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There’s a woman in a red jacket fighting what appears to be, as far as Ada can tell, the screaming, animated remains of William Birkin. Ada has to give her credit — there’s no fear in the set of the woman’s shoulders even as Birkin’s regeneration negates all the damage she deals. “This thing’s gotta go down,” the woman snarls to herself, neatly dodging a swing from Birkin that dents the metal railing behind her. It’s an impressive show of skill. Even so, Ada can tell the woman is at a severe disadvantage. She’s shooting less and dodging more, clearly attempting to lead the creature towards the railing it just dented. Ada can only assume the woman is running out of ammo and is attempting to force it over the railing.
It’s unfortunate, really. Everyone in Raccoon City was doomed from the moment the infection began to spread, so she had assumed she wouldn’t actually find any survivors — at least, none unaffiliated with Umbrella Corp. There’s really no hope for that woman down below. Even if she manages to defeat Birkin and make her way out of the depths of the RPD, the hungry dead roam the streets in ever-growing numbers. With the way the woman is changing her style from careful offense to desperate defense, Ada knows she won’t make it out without a helping hand.
She’s not being paid to help. She’s certainly not being forced to help. But Ada is only human, and she can respect a woman fighting against insurmountable odds. Besides, she’s fairly certain her employers will overlook any minor deviations from her mandate as long as she delivers the G-Virus to them in the end. So what if a random civilian makes it out of the ruined city? She certainly wouldn’t be the first — though Ada is fairly certain she’ll be the last.
The strange eye on Birkin’s shoulder blinks open and Ada takes a careful shot from her hiding spot, causing the creature to momentarily recoil with a howl. The woman takes the unexpected opening without hesitation, firing into the enormous eye until Birkin stumbles back, slamming into the damaged railing. “Please,” Ada hears the woman pray desperately as metal begins to groan, “please be enough.”
And as though in answer to her prayer, the railing buckles beneath Birkin’s grotesque weight and gives way with a loud screech, sending the mutated man plummeting into the dark with a distorted scream of fury. Ada can’t afford to linger, but she can offer one more favour to the stranger down below. With the simple push of a button, a ladder clatters down beside the woman. She jolts. “Hello?” she calls out, peering at the broken walkway above. “Grace? Is that you?”
But there’s no response — Ada is already gone.
Against all odds, there’s a single surviving member of the RPD inside the parking garage. He’s wrestling with a mutated dog, gloved hands visibly straining against the doberman’s neck as he struggles to hold its slobbering maw away from his face. His gun lies uselessly beside him. Ada sighs to herself. Men. But behind him —
There’s a little girl, back pressed flush against the metal gate, the whites of her eyes shining with terror. Her chest heaves. She’s not moving. She can’t move, Ada thinks, feet rooted to the spot with fear. “Sherry, don’t worry about me — RUN!” the man yells, voice choked with effort, and Ada — Ada has already spent too much time picking through the RPD and sneaking past the Tyrant, the silent timer at the back of her mind slowly ticking down, but —
“███████, RUN!” screams a boy she’ll always remember, half-starved and waifish and too heroic for his own good, metal pole grasped in trembling hand. “Don’t look back! Don’t look back, just keep going!” A girl she wishes she could forget turns tail and flees, not yet realising there wouldn’t even be enough left of her saviour to bury.
The dogs were just too hungry — and she was too weak to stop them.
Without thinking about it — without really meaning to — she unholsters her pistol and fires, striking the mutt in the flank. Her traitorous heart races as the dog falls beside the man — barely more than a boy, really, now that she can make out the broad strokes of his face — but when it twitches she snaps, “Stay sharp!” as it begins to slowly rise once more.
The boy snatches his pistol off the ground and hastily fires, a haphazard shot that punches through the dog’s jaw but clearly misses its brain. Even so, the beast slumps to the ground once more, blood and drool dripping onto the pavement as its maw twitches mindlessly. The boy pushes himself up and immediately shuffles back, shielding the little girl with his body as he points his pistol at Ada. It’s admirable, but annoying. She stalks forward, her own pistol aimed right back. “Lower it,” she orders, flashing her forged credentials. “FBI.”
