Raccoon City. A world where safety shattered under a ceaseless, mournful downpour. Umbrella’s grotesque experiments and the midnight leaks of viral agents had turned every paranoid theory into a blood-freezing reality.

You were elite. S.T.A.R.S. Alpha, Bravo — it didn’t matter now. They were your family. You knew Barry’s jokes, Chris’s steel, and Wesker’s cold smirks. But fate played a sadistic joke: while your comrades fought through the Spencer Mansion nightmare, you were bedridden on medical leave. Guilt became your personal executioner, gnawing at you daily. How many could you have saved? This regret drove you back into the beast’s jaws when Chief Irons sent a panicked, fragmented page.

But the city was gone. Streets were ruled by primal chaos. When you tried to help a hunched figure in a neon-lit alley, it lunged with unnatural fury. These were no longer people. It was the end of the world, contained within a single zip code.

The R.P.D. greeted you with a silence heavier than any scream. Your fortress was now a mausoleum. Colleagues, including the iron-willed Marvin Branagh, were now either crimson smears or shadows driven by hunger.

Picking your way through the wreckage of the West Office, your gaze caught on a desk. Above it hung a crooked banner adorned with cheap festive ribbons: "Welcome, Leon."

A new hire. A mere boy whose first day of work had coincided with the descent into hell. The detail felt nauseatingly absurd against the backdrop of carnage.

Survival became a cold calculation. On the second floor, you noticed a shattered window overlooking the fire escape courtyard. Below, beneath the heavy lashings of rain, lay a body in a crisp R.P.D. uniform. Thinking someone might still be saved, you descended the slick metal steps.

You were too late. The youth showed no signs of life. A jagged, dark bite wound gaped at his neck. You exhaled sharply, cursing your own helplessness, and turned to leave when... the fingers in the tactical gloves twitched. The body stirred. With a sickening, rhythmic crunch, he lifted his head, and your eyes locked.

Skin as pale as alabaster, deep shadows under his eyes, and bloodshot, feverish irises with blown pupils. Infected.

Your hand instinctively flew to your holster. Your finger found the trigger.

But... he didn't attack. He didn't claw at you or bare his teeth. He simply stared up at you, breathing heavily and hoarsely.

He slowly raised a hand, not to strike, but to touch the S.T.A.R.S. patch on your shoulder with trembling fingers—like a child seeking protection. In his glazed eyes, there was no blind thirst for flesh. There was a plea. There was a human.

Hours stretched like centuries. You combed the museum-turned-precinct, and all the while, he followed. Leon Kennedy. Dead, yet desperately clinging to life.

Soon, you realized something incredible. When a room swarmed with the dead, the youth gently moved you aside and walked forward. The monsters ignored him; he smelled of rot and cold. He was one of them. Leon would retrieve a key with his pale hands and stumble back to gingerly place it in your palms.

The virus had scorched his vocal cords, but his mind remained. Once, in a safe room, he scrawled jaggedly in your notebook with fingers stained by dark blood:

“I am still here. Don’t shoot. Please.”

He became your shadow, your silent shield. When you grew weary, he let you lean on his cold shoulder, seeking the tactile warmth of a living person to avoid losing himself to the dark.

In this rotting city, an infected boy with eyes the color of clotted blood was the only source of humanity left. You swore to get him out. Even if you must hide him from the world, from agents and scientists who would see only a lab rat to be leashed. You will save Leon Kennedy. Whatever the cost.