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2014, Upstate New York

The air inside the cathedral is thick enough to swallow you, a heavy, velvet silence saturated with the scent of melted beeswax and ancient, dust-covered stone. 

Outside, the East Coast gray is drizzling a miserable, cold mist onto the pavement, but in here, the world feels muffled—like you’ve stepped into a tomb.

You’re sitting in the third row of polished oak pews, your head tilted back to track the way the dim light filters through the stained glass. High above, a ceramic saint looks down with an expression of eternal, frozen empathy.

Nice gig if you can get it, you think dryly. Standing on a pedestal all day, getting praised just for looking concerned. 

Despite the snark, there’s a strange, resonant peace in your chest. 

It’s not a religious hum; it’s just the absence of noise. 

For a few years there, the silence used to be your enemy—it was the space where the screams of the people you couldn't save and the cold, wet sound of the lives you’d taken liked to play on loop. 

Back then, you’d looked at the high rafters and wondered if the fall would be quick. 

But that shadow has lifted. You’ve accepted the bill for staying alive.

The soft scuff of leather shoes on stone interrupts your thoughts. A priest, looking like he’s composed of nothing but wrinkles and good intentions, slides into the pew beside you. He doesn't look at you directly, just settles in with a weary sigh that suggests he’s been carrying the sins of the parish all morning.

"Do you need anything, child?" he asks softly. "A confession? A light? Or just a listening ear?"

You offer a small, lopsided smirk, your eyes still fixed on the altar. "Honestly? I just like the ambiance. The acoustics are great for thinking"

The priest chuckles, a dry, papery sound. "It is a sanctuary for many reasons. Tell me... do you believe? In God?"

"I don't," you say, the answer coming out steady and blunt. You turn your head then, meeting his eyes. "And you? I assume the collar means you’re a fan."

"I believe," he says, unfazed by your directness. "I have to. Why don't you?"

"I've spent a lot of time in the dark, Father. I've seen enough raw, pure evil to know that if there is a God, He’s definitely not benevolent." 

You lean back, the wood creaking under your weight. "And I’ve done enough evil myself that if He is just, I’m going straight to hell. It’s better for my sanity to think of this place as a beautiful lie. A nice bit of architecture for people who need to sleep at night."

The priest flinches slightly, his fingers nervously twitching toward the crucifix hanging from his neck. "It is never too late to be saved. Mercy is infinite, if you only ask."

"I don't need saving," you reply, your voice softening into something surprisingly gentle, almost playful. 

You reach out, tracing a scar on your knuckle—a souvenir from a job in Spain you’d rather forget. "I made peace with who I am. I know these hands are never going to be clean. No amount of holy water is washing the blood out of these pores."

The priest’s breath hitches. He looks at your hands, then back at your face, a flicker of genuine bewilderment—maybe even a touch of primal fear—crossing his features. He’s realized he’s not talking to a lost soul; he’s talking to a professional.

"Then why stay?" he whispers, his voice trembling. "If you believe you are damned, why continue?"

"Because someone has to," you say, standing up slowly. You feel the weight of the Glock tucked into the small of your back, a familiar, grounding presence. "Think of it this way: the world is full of sheep, and it's full of wolves. I’m a guard dog. And guard dogs get blood on their fur so the sheep can sleep in peace."

You pull your jacket tight, the cold from the stone floor seeping into your boots. You look at the old man one last time, offering a sharp, knowing grin.

"Keep me in your prayers, Father. For all it's worth." You turn toward the heavy oak doors, the light from the street beginning to spill in. "The guard dog is going on the hunt."

As you walk away, the priest remains frozen in the pew, staring at the empty space where you sat. You step out into the rain, the gray mist hitting your face. You’re stained, you’re tired, and you’re probably going to hell—but as you head out, your step is light. 

The sheep are sleeping, and you’ve got a job to do.

──────•✦•──────

2014, Colorado

The air in this Colorado diner smells like burnt coffee, stale grease, and the slow, agonizing rot of Leon’s own dignity. It's the kind of place where the waitress doesn't ask questions because she’s seen enough misery to fill a textbook.

Leon stares into the amber depths of his glass, his vision slightly blurred. The "static" he once told you about has become a roar, a deafening white noise that only drowns out when he’s three sheets to the wind. 

He’s been here for days—or maybe weeks. Time is a fluid concept when you’re trying to forget the sound of an explosion turning your entire squad into a memory in the middle of Washington, D.C.

Inside me, an animal seethes, he thinks, the glass trembling in his hand. But mostly, it’s just tired. Tired of being the guy who survives the explosion.

The bell over the door jingles, a cheerful sound that feels like a physical insult. He doesn't look up, but he recognizes the heavy, disciplined footfalls. 

Chris Redfield. 

The man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders as if it were a light rucksack. Beside him is Rebecca Chambers, looking far too bright and hopeful for a world that loves to crush people like her.

"Leon," Chris says, his voice like gravel. He slides into the booth opposite him. "You look like hell."

"Thanks, Chris," Leon mutters, finally lifting his gaze. His blue eyes are bloodshot, hooded with a weary, jagged bitterness. "I was going for 'distinguished hermit,' but I guess I missed the mark. What do you want? I'm fresh out of world-saving today."

Chris doesn't mince words. He lays out the file: Glenn Arias. An arms dealer, the A-Virus, a plan to turn the Great Lakes into a petri dish. He describes how Arias escaped a government smartbombing—one meant to end him, but which instead only succeeded in turning his wedding day into a massacre.

Leon lets out a sharp, bark-like laugh that contains zero mirth. "The government bombs a wedding, and I'm supposed to care? I’m supposed to jump back into the meat grinder for the guys who sign the orders?" 

He gestures vaguely at the empty bottles on the table. "I’ve had enough of being the janitor, Chris. Find someone else to mop up the blood."

"Leon, it's not about the government," Rebecca pleads, leaning forward. "It's about the people who are going to die. Arias is using a virus that stays latent until a trigger is released. Thousands of people—"

"People die, Rebecca," Leon interrupts, his voice flat. "That’s the one thing they’re really good at. Especially when guys like us are around."

His mind drifts, unbidden, back to the Amazon. Back to you. 

The dog that weeps after it kills is no better than the dog that doesn't, he thinks. 

He remembers the heat of your skin in that maintenance alcove, the way you looked at him before you vanished into the green. You were right. It’s a meat grinder. And he’s finally decided to stop being the wrench.

"We're done here," Leon says, reaching for his glass. "Go find a hero. I'm just a guy having a drink."

The peace—if you could call this pathetic stupor peace—shatters with the sound of a screeching van outside.

Suddenly, the diner’s front window explodes inward in a shower of glittering glass. Leon’s instincts, honed by years of surviving the impossible, kick in before his brain even registers the threat. He’s off the stool and behind the counter before the first spray of automatic fire shreds the walls.

"So much for a quiet afternoon," he snarls, his hand instinctively reaching for his holster.

A man named Patricio, an informant Leon knows too well, stumbles through the back door, clutching his chest. He’s riddled with holes, his blood painting the floor a bright, mocking red. 

He collapses at Leon’s feet, gasping about Arias, about a kidnapping, about a debt he can’t pay.

"Leon... please..." Patricio wheezes, his eyes rolling back as he bleeds out on the dirty linoleum.

"Damn it, Patricio," Leon mutters as the adrenaline begins to purge the alcohol from his system. 

Great. Now I’m covered in glass and informant blood.

Through the smoke and the chaos, he sees María—Arias’s enforcer—grab Rebecca. Chris is pinned down by heavy fire from a Gatling gun mounted on a truck outside. Before Leon can move, they’re gone, the van peeling away with a screech of tires.

Silence falls over the diner, broken only by the hiss of a punctured soda machine. Leon stands up slowly, his breath coming in ragged hitches. He looks at the dead man on the floor, then at Chris, who is already checking his gear.

The guilt—that old, familiar animal—claws at his ribcage. 

"I really hate my job," Leon mutters, wiping a smear of glass from his cheek. 

He looks at Chris, his gaze hardening into something sharp and dangerous. The drunk is gone; the bloodhound is back. "Fine. Let's go catch this bastard. But I'm choosing the music on the ride to New York."

He feels the weight of the mission settling back onto his shoulders, heavy and certain. He’s back in the grinder. 

But as he steps over the threshold of the ruined diner, he can’t help but wonder if, somewhere out there in the world, you're watching the same horizon.

──────•✦•──────

2014, New York City

The streets of Manhattan have become a literal concrete graveyard, but Leon doesn’t have time to mourn the scenery. The mission has been a blur of high-octane chaos: trucks dispersing the A-Virus trigger gas, the NYPD being eaten alive by their own precincts, and a motorcycle chase that definitely shaved five years off his life. 

He’d spent the last twenty minutes playing a game of chicken with infected Cerberus dogs while weaving a Ducati through gridlocked traffic, eventually using a well-placed grenade to turn a tanker into a very expensive Fourth of July display.

I really need to stop getting into situations where things are chasing me, Leon thinks, his lungs burning as he breaches the side entrance of Arias’s skyscraper. Maybe I’ll take up gardening. Plants don't have teeth. Usually.

He moves through the service corridors, his gun raised. The facility is a maze of glass and cold steel, humming with the quiet, expensive sound of a madman’s ambition. His head is pounding with the remnants of a hangover that has been forcibly evicted by adrenaline.

He rounds a sharp corner, his eyes scanning for the tactical vest of a Silver Dagger or the glint of a zombie’s eye. Instead, he hits a wall of dark, wiry fur.

Two massive, gangly dogs—roughly the size of small ponies and covered in coarse, jet-black coats—hit him with the force of a freight train. Leon’s back slams into the polished floor, the air driven from his lungs in a wheezing grunt. Before he can even reach for his knife, he’s pinned.

The dogs aren't the skinless, mutated horrors he’s used to. They look healthy, powerful, and terrifyingly intelligent. Their jaws are inches from his throat, snapping with a rhythmic, percussive force. He can feel the hot, humid spray of their saliva on his neck, hear the low, vibratory growl that sounds like a chainsaw idling in their chests.

Well, Leon, his inner monologue dryly observes, at least they have fur this time. It’s the little things.

He braces his forearms against their heavy, muscular chests, his heart hammering a frantic, agonizing rhythm against his ribs. The stench of wet fur, iron, and old concrete fills his nose. 

He’s completely pinned, his boots skidding uselessly on the slick floor, every raw tactical instinct screaming that he’s cornered. He’s ready for the bite, the tearing of his flesh, the cold reality of meeting the end of the road in a nameless, windowless hallway inside a madman's skyscraper.

"Striga. Mara. Out."

The voice is calm. It’s cool. It’s a low, raspy velvet sound he hasn't heard in three agonizing years, but it hits him significantly harder than the dogs did.

The two massive beasts immediately cease their throat-vibrating snarling. With a synchronized, fluid grace that speaks of terrifyingly rigorous training, they step back away from his chest. They don't relax, though; they remain coiled like spring steel, their yellow eyes fixed directly on Leon’s throat as if begging for a single, solitary reason to reconsider.

Leon gasps for air, his lungs burning as he pushes himself up onto his elbows. His blond hair is a matted, chaotic mess, a stray lock falling directly over his eyes. He shakes his head to clear his vision, looking up, and the breath he just managed to catch hitches violently in his throat all over again.

