Thea have been in the NEST before, but only two times. The first time when her father showed her around the whole facility, him being the chief security. The second time was when it was really late at night and she hadn't heard from her mother in two days so she decided to check up on her in the lab.
Of course, her mother was nose-deep in developing a new type of living form: she was always obsessed with nature and flowers. So, her mother wanted to develop a new kind of plant that got its own section on the East Side. The Greenhouse was huge, filled with sensors and a unique system that could eject the new samples her mother would work on. Thea was fascinated by her mother's work, and Clara took great pride in her work. Her daughter would stare wide-eyed and her jaw hanging open in fascination as she stared at the plants through the big window from the observation room.
Right now, Thea was standing right in that spot where she stood the first time. Only now she didn't stare at the plants with wonder but with fear and dread. The plants grew out of their way, like they had a mind on their own and she would swear she saw them move. And it didn't help that there was a worker in a hazmat suit pinned against the thick plexy, blood dripping down alongside the cracked window.
A vine was piercing through their chest. There was nothing they could do to save them.
"This is insane," Leon breathed next to her, his eyes scanning the plants she loved so much. But their image now only grew distress inside her, and Thea didn't know how to fight it.
There wasn't any proof that her mother would be an evil scientist like Annette seemed to be, but there was evidence now. And it was right in front of them. And her work had at least one victim at this point; probably more judging by the state of the lab.
"This was my favorite place inside here," Thea muttered, unable to take her eyes off the vines. She watched as a small vine twisted around a larger and thicker one, clinging to it like a child would to its mother. It made her skin crawl. She felt Leon's gaze weigh down on her.
"Who would do this?"
"My mother," Thea gulped, forcing her eyes off the plants and looking around the room.
"What?" Leon's voice broke at the end, feeling his heart break a little. He tried to believe so hard she had no business with any of this, going against what Ada had told him. But the more they got to know about Umbrella, Thea seemed to get more tangled in the middle of it.
"Remember when Ada talked about two scientists who developed the virus that caused all of this? The G-Virus?" Thea ran her fingers along the control panels, the memory of seeing her mother work in here almost suffocating her. "There was Annette Birkin and another woman. Clara Keller."
"Keller? As in...?" Leon furrowed his eyebrows, following after the girl. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he stared at her like he couldn't believe what he just heard. Thea rolled her eyes.
"You're lucky you're pretty," Thea muttered under her breath, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. He just looked more confused. "The other scientist, Clara. She's my mother. And this-" she gestured towards the plants, Leon's eyes following her hand and swallowing. ", is what she was working on for years now."
She looked back up at Leon, who seemingly struggled a little to process everything. She couldn't blame him, this must be a lot. Hell, it was a lot for even her. Their traumatized brain struggled to get more information in.
"We have to destroy it," Thea said softly, Leon slowly turned his head towards her, but his eyes still remained on the plants. Then he looked at the person pinned against the glass, a Senior Staff chip that could upgrade the wristband Ada had given them. "We'll have to make a solution to kill these things, but I'll need your help."
"Okay," Leon finally tore his eyes away, meeting her green ones. "Show me the way."
Thea nodded and took the lead, hoping that she remembered right where the lab was. But there were a lot of things in their way: scientists turned into monsters, weird plant-like things shaped like humanoids (which freaked Thea the fuck out), and even a thing with a split-open head that seemed to only hear them, not see them (which also, naturally, freaked her the fuck out). And if it wasn't for Leon, she was sure she would've just curled up in a corner and not stepped another foot inside.
She thought she saw everything, but it was clear she was far from that.
Once they reached the lab where her mother lived basically, Thea shut the door after them. Taking in a deep breath, she looked around, expecting to see bloodied bodies around and blood splattered on the wall, but this room seemed the most normal so far. Which almost seemed unnatural at this point.
She could practically see her mother hunched over the station and working on cells and serums she had no idea about. It was oddly chilling to not see her here, but at the same time, it calmed her. There was a chance she was alive out there, which meant she could answer Thea's questions.
And she had plenty of them.