His pistol quickly drops to his side. “I’m sorry,” he quickly apologises, “thank you —”
The beast raises its head. The little girl shrieks. Ada doesn’t even think before dropping her hand and firing, a bullet bursting through the poor creature’s skull and splattering blood all over the front of the little girl’s clothes. It falls to the ground, finally still. The girl whimpers. The boy swallows. His gaze catches hers. “Thank you for your help.”
“I’m surprised you made it this far,” she says waspishly as she takes a step back, trying to put distance between herself and the sincerity shining in his too-young eyes.
“Wait!” the little girl cries, and Ada finds herself arrested by the sound of that voice. She’s helpless to the pull of it — no matter how badly she wants to be anywhere else. “You’re FBI?” the girl asks. “Can you — do you know what’s going on?”
“Do you know what’s going on?” a little girl whispers, huddled in the back of a rumbling truck with a gaggle of equally filthy children. Wind batters the canvas above them.
A boy — and he had seemed so much older back then, but she knows now he was barely older than the rest of them — answers her question. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but that’s a secret for now.”
“I’m sorry,” she says gently, more gently than she’s used to, “but that information is classified.”
She turns away, steps quick and light as she tries to subtly flee the garage that suddenly feels too small. The boy finally stands, his charge immediately wrapping her arms around his leg. The image nearly knocks the breath out of her. She desperately tries to forget why. “Wait, where are you going?” he asks.
She needs to leave. She needs to leave now, before the ghosts of her past catch up to her. “Do yourself a favour,” she hisses, skin prickling uncontrollably. “Stop asking questions and get the hell out of here.”
Beneath the shade of her glasses, her eyes are wild. Ada turns her back and flees, ignoring the way the pair call out to her. She has a mission to complete. She can’t afford to care. She can’t.
Ada doesn’t believe in luck. Not really. She knows how to tip the odds in her favour, to curry support and use others to her advantage, but she doesn’t really believe in luck. Such esoteric beliefs are best left in the past, along with every other superstition and childish worldview she’s shed. However, as she turns down a corridor and nearly crashes into a woman sprinting around the corner, she’s starting to wonder if luck truly does exist — because if it does, hers is certainly awful tonight.
It’s another RPD officer, a young woman with filthy blonde hair — and she really seems young, even younger than that boy she left behind in the garage. However, instead of trying to talk to Ada, the girl mutters to herself, “Have to keep, keep going, ha — have t-to, I h-have —” grabs Ada by the arm, and pulls, clearly attempting to drag her along as she tries to keep running. Ada yanks her arm free, intent on continuing her path into the bowels of the RPD’s maze-like basement, but the girl darts into her space, poorly blocking the way with her waifish frame. “Y-you can’t —” she’s gasping for air, face slick with sweat, bloodshot eyes darting around the space frantically, “c-can’t go th-that way.”
Ada raises an unimpressed eyebrow and fishes her forged documents out of her pocket. “I’m FBI,” she tells the girl sternly as she flashes her false badge, “and you’re impeding my investigation.”
Instead of recoiling, the girl’s hand darts out and snatches the badge out of Ada’s grasp. Though she’s annoyed by the presumptive action, she’s not too concerned. Even if the girl is looking for proof of forgery, she’s not going to find it. Her contacts are too seasoned to leave any tells in their work. But the girl’s frantic eyes go wide and she stumbles, body listing to the side until she crashes against the wall. She looks up, agonised and wondrous all at once. The hair on the back of Ada’s neck stands up. Something is wrong with the look in the girl’s eyes. “Ada Wong?” she asks breathlessly. “You’re — you’re Ada Wong? Truly? The Ada Wong?”
And that… that brings her up short. Because Ada has gained a fair amount of notoriety in some circles, sure, but they certainly weren’t the type of circles a cop should be familiar with — a cop that definitely shouldn’t be saying Ada’s name like a half-realised prayer, either. “What exactly do you mean by that?” she asks, canting her body until her posture looks lazy and unbothered.
