Chapter Text
Ada felt sick. It was the presiding feeling, but whether it came from the black infection curling around her veins or the smell of death and burning, she couldn’t be sure.
She would blame the former for muddling her brain. This was supposed to be a simple job. Get in, get the amber and get out, irrespective of extenuating circumstances or collateral. But everything had felt tangled and complicated ever since she had realised Leon was present. Then again, that happened at a similar time to her infection, hence her blaming the former. She told herself it wasn’t a cop out.
Ada launched herself up onto the battlements, where she had agreed to meet back up with Luis. She supposed, if his suppressant did its job, she’d know shortly if her brain really was muddled because of the infection.
As she landed, she caught sight of Luis’s approach. He was carrying a large, wooden case and a pleased expression when he spotted her.
Ada let out a short sigh, expelling her energy for but a moment.
“I got everything you need,” she reported, handing back the butterfly he’d requested. Ada didn’t claim to understand the science behind it.
“Good,” Luis pocketed it, “and I got exactly what you want,” from the same pocket he produced a small vial, with an angular, orange shard inside. The amber.
Ada reached for it. As soon as her fingers wrapped around it a sharp piercing shot through her skull. Ada’s head rushed and her stomach surged as she let out a noise, wincing hard and holding her hand to the side of her head.
The lights brightened and split into colour. She turned her eyes downwards away from the torches and tried to blink back the fogginess from her vision. Luis moved the vial away in her peripheral.
“Oh, that’s not good,” he commented. Ada looked back at him, vision sharpening enough to watch him frown down at the small vial. “The parasite’s reacting to the amber.” Reacting was right. Ada felt as if someone had shoved a hot poker in through her skull and spun her around one hundred times. Her entire body felt weak, knees trembling and skin coming up clammy.
This parasite needed to go. How she was supposed to work like this was a mystery to her.
“So that’s the amber,” Ada would’ve scowled at the wretched thing had it not hurt so much. She kept her fingers against her throbbing temple, shaking her head a little. It had caused her a world of trouble so far that night. “It looks like the kind of thing Wesker would want,” She mused, mainly to herself. Only her employer would want his hands on something so small but capable of such affects.
Luis put the amber away and hurried over to a flat surface. He opened up his box and produced a small, portable kit to cook up her suppressant. Ada tried to swallow down her nausea as she leant her hand against a nearby wall. Her head was swimming. She hung it, trying to steady her breathing and muster up a little more clarity.
It wasn’t massively successful. She turned and settled her back against the wall, giving her feet a little respite. Her body felt weak. Her gut was churning, almost as if there was something inside of it. Her skin was crawling.
It was perhaps against her better judgement, but Ada pressed her eyes shut for a long moment. She was tired, she’d admit. Her body was heavy and hot. The parasite really had done a number on her.
She could hear Luis working close by, quiet but urgent. Ada tilted her head back against the cool of the stone wall, trying her best to breathe through the waves of nausea soaking into her skin.
For a moment, she wondered if Leon and the girl were suffering as much as she was. She hoped not. It would be easy to get sloppy when this sick.
“This will knock out the parasite,” Ada opened her eyes to watch Luis fill up a syringe with a purple liquid. It was a good thing Luis was as earnest and regretful as he was. She was having to put a lot of trust in him. “Are you ready?” He asked.
Ada only tilted her head to one side slightly, giving him access to her neck as he approached.
She shut her eyes again, taking a soft breath inward.
“A tu salud,” he murmured, before pressing the point to her throat. Ada winced infinitesimally, letting out a soft sound at the sharp pinch and the feeling of the foreign liquid under her skin. She breathed out steadily.
Luis pulled back and Ada opened her eyes again, waiting to feel better.
“Just remember, it’s not a cure,” Luis pointed out. The concern on his face was obvious and slightly charming, if not unnecessary. “We still need to find a way to get that thing out of you,” this entire mission had become far more complicated than it needed to be.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have minded the delays and bumps in the road had Wesker not been breathing so closely down her neck. He was impatient and antsy, that much was obvious. Ada had never known him come to the field for anything, not least to rescue her.
Well, rescue was a loose word. Ada wasn’t under the impression his little drop in was born from care for her. He stank of ulterior motives.
It made Ada suspicious of the entire endeavour. She couldn’t quite figure out what made this so important to him.
