+Author's note+:
I took down some of my other stuff I'm never going to finish. I'm flush with ideas and need to finish a few. I've made some great strides to finish my other stuff (Darkened Sky, Devil's Bargain, Reckoning will be coming to end soon enough).
So this is darker and harder than some of my other stuff I'm working on. In all my tales, I refer to Leon Kennedy as The Executioner. I have a pretty clear idea of how he came to be that. It's my idea of what kind of "training" he under goes after Raccoon City leading up to Operation Javier (which is where this story will take us).
But he's the star here.
I'm working too on a Claire and Chris story chronicling their youth and leading up to Raccoon. A Jill and Chris take on 6. And a few other ideas.
Thank you for reading and reviewing.
Slainte.
BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM
Episode 1: The Rookie
Day 62:
The door opened. The squeal of rusty hinges filled the silence.
He rolled, eyes dilating to adjust to the gush of light into the absence of it.
A tray was pushed along the floor, scraping on the jagged stone.
"What is your answer?"
Shaking, soaked, freezing and naked – he stared back from the floor where he lay. "…no."
The door closed with a snap.
The tray in the dark had food. But the food was rotten. He knew that. The food was always rotten.
He inched toward it – and ate it anyway.
Day 34:
"Come on! What the hell is this? Somebody get in here and talk to me!"
The slat on the door opened. Two blue eyes stared in at him. "Stop shouting."
"Then get in here and answer me."
"…agree. And he'll come in there."
"Agree to what!? What am I agreeing to?"
The eyes went right and left, searching for something he couldn't see. "To the Cage."
"What the fuck is the Cage?" He did air quotes. He laughed.
The eyes weren't laughing back at him. "The Cage is where you become. It's where you go to train. You want to live in that fucking room?"
"No. Let me out."
"Then agree to the cage."
The slat snapped shut and left him in the dark.
Day 42:
He could hear the screaming. Someone, somewhere, was screaming like they were being tortured.
It was the first time he stopped being angry to really pay attention. Where was he? What was happening here?
What had he agreed to?
The door opened.
He made his first real mistake.
He rushed the door.
The tazer hit him full in the chest and threw him to his back on the cold stone. He jerked. He flopped. He gasped and spastically kicked his mattress. His jaw clenched on his tongue and drew blood.
Electricity stole his ability to do anything but lay there jerking like a landed fish.
Something was thrown on him. It was wet. It was warm. It smelled like pennies and sweat.
The door slammed shut.
He sat up in the dark, twitching from the after shocks.
His hands picked up the warm wet thing on him. It had a tattoo of an eagle on the back right shoulder.
It was the flesh off the back of Jefferson Drew. They'd skinned him alive.
It splatted. It plopped. It squelched as he dropped it.
He crawled to the corner and threw up the empty bile in his stomach.
Day 3:
The door opened. Curious, he rose from the mattress.
But the small foot kicked him in the chest and sent him back down.
Angrily, he almost shouted at her, "Let me the fuck out of here. Seriously."
The light from the door showed a pretty girl, small of build, probably mid-twenties. She shoved him to his back and mounted him. He was too surprised to do anything to stop her.
She tugged at his pants. She pulled him free and put him in her mouth.
His hand shot forward to spear through her hair. He tried to tug her free but she just sucked him harder.
The door opened. A man in white stood in the doorway. "There is pleasure in pain. And intense pain in release. Deny your body, deny your release, and learn to listen to your skills."
The girl was wetly sucking him, like a whore, like an eager thing.
He tried to tug her off again and she bit hard enough to arouse and frighten him in one go.
The man in the doorway added, "Give over. Please yourself. And prepare yourself for battle. Or deny your body, and succumb to the torture of your enemies."
He gasped, fisting his hands in the hair of the girl in his lap. She suckled him like a succubus, trying to pull his soul out of his dick.
Was the girl in his lap his enemy or his ally?
Who the hell knew here?
She bit again, swallowing him all the way to the base of him.
And he bucked, gasped, and went in her mouth – jerking.
The man in white nodded, "When you can resist your own release, when you can resist the needs of your body – you will be ready for what I can teach you. Until then?"
The girl rose. She shoved away from him and went out the door, no looking back.
"Remain in the dark and contemplate your own weakness."
Day 17:
The door opened.
A bucket of water was thrown on him.
Freezing, stumbling, he collapsed against the wall with the force of it.
They sprayed soap all over him and threw another bucket.
He sat in the dark when the door slammed, soaked and freezing.
