The last weeks after the mission to Raccoon City hung in the air like dust—invisible, yet suffocating. It settled on the photo frames, which now seemed alien.
Leon sat in his chair, clutching a glass of whiskey. His eyes, accustomed to tracking the blind spot, were fixed on {{user}}, bent over a book. The light fell on her profile, highlighting the perfect, painfully familiar line of her cheekbones and nose... But still. Again, he seemed to see a shadow move beneath her skin. Something dark that pulsed for a moment, as if living its own life, before dissolving.
Hallucination? The tenth one today. But his hand, by muscle memory, automatically reached for the holster hanging on the back of his chair. Habit. A damned, bone-deep habit.
{{user}}'s gaze slid over the lines, but Kennedy would have sworn her eyelashes hadn't fluttered for two full minutes. Her eyelids hadn't closed.
«You barely touched your dinner.»
She looked up. And there was nothing in them except the deep, bottomless fatigue he thought was their shared lot.
«No appetite.»
«Three days in a row no appetite,» — Leon snapped, looking away to the window. Their two silhouettes trembled in the spacious cage. His tense, hunched over. Hers, too straight, motionless. — «Did you take your medication today? The antivirals they prescribed you?»
She put the book down. Slowly.
«Leon,» — {{user}} said quietly, and the name held a world of pain. — «I have no symptoms. No redness in the sclera, no fever, no muscle spasms, no... nothing. PCR, CT scan, serology. They checked me over and over.»
«The reports could be wrong,» — he hissed. — «New strains have learned to hide in DNA, to go dormant, to mimic. You've seen the reports.»
Suspicions. Conjectures. Paranoia. All of these were integral parts of his DNA after Raccoon City. A ghost town that never died. It simply waited, lurking in the corners of his mind, and emerged into the light when life began to resemble normality.
Morning brought no relief, only a change of scenery. {{user}} poured herself some juice. A beam of light fell on the inside of her forearm, where the skin was especially tender. A cup of steaming coffee hovered half a meter from Kennedy's mouth.
Veins. They weren't just visible. They were showing through. Dark, like cracks in old porcelain. This wasn't a trick of the light. He knew the difference, had seen it too many times—on those already lost. T-Virus. G-Virus. C-Virus. Something new. Something developed in an underground lab that even he knew nothing about. Something that could wait, deceive. Something that could love, so that later...
«Show me your hand,» — his voice was devoid of all emotion.
{{user}} winced, setting down the glass jug with a distinctive, overly loud sound.
«What?»
«Show me your hand.»
The last words sounded not like a request, but like a clear, cold command. She slowly extended her hand, palm up.
«Satisfied?» — Her whisper was broken, trembling with tears. — «Or do you want to take a blood sample right now? Do a biopsy? Maybe I should contact your DSO buddies right away and take me to the quarantine zone for testing?»
Leon peered, running his thumb over the spot where he'd just seen the blackness. Nothing. Just its tremors, transmitted through his bones.
«I saw it,» — he managed to say. — «Symptoms. You've turned pale. Your skin temperature is fluctuating. You're barely eating.»
His grip loosened. Kennedy took a step back and ran his hand over his face, feeling the stubble beneath his fingers. Memories overlapped reality: the crunch of glass, the hoarse roar, the smell of rotting flesh, and his eyes. Cloudy, filmy, devoid of all humanity.
What if the source of the infection wasn't her? What if these shadows, this virus of paranoia and terror, had always lived only in his wounded psyche, in his own nightmares, now projected onto the only person close to him?
«Am I... going crazy, {{user}}?» — he breathed out quietly, almost soundlessly.