After Days - Chapter 3: Part 2

He struggled to his feet. As he tried to straighten his back he was pulled back down by his muscles tugging, vomit spewing from his lips. It wanted to keep coming but there was nothing left, he was surprised there was anything at all to begin with. It wasn’t safe there, he had to get out. He remembered seeing another exit, maybe four tunnels over, but the repetitive heaving of his stomach made that no easy task.

Still, he persevered, having to stop only a couple of times as his mind flickered back to what he had just seen. Survive, that was all he had to do right now. Laza had gotten Elliott out of the sewers so Leon could afford to think for himself. ‘Russell is tainted, he must have been weak. I will make it out of this and I will kill anything I have to, to stay alive.’ He repeated in his mind, knowing that it was a lie. Before he had left the gunfire behind him, he saw the light was still strong in Russell’s eyes, he was not dead, and Leon would not kill him.

Leon scurried up the ladders, dragging his frail body and soaking clothes out of the ground, the cold breeze of another day had never been so welcome as it rushed into his lungs.

“Leon?” Laza checked as he saw a figure crawl out of a hole, hunching over the cobbles.

Leon looked up to see Laza and Elliott huddled in an alleyway, the same one that Leon himself had crouched in before entering Route 13. For a few moments he stayed put, taking a few more gasps of the open air before the thought of ‘What if something pulls you back down?’ crossed his mind. As he hurried to drag himself out of the hole, something pushed against his boot, flinging him over and onto his back.

Laza sprinted over to his size and pulled him to his feet. Leon hadn’t see what had happened, but it must be bad for Laza to offer help, especially when he ended up getting rancid water on his jacket. The pair stopped as they retreated to guard Elliott, but for a moment Leon didn’t want to look back and risk seeing that haunting face again. For the sake of Elliott’s safety, he did.

A Whisper. That’s what had thrown him to the street. The moment he realised his eyes filled with blinding rage, he hated their kind and everything they stood for. The grunts of Celestia, mindless pawns who followed their orders blindly in return for the false promise of ascension.

The need to rip the Whisper apart was suffocating, but Laza’s strong hand dragged him back to cover. He thrashed to try and escape, but it was no use. Why would Laza stop him from ridding the world of a Whisper, evil wearing a man’s body? It didn’t make sense.

The question in his mind was enough to help distract him from his anger, and through clearer eyes he understood. The soldier’s dark visor stretched from the top of his head down to the base of where his chin would be, with two long curves clipped at either side, the whole thing shone a pale green. His armoured arms dangled with hypnotic sways as it rose farther from the ground. Around his waist, the plating suddenly ended and was instead replaced with a thick, dripping mass of black which led back into the tunnels like a snake. He had become part of Russell now, somehow making it easier for Leon to accept that he may have to kill his old friend.

Leon’s stare was stolen by the road splitting at either side of the manhole, like something was trying to burst through. The splitting surface thumped again and again, until finally the ramming broke through. Three more towers of oily gunge carried a Whisper at their tips, their bodies shattered and mangled from being pressed through stone.

Elliott trembled behind his older brothers with an open mouth, not knowing whether to scream or cry. He wasn’t brave and he didn’t care if the world knew it, he just wanted to run, he wanted to live. These were the horrors that Leon had spoken of, a child couldn’t dream of facing such things. He reached out and tugged at Laza’s sleeve, trying to persuade him to leave, but he refused, simply holding his arm out like a barrier and a command. Stay still.

Leon had faced more tainted victims than the rest of his group combined, and though he had learned little about them, there was one unmistakable truth. If their eyes are green, you are not safe. To add to the terror of the black, swinging tentacles, every one of them bore a soldier with a pair of bright eyes, even those that were little more than mush.

The boys were still, silent, praying that the docile threat they stared at was not staring back. Leon readied his knife and Laza began to rub his thumb against the pipe once again.

Tapping stings of tiny footsteps tickled over Elliott’s arm. A rat! A healthy untainted rat! He could still come out of this as the hero of the group by bringing a meal home. Without hesitation he snatched it in both hands as it reached his chest. He grinned with victory as he tried to squeeze the life out of the rodent with his small, bony fingers.

Something inside held him back, he was a stranger to killing and the tiny, helpless kicks of the animal tore at his heart, shattering his illusion of heroism. In surrender, he loosened his grip and the small creature let out a pitched squeal which seemed like a siren in the tense quiet.

The array of blistering eyes seemed to hiss and darted to the mouth of the alleyway with wide, hungry intent. Elliott began to shrink as his brothers turned to him with petrified confusion on their faces. Everything immediately made sense to them. ‘Dammit kid.’ Leon snatched the rat from the boy’s clutched and snapped its neck with a single flick of his thumb.

“Run!” Laza commanded as he grabbed Elliott’s wrist, practically dragging him through the air.

Leon wanted to stay and fight, but he was not an idiot, he stood no chance against whatever the hell this was. He dived to a roll as the intact Whisper launched towards him, splattering against the pavement. Quickly, he sprinted after his brothers trying to decide if it would be best to try and lose the pursuing monster as more and more of its body erupted from the tunnels below, or if Ueda would be able to kill it. In his honesty, he couldn’t be sure if she could.