Chapter Text
At this point, shit was usually bound to go south pretty fast. That just was the way the world seemed to work now, and the way Leon had started to feel like it always would be, after seven constant years of it. He could always be prepared for it — stocked, locked and loaded, strapped in for the ride. But it didn’t mean he was ready.
He should’ve known something was off the second he walked onto the helipad. There were more men there than there should have been for a simple tank refill.
Repair workers crowded around the base of the helicopter like flies, gathering and jumping from one open panel to another in harried relays. His hair blew in shreds from the wind up here, all warm and gray like a dog’s breath. He flicked it off his face enough times to spot a tech off to the side overseeing.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he approached, readjusting the weight of his pack over his shoulder. She was an older woman, frown deep as Leon felt his own might be — they’d already delayed this mission once; time was too precious a resource for things this sensitive. They were close to not making it at all.
“Nav got busted from a bad hit to the fuselage,” she shouted back, eyes on her tablet. “This one’s only been back on site for an hour, so we just started on it. Transmission suffered a bit of a casualty too, but that’s a quick fix. Should be good to go in a little while.”
He nodded, hoping she couldn’t hear the sharp sigh that escaped from beneath his tongue. It wasn’t her fault, or her team’s, or anyone else’s, really. He tapped on to his comms, waiting for the telltale click of connection.
“Roost, this is Condor One.”
“Condor One, this is Hunnigan. Sitrep.”
“Grounded, for now.” He already knew the answer, but: “We got any other choppers in this place? We can’t be that strapped, can we?”
“Unfortunately, we can. We’ve got multiple cells out at the moment.” She was typing, always double-checking just in case. “I’ve got an hour estimate for remaining repairs to DM-04.” Shit. Okay. “Calculating route readjustment for prompt arrival to destination — standby.”
Alright. It was…fine. They always managed somehow.
He spent the next hour with a restless leg. He rechecked his weapon stock. Watched the repair team. Reread the mission brief. Another day, another pharmaceutical brain rot, another group of shitty people. Nothing new. Maybe they’d blow themselves up before he got there, without his help. There’s a thought.
By the time the pilot found him, things were looking clearer — on the technical side, at least. The weather was muggy, thick with an incoming storm. They needed to leave ASAP.
“Keith,” he yelled over the building wind, squinting against it. “We good?”
“We’re good!” the pilot called back, already walking back the way he came, over toward the open chopper. “Let’s hit the road!”
+
The sky was fine on the way out. Leon had expected what hadn’t been on the forecast — a storm, bumpy air, another delay. Sometimes he wondered about his paranoia, the way it permeated everything. Sure it was warranted, but it veered into too much too often. It just made him tense, bitter. It was unnecessary.
Until it wasn’t.
His stomach dropped before he even saw the problem start.
Something started beeping and blinking, and Keith fiddled the controls until it stopped. And then it started again, this time followed by a patch of rough air that shook them in their seats.
“Shit,” Leon heard crackle through his earphones. They hadn’t been off the ground thirty minutes. Keith tapped on the doppler, turned a knob until it zoomed off of them. There were red patches like sores all over, all incoming. “Where the hell did this come from?”
They looked out into the dark air around them — a cloud they’d been surrounded in for more than a moment. Then came a flash of light, sharp and hard.
“I’m getting us out of here,” Keith promised, but something was odd in his voice. Not the lack of confidence — it was like it was melting, warping in his throat.
Oh, shit.
Two things happened at once.
The first: the helicopter was forced into another patch of air, hard enough that Leon almost busted his head open on the window more than a few inches from his head. The whole control panel went haywire, and he could tell they were sloping downward through the air.
The second: Keith was seizing up in the seat next to him — literally having a seizure, and the skin of his face began to bubble and pop over itself, open sores oozing and morphing into something red and gray and all too familiar. His body was changing, widening beneath the fabric of his pilot’s jumpsuit, and his hands were no longer anywhere near the controls. The sounds coming through the comms were miserable, sinister, turning inhuman all too fast.
Leon didn’t have time to think. Didn’t need it either.
“Fuck this,” he declared, pulling his pistol from its holster as he unstrapped himself. A cacophony of alarms and worrying noises from the motor filled the small space. He sent out a distress call with the press of a button at his ear. “Roost, this is Condor One. Mayday. Do you have eyes on my location?”
Hunnigan came through a thick shield of static. He could barely hear her over the horrifying metamorphosis beside him. “Condor One, I read you. What’s going on?”
“You tell me,” he returned, flipping the safety off. “Keith’s turning on me. Some kind of nasty monster thing, as usual. Any ideas?”
