Chapter Text
Rhodes Hill Care Center had never felt like a place built for healing.
Even before you understood what hospitals were supposed to be or learned from overheard staff conversations and the fragmented mutterings of other patients that normal places did not keep people behind reinforced glass and keycard doors.
Something about Rhodes Hill was wrong.
Its corridors were too bright in some places and too dim in others, fluorescent panels humming overhead with a nervous, air carrying the layered scent of antiseptic, old mop water, latex gloves, metal trays, stale coffee gone bitter on nursing desks, along the colder smell you could never quite name as a child but knew now as medicine.
Your ‘room’ sat in the lower level, one of the smaller observation units set behind thick glass panels framed in dull institutional steel, walls painted an almost-friendly off-white that yellowed under artificial light, a color someone had once selected believing it would soothe unstable minds.
Not that it worked.
Thin seams ran between wall panels and in the corners you could see where years of repeated cleaning had worn the finish down to a smoother, shinier sheen.
A small vent high above the bed exhaled a steady stream of cold air that smelled faintly of bleach and dust. Every few minutes it clicked as the system cycled, a sound so familiar it had become part of your pulse.
The bed was narrow, white and too firm, made with military precision by nurses who tucked the sheets so tightly that slipping beneath them felt like being packaged.
Pillow thin enough to flatten beneath your cheek in seconds, a rolling metal stand stood near the wall for IV bags even on the days you were not hooked up to anything and there was a monitor mounted outside the room behind the glass, its dark screen sometimes reflecting your own shape back at you at night when the hall lights dimmed.
The door was not really a door in the way doors should be, more a controlled access panel with a magnetic lock and a detector, meant to be opened from the outside, except on the rare days someone remembered or decided that a supervised walk would keep you cooperative.
Tonight the room seemed smaller than usual.
You sat on top of the bed, knees bent, bare feet against the stiff sheet, listening.
The routine had stretched too far.
Usually by this point someone would have come, a nurse to check your vitals with clipped efficiency.
Another to ask the same useless questions in the same practiced voice.
Then maybe, if the day had gone the way Dr. Gideon liked and if whatever numbers or samples he wanted from you had satisfied him, you would be granted a little freedom, a reward dressed up as treatment with few supervised laps through Rhodes Hill’s inner corridors or, on especially rare evenings, time in one of the common areas where the long-term patients drifted around bolted furniture and muted televisions.
No one had come today.
Hours had passed, ache in your back from sitting too long, growl of your stomach and constant creeping shift of thunder somewhere far above the buried concrete levels of the facility.
A same routine had ruled your life for as long as memory could hold.
Wake, needles, questions, testing, silence and observation.
Another tray of food slid to you with as little conversation as possible, another evening listening to footsteps beyond glass.
Ever since the first days you could remember clearly, Rhodes Hill had been your world. The basement units had been your house before you knew houses belonged above ground.
The other patients, unstable and unpredictable in ways that could turn frightening without warning, had still become the closest thing to family you had. Not because you understood the true meaning of family, but because you understood presence and the way some people looked for you when they were frightened.
Understood the woman who enjoyed attention and sang beautifully, enjoying hearing her talk profoundly of anything she wanted as you learned progressively everything about life.
Understood the man with bandages around his eyes and offered yourself to be his own eyes while he moved inside the place with that medical auctions for drip and grumbly whined to you about everything.
Although he was easily irascible, deep down he seemed to like your presence whenever you had the opportunity to step out of your ‘room’
Dr. Gideon liked to phrase it differently.
Therapeutic social exposure, he called it when he allowed you out.
Baseline interaction opportunities.
He liked making cages sound clinical.
Sometimes he had you brought to one of the exam rooms where the counters shone under surgical light and the tray instruments lay arranged in exact rows. There he would take always more blood, tapping a gloved finger against your vein with a patient sort of fascination before the needle did it’s thing.
On his kinder days, or the days he wanted something from you that cooperation would get faster than restraint, he would let the suggestions of the others sway him. A nurse would mention fresh air in the atrium levels, doctors chiming in would say increased privilege might produce better behavioral outcomes.
