Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Sleep is uneasy, so initially, Leon isn’t surprised when he wakes at an ungodly hour to the sound of Hewie shuffling between them.

They’d made it through the next couple towns, though at a much slower pace. With the intermittent rain forming sucking wells of mud in the woods, they’d also been forced back onto the road. Ashley rode on his back for most of that- Luis shouldering her backpack, her arms and pincers slumped over Leon’s shoulders as she wallowed in the sparing painkillers Rebecca was able to provide.

It’d always burn through her quickly. She’s almost 300 pounds of her now anyway; pincers, tail and stinger accounted for.

Leon, for his part, hadn’t dared make a peep of complaint about that. He’d rather carry her anyway, rather they actually get somewhere worthwhile. Even if progress was slow.

Claire had also been stubborn, to the point that Chris practically had to pry her bag out of her hands just to relieve her shoulder of the pressure.

For now, it’s quiet. They’re actually sleeping for once.

Isolated in a now empty village (or mostly empty, Leon isn’t sure and hadn’t been with their arrival being so quiet, damn near at dusk) they’d tucked themselves into an abandoned building with an empty second floor apartment, bare of any furniture. Maybe that’s why it was unlocked, some kind of open house or repair job, gaps in the walls here and there for plumbing or wiring, some facing out where wall fillings or boards need to be replaced. But it’s more than enough to provide a sturdy door between them and the hall, an easy sweep, and a floor large enough for them all to sleep on.
With walls around them, Chris had also decreed that only one person on watch was necessary.

Maybe it was moreso because they had two wounded people who just… needed the sleep.

Nevertheless, Leon finds himself pulled from his own.

For a moment, Leon wonders if he’d woken because he needed to take his shift. If Chris had tapped him on the leg or disturbed Hewie or something. A drowsy part of him starts to pick up his head, tail and claws lazily curling across the floor to roll over and check on Ashley before he freezes.

Hewie is growling softly, head trained towards the window. The glass there is already marked with mildew, turning black and brown and green at the edges. Beyond it, the sky is beginning to fade into a faint pale yellow as morning climbs up along the edge of the horizon. But it’s still dark. Still blatant, still cold, and he finds himself shivering as his ears twitch after Hewie’s growling.
It’s as he starts to open his mouth to quiet the dog that he does, in fact, feel a hand on his leg.

Head whipping around, he finds Chris gripping onto his calf, fingers closed tight around his pant leg as he stares back. Jarring– it’s jarring, Chris’ expression makes him freeze and shudder. The man’seyes are wide, mouth slightly agape- when Leon perks his ears, he finds that Chris is measuring his breaths, making sure they come out quiet, gaze trained on the small gap in the wall just over Leon’s head that faced the narrow street outside. Before Leon can open his mouth all the way to whisper his question of what the hell is going on, Chris’ hand moves.

Squeezing his calf, his other hand shifts up, finger settling over his lips in a wordless plea.

That’s when Leon realizes that he’s hearing it.

Movement.

Not just the shambling of the dead either- not lickers, not the biters, not even the scrambling of animals in brief moments of respite. 

No, it’s bigger than that. 

And it’s close.

In an instant, something crawls from his throat to his gut, fettering hot tendrils across his face. He can’t even bring himself to call this nausea, no, suddenly it’s hard to breathe, his heartbeat a palpable thing across his entire body with the painful rock of fear suddenly comes crowding in. Like the sensation of a sinking anchor through the length of his intestines. It’s too loud- his heart, his breathing, his own fucking thoughts. Memories come flooding back, red and instinctive, the sound of pounding footsteps overhead in the station, clattering across rickety catwalk, the shape of the thing–

Leon finds himself turning as the movement all but passes by.

There’s no cold air coming from the gap in the wall by his head. It’s dark.

No.

There, in a gap between the stonework, something obscures the light.

It’s early morning in the window overhead.

And yet–

There’s a shifting, a shimmer.

Something’s looking at him.

Heart leaping into his throat, it takes all of Leon’s will not to chatter. To instead freeze. Beside him Hewie sits with his paws on the floor, overgrown nails digging into the wood. He puffs silently like he’s going to growl again, ears trained straight ahead at the gap in kind.

Chris is still clinging to his leg.

And that thing looks at him.

It has dead eyes.

It’s big, too. Big enough to peer easily through a gap in a second floor wall. But those eyes linger, almost blind, fuzzy with the blueish reflection of the sky beyond. It doesn’t blink. It doesn’t even breathe, and yet; it smells vaguely of– of meat. Meat and chemicals. Of rot that hasn’t quite set in yet.

There’s no telling how long that thing looks in before it moves its great weight again. 

The shape obscuring the gap, a massive misshapen head, finally shifts away. Skin grey, cracked and too dry– each step draws a false breath from its lungs for the sheer weight of its body alone.

Leon can feel his pulse in his throat.

And when he turns back to Chris, the man is staring at the gap like he’s expecting it to return.

For a terrible too-long moment, they both just. Lay there.

Hewie is tense pressed against his side, like he’s ready to leap up. Hyperaware of the room, Chris is still sprawled on his stomach behind him. To his left Ashley lay, tucked under her blanket and breathing softly. Beyond her is Luis. On his other side a few feet further away is Rebecca, Claire, tucked shoulder to shoulder to share warmth. None of them stirred during it, none of them woke to the sound of great big steps settling gently into the earth outside.

Finally, as if needing to compel himself, Chris begins the painstaking army crawl forwards.

It must feel like shit considering his healing wounds; but he grits his teeth and manages to hold his breath enough to bear through it.

Only then does Hewie puff and start to growl again. Instantaneously, Leon’s hand shoots out to clamp the dog’s mouth shut. It must be enough warning– Hewie shuts up, ears pinning briefly back, but Leon hangs on as he cautiously cranes his neck to peer out the gap.

His field of view is obscured by the crumbling stonework, but he can glance left and right just a touch. Right is where it’d come from. It has to be. But the narrow alley between the other house is empty, cast in a still soft blue from the dawn. Shit, had Chris let him sleep all night? Asshole. Either way, Leon glances left towards where it had gone. There’s disturbed earth and cracked old cobbles on the ground, but the path towards the street is also empty.

The chemical flesh smell is gone.

Chris sidles up to his side.

He whispers frantically.  “We need to get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Leon breathes back. “Yeah, shit–”

Chris swallows, and Leon can make out the way his jaw tightens through the pain of it. He’s still healing from the licker attack almost a week ago now, the scabbing thick and flaky. It’ll leave a gnarly scar. Hewie’s ears rotate around; and Leon finally lets go of his muzzle as the dog lets out a soft sneeze to spite him. He side-eyes the dog for a moment, but Hewie doesn’t budge, dropping his head to his paws as Chris wedges in close.

“When we came in from the southeast, there wasn’t a lot of activity. As far as we know, that thing’s moving north.”

“We’ll have to go the long way around,” his companion points out gravely.

Leon scowls towards the gap in the wall. He bites out a shaken breath, nodding shortly. “Yeah, well it’s that or toe up with a damn Tyrant. And none of us are really in one piece right now.”

Reluctantly, Chris nods. Scrubbing a hand down his face with a grimace, he props himself up a little straighter on his elbows. Of course, Leon knows he’s right. Ashley can walk if she has to, but running’s a far cry with a kid healing from a bullet wound to the leg. Moreso a really abnormal leg. Claire too, dealing with her shoulder wound– and Luis and Rebecca have their own fair share of scrapes and near-gashes from the attack, not to mention Chris almost getting blood-eagled by the stupid bloodthirsty things. As much as Chris is really good at sucking it up and pushing through his pain, Leon isn’t in the mood to push through a fight with a Tyrant when they’re better off just skipping town.

“The sooner we move, the better,” he reiterates.

“I know.” Chris sighs.

Being their defacto leader is bound to give Chris some premature gray hairs. But he glances over, sparing a grimace, finally nodding.

“Let’s move. Keep it quiet. You and I are gonna make sure the path out is clear.”

“Copy.”

Grinding his teeth together to fight the urge his mandibles feel to rattle against his teeth, Leon ducks his head in agreement and turns to do just that.

Very, very slowly, Leon drags his knees under himself to sit up. The blanket he’d been tucked under rustles briefly, a scavenged thing with Ashley being prioritized with the real stuff. Gently shoving it aside, Leon’s movement is apparently enough to spur Hewie to his feet. Immediately he winces at the sound of the dog’s claws against the floor, instinctively tensing up his own jagged feet as he shuffles into a crouch. For a moment, he debates waking Ashley or Luis first– but Luis has a gentler touch with the kid, so he shuffles near silently over. Tail swinging lowly for balance, he manages a low clamber to Luis’ side. 

