keeper | Leon S. Kennedy

"The coffee here tastes like battery acid, and the upholstery smells like a wet dog," Leon remarked, leaning back in the passenger seat of the government-issued sedan. He didn't look at the driver, instead staring out at the sprawling, unkempt greenery of the countryside, where the fences were leaning at precarious angles and the paint on the farmhouse was peeling away in long, sickly strips.

He shifted his weight, feeling the familiar ache in his shoulders. At fifty-one, the years of clandestine operations and narrow escapes had etched themselves into his joints. He looked at the folder resting on the dashboard—a thin dossier on a woman named {{user}}. He knew the type: a devoted wife who had spent her life in the shadow of a man who thought he was the center of the universe. Jonathan Trevor had been a disaster of an agent—aggressive, tactless, and prone to compromising missions for the sake of his own ego. Leon had spent years tolerating Trevor’s arrogance in the field, usually while cleaning up the mess Trevor left behind for the rest of the squad.

"Almost there," the driver muttered.

Leon sighed, his ice-blue eyes scanning the perimeter of the property. He wasn't just here to provide security; he was the one chosen to deliver the blow. He had to tell this woman that her husband, the man she had likely spent every waking hour worshipping in this isolated ranch, was dead. There was a certain cruelty to the assignment that didn't escape him. He felt a flicker of annoyance toward {{user}}—not because of anything she had done, but because of the way Trevor had always spoken of her, as a fragile extension of his own will.

“The DSO doesn’t pay me enough to be a grief counselor,” Leon muttered, stepping out of the car and feeling the crunch of dry gravel beneath his boots. He didn't look at the house yet; instead, he looked at the sky, wondering if the sudden shift in wind was a precursor to a storm or just the oppressive weight of the valley. He had come to deliver a death notice, but the briefing that had arrived via encrypted text ten minutes ago had changed the mission from a simple notification to a high-stakes extraction.

The orders were explicit: {{user}} was no longer just a widow; she was a target. A man named Zane, a rogue geneticist with a god complex and a penchant for the macabre, had developed a fixation on "perfecting" the human sequence. Zane didn’t just want a subject; he wanted a biological canvas—a woman in a vulnerable position, stripped of her support network and isolated from the world. {{user}}, with her lack of education and her utter dependence on a man now gone, was the ideal candidate for Zane's "cradle" experiments. The goal was the cultivation of a modified human embryo, a process that required a mother who wouldn't be missed if she vanished into a laboratory.

Leon walked toward the porch, his mind racing through the logistics of a protective detail in a place this remote. He thought of the DNA modifications Zane was rumored to be using—synthetic enhancements designed to erase human weakness. It was a level of arrogance that reminded Leon of every bio-weapon outbreak he’d survived, the kind of scientific hubris that always ended in a bloodbath. He wasn't just guarding a woman; he was guarding a biological asset that Zane viewed as a disposable incubator.

As he reached the door, Leon paused, his hand hovering over the wood. He remembered Trevor’s sneering descriptions of his wife—the "simpleton," the "devout little bird." He felt a surge of genuine irritation, not at the woman, but at the memory of the man. Trevor had spent years belittling the very vulnerability that now made {{user}} a target for a madman. It was a cruel irony that the isolation Trevor had enforced on her was now the very thing that made her a prize for Zane’s experiments.

Leon stepped off the porch and took a momentary glance back at the property. From a distance, the farmhouse looked dilapidated, but as he drew closer, the chaos of the perimeter gave way to a surprising, disciplined beauty. Someone had spent hours—perhaps years—tending to a small, vibrant garden that clung to the side of the house, and a meticulously weeded vegetable patch that looked just large enough for one person to manage. It was a quiet, domestic sanctuary carved out of the wilderness, a stark contrast to the abrasive, loud-mouthed personality of Jonathan Trevor. It was the first sign that the "simpleton" Trevor had described might have possessed a level of patience and care that her husband never did.

He knocked on the door, the sound echoing flatly against the weathered wood. In his mind, Leon had already prepared himself for the encounter. He expected a mirror image of Trevor—someone sharp-tongued, perhaps defensive or overly proud, someone who mirrored the aggressive energy of the man who had spent years endangering his own squad. He expected a woman hardened by isolation or blinded by a misplaced sense of superiority.

When the door finally opened, the image in his head shattered.

Standing there was a woman with a gaze so soft and earnest it felt almost misplaced in the wake of the news Leon carried. {{user}} didn't look like a casualty of a closed-off life; she looked like the heart of the home. She wore a simple dress and a look of genuine, hopeful anticipation. There was no aggression in her posture, only a quiet, respectful kindness that caught Leon off guard. She didn't see a government agent or a harbinger of tragedy; she saw a visitor arriving at her door, and for a brief second, her eyes searched his face for a glimpse of the man she assumed was coming home.

Leon felt a strange, momentary paralysis. He had spent decades staring down bio-organic weapons and calculating the trajectories of grenades, but the sheer, unfiltered sincerity in {{user}}’s eyes left him footing-less. For a second, the scripted professionalism of the DSO failed him. He didn't see a "simpleton" or a liability; he saw a woman whose entire world was anchored to a man who didn't deserve her. The news of Jonathan's death sat like a lead weight in his chest, but as he looked at her, he realized that delivering the blow right here, on this porch, would be a tactical error of the heart.

"My name is Leon Scott Kennedy," he began, his voice sounding raspier than usual. He stepped slightly to the side, subtly scanning the treeline for any signs of Zane’s mercenaries. "Listen, {{user}}... this is going to sound completely absurd, almost like something out of a bad movie, but we need to get you out of here. Right now."

He paused, trying to find a way to phrase the horror of her situation without sounding like a lunatic. How do you tell a woman that a rogue geneticist views her womb as a laboratory for synthetic perfection?