And then you would be allowed out.
Never alone but always with eyes on you, by it from a nurse, an orderly or security.
Even then, those walks had meant everything. The polished corridors, sharp turns where one department bled into another and glimpses through reinforced windows into rooms that smelled of chlorine or medicine.
Would it really hurt to go out and take a look around?
Maybe you could check in on your friends if they weren’t already in bed.
Sliding off the bed soundlessly and dropping to your knees, feeling the cool change from contact with smooth floor even through the thin fabric of your white pants. Lower yourself all the way to flatten yourself and reach beneath the frame into the shadows where dust gathered in gray ribbons and forgotten things sometimes hid, fingers finding the taped underside of the support bar exactly where you had left it.
Peeling the tape free and drawing out the bracelet you had kept and constantly used throughout the years.
White plastic, slightly yellowed with time, with the embedded amber yellow chip still intact under its smooth surface. An ID bracelet from a newcomer girl who had arrived disoriented and terrified.
You had stolen the bracelet in the confusion of her first week as she came to check on your vitals, quick hands and quicker panic, afterward she had vanished from your orbit as so many people in Rhodes Hill did.
Moved, perhaps, or taken elsewhere.
You had felt bad in your own way, a small sour knot of guilt that never fully dissolved, but guilt had not stopped you from hiding the bracelet or using it.
Thanks to her, you had slipped out on late nights when the lower ward ran thin on staff and half the building seemed to doze under storm-heavy skies, wandered the sleeping corridors and traded whispers with the few patients still awake.
Shared contraband snacks, laughed quietly in laundry alcoves and sat under the emergency stairwell lights listening to stories from people whose memories came in cracked pieces.
That was as close to belonging as you had ever gotten.
You crouched by the door and pressed the bracelet against the outside-detection point built into the panel seam. It took a few seconds of stubborn pressure and angle adjustment before the reader acknowledged it, followed by the tiny mechanical click, one of the most beautiful sounds you knew.
The lock disengaged and you backed away instinctively as the door slid open with a muted hydraulic whisper, breath catching in your throat from the thrill of it even after all these years.
The basement was so claustrophobic at times, floor polished linoleum and walls lined with occasional observation windows and storage closets.
Thunder grumbled above the concrete earth as you moved quickly.
You knew where to place your feet to keep them quiet, knew where the camera blind spots curved near the corners or which stairwell door on this level complained if opened too fast. In a few moments you were climbing from the basement, hand gliding over the cool rail, pulse ticking faster as you emerged upward into the broader heart of the facility.
The main lobby looked different at night, large enough to suggest the illusion of openness, furnished just well enough to make visitors believe in Rhodes Hill’s polished mission statement if any real visitors still came. You had memorized its shape over years of stolen glances and supervised crossings.
“Excuse me.”
The voice struck surprised and immediate across the lobby.
“What exactly are you doing out here?”
You turned toward the irritating noise with instant annoyance and found a nurse marching toward you, shoes clicking briskly on tile, expression already pinched into reprimand. You still couldn’t remember her name, she had not worked here long enough to sink into your internal map of the place.
She carried a medical record tablet tucked tight in her hands as the irritation on her face came in small precise shifts, flattening of her mouth first, then the slight draw of her brows inward followed by an exhale through the nose that lifted her upper lip just enough to make her look disgusted before she’d even finished hearing your answer.
“No one came to check on me,” you said, already defensive. “This is usually when Dr. Gideon lets me go out.”
She sighed heavily in annoyance, dramatic enough to make sure you heard it. Her shoulders dropped with the breath and her eyes rolled very slightly toward the ceiling before settling back on you. “You are going to put me in trouble with this attitude,” she said, voice tight with that fake patience staff used when they had already decided you were the problem.
“Honestly, I would expect more discipline from someone who has been here as long as you have.”
Something shifted at the edge of your vision and both of you looked.
A man had just stepped through the front entrance, tall, broad-shouldered and dark jacket still damp from the storm outside, leather catching the lobby light in worn matte streaks.
Blond hair, a little longer than severe professionalism would allow, falling in a loose lock near the side of his cheek.