Day 26:
She came again, the girl with the short hair and the big eyes. She shot him first with the taser.
It sent him over, shaking and twitching.
She mounted him and jerked at his pants.
He started to pull her off him and she hit him again with the electricity. He flopped, jerking, gasping. And she sucked at his body.
Each time he reached for her, she hit him again.
After fifteen minutes, he went in her mouth, bucking and shaking. His body twitched, spastically, as she rose and kicked him away.
He laid in the dark still jerking from the countless shocks to his system.
He was starting to wonder who the hell he was anymore.
Day 30:
The music started.
Moonlight Sonata.
Over and over and over.
It played and played. It played and played and played. Loud. Constant.
He couldn't sleep. He couldn't do anything but hear it.
He put his face in his hands and jerked at his hair.
Day 48:
The torture.
They shocked him. They brought the water tank.
They did electro shock therapy. They strung him up and whipped him. First it was skinny little strips of leather. Repeteadly, over his back and buttocks.
He fought. Who wouldn't?
He fought.
By day 48, he stopped fighting.
They put him in the tub of water. They cranked up the electricity.
He ground his teeth and took it.
They strung him up to whip him. He stared at the wall and tuned them out.
In his head, over and over, Moonlight Sonata.
It had somehow become his happy place.
Day 16:
The training started. Heavy.
Constant.
In a dark cellar, in wavering torchlight.
They shoved him barefoot onto heated coals.
He was given a Bo staff. He was pitted against a girl in a white gi. She hit him twice in the stomach, whipped around to take his knees, and kicked him to his back on the hot coals.
She whipped him in the face and spun away to trip him again as he raced at her.
She back flipped, spun around, and hit him twice in the nuts.
He went back into the dark burned and broken.
Day 50:
She came again.
He was naked now.
They didn't even bother to give him clothing.
He was bearded and likely looked like a monster. He was lean and honed and hard. They made sure of that too. They trained him.
She pushed him to his back. She put her mouth on him.
He didn't fight her.
He didn't even bother.
He stared at the wall above her head and felt nothing. She couldn't even get him erect now.
She sucked, she played, she rose to watch his face.
He ignored her.
She tilted her head. She took off her pants and climbed on his lap.
Moonlight Sonata played behind his eyes. He could see the chords. The notes. The lull and pull of the music.
She worked at him, trying to get him erect to mount him and fuck him.
Nothing.
She finally grabbed his bearded face and studied his empty eyes.
And nodded.
She climbed off his lap and left.
She didn't come back again.
Day 54:
She came at him with the Bo staff. He waited, watching her.
She swung at him. He flipped back twice, spun low to miss losing his head, and took her feet. She went over into the coals and he kicked her in the side as she tried to rise. She rolled across the burning surface, scissored her legs to attempt to get back up and he hit her so hard in the face with the staff she was thrown backward.
She humped her hips, jerked her staff to take him in the junk, and he caught it, twisted, and whipped her twice in the face with her own staff.
As she went down, he hooked his knee behind her head, spun her out and hip kicked her twice in the ass.
On her face, she tried to crawl.
He put the staff to the back of her head and a voice shouted, "Enough!"
It wasn't. He drove the staff through the back of her neck.
It cracked. It spilled hot blood onto the burning coals. His feet were numb to it now. He no longer felt it.
Or pity for the cry she made as she died.
Moonlight Sonata played behind his eyes all the time now. It was all he heard.
Above him, that voice, "You have killed your trainer."
He dropped the staff.
The greasy spill of his hair nearly hid what had once been a handsome face.
And the voice said, "Good. You are ready…." To someone beside him, the voice said, "Put him in the cage."
Day 73:
The Cage hung above a pit of spikes. It was a wood arena no wider than a wrestling mat.
It was covered in old dried blood.
It had the skin of those who'd lost and died strung up like patchwork hide on a teepee around its narrow bars. Human flesh still browned, it seemed, in the sun even after it was cleaved from the muscle and bone of its owner.
They were given knives.
They were put in The Cage.
The man in white said, "End your opponent. Or you will both die."
The Cage was lowered above the pit of spikes. The spikes were enormous, fashioned from heavy trunks of heavily sharpened trees. They wound puncture the fragile cage and killed them both if the bond that dangled it was cut. It was, literally, kill or be killed.
He faced the girl across from him.
Pretty.
Young.
He kept forgetting that he was young too.
He felt a million years old.
The girl was scared. He could smell it on her. Like a predator. Like an animal.
She whispered, "Why are we here?"
