It was the first week of September, something that had escaped her until she looked at the calendar. Over a month had passed since Bravo Team's ill-fated final mission.
She'd been dead for over a month.
Like so many things about her condition, she didn't know what to think of it, nor did she particularly care at the moment. It was a distraction, and right now there was no time for that.
Over a month had passed and nothing had been done to stop Umbrella, at least nothing she knew about. Jill, Chris and the others were doing whatever they were doing, but from what she could see, they'd had no better luck than her and that wasn't good. The events of the previous day drove that home more clearly than anything else so far.
She'd encountered a zombie in the woods and she'd dealt with it, something that she was understandably proud of. Her, the odd one out in S.T.A.R.S., the least effective member, and she'd managed to deal with a threat on her own. If she hadn't been there, the zombie would have still been out there, wandering the woods.
And that was the problem.
If she hadn't been there it might have wandered deeper into the woods and vanished, or it might have made it to the train tracks and started walking along them, kept going until it made it to the road.
Or it could have found someone and attacked them. It might have killed them, or worse, they might have escaped and carried the virus back to the city. If they only managed to bite a handful of people before they were stopped, that would mean however many more zombies, attacking people, spreading the virus. It wasn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to see the city ending up overrun, the virus spreading and…
She had to do something about it and she could.
It wouldn't be easy or pleasant, but it was something she could do.
It was something that she had to do, because she was the only one who could.
She was going to need to go to the training facility, clear it herself and then the woods around it, at least until the teams working for Umbrella made it there and took matters into their own hands, if they weren't already there. Finding a way to stop Umbrella was secondary to stopping the zombies, but the two goals weren't mutually exclusive. She could easily find evidence while she got rid of the zombies.
This time when she went out, instead of taking a few dozen leeches, she gathered as many of them as she could in her backpack. It wasn't hard at all, she just held the pack open and they slithered right in. She made sure the ones she was leaving were well fed, leaving out two cans of dogfood and several bowls of various dry foods they liked, as well as bowls of water for them to soften it in, so they didn't make a mess of the sink or bathtub.
There were enough of them in her backpack that she could feel their anticipation. They liked the woods, liked exploring, liked it when she stopped to rest and let them wander in new places. She didn't, but she had to do it, there was no one else who could. Even if she got in touch with Jill and Chris, asked them for help, she'd have to come up with a reason for why she couldn't come with them, the most obvious being that she wouldn't have been able to keep up, even before everything had happened she wouldn't have been able to. It was embarrassing and it would be pulling them away from what they were doing.
Her preparations took her long enough that she missed the first bus and had to wait, but that was fine. The humidity was high and dull gray clouds were starting to gather. In the past, it was the kind of day that would have made her want to curl up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book, it still did, but it was also the kind of day that the leeches liked.
By the time the bus arrived, the sky was a solid steel gray, promising rain. She boarded the bus, got a seat towards the back, away from the other passengers and looked out the window as she waited for her stop. On a day like this she wanted nothing more than to sit around the house and listen to the rain against the windows. That wasn't an option though, not until it was all over.
Besides, the leeches didn't like it if she drank anything too hot or too cold. If she wanted to have hot chocolate she'd need to cool it down to lukewarm by putting in a spoonful of ice-cream.
Maybe after she got back and sent the camera out for the pictures to develop, she'd take a day to reward herself, return a few phone calls, send a few letters and sit around her apartment pretending that everything was normal. Just for a day.
The leeches in her backpack squirmed excitedly, she could feel them. It didn't bother her as much as it would have in the past. There was no worry of them trying to escape, they'd do what she told them to and wait patiently to be let out. She'd worked with them enough in the past few weeks to know that. She was even starting to get used to keeping track of what they were doing, being aware of them, even when they were out of sight.
If everything went well, she'd have her proof soon enough and others, people who were far better qualified than her, would take over the situation. Then she could have her day off.
Just for a day, she wanted to pretend, to feel human, before she forgot what it was like.
o0o
The rain had started before she even reached her stop, a light drizzle that, judging by the clouds overhead, would neither let up or worsen as the day went on. She still wore her hooded jacket and long pants, because that was what she'd come to think of as her exploring outfit and she'd grabbed it without thinking. It quickly ended up soaking wet and clinging to her like a second skin, making the leeches squirm in agitation.