Ears twitching absently for the window, he freezes when he hears Chris quietly trying to rouse Claire. Hunching then, he reaches out to cautiously shake Luis’ shoulder.

“Hey–”

Luis groans. He’s huddled under his own travel blanket, one of the military issue ones they’d scrounged out from the safehouse. He’s practically tucked to his chin under it, but his brow sleepily furrows when Leon gives him another shake.

“Luis,” he hisses urgently. He clicks now. Can’t help it. “Luis, we gotta go.”

Bleary as the man is, that seems to be enough to wake him up a little. 

“Que?...”

“Tyrant,” Leon offers between his teeth.

Luis’ eyes snap open, he scrambles to sit up in his own whisper. “Mierda!” 

“Shh!” Gaze darting for the windows, Leon shuffles back to snatch up Luis’ blanket, starting to roll it up. He palms around for the backpacks, for his own in particular– tugging out his sidearm and sliding it into the underarm holster that hadn’t come off him in days at this point. “I’m gonna get our shit together. Get Ash up and ready to move.”

Blinking wildly, clearly a little disoriented at having been woken so suddenly (and having his blanket torn away), Luis grunts from the discomfort of sleeping on the floor. Taking only a moment to sorely rub his back, he fumbles to zip up his jacket and pull his own weapons to their holsters, blindly feeling for the knife on his hip before leaning over to the girl.

Leon moves.

Tugging their sleeping supplies into a roll, he hurriedly ties it to the bottom of Luis’ bag. As he reaches for the man’s shotgun where it’d been propped against the wall; he catches Rebecca and Claire stirring. Chris is making every effort to keep them quiet, to get them going as quick as he can– he’s packing too, shoving his things into his pack. 

Scampering as quietly around the room as he can on his claws, he slides checks the ammo on the shotgun and slides it into Luis’ capable grasp. Out the corner of his eye, Ashley is waking up, blinking and rubbing her face and trying to turn away in the face of the darkened room. At the very least, Hewie is trying to help. He must’ve gotten too anxious laying there waiting; he’s stood, nosing at the girl’s face until Luis’ urgency seems to hit her.

With that, Leon turns to his own gear. He quickly holsters his Red-9 and Blacktail, underarm and hip respectively, making sure his knife is still snug in the strap on his chest. As soon as he’s sure those are secure, he tugs the backpack he and Ashley now share over his shoulder and slings his CBQR over his chest.

Rebecca’s up. Strapping everything back onto herself, peering worriedly at the window. Dragging herself to her feet, Claire clings to her weapon and scans the room as if she’s expecting something to burst through the walls.

Leon wouldn’t put it past a Tyrant to do that.

But as soon as everything’s packed up, he turns back to Ashley in a whisper.

“Are you good to walk?”

By now she’s sitting up. Bedraggled in her layered shirts, an already fading orange tee and a long sleeve she’d had to rip up just to fit her pincers through, she pats for her coat. Sleep still clings to the girl’s face, but panic layers in it.

Ashley doesn’t know what a Tyrant is. Not like they all do. But she seems to know well enough that it’s trouble, she trusts Luis’ urgency as much as his.

“I– I think so, do we have to run?”

“We should probably be quick,” Luis offers hushedly. Somehow he manages to stay composed as he offers a hand to help her up.

Worry pinches across Ashley’s pale face. Her ears pin back as she takes Luis’ hand, stumbling to her feet with a grimace. Swaying slightly, she falters. 

“I can carry you.” Leon offers shortly.

“No–” she shakes her head hurriedly. “No, it’s been better. I’ll be fine. I can run if we have to.”

As much as she seems determined at the thought, the limp in her is still remarkable. But she stands. Even clinging to Luis’ arm, she stands, and resolve filters across her jagged cheeks as she peers towards the window. 

“What was it?”

“A Tyrant,” Luis offers again hushedly. 

“What is that?”

“Bad news,” Claire murmurs, painstakingly rolling her shoulder.

All things considered, Claire seems wearier than Ashley by far, tender on that side of her body. Ever stubborn not to let her push herself, Chris snatches up her bag but relents her to take her gun.

Ashley frowns. Her stinger tail curls in around her legs where she sways. Hewie shuffles to her side, nose twitching, tail low.

Disoriented in the morning light they all shuffle together towards the door. The past few days have made them thin, pulled their supplies to a minimum bar most of the bullets. Despite the road, they’ve tried to keep to knives anyway.

“We move out and move South. Everyone remember the soccer field on the side we came in?” Chris murmurs, only as loud as he dares. Everyone nods silently. “That’s our goal. We’ll hunker down in the storage shed and figure out our path from there.”

“Copy.”

Ashley seems nervous even as Leon agrees, at least trying to blink herself awake. She fumbles for the knife on her thigh.

It’s with that thought that Leon carefully lets his CBQR fall to his chest, and he draws the Blacktail, the knife in kind; slipping between the women to Chris’ side. As a pair they maneuver to the sturdy wooden door that had served as their protection for the night. Leon has to take a breath to steel himself. 

All they have to do is make it out into the hall. And then out the hall and downstairs. Downstairs, then outside, then outside and back to the southernmost side of the village, to the field, and around to the road. North again. While the morning air is brisk and sharp. Away from the Tyrant, away from the danger.

There’s no reason for a Tyrant to be here.Taking yet another steadying breath, Leon tries to banish the thought. Then, with Chris’ nod, he wraps his claws around the doorknob and pushes it open.

Just as it was yesterday evening, the hallway is dark. Unpainted, pale, the window at the far right end is their only light. Pushing out first, Chris turns left with his flashlight and Sauer muzzle as guide. And then, he navigates left, waving for Leon to follow.

Every step Chris takes is one Leon can feel through the floor. It shudders across the gathering dust on the floorboards, through the pads of his inhuman feet, the air rippling with each tread. He can feel it in the odd feelers on the sides of his feet– can feel it like he can feel the cold, where they stick out through the improvised wrappings there.

Step after terrible step they move along the hall.

Rebecca is the first person behind him. She keeps her weapon trained up, knees lightly bent, and finally as they grow nearer to the window Chris flicks off his light. Being seen from outside isn’t ideal. Especially with what’s now out there to see.

Next out is Ashley, Claire at her side. Luis takes up the rear with Hewie, and they all move. 

As if loathe to lose him or fall behind, Rebecca’s hand ghosts the spines of his tail.

Shuddering on instinct, he glances back. Instead of wincing, or complaining, he just offers her a stoic nod.

She purses her lips like she’s trying to smile.

With that, he turns to stare ahead. 

Nearing the window, Chris takes a sharp turn and leads them down the stairs. They leave the other empty rooms behind, already checked and closed off the previous night. The warmth of sleep leeches off them for every second spent in movement. As he ducks past the window, Leon glances out– from here, he can see the street. Once picturesque shop fronts and stone houses line the street. They’re becoming different the further North they go– pale plaster in different tones from different decades. Window shutters in peeling blue and red and untainted brown. Some doors are strewn wide open, others haphazardly nailed shut. Tiny box cars scatter the road.

The Tyrant is out there, somewhere.

But the morning is still. Pink, fog clinging to the earth and the horizon between deep dark grey clouds and the lingering blue of night.

Leon can’t smell the dead. Can’t hear them moving down the street.

The world sleeps, and for now, their path is clear of the Tyrant.

Chris makes it to the bottom of the stairs, so Leon steps past him into the short hall beyond. Tenderly placing one foot after the other, he maneuvers sideways with his firearm trained ahead. Here there were more doors, doors that lead left and right into deeper parts of the house. Exposed parts. But these, too, had been blocked off with shelves and spare benches– there, ahead of them, is the entrance they’d come from.

Shifting up along the backing wall, he takes his position behind the door and nods for Chris to take it.

This habit is becoming an easier one. One that they’d had to change a touch with Claire’s injury, but the nice part about it? He and Chris don’t really have to talk it through. They speak the same language, an unspoken series of nods and silent gestures made with a single hand. If Leon bothered think about it any more than he had to, he’d swear the other man was starting to learn to read Leon’s mutations as much as he is himself. The twitching of his massive tail, when he pulls the stinger tip back from touching the floor. When his ears pin back or his spines start to stand on end. It’s like when he can read Hewie, the way the dog can pick up on a touch more than either of them can– big white ears swiveling around, the tell of his pale hackles or the nakedness of his teeth.

Dutifully, Chris takes the final door.

He twists the handle open, and cold air filters in as he allows its weight to guide it open.

Past that, the narrow alley is empty.

There isn’t even a shambler moving down it, any dead idling in the odd shaped corners.

