Leon had sat in his hospital bed fuming as he still tried to digest the information that he had just been told by Claire and Sherry. Helena and Aliya were both MIA and to make matters worse, Helena was pregnant.
Leon looked up as Hunnigan entered the room holding her laptop with a grave expression on her face and Leon immediately knew that this wasn't going to be good.
"Did you find them? Are they safe?" he asks, sitting up in his hospital bed.
"No, we didn't find them, but something did happen."
"What happened?" He asks curiously, noticing Hunnigan open her laptop and place it on the bed in front of him.
"We sent a search party looking for the two of them several hours ago. Agent Ramirez had found Helena. However, we lost communication and when evac arrived, Helena was gone and only his body was there," she explains, logging into her laptop and turning the device towards Leon, "upon retrieving the body cam footage, we saw this." She adds, pressing play on the computer for Leon to see for himself.
Leon took the laptop as Hunnigan pressed play and he watched everything play out. His blood boiled as he saw Helena come into view, her hair and clothes caked in mud. She looked terrible; her skin was paler than he had ever seen it with bags under her eyes.
Leon watched the interaction between Helena and Ramirez, watching all the way until Helena picked up the gun and approached Ramirez. Leon paused the video and zoomed in on Helena's face and saw her normally green eyes were as black as coal.
"She's infected."
Hunnigan nodded, "yes she is."
"Okay so what do we do?"
"Well," she starts, closing her laptop, "I'm going to keep sending search parties out there and our scientists will try to figure out what we're dealing with to develop a cure for when we do find them." She adds, picking the device up and putting it to the side.
"I want to go with the search parties."
"Leon, we will find them, but you can't go just yet. You need to recover and then you can go," she explains, looking up as Carla entered the room to check on Leon.
"Carla, when can I go back to work?"
"Your broken bones will be healed in six to eight weeks, but the ruptured spleen will take another month after that. So, I'd say you can go back to work in about twelve weeks. When you do go back to work you should be on light duty though."
Leon sighed in frustration as he laid back in his hospital bed. He couldn't just sit here while Helena and Aliya were being held hostage with only God knows what happening to them.
"Leon, I promise we're going to find them, but you need to be patient. We will not stop looking for them and if we find one then we find the other." Ingrid explains, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before leaving the room.
Helena walked into the room she was sharing with Aliya, who woke up when she heard Helena slam the door shut. Aliya yawned as she sat up in their bed and looked Helena up and down, quickly putting two and two together when she saw the mud and blood covered clothes.
"You tried to escape." Aliya says matter-of-factly as she narrowed her eyes at Helena as she got up and approached her, "and what is this? Blood?"
"It doesn't matter," Helena says, making her way to the bathroom where there were already clean clothes waiting for her, "and yes. I tried to escape because we needed to get out of here. This is not our home." She says as she starts the shower.
"So what? Matthew only wants to help us, and I want to get to know my only family!" Aliya says, raising her voice slightly.
"He is not your family! He didn't raise you and you don't know him like you think you do! He's using you!" She snaps as she turns to look at Aliya.
"You aren't my family either! You will never be family!" The teen yelled, turning and running out of the bathroom.
Helena flinched as she heard the bedroom door slam shut and she painfully began peeling her clothes off her petite frame, letting the mud-soaked clothes fall to the floor and stepping into the hot shower.
Aliya's words cut through her like a knife and no one's words had ever hurt her like Aliya's did just now. Helena knew deep down that what Aliya had said was true; they weren't family, but Helena loved the girl as though she was her own. She knew that Aliya would eventually come around, and she knew that Aliya was being brainwashed and didn't mean it.
Despite all of this, it didn't stop Helena from falling to her knees and crying.