#nerd!leon diary

[rookieinglasses]

[06.24.2000]

With just over an hour left until dawn, he had to hurry. He wanted to slip out silently, unnoticed, but the moment he passed by, Star got up to follow him, her tail wagging briskly. While he was putting on his shoes, as if asking where he was headed, it showered him with licks wherever she could reach—his nose, ears, and forehead—until Leon finally gave in and wrapped his arms around her, pressing himself softly against her fur with a quiet chuckle, wiping the dampness from his cheeks with the back of his hand.

"Come on, let's go."

Star bounded eagerly on her leash, setting a cheerful, springy pace even where her owner remained cautious, scanning the street to make sure no one was around. Once they reached a deserted, shadowy path lined with inky-black trees, Leon checked his surroundings one last time and leaned down to unclip the leash, briefly embracing the excited dog.

"And remember to behave. We don’t bother anyone."

He whispered this right against her ear, kissing the bridge of her snout before letting her go. Star didn't have a mean bone in her body; it was driven by a childlike curiosity, nudging everyone she met to get acquainted. Other people, blinded by the misconception that all dobermans are vicious attack dogs, would panic whenever Star poked her nose against their waist to sniff them out. No matter how much they recoiled, doberman would sensitively step closer to understand them. When the particularly fearful ones started screaming, waving their hands, and insulting his doggo child, Leon's patience would wear thin. Before pulling his girl away, he would give those idiots a piece of his mind, while his dog just tilted her head in utter confusion, retreating like a child behind his back. In moments like these, Leon found himself thinking more and more that he wasn’t the one walking Star—she was walking him.

By 3:28 AM, Leon began his run. He deliberately sought out the most derelict spots: abandoned industrial zones, overgrown, wild corners of the park, dead neighborhoods—anything that bore a resemblance to... Raccoon City. He didn't run along the designated park paths where it would be safe. On his missions, he almost always faced the same architecture of ruins and devastation. Star ran right at his side, a loyal companion keeping perfect stride with his rhythm.

An average of 4.28 minutes. Horrific. Monsters are faster. Leon recalculated, squinting to catch the digits on his watch, but he nearly tripped over a fallen cable, losing a few crucial seconds. No matter how he crunched the numbers—at this speed, it was no wonder Mr. X caught up to him so often, ready to smash his skull like an egg against a wall.

He timed himself roughly every 3 miles. Sometimes he used mile markers, and in their absence, he relied purely on instinct. Every mission, every sleepless nightmare about September 30th boiled down to one thing: a fatal lack of speed. He couldn't always shoot or blow up the monstrosities hunting him, whether it was Mr. X, a Licker, or something else entirely. He never knew what to expect on those assignments, which his superiors spoke of so sparingly right before almost shoving him toward the military transport.

4.23 minutes. Still too slow. Back at the base, the combat instructor always wondered with a hint of exasperation how someone with Leon's specific skills and high learning curve had even survived in the first place, before begrudgingly handing him an increased training quota. Leon hated the drills, sometimes even more than the missions themselves. He liked Stanley Kubrick's films, but he never wanted to find himself living inside one. But did he ever have a choice? Did anyone care how much he despised weapons? Despised the military? They didn't care; they just wanted to take Sherry away…

3.67 minutes. Leon shook his head, flipping back his sweat-soaked bangs. He needed to be faster. If he had been faster back then, he would have saved Elliot. Elliot would have made it out alive if Leon hadn't been such a slowpoke. If he hadn't been so clumsy, that man would still be here.

3.21 minutes. Leon exhaled sharply, searching for Star with his eyes. She was running right beside him, carefree and light on her feet, her tongue lolling in the wind. She wagged her tail—that was his girl. She was nothing like those disease-ravaged hounds from the past. Those dogs ran faster. They would already be waiting in pairs right at the edge of the turn, ready to lunge in a matter of seconds and rip his throat out.

