He could smell the beast first before he even heard Sasha's gun firing into the night.
The crunch of snow, the hot breath of a prowling animal. The smell of a predator that had been hunting in the wilderness for perhaps several weeks.
It didn't take but a drop of his hatchet and a click of his gun. He aimed and let it fire, but whatever decided to hunt after him leapt, leaving a cloud of snow in its wake. He spun on the balls of his feet, hoping to catch sight of the creature. It darted around him, reminiscent of a beast not very keen on staying very still.
Like a wild animal, and not at all like the virus-infected undead he was so used to.
He kept his gun level, all the while waiting for the beast to come closer. He kept his back to the fire, even with the dwindling light and warmth. He shivered; it was growing cold, a bit too cold to his liking.
He needed to get back to the cabin.
The beast lunged again with a loud roar. He felt claws into his back, cutting into skin, into bone. He howled loudly, taken for a moment with the sheer paralyzing pain through his back. The Plagas screamed in his head, the searing pain blooming from the parasitic womb...
...and followed with burning anger, a primal, wild flame that pulsed through his heart and burned through his body. But he didn't remember this, other than that searing, blooming pain from his back, the fevered heat that constantly thundered like a heartbeat at his back. Then cold...like ice, cloaking him into a chilling embrace.
And he remembered a deep sleep...
When he did wake, he was in the cabin, rolled up in a blanket that, unfortunately, smelled very much like cat, but with his back abnormally exposed in a strange manner. He winced, but Sasha hushed him.
"What happened?" He asked, but winced as something like hands wrung cold cloth at his...wait...
He glanced back, seeing strange appendages over his shoulders. They held a bright color of deep red, brightening to a warm luminescent yellow at the very end of the thin veils of membrane. He winced as Sasha laid cold cloth on the veins. He told him, "Don't, that's cold...!"
Sasha leered back, as if startled. He then nodded and asked, "Can you feel my hands?"
"When you touch them yes," Leon admitted. He grumbled and shifted, causing his...well whatever they were, to shift as well, as if to stretch. He asked, "What're...are these wings?"
"Might be," Sasha admitted, "I've never seen a mutation like this before..."
"What do you remember?" Came Zemira's quiet voice, though the shock was barely held from it. Clearly... The FBI agent had never seen actual wings before. "And uh, how did you manage to get wings?"
"Oh..." Leon groaned and rubbed his face. He muttered, "I remember chopping wood for the house. And I remember some big...fuck I don't know, some big beast coming after me. I tried to take some shots of him last night, but he got my back from behind."
He winced and muttered, "I go from being a woodsman to a fairy. Great...just my luck."
Sasha chuckled and noted, "Well, it seems to have saved your life."
"Or not..." Leon grumbled. He furrowed his brows and focused, trying to raise his new mutation. They responded, rising farther and farther from his shoulders and back and stretching as far as they could. He muttered, "...well well well...I guess these appendages aren't independently acting..."
"Is that a good thing?" She asked, sitting cross-legged beside Leon. "That they aren't independently acting?"
"Maybe..." Leon remarked. He focused to see if he could get them to flap, and sure enough, they flapped, eventually picking up to a full buzzing flutter. They also took a warm glow, deep red from his back to the golden yellow at the ends. He hummed.
"...huh..."
"They're pretty....." Zemira stared at his back for a moment, these new appendages that seemed to have sprouted from Leon's back. "Like, they remind me of the sun."
Leon nodded. He settled them over his back, sighing. He muttered, "...Chris would freak at this..."
"Or maybe not?" Zemira offered. "After all, if he's around here, then I think we can safely assume that he's probably seen stranger...."
"No..." Leon frowned, and Sasha tilted his head. The agent explained, "I'd...be another damned monster to him. Maybe...I don't know for sure. But...he wouldn't see this the same way I do...if anything he'd want my head lopped off and pocked with as many bullets as he can put into my head for this..."
Sasha shook his head. "Leon, this wings are beautiful. These wings kept you alive. Keep them. Don't think about what others think..."
Leon frowned and glanced back at Sasha. As the former fighter nodded, Leon grimaced. He muttered, "I guess they did save my life...but there's no telling what the outcome will be when he sees this."
