Little Bird - Chapter One
Summary: Losing everything was the last thing on her list. She’s the rat hiding in plain sight, trading secrets to keep her father alive. Careful. Quiet. Invisible. That’s how she survives. How she keeps him breathing. No one is supposed to notice her. No one ever does. Until Leon.
Chapter Index
a/n: hi pretties!!! thank you for taking the time to read my first post on tumblr! i fell back in love with writing and i’m so excited to share my stories with you all. please don’t hesitate to give any feedback or suggestions! i’m still very new to tumblr, but i hope we all can be moots! <3 ps: the layout was inspired by fairybones on tumblr! pls support their work! pps: tysm for my bff helen for helping me polish the “hacking” ily girlie
Chapter One
You heard the monotonous pitter-patter of rain tapping on the windows just outside the office building. Its rhythm was soft and uneven, just barely drowning out the hum of the dim fluorescent lights and faint whir of the ventilation system above you. As you sank deeper into your chair, there was the unmistakable sound of a lone fly buzzing past your ears, but it didn't bother you as much as it should have. Normally, you would have swatted it away, but you were too transfixed by the static of your monitor burning holes through your retinas. It painted your small workspace in a pale shade of blue, casting shadows on stacks upon stacks of files that seemed impossibly high for someone who was “new.”
It was your first day at the DSO, and they already had you doing their busy work.
A small sigh slipped past your lips as your gaze drifted lazily over the half-opened boxes scattered across the gray carpet. You didn’t own much, and you preferred it that way. It kept you sane, and it was reassuring to know there was no clutter or distractions to hide behind. Everything you owned had a purpose, or at least one you could justify. However, you couldn’t deny it looked more like being prepared to leave than anything else.
But no one expected much from you. You were a rookie in their eyes after all. The new girl who was tucked away in a quiet corner, anonymous and expendable. To them, you were a lost little lamb who was overlooked by the wolves. At least, that was the story that you were selling, and you intended to keep it that way. Tiny breadcrumbs could lead all the way to the truth for anyone paying attention, which was the one thing you wanted to avoid.
You had already made a tiny slip-up once this morning, right when your new coworkers gathered to welcome you to the team. You had forced a polite smile when they greeted you, masking the wince just shy of forming around the corners of your mouth. You had hoped your reaction seemed akin to gratitude – hell, you even accepted the cupcakes that were bought just for you.
There had been a red-haired girl, bright green eyes wide with surprise as you placed your belongings down.
‘Is that all you brought?’
You remembered how your cheeks flushed as you gave her a small, tight nod before turning away, like that alone might be enough to shut them out.
It wasn’t until now that you noticed how tense your shoulders still were. You didn't want them to know you. You couldn't let them get close.
The unopened chocolate cupcakes sat at the edge of your desk, quietly tempting you. They were starting to go stale. You hadn’t touched them, and you weren’t going to. The moment you allowed yourself to indulge in something so small, you would become complacent, and this would all start to feel too real. You settled on the thought a bit longer than you should have, vision locked on the crinkled plastic box while the rest of the world faded away.
And then a vibration on your leg jolted you out of it.
You reached into your pocket and pulled your phone free. The screen lit up, and you squinted as the sudden brightness illuminated the ceiling. As your eyes adjusted, you felt your blood run cold, and your fingertips go numb. Something dark and heavy settled in the pit of your stomach. No contact name, no number. Just a video, but you already knew who it was. Your thumb hovered over the play button with a choke lodged in the back of your throat.
The video was short, grainy, and shot from an angle that made the interior of the small suburban kitchen look like a girl’s dollhouse. You saw your father. He was sitting at the table (the one you built together), with his back towards the camera. He was methodically flipping through a newspaper, a task that was so mundane it was haunting. He looked older than he had two weeks ago, his shoulders stooped under the weight of an invisible pressure you couldn't name. The golden lamp shade flickered in his face. When did he get so many wrinkles? He didn't know he was being watched. He didn't know that his daughter was currently infiltrating the world’s most powerful intelligence agency, all to keep a bullet from finding its way to the back of his skull.
The screen suddenly went black. A single line of text followed: Task due 0100. Don’t be late, Little Bird.
You hated that nickname.
You swallowed hard, biting back the bile burning in your throat.
Before all of this, your father had been a simple logistics contractor. You always thought he worked himself to the bone, married to the job. Nothing exciting ever happened; it was all just mundane, honest work. Like any other day, he was reviewing forms for approval when something unusual caught his eye: a shipping manifest Umbrella had tried to keep under the radar. It was a list of chemical precursors, the kind used to manufacture biological weapons. And they were all headed to a site that didn’t exist on the map.
A smarter man would have looked away. A coward would have run. But your father was neither. He tried to secretly report the discrepancy from the inside, believing he could stop a catastrophe before it even started. It was a noble mistake, and the last free choice he ever had. However, Umbrella didn't kill him; they did something much worse. They turned your father’s home into a prison and used his life as a leash to pull you into their servitude.
