The disposable camera flashed an instant before the lightning outside the tent. Kennedy winced, sighed, turned over onto his other side, but didn't wake up.
It came out well. His face so gentle and serene, like a dead man's.
Krauser was big and heavy, but he stepped so quietly that even the fabric on the tent floor didn't rustle—only the rain outside. After two steps, he knelt down next to the sleeping Leon and looked through the viewfinder again: dark, with only the little light on the receiver glowing with a dull, bloody gleam, but he knew the shot would capture exactly how his disheveled bangs fell across his forehead. But before the major could press the button, the light reflected off a wide-open eye.
"Jack!.." Kennedy barely had time to cry out before a strong hand pressed him down into his sleeping bag, preventing him from jumping up.
"Not good, rookie," Krauser immediately let go, hid the camera, and flicked his lighter to show that it really was him. "You should always be ready."
"You told me to 'go jerk off and hit the hay,'" Leon smirked in his usual insolent manner and rubbed his neck. "And you sat down to fiddle with your bow. I thought you were keeping watch."
"I am keeping watch," Jack stood to his full height, as much as the tent allowed, frowned, and sighed. "I was testing you."
"On the first point, right?" Kennedy asked venomously, knowing the major wouldn't do anything to him anyway.
Krauser released the button on the lighter, and it went dark again.
As for the "first point," Jack himself had problems. Weakly and dully, he could still feel it, but never in the presence of a living person. The kid's too-pretty face might as well have had a sign saying he only drank tea with girls, and Krauser, as feral as he'd become after nearly fifteen years of service, could see the kid glancing at him in a certain way, but he couldn't and wouldn't do anything about it. A photograph, especially of a sleeping person, didn't count as a living person. Jack stared at the photo paper with its nauseating glare of blind spots, bit his free wrist until it bruised, forced himself to breathe so rarely and silently that he grew dizzy. In the last seconds, he'd jolt as if electrocuted and collapse right where he sat. It was painful, more painful than a flashbang at his feet, as if a discharge had been sent straight through his brain, leaving convulsions in individual small muscles for another minute. But what was far worse was that the same photographs inevitably grew boring, and this camera was the last one.
They often joked about him—it's good to be a pessimist: either you're always right, or you can always be glad things turned out well. Krauser was always certain that he would be discarded like spent material as soon as something happened to him, and all that would be left for him would be to wander the streets begging like countless other veterans—and that would be if he was lucky enough to still have legs to wander on. He told everyone that this would definitely happen to him, with no irony at all, like a madman. Believing it so deeply that it happened.
The crimson beret melted over his face in sticky, thick blood. Salty, poisonous—it stung his eyes and the small cracks in his skin. In his ears was the wet crunch of his own cartilage, and no creature he'd seen on this mission scared him as much as the fact that he could no longer move his fingers. No fairy tales about recovery, no lying whining about how there was always a way out—it was all over.
Everything was over for him, unless some goddamn miracle happened.
He had been a bad person but an excellent soldier: Krauser felt no remorse about killing people. Composed, effective, perfectly executing the task of "eliminate"—no one ever had any questions for him, and it never occurred to anyone that he did it with such pleasure, that in his time off-duty, he didn't rest but worked as a mercenary.
Now, not even a mercenary anymore, Jack wasn't bound by any humanitarian law, let alone morality, but he didn't even feel regret that while he had been, it had protected him in no way. No one had protected him, including Leon, who, so kind and compassionate, couldn't afford to stop and turn back for a wounded comrade. It wasn't his fault; further on, where the virus still threatened humanity, he was far more needed, but no matter how much Krauser thought that this was the only correct course of events—it stung, he was angry at him, to the brink of total hatred, but he never threw away a single photo of him.
As Leon said, for reasons completely inexplicable, genuinely believing his own words, he could continue to be an instructor for recruits and handle army logistics, but it was easier to fake his own death than to wait for them to find something for him, crippled and useless, to do. After recovering, he found an occupation that at first glance seemed unusual for a man of his past—he got involved with a cult. Why, if his country could betray him, should he himself remain submissive and loyal? It wouldn't have been loyalty anyway; only someone endowed with a higher consciousness could be loyal, and Krauser, if he left everything as it was, would have no consciousness left. Everyone dies once, and it doesn't matter whether you continue to exist aimlessly afterward—but Jack miraculously rose from the dead.
All the time until he met Albert Wesker, he could hardly sleep, not because of the pain, but because when he fell asleep, he couldn't let go of himself, couldn't forget what had happened to him, that he could no longer do anything, that his life was over. He'd close his eyes, hoping to relax a little, to forget, but his own severed arm, the moment he stepped into a place where everything was still fine, would grab him by the scruff and throw him into a nightmare indistinguishable from reality. His life was over, yet for some damn reason he continued to exist.