“You’re, um… your name, it’s…” The girl agitatedly runs her fingers through her hair. “Oh, I should’ve listened better, I’m not… I’m n-not sure I can…” With a resigned sigh, the girl meets Ada’s cool gaze. “Your name. The, um, Chinese one. You’re, uh, Wang A-Aiqiong, right?”
The pronunciation is butchered, nearly unintelligible through the mistakes, and yet Ada’s blood runs cold. Despite all of her training, her traitorous hands begin to shake. It’s impossible. It’s impossible. That name shouldn’t be known, shouldn’t even exist, not anymore, not when —
“Aiqiong!” her mother calls, peeking out from behind the doorframe, a small smile softening the severe lines of her face. “Come inside! Mama has something for you!” And she runs towards home, kicking up clouds of dust behind her as —
“Aiqiong,” says the man, eyes cool as she trembles on the ground at his feet, “you’re falling behind in your training. If you keep this up, we’ll be forced to —”
“Aiqiong, stop it!” shrieks her friend as she shoves a fistful of dry leaves down the back of his dirt-stained shirt, both of them filling the air with peals of laughter —
“Aiqiong isn’t a very subtle name,” the woman remarks. “You should lose it before you lose your life.” And there’s nothing she can say to refute that even if her heart feels like it’ll tear itself in two at the thought of giving up the last thing that belongs to her —
“Aiqiong, I’m sorry,” she whispers in a dark room, staring at her reflection and the face her mother wouldn’t recognise, not anymore, not after everything she’s done to become Ada and not —
Before she even realises what she’s doing, Ada finds herself with the muzzle of her pistol jammed into the soft flesh of the girl’s jaw. “How do you know that name?” The girl whines, head tilted back at a painful angle. “How do you know that name?!”
“Was — given to me,” she wheezes, bony fingers wrapped around the violent curve of Ada’s wrist, using just enough strength to relieve some of the pressure Ada’s putting on her windpipe. “A d-dying man — he wanted m-me to give it ba — hah — back to you — if he couldn’t do it himself —”
“What do you mean by that?” The words are sharp and quick, fed by an undercurrent of shameful fear. She doesn’t understand.
“H-he said — even i-if y-you’re owned b-by some — someone else — y-you have to keep your name — no matter what — own y-yourself s-so no one can own you e-entirely —”
“Who told you that name?” Ada presses urgently. If someone else knows that name —
The girl chokes out a laugh, something small and sad. “Doesn’t matter,” she says, boldly keeping her informant’s name a secret despite the precarious situation she’s in. “He — died. Told me to take it — take it to the g-grave if I couldn’t f-find you.” Her lips curl into the ghost of a smile, almost taunting in its resignation. “W-will take it to the grave a-anyway. It’s not — not my secret to t-tell.”
Ada wants to press further — wants to crack this girl’s mind open and root around the tender insides until she knows every secret she’s keeping behind her bloodied teeth — but the wall gives an ominous shudder before she can speak. The girl’s eyes slip shut and an exasperated sigh makes its way past her pale lips. “Can’t I catch a break? Just a little one?” she whines. Now she pushes, shoving Ada with all her strength — and Ada, still shamefully rattled, lets herself be moved away. “You sh-should get going,” the girl tells her firmly, positioning herself between Ada and the shuddering wall. “The — this fucking Tyrant just won’t —” Cracks appear in the aged stone. Dust falls from the ceiling. “Oh, you stupid motherfucker, why can’t you just —?”
A giant hand bursts through the wall, grey skin warped with imperfections. The girl uses her entire body to shove Ada further away, drawing a massive revolver from its holster as she does. “You sh-should get going, Agent Wong,” she says firmly. “I’ll just — I’ll buy you some time. D-don’t worry about me — well, I mean, I, I’m sure you w-wouldn’t, you probably want me, um, dead, but —” An impossibly large body shoves its way through the crumbling wall and the girl immediately fires. Ada’s ears ring. “Go! Go, go go go go!”
Ada does not want to be saved. Ada does not need to be saved. But she is rattled and unsteady in a way she hasn’t been in a long, long time and so —
She goes, traitorous heart pounding in time with the bark of the revolver.