Leon kept his hand on the door for a moment after it closed, listening past it into the corridor, into whatever distance remained between them and the thing still moving through the station below.
Nothing immediate.
He let go.
The S.T.A.R.S. office had held together better than the rest of the building — desks, equipment, papers still pinned to boards, the particular order of a place that had been interrupted rather than destroyed. Leon guided the girl to the nearest chair and eased her down. She settled without resistance, hands resting loose in her lap, eyes moving across the room in the quiet inventory of someone cataloguing exits.
Marvin checked the door. Checked it again. Then leaned back against the wall instead of sitting, and Leon noted the specific quality of that choice — not rest, just the minimum contact needed to keep himself vertical while he recovered.
The three of them breathed.
Leon dragged a hand across the back of his neck. "Okay," he said, mostly to the floor.
He looked at Marvin. "What the hell was that."
"Not something I've seen before." Marvin's voice was level. The effort behind keeping it level was more visible than it had been an hour ago.
"Yeah." Leon turned back to the girl. "You still with me?"
A small nod.
"Good." He crouched slightly, dropping to her level without closing the distance. "I've been calling you 'hey' for a while now."
Something shifted in her expression. Almost nothing.
"Do you have a name?"
Silence. Her fingers moved slightly against her knee. "…no."
Leon held that for a second. Nodded once. "Okay." A small breath. "Do you mind if I give you one?"
No answer. But she didn't pull away. Her eyes stayed on him with the way she weighed the question before answering.
Leon tilted his head, studying her. "You look like—"
The radio cracked.
Marvin already had it up, adjusting the dial. Static thinned and cleared into a voice — fragmented, mobile, clearly not coming from somewhere stationary.
"—anyone on this channel?"
Leon didn't think. "Claire?"
Dead air for a beat that felt longer than it was.
"Leon?!"
He let out a breath that almost became something else. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here." A small shake of his head. "You okay?"
"Second floor, east side. I had to move." Noise behind her — movement, something falling, the ambient sound of someone who hadn't stopped since the city went dark. "I found someone."
Leon's eyes went briefly to the girl. "Yeah," he said, quieter. "We did too."
A pause. "What?"
"You okay?" he asked instead of answering.
"I'm good. She's — she's okay. Just scared."
He nodded to himself. "Claire."A short pause.
"There's something in this building."He glanced once at Marvin.
"Big," Leon said.A short pause.
"Eight feet, maybe. Black coat. Hat."
His eyes flicked once toward Marvin.
"Skin's… wrong. Grey."
"...it broke through a door."
The line stayed open a second.
"Got it," Claire said.
Marvin stepped in and took the radio. "Stay where you are. We'll—"
The signal cut.
Static.
Marvin lowered the radio. "She didn't sign off."
"No," Leon said. "She didn't."
He turned the fact of it over once and set it aside in the place where he was keeping everything he couldn't act on right now. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out the folded paper from the desk.
He opened it and read it slower this time.
"'Gone for a bit,'" he said. A pause. "'Don't wait up.'" His eyes moved down the page. "'If things don't settle here, check the usual place.'" Another line, shorter. "'They say the weather in Europe is good.'"
He frowned slightly. "That's it?"
Marvin shifted against the wall. "That's more than it looks like."
Leon glanced at him.
"They were pushing something after their last mission," Marvin said. "No one wanted to hear it."
The girl had been watching Marvin for several minutes.
Not Leon. Not the door. Marvin — the way he was holding his side, the way his breathing had gotten shorter since they'd left the corridor, the way he was taking more of his weight from the wall with each passing minute and giving less back. Her head tilted slightly. Something moved behind her eyes that wasn't quite recognition and wasn't quite confusion.
Then she got up from the chair.
"Hey—" Leon started.
She stepped toward Marvin.
Her eyes moved to his side. Then to her own forearm. Then back. Leon tracked the direction of it and understood what was coming a half-second before it happened.
"Don't."
She pressed her fingers into the edge of her wound — not deep, just enough. Dark blood welled at the contact.Marvin saw it a half-second too late.His body shifted on instinct — not away, but enough to break the contact before it happened.She stepped in anyway.Her hand caught the torn fabric at his side.Pressed.
Marvin went rigid. A sharp inhale — not pain, or not only pain, something without a clean category, his whole body going still in the way of a person trying to take an accurate reading of something they don't have language for yet.
Leon got hold of her wrist and pulled her back. Not hard. No room for argument. "That's enough."
She didn't resist. Let herself be moved, her eyes staying on Marvin.
Marvin stayed where he was. One second. Another. His hand pressed into his side, testing, his face doing the careful closed work of a man running an internal inventory he wasn't ready to share.
Then his breathing changed.
Not better. Not easier. Deeper — the specific quality of a body that had been rationing and had just found another gear it hadn't known to use. His shoulders came down a fraction. His weight redistributed slightly from the wall.
He exhaled slowly. "That's new."
"What is?" Leon said.
"It's hitting back harder." Marvin pressed his hand into his side again, still assessing. "The infection. Something's — there's more resistance than there was."
Leon's eyes went to the girl. To the blood drying at the edge of her wound. Back to her face.
"You've seen that before," he said.
She didn't answer. But the question didn't confuse her, and the absence of confusion said enough.
"We're not doing that again," Leon said. Even. Not a negotiation.
She stepped back.
Marvin was still infected. Still injured. His color was wrong and his breathing was costing him more than it should and the stabilization — if that was even the word for it — wasn't a solution and all three of them understood that without needing to say it. But his eyes were sharper. His weight had shifted off the wall by a degree.
Holding.
Leon picked up the shotgun. Ran the check on it by habit, reset it, let the routine of the motion settle his hands. He looked at the girl one more time — the careful stillness of her, the way she was watching him the way you watch something you haven't finished deciding about yet.
"We'll figure the name out later," he said.
Beyond the walls, in the corridor below and the dark spaces connecting the station's bones, something heavy placed one foot down.
Then another.
Measured. Patient.
___________________________________
For her name
I do have one in mind, but I want to see what you come up with first. Drop your suggestions in the comments—I'll be checking.