"So, what now?" Leon walked around, trying to figure out what do to. It was clear he had never been to a real lab before, because he tried to find the solution in a cabinet. Thea rolled her eyes and pushed up the sleeves of her hoodie. His hoodie, to be more exact, but at this point she wore it more than him.
"See this station?" Thea walked over to a thing with three little vials, a few colorful buttons, and some weird substance in the tubes. She had no idea how to operate these things, but she had to pretend like she did. "This is where we will make our solution. To wipe out the fucking plants."
"I'm pretty sure if you would have to take care of them they would perish in days," Leon murmured, looking at some posters on the wall related to plants and nature. Thea gasped at his statement, ready to throw a vial at his head. He heard her gasp and looked above his shoulder, his gun lazily hanging from his hand. "What?"
"That was a low blow, Kennedy!" Thea pointed at him, amusement glinting brightly in his eyes. "I tried my best to take care of Mr. Pickles, it was not my fault he died before the professor could grade it."
"Right," he scoffed, wandering to a microscope and leaning down to look into it. It looked really tempting to just bash his head against the counter right now. "Mr. Pickles deserved to die because it was a cactus."
"I'll shove this vial up your ass if you don't shut up!" Thea threatened, but he only shook his head like he had the time of his life.
The little shit always had to rub it under my nose how his fucking plant survived longer than mine.
After that, he stayed quiet and let her work her magic. It took some time and some pushing around to figure out how to mix the substance and put it in the correct vial, but she always loved puzzles. It just scratched the right part of her brain and every time she was successful, she felt so proud of herself. Especially if she saw others struggle with the same puzzle.
As she waited for the machine to be done, she propped her hips against the cabinet, mindlessly staring ahead and pulling the silver chain out under her hoodie. Leon caught her fidgeting with the chain that became one of her signature things about her. It had a silver ring dangle of it, the band decorated with a straight line in the middle. The line shone in the same shade of her sage eyes.
He wondered where she got it. It looked special.
The beeping of the machine snapped both of them out of their daze.
"Fucking finally," Thea sighed, stepping up and snatching the vial. She held the vial up to her face as she looked at it, the lights shining brightly down at the pale mixture.
"You sure it's gonna work?" Leon asked, and even though he tried to sound more confident, it was clear he had doubts about the whole thing. Thea sent him a glare.
"Are you a scientist to doubt me?" his mouth opened, but she shut him off quickly. "No. Then shut the fuck up. I'm the one that possesses more knowledge in the matter."
Leon rolled his eyes, Thea missing the little action as she was busy securing the vial in her pocket.
The two of them made their way back to where they came from. The darkness wrapped around them, the eerie flickering of the neon lights above them making her paranoid. Deep down, she was glad she didn't have to do this alone, even though she was stuck with Leon.
But tonight, he proved to be a good companion. Whether they were enemies or not, Thea started to take a liking to him.
Which disturbed her deeply.
"What's up with the frown?"
"Huh?" Thea looked up at Leon walking beside her, his gun pointed ahead of him, ready to shoot anything that stood in their way.
"That," he gestured towards her face.
"I just look like that."
It was clear she wasn't going to elaborate or share her thoughts, so Leon just shook his head and remained silent on their remaining way. They only saw an infected man in a changing room as they passed, but they decided not to waste more time and bullets as they strolled past.
Leon walked ahead by a few steps, almost in a protective way. Which, in Thea's opinion, was hilarious. He was the injured one and he still wanted to play tough. Moving her flashlight around a little, she caught a glimpse of his arm. The dressing on his arm was tinted with his dark blood, the wound leaking because he moved around too much.
"Idiot."
"What?" he glanced back at her above his shoulder, his eyebrows furrowing.
As he stopped in his tracks to address her, she moved her flashlight off him, to his right. Above the door, in bold letters, it said Security Room. Her heart skipped a beat as she stepped closer, the thought of her father appearing in her mind. She hadn't gotten any responses back from him, either, and it was alarming since her father always called her back whenever he got a spare second.