It was all quite complicated, moving men like chess pieces on a board.
Ada dipped her head back down, hands firm on the wall behind her as she tried to breathe through the noise in her head. She could’ve sworn it was getting worse. Perhaps that was what it did before it felt better.
Then the ringing pinched, filtering out to a singular, agonising frequency between her ears. Her stomach churned uncomfortably and Ada’s vision staggered, sky hazing into a light purple as Luis momentarily split into three. She let out a pained sound, holding her hand to her ear.
“It’s coming,” She got out. Luis turned. Over his shoulder she saw the same creature that had put her in this position approaching over the battlements. It seemed somehow larger and when Ada peered through the haze into its orange eyes, they felt more exacting and merciless than before.
She tried to muster up the willpower to move, let alone think of what she might do next, but it was a near impossible feat. Her body felt as though it were failing completely, joints too heavy to move and feet too unsteady to plant. Thankfully, Luis seemed to take the initiative for her.
He dropped the syringe and grabbed her by the shoulders, helping her off of the wall and away from the creature, deeper into the battlements. Ada’s vision blurred as the ringing in her ears sharpened to almost an unbearable pitch. She willed one foot in front of the other, blinking back blotches.
“I don’t understand,” Luis admitted from her side as Ada groaned. “It should be working by now.”
This wasn’t sustainable. If they kept up this pace, the creature would reach both of them. She needed Luis alive and unharmed. Not just for her sake.
She pushed at his arms, staggering into the cool brickwork behind her. Ada tried to catch her breath, stomach somersaulting violently. Every hair on the back of her neck stood on their end, as if trying to alert her to the impending doom that was stalking its way towards them.
“Take the amber and go,” she ordered her companion, holding a hand out when he tried to come to her aid again. “Once the parasite is sedated, you can give me back that damn stone,” it was a loose plan at best, but she needed Luis out of the way.
He didn’t seem eager to leave her again. His expression was conflicted, caught between logic, fear and concern.
“I can’t leave you here,” he replied adamantly. “Not like this!”
Ada shook her head, as if trying to shake the ringing from between her ears. She waved him off with a hand.
“Spare me, I’ll be fine.” She glanced at him from where her pounding head hung loose between her aching shoulders. “You’ve got another promise to keep.”
Some would’ve called her selfless. If Wesker were here, he would’ve interrogated her for her thoughts of Leon. But he wasn’t so Ada forced herself not to spare it much thought. This was no time for pondering her varying moral compass.
Luis was flighty on his feet, caught for a moment between decisions. He glanced behind them.
“Alright, but you come find me. As soon as you’re done here.” It was more of a command than anything else, as he wagged his finger at her. Ada couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh at his earnest expression. His concern was entertaining. She would’ve called it out of character for a former Umbrella researcher, had she not been so privy to his attempts at retribution.
Ada nodded at him once and Luis took his leave, hurrying away from them. Forcing herself straight, Ada looked back towards her ominous stalker.
She tried to settle the quivering of her body and the splitting of her vision. Her deep breaths did little to help.
As soon as Luis was out of eyesight, she followed the way he had come, forcing herself into a jog. Ada’s entire body whined with the exertion, stars marking her vision and the same shrill noise echoing just behind her.
The creatures everpresence lit goosebumps up Ada’s arms as she escaped into the tower. She all but staggered around the corner, catching herself on a dark wooden wall. Stumbling a little, Ada glanced back the way she’d come. The creature was close behind.
She was slightly baffled by the way its presence seemed to cloud her reality. The sky was a misty purple and it felt almost as if a sheen had fallen over everything. The fires it splayed across the ground were icy cold. They seemed so real to her.
Ada pulled her gun, holding it tight with two hands as she tried pointlessly to catch her breath. She was woefully underconfident for the optics of such a fight in this condition, but there didn’t seem to be many other options for her.
Suddenly, something changed. Ada’s stomach settled, her knees held fast and the shrill ringing in her ears dropped lower and lower. It seemed that by the grace of God, or Luis, she was improving.
“The medicine,” she whispered to herself, “it’s working.”
Ada felt her vision clear. The haze over the tower interior dissipated, fires snuffed and the temperature returned to that of a Spanish night. She took a deep breath, grateful for the way it settled squarely in her chest.