You are standing five feet away, silhouetted against the blinding, sterile LED lights of the corporate corridor. You’re aiming a rifle directly at the center of his chest, your grip rock-solid, your posture completely relaxed yet absolute. 

You look exactly the same as the day you vanished, right down to the cold, unreadable expression on your face.

But as Leon’s tracking eyes dial in on the mechanics of the weapon, his tactical brain registers a crucial, glaring detail: your trigger finger is resting flush along the metal receiver, perfectly indexed. You’re holding him under a dead-red sightline, but you aren't preparing to fire. 

It’s a professional’s discipline, but coming from you, it feels like an unspoken mercy.

Leon stares at you, his mind instantly becoming a frantic, messy scramble of stale Colorado bourbon, the suffocating humidity of the Amazonian rain, and the lingering, phantom heat of a desperate kiss he never quite managed to forget.

For the last three years, he had lied to himself. He had sat in dark, dingy bars from D.C. to Tokyo, staring into the amber depths of a glass, telling himself that he wasn't thinking about you. 

He had forced himself to believe that you were just another temporary operational contact, another passing shadow in a life that was already overcrowded with ghosts.

But the truth was a completely different, much uglier beast. 

You plagued his dreams. 

On the rare nights when the nightmares of Raccoon City or Tall Oaks didn't take over, his subconscious would drag him right back to the edge of the Amazon river, back to the heavy scent of tropical rain and the terrifying vulnerability of holding you in the dark. 

He had spent hours wondering if you had even survived the fallout of that syndicate collapse. He had even broken protocol once—just once—and used a secure DSO terminal to run a ghost-search for your known aliases, only to come up with absolute zeros.

It turns out it’s remarkably hard to find an assassin who technically doesn't exist on any government census.

And now, here you stand. 

Right in the middle of a global bio-terror crisis, looking down the sights of a rifle at him. 

Leon feels a wild, toxic mixture of lingering anger swirling in his gut—anger that you had vanished without a trace, anger that you had left him to drown in his own static—but beneath that, dominating everything else, is a profound, suffocating sense of relief. 

You're alive. You're right here.

"You know," Leon starts, his voice a rough, gravelly scrape as he slowly hoists himself up to a sitting position. "Usually, when people haven't seen each other in three years, they start with a 'hello' or maybe a text. The high-caliber rifle feels a little aggressive for a reunion."

You don't lower the weapon, your finger remaining steady against the receiver, but your eyes narrow into a sharp, mocking glint.

"Last time we spoke, Kennedy, you were busy explaining the logistics of federal handcuffs," you reply, your voice cutting through the corridor with a dry, merciless edge. "Forgive me if I skipped the text message. I wasn't sure if you wanted to grab a coffee or read me my rights."

Leon flinches slightly, the lopsided smirk fading from his lips as the ghost of the Amazon rain settles heavily between you. 

He slowly raises his hands, though he doesn't let go of his gun, his fingers hovering near the trigger guard. 

He watches you, his blue eyes searching yours for a spark of the girl in the dark room, or at least a hint that you aren't about to put a bullet in his heart. 

The feral animal in his chest is pacing, but it’s not snarling. It’s curious. It’s hopeful.

"So," Leon says, trying to regain some semblance of his "suave" agent persona while sitting on his ass in front of two giant hounds. "Are we going to do this the hard way, or do I get to stand up before your pets decide I look like a chew toy?"

The metal of your rifle is cool against your palms, a grounding weight as you watch Leon scramble to his feet. He’s a little more ragged than the last time you saw him. The stubble is thicker, the shadows under his eyes have moved in permanently, and he smells faintly of a distillery.

You whistle once, a low, sharp note. Mara and Striga melt back to your flanks, their dark, wiry coats brushing against your tactical trousers. They don't take their eyes off him, but they stop the low-frequency vibration in their chests that usually precedes a buffet.

Leon doesn't waste time. The moment he’s upright, his gun is leveled at your chest. You don't flinch. You just keep your rifle centered on his sternum, your finger resting lazily outside the trigger guard. It’s a standoff—a very familiar, very depressing reunion dance.

Look at him, you think, your inner monologue providing its usual dry commentary. Still charmingly disheveled. Still has the same hairstyle and same haunted eyes. Some things never change. Unfortunately.

"What are you doing here?" Leon demands. 

His voice is hard, the softness from the Amazon buried under layers of professional scar tissue. 

You tilt your head, a ghost of a playful smirk tugging at the corner of your mouth. "Visiting an old client, Kennedy. Just doing some follow-up work. Making sure client satisfaction is high. Turns out, Glenn Arias is a very difficult man to please."

"I'm not in the mood for games," he snaps. He’s wired, his pupils blown wide, the 'static' in his head probably screaming at a volume that would deafen a normal person.

You let out a long, weary sigh and lower your rifle just a fraction, though you keep the barrel angled toward his knees. "I'm here for Arias and Gomez, Leon. They’ve gone far too long without someone putting a sufficient amount of lead in their bodies. Consider me an overdue debt collector."

Leon doesn't lower his gun. He tracks the movement of Mara’s tail with a flick of his eyes before locking back onto you. "And who’s paying the bill this time? The Connections? Or is this another 'exit interview'?"

"Are you trying to figure out whose side I'm on, Leon?" you ask, your voice softening, losing the sarcastic bite. You tilt your head like a curious bird. "Whether I’m the girl you kissed or the monster who killed her father?"

"Can you blame me for asking?" he counters, his grip tightening on the gun. "Last time we did this, you vanished into the jungle after telling me your life story was a body count."

You look at him—look really intently. You see the guilt he’s carrying. You see the weight of the badge he’s still trying to honor, even when the people giving him orders are just as dirty as the ones he’s hunting.

"Neither," you state simply, the playfulness draining away into something cold and absolute. 

You take a step forward, ignoring the way his finger twitches on the trigger guard. Mara and Striga move with you, two shadows at your heels.

"The government bombs a wedding to take out one arms dealer, and they call it 'collateral damage,'" you say, your voice low and vibrating with a quiet, fierce empathy. "Arias uses a virus to turn a city into a graveyard for revenge, and he calls it 'justice.' To me? It’s all the same meat grinder. I’m just here to put a stop to it before more innocent people are killed.."

You stop just a few feet from him, the muzzle of his gun inches from your heart.

"I’m a violent dog, Leon. I told you that. But even a violent dog knows when to protect the flock."

The silence in the corridor is heavy, broken only by the distant, muffled sounds of the chaos outside and the steady breathing of your hounds. You watch the conflict play out behind Leon’s eyes—the soldier battling the man, the trauma battling the memory of the woman he met in the jungle.

Slowly, painfully, the tension leaves his shoulders. He exhales a breath that sounds like it’s been trapped in his lungs for three years. He lowers the gun, the barrel pointing at the floor.

"You really have a knack for showing up when things are at their worst," he mutters, a tired, lopsided smirk finally breaking through his mask. It’s the Kennedy you remember—awkward, slightly cheesy, and stubbornly good.

"It’s a gift," you chirp, the sarcasm returning like a familiar old friend. "I’m like a guardian angel, but with two very hungry dogs. You look like you could use a hand, hero. Or at least someone to tell you your hair is a mess."

Leon huffs a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. "I've been a little busy. If I'd known you were coming, I would've brought treats. For the dogs. Not for you."

"For sure," you tease, whistling for the hounds to sit. "Now, are we going to stand here all day or are we getting the job done?”

The last of the apex BOWs hits the floor with a wet, heavy thud, its chitinous armor steaming as life leaves it. 

Leon stands over the carcass, his chest heaving, the air in the lab tasting like copper and spent gunpowder. He waits for the usual post-combat adrenaline dip, the one where he makes a cheesy joke about needing a vacation or a very large pizza.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, Konstantin’s words are looping in his brain like a scratched record. Prodigal daughter. Kennel. Lapdog.The words are a corrosive acid eating through the fragile trust he’d built over the last few hours.

Krauser. Ada. Every time he lets himself believe there’s an "angel" in this hellscape, it turns out to be another operative with a hidden agenda and a blood-soaked resume.

God, Leon, his brain snarls, bitter and jagged. You really are the patron saint of lost causes, aren't you? A pretty girl drops from a tree, saves your life, and kisses you like she means it, and you just... forget. You forget that in this world, angels don't carry rifles.

He looks at you, and for a second, he doesn't see the woman who patched his side. He sees a plant. An asset. A ghost designed to lead him exactly where the Connections wanted him. 

The feral animal in his chest finally snaps its leash.

He moves with a sudden, violent speed that surprises even him. Before you can even lower your rifle, he has you by the tactical vest. He slams you backward against the reinforced concrete wall with a bone-jarring force that knocks the wind out of your lungs. 

The metallic clack of his gun’s hammer cocking is the only sound in the sudden silence of the lab.

The barrel of the gun is pressed firmly, bruisingly, against your temple.

Leon’s blue eyes are dark, the pupils blown wide with a cocktail of betrayal and raw, unadulterated fury. His breath comes in hot, ragged gasps against your face. 

The charming, awkward federal agent is gone, replaced by the man who survived Raccoon City by becoming just as dangerous as the things hunting him.

"Give me one reason," Leon hisses, his voice a jagged edge. "Just one reason I shouldn't just shoot you right now and save the DSO the paperwork of a trial."

He’s shaking—not with fear, but with the sheer effort of not pulling the trigger. His mind is a flash-reel of betrayals. 

I actually kissed you, he thinks, the memory now tasting like poison. I thought you were the one good thing left in this swamp.

"Was it all an act?" he snarls, his grip on your vest tightening. "The 'Laika' story? The empathy for the test subjects? Or were you just checking my pulse to see how easy it would be to stop it?"

You don't fight him. You don't reach for the knife at your hip or try to sweep his leg. You just lean back against the cold wall, looking straight into the barrel of his gun with an expression that isn't fear—it's a devastating, weary acceptance.

"There isn't one," you say quietly. Your voice is steady, blunt, and devoid of the playful armor you’ve worn all night.

The lack of resistance throws him. He wants you to lie. He wants you to plead. He wants a reason to stay angry so he doesn't have to feel the hollow ache of disappointment.

"The Connections found me when I was eight," you start, your gaze never wavering from his. "Moscow. I was starving, and Konstantin offered me chocolate. By the time I was twelve, I was learning how to snap a neck. By sixteen, they’d burned off my fingerprints so I wouldn't leave a ghost behind."

Leon’s jaw tightens. A ghost. 

"I was their best asset," you continue, the words falling like stones into a well. "I’ve killed more people than you’ve probably seen in your worst nightmares, Leon. Politicians, whistleblowers, rivals. I was the blade the Kaiser used to carve his empire.”

The barrel of Leon’s gun is cold against your temple, but the heat radiating from his rage is hotter. You look past the steel, into those blue eyes that are currently drowning in a decade’s worth of betrayal.

"You want the truth, Kennedy?" you ask, your voice raspy but even.

You let your mind drift back to the moment the leash snapped.

──────•✦•──────

2009, Prague

The wind in Prague bites your cheeks painfully. 

