Chapter Text
“Scott Walker, FBI.”
Ada quirks an eyebrow up at the man from her prone position on the ground. It’s weird. He says he’s FBI, but he doesn’t sound FBI. Surely a real FBI agent would know better than to wear sunglasses indoors, at night. “Ada Wong,” she says, pulling herself up to her feet. “RPD, but that’s obvious enough, I’m guessing.” Which is a bald-faced lie, but he doesn’t need to know she’s actually a journalist.
Walker’s head tilts down, then up, and he tilts his sunglasses down to meet her eyes. His own are a pale blue, like chips of ice. “Something like that,” he says. “I didn’t think anyone was still alive down here.”
Ada tries not to think of Marvin, the way he’d snarled at her for just a moment before he’d gotten a hold of himself. Just go, Ada. “Me too,” she says, with no small amount of bitterness. Marvin had used to give her coffee sometimes, while she waited in the precinct to interview people. “So what’s the FBI doing down here? Do you know anything about what the hell’s going on in town?”
“That’s classified, I’m afraid,” says Walker, and that does sound like something a federal agent might say. It’s just frustratingly cryptic enough. “I can tell you, though, that I’m looking for my source. Haven’t found him yet, though—so far as I know, the last anyone saw of him, he was being thrown into a holding cell here.”
Ada’s gut twists into knots. “I don’t know if your source survived,” she says. “There’s a lot of zombies walking around, if you didn’t notice.”
“Maybe I’m a hopeful guy,” says Walker.
Hah. Yeah, right. He’s FBI. Ada’s met enough FBI guys to know they’re generally cynics. “Yeah, he’s probably dead now,” she says. “Listen, Walker, just—do yourself a favor and get the hell out of here, all right?”
“Can’t,” says Walker. “I’ve got to find my source first. He’s got information I badly need.” He looks at the parking grate, still shutting off the parking lot to the rest of the world, and says, “I’m going to guess you can’t get out just yet either, huh. Not without a key card, anyway.”
“I’m—working on that,” Ada says.
“Mm,” says Scott. “Well, good luck, Officer Wong.” He walks away then, heedless to Ada yelling after him for answers. Goddamn FBI agents. Are they always this enigmatic and cryptic?
--
Ada hadn’t really thought about it much, when she pulled the spare RPD uniform on. At least not beyond the fact that her smart red blouse and heels weren’t practical in what looked like a George Romero zombie movie, and anyway, Marvin had been the one to suggest it himself. “Listen, Ada,” he had said, clutching at his side and squinting at his outfit, “there’s a spare RPD uniform with body armor and all the bells and whistles in Johansson’s locker. You ought to take it.”
Ada had lifted her eyebrow. “I think that’s impersonating a police officer,” she had said.
“Wong, kid,” said Marvin, and Ada rolled her eyes at him, the most normal interaction they’d had since he’d saved her life from that zombie ten minutes ago, “I promise you, everyone else who would give a shit is dead. Take the damn uniform.”
“I’m twenty-four,” she had told him.
“I’m forty-five,” said Marvin, “everyone’s a kid.” He hissed in pain as he moved, but the moment Ada stepped closer he’d held up his hand and shaken his head. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Worry about yourself first, all right? Those things will eat you if you’re not careful.”
Ada stands over Marvin’s corpse now, half his face blown right off, brains spilling out onto the marble. “I’m sorry, Marvin,” she murmurs, kneeling down to take his badge and spare handgun ammo. The ammo she needs, because she’s starting to run low. The badge—Marvin had been a friend to her. She couldn’t save him from the virus and she can’t bury his body, but she can bring this to his family, at least.
Then she hears the sound of heavy footfalls. When she looks up, she spots the tall, grey-skinned fellow from before coming out of one of the doors.
“Well, hello, handsome,” Ada mutters to herself, taking her shotgun off her back and backing away toward the east wing. “Sorry, but I can’t stay.”
Then she runs like hell.
--
The next time she sees Scott Walker, it’s right after she gets the keycard off the reporter’s corpse. Somehow Ada manages not to throw up at the sight of it, or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s seen a lot of people’s insides on the outside lately. “Oh,” says Walker, staring at the corpse with his lips pressed together, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, “goddammit, Ben.”
