𝕔𝕝𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕖
Our jokes and smiles quickly diminish as we scan the room that supposedly will lead us into the ship's bilge.
It looks more like a research room than an engine room. One wall is just a huge glass window, with slight cracks all throughout.
Leon shines his light all around, clicking it every few seconds as a signal to anyone who might still be down here.
It smells like actual death, of the smell of rot and stagnant water, festering with whatever died in here.
Leon covers his nose with the top of his shirt, his face scrunched up. "Fuck, this is disgusting."
I bury my face in the crook of my arm, trying not to upset my stomach. "It is."
He points to a journal on a metal table. We walk up to it, in tight formation, our arms rubbing into each other as we keep our eyes on the space around us, in case the dark has more surprises for us.
I shine the light on the pages, and he starts to read out loud:
"'I was forced on this mission. I had no desire to come here for a job that may very much get me killed. Anyway, stage one is complete. This ship was used as the base of operations for the terrorist attack on Terragrigia one year ago.'"
"Terragrigia... The name's familiar," I say, thinking out loud.
Leon pauses to look at me, and then goes back to reading. "'My head feels like it's going to split open. I lost an eye already. It's hard to see. I feel like crap. Arms starting to feel weird too.'" He grabs the paper to turn it, and I realise the bottom half of the page is covered in dried blood. "'My right arm split into two. Blood all over, I can see my bones.'"
"Holy shit... How did the person manage to write this?" I whisper.
"Talk about dedication," Leon says, shrugging. "Anyway, it says, 'I got the key for the freight lift. Now I can access the bilge.'" He sighs. "Great. More hoops to jump through." He flips the page again, and says, "It just ends with: 'need doctor bad'."
"What do you think happened to this person?"
Leon sets the journal down and stares at me in the eye. "We both know what happened to whoever wrote this."
I exhale, sadness and fright taking up space in my lungs. My arm still stings with pain. What the hell is going to happen to us?
Leon puts an arm on my shoulder, soft and gentle. "You doing good?"
Before I can answer, we hear something slam against the glass wall. We both turn in lightning speed, focusing our light on the glass.
At first, the shape slamming against the window looks to be that of a woman. Blonde hair, hourglass figure. But then, as the shaky light allows me to focus my eyes better, I take a step back, behind Leon.
Fear strikes me at my core, slithering down my spine like a cold sweat.
That is no woman.
It's a mutated, slimy mess of a corpse. Wet tentacles are wrapped around her chest, her legs, and her fingers are long and misshapen.
Leon steps in front of me, his arm shielding my body. "Step away from the glass!"
I step back, and as I do, we hear a bone-chilling laugh, exactly like the one I had heard upstairs in the gym. Then, a woman's voice, eerie and teasing, almost singing: "Found you!"
The oozing mess of flesh runs away from the glass wall, disappearing into the corridor beyond it.
"We need to catch that thing and kill it," Leon shouts. "Stay close!"
He sprints out the door, and I go to follow him, but notice something poking out from behind the door. I close it and find a rifle, neatly wedged behind the door. I grab it and run after Leon, my heart beating in my throat.
He looks back to check I'm with him. "Good find!" He says.
"It's loaded!" I shout back, our footsteps echoing across the metallic corridor.
We reach a dead-end, stairs facing the other direction.
"I'll check the top of the stairs," he says quietly, his handgun by his face. "Stay close to me."
I follow him with the rifle pressed into my chest.
"All clear," he says from behind the corner. "Unbelievable."
"Where the hell did that thing go?" I gasp.
As we go back down the stairs, we both start to breathe heavy, and I can tell whatever that thing was has Leon worried too.
We hear the laugh again, coming straight from behind us, and my breath catches in my throat.
It's behind us, at the top of the stairs. The way it writhes and moves makes my legs shake.
It sprints down the stairs, and Leon pushes me out of the way with one hand, with the other emptying his gun's magazine into the thing. "Get back!" He shouts at me.
I take a few steps down the corridor, and bring the rifle's scope to my eyes. Leon is reloading, and the thing is moving close to him, swinging its arms around, and he dodges, rolls across the floor, and steadies himself across the wall as he finishes reloading.
The thing is moving so quickly that I miss a couple of shots. The fact that I'm shaking out of the terror unfolding in front of my own eyes isn't helping my aim, either.
But then the thing lunges at Leon, its faces inches away from his.
"Leon!" I scream, a new type of fright taking hold of my body.
He grunts and I realise he has his combat knife wedged deep into its neck, but its still on top of him, its blonde slimy hair mixing with his, and my heart plunges as I see that it is overpowering him.
I inhale as much air as I can, and hold it in my lungs as I bring the scope back to my eye again.
I have one more bullet.
Just one.
"Clean through the head," Leon tells me through gritted teeth. "You got... This..."
His voice fills me with courage and I aim, and as my finger squeezes the trigger, my eyes shut themselves.
I don't want to fail him.
I open my eyes just in time to see the thing absorbing the rifle's bullet clean through its forehead. It turns to look at me, and for the first time I see its face properly: it still looks like a person. A woman, with blue eyes.
Leon kicks it off of his chest, and scampers up to his feet. As he kicks it, a piece of its flesh falls to the floor with a loud thunk.
"Nice shot," he says, and we both shoot it again with our handguns.
"You— You owe me," I struggle to say, my words sticking to my lips.