She chose to look at the bright side of things, she'd be able to keep a good pace along the tracks and probably wouldn't have to stop to rest. Never mind that this was the sort of weather the leeches liked, and that they were delighted with the prospect of walking through the woods in the rain, even if the outermost layer of them were less than comfortable.
Despite getting off to a late start, she passed the zombie that she'd killed right on schedule. It was a relief to see that it was still there, because she hadn't considered how durable they might be. From what she'd seen with Billy, they needed their nervous system to function, but because they never stopped to linger over the zombies that they'd killed until now, she hadn't been certain if they were really dead or if they'd reanimate again.
The remains of the zombie marked what she considered the danger zone, past it she had to keep her eyes and ears open for anything that might indicate danger.
Because of the rain, the noises of the woods were different, a different set of birds and insects, far fewer than those that came out in nicer weather. The sounds they made were muffled, nearly drowned out by the steady patter of rain against the leaves.
Slowing down to better pay attention to her surroundings, she continued onwards. There was no reason for her to be afraid, but she was. Nothing out in the woods could hurt her, which was in itself frightening. Monsters prowled this stretch of forest, and she was one of them. Eventually, she'd have to come to terms with that, but she didn't want to. She didn't feel like a monster, at least not when the leeches were calm, and she didn't think that she was dangerous, but she couldn't be sure. She probably carried the Tyrant virus and she knew it was contagious, so she had to be careful of that, but she wasn't sure if she could trust herself. How was she to know that nothing would change? Maybe the leeches would take over and eventually she'd stop caring that she wasn't human. She was already willing to let them eat some pretty terrible things, she'd guided them through killing the zombie and would it be that much of a leap to think that she might have them do the same to an Umbrella soldier if she got caught and cornered?
She could tell herself that she wouldn't let it happen, but unless it actually did she'd never know.
Then she thought about Captain Wesker and Billy, Director Marcus' journal entries and the countless Umbrella employees who had to be involved in the horrible experiments that had taken place. Willingness to kill a person was a poor measure of being a monster, or at least the difference between people and monsters.
She listened, she was fairly sure the leeches were listening as well, and eventually she heard the sound of something tramping through the leaves. Calling out would be the easiest way to determine the source of the noise. If it ran away it was an animal, if it came to her it was a zombie, but the recollection of what had happened with the group of zombies in the mansion kept her silent. Just because she only heard one, didn't mean that there weren't others in the area. If she drew them all to her at once she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to deal with them. She was sure she could do it, it was just a matter of how unpleasant it would be for her. To play it safe it would be necessary for her to go to it rather than bring it to her.
She had an idea though, something that had occurred to her on the walk back home the previous day. So she wouldn't get lost, she'd leave a trail for herself to follow back to the railroad tracks, just in case she ended up farther into the woods than she expected and lost sight of the way back.
Opening up her backpack just enough to let the leeches out a few at a time she let them fall to the ground as she walked, ordering them not to wander too far. Once she found the zombie and dealt with it, she could turn around and gather the leeches back to her as she retraced her path to the tracks.
Leaving a living trail behind her, she headed towards the source of the sound, eventually finding it.
She'd been right about it being a zombie, slightly less necrotic than the one she'd encountered yesterday and far less aggressive. Like the zombies in the mansion, it hardly reacted to her presence until she tossed a handful of leeches at it. Even then it only turned to stumble in her direction, a slow shuffle that made it easy for her to evade its outstretched hands.
It was an interesting discovery, that there seemed to be multiple types of zombies, some far more reactive and aggressive than others. Fortunately it seemed that the aggressive ones were rare, though given that she hadn't really dealt with that many zombies, sampling bias was an issue.
Leading the zombie in circles, weaving between the trees to keep it from getting too close, she guided the leeches through the process of killing it. It went faster this time, both she and they knew what to do.
When it fell she gathered the leeches and considered what she'd done, not the details of how she'd done it, but what it meant. She'd killed two zombies so far, preventing them from ever finding and hurting anyone. She was helping, on a small scale, but it was still important.
Retracing her steps back was easy thanks to the leeches. During her fight with the zombie, she'd lost track of which direction she'd come from, but the trail was obvious. Without them she realized she would have been lost, probably for a very long while. They were useful, she wasn't going to go so far as to consider them helpful, but she was starting to learn what she could do with them. It would make clearing the training facility alone a lot easier. She could leave them in rooms and halls to prevent her from getting lost, to keep track of where she'd already been, even check for danger behind closed doors.