Krauser couldn't sleep, but he finally went mad when, in rare exceptions to his paralyzed semblance of sleep, it wasn't his own mutilated reflection that appeared, but the one who had been lucky enough to get out of that mission intact.
Leon Scott Kennedy occupied all his thoughts. And the thought that he might meet him again struck Jack with such excitement that he found the strength not to end it all.
Jack silently dropped his head to the side, exposing the largest vein. The needle stopped a millimeter from his skin.
"Are you sure, Mr. Krauser?" Even through the thick black lenses, Jack could feel how mocking Wesker's gaze was. It crawled under his skin, dissected him vein by vein, tried to burrow so deep into his brain that nothing would be left of him. Krauser clearly interested him; otherwise, they wouldn't have taken a good half-liter of blood and every possible sample. "Good genes"—he'd heard that fragment of a conversation through the anesthesia, either with someone or with himself. And ironically, the joke about good genes, combined with his German roots, had stuck to Jack like a brand since school. And it was all true about him: tall, strong, healthy—if not for the scars, even his face was good—but that wasn't what interested Wesker.
"NSAIDs contraindicated"—one nearly invisible note in his medical file, which Wesker had bet on and hadn't lost.
"Or is something weighing on you?" Jack saw a restrained, arrogant smile reflected in the deactivated medical panel. "For everything you've done, you should have been executed last millennium—if not under military code, then under civil law. 'Sexual assault of minors with particular cruelty'…"
Jack didn't feel pain well. Not others', not his own. He was angry at himself, looking for some line he wouldn't cross, while Wesker was only looking for his analysis of the PTGS2 mutation.
"Basal plasma prostaglandin E2 levels significantly below reference values," Wesker momentarily left Krauser with his thoughts about what he'd done and turned to the printout. "The hyperthermic phase of viral rejection will be skipped."
Injection or electric chair? Jack had long ago decided for himself that he would choose the latter. But the choice was made for him.
"You're clearly not here to lecture me on morality," the former major smirked, wincing at the touch of cold, tentacle-like fingers.
"And you were so waiting for this, weren't you? To finally clear your conscience and get what you deserve." Wesker quickly grew tired of dry calculations, and it was far more interesting to switch to a living specimen. And Krauser had gotten used to being just a biological unit back in the army. "This injection won't kill you. But to gain one life, you must pay with one death. I know what you want." He pulled Jack by his sewn-on arm, forcing him to stand, and sat him in the electric chair. "Get ready. You will become something better than human." Wesker slid the needle into the vein with a soft whisper and pushed the plunger. Krauser felt nothing. Right up until Albert pressed a button on some panel to the left, and Jack was jolted with such electricity that it felt like his bone marrow was sizzling. Everything flashed before his eyes like the flash of a disposable camera. "Welcome."
Injection or electric chair? Or maybe neither? Treating him, and then trying to convince his paranoia-inflamed mind that the treatment had worked—it would be easier to just shoot him. A bullet to the head, and it's done. Easier for everyone.
And someone he didn't know wanted to help him, without even realizing it.
As he heavily knelt before the cult leader, Krauser felt the familiar tickle of someone else's scope on the back of his neck—a feeling that had never failed him since his very first operation. And just a moment before he released his mutated hand, bones outwards as a shield, Wesker regretted the effort he'd invested, and the aim shifted away from him.
If the major had known what happened back at the tower, he might have silently said thank you, but as he rose, Krauser held onto his bitter rage against anyone who might do anything out of pity for him.
Jack got scared when he realized that besides rage, paralysis, and the anticipation of danger, he could feel something else. Something unsettling and prickling, but so warm that he didn't want to get rid of it. That he worried about his rookie, that he cared what happened to him, that he wanted to protect him.
He wanted to split his eyes with an axe into one black wound, making the bones crunch. The boy had thin wrists—he remembered well, he knew, he anticipated the sound they would make when they broke. Flexible as willow branches. He'd fall backward from the blow, blood gushing from his face, he'd grope around helplessly and scream, he'd want to cry but wouldn't be able to.
Leon, when no one was watching them, was very attentive and—unusually for not just a soldier but any man—tender. He'd put bandages on every scratch as if they weren't trivial, always catch moments when he was starting to lose his temper, and even give him his water on long marches. He had such kind and clear eyes that it made your heart ache: he wanted to help everyone, even after seeing an entire city die.
Jack would have had the strength to pull his joint out with his bare hands. Even back when his own hands were alive. Not just wrench his arms behind his back, already showing his superiority and strength, but dislocate them unnaturally so that his elbows bent outward, dangling by skin bruised blue from ruptured vessels. Then cut open the swelling hematoma with a knife and take his limb, pulling it off as easily as a leaf from an autumn tree.