You still remember the day they first contacted you. You were sitting at a crowded library, your eyes dry from staring at a complex thesis you thought was the most important thing in the world. When a stranger sat across from you, you had hardly even noticed. The only time you looked up was when he slid a tablet over your textbook, showing live footage of your father sleeping peacefully in his bedroom. Umbrella told you that they had you on file for a long time. They knew you were smart (perhaps too smart for your own good), and your father’s mistake was the perfect leverage they needed. You were the scalpel that they could slide into the DSO’s ribcage without the body even knowing it was being cut. So, despite your protest, you became the “rat” that they spent weeks grooming to infiltrate the agency.
Umbrella was using your soul to pay back your father’s debt.
You could feel a small trickle of sweat glide down your brow. God, was it always this hot in here? Fanning your face with your hand, your eyes darted around tentatively. It was 8:00 PM. All the desks were dark at this hour, leaving you alone with that angry, static glare of your monitor. You had five hours until the deadline. Taking a steady breath, you reached for the buttons of your cardigan. Pulling it off your shoulders, you draped it over the back of the chair. You then swiveled back to the keyboard, tied your hair in a loose ponytail, and poised your hands over the keys. You weren’t here to do anything loud. A total system blackout would bring every agent in the building to your desk. No, Umbrella wanted a slow, untraceable rot. Instead, you accessed the most overlooked program on the computer: the Office Supply Inventory.
Your pulse thrummed in your fingertips as you typed a specific string of code into the search bar and logged into a hidden root account you had secretly programmed earlier in the day. With a few small lines, you told the system to erase all your activity logs and planted a small digital “glitch” in the agency’s communication line. For the next forty-eight hours, every emergency report sent from the field would be delayed by exactly twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes was a lifetime in the field. It was just enough time for an Umbrella cleanup crew to vanish before DSO strike teams ever received their coordinates. You watched as the progress bar crawled across the screen, the silence of the office suddenly feeling thick, as if the building itself was holding its breath while you betrayed it.
Then, something creaked behind you.
It was a sound so intentional that it made the office suddenly feel crowded.
You didn't startle at it, though. Instead, you slowly closed the encryption window with a steady hand, pulling up a half-finished spreadsheet on stationery orders just as a tall shadow stretched over your desk.
“Inventory logs?”
The voice was deep and gravely, and it felt like it was vibrating under your flesh. It was a voice that didn't waste any words, yet carried itself with a casually rude undertone. He sounded bored with the lie you hadn't even told him yet.
Trying to let your muscles go slack, you felt the sudden, traitorous bloom of goosebumps rise along your skin. You silently cursed that you had taken off your cardigan earlier. In this heat, those little bumps would be a dead giveaway that something was wrong. Turning your chair towards the stranger, you feigned the innocent look of an overworked rookie.
The blue light of your monitor caught the blonde of his hair. It didn’t soften him, however. It only made the sharp, unforgiving angles of his face look like they were carved from ice. His body was blocking the entryway of your cubicle, effectively cordoning you off from the rest of the room. He loomed there, possessing a terrifyingly patient stillness, the kind that only belongs to a man who has spent more of his life in a warzone than out of one. The tactical vest he wore looked like a second skin, well-worn and scuffed in places that hinted at close calls you weren’t supposed to know about. His arms, thick with lean muscle, were crossed tightly over his chest, making him look even less like a man and more like an immovable wall between you and the only exit.
Then there were his eyes. They were the color of a shallow grave in mid-winter. Cold. Piercing. Utterly unimpressed. He was searching for the pulse in your neck, the tension in your jaw, the microscopic tells that screamed guilt. He was dismantling you. Under that deep, unblinking stare, you felt your facade begin to fray. It was like he didn’t even need to utter a word to make you feel like you were already under investigation.
The scent of him was overwhelming in that tight cubicle; it was thick enough to taste. He wasn't wearing cologne. Instead, the raw, sharp smell of the outdoors filled your nose: petrichor, cold wind, and the clinging tang of gun oil. It was a soldier’s scent. The kind that didn’t belong in a room filled with the perfume of ink and stale office coffee. This was Leon S. Kennedy. The Leon S. Kennedy.
The realization hit you like a physical weight, settling heavily in your stomach. In the grainy training videos Umbrella made you study for hours on end, Leon looked like a professional. In person, he was absolutely intimidating. There was a rugged, hardened beauty about him. He didn't look anything like the airbrushed “hero” all the DSO recruitment posters promised. He looked like a man who never thinks twice before pulling the trigger.
“I was trying to get ahead, Agent..sir,” you corrected yourself quickly, your heart racing in your chest. “I didn’t realize anyone else was in the wing.”
You almost used his name just then, and all you could do was only hope he hadn't caught it.
The silence that followed was stifling. The oxygen somehow felt thinner the longer he stood there. You watched Leon’s eyes as they traced over your desk - the absence of anything personal, the untouched cupcakes, and then finally settling on your bare arms. He seemed to notice the goosebumps practically radiating along your skin, head tilting slightly, as if he could hear the sound of blood rushing through your veins. It was oppressive; he already knew the answer, but was waiting for you to trip over your own tongue.