"Well, for that bout of anxiety, we do sorta have to find him first." Zemira quietly noted. "After all, there's no telling what he'll say or do if we cannot figure out where he is."
Leon couldn't help but agree to that. He then frowned, thinking.
"...that thing..." he mused, "...I wonder if I landed a hit on him. If I did he'd leave a blood trail."
"You're saying follow a beast's blood back to where it came from?" Sasha arched a brow at the agent.
"It's the only idea I have," Leon considered. "Otherwise we'd end up following the mountain range and getting lost. And we can't risk that."
"That would definitely be a bad idea. Almost as bad as following the thing that tried to kill you." Zemira gave Leon a hard stare. "What will keep it from attacking us as we track it? Especially when we don't know what it is!"
"You think I don't know that already?" Leon growled, glaring back at Zemira. "All my life I've fought ugly bastards raised from the dead by those who want to control the human population! I'm well aware of the risks. Do I like it? No! But that's about the reality that we're going to be facing! As long as we are armed, we should be fine, regardless of whether it attacks or not!"
He frowned and shook his head. He muttered, "You don't know what I've been through. I've been fighting BOWs since I was a rookie cop. And I will say this: once you get sucked into this mess, it's a continual cycle. There are ALWAYS going to be BOWs and there are ALWAYS going to be the puppeteers behind this."
Zemira flinched, moving back from Leon, and falling silent, folding her hands in front of her in the perfect picture of who else but a desk monkey. And even then, she didn't meet his eyes, staring at a particular spot on the floor, as if wishing she could melt into the floorboards.
Leon sighed. He watched her, then explained, "Zemira...Hunnigan doesn't tell you a lot of things due to confidentiality matters. Do you know about Raccoon City?"
She shook her head no, hands still stark still in front of her. "I'm just the desk monkey, remember? Cold cases. If it doesn't involve my job, then I don't get told about it, because it holds no bearing towards myself."
Leon nodded carefully. He then explained, "The Raccoon City Incident took place in 1998, years back. There was an incident where the founders of Umbrella Corporation released bioweapons into the sewers, infecting rats and, eventually, people. The whole city was taken almost nearly overnight. I was a rookie cop then and didn't know the true extent of the bioweapon outbreak of the T-virus. But I learned as time went on, that it was not an accident. The founders of Umbrella Corporation, Marcus, Spencer and Ashford, released the virus to test on the civilians, the study the bio-organic chemistry of human weapons. They tested everything, the Progenitor virus, the T-virus, the G-virus, anything you can think of they experimented on, and they released it into Raccoon City. The city was their testing ground, and myself and another pair of survivors were but rats in their own lab. We managed to escape, just as the government released a nuclear bomb onto the city and eradicated everything. "
He sighed. "Zemira...incidents like Raccoon City have happened all over the world. And I've been to nearly every part of the world where Umbrella dared to raise its ugly head time and again. I've had to fight their experiments, and kill people who didn't ask to be infected. I won't tell you how many people I've had to take in order to protect others. I even had to kill the President of the United States, my own friend..."
For a long moment, Zemira stayed remarkably quiet. Surprisingly, so was Sasha the entire time, listening on their conversations. Leon didn't enjoy the silence, but he waited, waited for one of them to say something...
It was Sasha who finally broke the silence. He asked Leon, "Then what you said, back in the Eastern Slav Republic...when we owed it to those who died alongside us...you owed it to those who died in Raccoon City...that's what you meant, right?"
Leon nodded. He pushed himself upright to a sitting position, his back spasming painfully. He winced, stretching his wings again, then looked at Sasha.
The other was remarkably quiet. It felt like an eternity, no one daring to say a word. No one in the cabin dared to say a peep. But it was the meow of a kitten that alerted them both.
Snuggles, the mother cat, and her kittens crawled over to the three. The kittens wormed themselves into Leon's lap, finding their warm cozy spot. He smiled and petted the kittens, then looked at Sasha and Zemira.
"...I know I've said this already," He reminded them, "...but I have to find Chris Redfield. And I'm not sure why, but we should start with that...beast, whatever it was. If it's a bioweapon, then it's likely it'll lead us to where it all started. And if I know Chris Redfield, he'd do the same thing. Wherever that creature came from, that has to be where he is now..."