The Long Dark
V.
Abandon All Hope
They reached a place where it was clear they had to go under the ice flow. Jill glanced at each woman and back at Kevin. He nodded, and they engaged what they had for breathing devices.
Jill was the odd man out since she was missing most of her equipment.
Shenmei went under first, Rebecca followed, and Kevin nodded to send Jill before him.
She inhaled sharply, went down and under, and used her hands to walk them carefully along the ice flow as she followed.
A rustle, a bump of movement behind her, and a gust of water hit her body like a jet. People scattered, the water rushed and shoved, and Jill tumbled through the cold. She sank, she struggled, and her chest let her know she was struggling to breathe.
A pair of hands caught her and pulled. Shenmei pressed against her mouth, breathing air into her lungs. Jill inhaled sharply, the agent let go with a nod, and she swam on in the dark.
Jill followed, trying to keep her bearings. Things brushed her legs in the dark and her belly and her buttocks. Ice? Fish? Parasites? Tentacles?
Jesus. There was no way to know.
When she reached an outcropping, she poked her head up, inhaled with a wheeze of struggling lungs, and went back down to keep following.
When she started to panic for air again, a hand caught the back of her neck and turned her. Leon pressed against her lips, breathing into her mouth. She met the whites of his eyes in the dark and nodded.
He tucked the respirator in his hands over her mouth and let her inhale for a moment before she squeezed his arm, nodded again, and went forward in the water.
The relief of him being alive and with them was a trembling thing.
Jill broke the surface when the ice above them abated and tried to keep her breathing quietly even as her lungs screamed. Leon caught her around the waist and put the respirator over her mouth for a moment until her breathing leveled out. She inhaled slowly and easily until her nod signaled she was ok.
He answered it with his own and let her go to drift to the ledge, where they climbed out onto the ice to join the others.
The fighting they'd left behind still echoed as they crept through the dark, sticking close to each other. A crack in the ice had Rebecca sliding through. First, Shenmei followed, and Jill passed through behind her. She knew what Leon would whisper at her the second she was through.
Her hand rolled over to grip his wrist before it retreated. She held. Their eyes held in the dark. She urged softly, "Come on. Follow."
He shook his head, "We won't fit."
The panic on her had him soothing, "It's ok. Keep moving; we'll go around."
Kevin whispered, "We're fine. We're good. Stay together."
Her soft light bobbed over Leon's face in the divide and showed the blood on his mouth. She reluctantly let go of his wrist, and he pulled his hand back through the opening. He nodded once to encourage her and was gone.
Jill turned to the other two women and advised, "Soundless, ok? And slow."
They both nodded. She knew, without a doubt, they all wanted to hold hands again in fear, but they didn't. They just moved on. They were divided and hoping like hell that the other two of their group weren't trapped beyond where the battle raged.
The path around wasn't as easy as Leon had hoped.
It was climbing and sliding and trying like hell to be quiet.
Luckily, the battle they'd left behind drowned out any other noise.
Kevin reached a wall and mused softly, "...dead end."
There were a lot of those too. Leon glanced around in the dark and upward. He could make out a ledge as he whispered, "Boost me up."
Kevin gave him a dull look that had him returning, "I'm lighter, buttmunch. Just do it."
Kevin made a cradle from his hands, and Leon stuck a boot in it, letting the other man hoist him up with a soft grunt as he whispered in complaint, "Light, my ass."
Leon smirked as he grabbed the ledge, boosted himself up, and got his bearings. They'd have to wall slide along the open pit in front of them. A quick pass of his light over the walls showed things frozen and watching them.
Unnerving, but hopefully not dangerous.
He put a gloved palm down to Kevin to tug him up beside him. As he hoisted, Leon grunted, "...fat bastard, seriously."
Kevin hissed, "It's muscle, you jealous bitch."
They eased forward and slid along the narrow icy outcropping. Back to the cold, face forward as their breath gushed icily, they moved soundlessly and slowly. As Kevin followed, the ice cracked in protest, and he muttered, "...damn this muscle."
Leon smirked as he reached the other side and waited, scanning the room beyond. What was that on the walls?
He moved forward, light bouncing, and Kevin joined him with a whispered, "Cave drawings again?"
It was.
Leon narrowed his eyes at the pictures. A man and a woman holding flowers. A woman eating them. The man lifted his hands at the sun. They stood in front of a door guarded by something he couldn't even describe. A goat? A moose?