Face with the kind of rough, worn handsomeness that didn’t need help from expression, though there was plenty of it buried under the restraint if you looked close enough.
Tiredness lived around the mouth and at the edges of the eyes, experience sat in the line of his shoulders and the way he moved, balanced and watchful even in stillness.
Dull blue eyes that settled on you immediately.
The nurse straightened instantly.
“Mr. Kennedy, welcome. Dr. Gideon has been expecting you.”
His gaze rested on you for a beat longer before moving to her with maddening calm.
“Funny,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting just a little. “I don’t remember getting an invitation.”
The flicker of his gaze came back to yours as if he couldn’t help it.
“Well, he’s waiting for you,” the nurse said, already turning, then shot you a look from the side and muttered “you come along”
“Can’t have that, can we?” he replied smoothly, and the ghost of a smile remained at his lips as he fell into step behind the two of you.
His eyes cooled when they rested on the nurse after the tone she had used with you, a faint tightening near his jaw that suggested he was filing away details he didn’t like.
The hallway beyond the lobby stretched long and clinical, lined with offices on one side and internal windows on the other where blinds were partly drawn, your footsteps and the nurse’s clicks and the heavy, controlled cadence of Mr. Kennedy’s boots created a strange little rhythm through the corridor.
“So how long have you been working for… uh, Dr. Gideon?” he asked.
“Not long,” the nurse said quickly. “I just recently joined the team.”
Lightning flashed beyond the distant windows, bright enough to bleach the hall for a heartbeat. Your shadows leapt onto the wall to your right in stretched black forms and, for that instant, you saw all three of you projected there.
What caught in your chest was how close his shadow ran behind yours, broad and looming and near enough to seem almost joined.
“We care for quite a few long-term patients here,” the nurse continued, smoothing her tone into strict professionalism. “All undergoing experimental therapies developed by Dr. Gideon.”
“Experimental therapies?” he repeated.
“Yes. It’s all very cutting edge. The facility keeps a low profile due to the sensitive nature of the research.”
He nodded once, slowly, but you could still feel his attention on you. It was absurd how aware you had become of it in such a short time.
Not because he was the first attractive man you had ever seen, though the sheer difference of his presence in this place gave his attractiveness a sharper edge, but because he didn’t looked at you like data or a case file.
Every time you glanced behind and found his eyes already on you, something small and hot tightened under your ribs.
Swallowing turned difficult, air seeming to drag a little thicker in your throat, hated that he could do that with so little effort.
The nurse stopped at a pair of large double doors and ushered him inside a private office, larger than the basement rooms by a humiliating margin, lined with bookshelves, framed credentials, locked filing cabinets and a heavy desk of dark wood polished enough to gleam under the lamp with a fake skeleton nearby.
She turned back to you. “Wait here with him. I’m going to call for Dr. Gideon.”
Then she was gone, large doors closing behind her with a padded thud.
For a moment neither of you spoke.
Mr. Kennedy moved first, taking in the office with the clipped efficiency, gaze skimming the shelves, the corners, the window, the desk. He picked up a framed photograph from one corner of Gideon with his team, all of them posed in lab coats under bright sunlight. He studied it briefly, then set it back down and turned his attention to you.
“So,” he said. “How long have you been here?”
Leaning against the large door frame behind, careful not to put enough weight on it to lose your balance and crash into the hallway like an idiot. “Forever,” you muttered. “Since I could remember things.”
His eyes lifted to yours fully then. Serious, yes, but there was something gentler tucked into the severity and under all that roughness. The lines in his face made him look harder than he sounded, lock of blond hair falling loose near his forehead and softening the stoic cut of him.
“Anybody from outside ever come to visit you?”
His gaze moved over you again, quiet and unashamed, tracing the shape of your face, pause on your mouth, take in the fragile tension in your shoulders. Heat crept up your neck before you could stop it.
“No one I know of.” Then, because the words had lived in you too long not to come out when asked plainly, you added, “I was probably abandoned here.”
It had become the explanation that made the most sense after years of listening to others and collecting fragments of their histories. Parents who signed forms, guardians stopping visits, people left behind by those who could not or would not deal with what they had become.