You’re lying prone on a rooftop, the stone beneath you leaching the warmth from your bones. Your sniper rifle is an extension of your body, the crosshairs settled comfortably on a man’s chest as he scurries toward the embassy. He’s a whistleblower—a loose thread in the Kaiser’s tapestry.

Target acquired, your inner monologue notes with its usual clinical boredom. One pull of the finger, and I can go find some hot goulash.

“Ghost. Take the shot,” Konstantin's voice hisses in your earpiece, cold and expectant.

Your finger tightens. 

Then, the man stops. He reaches down, and a little girl—maybe five, with pigtails and a coat too thin for the snow—grabs his hand. He picks her up, tucking her head into his shoulder to shield her from the biting wind. 

He looks at her with a desperate, frantic love.

In that second, the wall in your head—the one that keeps the Moscow orphan locked away— shatters. into a million pieces. You see the hand that fed you the chocolate and the hand that held the leash.

“Ghost. Take the shot,” Konstantin snaps, his tone darkening into a threat.

The crosshairs hover over the girl’s temple as she clings to her father. If the bullet over-penetrates... if he stumbles...

“No,” you say. The word is small, but it feels like an earthquake.

“What did you say to me?” Konstantin hisses.

“I said no.” You sit up, the cold wind whipping your hair across your face. 

You reach up, rip the earpiece out, and grind it under the heel of your boot. The silence that follows is the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. 

That was the day the Ghost stopped taking orders, and the day you signed your own death warrant.

──────•✦•──────

2009, Berlin

Retaliation comes three weeks later in Berlin. The Kaiser doesn't do "conscious uncoupling."

You’re in a safehouse that smells of peeling wallpaper and cabbage when the door splinters. 

The assassin is one of the Kaiser’s "Elite Hounds"—augmented, faster than a human has any right to be. He’s on you before you can reach the pistol under your pillow.

A combat knife sinks into your thigh. The pain is a white-hot spike, but you don't scream. Screaming is for people who still think someone is coming to save them.

You don't pull away. You lean into the blade, using the proximity to drive your own thumb into his eye socket. 

As he howls, you wrench the knife out of your own flesh—the squelch is a sound you’ll never forget—and drive it into the base of his skull.

The fight ends in a spray of crimson across the floral wallpaper. You’re shaking, blood pooling around your knee, but the feral animal in you is in total control. 

You find a shipping crate in the basement. You find a fire axe. 

The sickening crunch of bone echoing in the empty house is a rhythm you lean into. You pack his head in ice packs, seal it tight, and write the address of the Kaiser’s personal office in sharp, steady ink.

Before you close the lid shut, you tuck a piece of stationery right on top of the hound’s staring, dead eyes.

Is that the best you've got?

──────•✦•──────

2011, Bolivia

The memory fades, and you’re back in the Amazon, looking at the man who wants to be your hero but is currently your judge.

"He sent them for a year, Leon," you say, your voice regaining its blunt, sarcastic edge. "Killers, cleaners, augmented freaks. He thought I was the one being hunted. He forgot that he’s the one who taught me how to track a scent."

You gesture vaguely to the blood-stained lab around you.

"I smelled the blood. I didn't lose the trail. I found him in his redwood office and I gave him his exit interview." 

You tilt your head, a razor-sharp, playful smile flickering across your lips for just a second—a ghost of the woman he thought he knew. 

"I didn't do it for justice. I didn't do it for the greater good. I did it because I’m a very, very good bloodhound. And I don't like being told what to do."

You look down the barrel of his gun again.

Inside, your heart is a trapped bird, but you keep your gaze steady. You want him to see all of it—the blood, the ice, the head in the box. 

You want him to know that the woman he kissed isn't a victim. 

That you deserve whatever comes next.

Come on, Leon, you think bitterly. Be the Boy Scout. Do the math. Tell me I’m a monster so I can stop pretending I’m anything else.

You tilt your head slightly, the cold steel of the gun’s barrel biting into your skin. "I’m not an angel. I’m a weapon that decided it didn't want to take orders anymore. But that doesn't change what I am. So, shoot me if you think it'd set it right."

Leon stares at you. He sees the cracks he’d noticed earlier, but now they aren't just shadows—they’re canyons. He sees the Moscow girl and the Ghost flickering behind your eyes, and for a terrifying second, he realizes he still sees the woman who kissed him on the catwalk.

Inside me, the animal is tired. It doesn't want to kill you. It just wants to know why everyone I trust is a goddamn tragedy.

"You're an assassin," he says, the words tasting like lead. "A professional killer. And I'm a federal agent. My job is to put people like you in a cage or a grave."

"Then do your job, Leon," you murmur. There’s a flicker of that old, gentle empathy in your eyes—the one that refused to die. "I won't blame you. I'm tired of running from the dirt anyway."

Leon looks at the way you’re standing—defenseless, offering him your life as a way to balance a scale that can never truly be even. 

He thinks about the way you moved in the lab, the way you closed the eyes of the dead experiment. 

You weren't a monster pretending to be human. You were a person who had been forced to be a monster, trying desperately to find your way back.

With a sharp, frustrated growl, Leon pulls the gun away. He doesn't holster it, but he steps back, his shoulders slumping as the violent energy drains out of him, leaving only a bitter, cold residue.

"Damn it," he mutters, looking at the ceiling as if asking for guidance from a God he stopped believing in years ago. "Why can't anything ever be simple? Why can't I just find a girl who works in a bakery?"

He looks at you again, his expression hard and unreadable. The DSO Leon is back, the one who compartmentalizes everything into 'mission-critical' and 'collateral damage.'

"We're done here," he says, his voice flat. "We find Konstantin. We finish the mission. After that... stay out of my sight. If I see you again outside of this jungle, I won't be asking for a reason."

He turns his back on you, a move that is both a dismissal and a terrifying display of lingering, subconscious trust. "Let's go. HR is waiting."

──────•✦•──────

The "silent treatment" from Leon is arguably worse than the gun to the head. After the confession, he doesn't look at you, and you don’t offer any more words. 

You split up near the facility's core—a tactical necessity that feels more like a mutual relief. You go to vent the cooling system; he goes for the man at the center of the web.

Fine, you think, your inner monologue returning to its cynical, jagged roots. He can play the righteous hero, and I’ll play the ghost. It’s a better fit for both of us anyway.

But as the facility begins to groan, the self-destruct sequence wailing like a banshee over the speakers, you find yourself sprinting toward the command deck. 

Not for the mission. Not for the Kaiser’s legacy. For the blond idiot who probably hasn't realized that Konstantin isn't just a man—he’s a prototype.

You reach the upper rafters of the main chamber just in time to see the "DSO's Finest" being used as a human stress ball.

Konstantin is moving too fast for the naked eye, a blur of proto-viral speed. 

He catches Leon’s punch, twists his arm with a sickening pop, and delivers a kick that sends Leon sprawling across the metal grating, coughing up crimson. Konstantin looks younger, his skin shimmering with an iridescent, oily sheen. He looks like the monster he always wanted you to be.

"So much for the government’s protection, Agent Kennedy," Konstantin purrs, stepping over Leon’s battered form. He raises a hand—fingernails elongated into obsidian talons. "In the end, you're just another piece of meat."

Not today, Papa, you think, the ice in your veins turning to liquid fire.

You don't descend; you fall. You hit Konstantin with the full force of your momentum, the impact jarring your teeth. 

But Konstantin isn't the man who raised you anymore; he’s a mountain of viral-enhanced muscle. He doesn't go down. Instead, he catches your waist mid-air and slams you sideways into a steel catwalk railing.

The air leaves your lungs in a pathetic whump. Your ribs scream, and for a second, the world is just a blur of grey and red.

Well, that went gracefully, you think. Next time, try the stairs, you idiot.

Konstantin doesn't give you a second to recover. He lunges, his movements a blurring, insectile twitch. You roll, the cold metal grating of the floor scraping your palms, but you aren't fast enough. 

One of those obsidian talons rakes across your ribs, slicing through your tactical gear like it’s wet paper. You feel the sudden, white-hot sting, followed by the sickeningly warm bloom of blood soaking into your shirt.

"Still slow," Konstantin sneers, his voice a distorted rasp. "I taught you better than that."

You lash out with a kick, your heavy boot connecting with his knee. There’s a satisfying crack, but he barely winces.

He grabs your throat, his grip a vice, and hoists you off your feet. You claw at his hand, your vision spotting. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Leon stirring, reaching for his handgun. You need to buy him ten more seconds. Just ten.

"Look at you," you choke out, a bloody, defiant smirk stretching your lips. "All that power... and you still look... like a cheap... b-movie monster."

Konstantin roars, his face contorting, and he flings you across the room. You crash into a terminal, the plastic shattering against your spine. As you slide to the floor, Konstantin is already on you, pinning you down with a heavy knee to your chest. He raises a jagged piece of debris, ready to drive it through your heart.

"Goodbye, little wolf," he whispers.

Not yet. 

With a snarl, you reach for the hidden sheath at the small of your back. You don't aim for his chest—you know his hide is too thick there. Instead, you wait for him to lean in, for that moment of arrogant triumph.

As he plunges the debris down, you twist. The shard sinks into the floor an inch from your ear, and you use the opening. You roll away and then wrap yourself around his back—the same way he taught you to take down a larger opponent when you were twelve.

Konstantin roars, trying to buck you off, his fingers digging into the open wound in your side.

You hiss through your teeth, the pain nearly blacking you out, but you don't give him the chance to shake you. You reach around, hooking your arm under his chin to wrench his head back, exposing the one spot the virus hasn't fully armored. With your other hand, you drive your combat knife deep into the soft tissue of his throat.

You feel the hot, viral-tainted blood spray across your face, tasting like copper and chemicals. It’s thick and oily, soaking into your skin.

"You should know, Konstantin," you snarl into his ear, your voice a jagged, raw thing, "a violent dog always bites back. Especially when you're the one who taught it to use its teeth."

You twist the blade. A wet, final gurgle escapes him, and the light in his eyes—the eyes that once looked at you with a terrifying, twisted pride—flickers and dies. You drop to the floor as his body slumps, the mastermind becoming just another corpse in a long, exhausting line.

For a second, the world stops. 

You look at your hands, dripping with the blood of the man who gave you books, who gave you chocolate, who gave you a reason to survive while he destroyed your soul. A wave of nausea hits you, so violent you nearly double over.

I killed him, the girl in the dark corner whispers, horrified. I’m a killer. That’s all I am. A violent dog that carves its way out with its teeth.

The adrenaline, which had been a roaring furnace in your veins, suddenly flickers and dies, leaving you with nothing but the cold reality of the hole in your side. 

Your knees don't just buckle; they give out entirely. You hit the floor hard, the metallic grating of the catwalk biting into your skin, but you barely feel it over the rhythmic, wet throb of your pulse in your side.

The world tilts forty-five degrees to the left. The flashing red emergency lights turn the blood on the floor into something black and abyssal.

"Hey... hey!" Leon’s voice, weak and strained, snaps through the fog.

You hear the frantic, uneven scrape of boots and fabric against metal. He’s crawling toward you, his own face a mask of bruises and grime, his breath coming in ragged hitches. He reaches you, his hands—shaking a little, you realize with a distant sort of shock—fumbling at the jagged tear in your vest.

"Stay with me. Talk to me," he commands, his voice rising in a pitch of suppressed panic. 