Leon steps out into the morning, and it is cold.

He’s on high alert.

Clasping his gun readily in his hands, he paces out along the stonework. Shoulders stiff, head held straight as he glances left and right; he makes an effort to keep his claws off the ground. Ahead of him, the alley is empty. And behind him, the shadows are unmoving. Darting across the alley for a brief moment he goes stock still to soak in any movement, any sound.

That’s a good part of this, at least. With his ears rotating around like satellites, his warped feet tensed, he awaits any tremor in the earth.

Seconds tick by. And when the minute draws too close, he waves Chris out.

Just south of them, the alleyway splits. Sheltered by the tall stone walls on either side, their path is narrow. Direct. What’s now left of them is a path towards one of the side streets, lined with once back doors and the very sparing shed garage. Straight and slightly to the right through the winding route between more houses, towards the edge of town, towards where the roads are more worn out and the little farm houses are surrounded by low walls. From there, they’ll have a straight shot to the farmlands and thickets with which they can cut through. They can get away. Circle around. 

Then they’ll go North. Eventually.

Taking the charge now, Chris steps over to him with his weapon drawn. And after peering briefly down the way, he starts to move ahead. 

The earth shifts beneath Leon’s feet.

It’s as if there’s something in the very air that changes. A presence, the sensation of being watched, the reek of chemical rot, formaldehyde in his nose– he can feel it in his bones, up his legs, and Leon’s spines go on end as he whips back around to the Northern side of the alley. 

Towards the street.

Towards the abandoned cars and the emptiness of the morning.

Towards the shadow looming across the road, growing, climbing across the stone towards them. 

By the time Leon realizes what he’s seeing, Rebecca is picking her way out after Chris, Claire’s foot in the doorway. He moves then, lunging back towards them as he hauls the backpack from his shoulder to shove it into her hands– she stops, glancing up wide eyed as Luis’ mouth falls open. Ashley breaks into a squeak, but he hurriedly ushers them back with a hiss to quiet them. Hewie backpeddles hard, Luis’ eyes go wide, and Claire looks sharply up at him. She must see the urgency on his face, because she steps shakily back.

He reaches in, points for the other exit, and pries the door shut.

It creaks. Clicks.

It’s at once too loud, and he freezes as he turns to catch the others' positions.

Rebecca’s frozen, turned back to him with wide eyes. She doesn’t understand. Hasn’t seen the shadow yet, doesn’t smell death at their backs, so he raises his Blacktail in tight fingers and lowers himself a touch. It’s a rush. Enough at her that she jumps, slapping a hand over her mouth, as Chris stops ahead. He’s too far up, maybe a hundred feet. He, too, looks confused. Maybe a little shaken up that Claire isn’t in sight yet, but Leon waves a hand to shake him from it. Wrapping an arm around the woman’s shoulders, he pushes them against the nearest divot in the houses he can find, waving wildly for Chris to push ahead before thumbing back and holding a finger over his lips.

Realization flutters across the man’s face. He reaches for his gun, nods, and ducks behind the nearest corner he can.

The place Leon had managed to shove them both is a doorway. It’s arched, neighboring a white and red painted storefront reading ‘Piercing Tattouage’ with the safety gate pulled down. But it’s deep, deeper inset than most of the other doorways, and Leon presses himself into the closest, darkest corner; all but obscuring Rebecca into it, cramming her in. She still has a hand over her mouth, eyes blown wide, breath harsh out her nose as he ducks in with her and coils every darkened outer part of himself he can into the depth of the shadow. 

It’s like instinct.

The earth still moves beneath his feet– a faint shake, a massive thing growing closer by the second as they try to steady their breathing. 

Rebecca’s staring up at him. Blinking, Leon realizes he’s staring back– they’re both holding their breath, tense with fear, anticipation. Then, her gaze flicks out. It’s a flicker of brown in the faint light, and still he can see it.

God, he hopes the Tyrant can’t see them in the dark like he can.

With her eyes tracking something, with the tremors growing steady despite how faint they are beneath his claws, Leon dares a peek over his shoulder to follow her gaze.

The shadow now casts along the opposite wall. Upon the very doorway he’d just frantically shut.

Then, there’s a foot.

A massive foot, pounding slowly into their vicinity.

That’s a Tyrant alright.

Leon hasn’t actually seen a Tyrant in the flesh since… it had to have been six years ago. In the city. The one that’d been dispatched to clear the police station had been refined. Grey skin all the same, smooth and expressionless, dead eyes staring him down every time it got too close. Hilariously, it’d been dressed– dark hat and trenchcoat and all– but over time that had fallen to shreds, every time he shot at it, every time it mutated to heal itself.

That one had been louder, but it’d smelled the same. Even if this one smells… stronger.

This one’s bigger, too. So big its head is well over the doorway, it has to be at least eight feet tall as it steps past them.

It’s taken some heavy hits already.

Whatever semblance of clothing had been put on it is starting to fall ragged, it’s barefoot. One of its shoulders, the closer one, the left one, is swollen up with healed muscle warped out into an overextended arm that threatens to drag against the cobbles. Its massive heart is already exposed through a deep gash in its chest– thumping away, glimmering flesh in the morning light. Other lacerations litter it, darkening its lifeless skin. Every instance of air coming in and out of it is simply because of its mass, the force of its own steps.

Rebecca is frozen beneath him. Staring. Tracking it with her eyes as she keeps her hand over her mouth as if she can silence herself further. Recognition falls dreadfully across her face as it moves. Has she seen a Tyrant before? In person, or just in reports? He hadn’t ever known– hadn’t wanted to ask.

Leon doesn’t even want to swallow.

But it keeps moving. Either it hasn’t noticed them, or it’s too tall to see them at all. Or, hopefully, it can’t see in the dark as well as he can.

In two slow, massive steps, it's past the doorway they’ve hidden under. It’s moving towards Chris.

Head still held low, he tentatively turns back to Rebecca.

By now, she’s pressed herself wholly into the corner. Her short hair catches in the age of the wall, features pale, but her hand slowly slips from her mouth. Glancing up to him again, she briefly nods out. But he shakes his head. Lips pressing into a thin line, she drops her hand to the wall, to the door they’re beside. Then, with inching fingers, she feels along the woodwork for the handle.

At least they can duck in and hash out a plan.

But when Rebecca’s grip tightens around the handle, it doesn’t budge.

Locked.

They’re stranded in this corner, out here with this thing.

They gotta move.

Maybe even draw it away, buy Chris, buy everyone else time. 

Only when a few more seconds have passed, when Leon feels he can breathe again, does he allow his body to relax. Pincers sagging from their subconscious grasp on the wall, tail unfurling from where it’d been pressed into them, he takes a slow step back. Rebecca all but pitches forward, and he lets her; instead backpeddling to peer around the corner.

The charred backside of the Tyrant is already vanishing down the alley.

Still, he doesn’t speak. Instead, he keeps his grasp on his gun and nods towards the side of the alley it’d come from. Seeming well aware that it’s their only route at the moment, Rebecca withdraws her sidearm and nods shortly.

So Leon moves.

They can do something– find something, set something up; draw it away and high tail it for the South side of town.

This is bad.

This is so fucking bad.

He bursts into the street with Rebecca at his heels. Even as he drops into habit by holding out his weapon and scanning the street from either side, thoughts cloud his mind.

Why is there a Tyrant here? Now? When the entire world is on fire, when there are a hundred, a thousand other places it could be sent? Government buildings, military facilities, old Umbrella labs– but no, no, there’s a Tyrant here, in the ass crack of France; just where they happen to be.

Where he and Ashley happen to be.

Rebecca’s hand finds his human arm and he can’t tell if it’s to reassure him or herself. But together they hustle across the darkened street. There’s a church in view, a tower between the buildings, and they’ve found themselves in a plaza busied with cars. All empty. A couple are burnt out and rammed together near the remnants of a cafe on the corner with the windows busted out. Still other buildings along this street have seen some damage– there’s a balcony and adjoining window that had been ripped out, glass littering the paved road. A few bodies are scattered here and there. They’re too rotted already to tell if they were infected or just people, but that doesn’t matter anymore.

Together, they slide up against a shadowed wall and take cover behind a little car.

“Chris–”

“He had time to get cover,” Leon bites out. Still, his pincers shudder uneasily along his biceps where he’d pressed them.

The woman turns sharply towards him. “And everyone else?”

“There was another exit out the back, remember?” He measures, sneaking a glance through the car windows. “They know where to go. We can circle around and catch up.”

“It’s gonna circle back.” Rebecca continues, dropping to a crouch. “But it has to be here for a reason.”

“I don’t wanna find out!” He hisses back, mandibles giving an involuntary chatter.

