Chapter Text
Chapter 1- Careful What You Wish For
The rain smacked violently against Charlotte’s bedroom window while wind howled around the apartment building hard enough to make the glass tremble in its frame.
Her room was dark, same as the rest of the apartment, the only light coming from the dull glow of her computer screen.
YOU ARE DEAD
The words sat there in bold white letters, practically mocking her.
Charlotte dropped her head into her hands with a long, slow exhale, trying not to let a stupid video game piss her off this badly.
All she wanted was to spend her night off relaxing for once. Instead, she’d spent the last three hours dying repeatedly and contemplating throwing her controller through the fucking window.
She groaned and shoved herself out of her chair, stretching until her spine popped faintly.
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “How long have I been sitting here?”
Her body ached from being hunched over her desk for so long.
Slowly, Charlotte wandered toward the kitchen, bare feet dragging against the hardwood floor while thunder rumbled somewhere outside.
The fridge light illuminated her exhausted expression as she stared at the depressing selection inside.
Half a carton of milk.
A few oranges.
And leftover takeout that had absolutely crossed into biological hazard territory at least two days ago.
She grimaced and shut the fridge again.
“Great.”
For a moment, Charlotte considered just going to sleep hungry.
Then her stomach growled loudly enough to make the decision for her.
With another sigh, she headed back toward her room, pulling on sneakers and yanking a hoodie over her tank top before grabbing her keys off the dresser.
The second she stepped outside, freezing rain hit her sideways.
“Fuck!”
Charlotte hurried down the apartment steps and practically dove into her car before the storm could soak her completely.
The door slammed shut behind her with a heavy thud, cutting off most of the wind.
For a second, she just sat there listening to rain hammer against the roof of the car while the windshield fogged faintly around the edges.
Then she shoved the key into the ignition. Might as well go find something edible. Even if the only thing open this late was greasy fast-food garbage. Honestly, it still sounded better than staring at that death screen any longer.
What kind of idiot decided playing Resident Evil Requiem on insanity mode was a good way to relax?
Charlotte had spent the entire night watching Grace get sliced in half by that horrifying chef zombie over and over again until her eyes felt ready to fall out of her skull. At this point, even overpriced drive-thru fries sounded preferable.
Charlotte pulled out of the apartment complex and into the nearly empty street, windshield wipers fighting a losing battle against the rain pounding against the glass.
The storm had only gotten worse by now.
Streetlights blurred into long golden streaks across the wet pavement while thunder rolled overhead. She turned the heat up another notch and tiredly rubbed at one eye. Maybe this was a sign she should have just gone to bed instead. At almost two in the morning, the roads were mostly empty aside from the occasional pair of headlights cutting through the rain going in the opposite direction. The silence in the car felt strange after hours of gunfire, zombie screetches, and the sound of Grace’s heavy, nervous breathing on loop coming from the game.
Charlotte exhaled slowly and leaned back against the seat. Honestly, she’s probably gotten too invested in the game anyway. It was stupid. Here she was, at her grown ass age of twenty-eight, getting attached and emotionally invested in fictional characters, like their survival mattered somehow.
Especially Leon.
God.
What was it about that man that made everyone collectively lose their minds?
She laughed quietly to herself, stopping at a red light that reflected bright crimson across the rain soaked windshield.
Maybe it was just the exhaustion talking. Or maybe, near death experiences and unresolved trauma were just weirdly attractive in video game protagonists.
The light changed. Charlotte pressed a little too hard on the gas. The tires hissed against the rain-slicked pavement as the car moved through the intersection. Rain hammered against the windshield hard enough that the wipers barely kept up anymore, the rhythmic screech of rubber against glass starting to grate on her nerves.
Charlotte sighed and adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. “This is so pathetic,” she muttered to herself with a tired laugh. Twenty-eight years old and getting emotionally attached to a fictional government agent with trauma and bad one-liners. Had she really grown that lonely?
It had been two years now since her breakup with her shitty, cheating ex. Two years later, she still wasn’t over the betrayal, and instead of moving on to real men, she had moved on to video game characters and holling herself up in her apartment on days off. Ignoring her friend's phone calls until they eventually just stopped calling. Just her and a screen, and a neighborhood cat she would occasionally feed.
Another crack of thunder rattled.
“God,” she mumbled, glancing toward the empty passenger seat.
“I wish Leon Kennedy was real.”
The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them, and her face immediately twisted in embarrassment. She laughed once, instantly mortified even though no one else was there to hear her little confession. “Okay yea, definitely losing it.”
The road curved slightly ahead, and she eased her foot against the brake–and the car suddenly jerked sideways beneath her.
Her stomach dropped instantly. “Oh shit–”
The tires lost traction completely, and the steering wheel pulled violently against her hands as the car hydroplaned across the flooded pavement.
“Oh shit, shit shit!”
Charlotte tried correcting the wheel, and the car spun harder.
Streetlights blurred across the window in streaks of gold and white while the sound of rain and screaming tires became deafening.
Her pulse exploded into panic.
The brakes locked, the car fishtailed sharply, and a pair of headlights appeared through the heavy storm directly ahead.
Too close.
Charlotte sucked in a terrified breath, then impact. Glass shattered outward in a spray of glittering fragments.
Pain burst through her skull, and in one blinding flash, everything went dark.