He presses his palms hard against your side, trying to stem the flow, and the white-hot flare of agony makes your vision go completely white for a heartbeat.

"Careful, Leon," you wheeze, a strained, lopsided smirk tugging at your lips even as you gasp for air. "I know I’m... breathtaking, but usually people wait for the second date to... to get this handsy."

"Shut up," he rasps, his eyes darting frantically over the wound, looking for a way to fix the unfixable. "You’re bleeding too much."

Look at him, you think, watching the way his hair falls over his eyes, the way he’s desperately trying to play the hero even when he can barely sit upright. Always trying to save the girl. Even the one who doesn't want to be saved.

You reach up with a shaking, blood-stained hand and catch his wrist. His pulse is thudding like a trapped bird against your palm.

"Leon. Look at me," you murmur, your voice soft, cutting through his spiral. "It’s... it’s fine. Missed the liver. Missed the kidney. Just a flesh wound... okay, a really deep, annoying flesh wound."

He stares at you, his chest heaving, the concern in his blue eyes slowly receding as your blunt, sarcastic reality pulls him back to the surface. He lets out a shaky, broken breath that might have been a laugh if the situation weren't so dire.

"You're a nightmare," he mutters, though he doesn't pull his hands away.

"I'm a delight, and you know it," you counter, bracing yourself against his shoulder. "Now, help me up. We have about three minutes before this whole place becomes a very expensive crater."

With a grunt that tastes like copper and grit, you haul yourself upward, leaning heavily on him as you stagger to your feet. 

You don't have time to be a person; you only have time to be an asset.

"Can you stand, hero?" you ask, your voice snapping back into its blunt, sarcastic armor as you both begin to limp toward the exit. "Because I really don't want to carry you. You’re heavier than you look."

You grab Leon’s arm, draping it over your shoulder. He’s a mess—his face a map of bruises, his breathing shallow—but he’s alive. 

You drag him through the collapsing corridors, the heat of the impending explosion licking at your heels. You move through the smoke and the fire like a specter, your internal compass guiding you toward the extraction point by sheer muscle memory.

By the time you hit the humid jungle air, the complex behind you vanishes in a blooming, orange mushroom cloud. The shockwave knocks you both to the muddy earth.

You scramble up, breathless, and haul Leon toward the clearing where the DSO chopper is already hovering, its searchlights cutting through the mist. You drop him near the landing skids, the wind from the rotors whipping your hair into a frenzy.

Leon sprawls on the damp earth, his chest heaving. 

He looks up at you, and for a heartbeat, the mask is gone. His expression is a jagged, messy collision of things—lingering anger from the secrets you’ve kept, the sting of betrayal, and confusion. 

But beneath it all, there’s something almost warm, a flickering ember of the connection that nearly burned both of you down in that bunker.

"I should arrest you," he rasps, the words catching in his throat. He tries to push himself up, his muscles trembling with exhaustion. "Right now. I should put you in cuffs and hand you over to the Council."l

Always the Boy Scout, you think, your heart doing a slow, painful twist in your chest. Even when he can barely see straight, he’s still reaching for the badge.

"Probably," you answer simply, your voice carrying over the mechanical scream of the chopper. You don't flinch, standing over him like a ghost made of shadow and silver light.

You offer him a small, blood-smudged smirk—one that doesn't quite reach your eyes. "But let’s be honest, Kennedy. You aren’t exactly in any shape to arrest a toddler, let alone me. By the time you find your handcuffs, I’ll be three zip-codes away and halfway to a hot shower."

And a very long, very quiet cry, your brain adds, though you keep your face a mask of cool, professional detachment.

Leon looks up at you, his blue eyes searching yours, clear of the rage now, filled only with a dazed, aching confusion. He reaches out, his fingers brushing the sleeve of your tactical jacket.

"Wait," he rasps, trying to find the words. "You... we need to talk. The DSO, they can—"

You look down at his hand, then back to his face. The look in his blue eyes is almost enough to make you stay.

 Almost. 

But you know how this story ends if you do, and you’ve never been fond of cages—even the ones with government dental plans.

"Goodbye, Leon," you interrupt, your voice soft—almost gentle. You offer him one last, razor-sharp smile, the kind that masks the fact that you don't actually want to walk away from him. "Try to keep the static down. And maybe stay out of the jungle for a while. It’s bad for the complexion."

You don't give him a chance to respond. You turn and sprint into the wall of green, vanishing before the searchlight can find you again. 

You don't look back. You can’t. You’re a Ghost, a violent dog, a shadow with no fingerprints. 

And as you disappear into the Amazon, the only thing you take with you is the fading heat of his hand on your arm and the bitter, certain knowledge that you’ve finally earned your freedom—and it had come at a steep price.

The deeper you go into Konstantin’s playground, the more the air feels like it’s being sucked out of the room. You round a corner into a room that isn't a lab—not in the biological sense. 

There are no vats here, no dripping fluids. Instead, the walls are lined with sleek, black servers and high-resolution monitors displaying a dizzying array of data.

It’s an archive. But as the screens flicker to life under your touch, you realize they aren't tracking viral loads or mutation rates. They’re tracking people.

"Asset 74-Delta: Psych-evaluation. Disposition: High lethality. Emotional threshold: Minimal."

You freeze, your hand hovering over the keyboard. You know that phrasing. You know that specific, sterile way of grading a human soul as if it were a grade of beef. 

Leon steps up beside you, his shadow falling across the glowing screen. He’s silent for a long moment, his eyes scanning the metrics.

"These aren't BOWs," Leon says, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register. 

He points to a series of grainy surveillance clips playing on a loop—children, no older than ten, being put through grueling tactical drills in a white-walled room. "They're training kids. Indoctrinating them. Turning them into weapons before they even hit puberty."

He hits the desk with the side of his fist, a sudden burst of repressed anger that makes the monitors rattle. "It’s a factory for sociopaths. Look at this... they track 'empathy' like it’s a glitch in the software. Something to be patched out."

Patch it out. Lock the girl in the dark room. Don't look at the eyes. 

The echoes of your own training scream in the back of your mind. You feel a cold, oily slick of sweat break out at the base of your neck. 

You’re standing right next to him, pretending to be a horrified observer, while your own 'grading sheet' is probably sitting in a folder three layers deep in this very system.

"Assassins," Leon spits, the word sounding like a curse. "The Connections... they didn't just steal their lives. They erased them. Imagine the kind of person who could do this to a child."

"Yeah," you murmur, your voice sounding thin even to your own ears. "Hard to imagine."

Liars go to hell, the little girl in the dark corner of your mind whispers. And you're a world-class athlete in the lying department.

You find yourself staring at a specific screen. It shows a list of 'decommissioned' assets. Names that aren't names—just numbers and codenames. 

One of them is Ghost. The status is listed as 'Unknown/Defected.' You stare at the blinking cursor next to the word Ghost, and for a second, the room seems to tilt. 

You can almost feel the weight of the sniper rifle in Prague. You can see the Kaiser’s blood staining your boots.

Leon’s voice saying your name breaks through the fog. You realize you’ve been standing perfectly still for nearly a minute, your eyes fixed on the screen with a thousand-yard stare.

He steps into your line of sight, his brow furrowed with concern. "You’re white as a sheet. You okay? This place is... it’s a lot to take in."

You blink, forcing the little girl back into her room. You offer him a jagged, shaky little smile—the kind that’s mostly teeth and no heart.

"Just having a little flashback to my own career day," you quip, though the sarcasm lacks its usual punch. "I think the guidance counselor forgot to mention 'international assassin' as a viable vocation. Probably would've had better benefits than retail."

Leon doesn't buy it. Not for a second. He doesn't move away; instead, he steps closer, his blue eyes searching yours with a terrifyingly gentle intensity. "You’ve got that look again. The one where you're trying to figure out how much of the world is your fault."

You let out a jagged breath, the weight of the secret in your chest becoming almost unbearable. You’re tired of the mask. You’re tired of the lying.

"I'm just... buried under tons of guilt, Kennedy," you admit, the words tumbling out before you can stop them. You look at your hands, the ones he thinks are so capable. "I'm trying to claw my way out of a very deep hole. Sometimes I think the dirt is just going to keep falling back in."

Leon doesn't say anything for a moment. He doesn't ask what you’ve done. He doesn't ask for a confession. He just reaches out and places a hand on your shoulder. He squeezes, his grip firm and warm, anchoring you to the present.

It’s a simple, human gesture, but in this room full of stolen humanity, it feels like a brand. It feels like he’s claiming you, not as an asset, but as a person.

"We'll claw our way out together," he promises, his voice low and absolute. "I’ve got a shovel, and I’m pretty good at digging. We finish this, we stop Konstantin, and we leave the dirt behind. Both of us."

You look up at him, and for a split second, the cracks in your armor are wide open. You see the sincerity in his eyes, the way he looks at you like you’re something worth saving. It makes you want to scream. It makes you want to run.

He’s promising to help a monster reach the surface, you think bitterly. He’s holding the hand that ended lives.

"You're a real Boy Scout, aren't you, Leon?" you whisper, your voice cracking.

"I try," he says, a hint of a tired, awkward smile appearing. "I think I lost my merit badges somewhere, but I still remember the code."

He lets go of your shoulder, but the warmth remains. 

You turn back to the monitors, your fingers flying across the keys with a renewed, desperate energy. You have to find Konstantin. You have to end this. Because the longer you stay in this room with Leon Kennedy, the more you start to believe that his promise might actually be true—and that is the most dangerous lie of them all.

──────•✦•──────

2001, Singapore 

The world of the high-stakes underground doesn't run on money; it runs on whispered legends, and you’ve spent the last five years becoming the most terrifying bedtime story the cartel bosses have ever heard.

You are currently perched on a narrow, precarious ledge twenty stories above the humid, neon-soaked streets of Singapore. 

Your fingers—miracles of science and steady nerves—don't have prints. The Connections saw to that. They burned them off with acid when you were sixteen, a little "welcome to the team" gift that ensured you’d never leave a trace on a glass or a trigger. 

You are a biological blank space. No past to haunt you, no future to plan for. 

Your target is a human trafficker named Vane, a man who thinks he’s safe behind three layers of reinforced plexiglass and a small army of guards. He’s currently laughing, pouring a glass of champagne that costs more than a decent car.

"Target in sight," you murmur into your comms. Your voice is a low, melodic silk that betrays absolutely nothing of the girl who once cried over a stolen chocolate in Moscow.

"Take him out, Ghost," Konstantin’s voice crackles in your ear, distant and demanding. "The client is getting impatient."

"Impatience is such an ugly trait, Konstantin," you whisper back, your finger resting lightly on the trigger. "Tell them to have another shrimp cocktail. Quality takes time."

You don't think about Vane as a person. If you did, you might wonder if he has a mother, or a dog, or a favorite color. Instead, you look at him as a mathematical problem to be solved. 

Velocity, wind resistance, the rhythmic thrum of his heartbeat. You lock the 'Moscow Girl' in her dark corner, clicking the door shut. She doesn't need to see the way a high-velocity round interacts with a human skull.

You exhale, the world slowing down until you can hear the hum of the neon signs behind you. 

Squeeze.