It took four bullets, aimed into the seat behind what was now a roaring, slimy head exploding in bursts of blood and jellied puce, to subdue what had been his coworker moments before. He had to crouch over the corpse to try and take control of the chopper. He just had to pray it was fully dead, not trying to grab him and kill them both.
“Roost!” Leon pressed again, realizing he hadn’t heard a response.
“Condor — — it — —
— — you —”
Between the storm, the turbulence, and the very obvious fact that this helicopter was going to crash, it was no wonder he was losing contact. With a hard sigh, he shifted his focus to staying alive.
Words could not describe how loud it was inside the aircraft. Keith’s shoulder had somehow cracked the glass of the door window, and the air and thunder and violent wind all did their best to funnel through the hairline fractures. The alarms never stopped. The adrenaline and sweat were making Leon pant, and there was some kind of feedback loop through the comms of his breath back into his own ears. The static from Roost. The sound of the fall to the inevitable. His fingers were freezing outside the bounds of his gloves, and his palms were damp and hot inside them.
He pulled the shift back as far as it would go. “Come on.” It barely did a thing. “Come on. ” None of the comms were working — not just his. The whole system was out. It was all fucked. It was all inexplicably, irrevocably fucked.
Time to abort.
It was easy to grab his pack, to shove the door hatch with his foot, to make sure his parachute was secure. It was never as easy to jump.
+
It took several minutes to register what was wrong.
Not the way he’d landed, dragged into a cluster of pine trees that trapped him, checking one side of his body in a painful slap on his way past one leaning trunk.
Not the landscape itself, a deeply wooded, sloping departure from the flat, dusty rural plains he had expected. Those endless midwestern fields and farms.
No, it was the weather: not a thunderstorm, the shocks of which he could’ve sworn he’d felt on the way in. It was a snowstorm. Or at least it had been — this was its quiet aftermath, packed soft and deep against hillsides and in their valleys.
It was the middle of a hazy August in the middle of a sweltering America. Where in the hell had he ended up?
He cut himself out of the parachute where it’d caught him in the trees, shoulder and flank throbbing as he walked, uselessly trying to buzz into the Roost. He came into a clearing, and all he could see was white and green and gray — towering spires of evergreens, a clouded sky like a wall, cold, freezing, that he wasn’t prepared for, his utility boots not quite hearty enough for the knee-deep snow. At least he’d thought to bring a jacket, warm with a shearling lining. It was the first thing he’d snatched out of his pack once he could move again.
His cell wasn’t picking up any service. Not even with his emergency frequency. No radio, no signal. Nothing. He allowed the frustration, but ignored the looming despair.
Helicopter first. Then, people.
Leon followed the trail of smoke to the west, a rising plume of black against the heavy silk of clouds, a clear signal of distress above the trees. He had a last resort for communication there — and if that failed him, someone else would surely have noticed the crash, even somewhere as remote as this. There was a way.
He felt the cold begin to burn. Nose, face, throat, lungs. The challenge of wading through the snow caught up with him fast. His pant legs were damp, his hair was damp from the sweat that struggled to create itself. Whatever fire remained at the crash would be tremendously welcome. He still couldn’t determine where he was that would be this freezing, this wintered in, this wooded on the course of their trajectory to the drop site. There wasn’t any wildlife he could see to even hazard a guess. Just trees, rocks, white as far as the eye could see, muted and silent. Only him and his dense footsteps, and his breath.
He was so lost in the dense quiet, he almost missed the sight that finally awaited him, and when it did it nearly arrested him:
The splintered helicopter, engulfed in black smoke, surrounded by men who could only be soldiers.
They were downhill. Leon broke into a sprint as best he could, then leveraged the side of his heel to slide the rest of the way, then sprung himself up like a cat, slowing his run into a less alarming approach.
“Hey,” he called, waving a hand above his head, “I’m —”
“Hands up! On your knees!”
Every one of them — four, if Leon were counting correctly — aimed their guns on him. Automatic rifles. Yeah, shit, okay. Fair. He knew that training. He did as he was told, sinking onto his knees in the snow.
Two men came to meet him. They were in pretty standard gear: dark blue fatigues, kevlar, helmets. As they got closer, he saw one pull out a handheld device he’d never seen before — something big, clunky, with a screen on it, like a big remote thermometer. He lifted it to Leon’s neck. On instinct, Leon jerked away.
“What are you —”
“Quiet.”
Leon’s skin was too numb from the cold for him to feel anything but the way his head was shoved down from behind, held still until there was a beeping.