Rebecca’s eyes widen again.

Shoulders sagging, he falls silent. His nose twitches.

There’s smoke in the air.

What the hell?

“There’s something going on here,” Rebecca bites out, well aware of it.

Yeah, obviously. There’s a Tyrant kicking around some hole in the wall village in the middle of the literal end of the world. And something’s on fire. It’s barely past six in the morning and there’s something on fire. But the way she says it, it brings a creeping unease up the back of his neck as he slowly turns to face her.

“No–”

“I’m not!–”

“Bec, we can’t do this shit right now.” He bites out anyway. “We’re with a kid. And we’re kind of lost. And just about starving!”

“If there’s a lab here, we can cut off whatever the local source is.” She says firmly. “If anyone’s still alive around here, we can at least just– buy them some time!?”

“Rebecca!”

Leveling a dubious glare at the woman, he shifts his grip on his gun. Honestly, he hates that she’s right. Even if that’s a much more optimistic solution, but he doesn’t put it past ‘High Hopes’ to think of that. Gritting his uneven teeth, he lets out a low sigh.

If they find the entrance, they can burn the place out right?

If there even is a lab.

Caught halfway in considering it, Leon jumps when the cloudy window beside them gives a loud ‘thwap’. Turning sharply, he finds a shambler there on the other side. Its bloodied palms drag hungrily across the glass, dead eyes glued to the both of them where they’re huddled behind a boxy little red Renault. It must’ve been a waiter once. A man, with formerly coiffed hair and a little apron over his tattered black slacks. It keeps lazily slamming its palms against the darkened window.

By the rustling he can pick up from inside, it isn’t the only infected in there. 

Leon grimaces, turning back to Rebecca.

“Let’s just get back to everyone else first, okay? We’ll figure out a game plan after that.”

Reluctant to let go of it, he sighs and nods. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m getting ahead of myself. But wherever that fire is, we need to steer clear of that too.”

“Obviously–”

Their cover is promptly hauled out of the way.

Ears pinning back where he’s crouched, he turns just in time with Rebecca to see the little red family car being bodily flung away from them. Rebecca all but falls on her ass, stifling a yelp; and for a split second they both stare up at the figure looming over them.

Leon never really held it to Tyrants to have pauses for comedic affect. Not that this is particularly funny.

But the Tyrant stands there but eight feet away, staring down at them with its lifeless eyes as if it's a kid staring at bugs under a rock it’d just lifted up. Still, there’s something analytical in it– it stares at both of them, back and forth, slack face unmoving before it goes to take a step.

Leon lurches back, shoving Rebecca away. 

“Go! Run!”

And with that, he holds his weapon up to shoot.

He gets off four good shots as he’s backing up before a burst  of gunfire comes from the opposite side of the street. The Tyrant only lightly shudders with the impact of his bullets, but he’s clearly got his attention until it upright staggers under the impact. Scrambling back, in the direction of the smoke, he manages to get to his feet again with the help of the tail swirling behind him.

Chris is there at the mouth of the alley with his CBQR. It seems he’s only paused long enough to make sure he and Rebecca are well away so he can fire again.

And fire he does.

He unloads into it, opening his mouth; yelling.

“Move! Go!”

Shit.

Taking it for an order, Leon does. He just moves. Rebecca is already sprinting in the opposite direction behind him; so he surges forward. His claws clack loudly against the sidewalk as he does, but he keeps his gun in hand. Underfoot is trampled disintegrating paper, wood that must’ve been intended for boarding windows up, a car that’d slammed into the front of a business.

He doesn’t stop. Not for a second.

Instead, he throws himself over the top of that little sedan and sweeps his legs and tail to the side.

If he wasn’t terrified, he’d maybe think it crazy just how effortless it felt.

But the clack of his fingers, the thunk of his pincers across the top as he goes– it’s enough to stir whatever was inside, because he hears movement nearing the caved-in shop entrance even after he’s got ground.

Shit.

He needs to make sure he loses this thing before circling back around to the rendezvous. He needs to make sure Chris and Rebecca are still alive.

Throwing a frantic glance over his shoulder as he sprints, he sees the shadow behind him.

The Tyrant’s following.

Heart leaping in his chest, Leon fumbles for the conscious thought that at least it’s following him. Not Rebecca, not everyone else, and hopefully that means Chris is okay too. Still, a wild panic flies through him in a manner that’s hard to temper even as he sprints away.

Running is–

He doesn’t have to think about running.

It’s like his legs are spring loaded, each step forcing him farther forwards than he’d ever gone before; every waver caught in the sway of that massive tail. All he has to do is hold his gun, think about the fact he has six bullets left in his magazine, think about where he can go.

Before him, the wreckage of the street stretches in shades of blue and gray. The pink sky is lighting up overhead; but the buildings cling to the cold. Smokiness hangs in the air, in his nose, a haze gathering North in the direction he’s running. There’s movement all around him anyway. Infected are waking up, drawn by his noise and his warmth, the beating steps of the Tyrant. Or the fire.

He’s running towards the fire.

Shit.

This reminds him far too vividly of the police station.

Leon only barely manages out that feverish thought before a biter throws itself out the shop window in front of him.

Skidding to a halt, he only catches sight of glass shards in greying skin, long hair and long arms reaching wildly out for him before he’s jolting. A wild hiss pries out of him– loud, real loud, mandibles rattling against his teeth as he darts out of the way of its grasp and left.

Another alley.

Nope, he can’t stop.

If he keeps moving, at least he’s drawing it away from everyone else.

Flinging himself down the path, Leon just keeps running. 
It’s narrower here than the last alley, so close not even one of those itty European cars could cram in without losing its sideview mirrors. He leaps over a crate of trash, a spilled laundry basket, and catches sight of a tall wall up ahead.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

It’s tall. Taller than him, but–

He can’t stop. Can’t stop, can’t stop.

Moving without really thinking is becoming a habit. For now, a good one. Because Leon slides his Blacktail right back into the holster, throws his CBQR over his back, and jumps.

Clawed fingers catching the top of the wall, his momentum pushes him up. Large jagged toes catch in the stone, any crack or crevice to be found, and his tail lifts and he just–

He clears it.

And before he realizes it, he’s careening over the other side, landing hard into a crouch, and running all over again.

Oh shit.

Legs moving completely on autopilot, he has to hold him back from the strange urge to just pitch forward and put his hands on the ground. Moving is the priority right now. Gaining ground. Getting space between himself and the Tyrant, and of course it’s on him like a fly on hot shit. Of course–

Distantly, he realizes that this’s the first time he’s been alone for a while.

Is that why he’s more panicked than he knows he should be? He can handle this. Leon’s run from bioweapons before, he’s gotten cover, he’s found safety. He’s done that more than enough times with and for other people. But now, with cold air rushing in and out of his lungs without thought, with adrenaline surging through throat and his chest and his limbs; he realizes jarringly how alone he is in this moment.

Leon’s alone, for the first time in what feels like a very long time; and he wants nothing more than to at least have eyes on the group again. It’s a new feeling, jarring; he feels exposed without the presence of others and he hates it. Something animal gnaws at the back of his mind, telling him to climb, to look for somewhere warm and dark and safe to hide until the threat passes and he can weasel back towards his group.

The thought is fierce. All encompassing.

Enough so that he doesn’t realize he’s across the next street and hauling himself up the wall by claws alone until he’s doing it.

Scampering up the facade of a slightly more modern building, maybe something that would’ve once been a bank, wedged between two townhouses and painfully old buildings; he climbs. The massive tail swings behind him, catching his balance when his body threatens to move too far to one side. Somehow he manages to wedge the tips of his fingers into the smallest crevice, to use the faintest bit of texture as enough to haul him upright; his misshapen feet do the same. Leon scales the front door, an overhead balcony, and a set of third floor windows in a blink and he just keeps running.

He finds grip on the shingles and scrambles along the rooftop in a hunch.

From here, he can see the sun moving slowly up in the sky. Fog hangs around the edges of the city– there’s a river West of them he hadn’t even known was there, cutting through to green forests. But he doesn’t stop. Because stopping means he can feel the movement of lickers shuffling about on the ceilings beneath his feet. It reverberates through the wood, against the weird crags of his feet. He can hear them too, the shudder of hisses in their mutated throats. He smells alive, like food, like the ones on the road must’ve thought.

So, he has to keep moving.

It smells like damp wood, wet paper, stone– gunpowder, he hears the pop of gunfire south of where he is. The dead are beginning to shamble around, drawn out by the sound of activity, the smell of fire. Smoke is starting to roll in along the streets. Someone must’ve lit that, or it must’ve started somehow, but whatever it is– it’s not enough to shake off the Tyrant.

