Chapter Text
The operating room is bright enough to interrogate someone.
Eight surgical lights burn overhead in a perfect white halo, bleaching color out of the room until everything exists in shades of blue, steel, and sterile white. The air smells like iodine, cautery smoke, and the faint plasticky warmth of disposable surgical drapes. It’s the smell of work. Of competence. Of the quiet arrogance required to cut someone open and expect them to thank you afterward.
You’re in your element.
Your gloved hands move with slow, precise confidence over the patient’s face, the needle driver steady between your fingers as you guide a delicate suture through the reconstructed edge of a cheekbone incision. The fracture beneath it had been ugly—three separate breaks across the orbital floor, the zygomatic arch crushed inward like someone had taken a hammer to it.
Car accident. Drunk driver. Twenty-three year old victim.
You spent the last four hours putting the kid’s face back together piece by piece like a morbid anatomical jigsaw puzzle.
Titanium plates. Microscrews. Careful alignment of bone fragments that look alarmingly similar to porcelain shards when they’re lying exposed in a surgical field.
You adjust the retractor slightly and lean closer, studying the contour under the harsh surgical lights.
“Emily,” you say without looking up, “if admin asks how many plates we used tonight, you tell them two.”
The scrub nurse beside you snorts quietly behind her mask.
“We used five.”
“Yes,” you say calmly. “But they don’t need to know that.”
Across the table, Dr. Harris—the anesthesiologist—glances up from his phone with tired amusement.
“You realize the billing department can count.”
“Sure,” you reply, tying another suture with delicate efficiency. “But that would require someone in administration understanding a surgical report, which historically has proven unlikely.”
Emily shakes her head while handing you the next instrument.
“Last month they sent an email asking why plastics spends more on titanium than orthopedics.”
You pause for a moment. Then you look up slowly.
“They asked that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
You let out a quiet sigh through your mask.
“God help us all.”
Harris chuckles. “In their defense, titanium plates aren’t cheap.”
“Neither is a human face,” you say dryly.
You guide the suture through the patient’s cheek with careful precision, tightening the knot until the tissue sits perfectly aligned.
Plastic surgery gets a reputation.
Most people think it’s nose jobs and lip fillers and rich people panicking about wrinkles.
In reality, most of your cases look like this.
Car wrecks. Dog bites. Gunshots. Domestic violence. Faces shattered by bad luck and worse decisions.
You don’t make people prettier. You make them recognizable again.
Which is why the titanium budget is nobody’s business.
“You know what the real problem is,” Harris says lazily. “Surgeons.”
You glance up.
“Oh?”
“Arrogance,” he says. “Every single one of you.”
Emily nods like she’s been waiting years for this moment.
“Oh absolutely.”
You tilt your head slightly, considering.
“That’s fair.”
Harris raises a brow. “That was suspiciously easy.”
You pull the suture tight and snip the thread with surgical scissors.
“Because you’re correct,” you say simply.
A quiet beat passes. Then Emily laughs.
“You’re not even going to argue?”
“No,” you say. “Because anyone who thinks they can cut into a human body and fix it without a little arrogance is lying to themselves.”
You glance down at the reconstructed cheekbone.
“Or incompetent.”
Harris exhales through his nose.
“That might be the most honest thing I’ve heard all week.”
You adjust the surgical field again, inspecting the titanium plates anchoring the repaired bone beneath the skin.
Everything is clean. Stable. Good alignment. Good perfusion. The kid is going to look like himself again. Mostly.
You lean back slightly, rolling the stiffness out of your shoulders after hours bent over the table.
“Last couple stitches,” you murmur.
Harris glances at the clock.
“Music to my ears,” he says. “Thought you were planning to move in here.”
You guide the needle through the final edge of skin, tying the knot with practiced ease.
“If I move in,” you say, “you’re paying rent.”
“Not on my salary.”
“Then I guess you’re getting evicted.”
Emily lets out a quiet laugh behind her mask.
You snip the final suture and set the needle driver down on the tray with a small metallic clink.