“He’s clear,” one of the soldiers confirmed. The others just barely loosened their aim.
“I’m special agent Leon S. Kennedy,” he finally explained. “I’m part of a task force sent to clear out a threat just north of Kansas. My pilot was compromised and our helicopter crashed. As you can see.” He nodded toward the tower of smog emanating hot. “Can you tell me where we are? I need to contact my team.”
There was a moment of completely tense silence. Leon started to wonder what kind of soldiers they really were.
“Special agent?” one of them finally parroted, with a strange quality to his voice. “Who are you working for?”
“President Graham,” he replied, and waited for the inevitable reverence that came with the name — not admiration, but acknowledgment. Clearance.
It never came.
“Who the fuck is that?” another man called.
Leon felt his stomach sink, something deeply wrong here he was only beginning to understand.
What the hell?
“Yeah, president of what?” The soldier behind him nudged him with the head of his rifle. “What division are you? You got ID?”
“Yeah, I do.” Leon went to reach for it, but the soldiers immediately locked their guns on him again. He sighed. “Front left pocket.”
The other soldier on him snatched it out of Leon’s jacket. He watched the guy read it, waiting for something to finally register. All he did was scowl, then toss it into the snow by his feet.
“Nice try, dumbass. Whoever forged this for you did a shit job.”
“What are you talking about? I already told you —”
“It’s thirty years old. You think we’re fucking stupid?” With the end of his gun, he poked at Leon. “So we’ve got a stolen aircraft, stolen fuel, stolen guns, what else? What QZ you smuggling for, huh?”
“No way he’s a smuggler,” another yelled. “Gotta be a Firefly.”
The shift in the air was palpable. The snow beneath Leon had melted enough, sunk enough that he was hip-deep in it. It may as well have been quicksand. He had no clue what was going on here — only that it was completely wrong, and he needed to get out of here. Fast.
He could sense the soldier behind him getting ready to either restrain him or knock him out. He didn’t give him a chance.
With all the swiftness he could manage, he downed the soldier next to him with an elbow to the back of the man’s knees. He pulled the man behind him by the vest, right over his head, arcing him over in a clumsy fall to use him as a shield — the other men were already shooting, and Leon just managed to avoid a bullet.
For soldiers, they didn’t seem too well-versed in combat. It was almost funny if Leon weren’t so goddamned unsettled by this whole thing. A couple of shots to the face took them down one by one. It wasn’t long before he was left again in the silence of the snow, now stained and streaked with fresh blood. It was all just fucking eerie.
He tried looting the men to see what he could find. Bullets, rifles, walkies, the usual — and then there was the shit he really didn’t understand: those big devices he couldn’t even begin to fathom, logos for something called FEDRA stamped on all their clothes, IDs that confirmed some kind of group delusion. The issue date was, as they’d said, thirty years in the future. He resisted the urge to fall back into the snow, baffled, suddenly exhausted from the last…however long.
Okay. Evaluate. He’d been in some weird situations before. No stranger to the strange. But this was on a different level. Think. His pilot turning on him — was that the start? Or had it been the storm? Or no — maybe this had been a sabotage all along, some bullshit with Umbrella or another entity that would land him smack in the middle of some culty headfuck. That was easier to consider than the alternative: that somehow, he’d ended up somewhere else entirely. Another time entirely. He had learned not to ask the whys by now, so there was no point in wondering about a purpose here; he would have to do what he always did, which was fight, use every bullet and knife and muscle and breath until he made it out on the other side of this, whatever it was, and got back home.
His eyes followed the long lines cut into the snow around the crash site to find a big military-grade vehicle, that all-terrain type, open at the top with no roof. All he could think about was how their faces must have burned in the cold wind as they rode. How his face would burn when he drove it out of here. He saw the supplies in the back of it and added in his own: the rifles laying around the ground, extra cases of bullets, his retrieved ID, his heavy pack; he took out any transmitters or devices, not leaving their tracking potential to chance. At some point, whoever was waiting for this unit to return would notice when it didn’t.
He tried to be quick about inspecting the helicopter — if nothing else, he had to be with the smoke and gasoline vapor that stung his eyes and throat, steadily churning from the fire that was quickly warping the bones of the whole thing, the paint bubbling and peeling off the side under the heat. He stomped down the door — the helicopter had skidded to land on its side, the passenger door up before explosion hit— and watched it crush what remained of Keith’s burning, inhuman corpse. Through the fire and steam and smoke, and with great but expected disappointment, he could see that their flare guns were ruined. And the emergency transmitter, which he needed the most, was damaged. It seared at his fingertips as he pulled it out of there.