2.95 minutes. Leon's breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps, his knees going numb. Dawn was breaking as he finally reached the park. Running through those grim, shadowed ruins in the twilight had been suicidal. But how else could he learn to run fast and nimble enough to survive among debris, barricades, and dense forests if he only stuck to the designated paths?

The slate-gray sky began to fill with deep blues and golds as the sun lazily rolled over the horizon. The clouds stretched thin, resembling the trim of a tangled, discarded blanket after a restless night. Still untouched by the sun's warmth, the park smelled of fresh grass and damp earth.

A cramp treacherously seized his leg, forcing him to slow down. Leon lengthened his stride, leaning his torso back. But he was too late even here; it barely helped. Striking the curb, Leon tripped, completely at the mercy of inertia and gravity as he went down.

By some grand miracle, he managed not to smash his head or nose. Realizing just how lucky he was to have landed in the grass, he let out a hoarse laugh that dissolved into a suffocating cough. Star jumped anxiously onto his chest with her front paws, showering him with licks. Propping himself up on a scraped elbow, Leon tried to catch his breath while she licked his ears, his hair, and his forehead, nudging his neck with an anxious snout.

"I’m okay."

He patted his girl’s withers, offering reassurance. His dog was extraordinarily intelligent; she already held his glasses in her teeth—they had flown off into the grass during the fall. Unbuckling his backpack, he pulled out a water bottle and a travel bowl for Star.

His knees were scraped raw, down to the flesh. The only reason he hadn’t snapped his neck was because he had taken the brunt of the fall on his knees, skidding across the asphalt before hitting the grass. It was just as fortunate that his glasses were intact. He wiped her drool off them, though he was entirely covered in it himself anyway. Even for Star, these outings were an absolute endurance test.

[rookieinglasses]

[10.06.2003]

It was supposed to be a mere "field trip"—a reconnaissance mission to a microreactor capped at eighty megawatts. From the outside, it looked nothing like a nuclear power plant; it resembled a small factory with its own reservoir, easily mistaken for a pulp and paper mill. But no, this was a highly compact micro-NPP. Arriving under the guise of an intern had worked flawlessly. Then again, judging by the drained, exhausted faces around him, no one cared about a nerdy kid in thick glasses. Maybe the Clark Kent disguise wasn't so hopeless after all?

All around, the golden forests of Ontario blazed with an amber glow, while a thick, almost tangible fog softened the riot of colors, mellowing the October carnival. The building felt alien, its very existence an offense to the landscape.

None of that mattered now…

The white cube was blazing from within. By some miracle, he had managed to slip into the main control room to activate the gas fire suppression system. He now had to tear the lead seals off the buttons—the first, then the second.

"Gas Discharge / Evacuate Room"

Oh, if only he could. Just beyond the door, a raw mass of muscle, fangs, and claws battered the steel relentlessly—blind despite its abundance of eyes. It was impervious to bullets and untouched by the neutralizing agent pouring like a torrent from the injection lines. This water curtain had been a salvation for both infected and uninfected staff alike. But there was no magic here—it was merely a Daylight-based agent, utterly useless against the irradiated T-virus. Even by Umbrella’s twisted research standards, this was madness, absolute chaos. The T-virus possessed complete resistance to radiation. The entire facility was utterly pointless in every sense but one: it served as a front to mask a massive, anomalously high radiation signature.

It was astonishing how no one noticed the station’s isolation, built so far from any settlement. Its efficiency barely hit twenty-eight percent, yet its emissions registered at thirty-five microsieverts per hour—a staggering hundred and fifty times higher than the natural background radiation. The remote location had played perfectly into their hands. But how had everyone, from the government to the IAEA, failed to notice this facility?

God, how he hated gas masks, especially these bulky MCU units. It was pointless.He had so little time left—the carbon dioxide was already flooding the room, and objectively speaking, that brute behind the door had lungs that, whatever state they were in, were far larger than his own.

