For the first two nights, Leon barely sleeps.

Every sound inside the apartment pulls him awake—the refrigerator kicking on, pipes knocking inside the walls, headlights passing beneath the living-room blinds. More than once, he gets out of bed just to check the front door, testing the deadbolt even though he already knows it is locked. Chris notices, of course. Chris notices everything Leon tries too hard to hide, but for once, he keeps the jokes to himself.

{{user}} has been staying at the apartment for three days now.

Three days of hastily packed clothes occupying the corner of the living room. Three days of extra shoes by the door, another toothbrush beside the bathroom sink, and someone else’s phone charger permanently tangled with Leon’s behind the couch. The arrangement is supposed to be temporary, lasting only until the calls stop and the group figures out whether Umbrella is genuinely interested in them or merely trying to scare them into surrendering the flash drive.

Leon tells himself the cramped apartment is inconvenient.

The place was barely big enough for him and Chris before. Now there are blankets folded over the back of the couch, extra textbooks stacked on the coffee table, and three people attempting to work around one another in a kitchen built for one. Chris drinks directly from the milk carton and Leon leaves cabinet doors open. Someone keeps moving the coffee filters to a place Leon insists they have never been stored before. Leon knows that it’s definitely {{user}}.

It should be irritating. Instead, Leon finds himself noticing how quickly the apartment begins to feel different. It’s warmer, somehow. More lived-in.

He notices the faint glow of the television beneath the bedroom door when {{user}} stays awake after midnight. He starts buying an extra coffee in the morning without asking whether they want one. When he comes home from class, his eyes automatically search the living room before he even remembers why.

He tries his best not to examine his newly found habits too closely.

The Unknown calls stop on the second night.

They simply end, without demand or question for the flash drive. There’s approximately 23 calls by the end of it all. Leon’s phone remains silent through dinner, through midnight, and through the early hours of the morning. By the third day, the silence feels worse than the calls ever did.

Leon checks his phone so frequently that Chris finally looks up from the PlayStation and asks, “You waiting for somebody?”

“No.”

“You’ve checked that thing six times.”

“I’m checking the time.”

“There’s a clock on the wall.”

Leon glances at the clock and realizes it is directly in front of him, and shoves the phone back into his pocket. Chris smirks but mercifully lets the subject die.

The rest of the group has noticed the change too. Claire has not received another visit from Umbrella’s public-relations representative. Rebecca’s laptop has stopped behaving strangely and Jill hasn’t seen the dark sedan that followed her across town. Even the anonymous photograph left for Rebecca appears to have been the last direct warning.

For seventy-two hours, nothing happens. Raccoon City continues as though none of it ever existed, like there’s not a target on all their backs. What bothers everyone, but especially Claire the most, is that Raccoon City continues living on as normal. Umbrella remains pristine and perfectly respected.

“They think we stopped,” she announces when the group gathers at Leon and Chris’s apartment that evening.

She has claimed the floor in front of the coffee table, surrounded by photocopied maps, old newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and several pages of Umbrella property records. Jill sits on the arm of the couch with her arms folded. Rebecca occupies the other end, her laptop balanced across her knees.

Chris stands in the kitchen doorway eating cereal straight from the box despite Leon telling him twice to get a bowl.

Leon remains near {{user}}, pretending the position is coincidental.

“Or they stopped caring,” Rebecca offers.

Claire looks personally offended by the suggestion. “Umbrella doesn’t stop caring about stolen confidential files.”

“We don’t know that they’re confidential,” Chris says.

Every head turns toward him.

Chris slowly lowers the cereal box. “Okay. They’re definitely confidential.”

Jill leans forward to examine the map spread across the coffee table. It is the same regional property map taken from the flash drive, though Claire has added colored marks of her own. Umbrella holdings surround Raccoon City in an irregular ring: warehouses, decommissioned factories, forest parcels, old mines, and buildings supposedly abandoned decades ago. Most are registered beneath different shell companies, but Rebecca has traced enough financial records to connect them.

One mark sits directly beneath the university.

Leon notices it only when Claire taps the paper with the end of a pen.

“Here.”

The faded university planning document shows the original RCU campus as it existed in 1969. Most of the recognizable buildings are present—Archer Library, the old science hall, the original dormitory—but beneath them runs a web of narrow lines marked as utility passages.

The steam tunnels.

Every older campus has stories about them. Hidden corridors beneath the university. Maintenance routes running behind locked basement doors. Places where students supposedly throw secret parties, where fraternities haze pledges, or where people vanish for hours only to emerge somewhere across campus.