And Kevin whispered, "...a minotaur."
He was right.
It was a minotaur.
Leon's blood ran cold as he looked at the next drawing. The man was cutting his palm with a knife. In the next, the minotaur stepped aside with the woman clutched to his chest like a gift as the man passed through the doors with his palm on them. His scrawled face was pained. His free hand clutched the flowers.
They both turned to look at the doors waiting.
Kevin breathed, "...I don't have any weed to eat. How about you?"
"...left it in my other wetsuit." Leon quipped as he stepped forward.
Kevin beat him to it. He pricked a finger with his knife and put it on the door.
Nothing.
With a shrug, the big guy remarked, "Worth a shot."
There was a tingling in Leon's toes he didn't like. What was it? It was knowing. He knew he could open that damn door. How? He couldn't explain it. It was a gut feeling.
Leon used the blood from his face as he passed his hand over it and transferred his palm to lay it flat on the carved drawing of the sun.
The door grew cold. It hummed. Kevin murmured, "...son of a bitch..."
And it parted.
A sound of sliding ice, almost metallic, as it opened for them.
Leon turned his head to meet Kevin's curious gaze as the long dark stretched in front of them. The silence stretched until Leon queried softly, "...what?"
"...nothin."
As the seconds passed, neither man looked away. Finally, Kevin intoned, "Maybe you should tell me about your time in Spain."
Leon held his eyes squarely, "It's all in the Kennedy Report."
"Sure...now tell me what isn't."
Kevin held Leon's eyes shrewdly until the younger man returned, "...that's classified."
"You gonna hide behind classified? Seriously?"
Leon blew out a hard breath. "I have to. It's classified for a reason."
"And if it costs me my life?"
"...it won't."
"You sure?" Kevin gestured at the doors. "You opened this. You did that. And that thing up there? It looked at you, but it didn't kill you. It threw you into that hole. It wanted you down here. You wanna tell me you have no reason why? That's your line here?"
Kevin kept looking at him until Leon turned away and entered the room with a single statement, "I don't know any more than you do. That's all I got."
The moment Kevin joined him in the dark, the room lit up. Lights emanated from within the walls, pink, blue, purple - beautiful. They flickered like flares beyond the ice. The room was empty save for a single bowl in the center of the cold chamber. It was silver and sat atop a pedestal.
The walls began to sing as they approached - that same haunting trill of invitation.
Leon paused at the thought - invitation? Is that what it was? Was it inviting them? Why? Where? For whom? For what?
Why did the door let him in?
Why didn't that thing up there kill him?
He had no answers.
He reached for the bowl with one bloody finger and instructed, "Cover me, you hear me? If shit gets weird, if something happens, you put me down."
Brows flying, Kevin grunted, "Seriously? You want me to be the guy who executes Leon Kennedy? I'll be dead in this business."
Leon gave him a cool look. "Just cover me."
With a shrug, Kevin acquiesced, "Sure. Go for it. Touch the bowl, tough guy. Open the magical portal to Narnia. Let's do this thing."
Leon touched the bowl. The walls sang happily. The bowl continued to sit there forlornly, smeared now with a streak of pretty red blood. Kevin blew out his cheeks, "Fail. What next?"
Leon glanced around the chamber. He frowned, studying the lights in the walls. His boots crunched on ice as he walked toward the pink wall. "You see anything in the cave drawings that might give us an idea?"
Kevin shrugged, "Not really. You want me to open a vein and fill the bowl?"
Leon shook his head, "You'd be dead before it filled up. Let's go back to the other chamber and see if there's something we missed."
Kevin muttered as he followed, watching Leon disappear through the cracked doors as he called, "You know what's really chapping my ass? You act like I don't have a right to know what the hell you're hiding. You just expect me to cover your ass like tighty-whities without any explana-"
As he ducked through the doors, Kevin simply lost his words.
Leon stood face to face with the thing that had thrown him into the pit. It looked down on the smaller man in a way that was both intelligent and considering. When Leon's hand slid toward his gun, the thing tilted its head at him. He hesitated in response before finally speaking into the tense silence, "...what do you want from me?"
It made a chittering, chattering, nearly metallic skittering sound from its flickering mask. The tentacles around its head wavered like medusa, swirling in the cold air as if they had a mind of their own. It took two steps toward him, and Leon backed up one in response.