The station was burning because of him. It wouldn't blow up, but all those people would burn alive because of him. Down on the lower levels, the place was crawling with people suffering from injuries, burns, and complications of the T-virus. The entire staff of this facility—this illegal facility—would die fully aware of their fate, stripped of any degenerative "anesthesia" the virus might provide. Did the infected feel pain? Did they fear death? Was it the same unnatural terror that a non-infected human felt?

Leon didn’t know. His magazine was empty, and his vision was tunneling from the lack of air. The alarms inside the building shrieked into the void, but predictably, there was no communication, no fire department, and certainly no medical bay. Classic Umbrella, isn't it?

[rookieinglasses]

[08.09.1997]

"Nobody needs your calculations. These long, expensive, and senselessly cumbersome math programmes. I am not going to explain this to you every single time,"

Mr. Harlow says coldly, sitting in his chair behind an absolutely empty desk, where a paper folder lies like a sacrificial lamb. He speaks quietly, with a calculated indifference toward Leon, who stands opposite him. The senior researcher does not immediately pick up the folder of his negligent intern, showing clear reluctance as he finally glances through it.

"They work, and they are more accurate than anyone else's."

Leon tries not to hunch his shoulders, keeping his gaze straight, steadfast, and brave—as if standing guard for all his sleepless nights spent over the calculations of a deterministic stochastic model. He had been working with some highly exotic input data provided by Mr. Harlow. It couldn’t be classified under any disease known today. Sometimes, when Leon brought his intermediate findings, Harlow would scold him and throw them back, calling it absolute rubbish, or occasionally toss them into the wastebasket without a glance. Yet, at the end of the day, he would demand a duplicate copy be left behind, telling him to start over.

"Nobody needs what you call accuracy. We need it fast, and we need it simple. No one is going to sift through your nonsense. You are reverse-engineering the data to fit a predetermined result; you are lying to yourself and trying to force your drivel on us."

A week ago, there was a corporate conference between the laboratories of this research center. Their lab presented intermediate results, showcasing the graphs and estimates Leon had obtained through his calculations. His name was excluded from the list of authors for the report, let alone the paper. The published article turned out to be mostly theoretical, saying very little about experimental results and featuring a relatively small series of trials for verification.

"These are human lives, and I completed my calculations before you even began conducting the series of experiments."

Leon does not give up, though standing straight and still for the second consecutive hour across from his superior's desk is taking its toll. He is forced to listen to yet another lengthy monologue from Mr. Harlow, who is clearly in no hurry and has no intention of stopping. Finally, Harlow takes the folder into his hands, choosing not to put on his glasses. With contemptuous roughness, his waxy, gaunt fingers flip through one page after another, caring little for the paper that is as fragile as a moth's wings. A few minutes later, he drops the folder into the wastebasket, slapping a hand heavily against his own face. He is tired of trampling him time after time, reducing to dust and ashes all of Leon's agonizing, sleepless nights in the cold laboratory—under its sterile, searing light amidst the absolute blackness of the ghostly reflections in the windows and doors between the labs. Harlow enjoys burning him in the acid of his words, over and over, while this lost Monarch butterfly of a Danaid clings to the destructively bright light, perishing in an icy fire against the glass, dreaming only of returning home.

“Oh, come off it. Really?! Don't start that broken record again. Nobody needs you and your absurdly cumbersome, stupid calculations that only you understand. You love wasting your time: one minute you’re petting dogs, playing Doctor Dolittle, the next you’re sitting around covering sticky notes and your own hands in non-existent formulas, and then you stare into a blank screen, musing on how best to format something that no one will ever write with you. You are a pathetic, foolish, utterly useless boy who imagines he can save someone."

Mr. Harlow leans forward; it angers him when people look him dead in the eye or at the bridge of his nose. He taps a rapid, tight trill with his pen, as if firing a machine-gun volley into him. It is a silent murder—without screams or blood, without evidence or weapons. Only his life's work in the wastebasket, and his dreams buried in the barbed, leaden shrapnel of pain.

"I did all the calculations and wrote them for the article before all of you combined even set about writing it."

