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“This makes no sense.” Leon frowned. The ‘not making sense’ part, he could have lived with, truth be told.
It was the other part that was going to be a real pain in the ass.
“Perhaps it is time to tell me who – or rather what, you really are, my American friend,” Sasha said. He sounded a little smug, a lot like a guy who thought he was 100% in control of the situation, instead of a guy who had voluntarily put something in his body that was sooner or later going to turn him into a monster.
“Trust me, I’m as human as you are,” Leon said, before he realized that wasn’t true anymore. “More human, I should have said.”
Sasha frowned. A nearby licker lifted its ugly head. If lickers had had eyes, Leon suspected it would have been looking at him. “I could simply order you to tell me.”
Leon swallowed. He and Sasha had been discussing a course of action – arguing, if you wanted to be technical about it. He couldn’t remember the actual words he’d said, just that he’d told Sasha exactly what he thought of him, and Sasha’s eyes had turned red and then Leon had hit himself in the face.
He supposed it could have been worse. He might have shot himself. That would have been embarrassing, rather than just inconvenient.
“Look,” Leon said. He remembered how it had felt, to have Sasha in his head, “is now really the time for that? For now, at least, we share a common goal. We want the same thing.”
Sasha scoffed. “You expect me to trust an American?”
“Oh, so you do know what I am,” Leon said, before he realized that wasn’t helping. “Let me put it this way: do you have any choice? It’s either work with me, or work alone, and I’m pretty sure working alone isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
“I am not alone,” Sasha said. His eyes had turned red again. The lickers stirred, chittering at each other.
“Right,” Leon said. “No offense, but I liked your old friends better. At least they were able to hold up their end of a conversation.” Leon had genuinely liked JD. JD had been a nice guy, very nearly reasonable.
“We don’t always have the luxury of choice,” Sasha said.
Leon imagined that Sasha had told himself the exact same thing when he’d injected himself with the Plaga. Assuming there had been any thinking going on at all. “You do. Right here, right now, you have a choice. We have a choice. And I can tell you right now, my choice isn’t -”
“Your choice is whatever I want it to be.” Sasha sounded very matter of fact about it. “If you want to call that a choice, then I guess the so-called government of this country gave us a choice too. When they burnt down our homes and hunted us like animals.”
Leon wanted to tell Sasha that they could do this the easy way, but he was still choking on air, still under Sasha’s control like a puppet. At this rate, Leon figured he was going to pass out within two minutes or so, at which point Sasha might either leave him behind or let the lickers eat him or whatever. Neither option was very appealing.
Then, suddenly the pressure eased and he was on his knees, coughing, while Sasha looked on, impassively but brown-eyed.
“Is this what you want to be? Really?” Leon didn’t think now was the time to reveal that he knew about Irina.
“It’s not about what I want,” Sasha said. “It’s about what this country needs.”
Leon was pretty sure that what this country didn’t need was B.O.W.s and ganados and Plagas running around. That wasn’t going to make life better for anyone.
“Still,” Sasha said, after a pause, “I will allow that this is not your fight. If you want to turn your back and walk away, I won’t stop you.”
“I wish I could take you up on that offer, I really do.” Leon checked his ammunition. “Unfortunately, I made JD a promise. And I intend to keep that promise. Just stay out of my head, and we won’t have any problem.”
“No promises,” Sasha said, and started walking, the lickers following him like sheep. Very ugly, vicious and violent sheep.
Leon sighed and promised himself that next time, he was going to stay right where he was and enjoy his well-earned vacation.