It was hot through the fabric of his coat, too, as he carried it in his arms back to the vehicle. His first order of business, wherever the hell he was, was to find a way to repair it. Any hope he had of getting back in contact with Hunnigan or otherwise hinged on that, especially if he couldn’t get a signal anywhere else. He prayed it was just because wherever this was was fairly remote, mountainous, rough terrain. The transmitter sizzled on the fabric of the passenger seat; the truck rumbled beneath him when he turned the keys, already waiting for him in the ignition, to life.
Leon felt boundless and untethered, still trying to get his bearings. This whole thing had thrown everything into a further skew than when he’d landed. Where the hell was he — or maybe the better question was, when was he?
He put his foot on the gas, knowing that was probably the only way he would get any answers.
+
They were maybe a little, verging on a lot, fucked. Like, kind of mega-fucked, actually.
“God damn it, Joel, come on!” Ellie heard herself wail in the sort of hiss a tire made when it popped. She tried to tap and pat his unconscious face back to life, not loving that he’d passed out — again, first of all — and the shade his lips were paling to. Granted he’d just beat several men likely to death, but it was the principle of the thing.
Panic swelled in her when she heard footsteps crunching in the snow, approaching fast. Unfortunately it was hard to cover your tracks when you were dragging the body of a grown man with you. The best she’d been able to do was take cover on the other side of the house closest to the woods, and it was too open, and it had her uneasy. She grabbed Joel’s rifle and swallowed against the tightness in her throat. Just because she could fight didn’t always mean she liked doing it, especially when it was people outnumbering her and not their crusty infected alternative.
“Just give up while you still can!” one guy called out, raspy, and closer to the house than she liked. “We’ll make it real easy for you!”
Yeah, she knew what that meant. She tried not to think of crunching glass, burning leather and wood, being held to the floor. Her hand shook a little, and she flexed it before she checked the chamber on the gun. It at least felt good to know what she was doing, and to be able to at all.
There was a soft crunch from somewhere behind her. Reflexively she whipped around, and found one of those scummy guys trying to approach them, presumably to take Joel by the feet and drag him off for scavenging. Or kill him, and then do it. She didn’t give him a chance to do either.
“Back off, motherfucker!” she yelled, aiming and firing with enough precision that blood sprayed out from his shoulder in a thick, wide arc. He groaned and fell back into the snow. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she murmured, heart beating in her ears.
She swung back just in time to see another guy approaching, probably the one who had been threatening her. She shot him in the stomach, the crack of the gun so loud she felt it echo against her skin, the recoil biting her collarbone enough she knew it’d bruise. She yanked the bolt back to get rid of the shells, then realized she needed the extra bullets out of Joel’s pocket. If there were any.
“Shit.” The second guy was cussing a blue streak at her. “Shut the fuck up!” Her own pistol was out of ammo, so she took her knife from its place at her ankle and crawled over to cut him across the throat. She cringed when it made that godawful noise, like he was choking on his tongue. But it had to be done, and it wouldn’t be the last. There were others who she knew had to be making their way over, probably carefully. She took that guy’s gun and checked the magazine — nothing. Seriously? It was always the big talkers. Time to dig through Joel’s pockets while he was half-dead asleep, then. Yay.
“You owe me big time,” she whispered to him as she rolled him to his side to get to his back pocket, trying not to be worried about how he looked a little anguished even in his current state, or if his body temperature was getting too low. Or, God forbid, too high. She didn’t have any other way to treat a fever or infection at this point. Ugh, this was supposed to be over —
Arms grabbed her from behind before she even registered it was happening. She smelled sweat and ash and rank breath against her hair.
“Got you,” the guy said in his ugly voice. Ellie thrashed against him immediately, jabbing her knife behind her as many times as she could, trying to land a hit.
“Get the fuck off me! You fucking creep!” His breath punted a little when she sliced something, but even then she knew it wasn’t enough. His hold was tight enough to squeeze at her stomach and lungs, and it was hard not to let the panic in when she couldn’t even get a real breath in. “You have no idea how hard I’m gonna kill you!”
Worse, one of the other guys was approaching Joel, and she knew there was probably nothing she was going to be able to do about it. She screeched louder, thrashed harder, stabbed with more force, trying to get free. It was like her worst nightmare playing out before her eyes: Joel getting approached with a knife, defenseless, about to die. A frantic wail escaped her without her meaning to let it out.
And then, divine intervention: the crack of a gunshot, the hot spray of blood against her arm, the hold around her going slack enough to let her out of it.