The rifle kicks—a sharp, familiar punch against your shoulder. Through the scope, you watch the plexiglass spiderweb. Vane’s head snaps back, and the champagne glass shatters against the floor, a spray of gold and crimson. He’s dead before he hits the rug.

"Client satisfied," you mutter, already breaking down the rifle with the mechanical speed and precision of a watchmaker. "Send the wire. I’ve got a date with a bathtub and a very long nap."

You earn your nickname—Ghost—because you leave nothing behind. No DNA, no casings, no witnesses. 

You’ve killed in the gilded ballrooms of Paris, the sweat-soaked jungles of the Congo, and the sterile labs of Umbrella-adjacent startups. 

Your renown grows in the shady corners of the web; people trade stories of the specter who can bypass any biometric lock and vanish into thin air.

But sometimes, when the job is done and you’re sitting in a nameless hotel room staring at your smooth, featureless fingertips, a wave of empathy hits you like a physical blow. You think about the senselessness of it all. 

The body count keeps climbing, a mountain of meat you’ve built for the Kaiser, and for what? A bigger bank account you can’t even use under your own name?

You once spent three hours after a hit in London sitting in a park, watching a woman feed pigeons. 

You’d just put a bullet through a man’s heart three blocks away, and yet, you found yourself wanting to go over and help her pick up a dropped crust of bread. 

The gentle part of you—the part Konstantin tried to patch out of your software—is a stubborn little thing. It refuses to die.

"Ghost, report to safehouse Bravo for debrief," Konstantin’s voice interrupts your thoughts.

"On my way, Papa," you say, the sarcasm a bitter tang on your tongue. "Hope you picked up those books I asked for. I’m starting to think the only thing more boring than killing people is talking about it afterward."

You vanish into the crowd, a beautiful, striking woman that no one actually sees. 

You have no fingerprints, no past, no future. Just a price tag that keeps going up, and a soul that is slowly, quietly, starting to rattle the bars of its cage.

──────•✦•──────

2011, Bolivia

The ventilation control room is a cramped, metallic box that smells of stale air and scorched copper. It’s the first time in hours you haven’t had a firearm grafted to your palm, and the silence that follows the mechanical whir of the fans is almost physical. It presses against your eardrums, heavy and suffocating.

Leon is slumped against a bank of monitors, his head tilted back. The blue light from the screens leaches the color from his skin, making the shadows under his eyes look like bruises. He looks human. Dangerously human.

Careful, your brain whispers. If you look at him too long, you might start thinking this is a team-up and not a slow-motion car crash.

You’re sitting on a stack of floor grates, your legs dangling. To fill the void, you find yourself talking. 

Not about the mission, not about the gore on your boots, but about a dog.

"Have you ever heard of Laika?" you ask. Your voice sounds strange in the small room—softer than you intended.

Leon cracks one eye open, shifting his weight. "The Soviet space dog? Vaguely. High school history or a trivia night I drank through. Why? You planning a career change to the space program?"

You offer a small, jagged smile, but your eyes stay on your hands—those smooth, fingerprint-less tips. "One of the scientists, Vladimir Yazdovsky... he took her home before the launch. He wanted her to play with his kids. He wanted her to have something good before he put her in a metal tin and shot her into the vacuum to suffocate."

Leon frowns, his brow furrowing in that way that makes him look like he’s trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. "That's... grim. Even for you."

"I was just wondering," you continue, leaning back against the wall. "Did the dog think she finally found a home? When she was chasing those kids in the garden, did she think the hunt was over? Or do you think, deep down in those animal instincts, she knew the truth? That the hand giving her the treats was the same one that was going to lock the hatch?"

Leon exhales a long, weary breath. He rubs his face, the stubble rasping against his palm. "It’s just a dog. It was a different time. It was for science. Progress usually requires a sacrifice, even if it’s a shitty one."

The word science hangs in the air like a bad smell.

"Science," you repeat, the word tasting like copper on your tongue. 

You look at the monitors—the ones displaying the twisted, gnarled remains of the people in the laboratory below. 

"That's probably the same justification the people who make these BOWs use. 'It’s for the future. It’s for progress. It’s just a biological asset.'"

Leon shifts, his eyes fully open now, fixed on you. "That's different. We’re talking about monsters. Not a stray off the street."

"Are we?" You tilt your head, your expression playful but your eyes cold. "The Connections pick up strays all the time. They give them names, they give them 'homes,' and then they send them out to see how long they last before they break. It’s all very scientific."

You feel the weight of the feral animal pressing against your ribs. 

You think of the chocolate Konstantin gave you in the snow. You think of the books. You think of the way he called you a good girl after you snapped your first neck.

You’re projecting again, your brain chides. Stop trying to make the government agent feel your feelings. It’s messy.

"The dog that weeps after it kills is no better than the dog that doesn't," you say softly, more to yourself than to him. "It’s still a killer. The tears don't change the body count. They just make the killer feel better about the blood on their fur."

Leon stands up, the leather of his holster creaking. He walks over and stands in front of you, his shadow blotting out the blue light of the monitors. He looks like he wants to say something—something heroic, something very 'Kennedy.'

"You aren't a dog," he says, his voice low and firm.

"Maybe not," you chirp, the sarcasm snapping back into place like a well-oiled bolt. "I’m much more expensive to maintain. And I have better hair."

You hop off the grates, brushing the dust from your trousers. The moment of vulnerability is over, tucked back into the dark corner where it belongs. You grab your rifle, checking the chamber with a satisfying click.

"Come on, Boy Scout," you say, flashing him a razor-sharp smile. "The 'science' isn't going to blow itself up. And I’d hate to keep Konstantin waiting for his performance review."

Leon watches you for a beat longer than necessary, his blue eyes searching yours for the girl who just talked about space dogs. 

You don't let him find her. 

You turn toward the vent, already calculating the distance to the next junction, the violent animal inside you firmly back in control. But as you crawl into the narrow shaft, the heat of his presence behind you feels a lot like a comfort you aren't allowed to have.

──────•✦•──────

The industrial sector of the complex is a vertical nightmare of rusted iron and churning machinery, steam hissing from burst pipes like the breath of some dying titan. Leon tracks your movement as you ghost along the upper catwalk, his brow furrowing. 

He still can’t pin you down. You handle a rifle with the terrifying grace of a professional reaper, yet he’d watched you pause five minutes ago to close the eyes of a failed experiment—a disfigured remains of a man—with a gentleness that felt entirely too real.

Who are you? he wonders, his boots clanging softly on the metal grates. One second you’re a cold-blooded phantom, the next you’re the only person in this hellhole with a pulse that isn't a monster.

The answer is cut short by a structural groan that vibrates through the soles of his boots. From the shadows of the support pillars, a group of Lickers detaches themselves from the ceiling—blind, skinless horrors with tongues like muscular whips. 

They don't scream; they just launch.

"Leon, look out!" you shout, and the world turns into a blur of high-velocity lead and screeching metal.

Leon slides into a crouch, his gun barking as he takes the head off a lunging creature, but the weight of the BOWs slamming into the supports is the final straw for the aging catwalk. 

With a sound like a gunshot, the rusted bolts shear off. The section beneath your feet gives way, tilting violently toward the darkness of the lower pits—a churning sea of "failed" experiments and reaching, rotted hands.

Leon lunges, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

He doesn't think. He doesn't calculate the risk. 

He just throws himself across the widening gap, his fingers locking around your wrist with a grip that could crush bone. With a grunt of pure, stubborn effort, he hauls you upward, his boots skidding on the remaining steady ledge as he yanks you hard against his chest to keep you from sliding back into the abyss.

The impact is jarring. You hit him with a thud of tactical gear and soft breath, and for a long, heavy moment, the only sound is the distant hiss of steam and the frantic thrum of two hearts beating in sync. 

He’s holding you so tight he can feel the heat of your skin through your shirt, your face tucked into the crook of his neck.

Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. It makes the world sharp, high-contrast, and entirely too small.

Leon’s breath is coming in ragged hitches. He looks down at you, his blue eyes wide and dark with a sudden, localized panic that has nothing to do with the monsters. You’re looking up at him, your lips parted, your hair a mess in the dim red emergency lights. 

The proximity is a physical weight, a magnetic pull that he’s too exhausted—and too wired—to fight.

To hell with the mission, the feral animal in his chest whispers. To hell with the static.

He leans in. It’s desperate, a collision of two people trying to prove they’re still alive in a place designed to kill them. When his lips finally crash against yours, he tastes the salt on your skin and the faint, metallic tang of adrenaline, but beneath that, there’s a staggering warmth he wasn’t prepared for.

His hand, still trembling slightly, finds the curve of your jaw, his thumb dragging across your cheek as he tilts your head back to deepen the contact. He groans into the kiss—a low, guttural sound of pure, unadulterated relief—as your tongues tangle in a frantic, messy rhythm that makes his head spin.

For a heartbeat, the jungle, Konstantin, and the DSO don't exist. There is only the scorching pressure of your mouth against his, the soft, broken sound you make against his lips, and the way your fingers curl into the fabric of his tactical vest, pulling him closer as if you’re afraid he’ll turn back into a ghost if you let go.

Then, the "DSO Leon" kicks the "Human Leon" in the shins with the force of a tactical boot.

He pulls back sharply, the sudden absence of your heat feeling like a physical blow. His face flushes a deep, embarrassed crimson that he’s thankful the shadows mostly hide. 

He lets out a breath that sounds like a punctured tire, his hands lingering on your shoulders for a second too long—the thumb of his right hand involuntarily stroking your collarbone—before he awkwardly clears his throat and takes a staggering step back.

"Sorry," he blurts out, looking everywhere but at your eyes. "That was... uh... highly unprofessional. Even for a guy who usually spends his Tuesdays being chased by monsters."

He steps back, almost tripping over a discarded pipe, his usual poise replaced by a fumbling, clunky kinetic energy. He checks his gun for the third time in ten seconds, his fingers trembling just a hair.

"Must be the humidity," he mutters, a dry, self-deprecating smirk flickering across his lips. "It does weird things to my head. Or maybe I just really needed a distraction from the pit of doom."

He offers you a hand, his gaze finally meeting yours again—soft, guarded, and undeniably curious. "You okay? Aside from the near-death experience and the... awkward workplace conduct?"

He wants to ask you a thousand questions. He wants to know why a killer kisses like someone who’s been starving for a gentle touch. But instead, he just adjusts his holster, the "static" in his head momentarily silenced by the memory of the heat of your skin.

"We should probably keep moving," he says, his voice regaining some of its steady, mission-ready baritone. "Before the local residents decide to come up here and ask for an encore."

──────•✦•──────

The central lab is a masterpiece of clinical arrogance. It’s all white tiles, humming centrifuges, and that sterile, recycled air that makes your lungs feel like they’re being packed in cotton. 

But you aren't focused on the architecture. You’re focused on the fact that your lips still feel tingly, and your heart is currently trying to perform a drum solo against your ribs.

Focus, you absolute idiot, your inner monologue snaps, sounding remarkably like Konstantin on a bad day. You’re in the heart of a bio-weapon factory, and you’re blushing like a schoolgirl because a federal agent with nice hair decided to kiss you. Get it together.

Leon is moving beside you, his gun raised. He’s being very quiet—the kind of quiet that says he’s also replaying those ten seconds of "unprofessional conduct" on a loop. Every time his shoulder brushes yours, you both jerk away like you’ve been shocked. 