When it paused, studying him, he urged, "...what? What is it? What do you want!?"
The skittering reminded Kevin of a tongue clucking in the mouth of an eager impersonator. He wasn't a scientist by any standard, but he knew when something was trying to speak. It was speaking that language that they couldn't understand.
When it took another step, Leon warned, "Stop. I mean it. Stop. I don't want to fight you."
The thing hesitated again. It chittered. It eagerly shimmered in and out of visibility. The fact that it could manipulate the light to look invisible was alarming. It trembled and finally made a human noise as it metallically invited, "...ch...cho...chosen..."
Kevin tossed a look at Leon, whose adam's apple bobbled as he swallowed twice before whispering, "...what does that mean? Chosen? For what?"
It tossed its head, listening to something they couldn't hear. When a ruckus happened behind the doors in the distance, it spun around.
And then?
Then it stepped in front of them.
And just like that, it was on their side.
What came through the doors was massive. It towered. It rose, shining black skin on a nearly avian face with a beak elongated over a thousand teeth. The wings that opened behind it were scaly and as wide as a car from end to end. It had four legs with hooves and hooked talons on the back of six elongated fingers on two somewhat human hands.
Something rolled across the ground toward his boots as Leon looked down to find a silver ball between his toes. He picked it up in his gloved palms as the thing told him, "Offering."
"...for-for the bowl?"
The invisible ally simply intoned mechanically, "...run."
And it raced at the thing that came through the doors.
Leon hesitated as Kevin called, "I'd listen, man. Run."
The battle began. Shrieking screams rocked the walls as blood splattered the icy lights around them. Their erstwhile protector was fast and brutal. It rolled and ran and leaped and went invisible. It was insanely quick and efficient.
A guardian clearly, but for what?
What was it guarding?
What did it mean to be chosen?
They ducked back through the doors to the room with the bowl and hurried toward it.
Leon laid the silver ball in the bowl. It rolled around and then flattened with a shivering sound and light. It filled the inner ring of the bowl with liquid metal. It shimmered. It circled and fed into the cracks.
And the pedestal slid to one side to reveal a staircase.
Kevin muttered, "What is this fucking place?"
With little choice, they descended further into the dark. They followed a winding staircase, boots echoing, breath billowing. Down, down, down, down until the inertia was nearly cloying. They were both shivering. Their eyelashes started to feel weighted with cold, and it became hard to breathe.
They reached the bottom and found themselves surrounded by torches throwing blue fire. Mystified, entranced, they walked down a narrow walkway surrounded by that eerie illumination until three steps put them on a dais and offered them another set of enormous doors. These were blocked by an image of a man with his hands lifted toward the sun while the rest of those surrounding him cowered in his presence.
Was it rain that fell around him?
Or blood?
The single word carved into the ice looked like an angry scratch made by hurried hands - Icarus.
Whatever it meant, it couldn't be good.
Leon started to touch the door, and a shout drew his attention.
Racing across the ice, Rebecca Chambers bellowed, "Get down! GET DOWN!"
She threw herself to her hands and knees as she yelled and a blast of something wet and sizzling missed her by inches as she went down. It hit the steps and had Leon and Kevin leaping apart as the ice melted under the assault, leaving a steaming hole behind.
As Kevin raced for Rebecca, Leon felt the air shift over his head, and he felt the fire on his face an inch from his left eye. It dripped and burned his flesh as something tackled him so hard he lost his breath and went backward to land on his ass and skid over the ice in a swirling slide. Instinct had him grabbing his attacker to his front as they grappled and hit the wall with a grunt.
Jill whipped off her wet suit jacket and slapped it against his face, wiping away the drip left behind. Gasping, she demanded, "How bad?"
When he just stared at her, she snapped, "How bad, Leon!?"
What?
Confused, he shook his head, "It just aches."
Nodding, she inspected his face and hissed, "It might scar. Fuck. These goddamn things spit acid like those bugs in Spain. Here."
From her back, she pulled a spear and thrust it into his hands. Surprised, he took it as she told him, "Best I could find. Get up. Hurry."
He reached for the gun on his back and found it was lying on the dais where he'd fallen. Jill dove for it, and one of those goddamn bugs - looking more like a praying mantis now than the grasshoppers they'd battled in Spain - dove for her like it would take her head at the same time.
