#plagaes

When another mission came across his desk pertaining to Las Plagas, Leon could have screamed. Gods damn Saddler and Salazar and Ada fucking Wong. Seemed as though everyone and their mother playing the bioterror game had gotten their hands on some sample or another of Las Plagas.

He’d always known that the ESR wouldn’t be the last he’d hear of it.

Now it was some remote village deep in the mountains of Nepal and he wasn’t going to bother wondering how it had gotten there. What troubled him though, were the reports within the folder detailing rumour and hearsay about a new ‘religion’ springing up and gaining an unprecedented following for the area.

It hearkened back to Spain and made his skin crawl.

It meant that when he infiltrated the area and started seeing disturbingly familiar cult symbols, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but how? How had Los Illuminados managed to spring up there?

His investigation took him deep into the mountains, through tunnels bearing desecrated statuary and religious imagery belonging to the Hindu faith, Nepal’s primary religion. So not only had Los Illuminados forced it’s way in, it had done so by disrespecting and desecrating the region’s existing religious places.

He honestly wasn’t surprised. The surprise was who was behind it.

“Well if it isn’t my least favourite American!” came Saddler’s lilting tones from across the cavern, divided in half by a fast-moving and undoubtedly frigid river that likely originated further up the mountain. Icemelt had made the current stronger and Saddler had to raise his voice to be heard over the rushing water.

Leon eyed the rather narrow and water-splashed natural rock bridge that spanned the rushing water before deciding that he didn’t want to be stood anywhere near it lest Saddler get any ideas.

Saddler. Las Plagas wasn’t a virus, it didn’t reanimate bodies and Leon had blown the bastard to bits in Spain and yet there he was, looking much the same. A touch younger perhaps, weirdly enough. Leon’s mind was racing in that brief moment, surmising that some part of the master parasite had managed to live and infest someone else and that ugly ugly mug was a result of the parasite twisting and mutating around what might once have been an average or even handsome man.

“Least favourite?” Leon repeated, flattered. “Yeah, I gotta admit, I’m like a bad penny, I just keep on coming back to ruin the days of assholes like you.”

“Ruin my day?” Saddler crooned in return, clucking his tongue and shaking his head. “No no, your timing couldn’t have been more perfect! Come deeper into the spider’s web, my pesky little fly. You’ll find I’ve bred some improvements into the parasite in the intervening years. Perhaps you’ll become as intimately familiar with this strain as you did the first...” he laughed, gleeful at the idea.

There would be no interfering Spaniards to help the American pig this time around either. Nor conceited and untrustworthy americans with their own agendas.

He would see this meddlesome agent implanted once more and there were no means of destroying the parasite within the mountain either. Once mister Kennedy was carrying the parasite once more, Saddler would be unstoppable. He would have the admittedly capable agent implant others in America for him.

Oh yes, the irony of the very agent sent to stop him, being the one to infect the highest seats of the American government...

“Saddler!” Leon shouted after him, moving swiftly to the rocky bridge as if to catch up to the cult leader who had already moved out of sight down an adjoining tunnel. The wet floor was slippery though and the agent didn’t fancy taking a dip so he slowed his pace.