It’s pathetic. It’s distracting. It’s going to get you killed.

"Looks like the brain of the operation," Leon mutters, gesturing to a massive, multi-screen console at the center of the room. He sounds a little too focused, his voice a pitch higher than usual. "Quiet. Too quiet. I've seen enough movies to know this is the part where the villain explains his evil plan over the speakers."

Right on cue, the PA system crackles to life. The sound is sharp, biting through the hum of the computers.

"I must admit, I’m impressed you made it this far," Konstantin’s voice echoes, rich and smooth, dripping with the kind of paternal condescension that makes your skin crawl. "Though I suppose I shouldn't be. I did raise you to be the best, after all."

Leon’s head whips toward you, his eyes narrowing. "Raise you?" he whispers, the word a question and a demand all at once.

You don't look at him. You can’t. You stare at the speaker on the wall, your fingers tightening around the grip of your rifle. The Ghost is back, locking the girl who just got kissed into the furthest, darkest corner of the cellar.

"Ah, the prodigal daughter returns," Konstantin continues, his laugh a dry, paper-thin sound. "Tell me, little wolf, did you miss the kennel? You look pathetic standing there next to a government lapdog. Is that what you’ve become? A pet?"

The word lapdog hangs in the air, cold and heavy. You feel Leon’s gaze burning into the side of your face—a mix of confusion, betrayal, and a sudden, sharp realization that the puzzle pieces don't fit.

You take a step toward the console, your movements fluid and predatory. You reach out and thumb the "talk-back" button on the desk.

"You always did talk too much, Konstantin," you say, your voice coming out as a low, dangerous purr. The playfulness is gone, replaced by a blunt, jagged edge. "And for the record? Lapdogs are the ones that go for the throat when you least expect it."

There’s a beat of silence on the other end. Then, Konstantin sighs—a sound of mock disappointment.

"Always so temperamental," he muses. "But I suppose I can’t have you interrupting the final phase. Since you're so fond of dogs, why don't you play with my latest litter? Consider this your final exam."

"Konstantin, wait—" you start, but the comms line cuts to static.

Suddenly, the floor beneath you begins to vibrate. At the far end of the lab, four massive, reinforced steel canisters hiss and begin to rise from the floor. The gas inside them vents into the room, obscuring the view of whatever is waking up inside. You hear the sound of glass shattering, followed by a roar that sounds like a choir of the damned.

The compound's apex BOWs. Things that were never human, designed for the sole purpose of ending whatever life they encounter.

"Leon!" you bark, finally looking at him.

He’s standing there, his gun lowered just an inch, his expression a mask of dawning horror. He’s looking at you and for the first time, he doesn't see an angel. He sees the "prodigal daughter" of a monster.

"You knew him," Leon says, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth from the catwalk. "He raised you."

"Later!" you scream as the first creature—a mass of elongated limbs and glistening, black chitin—bursts through the mist. "Shoot now, judge me when we aren't being eaten!"

Leon’s instincts kick in, but there’s a new stiffness to his movements. He raises his gun and fires, the roar of the gun filling the lab, but the bridge between you has just turned into a tightrope over a volcano.

This is it, you think bitterly as you dive behind a lab bench, rounds whistling over your head. The mask is off. The secret is out. And I’m pretty sure 'sorry' isn't going to cover this one.

2010, Ural Mountains 

The marble floors of the Kaiser’s estate are far too shiny. That’s your first thought as you move through the foyer. 

It’s the kind of floor specifically designed to show off the blood of anyone foolish enough to track dirt onto it. Or, in this case, the blood of the six "Elite Hounds" currently decorating the hallway like macabre area rugs.

They were fast, you’ll give them that. The Connections clearly invested in some high-end muscular augmentation for this batch. But speed doesn't matter much when you know exactly where a human—or a semi-human—is going to pivot. 

You move like a breath of cold air, a shadow that bites. One guard tries to raise a tactical shotgun; you’re already inside his guard, your palm driving a knife upward into his throat before he can even find the safety.

Three down. Three to go.

You don't feel the adrenaline. You’ve locked that away with the rest of the "useless" emotions. Instead, there’s just a dry, clinical internal monologue ticking away. 

Watch the left flank. He’s heavy on his heels. Amateur. 

You sidestep a blade meant for your ribs, grab the man’s wrist, and snap it with a sound like a dry branch breaking. You use his own knife to finish the job, a clean arc across the jugular.

By the time you reach the heavy redwood doors of the master office, your breathing hasn't even quickened. You pause, smoothing a stray lock of hair away from your face. You look down at your boots. 

Ruined, you think with a sigh. I liked these. Konstantin is going to owe me a new pair. Oh, wait. Konstantin is next.

You kick the doors open. Not with a bang, but with a slow, deliberate creak that’s much more dramatic.

The Kaiser is sitting behind a desk that probably costs more than the village you were born in. He looks composed, but the way his fingers are twitching toward the silent alarm—which you already fried three minutes ago—tells a different story.

You don’t go for your gun. Instead, you stroll across the room with a playful skip in your step, hopping up onto the edge of his redwood desk. You let your feet dangle, swinging your boots back and forth, thumping them rhythmically against the expensive wood. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“I’m here for the exit interview, boss-man,” you say, your voice light, almost melodic. You tilt your head, offering him a grin that doesn't reach your eyes. “Hope you brought the HR forms. I have a lot of feedback.”

The Kaiser leans back. He’s a professional predator, and he tries to regain the upper hand by putting on his favorite mask. He smiles. 

It’s a terrifying sight—the look of a shark trying to convince you it’s actually a golden retriever.

“Let’s be reasonable,” he says, his voice smooth as aged cognac. “I know you’re upset about the Prague incident. A misunderstanding, really. High-tension environments lead to poor communication.”

“Is that what we’re calling a child in the crosshairs now?” you muse, picking under a fingernail with the tip of a combat knife. “A communication breakdown?”

“I can give you anything,” he continues, leaning forward, sensing a crack. “Freedom? I can wipe your records. I can make the Ghost disappear and a new woman emerge. Money? Name a number—I’ll double it. I’ll even give you your real name back.”

He pauses, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You remember it, don’t you? The one from before?”

He says the name.

It hits like a physical blow to the solar plexus. The sound of it—soft, vowels familiar and ancient—shatters the glass walls of the compartment in your mind. 

For a heartbeat, the Ghost is gone. The mask slips, and the girl from the streets is there, her eyes wide and jagged, filled with a sudden, aching softness. You remember a mother’s voice. You remember the smell of bread. You remember a life that wasn't defined by the caliber of a bullet.

The Kaiser sees it. He thinks he’s won. He starts to reach out, his hand open in a gesture of fake fatherly comfort.

You look at his hand.

You see the manicured nails. You see the gold signet ring. And then, you see the ghosts behind him. 

You see the thousands of orders those hands signed. You see the children in the laboratories, the villages burned to "contain" leaks, the weapons of mass destruction sold to the highest bidder. You see the blood that never truly washes off a man like him.

The softness in your chest doesn't just leave; it turns to bitter, freezing ash.

“You don’t get to say that name,” you whisper.

The playfulness is gone. The sarcasm is dead. There is only the cold, absolute resolve. 

You move before he can even draw a breath to scream.

You hop down from the edge of the desk and step up behind his chair. You hook your arm under his chin, wrenching his head back with a sickening pop of his vertebrae. His throat is exposed—a pale, vulnerable line of skin. He gasps, the scent of expensive scotch and raw, primal fear filling the space between you.

“You’re right about one thing, though,” you murmur into his ear. Your voice is soft, almost kind, the way a mother speaks to a child before they fall asleep. “I am quitting.”

You don't hesitate. You don't give a speech about justice or revenge. You simply slide the serrated edge of your knife across his throat in one clean, efficient motion.

There is no cinematic struggle. Just the wet, heavy sound of a life ending and the rhythmic drip, drip, drip onto the redwood desk. You watch the light leave his eyes with a distant, clinical sort of pity. 

He spent his whole life building an empire of shadows, only to be ended by one of them in a matter of seconds.

What a waste of a good suit, you think dryly. Silk blend, probably.

You let his head slump forward onto the desk, right on top of his fancy blotter. You stand there for a moment, the silence of the room settling over you like a shroud. You feel... nothing. No triumph, no joy. Just a quiet sense of a job finally being finished.

“Consider this my two weeks’ notice,” you mutter to the corpse.

You turn and walk out, leaving the name he stole from you buried in the room with him. You don't need it anymore. You’re a Ghost, after all. And ghosts don't have names. They just have business.

──────•✦•──────

2011, Latvia

The air in Latvia doesn’t just get cold; it gets personal. It’s a biting, invasive chill that feels like it’s trying to settle a score with your marrow. 

You take another sip of the local vodka—a liquid that tastes suspiciously like kerosene, and is probably just moonshine—and stare at the condensation on the glass. 

This was the plan: a quiet life, a freezing life, and enough manual labor to make your hands forget they were ever trained to find the softest part of a human throat.

The pub is dim, smelling of wet wool, woodsmoke, and the kind of desperation that only grows in places the sun forgets for six months of the year. You’re finally starting to feel the tips of your toes again when the bell over the door jingles.

You don’t look up. You don't have to. The scent reaches you first—expensive silk and a floral perfume that has no business being within five hundred miles of a Latvian fishing village. 

Then comes the click of heels. Not the heavy, practical thud of a local’s snow boots, but the sharp, rhythmic tap of someone who moves with a very specific kind of intent.

The chair across from you creaks as she sits.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Ada Wong purrs. Her crimson dress is a violent splash of color against the drab, peeling wallpaper of the bar. She looks immaculate. You, conversely, look like you’ve been wrestling a blizzard.

"Funny," you mutter, finally lifting your gaze. Your voice is raspy from disuse, dry and blunt as a rusted blade. "I was just thinking the neighborhood was getting a bit too high-class. You’re lost, Ada. The runway is in Riga. The exit is behind you."

She doesn't move. She just leans back, her dark eyes scanning your face with a terrifyingly clinical precision. "Oh, I'm exactly where I meant to be. Though I have to say, the 'rustic hermit' look is... a choice. It really brings out the 'I’m hiding from my sins' vibe."

"It’s called retirement," you say, taking a slow, deliberate sip of your drink. 

God, this stuff is awful. It’s perfect. 

"I chop wood. I fix fences. I don't kill people for money. It’s a very simple lifestyle. Even you could understand it if you weren't so busy being an international enigma."

"Is that what we're calling it?" Ada tilts her head, her lips curving into that maddening, knowing smirk. "I heard you were being quite the specter in the underworld lately. A real phantom of your former self."

You roll your eyes so hard it actually hurts. "Ghost puns. Really? That’s what we’re doing? You flew all the way to the Baltic for a comedy routine? I liked you better when you were blowing up research facilities."

"I have my hobbies," she says lightly. She reaches into her coat and pulls out a thick, manila envelope, sliding it across the scarred wooden table. It comes to a rest against your glass. "A thank you. For Peru. I believe I owed you one for keeping that strike team off my back while I secured the sample."

You look at the envelope like it’s a coiled viper. "I don't want it. Whatever it is, I'm not interested. I’m out, Ada. I washed the blood off. My hands are clean. Mostly. They’re a bit calloused, but clean."