She spent a lot of time in there with her father, just talking or playing a round of chess when they had a break. She hadn't found the energy to make small talk with the other guards here, and they weren't too eager to get to know her, either. So Thea had stuck with her father, which she didn't mind. She preferred her father's companion over Clara's any day.
Thea brushed past Leon in a swift motion, him barely moving out of her way and watching her with a confused expression. Thea was the most confusing, most complicated jigsaw he had ever seen. But her mind was just as sharp as her tongue, which was a dangerous combination that pulled him in more as he got to know her.
The girl lifted her hand to punch in the security code in the panel right next to the door, but she stopped mid-air when she noticed the door was already ajar. That rang the alarm in her head.
Her father yelled at everyone who dared to leave the door open. He was allergic to it basically, which was not surprising if you knew Wilbur Keller.
Thea lifted her gun in front of her, her arms straight and grip tight as she took in a breath. But nothing could prepare her for what she would find inside.
With the barrel of her gun, she pushed the door open, the flashlight gripped in her other hand tightly panning around the room in a fast motion, searching for any threat. But it was clear nobody was inside.
Her wide eyes took in the dim room, the only light being their flashlights shining inside and a fluorescent lamp hanging above the makeshift bed where the guards would occasionally rest. In the corner, there was a small space where they could make coffee, heat up something in the microwave if they had the energy to. Now the counter was messy, some weird fluid covering the surface.
In the middle, the circular table where she played chess with her father was toppled over, the chairs kicked in different directions. One of the chairs was broken, its metal leg sticking out in an awkward direction.
But it was the station of the walls and the floor that freaked her out the most.
The wall was decorated in a half-moon shape with dark blood trickling down onto the floor. It reminded her of the time when she turned the sprinkler in the garden too high and it sprayed the wall of their house. Her mother was really mad at her.
On the ground, there were multiple shotgun casings and magazines, meaning that whoever was in here last put up a fight against whatever caused this much chaos. The blood pooled on the ground, seeping under the cabinets right next to the wall. The most disturbing thing was how clearly they could see that a body was dragged, the line of blood showing the way.
"Oh, damn," Leon scrunched his nose up in disgust, his bright eyes looking around the place. He noticed how there was blood on the ceiling, too. "What happened here?"
Thea ignored his question as she stepped forward, something weird catching her attention. Whatever it was, it laid beside the table laying on its side, the dark not helping with figuring out what it was. It was big, dark and her brain couldn't identify it.
But as she flashed her light at it, a gasp ripped from her.
It was an arm. A torn, fucked up, bloodied arm.
They've seen so much fucked up shit tonight that it shouldn't have surprised her. But under the blood, she could make out the dark outlines of a tattoo that was way too familiar to her.
The tattoo her father, Wilbur had gotten for her. It was a beautiful rose, with its stem wrapped around a sword. He always knew that his daughter would be beautiful and deadly at the same time.
And the silver band around the ring finger was a dead giveaway. It was a custom ring he made alongside the silver ring of her mother's. He liked making jewelry in his free time, but since he started working for Umbrella, he had close to none. He made a ring for Thea as her 16th birthday gift.
She wore that ring on a silver chain around her neck ever since.
"You okay?" Leon's voice broke her out of her thoughts, grief falling on her shoulders like a ton of bricks.
Her father was probably dead all this time. Judging by the amount of blood, his arm got ripped clean off from his elbow, spraying the wall and ceiling. Then he probably got dragged out by whatever attacked him.
She wanted to take her father's ring, but that meant touching his severed hand. Bile rose in her throat at the thought and she had to rush outside not to throw up.
"Thea!" Leon called after her, but she decided to ignore it.
Without even looking back, she marched towards the Greenhouse, clutching the vial with the solution in her hand so tight her knuckles turned white. In the back, she heard Leon hurry after her, but the buzzing in her ears was so loud it suppressed his voice entirely.
Her father was dead. The only person she still gave a fuck about. All because her mother crossed the rules of humanity inside this facility. Here, they doomed so many souls.
Thea had only one mission now. After killing the fucking plants her mother worked for years, she's going after Clara.
And there's nothing that could stop her from revenge.