For a moment you simply study the patient’s face under the surgical lights, head tilting slightly left, then right.
Symmetry acceptable. No tension across the closure. Tissue perfusion looks good. You nod once.
“Alright,” you say. “Let’s finish up here.”
The room immediately shifts into wrap-up mode.
Emily begins removing the surgical drapes with careful precision while Harris adjusts the anesthesia levels. Gauze is counted. Instruments clink softly into trays.
The quiet rhythm of finishing a surgery. You’re already thinking about going home. Maybe food. Definitely sleep.
The wall clock reads 10:42 PM. Technically still your shift. Barely.
“End of shift miracle,” Harris mutters. “You actually finished before midnight.”
“Don’t jinx it,” you say.
And then the intercom explodes to life. The voice crackles through the ceiling speakers, distorted and too loud.
“Code Yellow. All staff, Code Yellow. Repeat—Code Yellow.”
The entire room freezes. For a moment nobody moves.
You slowly lift your head toward the speaker.
Code Yellow.
Your brain automatically flips through the hospital disaster codes.
Mass casualty: Code Orange.
Fire: Code Red.
Infant abduction: Code Pink.
Code Yellow…
Internal disaster. Except no one actually uses it.
You glance across the OR table at Harris. He stares back at you.
“Did they just say Code Yellow?” he asks.
“Yes,” you reply flatly.
Emily looks between the two of you.
“What does that mean?”
You pause. That is… an excellent question.
You’ve worked at this hospital for six years. One of the busiest trauma centers in Washington, D.C. You’ve seen shootings, bombings, multi-car pileups, political protests that ended with half the ER full of tear gas victims.
You have never once heard Code Yellow called outside of a mandatory training slideshow. Your brain produces absolutely zero useful guidance. Fantastic.
“Well,” you say finally, voice dry, “that’s encouraging.”
Harris frowns.
“Do we evacuate?”
You stare at him.
“If we evacuate in the middle of facial reconstruction,” you say calmly, “the patient is going to be extremely upset about it.”
Emily lets out a nervous laugh.
The intercom goes silent again, as if satisfied with the chaos it just created.
You glance back down at the patient. Stable. Surgical field clean. Technically finished.
“Alright,” you say, slipping back into professional mode because panic is useless when someone is lying open on a table. “We’re almost done here.”
You nod toward Harris.
“Get him ready for post-op recovery in case they decide to evacuate the building.”
Harris hesitates.
“In case?”
You shrug slightly.
“Look, if the hospital is actually on fire, someone will probably come running in here screaming.”
A beat. Emily raises a brow.
“That’s… reassuring.”
“Thank you.”
Despite the calm tone of your voice, something uncomfortable is starting to coil in your chest. Your heart is beating faster now.
At first it’s subtle. A tightening under your ribs. The creeping instinct that something is wrong in a way that hospital protocols never quite account for.
The OR suddenly feels too quiet. Then, faintly, from somewhere deep in the building…
You hear a scream.
Everyone in the room freezes. It’s distant. Muffled through concrete floors and hospital infrastructure. But unmistakable.
Not the sharp cry of pain you hear every day in the ER. This one is long. Raw. Panicked.
Emily slowly turns toward the door.
“Was that—”
Another scream echoes through the building. Closer this time.
Your pulse spikes. You keep your voice level.
“Alright,” you say, already stepping away from the table. “Let’s move.”
Emily strips off her gloves faster now while Harris adjusts the anesthesia equipment with hurried movements.
You peel off your own gloves and snap them into the waste bin.
The screaming continues somewhere below. Your brain automatically tries to rationalize it.
Mass casualty. Panic in the ER. Someone reacting badly. Hospitals are chaotic places. People scream all the time.
You push open the OR door. The hallway outside is chaos.
Orderlies rush past with gurneys. A nurse sprints down the corridor with a phone pressed to her ear. Someone shouts something you can’t quite hear over the noise.
Another scream echoes from a lower floor. And then something crashes loudly somewhere in the building.
You stand there in your scrubs for a moment, staring down the corridor while a slow, unpleasant realization settles into your gut.