Her arrival at the facility itself was anticlimactic. She found no evidence that anyone had been there since she and Billy had left. That was a good thing, it meant that she wouldn't have to worry about people, just zombies and monsters. What wasn't good was that the power was out. There were windows and she'd brought a flashlight and spare batteries so the darkness wasn't total, it just made things more difficult. The package of floppy disks she'd brought with her were useless, since she wouldn't be able to copy anything from any of the computers. It was a shame, but there were plenty of notes that had been left sitting around, a good number of which were fairly damning for Umbrella.
Starting in the main hall, she went from room to room, searching through filing cabinets and killing zombies as she came across them, making sure to take plenty of pictures as she did, especially of the Umbrella logo when she encountered it on things like documents and the identification badges of the zombies she killed, to make it absolutely clear where she was and that Umbrella was responsible.
At first, she took every file and folder that looked like it had potential, but as she ran out of room in her backpack, she got choosier, looking for things that specifically mentioned the Tyrant virus or implied human experimentation.
Finishing the most easily accessible areas of the first floor, she moved onto the second floor, trusting that the leeches she'd left behind to alert her of anything sneaking up on her. The zombies weren't a concern, she hadn't run into any more of the aggressive ones, but the monsters had her worried. They were a lot more unpredictable and during her first time through, she'd tried to let Billy deal with them whenever possible.
She wondered about Billy. There hadn't been anything about him in the news, or at least nothing about him being recaptured, and she checked more or less daily. He was still missing and over the weeks there was less and less coverage on him, which was a good thing. Reading about what he'd done made her feel lucky to be alive, which she knew was foolish. For one thing, he wouldn't have benefitted by killing her, for another she wasn't really alive anymore so there wasn't anything for her to be thankful for. If he'd killed her at the start of things that would have been the end of it, but they'd both seen the benefit of working together. At the end, he'd been ready to shoot her if she tried to stop him from leaving, but by that point it probably wouldn't have done anything, since by her best estimates she was dead sometime around eight hours after that, not that she knew that at the time, so she let him go.
She took there being no news on him as good news, that he hadn't killed anyone, because if he had it would have been her fault for not trying harder to stop him. He might not even have made it out of the woods, though it was probably too much to hope that he'd gotten lost. Billy had seemed like he knew what he was doing, and considering his background, he probably knew how to get around terrain far more dangerous than the Arklay Mountains. She couldn't quite bring herself to hope that he'd gotten killed by zombies, though given what he'd done it wasn't like he didn't deserve to meet some horrible end. The most she could do, she decided, was assume that he was out there somewhere, alive, but laying low, that he wouldn't kill anyone, because he didn't want to draw attention to himself. As long as no one got in his way nothing bad would happen, that's what she'd tell herself.
It was better than telling herself that he hadn't seemed like that bad a guy, which he hadn't, at least until the end when she'd tried to stop him and he'd been ready to shoot her. She knew she was a poor judge of people, having followed Marcus to her death and trusting Captain Wesker. It felt like assuming the worst of people was the safest bet, especially with Umbrella around, but that wasn't like her. The thing was, what she knew about Billy didn't feel like it added up. There had been something about him, a certain sadness tinged with resignation. Did he regret what he'd done and now that he was free, he'd live out his life quietly or even try to do things to make up for what he'd done?
She realized that her thinking about him was an attempt to make sense of things, to create a narrative and a sense of closure, but she was learning that wasn't how things went in real life. In real life, things just happened, there was no reason and people could just do terrible things.
Once this was over, she'd get away from Raccoon City, go to a place where she could actually trust people and figure out what to do from there.
Maybe she'd meet up with Professor Rice, let him help her figure out the leeches and give her a face to put with the name, so she could stop free-associating when she thought of him, thinking about the botfly story, the way his name was Rice and rice looked like maggots, like the ones that had been eating the dead deer.
Yeah, she wasn't going to think about that, especially when from there she started thinking about the leech men. So far she hadn't encountered any, nor had she seen any leeches, but she hadn't made it to the parts of the training facility where they were likely to be. Eventually, she was going to need to, but putting that off until the end while she dealt with normal zombies was fine, especially when she had no clue how she'd deal with a leech man. She didn't have any weapons that would work against one, and the tactic she'd developed for dealing with regular zombies would work just as well on a monster, but wouldn't work at all against a mass of leeches with no central nervous system to destroy.
