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Marvin was kicking himself for not being more insistent that the Rookie stay away from the city, Leon wasn't supposed to turn up, wasn't supposed to burst in through the station's doors expertly taking down anything that was trying to follow.
But damn wasn't he glad, things would have been far worse if the Rookie had listened. The steadfast presence and confident commands had saved them all from things falling apart further. Marvin could only hope that the younger hadn't doomed himself to die with them, with the city
When things were quiet for a moment Marvin noticed an absence, the rookie, he could hardly claim Leon for wanting to take a moment away and had proven himself more than capable but one of their quickly established rules was to never go alone, always have someone watching your back.
The younger man wouldn't have gone far and was likely still in the building
Glancing across the main hall he signalled for Elliot to join him at the desk.
"Sir?"
"The rookie has gone walkabouts, I don't see anyone else missing so we'd best go find him,"
"I doubt he needs finding Marvin,"
"Maybe not, but all it takes in one mistake,"
"Yeah, alright,"
They checked the security footage, only having to wind it back a few minutes, it showed Leon heading up, rather than tracking him on the cameras they decided to head off straight away.
For the briefest of moments Marvin couldn't help but wonder if, given the hell outside, he would hardly blame the man, blame anyone for that choice. The thought was quickly banished with the memory of shortly after Leon had arrived. The rookie had promised privately to get as many people out of the city as he could, conviction burning in his eyes.
The officers made their way up the building, cautious but with their guard down, the RPD had been cleared of anything that had managed to get inside but that didn't make it completely safe.
The second and third floors yielded nothing, leaving the roof left to check. Slowly and quietly they open the door to the roof revealing their missing rookie looking out to the city.
The skyline was awash in the oranges of early dusk, smoke rising from several fires to join the clouds above.
The thought struck akin to a mug shattering on the ground, pieces flying, falling into broken patterns.
The city was already dead, only moving like the nerves that hadn't realised yet, and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it.
Instinct guided the lieutenant to stop Elliot at the doorway. Motioning to keep quiet, letting them be privy to the moment Leon had taken for himself.
Rather than continuing to stand there, the rookie unexpectedly let out a heart wrenching scream, full of frustration and anger, grief tangling with a multitude of emotions.
As he did Leon's form flicked, in that moment his shoulders broadened, his form now hidden behind a long dark leather coat, for an even smaller fraction Marvin could have sworn he'd seen bone instead of skin.
"Did you see that?"
The bewildered look he got answered his question well enough before the response "What?"
"Never mind, we should get the rookie back inside,"
Elliot continued to stare at him for a beat more, the detective trying to understand just what Mavin had seen, but there was no way for him to explain the brief flash of something inhuman in an entirely different way to the undead roaming the streets.
"The rookie we're all taking orders from now,"
"You gonna start questioning him again?"
It was kind of amazing how quickly Leon had got them all to follow him despite being new, despite being young.
"No, not at all but I think we could do with a reminder occasionally,"
It was a good point, all the confidence and skills didn't stop him from being fresh, from being new.
"Fair enough, skills like that rarely come from anything good especially this quickly,"
Part of Marvin, the part that was a father despaired over what could have happened, the innocence surely lost, the pain it must have caused. The more pragmatic part was relieved, as soaked in guilt as it was, that someone else had taken charge, that someone else seemed to know how to tackle this disaster, that he and the rest of the force weren't left fumbling.
Marvin promised himself that when they got out of this damned city he would keep looking out for his rookie, for Leon.
--
The scream may not have been the smartest of ideas but after the past couple of days he needed a moment to emotionally unload.
Leon was in a world of living ghosts.
Faces of those long dead and gone, those left as shambling rotting not quite corpses, superimposed on the walking, on the living.
There wasn't a single person he'd run into yet that he knew survived the first time around, so few had made it out.
The death throws of the city surrounded him layered twice, memories playing alongside reality.
Racoon City did not die quietly, it was a cacophony of alarms and sirens, screaming and wailing, gunshots echoing through the streets, and the occasional explosion with the fire that followed.
The quiet shuffling behind him was a powerful reminder of all the people in the building under his feet that were still alive. The city would not become their graves, not this time, not again.
Never Again.