Ears rotating, he catches the sound of rubble bursting. The wall.

“Shit–”

Darting back along the roofline again, Leon ducks to the opposite side for some semblance of cover. With his hands free for the moment he focuses on just sprinting, orienting himself back south again until he reaches the end of the block. Beneath him is a narrow sidewalk.

But up here it seems a lot farther across than it actually is.

Probably.

No use in stopping now.

Stopping means it’ll take longer to get back to everyone. To Ashley. Ashley’s still the priority, she’d looked so startled when he’d shoved the three of them back into the house–

Not daring waste another second, he backpeddles enough to get some momentum and flings himself bodily across the gap. 

“Hngh!”

A grunt pries out of him when his claws sink into the roofline. The shingles threaten to crack, but his feet scramble against the peeling mortar as he hefts himself up again. Footholds are revealed in the chimney, the steep angle of a window poking out of the roof, and he hauls himself along the skinny tip of the roof ridge. It’s shockingly easy to balance atop it as he speeds along; one foot after the other, still hunched. He’s getting good ground.

He has to be.

The block circles out towards the street he’d been on, and he spots the remnants of the little red car strewn in the middle of the road. Rebecca’s long gone, and it seems Chris is too. A glimmer catches his eye, a heap of bullet casings from where Chris had unloaded into the thing. Instead of any further sign of them, though, he’s met with the sight of a handful of infected meandering out into the street from the remnants of the cafe. 

Chemical flesh burns his nose.

He has to keep moving.

Three steps in and he hears a shout.

Chris.

Jolting back around, he spots him on the other side of the street fending off the reaching arms of infected through a gap in a boarded window. Already he looks tired, worn out from the suddenness of the fight. But he stumbles away from it, buys himself space– still, it’s not enough, it won’t be. So Leon pries out his Blacktail again and starts shooting at the shambling herd forming in the street. It isn’t big, but the brains go spattering out of the nearest to Chris and into the street. 

He looks up sharply, backpeddling. He must already be out of ammo, or just too hurried to reload.

“Come on!”

Chris takes the chance to pull himself further out into the street, ducking away from a few more shots Leon sends out to buy him time. Once the magazine is empty, he pops it out in exchange for a new one. Already Leon’s starting to run again. It’s an effort to keep up with Chris– he’s slow. He’s slow and Leon’s eyes are sharp after the shamblers stumbling after him, but at least he’s not alone.

Not alone. He knows where Chris is.

Tracking along the tops of the buildings, he doesn’t dare let his eyes leave the man as he finally gets his feet under him. Chris starts surging down the road South, the same way Rebecca had run, and that animal feeling gnawing at the back of his mind leaps with a figment of relief. 

Safe. This is safer, but not safe enough. 

As soon as Leon sees the end of the block approaching, he drops to a crouch. Sliding off the roof, he grips onto the edge and clambers down– window frame to ledge to doorway, dropping to the roof of another strewn car with a hollow ‘thunk’ before he leaps from it and hurries down the street after Chris. For as much as he’d stumbled, they’re getting pretty good ground from the shamblers that’d busted out of the cafe.

As soon as Leon sidles up, Chris glances back like he’d jumped out of his skin.

“Holy shit–”

“Yeah.” Leon huffs out. “Tyrant.”

“I saw!” The man retorts, dreadful for it. He grits his teeth. 

“We gotta lose this thing.”

“I know–” 

“It was following me. I can– do you have ammo?”

“It’s been packed, I haven’t had time to reload.” Chris wheezes out. “I just… shit, this all blew up.”

Between them, their footsteps are deafening. Chris’ boots are wild against the ground, heavy. But they’re getting ground, and that’s what matters. As soon as they’re a safe distance from the shamblers, as soon as Leon’s sure it’ll be the last chance before the Tyrant comes from wherever, he elbows into Chris to usher him into a side road. There’s plenty of space behind them to cut towards the river, but Chris takes the moment to suck in a breath and press his back against the wall, Leon circling around beside him as he briefly holsters the Blacktail.

It feels natural to drop into a crouch. Here in the shadows, where it’s quiet and they’re unseen. It feels better having the company, knowing somebody he knows is alive and there. He hurriedly tugs the CBQR off his shoulders then, pressing it into Chris’ hands. 

“I’ll get you a clear shot. It's got a huge hole in its chest, somebody tried to get it down. If we get it down– if you shoot it right, it’ll be done. Or at least down long enough for us to get the hell outta here.”

Chris grimaces. “Are you sure about this?”

“You know it’ll follow us.” He manages back. Only then does Chris take it, slinging it atop his first, fumbling to reload the first. Anything for a quick change.

“I know, I mean are you sure–”

“If anything happens, I just need you guys to look after Ash. Okay?” It tumbles out of his mouth before he can help it. Desperate, almost. And it has the other man turning back to him with wide eyes, startled.

“Leon.”

“Don’t– don’t. Okay? I’m gonna give you a clean shot. When you can take it, just take it.” He swallows down his own apprehension, well aware of the mandibles rubbing across his teeth. “Chris.”

“Okay. Okay, okay. I’ll take it. But I’m hauling you out of there if I have to.”

“Hey–”

“Go.” As much as he’s hurried, out of breath, overwhelmed; Chris brokers no room for argument. It’s firm, his Air Force voice kicking in. That much has Leon straightening, drawing his firearm with a nod.

He doesn’t say goodbye. Instead, he glances briefly back at the man with a nod and takes off into the street. 

Leon finds himself with way too much of a closeup with the group of infected from the cafe. There’re only a half dozen, but it’s enough to send his spines entirely on end as he raises his gun. Three quick shots sound off, two zombie heads jerking back wildly as he scrambles back for ground. His heart leaps in his throat at the immediate realization that the Tyrant probably heard it, but hell, that’s kinda what he wants.

Shit, he has to do this.

He can do this.

Backpeddling and nearly crashing into the wall behind him, Leon turns hard on his heel to take off down the street again, the opposite direction he’d been fleeing in the first place. The way Rebecca had gone.

She’ll find her way, she has to.

Eyes darting around the street for his next route, Leon can feel the dead shambling behind him. The massive tail swings out behind him, skirting away from grasping hands, each step they take pushing air against the sensitive crags of his feet. Fighting the urge to shudder, Leon keeps running, lurching around the back of another car and into the near-empty street. The little group hoarding behind him are groaning and snarling up a storm, but he’s getting good ground until–

He feels it. Like the earth is shaking under him, a great thing charging through the empty town in his direction. Or the direction of the gunshots. Sprinting across the street, he glances back like he might see Chris on the move. Instead he just sees the dozen dead on his heels– and shit, Leon just has to move.

Looking back was a stupid choice.

A really fucking stupid choice.

Because the second he turns to look ahead again, he gets a face full of rubble. A storefront wall all but explodes in front of him, sending him sprawling back into the street with a gasp. He goes down hard, it knocks the breath out of him, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop for a second as he hears the Tyrant moving, marching over the scattered bricks, through the dust–

Shit shit shit.

Pushing himself up to his feet, Leon doesn’t dare look back now. Not when he finds himself face to face with the shamble, grey hands reaching out, dead throats hoarsely calling after him and– can’t go back. Leon can’t go back and it has his spines going on end again, he has to go–

All that’s left is up.

Moving entirely on instinct, he sprints right back across the street and wildly flips his grip back on the Blacktail so he can hold his arms out. And then?

He jumps.

It’s all movement. Each breath isn’t so much a thought, so fast he doesn’t think he’s even breathing. Up Leon goes, scrambling up the nearest building facade with scrabbling claws, that tail swinging in a wild pendulum. Even the pincers grab at anything they can find to haul him up as fast as possible.

Not fast enough, apparently. 

He hardly gets halfway up when those pounding footsteps rush up behind him far faster, a great big something -a hand, it’s a fucking hand- wraps around the bulb of the stinger and yank him right off the wall. 

It doesn’t stop to ponder or even bother squash him. Instead, the damn thing flings him by that tail off down the street. For a dizzying and frantic moment, all Leon can feel is his heart in his throat and all he can see is the wild blur of the walls- the street- some windows- fuck, is that a car!?

It’s very much a car when he clips off of it and goes tumbling to the road. 

“Agh!-”

Leon lands hard, skidding in stray rubble with a yelp that he knows is enough to pry the attention of everything else he doesn’t want to deal with right now, undead or mutated or who knows what the fuck.

The Tyrant isn’t shaken. Those steps come pounding still, lumbering ever closer, a greater threat than anything else.

He needs to get up.