This is not a drill. This is not a normal hospital disaster.
You glance back into the OR where Harris and Emily are watching you expectantly. You force a thin smile, trying not to incite more unnecessary panic.
“Well,” you say dryly, gesturing toward the distant chaos echoing through the hospital.
“On the bright side…”
Your eyes flick down the corridor again.
“…it’s definitely not boring.”
Inside, your heart is pounding hard enough to crack your ribs. And somewhere deep in the hospital below you, something is very, very wrong.
──────•✦•──────
The hospital basement smells like disinfectant, dust, and the faint metallic edge of blood.
Leon S. Kennedy pauses at the end of a narrow service corridor, one shoulder angled toward the concrete wall, pistol already raised. The suppressor extends the length of the weapon just enough to make the silhouette unfamiliar to anyone who hasn’t spent years carrying one. To him, it feels like an extension of his hand.
The fluorescent lights overhead flicker unevenly, buzzing with the tired electrical hum of a building that was never designed to handle this kind of stress. Each pulse of light throws the hallway into alternating bands of sterile brightness and gray shadow.
Hospitals always smell the same. Bleach. Plastic. Alcohol wipes. Tonight there’s something else layered beneath it.
Blood.
Leon inhales slowly through his nose, then exhales. Yeah, he thinks. That’s never a good sign.
His boots make almost no sound as he moves forward. Years of training and a lifetime of survival instincts keep his steps measured and quiet. He keeps the pistol at eye level, muzzle tracking the hallway in smooth arcs as he clears each angle before advancing.
His earpiece crackles.
“…all units evacuate the lower floors—”
“—I repeat, people are attacking each other in ER—”
“—what the hell is going on in there—”
Leon grimaces faintly. D.C. Metro police.
They sound exactly like every police department he’s ever heard at the start of an outbreak: confused, panicked, and about fifteen minutes behind the actual situation.
Which means the hospital above him is already falling apart.
He reaches the corner and leans just enough to check the blind spot. Clear. For now.
Leon straightens again and continues forward. The DSO intel briefing had sounded simple enough.
Domestic bio-terror cell. Amateur operation. Intercept before deployment. Except they hadn’t intercepted shit.
Someone released the pathogen first.
And now the ventilation system of a major D.C. trauma center is circulating it like a goddamn perfume diffuser.
“DSO actual to command,” Leon murmurs quietly into the radio clipped to his vest.
His voice is calm, almost casual. Experience has taught him panic doesn’t improve anything.
“I’m in the basement level. Infection confirmed active.”
Static crackles across the line for a moment before a familiar voice answers.
“Copy, Leon.”
Hunnigan. Calm, precise, unshakable.
“We’re still trying to identify the dispersal mechanism. Can you confirm the delivery system?”
Leon glances up at the massive ventilation ducts running along the ceiling. Metal arteries pumping contaminated air through the hospital.
He exhales slowly.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “I think I’ve got a pretty good guess.”
He steps over a body lying near a rolling supply cart. Male. Early thirties. Hospital orderly, judging by the scrubs.
Leon crouches briefly, scanning the corpse with a practiced eye.
The man’s throat is torn open, deep ragged gouges exposing muscle and tendon beneath drying blood. A smear along the wall shows where he tried to crawl before collapsing.
Leon notices the bite marks immediately. Two of them. Deep. Messy.
He doesn’t check for a pulse. Instead, he stands.
“Looks like ER ventilation,” he says quietly into the radio. “Someone dumped the pathogen straight into the air system.”
There’s a short pause on the other end.
“…Understood.”
Leon rubs the back of his neck.
“Which,” he mutters under his breath, “is a fancy way of saying we’re screwed.”
He rounds the next corner. And stops. Three figures stand at the far end of the corridor.
For a brief moment, they look almost normal.
A nurse in pale blue scrubs leans against the wall, her posture slack and crooked. A security guard crouches nearby with his back to Leon. An elderly patient in a hospital gown stands perfectly still in the middle of the hallway.