He tilted his head slightly, the loose strand of hair shifting from said motion. His blue gaze stayed heavy on yours and this time the smile that touched his mouth was a little more visible, though no less strange for how soft it was.
“Hard to imagine,” he said, voice low. “I’d really like to know who’d leave someone like you here alone.”
The word hit you like a spark to dry tinder, heat exploded into your chest.
He watched the result with the faintest widening of that smile into a real grin, small but unmistakable, like he was entertained by how quickly he’d unraveled your system.
“Announcement: Code Six. Code Six. All staff, initiate emergency protocol.”
The words ripped straight through the charged bubble formed between you and the handsome stranger.
The doors banged open, nurses hurrying back in, visibly agitated now, composure fraying at the edges. “Mr. Kennedy, we need to leave immediately.”
“What’s happening?” You moved toward her on instinct and caught her shoulder.
Her head snapped toward you, eyes too wide now, breath coming quicker. “We all need to get out of here. Now.”
She turned toward the hall just as another figure lurched into view behind her.
At first your brain tried to place him as one of Gideon’s doctors because of the ruined remains of a lab coat hanging off his body.
His skin had the sick, waterlogged pallor of flesh gone wrong, gray-white stretched over features that no longer moved properly except in jerks, lips receding from the teeth in a permanent grimace while grayish-towards-the-black tears ran down his face.
His dead fingers twitched on the grip of a chainsaw he had as it was yanked alive and the engine roared.
A large hand seized your arm so fast you barely felt the movement until you were already being dragged back and crashed against a broad chest made of solid muscle.
Mr. Kennedy’s bicep locked across your frame to hold you close, hand on your arm calloused and strong even through the glove.
The chainsaw punched out of the nurse’s back and burst through her stomach in an obscene spray, her mouth dropping open in a soundless cry before the real scream came too late, cut short when the blade tore sideways through tissue and bone. Blood hit the floor in a red fan as her body dropped in a boneless collapse and the saw’s scream filled the office, chewing air and flesh alike.
Leon guided you behind him with astonishing gentleness for the violence of the moment, a firm push at your shoulder that placed his body between you and the thing wearing a doctor’s face before kicking a nearby metal-legged office chair that skidded hard across the floor and slammed into the zombie’s knees, opening its stance just enough.
He moved instantly cutting behind the arc of the chainsaw with a grip still tight on your arm to keep you moving with him.
“I think I want a second opinion,” he muttered while extracting a huge handgun.
He closed the distance on the chainsaw-wielding corpse with insane speed for someone his age. One step, pivot, boot driving into the back of the thing’s leg at the joint. It buckled and hit the floor hard, still trying to turn the screaming saw toward him. The magnum came level with the back of the doctor’s skull and fired.
Shot detonating the room at the revolver’s bark and the zombie’s head burst apart in a spray of bone fragments, blood and gray matter that painted the wall behind it. The body spasmed once and collapsed, chainsaw clattering loose from dead hands and skittering across the floor in a wild grinding spin until it finally choked out.
Your ears rang, too much had happened but fate kept firing more catastrophe towards you as snarling came from behind.
The office side door shuddered as more nurses and doctors in the same state as the chainsaw welding one was, shoved through with jaws working and hands clawing.
Mr. Kennedy stooped, caught the fallen chainsaw by the handle once the chain stopped whipping and hauled it up with caution, the engine coughed as he yanked and it came alive with a vicious buzzing roar.
He stepped forward, face nearly unchanged and set into an hard and stoic calm that somehow looked even colder with a blood-slick chainsaw in hand.
Before fully engaging the oncoming dead, he looked back at you quickly, eyes sweeping over you head to toe, checking for injuries.
When he found little more than shock, something in his features eased by a fraction.
“Stay behind me,” he said, voice rough. “Wouldn’t want that handsome face getting hurt.”
It should not have landed in the middle of all this.
Then he turned and met the first zombie, chainsaw carving upward into its torso with wet violence that drowned the creature’s snarl under the engine scream. Flesh split and blood sprayed hot across the desk and rug.