“Friend of yours?” Ada asks.
“Not really, no,” says Walker, “but he’s—was. He was my source. He had information that could be relevant to my investigation.” His hands are shaking, she notices, in the brief glimpse she has of them before he stuffs them back into his pockets. Is he new to this? Shit, this is a hell of a first federal case if it is. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Ada admits. “It all just happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to react.” One moment he was begging her for help, and she was trying to get the door open with the lock not fucking budging like it should’ve, the next something had crashed through the wall and squished the man’s head like the world’s most gruesome orange. She hadn’t even had the time to get her gun out. “I’m—sorry about your source,” she adds, a little stilted. She’s never been good at offering empty sympathies, no matter how much she tries.
Walker breathes in, then out, as if steadying himself. “It’s fine,” he says, shortly. “Did he have anything on him?”
“I found this,” says Ada, handing the tape recorder over. “Something about Umbrella and a virus, and Irons. He said he was going to blow the whistle on Irons’ dirty ass.” The idea that the chief had been dirty makes Ada feel—stained, somehow. Gross and grimy, in a way that’s deeper than the dust and blood that’s gotten on her. She’d interviewed him once before and he’d seemed perfectly fine, but apparently that was a fucking lie. “Is that helpful?”
Walker clicks the play button, listens to the whole thing, and says, “Damn it, Ben. You didn’t have to die for this.” He exhales, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not as helpful as I’d hoped,” he says, sounding regretful. “He didn’t come through after all.”
“Really,” says Ada. “Confirmation that Umbrella did make a virus and that Irons was dirty, and that’s not helpful to you?”
“I already knew this,” says Walker. “I was hoping he’d have something new for me but—well, clearly not.” He turns to walk away, and Ada lunges forward, grabbing for his arm.
“Explain,” she snaps.
He yanks his arm out of her grasp, and behind his sunglasses she could swear he’s staring her down like she’s a pest stuck to the bottom of his shoe. She glares back, giving as good as she gets.
“What the hell are you looking for in this city?” she asks, softening her voice. “Why come all the way here?”
Walker’s lips press into a thin line, and gears seem to turn in his head before he sighs. “Find a way out first, Officer Wong,” he says. “Before it’s too late. Then we’ll talk.”
Ada watches him go, then runs a hand through her hair and huffs out a breath. “Officer Wong,” she mutters to herself. “Branagh would lose his shit.” The thought of Marvin Branagh draws an iron band tight around her lungs, the grief taking hold of her just then, but she shuts her eyes and breathes.
“First things first, then,” she says, grimly. “Get the fuck out.”
--
The grey-skinned fucker from before is strong as hell. Ada knew this already, the guy punches like a fucking truck and can squash people’s heads with one hand, but it’s one thing to see it and another to feel it happening, the hand tightening around her windpipe.
She kicks wildly out, clawing at the fingers around her throat. No, no, no, not like this, Claire had said they’d both make it out and she had promised, she had promised—
An engine roars, and suddenly Ada hits the ground as an armored van slams into the guy and crushes him into a wall. She coughs and gasps for air, sweet blessed air, and scrambles backward as Scott fucking Walker hops out of the driver’s seat, taking off the sunglasses and looking down at her, eyes wide and worried.
“We’ve really got to stop meeting like this,” he says, and she blinks at him, because wow, he resorts to cheap lines under stress. Good to know the FBI agent’s kind of a goober. “That’s what, twice now that I’ve saved you?”
“Didn’t realize we were keeping score,” she says with a huff as she stands. He stands with her, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Just saying, you seem really new to this officer thing,” he says.
I’m a journalist, actually. Surprise! “It’s my first day,” she improvises.
“Hell of a first day,” says Scott, wincing. Then the van moves, and by now Ada knows the score—she pulls her handgun out, pointing at the hand beginning to move. If she can stun the monster for a time she can buy herself and Scott time to get away.
Scott groans, and says, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Scott,” says Ada, with authority she doesn’t actually feel, “get the hell back.”
“Nothing dies down here,” Scott grumbles, then takes out a detonator and presses the button. The van explodes, the sheer deafening sound leaving Ada’s ears ringing, but the monster is no longer moving and she can smell its flesh—cooking. Bile rises in her throat, but she swallows it back. “You’ve got the key card on you, right?”