Then the security guard shifts. Leon sees what he’s holding. A human forearm. He’s chewing it.
Leon sighs quietly.
“Well,” he mutters.
The nurse’s head jerks toward him. Her eyes are cloudy. Milky. Dead. She hisses. The sound is wet and animalistic.
“Guess that answers the infection speed question,” Leon says.
The nurse lunges. Leon fires three times. The suppressed shots barely echo in the corridor.
The nurse drops instantly, a clean hole through her forehead. The security guard jerks upright just in time for the second round to punch through his temple. The elderly patient staggers forward anyway.
Leon steps sideways and fires again. The body collapses. Silence returns to the hallway.
Leon lowers the pistol slightly and watches the corpses for movement.
None.
“Yeah,” he murmurs.
“Just another Tuesday.”
He moves forward, stepping carefully around the bodies.
The infection vector is aggressive—far more aggressive than most early-stage outbreaks.
Which means one thing.
This isn’t random. Someone engineered it.
Leon’s jaw tightens.
He has seen too many variations of this nightmare. Raccoon City. Terragrigia. Lanshiang.
Different viruses. Same outcome. People turning into monsters in places that were supposed to save them.
His radio erupts again with panicked shouting.
“—officer down in emergency intake—!”
“—they keep getting back up—!”
“—we need CDC, National Guard, somebody—!”
Leon grimaces.
Little late for that.
He moves deeper into the basement.
The corridors branch constantly—laundry services, medical storage, maintenance access. The entire level is a maze of concrete and pipes.
A terrible place to hunt anything. Or escape it.
He passes an overturned gurney. A long smear of blood stretches across the floor beside it.
Leon slows. The smear leads down the hallway. He follows it automatically.
Instinct.
The trail ends at a pair of metal double doors labeled: VENTILATION CONTROL
Leon sighs.
“Well,” he mutters, adjusting his grip on the pistol. “If I were a bio-terrorist…”
He nudges the door open with the muzzle of his weapon.
The room beyond is loud with the mechanical roar of industrial air systems. Massive fans churn inside metal housings, forcing air through the hospital’s duct network.
And there are bodies. Two men.
Civilian clothing, tactical gear thrown together with the enthusiasm of people who think YouTube makes them professionals.
One slumps over a control console. The other lies on the floor beside the main ventilation unit.
Leon steps inside cautiously.
Both men are dead. Their skin has turned a sick gray color. Blood leaks from their noses and ears.
He kneels beside the nearest body. The man’s hand still loosely grips a handgun. Beside it lies a shattered glass vial.
Leon studies the fragments.
Residue coats the inside. Aerosol dispersal capsule.
He exhales slowly.
“Guess the whole ‘don’t breathe your own weaponized virus’ rule slipped their minds,” he mutters.
He stands and looks up at the roaring ventilation system overhead.
Air is already moving through the ducts. Fast. Which means the pathogen has been circulating for several minutes. Maybe longer.
Leon runs the numbers in his head.
Emergency department. Crowded waiting rooms. Shared ventilation across multiple floors.
He grimaces.
“Yeah,” he mutters.
“This is gonna be bad.”
His radio crackles again.
“Leon, status?”
He rubs the bridge of his nose.
“Ground zero confirmed,” he says. “Delivery system was ventilation dispersal.”
A pause.
“Can it be contained?”
Leon looks up at the roaring ducts. Then at the bodies. Then toward the hallway leading back into the hospital.
From somewhere above him, a scream echoes through the building. Then another.
Leon chambers another round with a quiet metallic click.
“…No,” he says flatly. “But there might still be survivors.”
He pushes the door open and steps back into the corridor. The distant noise of chaos rolls through the hospital like an approaching storm.
Leon raises his pistol again.
“Well,” he says quietly to the empty hallway. “Guess it’s time for my annual checkup.”
──────•✦•──────
The hospital does not fall apart all at once.
At first it just… frays.
You notice it in the way the noises change. Hospitals have a rhythm—monitors chiming, carts rattling, distant overhead pages, the low murmur of staff who have been awake too long. Controlled chaos. Familiar chaos. The kind you’ve spent years navigating with muscle memory and caffeine.