Shit, she thought, wondering if she was going to be in the crosshairs, but no — next was the guy coming toward Joel, and he went down with a gory spray himself, red like a firework against the side of the house. He crumpled in on himself as he went down, eyes vacant, his head shot cleanly through. Who the hell — ? She crawled to shield Joel, trying to find the source of the shots somewhere to her right, in the forest. And then she saw him.
It was like something she had made up. Like something out of a comic book. Here came this guy running toward them, someone who she could tell was strong and capable just by the form he used to get quickly through the snow. He looked like he was from a poster for an action movie, but also like he was from one of those boy band CDs that Riley used to secretly love. His shearling coat and jeans looked weirdly untouched by the elements. She’d never seen someone with clothes that looked…new. He was like something out of a rescue fantasy, or maybe a regular fantasy, and yet he was here. And he was getting closer.
“Hey,” he called, holding his pistol with two hands down by his hip, like he meant business. “Are you hurt?”
Ellie was transfixed against her will. It just seemed impossible. No one ever came to save them. Maybe she and Joel were dead after all, and she was making this up to feel better about letting them die. He was close enough now to approach her slowly, this time with a cautious hand out toward her, like she was a nervous animal. His hair was shiny, even in the wan light of a cloudy day, which felt ridiculous to notice. But it was hard not to. It was cut in a way that didn’t seem practical, and that set him apart from pretty much anyone she’d ever met. He was super good-looking, too — all chiseled cheekbones and blueish eyes and pouty lips — literally like an actor from a movie, not someone real. His only blemish was a line of dark red on his cheek, dried blood coming from somewhere north of his temple.
“My name’s Leon,” he said, like she’d responded to him already. “I’m gonna help you get out of here. Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Um,” she found herself saying dumbly, almost like her brain was testing her. “No, I’m — I’m good…”
“Is your dad okay?”
Still lagging, she saw him assessing Joel, who unfortunately showed no signs of stirring. “He’s — ” Clarifying didn’t seem important at the moment. “I need to get him somewhere else.”
The guy — Leon? — nodded, looking all about it, like he was on an actual mission. “I have a car not far from here. Come on.”
There were all sorts of things she should be thinking — was this actually happening? If so, could she trust him? Were there other hunters waiting around to try and kill them? All of them paled in the face of one fact:
“You have a car?!”
Leon seemed to be forming a response to that, unsure what to say. But he was interrupted by a telltale screech in the distance: an infected, and one that wasn’t far off, drawn in by all the noise.
“Let’s go,” Ellie decided, not wanting to take chances, even with this bizarre, skilled, pretty stranger apparently on her side. “One infected usually means a heck of a lot more behind them.”
“Infected,” he said. No, he’d asked. It was a question. She could even see his dark blond brows knit together.
“Uh, yeah? The nasty humanoid monsters that look like they’re made of tree rot and hamburger meat and crushed dreams?” He just stared at her, and she tried not to get distracted by how insanely sculpted his face was. “Sick? Runners?…Clickers? Uh…zombies?”
That one seemed to register with him. “Ah.”
His expression was still a little lost, but whatever. They needed to get the hell out of dodge. They could discuss it in the car, away from this crime scene. He had the same idea, because he moved to pick Joel up, like he was going to sling him over his shoulders.
“No!” she found herself calling out, louder than she realized, and Leon immediately halted. “No, let me help.”
“Are you sure? I can —”
“I’m sure,” she said, feeling better about it when she had her hands under Joel’s ankles, his boots thick against her palms. She watched Leon get a grip under his armpits. “On three?”
He was heavy, but they managed. She’d definitely had it worse before.
The fabled car turned out to be a FEDRA vehicle, and that set Ellie on edge for the first real time. She froze, her hands tight where she held Joel.
“Oh no, no, no, I knew this was too good to be true. Hell no.”
Leon realized pretty quickly where her eyes had landed. “No, I’m not — it’s stolen. I didn’t have a whole lot of options when they cornered me.”
“They cornered you? For what?” He didn’t immediately respond. “If you’re lying, I swear to god — ”
“I’m not. I don’t know who they are, but they’re definitely not my friends.”
Another shriek from an infected, and then there was a little chorus of them. They didn’t have time for this.
“Yeah, me neither,” she mumbled, trying not to get too relieved, begrudgingly continuing on toward the car. It wasn’t until they had hoisted Joel into its roomy open trunk that the oddity of what he’d said had hit her.
So he…didn’t know what infected were…or FEDRA? How hard had he hit his head?
Who was this guy?
