Sherry smiled back, hugging the faded pink denim to her body. “And it’s a bribe, huh?”
Claire nodded without hesitation. “Yes. And it’s a bribe. So what do you say?”
Sighing, Sherry reached for her hand, and they walked back into the warehouse to find the controls for the elevator.
Ada woke up as Leon set her gently on a creaking cot, woke up with a pounding headache and a pain in her side. Her first thought was that she’d been shot—but as she opened her eyes, and Leon’s worried, pale face swam into focus, she remembered.
He was going to kiss me, I think—and then . . .
“What happened?”
Leon reached down and brushed her hair off of her forehead, smiling a little. “A monster happened. The same one that got Bertolucci, I think. It put its hand through the wall of the transport and knocked you over. You hit your head, after it—clawed you.” Virus!
Ada struggled to sit up, to look at the wound, but the headache knocked her back. She reached up and carefully touched the throbbing spot just over her left temple, wincing at the feel of the sticky lump. “Hey, just stay put,” Leon said. “The wound isn’t too bad, but you took a pretty serious knock. . . ” Ada closed her eyes, trying to collect herself. If she’d been infected, there wasn’t anything she could do about it now—and really, what an irony that would be—if it was Birkin who’d stabbed her and he was still hot, she’d end up collecting a G-Virus sample in an extremely personal way.
Deep breath, keep it together. You’re not in the transport anymore, what does that tell you? “Where are we?” she asked, opening her eyes. Leon shook his head. “I’m not sure. Like you said, it’s an underground lab or factory of some kind. The transport is just outside. I brought you to the closest room.”
Ada turned her aching head enough to see the small windows, over a cluttered counter, looking out into the transport bay.
Gotta be fourth level, where the lift stops.. . .
The main synthesis lab was on the fifth level. Leon was staring down at her so sincerely, his bright blue gaze so achingly tender, that for just a few seconds, Ada thought about aborting the mission. They could go down to the escape tunnel together, they could hop on the train and get out of the city. They could run away, run far, far away—
• and then what? Call Trent and tell him that you’ll offer a refund? Sure. Then maybe you can meet Leon’s parents, get a ring, buy a little white house with a picket fence, have a couple of kids ... you could take up crochet, and rub his feet when he comes home from a hard day busting drunks and making traffic stops. Happily ever after....
Ada closed her eyes again, unable to look at him as she spoke.
“My head hurts pretty bad, Leon, and the tunnel I saw, on that map—I don’t know where it is,
ex-actly_” “I’ll find it,” he said softly. “I’ll find it, and then I’ll come back for you. Don’t worry about
anything, okay?”
“Be careful,” she whispered, and then felt his soft lips graze her forehead, heard him stand up and move toward the door.
“Just stay here, I’ll be back soon,” he said, and the door opened and closed, and she was alone. He’ll be okay. He’ll get lost trying to find the tunnel, he’ll come back, he’ll see that I’m gone and take the lift back to the surface... I can find the sample and escape, and it will be over.
Ada counted a minute and then sat up slowly, grimacing at the pounding in her skull. A bad knock indeed, but not a debilitating one; she could function. There was a noise outside, and Ada stood up, walking to one of the small windows. She knew the sound even before she looked, and felt her heart sink a little; the transport was heading up, probably recalled to the factory by an Umbrella team ...
. .. which means I don’t have a lot of time. And if they find him—
No, Leon would be okay. He was a fighter, he had the sense to run from danger, he was strong and decent—and he didn’t need to have someone like her in his life. She’d been crazy to consider it, even for a moment. It was time to wrap things up, to do what she’d come to do, to remember who she was—a freelance agent, a woman with no qualms about stealing or killing to complete a job, a cool and efficient thief who could take pride in a career with no misses. Ada Wong always walked away with the goods, and it would take more than a few hours with one blue-eyed cop to make her forget it.
Ada pulled the key cards and master from her pouch and opened the door, telling herself that she was doing the right thing—and hopeful that in time she’d come to believe it.
TwEnfY-Slx
ANNETTE HAD RUN INTO SOME TROUBLE.
The trip down to the cargo room hadn’t been bad; she’d only run across one carrier, one of the first-stagers, and had blown a hole into its ashy, withered skull with the first shot. She’d passed under a sleeping Re3, but it hadn’t stirred from its ceiling bed, and it
seemed that the other creatures still lurking in the facility shadows hadn’t yet figured out that they were
free. Either that, or more of them had disintegrated into mush than she’d imagined ... in any case, she’d be gone before she had to worry about it either way. In all, she made it to the cargo room hall in under three minutes, and had punched in the key code with a sense of grand accomplishment; the high from the shot was wearing off, but she was still feeling good—
• until the hatch to the cargo room refused to open. Annette had tapped the simple code in a second time, more carefully—and nothing. It was one of the only doors in all the facility that didn’t open automat-ically on fail-safe triggering, but it shouldn’t have been a problem—there was a verification disk in the slot beneath the controls, the disk that was always there in spite of Umbrella’s insistence that only the section heads were supposed to have access—
• and of course, upon checking, she’d seen that it wasn’t there, that it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Someone had taken it.
Annette stood in front of the locked hatch in the empty hall and felt the first bright tendrils of panic reach into her mind, a hysteria that she couldn’t allow to take hold.
The lab’s going to blow up, and I’ve wasted four, almost five minutes now and where’s the goddamn disk?
“Easy, take it easy, you’re okay, it’s okay. .. ” A gentle echo, a whisper of reason in the shining hall. She’d simply have to take the elevator from a different level; she had the master key, she had a weapon, she had time. Not as much, but enough. Breathing deeply, Annette started back toward the hall that led to the stairs, reminding herself that all was well and that it didn’t really matter, that Umbrel-la was going to pay whether or not she made it out alive. She didn’t want to die, she wasn’t going to die, but the gleaming, blood-splattered corridors and once-sterile labs were going to burn either way, so there was no need to panic—
• and as she turned right and moved quickly down the connecting hall, her footsteps loud and hollow in the silence, a ceiling panel crashed down in front of her—
• and an Re3, a licker, dropped to the floor and screamed for her blood. No!
Annette fired, but only hit its scrabbling shoulder as it darted forward, reaching out with one deformed claw to swipe at her. She felt a sharp red pain in her forearm, and fired again, shocked and disbelieving—
• and the second one caught it in the throat, and it screamed, blood spraying from its torn neck, its trumpeting shriek a garbled and spitting cry as it lunged at her again.
The third shot blew into the gray jelly of its brain, and it flopped to a spasming stop just inches from her trembling legs.
Gasping as she realized how close she’d been, Annette looked down at her bleeding arm, at the thick scratches that had torn through her lab coat—