He drove through it without hesitation, letting the dead body open like a book fall to the ground in a puddle of infected blood before he wrenched the blade free and swung sideways into the next one.
The second corpse lost an arm at the shoulder in a spinning burst of black-red droplets and staggered, still advancing on blind instinct, only for Leon to step in and bury the chain deep across its middle. The body opened with gruesome resistance, then gave way. He shoved it off the blade with a jerk of his arms and pivoted around the third as it lunged, using its own momentum against it.
Blood sheeted over the floor by the time the last corpse dropped in two collapsing halves, the office looked less like a workplace than a butchered shrine.
You had ended up on the floor without remembering the moment you sat down, legs who had simply given up while staring at the ruin all around while your mind lagged painfully behind your eyes, trying and failing to fit what you had just seen into anything a human nervous system should be expected to accept.
Leon crossed the ruined office and lowered himself to one knee.
Blood speckled his jacket, fine spray dotted one cheek, hard planes of his face were still there, still stern and almost intimidating, but his hand when it came down on your shoulder was careful, voice scraping at an effort toward gentleness.
“You alright?”
You nodded, but the motion broke something in your throat when a sob tried to come with it, swallowing it down badly, hands shaking.
Getting back to full height he offered you one of his hands which you took.
Even hauling you upright while the other hand still controlled the heavy chainsaw, he made it look easy and when you stumbled the slightest bit, his body automatically adjusted to steady you.
“One hell of a first night together,” he muttered, mouth pulling into another dry and crooked almost-smile again.
Leon’s blood-flecked hand was still wrapped around yours when he moved towards the heavy emergency doors locked down by a lattice of metal braces.
Leon stepped forward, eyes narrowing once at the obstruction, then down at the chainsaw in his hand as if measuring one problem against another.
“Stay close,” he muttered, voice low and rough before bringing the chainsaw up.
The engine snarled back to full life in his grip with a vicious mechanical scream. He set the spinning chain against the middle brace, both hands steady on the weapon as the teeth bit into steel and orange tongues of fire spat from the point of contact in molten bursts, a storm of sparks showering outward and ricocheting against the walls in blistering little comets that showered over him in sheets, catching for an instant in his hair, hissing against the leather of his gloves, spitting harmlessly off his jacket and the hard line of his jaw.
He shifted to force the chain deeper, teeth chewing through another brace as orange spray intensified near the center seam.
A harsh metallic crack came from inside the housing, a jolt that kicked through Leon’s arms and then the front half of the tool split, blade assembly sheared away in a blur of smoke and slammed into the floor several feet off.
By then his other hand was already moving, Requiem drawn with smoothness together a compact flashlight snapped up in his off hand.
With a kick the metal keeping the door closed disintegrated completely.
The beam of light punched forward and tore a pale path through the darkness beyond the parted doors.
He barely turned his head enough for you to catch the hard edge of his profile and the blond strand hanging near his temple.
“Stay close,” he said again.
“Alright,” you swallowed and managed, though it came out smaller than you meant it to, more breath than voice.
You kept so near behind him that every step made you aware of his size, eyes snagging lower where there was a hatchet secured against the lower side of his back.
Its edge was darkened by fresh blood near the tip, sitting against the tight grey fabric stretched over his hips and thighs, making the contrast almost unfair. His pants fit too well not to notice, hugging the powerful build of his lower body in a way that made every shift of his bulky frame the more eye-catching.
He kept moving, gun raised and light steady.
“So,” he murmured after a few silent steps, his whisper pitched dry with sarcasm, “this one of your doctor’s therapy side effects?”
You stared at the line of his shoulders under the tight shirt and stuttered a little when you answered. “I—I don’t know anything. I swear. They never told me anything.”
He made a quiet noise that might have been acknowledgment.
“You can keep going?” he asked without looking back.
Terror had your heart in a fist, hands still shaking and the shard of broken bottle you’d picked up downstairs now dug cold and awkward against your palm.
“Yes,” you whispered. “I can do it.”
A tiny chuckle, more vibration than voice, nearly lost under the hum of the flashlight and the far-off alarms.