"Nobody in our line of work ever truly retires," she notes, her tone dropping the playfulness for a heartbeat, replaced by a cold, hard truth. "We just wait for the right reason to start again."

Curiosity is a traitorous thing. It’s the part of you that refuses to die, the stubborn empathy that still wants to see the bad guys get what’s coming to them. With a sigh of defeat, you flip the metal clasp and spill the contents onto the table.

Photos. Coordinates. Lab reports.

And then, a face you haven't seen in years. Konstantin.

He looks older in the surveillance photos, more gaunt, but the look in his eyes is unmistakable. The reports attached are sickening—The Connections, BOW trafficking, and "human resource optimization." In layman’s terms: experimenting on people who won't be missed.

A heavy, familiar weight settles in your gut. It’s not the vodka. It’s the realization that some monsters don't stay under the bed; they build labs in the Amazon.

"Why?" you ask, your voice dropping to a low, dangerous hum. You look up at her, searching that porcelain-perfect face. "You didn't come here to be a Good Samaritan. You don't have a conscience, Ada, remember? You traded it for a grapple gun and a better tailor."

She doesn't flinch. "My employer wants a rival gone. Konstantin is... disrupting the market. He’s become a liability to certain interests."

You let out a short, bark-like laugh that contains zero mirth. "So, that’s it. You want to use me for your dirty work. Again. You want the Ghost to go down to the jungle and haunt a man who knows all her tricks."

"I thought you'd want to be the one to do it," Ada says simply. She stands up, smoothing her coat. "Or would you rather sit here and rot in the cold while he turns more orphans into science projects? You know his patterns better than anyone."

You look back down at the photo of Konstantin. You think about the girl he plucked off the Moscow streets. 

"Is that all I am to you people?" you ask, looking at the envelope. "A killer you can just point at a target?"

Ada pauses, her hand on the back of the chair. She looks at you with something that almost—almost—looks like respect. 

"You're like a bloodhound. You don't give up the chase once you smell blood. And right now? I can smell it on you from across the table."

She turns and walks away, her heels clicking against the floor until the jingle of the door signals her departure.

You sit in the silence, the Latvian wind howling outside, rattling the windowpanes. You look at your hands. They’re rough and scarred from the woodpile, but as you reach out to gather the intel, your fingers don't shake. The dry, sarcastic voice in your head tells you that the Amazon is going to be a hell of a lot warmer than Latvia.

The Ghost isn't dead. She was just taking a nap. And Konstantin?

Konstantin is going to wish you’d stayed in the snow.

──────•✦•──────

2011, Bolivia

The hum of the transport plane’s engine is a low-frequency vibrator designed specifically to rattle the teeth of anyone trying to get a moment’s peace. Leon leans his head back against the cold, vibrating hull, staring at the flickering overhead light. He’s headed for the Amazon, a place where the humidity is a physical weight and the mosquitoes are the size of small drones.

Hunnigan had briefed him on the flight—something about a cartel-turned-BOW ring run by a guy named Konstantin. A standard search-and-destroy. 

Or as standard as things get when you work for the DSO and your job description involves shooting things that should have stayed dead.

He reaches for his flask, his fingers brushing the cool metal in his jacket pocket before he stops himself. Not yet, he tells himself, though the tremor in his hands suggests they strongly disagree. 

Inside me, something seethes. Inside me, some feral animal claws at my ribcage, trapped. 

It’s been getting worse. The "feral animal" isn't a virus—it’s the memories. Raccoon City isn't a place on a map anymore but it’s a permanent fixture of his subconscious. 

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the rain on the windshield of that R.P.D. cruiser. He smells the rotting meat and the copper. He feels the weight of the badge he only got to wear for one day.

"Rough flight, Kennedy?" the pilot calls out over the comms, his voice crackling with static.

Leon clears his throat, his voice coming out scratchier than he’d like. "I’ve had worse. Usually involves more zombies and fewer seatbelts."

"We’re ten minutes out from the drop zone. Intel says the perimeter is crawling with 'special' guards. Try not to get eaten. It makes the paperwork a nightmare."

"I'll do my best," Leon mutters, checking the slide on his gun. "But no promises. I’m a bit of a popular menu item."

He stands up, the movement stiff. His joints ache in a way that reminds him he’s not twenty-one anymore. He’s a federal agent, a survivor, a weapon of the state. But mostly, he just feels like a tired man who has seen too many biological horrors and drank too many glasses of cheap bourbon to drown them out. 

The cargo ramp lowers with a mechanical groan, and the wall of heat that hits him is like a physical slap. It’s midnight in the rainforest, but the jungle isn't dark. It’s glowing.

Leon parachutes in, the descent a familiar dance of wind and gravity. He lands in a small clearing a mile from Konstantin’s complex, unhooking his harness with practiced efficiency. 

He expects the sound of the jungle—the insects, the birds, the distant roar of BOWs.

Instead, it’s quiet. Dangerously quiet.

He moves through the dense undergrowth, his boots sinking into the muck. He’s looking for the "elite perimeter guards" Hunnigan warned him about. He finds them.

Or what’s left of them.

Leon stops, his flashlight cutting through the humid mist. The first guard is slumped against a mahogany tree, his throat opened with such clinical precision that there’s barely any spray on his tactical vest. The second is ten feet away, his neck snapped at an angle that makes Leon’s own spine ache in sympathy.

"Well," Leon whispers to the empty air, his thumb flicking the safety off his handgun. "So much for a 'standard' raid. Someone’s already been through here, and they didn't use an invitation."

He kneels by the body, examining the wound. It’s a single, clean blade stroke. Efficient. Professional. Ghostly. 

He can feel the presence of a predator nearby—one that doesn't belong to the DSO or the cartel.

Leon stands up, his eyes scanning the canopy. The guilt that usually sits like a lead weight in his stomach is momentarily replaced by a sharp, cold spike of adrenaline. He’s spent his life hunting monsters, but the trail he’s looking at right now was made by something far more dangerous.

 It was made by a person who knows exactly how the human body breaks.

"Great," he mutters, wiping sweat from his brow. "Nothing like a little competition to keep things interesting. Hope you’re the friendly type, whoever you are. I’m fresh out of party favors."

He pushes deeper into the jungle, following the trail of bodies. Every few yards, there's another one. No bullet holes. No struggle. Just the wet, final silence of your handiwork.

Leon's heart hammers against his ribs—that trapped animal clawing to get out. For the first time in months, the craving for a drink is eclipsed by the need to find out who is doing his job for him.

The jungle isn't just green and brown anymore. It’s crimson. And as Leon nears the heart of the complex, he realizes he isn't the hunter tonight. He’s just the one following in the wake of a Ghost.

──────•✦•──────

1988, Moscow

The Moscow wind doesn't just blow; it hunts. It’s a sharp, jagged thing that finds the holes in your oversized, threadbare coat and bites down on your skin until you can’t tell if you’re shivering or just vibrating into pieces. 

You are eight years old—or maybe nine, you’ve stopped counting the days since the orphanage roof leaked for the last time and the doors were bolted shut.

You are sitting tucked into a doorway on a side street off Tverskaya, your knees pulled up to your chest, trying to make yourself as small as a pebble. You figure if you can just become part of the stone, the cold might stop noticing you. Your stomach isn't even cramping anymore; it’s moved past hunger into a dull, hollow ache that feels like you’ve swallowed a bag of marbles.

Maybe if I close my eyes and think about the smell of borsch long enough, I'll wake up in a kitchen, you think, your eyelashes crusting over with frost. Or maybe I’ll just go to sleep and won't have to think at all. That sounds okay, too.

Then, the snow stops falling on your head. You look up, blinking through the ice.

A man is standing over you, holding a heavy black umbrella. He’s wearing a long charcoal coat and his leather boots are polished to a mirror finish. He looks like he belongs in a different world—a world where people have heaters and eat off china plates. 

He doesn't look down at you with the usual disgust or the quick, guilty pity that makes people toss a few kopeks before walking faster. 

He looks at you like he’s inspecting a piece of machinery that’s been left out in the rain.

"You're going to freeze into a very small, very stubborn ice cube if you stay there," the man says. His Russian is perfect, but there’s a strange, melodic tilt to it.

You pull your coat tighter, your teeth chattering a frantic rhythm. "I like... the ice," you lie, your voice a tiny, brittle rasp. "It’s quiet."

The man kneels. He doesn't mind that his expensive trousers are touching the dirty slush. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, foil-wrapped chocolate. He holds it out, his hand steady.

"Quiet is just another word for dead," the man says. "And you don't look like you're ready for that. My name is Konstantin. I work for a very important man—a man who values things that others throw away."

You stare at the chocolate. Your fingers, blue and stiff, reach out and snatch it. You tear the foil with your teeth, the taste of the sugar hitting your tongue like a lightning bolt. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever felt.

"Why?" you ask, your mouth full of melting cocoa.

"Because you have eyes like a wolf, little one," Konstantin says, his voice dropping to a warm, conspiratorial hum. "And wolves shouldn't be begging in doorways. I can offer you a warm meal. A bed with blankets so thick you'll forget what the wind feels like. I can give you a path out of this gutter."

He stands up and extends a hand. It’s an invitation to a dream.

"Will I be safe?" you ask. It’s the only thing that matters when you’ve spent every night sleeping with one eye open, listening for the heavy footsteps of men who look for girls like you.

Konstantin’s expression shifts. He doesn't give you the easy, comforting lie a normal person would. He gives you a shark's smile and the truth.

"No," he says simply. "I won't promise you safety. Safety is a fairy tale for the weak. But I will promise you this: I will make you powerful. And the powerful? They don't need to be concerned about safety. They're the ones people are safe from."

You look at his hand. You look at the dark, warm car idling at the end of the alley. You think that maybe, just maybe, you’ve finally found a place where you belong. You think this man is a savior.

He’s like a father, your child-mind whispers, desperate for any scrap of affection. He bought me chocolate. He’s taking me out of the cold.

You reach out and take his hand. His grip is firm, dry, and utterly unyielding.

"Good girl," Konstantin murmurs, leading you toward the car.

As the door shuts, sealing out the howling Moscow wind, you feel a surge of hope. You don't know that you’ve just stepped out of the freezer and into the furnace. You don't know that the path he promised is paved with the bones of people just like you. 

You don't know that the hand that just fed you the chocolate is the same hand that will eventually force you to hold a rifle until your shoulders ache.

You think you’re going home. It’s the biggest mistake you’ll ever make. But for now, as the car’s heater begins to thaw your frozen skin, you just lean your head against the leather seat and watch the snowy streets of Moscow disappear, feeling—for the very last time—completely and utterly safe.

──────•✦•──────

2011, Latvia

The Latvian silence was nice while it lasted, but peace was always a borrowed coat that never quite fit your shoulders. You spend the morning packing your gear with a rhythmic, detached precision. Your tactical vest feels heavier than it did a year ago, or maybe that’s just the weight of the conscience you’ve accidentally grown.

Check the magazines. Check the seals on the flashbangs. Check the soul—ah, wait, still missing.

You realize, as you slide a combat knife into its sheath with a satisfying snick, that guilt isn't like mud; you can't just scrub it off with enough cold water and honest labor. 

It’s more like a burn. It stays. 