Leon’s voice cracks betrayingly; it plummets, trying to claw and hold onto its own ribs. But the fall is so long that it burns up in the exact same place as his hopes and his ability to look far into the horizon and see something beautiful worth walking toward, no matter how long the journey might be.

"I wrote the article, and you are just a worthless lab tech here. There are hundreds like you waiting for this spot. What makes you any better than them? What have you even done all this time?"

Mr. Harlow rests his head on his folded hands and narrows his eyes, tracking him with a sharp, predatory gaze. Like Ephron, he stands ready to throw up his hands the very moment Leon drops his fire.

"You are only here out of my pity. They spent a month checking your calculations, making fools of themselves in other laboratories when even their computing power fell short. You are useless, and so is your mathematics. You can neither do the lab work nor format the reports, and you get in the way of others doing their jobs. The dogs are research material; if you feel sorry for them, that is your problem. You are not a veterinarian. You are here to do exactly what I tell you to do."

Leon swallows hard. It takes him time to cope with how, again and again, he sees all those empty cages. How at night, to clear his head and stretch his legs after long hours of writing calculation code, he walks past the cages with the puppies. How in the semi-darkness, as they sleep, they are barely visible, with not a breath or a whimper to be heard. How in a panic he flips on all the lights—an act that will later earn him a reprimand from security. How he checks every single puppy, only to arrive too late, finding time and again the still-warm, frighteningly limp, ragdoll body of a dog. How over and over they die in loneliness, in the darkness of a cramped cage, betrayed and abandoned by him.

“I have not killed, and I will not kill dogs. I will not participate in this with you..."

Leon’s voice trembles. He knows he cannot escape. They will force him to do what he did once more. They need his calculations; if they didn’t, they wouldn't check them, they wouldn't write articles based on them, and they wouldn't conduct experiments. And he knows they find it profitable to kill the dogs slowly, just to drag out their work. There is nothing stopping them from injecting that drug into all the dogs in a single day. They do it chaotically and sequentially, like serial killers.

"Sure, run along then. It’s easier that way, to run away and have a good cry. Just don't mistake the ladies' room for yours. Oh, and don't bother coming back."

Mr. Harlow says something like that every single time to his retreating back, yet at the end of the week, he always demands a report, even when nothing is ready. He demands even the intermediate steps. They are all infuriatingly riled up by the chaos of his drafts. But sometimes they would even grab him by the wrists, under the pretext of checking for dog bites or whether he was on something, whenever he produced such implausibly precise theoretical calculations for the even more implausible and flawed initial conditions of the problem set before him.

Leon slams the door. He doesn’t want to leave, to abandon all the puppies left all alone with those who view them as consumable research material—nothing more and nothing less than a cell colony in a Petri dish. He walks away, completely oblivious to where he is fleeing from all these monsters this time. His feet know this sorrowful route by heart. Leon will not show weakness in front of them; only when he is completely alone in the stairwell leading out to the open balcony does he timidly admit to himself what he is running from so desperately, and what is so agonizingly heavy to carry away.

The rain was pouring down, and the morning was bleak and foggy. Leon collapses onto his outstretched arms, propping himself against the concrete threshold, exposing his head to the lashing gusts of wind and water. He cannot allow himself to whimper like a shot dog. Though his chest is tearing itself apart, and he can neither breathe in nor breathe out until he deals himself the final blow. Until his bare hands try to extinguish themselves. He cannot drop the fire; it will either be passed on to someone who needs it, or it will be trampled out like a cigarette butt.

All those puppies are back there in the lab, and they need help; they will kill them, if not today then tomorrow, with their experiments and indifference. They don't care at all that the puppies are sick from what has already been injected into them, that they need food and water, and that they shouldn't be kept in cages. They are children on four legs, just as defenseless and innocent. Leon does not believe in any greater good or salvation for humanity built upon violence and death.

