The hatch opened into the parking garage.
Leon came through first, good shoulder driving the mechanism, the sound of it too loud in the shaft. He held position at the top of the ladder for three seconds before pulling himself through — came up in a crouch, gun up, scanning before his feet found the floor.
Concrete. Low ceiling. Oil in the air and something underneath it that didn't belong. Emergency lighting along the upper wall, red and weak — enough to shape the space, not enough to trust it. A ticket machine near the far wall, dark. Beside it, a rolling shutter door, metal slats, all the way down. Support columns at intervals. Old staining in the concrete where vehicles had been for a long time and then weren't.
Nothing here now.
Too quiet in the specific way of places that had been empty for the wrong amount of time.
He looked back through the hatch.
She was at the base of the ladder, watching him. Waiting, reading him for the answer to whether the space was safe enough to enter.
"Come on."
She climbed. He helped her through the last section and she landed beside him and immediately began reading the garage for herself, eyes moving in that slow deliberate way she had.
Leon moved to the shutter.
Dead panel. Dead reader. Dead machine. He pressed the button anyway. Tried the keycard. Hit the panel once with his palm, not expecting anything, just closing the option.
Nothing.
He looked at the ticket machine. Blank screen. Locked arm.
He was still looking at it when he heard the scratching.
Low. Distant. East corridor. A sound between claws and metal, irregular, moving closer in the way of something that hadn't decided to move fast yet.
Leon stepped back from the shutter and put himself between the sound and the girl without thinking about it, gun shifting toward the corridor mouth.
The growl came a second later. Wet. Wrong.
Then the first dog hit the turn at full speed — claws throwing sparks off the concrete, already committed to the direction before it entered the garage. Leon fired once. The round landed and the animal dropped, skidding hard.
The second came through before the first had stopped moving.
He turned, fired, missed, corrected, fired again. Too close — he had to give ground to keep from getting tangled in it.
The third came through low and fast and didn't go for him.
It went past him.
He turned and the angle was wrong immediately — she was behind him and to the right, the dog already between them, and he brought the gun up and found no shot worth taking—
A single shot from his left.
The dog dropped two feet from her and stayed down.
Leon turned.
A woman stood at the side entrance he hadn't cleared — personnel door, east wall, hanging open behind her. Brown trench coat, collar up. Dark hair, layered and uneven, falling loose around her face. Sunglasses that had no business being worn this deep underground and that she hadn't taken off. Weapon already lowered from the shot.
He raised his.
She didn't raise hers.
"You missed one," she said.
"Don't move." A beat. "Who are you."
"FBI."
That was all.
Leon scanned her — the coat, the weapon, the heels she was wearing in a collapsing city with the fluency of someone who had never considered them a limitation. She didn't move like someone who had just walked into this.
"They issue those now?"
Something moved in her expression. Controlled. "Only on special assignments."
Her gaze shifted.
Not to him.
To the girl.
The arm. The bandage. The blood that had dried through it.
"She was bitten," she said.
Not a question.
The girl moved then — not away, but behind Leon, close enough that he felt her hand catch the back of his jacket and stay there.
He didn't look back.
The woman's head tilted slightly toward the movement. The gun came up again. Not fully. Just enough. She didn't look at Leon when she did it.
He raised his own gun.
"She's with me."
He held the barrel steady.
"You said FBI."
A beat.
"So what is this?"
No answer.
Leon's jaw tightened.
"What happened here?"
Still nothing.
A step closer.
"Who did this?"
The woman looked at him a second longer. Then the gun came down. Not holstered. Lowered.
"Birkin," Leon said.
That got a pause. Small. But there.
"You know that name."
"I know enough."
Silence.
She looked at the girl longer than she should have. Her attention stayed there a fraction too long. Then she turned toward the side entrance.
"Don't stay here," she said.
She stopped at the doorway. Turned toward the girl one more time. The sunglasses giving nothing.
Then she left.
The door closed behind her.
Leon stood in the red-tinted quiet and held what he had — a name that meant something he hadn't worked out yet, no particular reason to trust any of it, and the specific unresolved weight of someone who had looked at the girl that way and then chosen not to explain why.
He looked at the shutter. The dead panel. The dead machine.
"Stay close," he said.
Her hand stayed at the back of his jacket.
_______________________________
He moved toward the east corridor. She followed.
The corridor was narrower, lower-ceilinged, heavier air. Leon cleared each turn before taking it, shoulder protesting on the swings. The cells appeared gradually — bars on both sides, most empty, some not. Shapes in a few of them, slumped or moving in ways that didn't mean anything useful. He left them where they were.
Then a voice.
"Hey — hey!"
Leon slowed.