It writhes on the floor, and then straightens up, standing a good foot above Leon, and he positions himself between the woman and me. I ready my aim at its head again, but this time it just bursts into another long, nightmare-inducing laugh, and sprints back up the stairs, and we know just by how fast it goes up those steps that we won't be able to catch up to it again.
When we can no longer hear its footsteps, we both collapse onto our backs onto the wall, the metal catching our weight.
I slide down the wall, bringing my knees to my chest. The adrenaline is leaving my body, and I can feel the kicks from the rifle shots bruising the my collarbones. My heart feels like it's about to explode.
"Roost? Roost, come in!" Leon says next to me, his finger pressed into his earpiece.
It's so quiet around us that I can hear Hunnigan's voice coming over the transmission.
"Roost here, what's your sit-rep, Condor One?"
"Run me a check on any field operatives that were stationed on the Queen Zenobia," he instructs her, casting a quick look at me. I give him a weak thumbs-up, and try to focus on my breathing.
"Any task force in particular?"
"Try the FBC," he says, his voice impatient.
It takes a while for Hunnigan to reply, and in the meantime, Leon crouches next to me, keeping an eye on me.
"I see here the last two agents to be assigned to that ship were Rachael Foley, an anti-bioterrorism agent, and her partner, Raymond Vestor."
"Physical description for Rachael?" Leon asks.
"Blonde hair, blue eyes, tall build."
Leon makes a noise in his throat. "Last known sighting?"
"Agent Foley never reported back to the FBC. It looks like she might still be on that cruise liner. Same goes for her partner, actually."
"Of course," he says.
The realisation slaps me across the face. That thing we were just attacked by. That mess of tentacles was an FBC agent. That was her journal entry.
She was sent here to investigate whatever happened on this ship.
Same as Leon.
Same as me.
I'm convinced we're going to end up like her. There doesn't seem to be any alternative to this mission, no happy ending to this nightmare.
My lungs feel empty again.
We're going to die here.
"Roost, I'll comm you later," I hear Leon say, but I can't really hear him, his voice is muffled, like I'm underwater.
I can't see him anymore.
My vision is a messy blur, and I see flashbacks of Tripp's office exploding in front of my eyes, of the grenade that destroyed the office and my old life, of the bodies on this ship, of Rachael's blue eyes looking at me.
I can't feel the wall behind me, or the floor underneath me. I can't even breathe.
"Clementine?"
•
𝕝𝕖𝕠𝕟
Leon falls to his knees next to you, and places a gloved hand on your cheek.
"Clementine? I'm right here with you," he tells you, and lightly slaps your cheek trying to bring you out of your panic attack.
He doesn't want to hurt you— though as his fingers clap against your face he can't help thinking about whether or not you'd let him slap you in another scenario, somewhere far away from this ship, tangled in his bed sheets—
"Fuck," he curses. "Keep it together," he tells himself, and looks around the corridor, trying to stay in the present, to stay in the now.
He shines a light in your eyes, and you blink it away, but then he realises you're not breathing right at all.
"Breathe just like how I showed you," he pleads, and inhales and exhales. "Come on, you can do this, inhale, exhale..."
You start to inhale, and he can see tears start to swim in your eyes. It hurts his chest, to see you like this, and he wants to kick himself for dragging you into this with him.
"Good girl," he tells you, his hand cupping your cheek. "I know you'll be fine."
You blink away more tears and he wipes the ones that roll down your cheek with his thumb. He gets a water bottle out of his hip pouch and a couple of painkillers, and holds the bottle to your lips.
"Can you take these? For your wounds."
You nod and he hands you the pills and the water, and watches to make sure you swallow.
He doesn't know if you can hear him amidst your panic, but he decides to try anyway. It has worked so far. "If you think we're ending up like Rachael, you couldn't be more wrong," he tells you, trying to keep his voice steady. Even as he says the words, he knows that they might not even be the truth.
Whatever is on this ship is worse than what he saw in Spain. It might even be worse than Racoon City, because here, there is nowhere to run.
Just you and him, and a rusted, decaying ship in the middle of the ocean.
"I promised you we could do anything you want if we get out of this ship alive, right?" He says, sitting down next to you, placing a hand on yours. He tries joking with you. "And you said you'd let me get creative. You think I'm going to pass an opportunity like that?"
He looks at you in the flashlight's light, careful not to point it right at your face, and relief floods over him as he realises your breathing is steadying.
He hates how easily he seems to be able to calm you down, how well you respond to his voice, how easily you blush at his flirting whenever you think he isn't looking.
He hates it because he shouldn't like it as much as he does.
He hates it because he's the reason you're having panic attacks in the first place.
He's the reason you're in this mess, danger threatening both of you at every turn.
Leon rests his head back against the cold metal wall behind him, and runs his fingers through his hair. He's been able to flirt without catching feelings before, of course he has. He's not the lovesick rookie cop he was back in Racoon City anymore. It's just another part of the job.
But there's something different about you, about the way you trust him so completely, even though you two have only known each other for a few days.
Something about the way you tease him, about the way you manage to joke even though he can tell you're scared out of your mind.
Something about the way your eyes light up, even in the dark, when you hear his voice, that makes Leon slightly weak in the knees.
And nothing, really, has managed to have that effect on him so far.
author's note: what do you guys think of the pov change? i'm thinking of having some pov switches every now and then ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