They hardly had time to discuss it. They could barely do more than make sure Joel was situated, as best they could. Ellie decided to stay in the back with him, wrapping him up in the tarp that was supposed to be covering the decent store of bullets and rifles and other goodies, including their newly half-full backpacks. She scooted up against him, hoping that keeping his head at an angle was the right thing. His forehead felt cold and clammy, which was not fucking good. But he was breathing, which was. She could have to look at his wound when they got wherever they were going; for now, she had to let the fact that his shirt was dry and not damp with blood be a balm to her nerves. She settled in behind the driver’s seat, his head on her thighs, her hand on his chest for reassurance, not that she could feel much through all the thick layers.
“Where were you headed?” Leon asked, keys paused in the ignition.
“What?” Ellie said, distracted. “Oh, uh. West.” She knew better than to give too much information; Joel would be so pissed if she got them in another pickle, the thought almost made her laugh — but also it was dangerous to talk about their destination to just anyone. “Where are you headed?”
Leon gave a heavy sigh, and for another second Ellie worried. She didn’t know this man. Helping her survive wasn’t enough to let her trust him fully. David had helped her, and look where that had gotten her. She almost felt sick waiting for Leon to respond, her brain plotting all the ways she could try to get out of this if she needed to. Her hand itched for the automatic rifle just out of reach.
Finally, he turned his head toward her, as far as he could reach. She could see how honest the look of confusion was on his face when he asked her:
“Do you know what a Firefly is?”
She really did almost laugh. Of all things to ask — of course. The only thing she let out was the smile that cracked across her face. Whatever kind of impossible this all was, she was starting to like it.
“Sure do, buddy.”
+
“ — seen a raccoon in real life, I don’t know why anyone would name a whole city after one.”
“Yeah, well, it was aptly named,” Leon sighed, recalling that dumpster fire, and also trying not to think too hard about it.
He had told the girl, Ellie, a bit about his experience with zombies and the like, and she had gotten him somewhat caught up on the situation wherever this was, but they hadn’t talked about anything more. It had just been a way to pass the time while they rode until the truck ran out of gas. And then their focus had been on finding camp somewhere quiet and safe, and getting her dad, Joel, somewhere where he could rest and warm up. He was using every hot pack in his emergency stash to stuff into the man’s sleeping bag, and he could see some color coming back to his face the more he and Ellie tried to get him comfortable.
He looked older, that was for sure: deep crow’s feet around his eyes, gray salting the better part of his dark hair, skin weathered by what had to be years of a life like this — outside, on the run, without. Ellie had gotten him up to speed on the injury that was plaguing him, and Leon considered it a miracle the man hadn’t had any kind of sepsis. The fact that Ellie had been taking care of him, keeping him alive completely on her own, said a lot about the kind of person she was. Leon felt a pang of sadness heavy in his stomach as he watched her change the dressing on his wound, moving with the clumsy but experienced hands of a child forced above her station.
“You sure this stuff works?” she asked, referring to the bottle of antiseptic spray in her hand, her eyes on the yellowed trench of red peeking out from the flannel of Joel’s shirt.
“It’s hospital grade,” Leon tried to reassure her. “It should finish up the job that penicillin was doing. If it doesn’t, I’ve got other things we can try.”
“Okay.” She sighed, like she was bracing herself. “Here goes.”
There was a silent moment as they watched while the spray foamed and bubbled violently, and then eventually settled down. Ellie hesitantly placed a clean dressing — this one actual gauze from Leon’s pack, and not a boiled strip of old shirt — on top, and sealed it up like a package with some medical tape. She tucked Joel’s side back into his sleeping bag, and it was like she could breathe again.
She pulled her knees up against her chest and hugged them, thoughtfully watching Joel’s face.
“It’s been like this for almost two weeks,” she explained, like Leon had asked. “I’ve barely been making our way through this fucking snow because he keeps trying to do more than he can, and then he has to sleep for a whole day after we go out for supplies, or he passes out in the middle of goddamn shootout. And I could go out by myself, but I don’t want to leave him too long, ‘cause…” She chewed on her lip, and then glanced over at him. “Anyway, I don’t know if you’re a serial killer or…or some kind of pervert, or whatever, but in the meantime, I really appreciate your help.”
Leon nodded, trying for a friendly smile. “I’m glad I can help. And for what it’s worth, I’m not either one of those. Cross my heart. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Yeah, ‘cause the right place is between a bunch of tweaking hunters and a horde of infected.”
“Trust me, I’ve been in much worse.”
Ellie cocked her head at him, narrowing her eyes, assessing. “Okay, seriously, who are you? You show up with all this swagger, and nice hair, and all these pristine guns and more medical shit than I’ve ever been able to get my hands on. And you don’t know shit about the infected, but you’ve seen something like them before? What’s that about?”