He didn't think; Leon just threw the spear in his hands like he knew what he was doing. It lanced into the thing, which roared in rage, and Leon tackled it around the middle and threw it over his back as he grabbed the spear, jerked it free in a burst of fluid, and kicked the thing as it came down from its fall. It flipped, slid, hit the platform's edge, and Leon drove the spear into its face from a foot away.
Jill rolled over with his gun to her shoulder and blasted the damn thing as it reared up to take his head with one of those claws waving wildly at him in defeat.
It spit, he leaped left and felt the air stream with acid, and Jill blew it apart from the ground.
As he turned, Jill shouted.
Everything retarded like someone had hit slow motion on the remote control of the universe.
The spear in his hands came up to stop the enormous scythe that came to take his head. Metal sang. The ring of it was loud in the crystalline stillness.
And he was face to face with Jack Krauser on that rooftop in Spain. The air stank of blood and guts and revenge. He could feel the world narrow to fight or die. He could taste survival like bitter regret on his tongue.
But it wasn't Jack Krauser trying to kill him. It wasn't. Krauser was dead. He'd finished him off in a bath of redemption and vengeance.
The thing trying to kill him roared in his face from inches away. It grabbed his throat and lifted. Someone was screaming.
Leon drove the spear in his hands into that throat. Blood pumped, it gushed - it splattered his face and chest as a hundred teeth opened to devour his head in a single bite.
Jill's gun went off, and the arm dangling him trembled. It thrust a tentacle from its disgusting face at his mouth. It tried to snake between Leon's teeth, and Jill shouted, "You son of a bitch...not today!"
Leon reared back and jerked the spear free to shove it once more into that gushing throat, and it threw him. He went up. He went out. Jill's gun went off like a grenade in an empty room - echoing and so loud. It accompanied him as Leon came down, crashing through the ice like it was fragile glass. It rained around him as he hit on his back, rolled, and tried to gain his feet.
He rolled, and something kicked him in the face. It lifted him and sent him to his back, curling on his side as a fat mutant man with three heads came over him with a chunk of ice in his hands like a sword. Leon grabbed for anything to use as a weapon, and it drove that ice at his back as he tried to scramble away.
Jill's gun went off again. It was echoed in the chamber by two more. Fighting. Fighting. Screaming. Someone was shouting in rage.
Bullets. Blood.
The ice in the man's hand came at him. Leon braced his arms to stop it from taking out his left eye. He kicked from his back, and instead of stabbing, that ice came at his face and slapped, smacked, whacked - once, twice.
He saw stars.
Jill blasted the thing atop him with a roar of battle. It jerked. It bled. It squealed like a pig or something.
It tried to eat his face with two of three of those heads.
And the gun again. Again.
Again.
Jill declared, "Get away from him, you bitch!"
And he pictured Ripley coming to the aid of Newt in Aliens.
It might have been so funny if the dark didn't waver at the edges of his vision as those hands gripped his throat and lifted, slamming his head back on the ice. Hard.
Too hard.
Leon punched one of those three heads. His fist cracked. It roared.
The gun again.
And again.
Everything turned into a movie where he was just observing, just there seeing it happen. His chest burst with pain that left him breathless. He grabbed his sternum, and it lanced down his arm as he thought with terror - I'm having a fucking heart attack.
So much for cardio and clean eating and being healthy and fit. He was going to drop dead at 27, not from a battle he couldn't win, but from his body giving out on him. It was almost ridiculous. He might have laughed if he wasn't frozen on the ground while everything broke apart around him.
Images, visions, things that made sense or didn't. The sounds of battle. The sight of survival. He tried to crawl and went to his back on the ground, spine bowing, hands clawing at his chest.
Something came to kill him while he struggled, and Jill was just there...just there like a savior, like a woman who carried you when you couldn't go on. He warned her in a voice gravelly with pain and fear, "I can't move, Jill. I can't move."
The look she gave him resonated with strength and determination. "You don't have to. I got you."
She blasted one of those things as it came for him. It was tossed clear, shrieking in rage and denial.
And then Jill stood over him to shout, "Me first, you pieces of shit! Come and get me!"
The world wavered. He murmured, "...my hero..."
And she gave him a look as she had in Spain, filled with sheer guts and bravery as she shimmered, and the long dark finally stole his vision.