He wanted to do something nice for him—even just buy him ice cream, but that was about all Jack remembered from civilian life. Once, as a joke, he'd sat Leon on his shoulders, lifting him at arm's length like a puppy. The boy got flustered, laughed, and said something about how if they saw each other in five years, it would be the other way around. And it was so bitter that they would part and nothing would remain except those creepy, stained photos and good memories that Krauser wanted to kill him.
He was obsessed with him, but he never did anything to him.
"I want to cut you," Jack leaned so close to Leon that he could hear his pulse beating in his temple. He snatched the knife in a lightning-fast movement and pressed the blade to his cheek. Sickly sweet as a girl, so unsure behind all those jokes… He didn't even have proper stubble yet, and they'd already thrown him into the thick of it.
There was nothing to grab onto; he had not a millimeter of maneuverability. One breath, one twitch, and he'd be cut.
"Don't be afraid to get close to the enemy," Krauser had always taught him. "They can't hit you if they have no room to swing."
Leon was pinned to the barracks cot by a heavy, hot body. Jack breathed noisily and threateningly, examining his face and neck, every small mole and the speck of dust clinging to him from training.
"So nimble," Krauser loosened his grip for a split second, then painfully drove his knee in its hard armor into Leon's thigh. "I wonder how you'll move…" Jack sliced open Leon's shoulder, along with his T-shirt, with a single touch and pressed his face to the cut, smearing himself in his blood. The boy jerked. "…if I cut off your legs?"
"Leave me alone!" He thrashed, tried to escape, turned his face away just to avoid looking Jack in the eye, but it was useless. "You're crazy!"
Krauser moved his knife hand closer to Leon's ear and bit his neck. The knife trembled, leaving small, inflamed points, and it took a tremendous effort for the major not to drive the blade in to the hilt. Jack was drooling with perverse rage and the desire to lunge at him, to bleed him, to hurt him so badly he'd lose consciousness—but he had to hold back. He had to do everything to keep the rookie alive.
"Let me go!" Short fingernails clawed at Krauser's crooked scars on his forearms. Leon shook his head, unsuccessfully tried to throw him off, and seemed to press even closer.
At some random moment, Jack just let him go and left. They forgot about it because on the mission, there was a far more serious problem than a moment's weakness. At least, they pretended to. Jack knew he wouldn't go unpunished for this. He should have been in the electric chair already.
"I died two years ago… That's what they told you, rookie?" Jack, seeing Leon for not the first time that day, couldn't suppress a crooked smile—God knows what it expressed, but Leon could guess it was nothing good.
"You're repeating yourself, Major," Kennedy hid behind his knife and raised his pistol. "And you'll give an encore performance if you don't let the girl go."
"Haven't learned a thing," Krauser waved his hand, and from it, with the wet crunch of breaking cartilage, emerged a crooked cage of bones wrapped in loose, mutated flesh. "Puppy."
Krauser fought without tactics, without any automatic assessment of the combat situation drilled into his head over so many years of service—just pure rage, unclouded by either the virus in his blood or Las Plagas. Rookie Kennedy had never grown up, and could never forgive someone who acted like a traitor and stopped at nothing to achieve his goal. Jack's goal was to once again find himself in the suffocating, hot humidity of the Brazilian jungle—to have everything like it was back then.
And everything was. And Leon was there again. And, disinhibited by the parasite, with no orders or objectives, he wanted to destroy him and could let himself go, not thinking that he was far more fragile than he might appear.
And Leon was there. A few blows in exchange for knife strikes that didn't even cause Krauser pain, and the rookie, breaking wooden barrels with his body, went tumbling.
"Stop…" Leon got up, grabbed his side, and suddenly began to limp. "I believe you, Jack… Let's make a deal, the easy way!"
Leon had become craftier. But just like Jack himself, he hadn't learned to forgive, even though he was sure that was nobility. And Jack had no reason not to fall for it. He had already done everything he could, and looking into his disgustingly honest eyes, he understood that what he had wanted—he would never do now.
"What, rookie, don't learn from your mistakes?" Krauser let his guard down and took a step forward. "I always told you that you'd better…" Without waiting for another greasy comment about his appearance, Leon was behind Jack in an instant and pulled the shotgun's trigger.
His last eye burst, the sounds around him merged into a deafening screech and faded, and again a bright, painful flash flickered before Krauser's eyes, like from a disposable camera.
After all, Wesker had given him a lot. He'd shown him a lot and confirmed his oldest, most obsessive thoughts. Having ended up the only survivor of the electrocution in the world, Krauser could say that his third death felt exactly the same.
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