Leon always assumed most of those stories were bullshit, but the map suggests otherwise.

“There are tunnels all beneath campus,” Rebecca explains. “Most of them carry pipes between the older buildings. Heat, water, electrical lines. According to the university website, nearly all of them were sealed in the eighties.”

“Nearly?” Jill asks.

Rebecca turns the laptop around. “One section is still accessible to maintenance.”

The screen displays a grainy scan of an old construction report. A red line connects Archer Library to a section of campus that no longer appears on modern university maps. According to the document, it once led toward an auxiliary research building demolished during RCU’s expansion in 1978. The same year Umbrella began investing heavily in the university.

Claire points toward a notation beside the tunnel line.

“Look at who funded the renovation.”

At the bottom of the page, barely visible beneath a faded university stamp, are the words:

UMBRELLA PHARMACEUTICALS — CIVIC DEVELOPMENT DIVISION

The apartment falls quiet.

Leon studies the map again. “This could mean nothing.”

“It could,” Jill agrees. Her tone makes it clear she does not believe that.

“Umbrella paid for half the university,” Leon continues. “Their name is probably on hundreds of construction documents.”

“Then why does the tunnel lead to a building that doesn’t exist anymore?” Claire asks.

“Because they demolished it...?”

“Why isn’t it shown on any newer map?”

“Because it isn’t there.”

Claire stares at him.

Leon stares back.

Chris steps between them before the argument can gather momentum. “I think what Claire is trying to say is that we should check it out.”

“No,” Leon says immediately. The answer comes so quickly that the room goes still. His gaze flickers toward {{user}} before returning to the map.

“So what’s the alternative?” she asks. “Sit here until Umbrella starts calling again?”

“We said we’d lay low.”

“We have been laying low,” Claire argues. “For three days. And now they’ve gone silent. You honestly think that’s a coincidence?”

Of course, Leon doesn’t think it’s a coincidence.

The calls were deliberate. Every warning had been meant to unsettle them, to make sure they knew they were being watched. Umbrella wanted the group frightened enough to surrender the drive voluntarily. Now there is nothing. Either Umbrella believes the warnings worked, or they have moved on to something else.

Leon doesn’t know which possibility is worse.

Rebecca scrolls farther down the construction report. “The original entrance should be in the basement of Archer Library. There’s a maintenance door behind the archive rooms. Electronic locks weren’t added until the nineties, so the tunnel itself might still use an ordinary key.”

Claire produces a ring of keys from her jacket pocket and drops them onto the map.

Jill closes her eyes. “Where did you get those?”

“The student-newspaper office.”

“You stole maintenance keys?”

“Borrowed.”

“Claire!”

“They’ll be back before anybody notices.”

Leon rubs both hands over his face. An hour later, they are preparing to break into the steam tunnels. The decision is reckless, poorly planned, and agreed upon far too quickly. Leon makes that clear several times while packing flashlights, spare batteries, bottled water, and the first-aid kit Rebecca insists they bring. Chris finds an old backpack and fills it with tools. Jill copies the tunnel map by hand in case their phones lose service underground. Claire brings a camera, a miniature tape recorder, and enough nervous excitement to make Leon reconsider the entire friendship.

They leave the flash drive behind.

Leon refuses to bring it anywhere near campus, so it remains hidden in the apartment beneath a loose floorboard inside his bedroom closet. Chris points out that their lease specifically forbids pulling apart the floor. Leon tells him to complain to the landlord.

By the time the group crosses campus, it is nearly eleven. A light rain falls over RCU, soft enough that nobody bothers with umbrellas. The university has mostly emptied for the night. A few windows remain illuminated in the dormitories, and distant music drifts from fraternity row, but the academic side of campus is quiet. Archer Library rises ahead of them, its tall windows glowing against the wet darkness. Leon walks close enough to {{user}} that their shoulders nearly brush. He tells himself it is easier to keep track of everyone that way.

“You stay near me down there,” he says quietly, keeping his voice low enough that the others cannot hear.

The instruction comes out more forcefully than intended. Leon glances toward them, jaw tense. “The tunnels are old. Floors could be unstable, there could be exposed wiring, pipes—whatever. Just don’t wander off.”

It sounds reasonable when he says it like that. Practical.

It has nothing to do with the image that has occupied his head since Claire first unfolded the map: {{user}} disappearing around some dark corner, beyond the reach of his flashlight, while something waits where he cannot see it.

Archer Library is technically open until midnight, but the basement archives close at ten. Rebecca distracts the student working at the front desk while Claire leads the others toward a staff stairwell. The borrowed keys work on the second attempt.