How would she deal with a leech man?
She'd have to keep an eye out for anything around that might help with that, flammable chemicals, strong acids or bases once she got to the areas where those were stored. Of course, the catch was that those areas were also where she was most likely to encounter a leech man, making it a question of what she found first.
Or what found her.
There was no shortage of possible dangers in the training facility, but there were also plenty of ways of dealing with them if you knew what you were looking for. She and Billy couldn't have picked the place clean of everything useful, just the most readily useable resources. If she needed to she could get a little creative and figure something out.
The deeper she went into the facility, the more thinly she had to spread her leeches and the harder it got to interpret the information they were sending to each other and to her. Part of it was relying on the senses of the individual leeches, which were better than those of normal leeches, but still didn't line up with the way a human would see the world. Some of the leeches were able to sense movement, but figuring out which leeches were detecting what was a challenge. Her best guess was that there were at least two zombies that she'd somehow managed to miss in areas she'd already been through, and that the room with a broken window and papers being blown around in it was causing a lot of confusion for the leeches near there. The zombies that she'd managed to kill were a fine meal as far as the leeches were concerned, and the contentment broadcast from those that were eating was equal parts distracting and disconcerting.
A sudden flash of alarm directed downwards had her staring at the floor, trying to figure out what was wrong with the leech that was at her feet, front end raised curiously.
She stood there, trying to figure out what had it so upset and got nothing from it. At least nothing coherent, the sense of alarm was growing, several leeches sliding down and clinging to her pant legs, waving back and forth, mouths open.
It was an aggressive response, but why?
The leeches wanted to attack, or wanted her to attack something, but there was no visible danger. They were aware of something, but she couldn't figure out what.
The leech on the floor lowered its head and stretched towards her, reaching out to brush against her shoe. Maybe when it rejoined the others, she'd be better able to figure out what had it so upset, because at the moment she wasn't getting anything from it at all.
As soon as the leech touched her, she realized what was wrong.
It wasn't one of hers.
Terrified, she staggered back.
She should have realized it from the start given the size of the thing, more than twice as big as hers, but she'd been so focused on the thought of zombies and leech men that she hadn't bothered to consider the individual wandering leeches infesting the place.
The leech belonged to Marcus and she'd been ready to let it touch her, crawl up her leg and…
It was a good thing that her leeches reacted the way they had, though she didn't understand it. She hadn't thought anything of it during her encounter with the leech man back with Billy. Back then, they might have simply been protecting a food source, but now there was nothing left to eat, no reason for them to be so hostile, but they were. More of them had emerged to wave threateningly at the larger leech. Though she couldn't see it, she could tell that their teeth were bared, ready to attack.
Alarm and attack signals were being sent back and forth through all the leeches now.
They really didn't like Marcus and she couldn't blame them.
No, she realized she was looking at it backwards, they probably wouldn't care either way about Marcus and his leeches, but because of how she felt about it all, the distress it had caused her, the leeches hated him with pure, animal aggression. Even if she couldn't recognize his leeches by sight, they could and reacted.
Understanding the reason behind their actions, she did what she had to do. Walking back to the leech, which by this point had managed to pick up on the fact that her leeches didn't like it and readying for an attack of its own, she stomped down on it as hard as she could, crushing its head end.
The dying leech thrashed wildly, several of hers falling free to land on it and start mauling it until it stopped moving. Only then did they crawl back to her, radiating an immense sense of satisfaction that spread throughout the group.
What they didn't understand was that it was only one leech, there were bound to be others and worse. She was going to have to be extremely careful. How easy it had been to deal with the zombies had made her overly confident, but she wasn't going to make a mistake like she had back in the mansion, not when she knew beyond a doubt that no one was going to come to her rescue this time.
Paying attention to what the leeches were sending to her, which at this point was just a bunch of sound and light and movement with very little clarity thanks to the agitated state they were in, she proceeded. Soon she'd be getting near the part of the building where she'd had her encounter with Marcus, and, no matter how she tried to tell herself there was no reason to worry, she grew increasingly nervous.
In her defense, the leeches weren't helping, she'd encountered several more of Marcus' and had to deal with them.
She was encountering them with greater and greater frequency, and just like her leeches, they could share information. After killing nearly a dozen of them, they began to respond by attacking her. Most of them she was able to avoid, and step on or hit with her flashlight if they ended up clinging to a wall, but it was simply a matter of numbers and odds until one got lucky and landed on her.
