#siincore

There was silence for a long moment as the agent stared into his glass, needlessly turning it around on the bartop.

“Abandoned? Not so much,” he replied eventually with a soft shake of his head that made his bangs sway. “Betrayed on the other hand...”

SIINCORE

Ares laughed at Nick’s half-assed attempt at a joke, her panic only dissipating slightly. She knew he was sick, and he was already starting to change, which amplified her fear back up. But, she wasn’t about to leave him there to die, so risking her life was fair game.

“I know you don’t, Suit, trust me. It’s all over your face that you’re not doin’ too hot. But, I ain’t leavin’ you here. Even if I get myself killed. You just gotta keep fightin’ it. I’m tryin’ to figure a cure, I really am.”

Not like there’s much I can do.

She knew there was no cure for the infection. She’d watched countless people die at its indiscretion and violence. But, watching him begin to die because of it, it yanked at her heart. They’d been through some shit together, even if it was things she’d rather not remember.

“Just keep holdin’ on, Nick. The livin’ ain’t done with you yet.”

@siincore

Muscles locking up, muscles spasming... Fatigue. Headache.

Nick had, by virtue of his specialty in medicine and the rarity of the disease, never seen rabies first hand. It was, by and far, a terrifying prospect-- luckily, it would never have fallen into his lap, if a patient ever even had it in his hospital. But, of course, it was so ubiquitous that the symptoms were fairly well known.

Mental confusion. Seizing. Delirium. Fever. Hallucination. Light sensitivity.

It was even now, to his addled brain, morbidly intriguing how the Green Flu took on so many aspects of rabies. He wondered if it had been engineered with samples of rabies, if it had been engineered, that was; but then, the Flu was too anomalous, too convenient for waging war, to be entirely natural.

Slowly, his eyes, reddened and sallow, flicked back to Ares as she laughed. He had gotten distracted again. That was, perhaps, one of the most infuriating things-- how slow his mind was. He didn’t have the energy to register the flicker of fear and primal panic when he, through blurry, half-squinted eyes, got the hint of sharp, too many teeth folded much too neatly in her mouth; how she seemed bigger, angrier, more monstrous than she really was. He at least had the wherewithal to, for the most part, ignore that part of the delirium. For now.

Oh, but there he went again. Getting off track.

“Don’ know what... what you’re talkin’ about. I feel like a new man, Sparks.” It’s difficult to get his jaw to open, with how the muscles lock and cramp-- he can’t but help but slur through his teeth and the excessive drool that, were he in a better state, would feel horribly disgusting about. “No point in... lying. Ain’t no cure, not in time, anyway.” He croaks, the very edge of his mouth curling into the barest smirk. “Maybe.. maybe beatin’ it, though. A.. possibility, I mean. After all, we’re... immune. Or, I was.” His shoulders bob a slight in a shrug. “Either way, I.... appreciate you. Watchin’ me. Must be... be real annoying, hm? N’... sad.”

 “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

It was a feeling Sherry knew too well. In between assignments and paperwork, there never seemed to be enough time to catch up on life’s events. As much as she wanted to live a ‘normal’ life, the blonde knew that it would never happen. Not for her, at least.

Sherry began towards the door, pulling her coat off of it’s hanger as she went by. Boots were shoved on, and she gestured for Ares to follow her out the door.

 “If you don’t have a place in mind, I know somewhere that Jake likes to go whenever he comes around. Jake’s- I’ll tell you who he is on the way there. I don’t know if it’s a good bar, or anything, but he seems to like it. Better than Leon’s Hiding Spot.”

Rare was the day in which Leon Kennedy let himself do nothing and that day was really no different. Despite the sun blazing down above him, a towel spread on the lounger beside him, shaded by an umbrella, he wasn’t laying there soaking up the rays, oh no.

Despite the sandy hands it was going to result in, with the sun beating down on his back he was doing press-ups on the beach while around him children clamoured and played in the surf and the sun and adults talked and drank and sunbathed.

His only concessions to the heat were his boardshorts and chilled soda that wouldn’t be chilled for much longer despite being in the shade of the beach umbrella. It was hot. 

 "Hello, Prim! It's good to see you again."

The gun was lowered, mutant sufficiently dealt with. The monster twitched, blackened blood oozing from the hole left in it's head. Claws click against cement, as it's nerves spasm for a final time. Sherry took care not to get the dark substance on her shoes, as she stepped over the creature to approach her fellow survivor.

A small smile twitched onto the virologist's otherwise blank expression.

 "Did you have fun killing this thing? We call them Bandersnatches. Little Tyrants, in essence," she turned to the mutant for a moment, "Ugly thing, isn't it? But it's very strong. Umbrella hasn't had a proper hold on them ever since Rockfort Island, so I'm allowed to injure them, and I won't have to mark you for arrest you for hurting it, either."

Her attention was turned back to the survivor. Momentarily, she wondered if she even knew about what happened at Rockfort. She, presumably, hadn't been there, and she wasn't an Umbrella employee ( oh, what a wonderful employee she'd make. It was so hard to find people like her these days. )

The agent halted her scribbling, tearing tired eyes away from her paperwork to look at Ares. Sherry offered a friendly smile. She set her pen down on the desk, and pushing the chair away as she stood upright.

Too well, Sherry knew the kind of fear she saw Ares experiencing. Being held down to be examined, poked, and prodded to their liking. As though you weren’t even a human. To them, you weren’t.

And, by all means, it wasn’t safe here. But it wasn’t safe anywhere, really, not whenever corporations like Neo-Umbrella were still standing. But the apartment she called home, the one that Sherry had only barely managed to pull Ares into, was the closest thing they had to safe.

Sherry smoothed out the blanket over her companion’s back, offering a kind smile as she moved away.