A wave of overwhelming nausea and pain rattle in dreadful unison through his gut, his chest. He promptly lurches after his nearest gun, prying it from his underarm holster to prop himself up on one knee. He can buy himself time to backpedal, or at least stun it- get everyone else time to get to the edge of town. To get Chris a clear shot.

Crack, crack, crack!

Three shots echo off the walls of the vacant buildings on either side of the street. Out the corner of his eye, there’s movement- a licker, maybe, scrambling low against the ground. Or an unlucky biter that's lost its legs.

Either way, the noise is drawing more and more unwanted attention.

Dammit.

Swaying as he pries himself to his feet, Leon keeps his gun trained, eyes flicking for cover.
Rushing into a house could buy him time if the thing decides to go rushing after him. Hell, maybe it’ll get trapped. That thought alone is enough to spur him on, claws catching over loose stone and concrete as he lunges for the nearest open door. He can deal with whatever’s inside once he gets there.

Unfortunately, he does not get there.

A meaty malformed fist pries him back by that stupid fucking tail again, sending his back alight and every single spine that can jumping entirely on end. The sheer momentum of it sends him swinging, limbs wild and hapless, white knuckled grip on his Blacktail. He almost expects to be thrown again, shoulders rounding to brace.

He isn’t. 

He isn’t.

No, the damn thing holds him up by its grip on his tail, swaying and upside down. For a paralyzing second, he’s staring down at its rotten face. Up close, its warped teeth sit half open- even breathless, the stench that rolls up from its throat is something that’d make a weaker man gag. Leon manages not to, craning his head and aiming right down at its beady eyes.

One of them glints. Is- is that a fucking camera?

No-

Is it fucking looking at him?

Sure, he knows these things can look. See. Whatever it is they’re programmed to do, hell, he knows they’re smart enough in the deep dark squalid human recesses of what’s left to recognize things. Leon’s read the reports, leftover scraps of Racoon still left to haunt him. His Tyrant had dead eyes. It looked through him.

This one is looking at him.

Like a kid looking at a cornsnake.

The image goes ugly as soon as the thing starts lowering him down near his face- fuck, fuck-! It’ll bite his head clean off-!

But it doesn’t.

Holding him there like a toddler grasping onto a lizard, the Tyrant brings him close to its eyes, its head, its face, so much so that the reek of rot in its teeth is sickening. It takes everything in Leon not to gag, already bringing up his arms to brace against its face and desperately try to keep himself out of its mouth- but there’s no shoving him down its gullet.

No.
No, instead, with an agonizing wheeze, it breathes in through its nose.

Is it- is it fucking smelling him?

Disgust manages to rocket up through his chest a mere instant after the sheer horror that clenches an icy fist around his lungs and rabbiting heart. Fuck. Fuck, this thing is smelling him, it’s looking at him, there’s intent in its meaty fucking grasp and-

Whatever’s about to happen, whatever it is that it wants to do, Leon doesn’t want to fucking know.

So Leon desperately sucks down some of that panic and lurches to bring his gun right back up to the thing’s dead eyes.
The Tyrant doesn’t like that.
The damn thing moves so fucking fast, it’s been so long, he’s forgotten how these things in particular move and it tosses him, rotates him, sending his vision swimming and mind lurching in his skull as his shot goes wide and clips its gruesome face. He brings his hand down again regardless, aiming again, and suddenly finds one gigantic dead hand around his waist as the other flies right for his shooting hand.

“Fuck-!”

Pain lights up behind his eyes.

An animal noise escapes him. Shrill and wild, like a scream. Something’s cracked, he can feel his bones grinding together as the gun falls from his grip. Every ounce of him expects the Tyrant to squeeze him around the waist too, to just pop him like a balloon– but it doesn’t.

No, it holds him even gasping, bleary eyed with pain, and doesn’t let his hand go.

It leans.

This plan went to shit.

This is it. He’s gonna have a chunk taken out of him by a Tyrant, it’s just gonna dig into him like a glorified crab sandwich.

But again, it doesn’t.

Through his swimming vision, the careening of his head in his skull, the blinding pain– it breathes in.

It is. It really is smelling him. Like it’s trying to make sure he’s the right string of garlic at the grocery store. For a long time it pauses. Like somehow it’s thinking behind its dead eyes, ignorant of anything else. Not even the dead starting to pool in around cars towards them.

And then with some certainty, it starts to walk.

The fucking Tyrant is taking him somewhere.

Yeah, composure flies right out the window.

Complete animal panic floods through the only functional part of his mind left, and Leon thrashes. Throwing his entire body into it, he desperately tries to squirm from the massive fist gripping him around the waist, to yank his broken hand free of the one clutching it and his probably crushed Blacktail. It doesn’t let go, doesn’t make any moves to squash him like a bug, it just keeps walking. Even when his pincers grasp at its fingers, when he reaches up with his free hand in a pathetic attempt to wrench those massive fleshy trunks away, when a sound rips out of him that’s just as animal.

He’s so disoriented by what the fuck’s happening that he doesn’t even realize the scattered shriek of a wail echoing in his own ears was him– clacking and shrieking and snarling with mandibles and sharp teeth bared right back.

The Tyrant strides past blocks until he hears something that has his ears flicking around. A yelp. Panic. Human.

Rebecca.

He barely has time to whip his head around and catch the color of her coat in the shadows of another alley before the Tyrant walks right by, completely ignoring her. Every impulse in his body aches to cry out to her, but maybe it didn’t see her, drawing its attention to her would be an awful idea–

A gunshot rings out so loud it’s almost deafening, and the Tyrant shudders.

And it keeps. Moving.

Another shot rings out, the thing shudders again and pushes on in its incomprehensible mission to take him somewhere. Then, he hears pot shots from a handgun.

Pop, pop, pop!

“Leon!”

That’s Rebecca alright.

Swallowing the lump of panic in his throat, Leon strains to lean back to see her, to peer around the hulking thing, but all that rips out of him is desperate.

“Run! Get the fuck outta here, go!”

He doesn’t get the chance to see if she does, because fire bursts across the side of the Tyrant’s head. Immediately he’s met with the stench of burning alcohol, glass shattering so fast he has to duck his head away from it because the Tyrant doesn’t move him– doesn’t drop him either, even with the flame already searing up its rotting face.

Holy shit.

Eyes flying wide, Leon lurches as much as the Tyrant’s grasp allows when a figure scrambles up the thing’s back like a massive spider. It’s a mass of dark clothes, dark limbs– a very human shaped clawed hand holding a molotov cocktail.

The figure flings the cocktail down into the wound on the Tyrant’s chest with a vengeance, unshaken as it finally seems to notice the stranger’s presence. Every second ticking by is far too quick, because suddenly he’s realizing this figure has pincers out the elbows, bare warped feet clinging to the Tyrant’s shoulder with triple claws, a long tail and stinger and even the same kinda stripes racing down the sides if not for the darker color, deep, vaguely purple and cracked and shedding and–

He doesn’t see the stranger’s face. Nothing but a pale nose behind motorcycle goggles and an improvised balaclava, a low hanging hood, but the figure moves fucking fast.

Before the Tyrant can even loose his broken hand and grab after the stranger, they scuttle sharply away on its back and send the Tyrant staggering in a circle like a dog chasing its tail. Fresh pain goes blinding him again with a pained gasp as soon as his arm is freed. Pieces of the Blacktail go scattering to the street, hot fire in his face with the Tyrant’s chest in front of him, and he immediately cradles it close. It’s for sure broken.

But that doesn’t stop the Tyrant.

Robotically, it makes every effort to snatch the person skittering across its massive back, grabbing at the swaying tail only to be milliseconds too late. If it weren’t so dead and stony faced Leon swears it would’ve been annoyed, but it’s not keen to let him go either.

Another shot sounds, and finally, fucking finally, he’s dropped. Careening to the pavement, all Leon catches are brief instances of the Tyrant almost stepping on him (and even worse, pointedly making an effort not to) as it chases the stranger. It’s a blur of black and grey and green all over the Tyrant, claws and pincers digging shamelessly in to grasp and move. He has to go. He has to get out from under this thing and not exposed and–

The stranger digs their stinger into the gap on the Tyrant’s chest, earning an immediate stumble. 

Shit. Holy fuck.

Army crawling out of stomping range, Leon barely manages to clamber and grasp onto the side of a dented car before another two gunshots ring out, the heat of fire blooming at his back, the dead three blocks back and growing closer by the second and–

“Come on. Come on get the hell up!” Rebecca’s yanking him by a bicep and miraculously attempting to take his weight. “Come on!”

“What the hell–”

“I don’t know!?”

