Chapter Text
”Sir…sir…please,” a female politician called after the president of the United States as she chased after him down a hallway.
“Not now Patricia, I have more important matters to deal with,” he replied and waved her off.
“But sir, this is important-”
He stopped in his tracks and turned to her. “Pat, can’t you see that the country is in the middle of a crisis right now?! It can wait!” He continued on to his office with the woman trailing behind him.
“Sir, this may be involved with the crisis! You need to listen to me!”
He sighed, rolled his eyes and sat at his desk. “Fine. What is it?” he asked in annoyance.
She slammed the file she had in her hands in front of him harder than she intended, opened the front cover and showed it to him. “There is another crisis going on in this little town in Utah, and we believe it may have a direct correlation with the national crisis going on.”
”Utah, eh?” He picked up the file and looked it over. “So…robots…”
“Correct. These animatronics are not acting like animatronics.”
“Sounds like a malfunction or something. Now quit wasting my time.”
“No, you don’t get it, Graham! They’re killing people to make them into animatronics as well, and they’re acting as if they’re controlled by something!”
He looked over the file once more to see if there was any convincing information that this was important since the woman didn’t let this go. He turned the page and that’s when he finally saw a black and white photograph of what looked like to be a semi-fresh corpse stuffed into an animatronic.
After reading further he saw the summary of what happened in the past few weeks: ‘The corpse was soon taken to a morgue soon after body was discovered. Body was so mangled, no funeral could have taken place. Subject needed to be cremated.
The animatronic animal which the corpse was stuffed into was acting strangely those next few days. Even with no power, subject was still able to move around so it is clear that this is a phenomenon not of the natural world. Subject tried to capture more people to stuff them into suits and was successful a total of three times spreading this phenomenon like a virus.
Subjects corpses were also taken out of the animatronics and sent to a morgue, but animatronic suits started to act the same as the first subject’s. Employees took it and the rest of the subjects out of the restaurant and dismantled them which seemed to work for the time being, but another was soon ‘infected’ by an unknown source and the animatronic had to be disposed of soon after.
It is still unclear what is causing this phenomenon, but police have identified that this is taking place at night during the night shift and targeting security guards. Investigation is needed on who is behind this is since this ‘virus’ is spreading rather quickly, being that there have to be new security hires every other week.’
“So it’s like a virus,” he said quietly.
“Yes, but it flew under the radar because it was in this little town in Utah,” she replied. “What should we do, Mr. President?”
He closed the file again and handed it back to the woman. “Give it to Hunnigan, tell her that I want special agent Kennedy to go on this mission, find out who or what is causing this and report back.”
“Him?! But sir, he just got back from rescuing your daughter!”
“Exactly. He has experience with mind controlling parasites from the Los Iluminados and viruses that turn the people into mindless beings from Raccoon City, none of the other agents have that experience. Send him.”
”Yes sir.”
”Seriously?! Utah?!” a young man exclaimed and dropped the file on a desk. “No way I’m going to Utah!”
“That’s not your choice to make, unfortunately. You are the best agent for this job.”
”But it’s a bunch of murderous robots, Hunnigan! I barely made it out alive rescuing Ashley from those Los Illuminados, you expect me to go out and risk my life again?! Why not send…Chris or someone?! This is B.O.W stuff! I think!”
“He can’t because he’s in Africa at the moment, plus we don’t even know if these are bioweapons, you just need to figure all this out and report back to HQ. I really don’t wanna do this to you Leon, but the president specifically asked you to handle it. You leave for Utah on Sunday.”
He groaned as he picked up the file and slowly walked out the door. He looked it over again as he went back to the gym, where he was before he was called to Ingrid Hunnigan‘s office.
He went to the back benches since the gym was packed with men letting off steam or chatting with others before their next training session. He read the summary again to himself, part of him hoping that this was just a hoax and he could just go down to Utah and relax.
“So the rookie’s got another mission! And so soon after you got back, they must love you! Either that or they want you to die,” one of the men by Leon said loudly to his two other friends. Leon looked over his shoulder, saw them approaching him and rolled his eyes.
Leon had never liked this man. He always found some way to be a jerk to him, never using his real name and usually called him ‘rookie’, his insults usually ranging from the fact that Leon was only in the police force for a day to straight up teasing, but the one that really got under Leon’s skin was when he brought up and joked about Leon’s past.
Leon thought he was only like this because he was jealous of him, since when he arrived and started training to be an agent, he was given praise and some fame for his bravery in Raccoon City, and now that he rescued Ashley Graham from the Los Iluminados cult he was given another round of praise and fame, and along with the attention he was getting he also managed to grab the attention of several women (and some men).
“So what is it this time? Parasites? Viruses?” he asked.
“None of your business, Jake,” Leon replied and turned back to read.
He looked over Leon’s shoulder. “Animatronics?!” he said loudly. As expected, he, his friends and a few men near them started laughing.
“Shut up, asshole,” Leon said.
“Oh no wait…ooh! Haunted animatronics!” he said and again, there was laughter around them. “Are they making pizza on their own or something?!”
Leon stood up and faced him. “Do you know English?! Shut the fuck up!”
”Hey, stop,” another man Leon has never spoken to before said and stepped in the middle of them. Leon had never seen him before, so he guessed he must’ve been new. “You’re taunting the guy who saved the president’s daughter! If it wasn’t for him, she would be dead by now. Have some respect.”
“Okay, geez, fine. You’re lucky training’s about to start or I wouldn’t hesitate to pound both of your asses into the ground,” he said to and he and his two friends walked off.
Once they walked off, Leon turned to the man who stood up for him. “Thanks,” he said to him. The man said nothing but nodded and went to go warm up on the exercise equipment before training began.
“Where to?” a taxi cab driver said to Leon once he got in the backseat from the airport.
“I dunno, some motel place in Hurricane,” he responded.
“It’ll be around half an hour since there aren’t any airports in Hurricane. That alright?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
The driver started driving and for a while they were silent, Leon staring outside the window at the dirt covered landscape zipping by as they left town and the driver started to ask questions to fill the silence. “So, what’re you going to Hurricane for?” he asked.
“Uh…work.”
“Work? What kind of work?”
“Well let’s just say, I’m looking for someone.”
“Looking for someone? Who?”
“I dunno yet. I’ll find out when I get there, I guess.”
“Are you sure I’m in the right place Hunnigan?” Leon said into the telephone once he checked into his motel room. “I mean, it’s a crappy little town with barely anything in it, there’s no way something catastrophic happened here!”
“Looking at your coordinates, you’re in the right place.”
“Shit, there goes that plan,” he said under his breath. “Well, what happened here? Other than killer robots?”
“Well it says here…five kids went missing in the eighties. No one knows who did it to this day, and things haven’t been the same in this town since.”
“Like what? Monsters? Zombies like in Raccoon City? A weird cult?”
“Not exactly. Just…strange, unexplainable occurrences, but the most notable is the security guards that go missing at that specific pizzeria and end up dead in the animatronics.”
“So…are we talking killer ghosts or something?”
“I dunno.”
He sighed. “So, I go in tomorrow night, right?”
“Yes, and remember your mission, to-”
“Find out who’s behind this, blah, blah, blah, yeah, I know.”
“I’m serious Leon! Whoever’s behind this could be trying to start another virus for all we know!”
“But we don’t know that yet, we know basically nothing about what’s going on at this place, so nothing could be starting and I just got on a plane for eight hours for nothing.”
“Whether something’s starting or not, it’s your job to find out.”