He had no answer.
He beckoned her with one hand. The knife pointed at the ground. His legs braced. He took up the stance they'd hammered at him until it was burned in his skull.
Shaking, the girl echoed him.
She whispered, "We could escape. Together? We could escape."
One of the bonds of the cage was cut. It swung, fast and sharp and scary. It swung over the pit, listing to one side. She shrieked and staggered.
He didn't.
He held his feet.
He didn't even move.
The voice called to them, "Now. Or die screaming."
She raced him. He braced. He rolled his back and her knife swung over the air where he'd been. His elbow rolled and smacked into her face, throwing her sideways. His foot kicked her knee to send her rolling. She managed to be a second ahead of the stomp he sent at her face.
She staggered and clamored up. She spun back at him, jabbing madly with her knife.
He paried, he blocked, he kicked her in the groin and threw himself back into cartwheel to kick her in the face as he went.
She squeaked. She hit the edge of The Cage and touched the flesh there.
She shrieked and dropped her knife.
She covered her face, crying. "Oh god…oh god…what is this place?"
The voice called, "Pick up your knife, St. Louis."
The girl cried softly now, desperately, "….I can't."
The voice sighed dramatically, "… Raccoon City."
He heard the command in the voice. He turned. And he threw the knife at her.
The girl, named for town she'd once lived in, tried to block it. But it sank into her throat. She gagged. She staggered. She fought against it, stumbling, and sliding in her blood. She went down, she crawled, she sobbed – she died in the rich smell of copper.
They raised The Cage.
They put him back in his room.
Moonlight Sonata in his ears, in his head, in his eyes. His programming was complete. He was nothing now but a killer. He didn't know who he was anymore but their puppet.
The door closed.
He put his face in his hands and wept.
Day 1:
"Leon!"
She struggled against their hands.
He stood in the circle of the men in the suits and watched her go. He spit blood on the ground. They'd already tried to get him to tell them where Claire had fled to.
He didn't tell them a damn thing.
So, they decided to use the girl to get to him instead.
"Agree, Mr. Kennedy, or we'll experiment on her until she's nothing more than blood and development."
The little girl. The longest night of his life.
And the hopelessness of defeat.
He spoke, softly, "You're supposed to be the good guys."
The man in the glasses smiled softly, "Mr. Kennedy, there are no good guys. There's just us versus them. We saw your transcripts. We read your file. We need you. If you're not with us, you're against us. Agree, we'll make you a legend in our field."
Leon said nothing.
"Deny us, and we'll make you a memory like the city you left behind."
Sherry shouted, they stuffed her in a black sedan.
"I want her protected. I swear to god, if I find you you've let anything happen to her, I'll take the skills you teach me and use every last one of them to destroy you."
They held eyes in the badly lit hallway.
"Agreed. Take him to White."
Sherry slapped her hand to the window of the Sedan, like she could touch him.
He lifted his hand like they'd hold on, just one last time.
And they stuck the needle in the side of his neck.
Day 100:
He went into the forest Leon Kennedy.
Maybe.
He went up against ten other people. Like Battle Royale. Like a man with nothing to lose. A game. A hunt. A predator and ten prey.
The first died in the brush trying to run.
The second struggled beneath the water while he'd held them down.
The third was an easy snipe from the top of the tree where he was perched like an avenging angel.
He took two of them down together by setting the little hut on fire where he found them sleeping. Apparently, they were lovers. They were just trying to out live the others and escape.
He killed two more while they fled across the lake. He swam down the first one and broke their neck while they struggled in the water. The second made it to the shore and he hit them in the back with a rock, kicked them to their back on the sand, and stomped their face to nothing.
The eighth one died after a lengthy struggle in the swamp. They both spilled blood. They both hit hard. Leon limped away. But he put the other man in the swamp choking on his own collapsed wind pipe.
The ninth one was luck.
They ran around the edge of the building where Leon was leaning. They stared at each other.
A pretty girl with big green eyes.
He head butted her. She went down. And he snapped her neck while she tried to run.
Eight days.
Eight days.
And one final opponent.
A shiver of sound had him missing losing his head to the arrow. He paced, he hid, he waited. Eventually the archer emerged from the trees. Leon kicked a tree branch into his hands and swung.
In the dark, a bat to the face.
A final gurgle.
And the last man left alive.
He collapsed to his knees.
They came to extract him.
100 days to make him a monster.
100 days to see him slaughter like a beast.
He went into the forest Leon Kennedy.
He came out The Executioner.