Frantic for ground and not eager to crush Rebecca, Leon walks. He can walk. His legs aren’t broken. He can fucking run if he has to and he should, but that stupid wild eyed part of him peers back over his shoulder in time to catch the figure finally being snagged by a stray leg across the Tyrant’s chest and flung.

“Hey!”

Bad idea. Really bad idea, since when was he so full of bad ideas?

The Tyrant’s head snaps back towards the two of them, and he fumbles for his other sidearm. Rebecca’s dragging him back, startled, making every effort to watch where they’re going as they’re stared down briefly. Molten flesh rips down the right side of the Tyrant’s face, fresh scores ripped across its chest and shoulder and arms, already nauseatingly attempting to knit itself back together at the edges. The gaping hole in its chest just seems bigger. Its massive heart, lungs, all raw and exposed and right there and Leon does the only thing he can think to do, and raises his gun.

Not that it’ll do much at such a low caliber, but maybe it can buy them time.

Across the street, the stranger staggers to their digitigrade feet, shoulders heavy. Silent.

The Tyrant’s looking at him. And then the stranger, then back, back and forth and back and forth as if it just can’t compute what it’s seeing or it doesn’t know how to proceed, so he shoots. If a dead thing could breathe he would’ve knocked the breath right out of it, because it seems to hunch. 

Yet another one of those deafening shots splits through the air, a second, a third in succession, finally hitting home. Chris. Chris, it’s gotta be Chris with his long range, posted up somewhere decent, it must’ve been him the whole time trying to shoot it in the back.

The Tyrant catches in a wild tremor and falls to its knees, all but convulsing, before finally falling flat on its stupid massive face.

Who’s to say if it’s actually dead though.

Breathless, blindly reaching to brace himself against anything other than Rebecca, Leon turns to peer across the street.

The stranger’s gone.

“Becc.”

“I know, I know,” she starts in a hapless mumble, staring wide eyed at the Tyrant’s limp form. 

“No, Rebecca!” Frantic beyond his control, he rounds towards where the stranger is.

Had been. 

Now the stranger is scampering away. Bolting around a car in a blur of black, they dart into a side street as Rebecca sharply turns her gaze. 

“Oh- oh my god, oh my god!”

And then, she starts to run. As if she’s reading his mind or just happens to agree, tandem dragging them both to their feet. In the back of his mind, Leon’s aware of a lot. His hand is still broken. Really fucking broken, agony pulsing through it with each step he takes at her heel. The Tyrant’s corpse –if it could be called that?– is still rancid, burning, flames crawling up its face and shoulder and leaking absolutely everywhere as they rush past. The shamblers keep moaning down the street. They’ll be following soon, Chris’s gonna be looking for them, for cover, for distance.

But there’s a person. An actual person like him, like Ashley, extra pieces and all and they’re running.

There’s no way in hell he’s gonna let that slip away, because what the fuck.

What the actual everloving fuck.

That’s a mutate. A whole ass mutate running away from them. Running very fast actually.

Rebecca’s running pretty damn fast too. Both of them go careening after the stranger and it seems to take all of her not to call out, setting her jaw and gritting her teeth as they move. Stone goes breezing past his feet, concrete, old fliers rained down and tattered trash against the corners. He’s wheezing, lungs burning with exertion from screaming and shrieking and running nonstop now more than he had in weeks. 

But he has to move. They have to move, they can’t lose sight of the mutate.

Step after step he sprints and manages to pull ahead of Rebecca. Any lingering shamblers are a background thought, no, everything’s right ahead on the figure. They move sharply right, before sprinting across to another side street, slipping through, running and running and running with claws digging into the ground and propelling them both forward.

For one horrifying second, he almost loses sight of them.

And then, rounding the next corner to a darkened passageway between narrow houses. It’s empty, and then, out the corner of his eye he spots movement.

The bulb of that stinger disappeared through a narrow window against the ground.

“Shit!”

Rebecca comes sprinting up behind him, stopping short only a moment to lean against he knees in a pant.

“Where’d they go?”

Dropping to a crouch beside the window, he grimaces. His hand still throbs, but he braces his shoulder against the stone wall. In the nonexistent shadow, he can make out some kind of basement. A skewed table, feathers scattered across the floor. Faint smells hang in the air. Blood and old meet and staleness, wood and dirt and faint smoke. The window’s been long since busted in, stripped of stray glass pieces that would’ve been clinging to the frame. Even the frame is damaged, cracked at the top, but it’s barely big enough for him to squeeze through.

Slowly, Rebecca shuffles to his side with a breath.

“There?”

“Yep.”

“Shit.”

Still braced against the wall, he glances up at her haplessly. It escapes in a hushed whisper. “You… you saw that, right? I’m not losing my mind right now?”

“Of course I saw it!” She hisses out. “I saw– oh my god that means if… we need Luis. We need–”

“We need to figure out who the hell that was.” He interjects. “And how they got infected with the parasite without going all the way. Or insane or–”

Rebecca goes quiet. For a long moment she goes quiet, staring down at what to her would be a blackened hole to some dingy basement. She can’t see what he does, there’s apprehension on her face, but she lets out a breath. And then, she starts to shed her belt.

“What the hell are you doing!?”

“I can fit.” She whispers hurriedly back. “We both know French, I can fit, I just need you to cover me.”

Tilting his head, he grimaces. “Are you crazy? I can’t fit in there, we don’t know who the hell that is, and last time we ran into anyone it ended bad!”

“You don’t have to remind me!” The pair of them are still whispering sharply at each other, not that it matters, but if it buys them time from getting spotted by some other rotting unfortunate, then he’ll take it. Rebecca drops her bulky belt and sheds her jacket. “But whoever that was, they helped. Helped you. You can’t tell me they wanna know what’s going on with you.”

Fair point. Leon purses his lips and shifts into a steadier crouch. 

“If anything goes wrong I’m coming in there.”

“You don’t have to-” she sighs. “Just. Just cover me.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he props the elbow of his injured hand on his knee. This is ridiculous. They should be looking for Chris, circling back to the rendezvous. They should be doing so much, but not an ounce of Leon wants to leave now. Too much hangs unanswered, like who this person is and how on earth another Las Plagas mutate just happened to be smack dab in the middle of France during all this. Not to mention the Tyrant, why it was just taking him somewhere and not throttling him to death every chance it had. 

Jesus, his hand’s broken. His shooting hand.

They’re so fucked.

With her coat shed, Rebecca double checks her thigh holster for her sidearm and drops to the windowframe. Bracing her hands on the top, she offers Leon one apprehensive glance, a half grin, and finally slips her legs in to shimmy inside.

In an instant, Rebecca’s inside.

Painstakingly, he drops on his good hand to watch inside.

It really is dark in there, but from this angle he can still see inside just fine. That table is faded and skewed in the corner, near some kind of improvised fireplace. Ash and soot are piled up in some old dumbbell or laundry chute. There’re blankets on the floor in the corner, supplies dragged in from elsewhere and stacked in some vague organization. But any sign of the stranger is absent. Rebecca teeters on her feet as she lands. For a long second she remains there, peering around, likely trying to soak in as much as she can in the slowly rising sunlight.

It’s not much.

She takes one slow step forward before the figure darts out of a doorway to the left.

A yelp pries out of her in an instant, she goes down hard, and Leon jolts.

No. No, no, no– not Rebecca, all the sudden whoever this is doesn’t matter, that’s Rebecca. 

Rebecca who’s been painfully kind despite the circumstances, Rebecca who’s been trying to help even if it’s impossible, Rebecca who’s his fucking friend.

Jesus Christ, he can’t lose anybody anymore. Not anymore.

Not his people. Not her.

A feeling surges up in his chest. In his throat, in his mouth all raw and sour and animal again, danger screeching through the recesses of his mind as he thrusts himself forward through that too small window like a snake out of the den. Without even thinking he presses his spines against his back and clutches his wounded arm against his chest, pincers flying out the second he gets his torso through. With some clawing at the cobbles, he forces his way through and slams into the stranger.

The stranger shrieks. Like the call of some angry bird right in his ear, but he’s a whirlwind as the pair of them go crashing off Rebecca and onto the floor. They go so hard, so fast, that the table scrapes loudly against the ground.

Still snarling, the stranger’s face is obscured. As they both go toppling he realizes immediately that this person is smaller than him, and it has him moving. Fast. As fast as he can. Snatching up his knife from his side, he brings it up and braces against the pincer of his injured arm. He’s on them. On them fast, bearing down his waist with a snarl. The stranger writhes, bringing clawed feet up hard into his stomach and send him arching back. It’s enough for another hard kick to be delivered to his chest, sprawling him on his side. Only narrowly does he manage to duck away from a careening hard tail. 