Due to him having his back to you, you caught only the edge of it.
“Good,” he said. “Lucky for you, you’re cute. Makes you easier to trust.”
Heat flooded up your neck and into your cheeks so fast it almost hurt. In the dark you were grateful he couldn’t fully see it, though part of you suspected he knew anyway.
“Are you a cop?” In a hushed voice, because your brain had found the first thing it could grasp.
His shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly and then a short laugh escaped him, dry and worn.
You remembered one of the patients on your floor with bandages around his eyes after an incident the staff always retold with too much relish.
He had attacked a police officer during some uncontrollable episode years ago and afterward, before they sedated him, had rambled to you about what cops looked like after asking him what they were and he had laughed so hard he cried.
“Used to be,” he whispered back, missing the way his face tightened briefly at that.
Nothing in his tone invited more questions and you understood that clearly enough.
Farther ahead, the corridor opened near an alcove where one of the wall switches or breaker panels had malfunctioned. The overhead lights there flickered on and off in erratic rhythm.
In the center of that broken strobe stood a figure wearing elegant clothes, skin the same dead, water-swollen gray as the others.
“Turn them off,” he rasped.
Click.
“Too bright...”
Click.
“Turn them off turn them off turnthemoff.”
Each flicker constantly made his frame twitch.
Leon’s arm shot out across your chest without looking, a silent bar of muscle halting you instantly.
Stay.
The message came through even before the slight angle of his hand reinforced it.
He slipped forward silently, flashlight beam dropping enough to keep from flashing directly across the zombie’s ruined face.
The hatchet came free from his lower back in one smooth pull while the zombie kept clicking the switch before Leon drove the weapon into the side of its neck.
Not a clean chop but a brutal sinking bite that buried steel into stiff tissue and half through the vertebrae. The zombie convulsed, fingers spasming on the switch so the lights flashed madly and Leon planted his weight, bicep swelling hard beneath the fabric as he forced the wound wider, using leverage and pressure as a tearing crack came, then the head came off.
It separated in a nauseating burst of blood and ruptured tissue, a geyser of dark arterial spray blasted upward from the stump in a violent fountain, pattering the wall, switch panel and floor. The body remained standing for the smallest impossible fraction of a second, pumping blood into the air from a neck attached to nothing, then folded and crashed sideways into the wall before sliding to the ground in a twitching heap.
Leon flicked the hatchet down to shake some of the blood free, then gave a tiny curl of two fingers without even really looking back at you, absurdly casual for a man who had just decapitated a once-human being with one arm.
Hurrying after him, carefully stepping around the corpse. Even on the floor the body still twitched, muscles spasming in ugly little aftershocks as trapped chemical energy and dying nervous discharge rippled through tissue that had not yet accepted it was finished.
“Do you know where Gideon’s office is?” he asked, not turning around, pistol staying raised and flashlight beam drifted with every measured step.
The tight shirt clung to his back in darkened patches where rain and blood had soaked in, shoulders broad enough to block half the hall. Each time he extended the gun, the muscles in his arm and chest shifted under the fabric with dense, heavy definition, bicep flexing as he adjusted his grip, large enough that the pistol in his hand looked almost secondary.
Nothing about him looked soft and yet he had checked your injuries twice already and kept placing himself between you and every horror in this building.
“Do you think Dr. Gideon is involved in this?” Asked after a moment of hesitation.
He turned his head just enough for you to catch part of his profile, lock of blond hair falling down the side of his face, brushing the stubble at his cheek with the motion.
“How about,” he murmured, thick with sarcasm, “for now I ask the questions and you answer them?”
That shut you up immediately, focusing instead on remembering on the times you had been brought through upper levels under escort or the few escape attempts that had made it farther than they should have.
“Top floor,” you said at last. “I saw him there before. Near the upper offices.”
Leon gave a quick nod and kept going, flashlight carving a narrow visible path through the suffocating dark.
After another stretch of hall, he tilted his head slightly and touched something at his ear.
“Sherry,” he said. “I’m getting close to Gideon’s office. Maybe I find something there.”