The basement smells like paper, dust, and damp concrete. Tall shelves divide the archive rooms into narrow aisles filled with university records. Old yearbooks sit beside financial documents, retired course catalogs, and boxes containing decades of student-newspaper issues. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, illuminating pipes that run across the low ceiling.

The maintenance entrance is hidden behind a movable shelving unit at the far end of the room. Chris takes it upon himself to shove it aside, giving everyone a dorky thumbs up when he succeeds on his first try. Jill cracks a small smile.

Behind the shelf stands an old steel door. There’s no window or university crest, only a faded yellow warning sign and a keyhole discolored with age. Claire tries three keys before the lock opens.

The door groans inward as warm, stale air rolls out of the darkness beyond it. The tunnel is narrower than Leon expected. Thick pipes run along both walls, wrapped in peeling insulation. Condensation drips steadily from somewhere overhead, collecting in shallow channels carved along the floor. Their flashlights stretch only a short distance ahead before being swallowed by the dark.

Chris peers inside, his brow knitting together. “This is how people die in horror movies.”

Claire raises her camera. “You’re the one who voted yes.”

“...I vote for a lot of bad ideas.”

They enter one at a time, their shoes barely scraping on the concrete, as if one step is going to send them flying through a secret trap door in the floor. The steel door closes behind them with a heavy metallic thud.

The group fractures, the silence of the facility swallowing them in pairs. Claire’s voice is sharp, a jagged edge of anxiety as she argues that splitting up is a death sentence. She rounds on Leon, her finger trembling as she points at him. “You of all people should know this! You’re the one who loves those damn horror movies!” Her frustration boils over into a defeated sigh before she finally veers off into the gloom with Rebecca. Jill and Chris have already vanished into the shadows together, leaving Leon and {{user}} alone with the weight of the oppressive atmosphere.

Leon’s grip is grounding in the damp chill of the tunnel. His hand is clamped firmly around {{user’s}}, his knuckles white, transferring a silent, rhythmic tension through his palm. They move through the corridor like ghosts, silent and stiff. For three agonizing minutes, the only sound is the synchronized scuff of their shoes and the heavy, thrumming pulse in their ears. Leon is a statue in motion, his head constantly pivoting, eyes scanning the darkness behind them for anything that moves.

When they reach a heavy metal door, Leon finally releases {{user}}’s hand. He leans his weight into the door, the rusty hinges groaning in protest that seems to echo for miles. He ushers {{user}} inside, lingering for one last, paranoid glance into the hallway before the door clicks shut, sealing them in. The room is a hollow shell of industrial decay. A lone filing cabinet stands in the corner like a tombstone, its drawers hanging open to reveal nothing but layers of grey dust. A metal table that’s seen better days sits in the center, its surface scarred and pitted from years of neglect.

A heavy, palpable wave of frustration settles over them as the realization sinks in. They have risked the exposure of the open halls for this—a dead end. There’s nothing of substance here. Only silence and dust.

Leon doesn’t know how it happens.

In a sudden, chaotic blur, the tension between them boils over. Leon drops heavily onto the edge of the scarred table, grumbling under his breath in sheer frustration. Moving to steady him, {{user}} offers a low, sarcastic word of comfort, but the moment their hand comes to rest against his thigh, the fragile restraint between them snaps. He can’t keep pretending.

Reaching out, Leon grips the sleeve of {{user}}’s shirt to pull them flush against him, his hands immediately rising to frame their face as he captures their lips in a sudden kiss. He leaves no room for hesitation, his tongue tracing their lower lip before pressing deeper into the kiss. A low groan escapes him when {{user}}’s hand slides further up his thigh. Rising to his full height, he shifts his weight, his hands sliding down the curve of {{user}}’s body until they grip their hips securely.

He breathes a frantic request for permission against their lips, waiting just long enough to catch {{user}}’s whispered agreement before turning them around and gently bending them over the old metal table. Leon’s fingers work fast, pushing {{user}}’s jeans past their hips, shoving his own down until there’s nothing left between them. When he feels them press back against him, he knows he doesn’t need permission anymore. With a singular movement, one hard thrust, he bottoms out inside them. He lets out a low, ragged moan, his eyes rolling back in his head.

“Fuck, {{user}},” Leon breathes. He shifts, pulling out until just the tip of his cock is inside them, before he thrusts back in. His nails dig into the soft flesh of their hips, undoubtably leaving half-moons indented in their skin. “You’re—mmm—fucking perfect.”