project: eden | leon kennedy

▪︎ Chapter 2 ▪︎

Thea thought that after graduation, her life would finally get straight and take a better route. She was ready to move out from her parents and begin her adult life. Until the very person her whole heart despised snatched away her future job.

She was devastated when Kennedy took her place at the Raccoon City Police Department. She wanted to work there because it was still close to her home but far away enough so she could experience the freedom she sought. But not like this. This was like she got stuck in a nightmare, spiced up with her mother's disappointment, which turned into dulling hatred.

Her mother, Clara Keller was disappointed in her daughter, and she made sure Thea felt that. When she didn't make it to be the top-class student, Leon Kennedy shining right in her spot, Clara didn't talk to her daughter for a week. Thea thought that the disappointed look couldn't hurt her more, but there was something else in the cold steel eyes of her mother that chilled her to the bone: it was fury.

Her father, Wilbur tried his best to support his daughter, seeing how badly it hurt her. He just wanted the best for her, to make her the most important woman on earth. So, he found an empty spot for her at the company he worked at as the head of security: at Umbrella Company.

Thea got to work as a new security guard, which wasn't her ideal job. Of course, she got to work for a famous company and it was nice of her father to pull a few strings for her sake, but this just wasn't for her. She wanted something more, something more thrilling. And her mother liked to vocalize her distaste towards her carrier path almost every day, which started to make Thea mad. She felt like she was actually going insane.

After her 24-hour shift, she went back to her apartment, which was on the shittier side of the city. She didn't let her father fund her living, too. She wanted to be free of charity work and try to survive on her own. Not like her mother would've let Wilbur to pay for a better flat for her. Thea knew if she could've been a scientist like her mother, she would pay for the best apartment in the city. Thea didn't talk to her mother after she moved to her own apartment. It may be shitty and her landlord was a creep, but at least it was hers.

Her first week at her new job went by slowly. She hated how she was treated like a child just because she was new. Nobody respected her, barely anybody acknowledged her there, only a few males taking their time to size her up. Whenever she got home after work she wanted to cry but decided she was way too cool for that. So, every other morning when she woke up she decided it was going to be a better day.

Until one day she woke to utter chaos and people tearing each other apart on the streets.

Thea was awoken from her sleep by a loud explosion. Scrambling to her feet she stumbled to her window, peering outside to see what happened. The sun started to set outside, the shadows stretching along the streets with the people running along them. At first, Thea couldn't see anything wrong with the scene, maybe there was just an accident and people were running to check it out. But as she started to pay more attention to her surroundings, she finally heard them.

The blood-curdling screams outside her apartment.

Narrowing her eyes, she tried to get a better look outside, her grimy window not quite helping her here. But you didn't have to have binoculars to make out what was happening outside. She watched as a running woman got yanked back by her hair, wailing and flailing her arms in the air, trying to get out of the grasp of the man behind her. Her screams became soaked through with agony when the man sank his teeth into the side of her neck, taking a chunk out of it.

This must be a fucking dream, Thea thought, as she tried to rub the tiredness out of her eyes. But when she opened them again, the scene just got worse: now another woman joined the man in torturing the poor woman, her screams slowly dying out as the two others ripped her apart.