A man behind one of the reinforced cells — hands on the bars, face drawn, eyes moving too fast for the rest of him. Alive.
Leon didn't lower the gun. "How long."
"Long enough to know this place is finished." His eyes moved past Leon. Found the girl. Stayed there a moment. Something shifted in his expression — not fear, not quite. Recognition of something that didn't fit. He didn't comment on it. "You RPD?"
"Leon Kennedy. Yeah."
The man let out something that might have been a laugh. "Ben Bertolucci. Reporter." He shifted his grip on the bars. "Chief Irons locked me in. Called it protective custody." A beat. "Didn't put anything else in here with me."
"From what."
"Umbrella. I got too close to the story." He glanced down the corridor, then back. "Whatever they were working on — it got out."
"I've seen it."
Ben studied him for a second. Then nodded once, quietly. "Yeah. You look like you have."
His eyes moved to the girl. Stayed.
"She bit?" he asked.
Leon didn't answer.
Ben exhaled. "…Yeah. Figured."
A sound reached Leon before he understood it.
Heel against concrete.
Sharp. Measured. Once — then again, moving down the corridor from behind him with the specific unhurried rhythm of someone who had already decided what they were doing and found the pace adequate.
He turned.
She was already there.
Brown trench coat. Sunglasses. Heels finding concrete like the surface had agreed to cooperate.
Ben's hands tightened on the bars.
"You." A beat. "Took you long enough."
She looked at him.
"Give me the tape."
"Not happening."
"You're not in a position to negotiate."
Ben's jaw set. "And you're not in a position to get it."
"I can open that door," she said. "Or I can leave you in it."
Not loud. Not emotional. Just fact.
Leon stepped forward. "Enough." His gun up — more warning than aim. "What tape."
Her attention shifted.
Not to Leon.
To the girl.
She watched her — the stillness of her, the hand still at the back of Leon's jacket, the way she wasn't scanning for exits but simply staying where she had chosen to stay. Not performing calm. Just calm. In a situation that didn't allow for it.
Her head tilted. Not toward Leon — toward the girl. Then back to Ben.
"Give me the tape."
Ben held the silence. Then reached into his jacket and produced a recorder — small, battered, used. He held it up.
"You want answers," he said. "Listen."
He pressed play.
Static. Then a voice — female, controlled, the flatness of someone keeping something out of it by force.
"…but that doesn't explain the rumors about the orphanage—"
"You told me this interview was about the scholarship."
"Come on, Annette. Nobody cares about that. They want to know about the G-virus and—"
The girl went still.
Not the stillness she used when she was reading something.
Different.
Leon felt the change before he looked. The hand at his jacket tightened once.
Ada didn't look at him.
She was watching the girl.
"Where did you hear that?"
"…and that sinkhole. The one that goes straight to your underground lab—"
"This interview is over."
A pause.
"…Bitch."
The recording cut.
The corridor held the silence it left behind.
Ben lowered the recorder. "That's what got me locked up. Started pulling on the wrong thread." He looked at Leon, then at the space past her shoulder. "Irons knew. Umbrella knew. Whatever was under this city — when it started going wrong, nobody stopped it. They just started sealing people away from it."
Leon looked at her.
She paused. Just long enough to matter.
"Annette," he said. "You know her."
"I know enough."
Her attention moved back to the girl one last time. Held there. The sunglasses giving nothing. The pause giving everything it needed to.
"She won't last," She said.
Leon watched her.
"You got a name?"
A beat.
"Ada."
She turned slightly.
"Ada Wong."
Then the sound of her heels on the concrete — measured, unhurried — moving away down the corridor without looking back.
Then gone.
The silence settled back in.
Ben looked between Leon and the empty corridor.
"Friend of yours?"
"No."
Leon looked at the recorder in Ben's hand. At the bars. At the dead systems keeping everything locked in place.
"The power," he said. "Where."
Ben nodded slowly. "Generator room. Further down." He held up the recorder. "You get me out of here — this goes with you."
Leon held his gaze. Did the accounting. Then nodded once.
He turned.
She was still close behind his left shoulder — hand at the back of his jacket, exactly where she'd placed herself when the shooting stopped, watching him with the attending stillness she used when she'd finished reading something and was waiting for the next thing to read.
"Stay close," he said.
He moved. She followed.
Behind them, somewhere deeper in the station, something that had been William Birkin continued becoming whatever it was going to be next.
_______________________________________
Special thanks to Zaheer_Ali_Khan_6774 and ustin_Lawyer_6808 for the recent powerstones—really appreciate the support.
Quick question for you all—when would you like to see Jill and Carlos return? Her storyline will connect with Leon's, but there are still a few things to set up first. Curious what you think.