Good job, Luis.
Ada wasn’t out of the woods yet. A mighty roar came from the beast, rattling the woodwork she pressed herself against. Despite her ever improving condition, Ada wasn’t keen to fight the creature there and then.
She heard the approach of its heavy feat, talons digging into the wooden flooring. Ada stilled her breathing, hands tight around her gun as she glanced both directions for any indication of direction. She found it in a growing shadow coming up on the floor at her right.
Ada moved accordingly, silently side-stepping towards her left, careful not to let her clothes rustle or her boots creak against the warped floor. She silently pressed herself around the corner, hugging the slim pillar to her back.
The creature suddenly rounded the corner where she had just been hiding. Ada breathed silently, listening to the creaking of the wood beneath its clawed feet. Her heart was pattering lightly, hairs on her neck standing again.
She watched the shadow retreat back the way it had come and she moved again, slipping back around and watching the beast move away from the tower. It swept eerily quietly across the battlement, almost like something worse than a ghost.
Ada watched it until it rounded a corner and slipped from her view. Only then did she appear from her hiding place, letting out a short breath. Well, that could’ve gone a lot worse.
She turned away from where the beast had departed from, remembering herself.
“Luis has the amber,” Ada murmured to herself, a habit that had been inevitable perhaps, considering how much time she spent alone. “I need to reach him.”
Ada touched at her temple, activating her I.R.I.S. It lit up a singular, blue footprint on the ground. She leant down, touching her gloved fingertips to it and lighting up a pattern of urgent footprints away from her, down a flight of stairs and into the depths of the castle below.
It was easy to follow him. The glowing footsteps helped of course, but the huge directions Luis had so helpfully plastered across every wall were equally as welcome. Ada couldn’t help but laugh fondly. How he’d found the time to make her life easier in such a manner was a mystery to her, but she was definitely not complaining.
Ada followed his instructions down into the waterway. She lowered herself down a vast, spiral staircase and into what she assumed was their sewer system.
It was an arduous task, draining the water whilst trying to tackle the many creatures and Saddler’s minions, but it was no skin off of Ada’s back.
As she navigated deeper underground, the sights only got stranger. The waterway emptied into some ancient looking cave, then gave way to what Ada could only describe as some old construction sight.
The isolation made her think as it so often did. Usually she thought about her next move or perhaps how she would navigate things with Wesker once she made it out of here. But this time, Ada found herself thinking about Luis.
He was a strange man. How an Umbrella researcher could be as actively involved in bioweapons as he was, then attempt to make something of his life in such a way was truly beyond Ada. She had known plenty of remorseful scientists and agents in her years. Usually, they died in a drink or turned into an empty husk, squirrelling themselves away in shameful isolation.
But Luis had such an overwhelming desire to be better. If she’d been someone else, Ada might’ve called it admirable. But she didn’t, and she ignored the way his actions made hope flutter in her chest.
Her compass had to stop spinning eventually. It had to, or Ada was sure she might never sleep soundly again.
It was all Leon’s fault. He was the one that had knocked her moral compass away from north in the first place. He had set her spinning out of control for six years, barely pinned down and hidden by her immovable facade.
Most days, it was easy to ignore. So much of Ada’s life was about putting one foot in front of the other and chasing a reward always nearby.
But his presence on the island, like a secondary magnet, had pulled her into a wild spin. She felt like most choices were pointing her in his direction, rather than the direction of her main goal.
She had to stop hanging around such earnest men. It wasn’t good for her health.
Finally, Ada ran into a big red sign that declared she was ‘ALMOST THERE!’ Ada couldn’t help but scoff.
She lowered herself down into a peculiar area with old, rusted scaffolding and construction material that never got used.
Amidst the building sight, Ada finally spotted Luis. He was leaning against a load of wooden palettes, flicking his lighter open and closed.
Then, Ada noticed that he was speaking to someone. Silently, she moved closer, hanging close to the half walls to get a better look at who he might’ve been with. Her suspicion narrowed her eyes. The Merchant, posted nearby, noticed her before Luis did. He didn’t say anything, simply raising what she imagined was a rather amused hand. Ada held a finger to her lips. He nodded and settled backwards from the table.
Moving around a scaffold, Ada realised who their guest was. Sat down, flexing his wrist and eyeing it carefully, was Leon. There was an open container beside him, still containing one suppressant, presumably for the President’s daughter who was still not present.