The stinger sinks into the table and sends splinters flying.

Backpeddling fast, he pushes himself to his feet with rattling mandibles. He has to be big. Bigger, scary, not something to fuck with as he puts himself between Rebecca and the stranger.

The stranger jumps after him. Claws and pincers extended, they jolt for any part of him, and he attempts to block it. The first claw digs into his shoulder, but he shoves the other hand hard. The figure stumbles. The fleeting moment he has gripping onto the stranger’s arm in that effort proves them to be slight under all that clothing.

He can work with that.

Attempting to snatch up his knife hand, the stranger lunges again, and he sharply flips the blade in his hand to the defensive and pries back with a slash at them. They lurch away narrowly, hissing, only to catch his hand again as he fully extends. Then, a leg comes flying up to his face. Claws curled to snag onto him, he attempts to duck away and his left arm pincer snatches the figure’s narrow ankle and grips. They gasp sharply, attempting to wrench away only to send that tail up with the momentum it takes to turn.

Leon flinches away and ends up on a knee.

The stranger turns again with an attempt to grapple; all but jumping on him, but he still has his knife out. Shoving the trapped leg away, the stranger ends up on the floor and he finally manages to skitter over, claws sinking against knees, pincers clinging to shoulders, knife held up to throat and–

The bandana’s down. Was it a bandana? Whatever it is, it’s skewed, hood sunk to shoulders. and for a second all he can see is more pale skin. Dark hair.

Dark eyes behind the goggles.

Miraculously, the figure is still. Staring up, gasping for breath.

“Ada!?”

She falters. And then she grimaces, letting her head fall back against the floor.

“Get off me, Kennedy.”

He considers it. And then, he doesn’t.

“I need to know you’re gonna stand down.”

Behind him, he senses Rebecca trying to get herself up. She stumbles hard, pressing herself against the wall and still breathless, before taking a tentative step forward.

“You know her?”

“Yeah, I do,” he offers back, but he doesn’t turn away from her. Doesn’t let up his grip. Not even when she goes all but limp beneath him. And just looking at her, adrenaline still coursing through his everything, he has to fight not to falter.

Last time Leon saw anything of Ada Wong, she was walking onto her own getaway helicopter; vaguely disappointed he hadn’t wanted to run away with her. She was as put together as she could’ve been after having been captured and strung up like she’d been in some medieval dungeon just for him to find. But she was… she was fine. Not really injured that he could tell, even her insane choice of a knitted dress was mostly intact save for some wear and fraying at the ends and sleeves. She’d looked fine. Like her composed self. Like he’d always remembered her.

Not infected.

Oh god. Ada got infected. Somehow, horrifyingly, during all of that time she’d been infect and uninfected and impossibly ended up… like him. Like Ashley. Confusion swirls around in his mind, the reality of it hasn’t crashed in quite yet.

Ada’s here. Ada’s alive. Ada’s here and barely alive and a fucking mutate.

But she looks like shit.

Paler than he remembers, a little gaunt in the cheeks, grubby. Her hair’s grown out around the sides of her face, lips gone chapped, and she feels genuinely thinner under his grasp. Much of the lean muscle he remembers is gone, but all of it– all of her, it’s all off, all wrong, all exhausted. Every change is stark from how different her face is to the dark chitin climbing up the sides of her face, to her pointed ears and… Jesus Christ.

“Okay,” Ada finally croaks out, half-assedly attempting to throw her hands up. “Okay, okay.”

Reluctantly, Leon loosens his grasp. And then he sits back, pushing himself off her. With a heavy breath, she pushes herself up, wincing away to recoil in a heap. She yanks the motorcycle goggles off and drops them on the floor.

And then they all just. Sit there and stare at each other.

“So…” Rebecca manages. “I’m sorry for falling into your uh… place.”

Ada shoots her a sidelong glance, but reaches to push herself up against the table. It’s a fluid, if heavy movement. Bracing hard against it, her tail loops about their ankles with a grimace, pincers sinking into the edge of the table. She doesn’t respond. With that, he also stands himself up and takes a hesitant step back towards Rebecca just for the sake of being closer. Being closer is better. Safer.

He has to shake the thought away.

“I figured you’d be around.” Ada starts, though she pauses, shutting her lips tight as if she’d intended to say something else and just opted against it.

“Not digging the new look?” Leon retorts tersely.

Ada glances up from where she’s swaying to stand by the half broken table, brow flat, entirely unamused. Her own stinger flicks sharply against the floor in a brief ‘clack’. 

“You’re one to talk.”

Yeah, he should’ve known that one wouldn’t land. He glances down.

“The UV machine didn’t work on you then?” She posits heavily.

“No.”

Rebecca frowns at how blatant it comes out of him. Any of the care for her, fascination about her, is gone for the moment. Ada’s shoulders shift uneasily, but she nods.

Finally, he glances up. “Have you been here the whole time?”

Ada’s eyes dart away, first to the tabletop and then to Rebecca. A hint of her appears almost cornered like she’s eager to retreat into another corner, or the doorway she’d leapt from. But she doesn’t. She keeps hanging onto the tabletop.

“If by ‘the whole time’, you mean ‘since the outbreaks’, yes.” Again, she glances between them. “It’s spread, hasn’t it.”

“...worldwide,” Rebecca offers, still shaken after the entire catfight. “It’s. It’s worldwide. I’m Rebecca by the way? Rebecca Chambers.”

“Right uh. Shit. Rebecca, this’s Ada. Ada. Rebecca. Rebecca’s trying to help us.”

“Us?”

He frowns, shoulders sagging. “It was me and Ash. And now you apparently. When… when did you? Fuck, wait. Wait, wait wait.” Shaking his head, he throws out a hand. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the Tyrant that didn’t kill me? Maybe?”

“I was being hunted.” She blanches. “If you weren’t already, you will be now too.”

Great. Wonderful. That’s just wonderful. And it makes total sense, as much as he hates to admit it. There had to be signs of he and Ash left behind in that house, gore and vomit and genetic material that no doubt screamed there was something inhuman left. Hell, even Ezaro. Their first shed (if it could be called that) the remnants of their claw marks and the bed and the improvised hospital bed they’d been chained to for ages. Bringing his uninjured hand to his face, he groans softly.

“...fuck.”

“You should come with us,” Rebecca offers hurriedly. “I can help. We can help. We have supplies, and food.”

Another glance at Ada proves she absolutely needs it.

Had… had she been alone through all that? Had she turned alone? If Luis hadn’t been there, he’s sure both he and Ashley would’ve died. They would’ve withered away comatose, starved or dehydrated to death. The concept of anyone, but Ada in particular going through all of that pain, the panic, the confusion, all alone?

“We have somewhere to go,” he agrees hurriedly.

What the hell. She was just probably trying to kill Becc, but– it’s Ada.

Ada standing there looking at the both of them like strangers, idiots, people not entirely worth trusting. But she can’t seem to not look at the not-so-human parts of him. Her ears pin back, and it’s hard for his own not to do the same. Then, her head tilts sharply towards the window just in time for some snuffling to sound from it.

He turns, entirely prepared to see the Tyrant or one of the infected, but it’s far better. Hewie’s nosing at the windowframe, sticking his massive head through the window with perked ears and a lolling tongue. There’re footsteps echoing in the alley, Chris’ voice calling– Claire’s voice calling.

Oh shit. Oh no. Oh no–

“You find somethin’ bud?”

“Rebecca!?” Chris calls. “Leon!?”

“We’re here!” She hollers up, and Ada immediately recoils further into the corner.

There’s shuffling out there, murmuring and whispering, Ashley’s asking something as Hewie is shoved aside. Chris hefts himself to the ground with the CBQRs both hanging to his chest, scraping against the floor as he kneels. And then he stops short.

“Oh.” 

“‘Oh’ what?” Claire scoffs.

A soft rattling hiss sounds from the corner. It’s immediately enough for Ashley’s claws to appear in the window.

“Are you guys okay!?” She calls down worriedly.

“We’re… fine,” he tries, but she doesn’t seem convinced by the way her tail sways. Hewie is circling around, grumbling.

Luis must not be convinced. Seconds later, he’s kneeling, grunting, making an effort peer in. Leon can feel the hair on the back of his neck standing on end with the mere air of Ada’s apprehension, all of it climbing and climbing and climbing as Luis’ own worn out face appears beside Chris’ in the window. He’s squinting, trying to take a read of them; but Leon can see the moment he spots her.

Because when he does? Luis goes uncharacteristically pale. It sends Leon’s spines on end.

And then, Luis shuffles back, staggers to his feet, and starts to hurl further down the alley.

Ada remains stalwart in the corner, eyes flickering in the dark, silent.