It bit her and there was pain, intense, horrifying agony as the leech of hers that it had grabbed was bit in half.
Screaming, she dropped the flashlight.
Her leeches responded immediately, dropping their mimicry to attack, swarming over it and burying it in a roiling mass of green and brown mottled bodies. She could see it thrashing beneath them, feel pain when it managed to bite one of them.
Sobbing in terror she tried to grab it, pull it away from her arm, only to have the leeches making up her hand flow forward to join the fight. By weight of numbers, her leeches were able to win and pulled back, letting the larger leech fall to the floor. They'd managed to kill it, but at the cost of some of their own. She could tell by the way they were moving that they were eating their dead. She was going to have to be careful, too many encounters like that and…
She wasn't exactly sure what would happen if she lost too many leeches. It would probably be similar to what happened when they dispersed too far, her thoughts would drift and grow dim until there was nothing left. Even if some of the leeches survived, if there weren't enough of them she'd be dead and they'd be little more than a colony of unusually large and aggressive annelids.
Somehow, that seemed worse than actually dying, having bits of her wandering around, living as predatory worms.
The leeches in her arms and hands began to settle down and regroup, though the ones making her hands were taking an unusually long time getting back into place, testing different positions and squirming against each other as they worked to rebuild her fingers. As soon as enough of them were in place she picked up the flashlight, the leeches small bodies wrapping bonelessly around it, clinging to it with their mouths and posterior suckers until they were able to get into place. Unable to look away, she watched, noting with some small degree of relief that the ones making her fingers used their tail ends as her fingertips, their suckers rather than their mouths helping them hold onto things, not that she could make out their individual anatomy once they finished and camouflaged themselves.
It had taken them more time than she'd expected to get back into place, and she let out another sob when she realized why.
During the fight, several small bones had clattered to the floor, only now that it was over was she able to place what that sound had been. Did she want to spend the time on her hands and knees looking for them in the shadows? Holding her hand up, she looked at it, flexing her fingers, then passed the flashlight from hand to hand, testing her grip. Nothing felt wrong. The bones must not have mattered anymore and she really didn't want to spend any more time in that room, not when there might be more of Marcus' leeches in it, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her.
Time to backtrack to where she'd walked past a door that to what she thought might have been a supply closet.
After her initial encounter with Marcus' leech, she'd stopped leaving a trail of her own leeches, just in case more of his showed up. One of hers on its own wouldn't stand a chance, as she'd just seen, so she hadn't dared leave any of them. Playing it safe like that meant that she was on her own when it came to navigating. She'd been fairly sure of where she was going, at least until she opened a door and found herself in a room that she remembered well from her first trip through the facility. It had been a lab with several tanks filled with green tinged water and leeches.
The tanks were still there, as were the leeches, but the water was clear enough that even in the dim light from her flashlight she could see them moving, casting eerie shadows on the walls.
It wasn't just the leeches then, Marcus was still around as well, getting ready to continue his experiments.
Carefully, aware of the very real possibility that something might jump out at her from the shadows, she approached the closest tank. The leeches in it were some of the largest ones she'd seen. Completely unafraid, they clung to the glass, watching her. Her leeches responded with their usual aggression, but also curiosity.
It was their interest that made her take a closer look. The tanks were uncovered, but unlike the rest of the leeches she'd encountered, these ones showed no interest in wandering. Instead she got the impression that they were waiting. If that were the case Marcus had far better luck getting them to obey. She was sure that by now the ones she'd left in the bathroom back at her apartment would have gotten out and be all over the place.
Some communication was taking place between her leeches and these ones, the first nonhostile contact they'd made with any of Marcus' leeches. Curiosity had, for the time being at least, gotten the better of aggression.
Bringing her light close to the glass, she got a better look at one of the leeches clinging to it. The thing was enormous, larger than her hand and its underside, rather than being smooth, was covered in small bumps. There was something wrong with these ones. Maybe that was why they were here, because they were being kept isolated from the others. That would also explain her leeches' response, except, no, her leeches had already figured things out. She could tell that their curiosity had been satisfied and aggression was returning. The problem was she couldn't figure out for herself what it was that they'd noticed.
The leeches in the tank were starting to get agitated, picking up on her leeches' hostility. One by one they fell away from the glass, stopped swimming and gathered in a corner of the tank, raising their front ends, just like hers did when they were trying to protect her.