This is different.
The screaming starts somewhere below your floor, raw and animalistic, the kind of sound that bypasses logic and goes straight into the primitive part of your brain that knows something is terribly, spectacularly wrong.
You step into the hallway just in time to see a resident sprint past you, his face ghost white, blood smeared across the sleeve of his scrubs.
“Hey—what the hell is happening?” you call after him.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even look back.
That’s usually a bad sign.
Another scream echoes through the corridor, closer now. Something crashes—metal hitting tile hard enough to rattle the light fixtures overhead.
You stand there for half a second longer than you should, your brain trying to force the situation into something logical.
Mass casualty event. Psych patient loose. Gas leak. Literally anything except the nightmare unfolding three hallways away.
Then someone stumbles around the corner. You recognize her instantly.
“Linda?” you say.
Linda, one of the scrub nurses. Early forties. Divorced. Always brings homemade muffins that taste suspiciously like boxed mix but you politely pretend not to notice.
Right now she’s staggering toward you with both hands pressed to her neck.
Blood pours through her fingers. A lot of blood.
“Oh, Jesus—”
Training takes over before fear does.
You rush forward, catching her just before she collapses. Her weight hits you awkwardly and you half-drag, half-pull her into the nearest open door—a supply closet crammed with boxes of saline and sterile gowns.
The smell hits you immediately. Blood. Hot and metallic.
You ease her down against the wall, dropping to your knees in front of her.
“Okay, okay, stay with me,” you say automatically.
Her eyes are wide, unfocused. Her breath comes out in wet, choking gasps.
You pull her hands away from her neck and immediately regret it. The wound is catastrophic.
Not a clean cut. Not surgical. Not even close. It looks like something tore into her throat.
Your stomach twists.
Well that’s… really fucking concerning.
You grab a stack of sterile gauze from the shelf and press it hard against the wound.
“Linda, look at me,” you say firmly.
Her eyes flutter.
“Stay awake. You hear me? Stay awake.”
Your hands are already slick with her blood, warm and sticky as it soaks through the gauze faster than you can replace it.
Arterial bleed. Wonderful. Exactly the kind of thing you love dealing with in a closet with zero equipment.
“Come on,” you mutter, pressing harder. “Don’t do this to me.”
Her fingers clutch weakly at your sleeve. She tries to say something.
Only a wet gurgle comes out.
Great. Fantastic. This is going really fucking well.
You grab another stack of gauze, pressing it down, your fingers digging into the sides of her neck to try to slow the bleeding.
“Linda,” you say again, forcing calm into your voice. “Stay with me.”
Her eyes meet yours. For a second, there’s recognition there. Fear. Then they start to go glassy.
You feel the moment her body begins to go limp.
“No—hey, hey—” you shake her shoulder. “Linda.”
Nothing. Her chest rises once. Twice. Then stops.
The silence in the closet feels enormous.
You sit back on your heels slowly, your hands still covered in her blood.
“Well,” you mutter under your breath.
“What the fuck.”
You should feel something. Shock. Panic. Horror.
Instead your brain does the annoying clinical thing where it catalogs the situation like a case study.
Massive hemorrhage. Untreatable in current setting. Time of death… roughly now.
Outside the closet, the chaos continues—screaming, running footsteps, something heavy slamming into a wall.
You close your eyes briefly.
Then Linda inhales.
Your eyes snap open.
Her chest jerks upward with a sharp, ragged breath. For half a second relief floods through you.
Oh thank god—
Then her eyes open. They are not the eyes you remember. The pupils are blown wide, the sclera clouded with a milky haze.
And she moves.
Fast.
Her hand shoots out, grabbing the front of your scrubs as her mouth opens with a guttural snarl that is absolutely not human.
“What the—”
You jerk backward just as her teeth snap inches from your face.
Your brain trips over itself.. Dead people are not supposed to do that.
Linda lunges again, clawing toward you with frightening strength.
“Oh no. Fuck no.”