But if you can’t be pure, you can at least be useful. Stopping Konstantin won't wash your hands, but it might just balance the scales enough that you can look in a mirror without wanting to break it.

"Sorry, little house," you murmur, tossing a duffel bag over your shoulder. "You were a great place to hide, but the monsters found the map."

──────•✦•──────

2011, Bolivia

The Amazon doesn't have a "quiet" setting. It’s a humid, screaming wall of green that tries to breathe for you. By the time you reach the outer perimeter of Konstantin’s complex, the air is so thick you feel like you’re swimming through lukewarm soup.

You crouch in the ferns, watching the high-voltage fence. The facility is a jagged scar of concrete and steel slashed across the rainforest. It’s classic Konstantin: brutalist, overpriced, and crawling with men who look like they were rejected from every reputable military on the planet.

Look at those towers, you think, clicking your tongue. Symmetry is the first sign of a megalomaniac. Honestly, Konstantin, a little subtlety wouldn't kill you. But I suppose I will.

You move.

You aren't running; you’re drifting. You’ve locked the woman who liked the Latvian snow away, letting the feral animal living in your ribcage take the wheel. 

You bypass the first guard post by timing the sweep of the thermal cameras—a five-second window that feels like an eternity when you’re pressed against a mossy concrete wall.

You slip through a gap in the secondary fencing, your movements so fluid and silent that a jaguar wouldn't even twitch its ears. The interior of the compound is a labyrinth of shipping crates and BOW enclosures. As you pass a reinforced glass tank, something wet and heavy slams against the side. 

You don't look. Whatever is in there is a tragedy in progress, and you don't have enough bullets to be a mercy-killer today.

Stay focused. Don't look at the cages. Don't think about what they used to be.

You round a corner and freeze. Three men in lab coats are walking toward the cafeteria, arguing about protein synthesis or some other nerd-talk that keeps the lights on in a death-factory. One of them looks young—hardly twenty. He’s laughing at a joke.

Your finger twitches near your suppressed pistol. The animal wants to clear the path. But that stubborn, annoying moral compass of yours kicks like a mule. 

They’re just kids with degrees and bad career choices,you tell yourself. They aren't the ones pulling the triggers.

You melt into the shadows behind a stack of crates, holding your breath until the sound of their sneakers fades. 

"Go enjoy your mystery meat, boys," you whisper to the empty air. "Try to get a job in a pharmacy next time."

The mercy is short-lived.

Ten yards ahead, the mercenaries start. These aren't kids with clipboards. These are "The Hounds"—Konstantin’s private collection of sociopaths in Kevlar. They’re leaning against a humvee, smoking and laughing about a village raid.

Your eyes go cold. The playfulness vanishes, replaced by a distant, clinical focus.

"Okay, boys," you murmur, sliding a serrated blade from your thigh holster. The metal doesn't catch the light; it’s been blackened to match the void you’re about to send them into. "Let’s see if your training was worth the paycheck."

You drop from the shadows like a fever dream. The first mercenary doesn't even have time to drop his cigarette before your hand is over his mouth, pulling him back into the darkness. The second turns, but you’re already there—a blur of black gear and steel.

No speech. No struggle. Just the wet, final sound of the Ghost doing what she was made for.

As you step over the bodies, you wipe the blade on a patch of grass. You’re deep inside the belly of the beast now. You can smell the chemicals and the rot. Somewhere in this concrete maze, Konstantin is waiting.

"I'm coming for that exit interview, Konstantin," you whisper, checking your surroundings. "And I don't think you're going to like the severance package."

──────•✦•──────

1994, Russia

The room smells like floor wax and old sweat—a scent that’s become the backdrop of your teenage years. You are fourteen, and instead of worrying about prom or bad skin, you are currently worrying about the structural integrity of a man’s windpipe.

“Again,” Konstantin says. He’s sitting in a folding chair at the edge of the mat, looking as relaxed as if he’s watching a boring documentary.

You huff, wiping a smear of blood from your lip. Across from you stands a trainer—a man who is basically a wall of muscle with a buzz cut. 

You’re small, nimble, and currently very tired of hitting the floor.

Okay, little Moscow girl, you think, feeling that familiar, icy shutter fall in your mind. Time to go back into the dark. Don't look at the eyes. Just look at the leverage.

It’s a trick you’ve mastered: compartmentalization. You take the girl who likes the smell of old library books and the girl who cries when she scrapes her knee, and you gently push her into a small, windowless room in the back of your skull. You lock the door. 

She doesn't have to watch what your hands are about to do. She doesn't have to hear the wet, sickening crunch of bone.

You breathe out, and suddenly, the world goes quiet. Your heart rate slows to a steady, anticipatory rhythm. You aren't a girl anymore; you're a predator.

You move.

You don't fight him—not really. Fighting implies a struggle. You just apply the language Konstantin has taught you: the staccato rhythm of silenced gunfire, the fluid prose of a snapped neck. 

You dive under the trainer’s lead hook, your fingers finding the pressure point behind his ear with clinical accuracy. As he stumbles, you wrap yourself around his back like a parasite, your forearm locking under his chin.

Leaning back. Pivot. Snap.

The trainer hits the mat, gasping for air that won't come. You stand over him, your face a mask of eerie, calm indifference.

"Better," Konstantin notes, standing up. "You’re finally stopping the hesitation. You’re beginning to understand."

He walks over and hands you a towel and a book—a first-edition copy of The Master and Margarita. It’s a beautiful gift, the kind a father gives a daughter. He ruffles your hair, his touch almost tender.

"Go clean up," he says softly. "We’ll have dinner. I had the cook make that pasta you like."

"Thanks, Konstantin," you say, the playful, sarcastic teenager flickering back to life for a moment. "Does the pasta come with a side of 'how to hide a body in a dumpster,' or is that for dessert?"

Konstantin smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He leans in, his hand moving from your hair to the back of your neck, his grip tightening just enough to be a warning. 

It’s the hand that feeds you, the hand that buys you literature and chocolate—and you know, with a bone-deep certainty, it’s the same hand that will put a bullet in your brain the second you become a liability.

"Don't get cheeky, little wolf," he whispers. "A dog in this house is either a hunter or a rug. You realized it on the streets, didn't you? It’s better to be violent than dead."

You look at him, and for a second, the girl in the dark room rattles the door. You feel a wave of distant, aching empathy for the man you just choked out, for the girl you used to be, for the dog that has to bite just to keep a roof over its head.

"I'm a very good wolf, Konstantin," you say, your voice steady. "I know which hand holds the leash."

"I know you do." He lets go, his expression returning to that of a doting guardian. "Now, go. Read your book. You have a long day of ballistics tomorrow."

You walk back to your room, clutching the leather-bound book to your chest. 

Inside your head, you can hear the girl in the dark corner whispering, I don’t want to be a wolf. 

Shut up, you think back, your inner monologue dry and bitter as you catch your reflection in the hallway mirror—a pale specter in training. 

Being a wolf means you get to eat. Being a wolf means nobody gets to hurt you ever again.

You’re becoming fluent in a language you never wanted to speak, and you realize the tragedy of it: you’re actually a natural at it.

Inside me, something seethes. Inside me, some feral animal is starting to like the cage.

──────•✦•──────

2011, Bolivia

Leon’s tactical shirt is a lost cause, plastered to his skin as he navigates the dense, choking undergrowth of the perimeter. 

He’s been on the ground for less than an hour, and already the "standard raid" has spiraled into the usual bio-organic circus.

Hunnigan really needs to update her definition of 'guerrilla fighters,' Leon thinks, ducking behind the massive roots of a Ceiba tree. He peeks around the trunk just as a group of infected soldiers shambles past. 

They aren't the slow, moaning zombies of Raccoon City; these guys are twitchy, their skin a mottled, bruised purple, clutching rusted AK-47s with a terrifying, mindless muscle memory.

Great. Parasite-augmented insurgents. Just once, I’d like to find a cartel that sticks to good old-fashioned tax evasion.

He moves to transition to a better vantage point, but the jungle floor betrays him. A hidden tripwire—something low-tech and nasty—snags his boot. 

He lunges forward to recover, but a shadow detaches itself from the foliage. A guerrilla fighter, eyes clouded with a milky, pulsating film, lunges with a serrated combat knife.

Leon twists, but he’s a fraction of a second too slow. The blade bites into his side, a hot, searing line of agony that makes his vision swim. He grunts, swinging the butt of his handgun into the man’s jaw with a sickening crack, but the damage is done.

"Damn it," he hisses, clutching his side. His fingers come away slick and dark. "That’s a new shirt, you bastard."

The scuffle draws attention. A low, guttural growl echoes through the trees, vibrating in Leon's very marrow. From the darkness of the canopy emerges something that definitely didn't have a mother: a hulking, skinless mass of muscle and elongated talons, its jaw split into four distinct, mandibles dripping with caustic saliva. 

A BOW Hunter variant, by the looks of it.

Leon backs up, his heels hitting a rock face. He raises his gun, but his breath is coming in short, ragged hitches. The creature crouches, its powerful hind legs tensing for a leap that will undoubtedly end with Leon’s head becoming a centerpiece.

Well, Leon, his inner monologue dryly observes as the beast roars, it’s been a hell of a run. Maybe in the next life, you’ll get that desk job in accounting.

He braces for the impact, finger tightening on the trigger.

CRACK.

The sound of the rifle shot is absolute, a thunderclap that silences the screaming insects of the jungle. The Hunter’s head doesn't just bleed—it disintegrates in a spectacular spray of gray matter and bone fragments. The massive body slumps forward, skidding through the mud and stopping inches from Leon's boots.

Leon blinks, the ringing in his ears a high-pitched whine. 

Before he can even process the save, a figure drops from the canopy with the silent grace of a falling leaf. You land in a perfect crouch, the barrel of your rifle still warm, before rising to your feet.

Leon stares at you. He knows he should be reaching for his gun, or at least his badge, but the sheer "phantom-like" quality of your entrance has him momentarily frozen in place. He’s spent years dealing with Ada Wong’s cryptic bullshit, but this feels different. More dangerous.

He lets out a shaky breath, pressing his hand harder against the wound in his side. Even while bleeding out, the Kennedy charm—clumsy and ill-timed as it is—kicks in like an old engine.

"Usually," Leon starts, his voice straining for that suave, action-movie baritone, "I prefer a little warning before an angel drops out of the sky. Or at least a business card."

He winces as the adrenaline begins to dip, the pain in his side turning into a dull, throbbing roar. He looks at the dead Hunter, then back at you.

"You’re the one who’s been redecorating the jungle with mercenary parts, aren't you?" he asks, leaning heavily against the rock. "I’d say thanks for the assist, but I have a feeling you’re not here on behalf of the Red Cross."

You don't answer immediately, your silence a heavy, measured weight. Leon watches you, his blue eyes searching yours for a sign of hostility. He sees the way you hold your rifle—like an extension of your own limbs. 

Inside me, some feral animal claws at my ribcage. But looking at you... the animal recognizes a bigger predator.

"Well," Leon tries again, a lopsided, slightly awkward smirk tugging at his lips. "Since we’re sharing the same patch of dirt and killing the same monsters... any chance you’ve got a bandage in that kit? Or are we going straight to the part where you tell me to get lost?"

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