These leeches were protecting something, but what?
They were different from the others, unless she was wrong and all of Marcus' leeches had those lumps of their undersides. She hadn't exactly checked. The thing was, they'd been so noticeable, it wasn't just her seeing them, it had been her leeches paying attention to them as well. She'd noticed as quickly as she had because of the leeches. There'd been something familiar about them, some spark of recognition on an almost instinctual level that hadn't been from her. It was something her leeches knew, something that a leech would know.
"Come on," she whispered, knowing that it didn't matter if she thought the words or screamed them, the leeches would pick up on it no matter what, "Give me a hint, something. Please."
Because she knew the leeches had thoughts and memories of their own, they just didn't, or couldn't, share them with her, at least not with any clarity. Too much of it was based on instinct.
Hunger.
That was that majority of what she was getting from them, the awareness of hunger.
Thrashing, trapped.
The sense of confinement seemed to be an important part of what they were communicating to her.
Hunger!
Not just hunger though, longing might have been a better way of putting it. The leeches longed for something.
Movement.
Something new. Smell! Food!
No, though that was part of it, it wasn't the important part, at least not with what she needed to know now.
Trapped.
Again, the feeling was stronger, more urgent. They'd never been trapped though, so why were they remembering it so clearly?
Curled up tightly. Smooth walls.
Movement outside.
Food! Outside!
Escape.
Leech memories were all feelings, sensations. There were no images, nothing from them that she could really understand, because it was all from their point of view.
Movement, so much movement.
Everything was moving.
Moving and the smell of fear and pain.
Not their own pain or fear, at least not at first. It was simply the awareness of it. Each leech was aware of the others and they all knew that one of their own was hurt and desperately needed help, even if they couldn't understand. That was the answer to their hunger, their longing.
"No!"
Dropping to her knees, she forced their memories from her mind. It had been the recollection of what Marcus had done to her from their point of view and she could recall all too clearly the pain of being shot, of drowning, her frantic, useless struggles as Marcus held her down and the leeches…
They'd been helping. From their memories, she knew their need to help her had been as pressing as their hunger. She'd fed them and they imprinted on her, recognized her smell and known that she was the one who brought them food, who would fulfill that hunger and longing.
It was too much of a blur for her to make sense of it anymore. The memory of the incident was now as much theirs as it was hers. When the fear and pain stopped, when she fell unconscious their memory was all that there had been. They'd been happy, no, elated, they'd found something that had been missing, something that they'd never known was missing until they found it. Prior to that point, there'd been instinct and need, now there was direction and, later, thought. For them it had been a joyful occasion.
But what did the memory of their hatching have to do with anything?
Their hatching.
The leeches in the tanks were carrying eggs.
She had to find the supply closet and dump bleach in those tanks, or something to kill them all before their eggs hatched. Maybe there was something in the room she could use.
The remaining spare leeches she'd brought with her were all out of her backpack, waiting clinging to the outside or sitting on her shoulders, blending in with her clothing. She could feel their weight there as she searched the room, still reeling from letting their memory bleed into her own. They were trying to reassure her, make her aware that they were there and this time she was willing to accept it.
She couldn't find anything, though that hardly came as a surprise. Marcus was insane, not stupid. It wasn't as though he would keep anything around out in the open that could hurt the leeches, especially not when they had eggs. There were plenty of locked cabinets in the room and if she was lucky, there would be something in them.
"Go on," she whispered as she brushed the leeches off of her and guiding them towards the most promising locked cabinets, all of her spares and then some, as many as she dared to let go. She could tell where they were missing from the sensation of looseness and lightness in her chest and stomach, a feeling of weakness all over. They were aware enough that she figured that they'd be able to give her a sense of what was in the cabinets, to let her know if there was anything useful in any of them, without her having to search through each of them one by one. As many locked cabinets as there were, searching them all would take time and she had no desire to spend more time around so many of Marcus' leeches than necessary.
What she really hoped was that she'd feel alarm from them when one discovered something it found unpleasant. That would be the easiest way to tell what she'd found.
It wasn't really that many leeches that she'd sent out, just the most while trying to keep her body and thoughts coherent. Uncomfortable as it was, it mostly worked, even if the way the leeches had redistributed themselves to make up for the missing ones left her looking emaciated. How hard they worked to maintain their mimicry was impressive, she would have assumed that they would have left her with writhing black patches all over her body, indicating where the missing leeches had been.