Ada couldn’t hear what they were talking about. She considered not announcing herself, waiting until Leon turned his back and snatching Luis to grab the amber from him. She seriously could’ve done without being stuck with Earnest One and Two.
But, she realised with a sigh, she was being impractical. They all wanted the same thing: to get back to the surface. It made sense to stick together. It would save her ammunition.
Ada stepped out from around the scaffolding, approaching as she holstered her gun. Luis noticed her first, face lighting up with genuine relief.
“Ah! My good Dorotea!”
Ada cocked her head at him. Leon followed his gaze, turning towards her. Surprise passed on his face.
“Ada?”
“Hey handsome,” she offered casually. He let out a soft noise somewhere between humour and dissaproval and shook his head. Luis raised an eyebrow in her peripheral.
“You two know each other?” He asked, in a way that sounded more like a tease than a genuine question. Leon stood, ignoring him.
“I should’ve known you two would be in business together,” he commented, peering at Ada as she approached. She inclined her head in his direction.
“Well, one of us had to be a good samaritan and give him a ride out of here,” it was a slightly spiked comment. Ada knew it was for good reason, but the betrayal and resentment emanating off of Leon was getting a little irritating to handle. She looked back at Luis, who seemed slightly awkward to be between them. “Amber, Luis?”
“Of course,” He fished it out of his pocket and handed it out towards her. Ada reached for it. Just like last time, a sharp prong of pain ricocheted through her skull. It felt like someone had shoved a lance straight through her eyes. The pain turned everything white for a moment.
Ada clutched her head, soft cry escaping her.
“Ada!” Luis reached out for her and before Ada knew it she had staggered sideways, agonising pain blinding her temporarily.
She tried to catch herself but before she could, Ada felt strong arms around her, steadying her back onto her feet.
She blinked back hazy stars, grasping Leon’s forearm as she tried to shake the pain. He kept one hand tight around her waist and the other on her shoulder. He smelt of dust, smoke and heat. Underneath, he smelt like Leon.
“I don’t understand, the suppressant should’ve stopped the reaction!” Luis mused frustratedly.
“Ada, you’re infected,” Leon commented pointlessly. She glanced up at him, vision slowly sharpening as the hot spike of pain began to dissipate. Ada wasn’t expecting to find such genuine worry in his expression. “Your face…”
“It’s fine,” as soon as she was strong enough she tried to push herself out of Leon’s grasp. She stumbled a little and Luis caught her, steadying her for just a moment. He looked equally as worried.
“May I?” He held a hand out towards her face. Ada hesitated, uneasy with the concept. Then she realised there wasn’t much choice. If Luis couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her and stop it, she’d never procure the amber.
She nodded shortly. Luis moved forwards, putting a hand on her face and tilting her chin downwards so he could get a good look in her eye. Ada stayed still, swallowing down her moment of weakness as he frowned unhappily.
“Oh.” Ada didn’t love the way Luis said it.
“What is it?” Leon asked. Ada marked his concern.
“Ada, your infection is that of a variant. It’s a little different from the standard Plaga.”
“Meaning?” She probed. Luis took his hand from her face.
“It functions more like a hive. If you kill what infected you, you kill the parasite inside of you.” Ada sighed, grateful at least for an answer.
“That shouldn’t be too hard. It’s following me wherever I go.” She pointed out. “You’ll have to hang onto the amber for now, Luis.”
He nodded firmly.
“Then we know what we have to do.” He said, leaning down and grabbing a yellow crowbar from the ground. “Come, Sancho Panza! We will free our lovely Dorotea from Don Fernando and rescue the Princess Dulcinea!”
Leon and Ada shared a look, before the former rolled his eyes. He took the crowbar from Luis and tossed it on the ground.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,”
“Hey, that was my lance,” Luis complained. He glanced at Ada, still behind him. “Is he always so grumpy?”
“No,” Ada answered honestly.
“We have to hurry. Come on.” Leon ignored them, but his gaze lingered on Ada for a longer moment than it needed to.
She only looked back. Then he turned around and the moment passed.
Looking at the two of them advancing into danger, Ada suppressed a sigh.
She really was stuck with Earnest One and Two. It was going to be a long night.