You scramble backward, grabbing the nearest object your hand finds.
A cardboard box of saline bags. Good enough. You swing it hard.
The box connects with the side of her head with a dull thud, knocking her sideways long enough for you to scramble to your feet and bolt for the door.
Behind you she makes a horrible, wet growling sound.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
You burst out into the hallway and start running.
Your shoes slap against the tile as you sprint down the corridor, your lungs burning, your heart hammering so hard it feels like it might actually punch through your ribcage.
People are running everywhere now. Some screaming. Some bleeding. One man staggers past you with a bite missing from his forearm.
You do not stop to examine it. Your brain is trying very hard to process the situation and failing spectacularly.
Dead nurse just tried to eat your face.
Dead nurse just tried to eat your face.
Dead nurse just—
You round a corner at full speed. And slam to a stop. Because suddenly there is a gun pointed directly at your head.
The man holding it stands perfectly still in the center of the hallway.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in black tactical gear that looks wildly out of place in a hospital. His hair is dark blonde, falling slightly across his forehead. His eyes are a cold, piercing blue.
And the handgun in his grip does not waver even a millimeter.
Your brain immediately decides this is how you die. Not eaten by zombie nurse.
Shot by some kind of government assassin.
You throw both hands into the air instantly.
“Don’t shoot!” you blurt.
Your voice comes out higher than you’d like. Your chest heaves as you struggle to catch your breath.
The man studies you for exactly one second. His gaze flicks over the blood on your scrubs. Your raised hands. Your terrified expression.
Behind you, something snarls. His eyes shift past your shoulder. And suddenly the gun moves. Not away from you. Past you.
The sound of the gunshot is deafening in the enclosed hallway.
You flinch violently.
For half a second you’re convinced you’ve been shot. Then something collapses behind you with a heavy thud.
The man lowers the gun slightly.
His gaze returns to you. Up close his expression is calm. Focused. Completely devoid of panic. Like this is just… another Tuesday.
“Easy,” he says.
His voice is low, steady.
You stare at him, still frozen with your hands in the air. Your brain finally catches up enough to form a coherent thought.
Great. Fantastic.
The hospital is full of homicidal corpses.
And now you’re being held at gunpoint by a stranger who looks like he walked out of a military recruitment poster.
You swallow.
Then say the only thing your exhausted, sarcastic brain can come up with.
“…please tell me you’re one of the good guys.”
──────•✦•──────
Leon almost pulls the trigger.
The decision happens in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the practiced reflex of a man who has spent the better part of three decades pointing guns at things that very much needed to be shot. The figure sprinting toward him bursts around the corner too fast for comfort—blood on scrubs, eyes wide, hands half raised—and his finger tightens on the trigger of the suppressed handgun before his brain fully processes what he’s looking at.
Scrubs. Human panic, not infection. Not lunging. Not foaming. Not trying to bite him.
He adjusts his aim in the same fluid motion.
Behind you. The infected nurse is already mid-lunge when he pulls the trigger.
The suppressed shot cracks sharply through the corridor. The bullet punches clean through the woman’s forehead, snapping her head back with brutal finality. She drops immediately, her body crumpling to the tile behind you with a wet thud that echoes unpleasantly down the hallway.
Leon exhales slowly through his nose. One shot. Clean.
He keeps the gun trained past your shoulder for another two seconds anyway, scanning automatically for more movement. Years of muscle memory refuse to let him relax yet. The hospital corridor is a wreck—overturned carts, smeared blood across pristine white walls, abandoned equipment scattered like debris after a storm—but for the moment nothing else charges them.
Good.
He lowers the gun a fraction.
You’re still standing in front of him with both hands raised like he’s about to execute you in the middle of a trauma ward.
Your breathing is fast, uneven. Your eyes are huge with shock.
You look exactly like every civilian he’s ever pulled out of a bioterror incident.
Confused. Terrified. And about three seconds away from a complete nervous system collapse.
Leon lets out a quiet breath.
“Easy,” he says.