“It’s 8:00 PM on a Tuesday,” he stated, his tone flat. Slowly, agonizingly, Leon stepped right into the narrow confines of your cubicle, invading whatever space you even had left. Leaning down, he placed his gloved hand on the edge of your desk, causing the wood to groan with the added pressure. He wasn’t even trying to hide it at this point...he was trying to trap you. He was so close that you could see the faint, jagged scar on his chin. He was too attentive.
“Why are you here after hours?” he whispered, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate level. A stray lock of blonde hair fell over his brow, but he didn’t brush it away. “Is work that interesting, rookie? Or are you that bad at your job?”
The insult stung, sparking a genuine flame of irritation in your stomach. You could do things that over half of the DSO couldn’t even dream of doing. You could do it in your sleep. Yet you were here, being looked down upon by a man who thought your highest ceiling was a clerical error. You looked up at him, meeting his gaze with a defiance you hadn’t intended to show.
“Maybe I just take my job seriously,” you retorted, the mask of a shy rookie you were holding onto slipping away. You squared your shoulders, refusing to let him dictate the tension. “Not everyone has the luxury of being so…established that they can walk in and out as they please. Some of us have to prove we’re an asset before acting like we own the place.”
You watched him as he looked you once over. You had almost said legendary. It was the word Umbrella used to describe him daily, but you caught it behind your teeth just in time. Leon didn’t flinch at your pushback. Instead, a mischievous smirk played on his lips.
He leaned heavier into your desk, practically pinning you down. You felt like a caged animal, trapped between the hard back of your chair and the heat of his chest, leaving nowhere to look but up at him.
“An asset,” Leon repeated the word dryly, as if it were poison in his mouth. “Is that what you want to be, rookie?”
He lingered a second longer. His eyebrows slightly pinched, and his gaze narrowed as if he were trying to solve a puzzle he hadn’t expected to find. But there was a slight flicker of interest that you hadn’t noticed before that danced in his expression, and you felt your response catch in your throat. You were never like this. Why could you not say anything?
“The DSO has a habit of chewing people up who try too hard,” his voice dropped so low it was almost a hum. Then, he straightened up with one fluid motion, finally giving you air, though the space felt crowded by his intoxicating scent. “Usually, they're the ones with the most to hide.”
He didn’t ask your name. He didn’t offer his. He simply turned to walk away, heavy leather boots hitting the carpeted floor with a steady, rhythmic thump as he headed straight for the elevators.
“Get some sleep,” Leon called out over his shoulder, not even bothering to look back. “I’d hate for you to miss a stapler count because you were too tired to see straight.” You watched his back as he turned the corner, vanishing into the hallway.
Silence rushed back into the office, sudden and hollow. You remained frozen in your chair, staring at the empty gap where he had been towering just mere seconds ago. The air was still tingling around you. Even with him gone, the space felt charged, as if his presence left a physical imprint on the room. You finally let out the breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, lungs aching in protest from the effort.
You hoped he didn't suspect anything. What were the odds anyway? A top-tier operative like Kennedy didn’t waste his time in the clerical wings of the DSO. To him, you were just a face in a crowd of analysts. A rookie who was entirely beneath his notice.
The adrenaline began to ebb as you turned back towards the monitor. You finished the last of your work, fingers moving quickly to close every open tab and wipe the temporary cache. You watched as the progress bar vanished. It was done. Whatever chaos the morning brought could never be traced back to you now.
With the screen finally dark, you turned your attention to the clutter on your desk. Muttering to yourself, you gathered the stacks of files that your coworkers had dumped on you earlier. It would have to wait until tomorrow; you needed to go home as soon as you could. As much as you hated to admit, Leon was right. You needed to rest.
Once your desk was clear, you pulled your phone out from your pocket again. Thumbs moving fast, you sent the two words that bought your father another day: Task Complete.
You didn’t stay a second longer. You grabbed your cardigan from the back of the chair and slung your purse over your shoulder, the office feeling uncomfortably warm and still. Someone really needs to check on the air conditioner. You made your way past the rows of empty workstations and stepped into the metal elevator, letting the heavy silence finally begin to feel normal again.
After a brief moment, the metal doors hissed back, and you stepped out into the lobby. It was an expanse of polished marble and glass, so brightly lit that it made your head ache after the dimness of the clerical wing. Right in the center of the floor, the DSO’s seal was stamped into the middle of the stone. As you passed the massive security desk, you caught the eye of the guard on duty. You offered him a tiny smile with a meek ‘Goodnight,’ and he gave you a curt nod in return. Taking the keycard from the lanyard that was resting on your neck, you pressed it against the reader to unlock the final barrier. The alarm flashed green with an electric chirp as you eased the exit open.
Outside, the torrential downpour had finally begun to subside. The humid night air tickled your nose the moment you stepped out. You stood there for a moment, the weight of what had happened finally catching up to you. You couldn’t shake the memory of how Leon looked at you. That piercing gaze felt as though it was reading straight into your soul, unearthing all of your deepest secrets. You firmly brushed the thought away, trying not to let it get to you.
The only thing that followed you out the door was the echo of your own footsteps.