They don't care about one another, either. When Steve vanished, no one even noticed or remembered him. And yet, he had supposedly worked here for several years and had been successful in his field. No one knows where he went—whether he was on vacation or had quit. People don't just quit Umbrella, but people do disappear somewhere. To any question he asked, he received only a condescending look or a suggestion to check the breakroom, where Steve, like some of the others, would occasionally doze off from chronic sleep deprivation. That room is like a train station; sometimes you might see these people there only once, and sometimes a few times, because they had the caution not to vanish into the unknown right away.

Leon is not crying; it is just the downpour, and it has stopped. He sniffs, looking up at the paling pink sky that tears at the cotton-like mist over the woodlands. A ripple of lavender clouds settles in, stretching like a shawl behind the naked, amber sun. He rubs his face; his head rings at the slightest touch—how many nights without sleep? Better not to count; he has lost all color, both his own and the world's. He hasn't looked at the sky for so long that it feels like someone else's picture in a depressingly sad calendar.He has to go.

He can still save little Star…

[rookieinglasses]

[08.21.1997]

In his rented apartment, the cozy chaos he'd left behind in his haste awaits him, quietly and peacefully. It takes him a while to find the light switch in the darkness; He hisses softly when blood stains it. The puppy in his arms groans weakly and breathes heavily, disturbed by his awkward movement.

«Hush, hush, we're home, little Star»

Leon whispers, kissing the puppy's hot head. They're not home; he'll be evicted from this apartment tomorrow morning.

He hurriedly goes in for the first aid kit and a basin of warm water. On his bed, Leon is spreading his hopelessly ruined sweater during his unsuccessful escape from the lab's security guards. The puppy wheezes and whines softly as it lands on the bed. Leon gently moves its cold paws, then probes its suede ears.

“It's all good, cutie. Hey, you and I have been through worse”

He comforts the dog, stroking her velvety ears, still untaped. His heart sinks as the dog nuzzles his hand. Crouching before her, he bows his head in response. It takes a great deal of effort not to whine as Star licks his split eyebrow.

He remembers the lab dog falling asleep on the table next to him, staying up all night once again to keep the puppy alive. That puppy lay on the lab table, and he held her paw gently the whole time, not letting her IV line disturb him. That morning, they almost fought as they were about to euthanize the puppy he had fought for so many nights. He will never forget that look in the dying dog's eyes, whose hope and death he himself was. How he shuddered as his paws, ears, tail, and back slowly and inexorably cooled and seated into rigorous mortis, and when only his head remained warm, this dog never ceased to believe in him and love him. How he mistook her death throes for her unconquerable desire to live and live with him. How, as she died, she wags her tail and licks him. How, instead of all the words in the world, one gesture was enough to make him pull himself together as he died inside next to this incredible dog.

Leon carefully removes the ear tag and the catheters from his paws, washing them with antiseptic. This tag belonged to another dog, already dead. A few weeks ago, he managed to duplicate the tags and preserve the body of the other dog. He made the replacement to save this dog.

Of course, he was interrogated using illegal methods. No one could believe that he didn't intend to sell the dog, which would compromise Umbrella. No one could understand why he would steal an unmarketable and defective dog, taking such a risk. No one could accept that he was just a weak-willed idiot.

When he finished cleaning each paw, lucky Star was licking him again. Leon chuckled tearfully as the puppy licked him, and he whined softly, nuzzling her side.

"Everything will be fine, we'll be home soon."

Leon, still dressed, lay down on the bed, huddled tightly, gently hugging his pet and holding him close, protecting him from the mad world and its demons, eating themselves alive in the sterile shadows.

[rookieinglasses]

[07.16.1997]

Their group is huddled in the examination room, where they're performing "anatomical theater"—as Leon vitriolic calls the lectures on Advanced Virology Methods. Sterile silence and the mechanical precision of chaos within the laboratory morgue. Leon has no idea what's happening, why everyone is frozen by the cold stability on the other side of the window. Everyone watches act after act of bloody cruelty against those who were once human. Their faces are impenetrable in the reflection of the window. He didn't see himself among them. They can't flinch as these bodies are crucified on the table like frogs. With practiced inhumanity, their bodies are forced to contract and slowly ruthless burn from the inside.