Leaning against one of the tables for balance, she waited for them to turn up something.
Spread out as they were, there were still enough of them around that she was getting clear feedback from them and they were curious. What she had them doing wasn't like finding food or retrieving specific objects. It required a great deal more guidance from her and they were enjoying the challenge, trying to find large glass bottles by shape and feel, because she was sure that anything really dangerous would be stored in glass.
This would have been the perfect thing for her to take pictures of, proof of strange experimentation, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, not of the leeches. She didn't want people to know what they were, what she was. That would only make things worse for her if, when, the truth about her was discovered. If people knew about the leeches there would be people who would decide that she was a monster and that she would deserve whatever ended up happening to her.
There would be other things for her to take pictures of, she still hadn't made it to the room with all the cages, or the one where it was obvious that they did necropsies on dead specimens, or maybe autopsies. She wasn't really sure what it would be given what Umbrella was doing.
Eyes closed, she thought over what she was going to have to do once she was done dealing with the leeches and their eggs. Keep killing off Marcus' leeches was the first thing, finding a way to quickly kill off large numbers of them would be her top priority, then she'd worry about getting a few more pictures to finish the film in the camera. After that she could finish clearing the building, kill any zombies or monsters she found and head home. A day to recover and then she'd head out again with the goal of checking out the woods around the facility to make sure that there weren't any zombies there. If she didn't find any, she'd move on to trying to get some more photos of the Umbrella teams patrolling the area around the Spencer Estate, because they, more than anything else, showed that Umbrella was determined to hide something. That alone would be enough to get people suspicious of the company. Combine that with the pictures she'd have already sent out and it would be the end for Umbrella
And she'd be the hero behind it all. No one would think that she was a monster, even if the truth got out, people would recognize that she was a victim. It was something that she hadn't really considered until that moment and, much like the leeches, she wasn't sure how she felt about it.
She opened her eyes to watch the leeches and focused on them, on her plan rather than what would happen afterwards. There was too much that she didn't know and it was always the things that she didn't know that got her in trouble.
The leeches continued their work with her guiding them through it. The problem was that their thoughts were indistinct, blurred by those of the leeches around them and further difficulty came from her own inability to properly focus, thinly spread as she was. A great deal of her mental efforts felt like they were devoted to just holding herself together, which was hard with all the movement.
Movement in the tanks when she shone the light on them, herself moving because even leaning against the table she was swaying slightly, and movement on the walls, strange and frightening shadows cast by the flashlight shining through the tanks of water.
Swaying, undulating, strange shapes dancing across the walls, balls of leeches forming dark blots that condensed and dispersed. She watched them, they watched her.
Watching and being watched.
Awareness of movement and shadows. Her own movement and the shadow she cast. The flashlight swaying, making even things that were still flicker and move.
Looming over a tank of leeches that was in turn aware of something over it.
Because even if Marcus' leeches and hers didn't have any interest in each other, they still shared information in the same way. She could pick up a little bit from them, but not much, like quiet conversation overheard through the walls of her apartment.
The only reason it was there was because she was so focused on her leeches. What they felt and sensed was stronger to her than it normally was.
Movement behind her.
Fear.
But of course she was afraid, she was alone in a building full of zombies and monster leeches, both of which would attack her. She would have been crazy not to be afraid.
The nagging suspicion that she was being watched.
Closing her eyes didn't help, only made her more nervous, like something might sneak up behind her. That was impossible though, because even with her eyes closed she could still see the room, hazy impressions of shapes from dozens of points of view, combined to give her a horribly out of focus, nightmarish impression off her surroundings.
The leeches were leaving the cabinets, abandoning their search to return to her.
Desperately, they wanted to get back to her because…
The fear she felt wasn't her own.
Again the leeches were aware of something that she had missed.
She turned around, flashlight raised. If whatever it was had eyes she might be able to blind it, buy herself some time to gather the leeches necessary to deal with it.
"So, you've returned," Director Marcus gloated, nimbly sidestepping the light, "I must say I'm surprised that you've made it this far. Let's get a better look at you, see where things went wrong."
He reached out for her.
She tried to take a step back, but with the table behind her there was nowhere for her to go.
His fingers closed around her arm in a grip that, like the first time, caught her off guard with its strength.