“Yeah, I haven’t lost it,” says Ada, flicking the key card into her hand from her hip pouch. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They walk out of the parking lot together, Ada following behind Scott with her handgun held at the ready. The rain is pouring down on them in buckets, and Ada spares a moment to be glad that at least she’s not wearing her heels right now. It would be hell to run in them in the rain. “So what are you really looking for?” she asks. “That Ben didn’t come through on.”
“More information on the people who started this whole thing,” says Scott. “What about you, Ada? Trying to save the world?”
Trying to pay my bills and get the big scoop first. “I told Marvin I’d bring help,” she says, and that’s truthful enough. She is in way over her head here, but if she can get someone who knows what to do on the scene, maybe they can turn this thing around. “Somehow.”
“Good luck getting that,” says Scott, coming to the end of the road. “Shit, road’s out.”
“There’s a gun shop over there,” says Ada, nodding to the blinking red neon sign reading GUN SHOP KENDO in bright cheery letters. She hasn’t ever been inside before—she used to get her guns from the store halfway across the city, if she ever bothered to get any at all. “We can make it through there and then out into a back alley.”
“Good plan,” says Scott. “And we can stock up on ammo as well.”
“Maybe a sniper rifle,” Ada wistfully says, going on ahead and picking the lock on the doors before pushing them open. Then she pauses, and says, “Okay, for a gun shop, there’s a pronounced lack of guns in here, and much more of a mess than I thought there would be.”
“Well,” says Scott, reflectively, as the two of them step inside, “I guess we should’ve expected that. Of course people would’ve bought up as many guns as they could, the second shit hit the fan.” He picks up a box of bullets for a handgun and tosses it to Ada, who unzips one of her hip pouches and lets the bullets fall into it. “Where did a cop learn how to pick a lock?” he asks.
“University,” she says, “to impress a girl.” This much isn’t a lie, Ada had fallen hard for this girl in her Intro to Communication Theory class and had determined to impress her. She just…is going to encourage him thinking she’s RPD. The second he learns she’s a journalist, this all-access pass she’s getting is going to vanish into thin air.
“Well, I’ve done worse to impress girls,” says Scott, and Ada chuckles despite herself. Maybe if they make it out alive…
Don’t think about it. She steps further into the gun shop, picking up ammunition and some gun parts as she goes. She’s the first one out the back of the shop, Scott trailing behind her, and so she’s the one who hears the sound of a gun’s safety being clicked off before an older man, out of the corner of her eye, snarls, “Don’t move.”
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” says Ada, quietly.
“I said, don’t move.”
“Sir, I’m just passing through,” says Ada, putting as much authority as she can into her voice, remembering how Marvin did it, how Elliot and Rita and David would do it, doing her best to sound exactly like the cop she isn’t. “I’m asking you to lower your weapon right now,” she says, as calmly as possible, her heart pounding.
“Like hell you are,” the man says. “You’re going to turn around, and step right back out the way you came in.”
“Sir—” Ada starts, before she catches movement out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head just a little, just in time to see a little girl emerge from the shadows. Her words die in her throat when she sees the black veins, the milky eyes, the way the girl staggers. Oh, god, no.
“Daddy?” the girl whispers.
“Sir,” Ada says, “I think your daughter—” might need help. But she can’t be helped now. She sucks in a breath, and says, her heart cracking, “Sir, please step aside. Your daughter may well be a danger to you.”
The man racks his shotgun, and snaps, “Don’t fucking tell me how to deal with my daughter.”
Another click, and Scott, behind her, says, “Drop the gun. Now.”
The man backs up, still pointing a gun at them. Ada draws her own gun now, her finger off the trigger as she points it towards the man, but she spots Scott moving the barrel of his own gun towards the girl.
“Step aside, sir,” he says, “that thing’s a danger to you.”
“That thing,” the man growls, “is my fucking daughter.”
Ada looks at the man, then the girl, the guilt and grief and horror rising up from the very bottom of her stomach to choke her. She thinks of Marvin, all of a sudden, begging her to go, and her hand goes to the badge in her pocket, still streaked with his blood. “Scott,” she says.