Well, if nothing else, he’d learned that Ellie was outspoken.
He was quiet for a minute, trying to decide what the best course of action was here. He’d been alone for two days, trying to find a signal back to Hunnigan, trying to figure out where the hell he was, trying to find a way back home. All he had seen were trees and snow, and heard an eerie quiet when he camped last night, like the whole world was asleep. The soldiers here had thought he was a firefly , which meant that whoever or wherever they were, they might be the only people here who had access to the resources he needed. And Ellie, the first person he had talked to since he landed here, had basically confirmed as much.
“Ellie,” he finally said. “What year is it?”
She looked at him with alarm, and also like he was stupid. “It’s 2033. Er, 2034 now, I think.”
Carefully, he passed his ID over Joel’s body between them, and even more carefully, she took it. He watched a journey happen on her face when she read over it.
“What the hell?” She glanced between him and the badge, him and the badge, him and the badge. “Dude, no way you’re the same age as Joel.”
“I’m not,” he told her, a bit of urging in his voice he hadn’t meant to put there. “Where I’m from, it’s 2004.”
Ellie was clearly having trouble believing him. He didn’t blame her. A cold, abandoned section of the world, a cold-hearted group of enforcers, a cold crop of rocks the three of them sat against, a girl and her dad fighting their way through it all, and they were obviously far from the only ones.
“Where are you from?” she asked, gripping onto the leather cover of his badge. “What are you…how did you get here?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Leon confessed, sliding his chilly fingers into the pockets of his coat. “I was on the way to a mission, and my pilot turned into some kind of monster, and my helicopter crashed about a day’s drive from here. The FEDRA thought my ID was a bad forge, and that I was one of the Fireflies, and they tried to kill me, so I stole their goods and ran. And I’ve been alone ever since.” He shook his head, closing his eyes in frustration. “I’ve never been so confused in my life. And I know you probably don’t believe me, which is understandable. I don’t believe any of this, and it’s happening to me.”
He looked pleadingly to Ellie, and what he found surprised him immensely.
Her eyes were round as saucers, and were practically sparkling.
“So you’re…a time traveler,” she ventured, her whole posture different, perked up like a puppy waiting for a treat. “Holy shit, you’re like, an actual time traveler!”
“Oh.” Leon was reeling a bit. “Well — ”
“Oh my god, I knew it was something like that, I just knew it! There was no way you looked like that and were from here and just…hooooly shit, dude. I can’t believe it!!”
“Looked — looked like what?”
“Like you walked out of an action movie!” She was clapping her hands, giddy. “God, it all makes sense now. You coming in like — pew pew pew, special agent Leon, at your service.” Her fingers were posed like a gun, and her face had gone into a steely pout, pretending to be him. He…wasn’t like that, was he? “I swear to God, I was like, this guy just dropped out of the sky or something, because there was no other explanation for you being so clueless. And you literally did!”
She was laughing now, maybe a little hysterically, her nose scrunching her dirty, freckled face. He wasn’t sure what to make of her reaction, if it had been better than he expected or if it was somehow worrying. He should probably be grateful — a best case scenario, after the welcome he’d gotten at the crash site. But something still ate at him.
“I don’t know if it’s…time travel, exactly.” To her credit, she did start paying attention again instantly. “You said the infection started spreading twenty years ago, right? 2013?”
Ellie nodded, raptly attentive.
“Were there any other similar outbreaks before then? Like the one in Raccoon City?”
“I dunno,” she said. “They only taught us about the cordyceps at the academy. That’s the only one anyone ever talks about, since…y’know.” She inclined her head. “And like I said, I’ve never even heard of that place. Joel might know, though. He knows more geography stuff, too. And, like, everything stuff.”
Leon considered that for a moment. Ellie was receptive to his story, but she was young. An older man, an experienced one who’d lived in this environment for twenty long years, would be a different nut to crack. If he’d raised someone like Ellie, though…he had to be a pretty good guy, and that gave Leon a chance. He did find it a little odd that she called Joel by his first name, but maybe society had changed even on that level by this point.
Leon slipped a paper out from the inside of his coat. It was warm and bent easily when he handed it to Ellie. He watched as she unfolded it skeptically.
“Does the Umbrella Corporation mean anything to you?” he asked. “That logo at the top is a symbol you might have seen on buildings, medicine containers, books…”
Ellie mulled it over, brows knitting as her eyes skimmed the report. She had such an open, expressive face, he could tell how hard she was trying to think on it, and that she was disappointed not to recognize it.
