of the door back upright into the threshold.

Have you ever felt someone move next to you? Someone opening their mouth beside your head to prepare to speak? Ashley felt a creek in the floorboard as well as the zombie's partially unhinged jaw as she turned to kick her assailant back.

She fell backwards against the door, drawing her knife and gun on the ground.

"Asta luigis." She tried to speak triumphantly in Spanish like some goofy action hero...

**Click**

…

...he remembered Claire:

She was looking toward him in the Raccoon Diner, scarred with a gun pointed toward her. Leon's handgun.

If it weren't for Ada, she may very well had been the girl for him. Now she never would after all Ada has done, directly or not.

She was looking toward him in a dark airport hallway, scarred with a light being shown on her. Leons.

Still, she would always be his friend, a promise two made each other long ago, in a small little town, on his first day as a cop.

She was looking towards him, in some kind of lab, scarred with a gun pointed at her. It wasn't Leon's.

If you would have told Leon twenty years ago he would be a ragtag action survival hero, the last cop in a city filled with undead and saving multiple beautiful girls, he would have actually thought it was fun.

...it wasn't. Seeing people die... change...

And the responsibility... he wouldn't ask that on his worst enemy...

…

It was only now as she watched death itself slowly crawl towards her, teetering on it's worn shoes a grabbing for air as it fell down, that Ashley realized she could have tried shooting the door to make it easier to break into the medical room. Grant it, she would have failed with no ammo, but at least she would have realized she was out before diving into the room inches from his hungry zombie.

It was obviously a medical personnel dressed up and on duty for the party, probably infected before the dead back and barricading himself in. His black dress-shoes were bow stained in blood like his brown pants. (Once upon a time she would have fount that a funny joke...) And don't get her started on the white shirt and lab-coat leading up to his pail white akin and black hair.

My, how bad it felt in hindsight, watching a moving corpse come inch by inch towards you.

What would Leon think?

What would her dad think?

Would the be proud?

Surprised Ashley made it as far a she did.

Disappointed in their that she couldn't make it all the way after all this time.

Tears began to leak from her eyes daintily as se tuned away in fear and defeat, waiting from grave-rotten teeth to pierce her neck and end it all...

**Crash**

…

He remembered Krauser:

A large spear was being launched at him.

Once a great man in service to his country.

He was collapsing on a wooden bridge tower. His heart had exploded.

Now he was just another person consumed by Umbrella.

"no..."

To think after everything, he actually wanted to bring it back.

Was it all really just for power?

"No."

For more mutations? For his... arm...?

"NO!"

Leon took one last look at his arm...

...to think he would die much like Krauser did. A mutant. A monster. An abomination.

"NOOOOO!"

Leon could only pray that he would die soon enough that it would be as a human.

...but if it meant keeping ANYONE safe, he would let it happen.

He slammed his hand onto the computer below the monitors and just kept yelling, trying to get them all to stop.

Could that really be how so many got wrapped up in Bio Organic Weapons?

Did every bad guy once think he was actually doing the right thin for everyone and not just himself? Another mystery...

All of the screens began to change back. Leon passed out.

...

A loud sound tore Ashley from the aright of her life flashing before her eyes.

The zombie seemed to have lost a foot... to the floorboard!

"The loose floor board!" Ashley thought. The one she would hop up and down in as a kid they never seemed to fix. It had saved her life!

Quickly she rose to her feat with scraped hands and leapt over. She turns to smile at her mimi-victory...

But saw multiple hands breaking through the cracks in the door, as well as the sound of a serpent moving slowly toward her location from the outside, bo doubt drawn to the loud noised the zombies and herself were making.

She was trapped...

She had no ammo...

Leon was slowly dying...

Her other friends and loved ones were all dead or turned.

"Can this day get any worse!?" Ashley yelled out to no one in particular.

**Beep** Self-destruct system has been activated. All personnel evacuate immediately. **Beep**

The look on Ashley's face, in the darkest of moments, twitching like she heard the lamest hoke ever... priceless...

"OH COME ON!" She yelled "WHY DO WE EVEN HAVE A SELF-DESTRUCT SYSTEM!"

**Crack!**

That question would have to wait, seeing as a large gash with red blood from the walking dead had splattered Ashley through the door, the had no doubt belonging to one of those damn lizards!

Frantically, she searched for a syringe to inject the anti-virus from the Panic Room that would save Leon.

...

"Leon..." Ashley shook him out of his daze.

"Wha?" He groaned. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" she asked. "You passed out and collapsed back against the wall after fighting that monster.

"Oh..." He pretended to understand. "Yeah. Hey, where's Ada? And Claire?"

"I..." Ashley was puzzled "i wish we knew." They hadn't seen any sign of them since the attack.

"Whadya mean?" Leon asked groggily, almost as if he was drunk. "They were just right there." He pointed over towards the monitors.

Suddenly, he began to realize just how crazy he sounded. "I...I'm sorry Ashley."

"Hey," she smiled, grabbing his normal arm. "It's alright."

Leon started back and realized how far she had come.

"I got the green keycard." She beamed, flashing it with her new med-kit at her side.

"Great," Leon replied confidently as he got to his feet... with a little bit of help "Ready?"

…

So that's what all of those month have produced. It's sad in that respect, but hey: it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I am proud enough for myself being so down and for all of the work, yet for getting it done in itself anyway.

Hopefully, you guys will be proud too.