“Daddy?” the girl says again.
“Emma, sweetheart,” the man says, not looking at her, “I told you to stay put.”
Scott makes a noise, like he’s been punched in the gut, and she can see the conflict in his eyes, the crack in his cool mask. The pragmatic thing to do here would be to just shoot her, and never mind what her father would say. But—Jesus Christ. She’s just a kid, and her father is right there.
Ada lowers her gun. “Scott,” she says, looking at him, looking at the way his hands are shaking, “put the gun down and let them be.”
“She might turn,” he says, but he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.
“Just let them be,” she says, reaching out her hand to touch his elbow. His hands steady when she touches him, and slowly, oh so slowly, he lowers the gun.
“Daddy?” the girl tries again, and the man turns now, kneeling down with a saddened smile, trying to reassure her even now.
“Yeah, Emmie, sweetie, Daddy’s here,” he says, gathering her in close for a hug. And there’s enough of Emma left that she doesn’t bite him, that all she does is lean into his touch, and perhaps that’s what breaks Ada’s heart the most. She hasn’t been infected for very long, but she’s too far gone to save already. “I’m here, okay? I’m right here.”
Ada steps closer.
“Those fuckin’ things outside,” the man sobs. “Look what they did to us.” He pulls away from Emma now, and snarls at Ada, “You’re a cop, right? You’re supposed to know something! How did this happen, huh? How?”
“I’m—” I’m not a cop. I’m here to find out. Come with me, sir, please, you don’t need to see this. Her head spins with headlines, bylines, lead sentences, but for the first time since she got here, she can’t see the story in print. All she can see is a father and his daughter. “I’m sorry,” she says, uselessly. She never could give platitudes worth a damn.
Scott, next to her, is staring at the kid with his hands shaking, his lips pressed into a thin line. Now that his sunglasses are off, she can see the horror in his eyes, and the guilt as well.
The man lets out another broken sob, cradling the girl close to his chest. “She was our sweet little angel,” he says. Our. But he’s the only one here, which means—
Ada shuts her eyes, and exhales. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says.
“You’re so fucking sorry,” the man spits at her. “Where were you? Where the fuck were you before this happened to us?”
The girl stirs again, and says, her voice rasping and slowing down, “Mommy?”
The man turns back to his daughter. “Mommy’s sleeping, okay, honey?” he says. His breath hitches in his throat, but he continues, “And I’m—I’m gonna put you to bed too. Okay, sweetie?”
Emma says nothing, just moans softly. Ada steps back out of reflex, but the man lifts his daughter up into her arms and carries her back into what must’ve been their home, once. She watches him open the door, carrying his little girl for the very last time. He turns to look at them, and it’s that look of complete heartbreak and despair in his face that Ada knows will haunt her for as long as she lives.
“Just go,” he says. “Just give us some privacy.” And the door slams shut.
Ada stares after him, her breath hitching in her throat. Then she rounds on Scott, and says, “Listen. I don’t care if you keep telling me how classified this is. That’s fine. I can handle that. But this—why him? Why her?”
A gunshot rings out. Ada flinches back, her breath catching in her throat.
“He didn’t deserve that,” she says. “She didn’t deserve that. Scott, she was just a damn kid.” She runs her hand through her hair, and says, “I want to find whoever’s behind this, and stop them. No more Emmas. No more Raccoon Cities. No fucking more. I’ll do it myself if I have to, but I won’t, I can’t let this happen again.”
“You really mean that, huh?” Scott says.
“Every fucking word,” says Ada, with conviction. It’s a strange feeling, conviction. Mingles quite nicely with righteous fury. “You need to tell me, Scott.”
Scott looks back at the door, and under the dim lights, she realizes: he’s young. She’s probably older than he is, and she’s only twenty-four. Maybe this is his first real assignment. God, what a mess. He looks back at her, and she can see the decision made in his eyes before he says it: “My mission is to bring down Umbrella’s entire operation. We might not make it out alive.”
“Whatever it takes,” says Ada, “count me in.”
--
Annette Birkin, Scott tells her, is the scientist responsible for creating the virus that’s now ravaged the city, and her masters at Umbrella Corporation are secretly making bioweapons on top of overcharging people for lifesaving medicine. So that’s something.