“Nope,” she sighed, handing it back to him. “What is it?”
“They’re a pharmaceutical company who’ve been trying to create bioweapons. They’re responsible for…well, pretty much all of the outbreaks I’ve seen, among other things.”
Ellie laughed, a little puff in the cold air, but it was disbelieving. “This is…I’m sorry, dude, this is just so cool! Like, bioweapons? Of course. You’re a secret agent trying to stop bioterrorists. Does the Umbrella thingy have evil scientists? Ooh! Do you have an archnemesis? Are they super badass?!”
Leon was actually grateful for the interruption: Joel had begun to stir, and there were the soft, pained sounds of him shifting in his sleeping bag. The man looked miserable as he regained some consciousness, his eyes moving behind closed, wincing lids.
“Ellie,” Joel tried to call, but his voice was gravelly, weak in his throat, like a match that hadn’t sparked. Leon watched him physically try again. “Ellie?”
“Oh, shit,” Ellie was already saying, scrambling up to hold him by the shoulder. “Joel? You with me?”
He couldn’t get another word in edgewise; Ellie was giving him sips of water, checking his temperature, hovering over him like a baby bird. When he finally could, it was just “I’m fine, I’m fine,” a few more times with more backing in his voice until she seemed to believe him. He got her to help him sit up — it was clear he did not enjoy being in this situation, and that they had been in it before. Leon understood that feeling all too well.
“Seriously, Joel, you need to take it easy for a couple of days. If it hadn’t been for Leon, we wouldn’t have even made it out of that stupid place with those stupid guys.”
The exact moment that Joel finally noticed him was a loaded one. The energy of the entire morning had been fraught, but full and lighter in that way that relief always was, like progress had finally been made. Finding someone like Ellie was better than he could have hoped for. His mind, subconsciously, had been figuring out a forward trajectory, vague and indistinct but there, and getting back home felt like a realer possibility than it had since he’d landed here. All that seemed to change in the scope of a second: Joel’s gaze found him, and however he had seemed when he was unconscious, however Ellie’s relation to him had begun to paint this man in his mind, Leon was not prepared for the sheer amount of anger in his eyes. It was acute, piercing, distrusting. Furious. And it was all directed at him.
He was taken by complete surprise when Joel grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, his strength not what it should be for someone in his current state. His jaw clenched visibly when he yanked Leon closer.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his voice deep and rough enough to skin someone. Even for someone sick, his presence was something that spelled danger, something that swallowed.
Leon, however, was a trained soldier, a skilled fighter, and someone all too used to being at the wrong end of someone’s temper. He knocked Joel’s grip off of him, a little less than easily, and stood up.
“I’m —”
“He’s — looking for the Fireflies!” Ellie interjected, panicked at this exchange. Her giant blue eyes were distressed as they flitted between the two of them. “He helped me get away from those hunters, and he helped me get you somewhere safe, okay? He’s cool!”
Joel looked up at Leon with a suspicion so derisive it could have burned him. “Is that right?”
“Yes, Joel, seriously.” She put her hand back on his shoulder, this time with an urgency. “I know what you’re thinking, okay? But it’s not like that. And we’re not…separated this time. And he’s cool.”
Joel just continued to stare at him, eyes hard. Waiting. The tension was thick.
“I have weapons,” Leon finally offered. “I have medicine, and I can fight. I want to help you, if you’ll let me. I just need to find the Fireflies.”
He knew better than to even attempt to explain his situation to this man. He was well acquainted with his type — a mutually beneficial arrangement would always go over better than asking for trust. He saw the way Joel had an arm out in front of Ellie, the way his body was turned to her, even if he didn’t realize it, ready for anything that might put her in harm’s way. Protective types needed assurance.
“Hey,” Ellie said, nudging her father like she was sharing a secret. “Strength in numbers. Remember? I…Honestly, I can’t do this alone. Not while you’re recovering, anyway.”
Leon could see the second that something changed in Joel’s mind. He looked to Ellie, and his eyes got softer, though in a pained way, like it was against his will. Like he had done something wrong. And after a long, lingering moment, it was gone as soon as it came.
“Alright, then.” Joel’s disdainful stare dragged from his feet all the way to the top of his head, sizing him up. “ Leon. Show me what all you’ve got.”
Thank god, he wanted to say, and he could tell Ellie did too, the way she plopped back on the ground like she was boneless. Instead, he went to grab his pack, and dropped it in front of Joel. An offering, just like he’d promised.
“There,” he said. “Take your pick.”