How can they talk about the development of viruses inside these "supplements" with serious faces?

Leon completely at a loss what they're talking about, what they want from them, or why his knees have gone so treacherous and numb as he looks at the operating table, at the blood. There's no pulse, no circulation, no virus that could develop in the dead. He knows that for certain... right?

They record and comment on every step with ritualistic obsession. All those serious people in white biohazard suits and respirators outside the window are talking gibberish. He wouldn't be surprised if they pulled out the Necromicon or recommended Cultes des Goules. That's probably what his lecture notes are like.

He couldn't dissect the frog at school, escaping and bursting into tears in the school library. This isn't a frog, and he can't escape. His legs are numb, and he feels the ground beneath him curse him, soaked in the unimaginably red, thick blood of the drug on the table...

Leon nearly hits the vertical handrail of the subway car; he nearly falls, falling asleep standing up. His body sagged against his numb arm, caught like a branch in the plastic handle of the handrail. It was just a nightmare. Leon looks around at the people in the carriage, very embarrassed, confused, and guilty. He's trying to compose himself. His head is spinning, and it seems as if he should lean it against something and let himself fall asleep. He hadn't slept for so long because he was so busy in the lab and the calculations they gave him to solve on his own. When was the last time he slept?

Leon doesn't know; it's doesn't matter. He's on his way to another lecture...

[rookieinglasses]

❓+ a trip to the beach with friends at midnight, lighting sparklers and running around like kids, then lying on the sand to watch the stars (someone gets buried up to their head at some point)

[06.22.2000]

This weekend, they managed to escape to the beach on his dad's old motorcycle with a sidecar—the very same one Leon used to ride in as a child. Everything went a bit sideways; they got stuck in a traffic jam and didn't arrive until evening, thoroughly exhausted by the sweltering heat of the road and the stifling dust.

It was a secluded, wild beach where almost no one ever went. Leon had known this place since childhood; he and his dad used to love camping here. They hadn't come to swim—these waters were plagued by strong rip currents, making them especially dangerous for Sherry. Rather, it was just a way to spend time together. They played frisbee with Star, who leaped incredibly high for the toy—nearly clearing Leon's own height—and raced all across the beach, kicking up wet, salty sand, happily barking and wagging her tail, inviting them to join her game.

As dusk begins to fall and the wind turns sharply colder, Leon lights a campfire while Sherry searches for their sandwiches and marshmallows in the motorcycle's saddlebag.

The sky here is absolutely incredible; sitting on the deserted beach, it feels as though you are resting at the very edge of the cosmos, feeling its biting chill. He tilts his head up toward the stars and galaxies scattered by gravity, shrouded in dust and light from the distant past. He pulls Sherry closer, wrapping her up in his windbreaker, while Star snoozes at their feet, warming herself along with them by the fire.

"That's the Aquila constellation, and that bright dot over there is the star Altair. It's just under seventeen light-years away."

"So, according to physics, it would theoretically take seventeen years to get there?"

"Yes, but only if you managed to travel at the speed of light."

"But it's physically impossible to accelerate a solid object to that speed, right?"

"Technically, yes. A light pulse travels faster than anything else in the universe; it has no rest mass."

"And we'd never actually see it moving?"

"No, photons move faster than our brains can process the visual data."

"How many centuries do you think it will take for humans to actually reach Altair?"

"Not for a very, very long time, Sherry. Altair will probably burn out before we ever do."

Leon sighs, a sad smile touching his lips as he holds his daughter closer.

"What do you mean, burn out? How does a star just die?"

"It will eventually deplete all of its hydrogen supply. Then it'll start burning through helium, expand, and ultimately collapse into a planetary nebula."

"But how do ships in Star Wars jump into hyperspace then? Why can't our scientists figure out something similar? It would be so much cooler to just bypass Einstein's limitations."

"Because it's only the year 2000, kiddo, and hyperspace is still just a movie thing. At least for now, in our world."