Also, they have to go through the sewers to get to the underground facility Umbrella’s built under the city. As a journalist, Ada is practically salivating at this gigantic scoop she’s essentially been handed, because if this breaks, not only will this make her entire career, it’ll also get her like forty prizes in the field and enough money for her to finally afford to get her own goddamn house and maybe even retire. This is a huge conspiracy that has gone so badly wrong that an entire city has become a casualty, and she can see the headlines now, her name in the byline.
But as the survivor she’s becoming, Ada’s starting to give less and less of a shit about her own exposure and more about tearing down Umbrella with her bare hands if she has to. Emma had been just a kid. If it hadn’t been for Umbrella fucking around with bioweapons, if it hadn’t been for Annette Birkin pushing science so far it broke the world, then maybe Emma would’ve lived to see her next birthday, and Marvin would be picking his kids up for his weekend with them right now, and Scott would be pursuing some other lead, some other case, something less life-threatening than this.
And Ada in particular wouldn’t be trudging through sewer gunk right now, wondering what the fuck is in this sewer with them that’s shaking the place up.
At least Johansson’s most likely too dead to freak out about Ada getting sewer gunk on her uniform. Or worse. Saves Ada having to apologize to her about it, she supposes morbidly.
“Appropriate,” she mutters, “that Umbrella’s made its home in the sewers. Ugh.”
“Well-said,” says Scott, ahead of her. He stops near a drop into the sewer water, eyes it critically, and says, “And I just got these pants.”
“I’ll do it, if you’re so worried about your pants,” says Ada.
“No, let me go first on this one,” says Scott. “You stay up here.” And with that, he drops off the edge and lands on the water, making a face when some of it splashes further up than either of them would’ve liked. “Jesus, this is disgusting,” he says.
“I can come down and boost you back up,” Ada says.
“No, it’s—”
Something rumbles nearby. Something rumbles very nearby, and the water begins to ripple.
“—fine,” Scott finishes, backing up. “What the hell?”
“Scott!” Ada yells. “Get the hell out of there!”
And then a giant fucking sewer alligator bursts from the water and roars.
“Ada, move!” Scott shouts up at her. He sprints down the sewer tunnel, and Ada swears and runs after him, just one floor up and away from the giant sewer alligator. Goddammit. God-fucking-dammit. Nobody said there were going to be fucking sewer alligators down here, what the fuck, does this virus work on animals too? Wait, shit, of course it works on animals, dogs. How the fuck did a reptile end up down here? Shit, Scott—
She jumps over a gap in the ledge, managing not to stumble and sprain her ankle in the process. She keeps running, only to almost fall flat on her face when another huge explosion rocks the sewer, and she scrambles out onto a platform just in time to see chunks of sewer alligator slide out of a tunnel. Scott, who apparently exploded a sewer pipe to kill the bastard, gives a weary little fist-pump.
“Chew on that,” he says, “you overgrown sonuvabitch.”
Ada stares down at him. Good fucking god, this man is an FBI agent. He is such a goddamn dweeb. “Scott!” she calls, getting his attention. “Hey, up here!” Then she kicks down the ladder.
When she sees his head pop into view, she says, “So I guess we can safely say reptiles are not immune to this virus, and also, that all those old urban legends about alligators in the sewers may be much truer than I thought.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” says Scott. “I thought—maybe it just affects mammals, which would explain the zombie dog, but. That throws my theory out the window.”
“How’d it even get down here?” she asks.
Scott wrings out his sleeve, and says, “My best guess is that Umbrella brought them here as test subjects, and then released them for reasons still unknown.”
“Right into the sewers,” Ada mutters, as Scott leads her towards an elevator. “And they sell those things to our military? Someone else’s?”
“They don’t sell the things themselves,” Scott corrects, pressing the down button and stepping back as the elevator comes up from the depths of the sewers. “They sell the viruses that make them, and Annette’s the one who makes the viruses. That thing might’ve been terrifying, but Annette’s more dangerous in the long term.”
“Just her?” Ada asks. “I would’ve thought there was a whole team involved.”