A woman’s voice answered in your earless emptiness, crisp and controlled, carrying the faint backdrop chatter of keys tapping quickly somewhere far away. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask me to find it for you.”
No speaker on the wall or person in sight, just the small device in Leon’s ear.
Leon glanced sideways and found you already staring at him with open curiosity, mouth of his edging up a fraction.
“Managed to find someone to help me out,” he said.
“You found someone in that facility who isn’t infected?” Sherry asked with genuine confusion.
Leon grunted approval. “Got there in time.” His side glance flicked over you once, warm and wicked in a way that made your stomach jump. “Saved the most handsome one, too. Honestly, if he’d turned, I probably wouldn’t have minded him jumping on me.”
Your gaze dropped so fast it almost hurt your neck, heat slamming across your face again while staring very intently at the floor as you followed him, gripping your pathetic glass shard harder than necessary.
Over the comm, Sherry made a quiet sound of disgust that still somehow carried amusement under it. “That is absolutely not the update I was looking for.”
You could practically hear the small scoff and the headshake behind her words, somehow even you could tell she was smiling despite herself.
“Contact me if you find anything,” she said and the line clicked dead.
The stairwell entrance came into view ahead, its push-bar door half open and emergency lights bleeding thin red along the frame.
Leon stepped toward it first, then a huge hand shot out from the darkness behind and lifted you clean off the ground.
One moment your feet were on the floor, the next your body was dragged backward against a mass of strength so overwhelming it made panic white-hot and immediate. The shard of glass nearly fell from your hand as fingers clamped around your upper torso and pinned your arms awkwardly as you kicked uselessly in empty air.
Dr. Gideon didn’t change into one of the mindless dead exactly, there seemed to be the same sight of the infection on his whole body but retrained his intelligence. He had always been tall, now the corruption seemed to exaggerate it, making him loom with grotesque emphasis.
Veins dark as spilled ink climbed the side of his neck and vanished beneath the collar of that torn coat, skin gone ashen and uneven, split at the temple, drawn tight over sharper bones.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked you first, rotten breath still carrying the dry, educated cadence you knew, only now threaded with something spoiled.
Then his eyes cut to Leon.
“And Mr. Kennedy,” he said, almost pleasantly. “You shouldn’t take other people’s things without asking first.”
Your whole body flooded with adrenaline so hard your vision narrowed, without thinking, you drove the sharp broken bottle neck backward into his arm.
It punched into the flesh above his wrist with a wet crunch and sank deeper than you expected. Gideon hissed, but not in pain, more annoyance, grip barely loosening.
Leon’s magnum shot cracked through the hall with force as the round hit Gideon in the head and snapped it violently backward, the impact so brutal you heard it before you fully understood it. Blood burst outward in a thick arc, droplets and heavier spatters painting the wall. Gideon’s hold failed all at once and you dropped hard to the floor, catching yourself badly on one arm, pain flaring hot from wrist to elbow as your shoulder jarred.
Scrambling up immediately and ran straight to Leon’s side as he was already sighting the gun again, stance squared, expression gone glacial.
The barrel smoked faintly in the flashlight beam.
"Sorry, doc. Guess that answers the custody question."
Said doctor answered with a roar, wound on his head knitted not perfectly but unfairly fast. Torn flesh shivered and pulled together, cratered ruin of bone sealed beneath a fresh spill of blood that cascaded down his face in dark streams.
Leon fired again.
The second shot from the magnum punched Gideon back a step, chest twisting with the force.
Then Leon turned his head sharply toward you.
“Run,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Running out of the hallway and into the bright white spill of the main lobby higher floor abruptly after the corridor’s suffocating dark, polished floors flashed beneath your feet.
Then metal bars dropped behind over the path you had taken in a thunderous sequence.
You spun just in time to see the hallway begin to close off even further as a reinforced wall panel descended from above.
Leon was still on the other side.
He had turned at the sound, Gideon somewhere beyond him in the dark passage. For one sliver of a moment, before the closing barrier cut him away, his gaze found yours through the narrowing gap, tension hardening around his eyes in concern before the wall sealed shut.
Suddenly, completely, you were alone.