His voice comes out calmer than he actually feels. You’re staring at him like you’re trying to decide if he’s about to shoot you anyway.
Fair. Given the circumstances.
“Please tell me you’re one of the good guys,” you blurt.
Leon almost smiles. Almost.
Instead he lowers the handgun a little further and says, in the same tired tone he’s used in a hundred similar introductions over the years, “Leon. DSO”
He taps the small agency patch on his tactical vest with two fingers, though he knows it probably doesn’t mean anything to you right now.
Most civilians have never heard of the Division of Security Operations. Which is exactly how the government likes it.
You blink at him. Your brain clearly tries—and fails—to process the acronym.
“Great,” you say breathlessly. “That clears everything up.”
There’s a beat. Leon huffs quietly.
Yeah. Fair again.
Before he can say anything else, the adrenaline finally catches up with you. You grab his arm.
Not aggressively. Just instinctively, like a drowning person grabbing the nearest solid object. Your fingers clutch at the sleeve of his tactical jacket.
“What is happening?” you ask.
Your voice shakes despite the bluntness of the question.
Leon looks down at you for a moment.
Up close, he can see the tremor running through your hands. The blood soaking your scrubs isn’t all yours, but you’ve clearly been through enough in the last few minutes to push most people straight into shock.
Another scream echoes somewhere deeper in the hospital. The infection is spreading fast. Too fast.
Leon keeps his voice low when he answers.
“Bioterrorist attack.”
Your face goes completely blank. Then horrified.
“…you’re kidding.”
“I wish.”
You stare at him for another second. Then you glance over your shoulder.
The infected nurse lies sprawled on the floor where she fell, the bullet hole in her forehead leaking dark blood across the tile.
Your stomach visibly drops.
“That’s—she just—”
“Yeah,” Leon says quietly.
He doesn’t bother sugarcoating it. He’s learned that lesson the hard way.
“She was infected.”
You look like you might throw up.
Leon doesn’t blame you.
The first time he saw someone come back after dying, he’d been twenty one years old and fresh out of the police academy.
Raccoon City. First day on the job. Hell of a learning curve.
Your grip on his arm tightens slightly. Your voice drops.
“…infected with what?”
Leon glances down the corridor again automatically before answering.
The place is a warzone now. Somewhere in the distance a fire alarm starts screaming, the harsh mechanical wail bouncing off the walls.
He looks back at you.
“Virus,” he says.
You stare at him.
“…that narrows it down.”
Despite everything, Leon almost laughs.
You’ve got a sense of humor. That’s a good sign. Most people lose that first.
“Trust me,” he says dryly, “you don’t want the full breakdown right now.”
Your eyes flick toward the body again.
“…does it always do that?”
“Come back from the dead?” Leon asks.
You nod slowly. He sighs.
“Unfortunately.”
You make a quiet, horrified sound under your breath.
Leon shifts his grip on the handgun, preparing to move again.
You need to get out of this corridor. You need to find survivors. You need—
A sharp stab of pain tears through his upper arm.
Leon inhales sharply.
Damn it.
The adrenaline had been doing a great job of masking that. Now that he’s standing still, the injury reminds him very aggressively that it exists.
You notice immediately. Your eyes drop to his arm.
“Hold on,” you say.
Leon follows your gaze.
The sleeve of his tactical jacket is soaked through with blood.
Right. That.
A B.O.W. had gotten a lucky swipe in earlier down in the basement while he’d been clearing the ventilation access tunnels. He’d patched it quickly with gauze and kept moving because, frankly, there had been bigger problems at the time.
Like the entire hospital turning into a zombie buffet.
He flexes his arm experimentally. Pain shoots through the muscle.
Yeah.
That’s… not great.
You’re staring at the wound now with the sharp focus of a medical professional spotting a problem.
“That’s not nothing,” you say flatly.
Leon rolls his shoulder.
“I’ve had worse.”
“Your arm is bleeding through military-grade fabric,” you reply. “That’s usually considered medically suboptimal.”
Leon glances down at it again. The blood has started dripping onto the tile.
Well.
That’s mildly inconvenient.