“She’s the head of it,” says Scott. “And unfortunately, the rest of her team are either dead or shambling around looking for brains to snack on. Annette’s the only one I’ve been able to confirm is still alive.”
“What are you gonna do if we find her?”
“Arrest her,” says Scott, “and demand she hand over the G-Virus samples so we can use it as evidence against Umbrella.”
“You don’t sound worried she’ll fight back,” Ada notes.
Scott snorts out a laugh, shakes his head. “She’s a scientist,” he says. “If she puts up a fight, I’m sure we can handle it. Her strength lies in her brains, Ada, not her brawn.”
Definitely baby’s first assignment. “Don’t get overconfident now, rookie,” she says, and grins when she sees him whip towards her with a shocked look on his face. “What, you thought I wouldn’t figure out this was your first assignment? I know what a rookie looks like.”
“She says on her first day,” huffs Scott, but there’s an odd look of relief on his face as he leans back against the elevator wall. “But—yeah. You caught me. First real federal case, and I land in the middle of a horror movie. Just our luck, right?”
“Just our luck,” Ada agrees. “For what it’s worth, Scott? You’re doing pretty well for a first-timer.”
“You too,” says Scott. “Despite me having to save you twice now.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone gets top marks at the academy,” says Ada. Which is true, you can’t get top marks in an academy that you don’t attend. “I just hope…there’s a girl I came in with, looking for her brother. We were going to go together, but we got split up, and the last time I saw her was at the police station.” She rests her head back against the wall, looks up at the dull glow of the elevator’s ceiling lights. “I just hope she’s okay.”
Scott sighs. “For your sake,” he says, “I hope so too.”
--
A woman in a white labcoat kneels over a dead body, her hair a dull blonde, her pencil scratching scribbles into a notebook. “Definitely William’s handiwork,” she’s saying to herself when Ada and Scott come in, their guns held at the ready. She barely even looks up.
“Identify yourself,” Ada says, summoning up Rita’s stern tone.
She needn’t have bothered, because Scott steps in front of her and says, “Annette Birkin.”
“Not much time,” Annette says to herself. “Need to dispose of it.”
Huh. Doesn’t look like much.
Annette looks up at them now and stands up, looking the two of them up and down with a critical eye. Ada grits her teeth and stands her ground, trying not to feel seen, exposed, vulnerable.
“We’re here for the G-Virus,” says Scott, and Ada cuts her eyes sideways to him. “Hand it over and come quietly with us. We’ll make sure to treat you well.”
Annette chuckles, mirthlessly. Some vital spark in her eye has gone out, Ada thinks. “That’s not gonna happen,” she says, lighting a match.
“I’m warning you, doctor,” Scott says, low and dangerous.
“Oh, yeah?” Annette says, before she tosses her match onto the body. It burns in front of them, the stench of cooking flesh filling Ada’s nostrils for a hot moment before Annette turns on her heel and runs, drawing a gun.
Scott bolts first after her. “Stop!” he calls, but quickly stops in his tracks as the bullets fly. Too close. Too fucking close. If he gets shot—
Ada charges forward, tackling him to the ground. Her shoulder explodes in pain as she slams onto the ground, and her vision goes white for a moment, her blood roaring in her ears. Shit, she’s been shot. Shit. Shit shit shit. Johansson’s too dead to ream her out for damaging her uniform, but ow it hurts it hurts it fucking hurts.
She can hear distant shouting, the sound of more gunshots, but it’s only when Scott says her name that Ada can manage to hear actual words: “—Ada? Oh, god, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Go after her. Take her in. I’ll—shit—I’ll just slow you down.” She laughs, then gasps for air. “Bet—Bet you weren’t expecting that from a scientist, huh?”
“I really wasn’t,” says Scott. “Shit, Ada, just—”
“One for me,” she says, her eyes beginning to flutter closed. She’ll be okay. She’ll be fine. She just needs a nap. “Watch out. I’m catching up.”
“You’ve gotta stop catching up,” Scott says, then his voice grows more and more indistinct. The only sound she hears is her name in his voice, and she smiles when she hears it. It’s a nice voice. He’s a nice guy. Maybe if they get out of here…
She closes her eyes, and drifts off to sleep.