A. WONG.

so of course they sent him ada. sleek and deadly, she'll play the room alongside him with the feline grace expected of her. they'll disarm with presence alone, both tailored to attractive perfection to make so much stuffy opulence swoon. it's all by design, all calculated with the sharpness of the knives he knows his escort has tucked away so impossibly discreet. and all the more reason to bristle a subtle sense of ire within his angular slope of jaw. it can get old, after all, feeling the role of prized show pony rather than what is dangerous, what cannot be fathomed by mortal minds he'd rather feel crushed within the slow flex of his fingers.

but zeno knows to curb his tongue, bite down bitterness in its jagged shrapnel forced through his throat. his time will come. his time will be the change of all and everything.

for now, he seeks what soothes his prickled temper in the taste of his cigarette. watches ada unimpressed through tinted lenses before he considers the view outside the car; blurs of trees his enhanced vision can still pick apart in detail, can catch the shimmer of a crow preening or the face of a hungry owl. still feels a needling resentment that he couldn't be trusted to handle this alone. perhaps because they've sensed his unrest, noticed his pacing between meetings. wouldn't do to let the restless tiger out into a room of old money when he's had little to sink his teeth into and even less to stalk, to chase. so he has a handler to keep him in check, ada wong with her smirks and her snark. the last person he wants to share the car with right now, but…

he inhales another drag, exhales more lazy wisps of smoke that unfurl from his lips in pale blooms. he cannot allow himself to rise to her bait nor to disappoint what is directed of him. because he will get this done and he will do so perfectly. if she would like to contribute, he will allow it. as long as he's the one calling the shots and as long as she knows her place. that is what curls his lip into the start of a sneer, narrows what could be a glacial glare behind his shades.

"we mingle until we find an access point that won't cause a disturbance. we'll be considered guests of honor, so it'll be easy to work the crowd. security is tighter than average, but nothing of note. easy to break." he taps ash into a tray at his armrest. his gaze returns out the window as their car starts to drive into the mountains. something in him stirs, leans the pull of familiarity he cannot claim as his entirely. "once we locate the restricted section of the household, we infiltrate. the study is on the east wing, second story. collect the data, wipe the back-ups. i'll handle any resistance."

his hunger is a palpable thing.     it’s a jaw unhinged, it’s saliva pooling along pale gums. a dying animal will limp to the darkest corner of the woods to lose its appetite, but not zeno— his eyes, as cloaked and ringed as they are, still glisten with the instinctual urge to chase, pin, and tear into a vulnerable underbelly. 

in spite of the gentle hands she's come to know since that fateful city, ada knows she's no different— she’s spent too many years playing prey to believe otherwise. she can feign the tremble of any quarry, even tell when it's best to use it. some days, it's for the white knight looking for a pliant damsel to save; most, it's the sham of a hunter mistaking her for the hunted. zeno is neither of those things, but it doesn't stop the impulse to pretend, anyways, if only to interrupt his barking. she can feel his gaze target the bare slope of her neck, its teeth grazing her jugular and ghosting down, down, to settle over the steady beat of her pulse. his pupils dilate— his breath hitches— and she is acutely aware of the ravenous need humming in the gap between them. game has a double meaning: ada tilts her head just the slightest, exposing her throat to his waiting maw. here is the space your mouth could fill, the move says, here is the meat, the blood, the red and red.

it is a short-lived invitation. no sooner is the mockery made that her own hackles rise, snapping her face towards him in a bid for territory, the car a cage around them.   “well. sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”   she smiles coolly, narrowing her eyes. ever the tyrant, zeno had clearly mapped out all the best corners to stalk, intent on gorging himself. still, it’s not a bad plan, all things considered— if she remotely trusted him, she might even call it good.

but that’s the thing with wild animals, isn’t it? you never know when they might bite.

ada lets loose a long sigh, rolling her eyes to face forward again.   “you’re impatient,”   which is another way of telling him to chew his food,   “we’re not the only hands in the pot tonight. a few of our competitors will be in the audience, primarily members of saurian's brazilian branch, who, as you remember, never got their cut of the e-series. we might as well kiss that data goodbye if the other operatives catch on— not to mention smoothing over any conflict on bailey’s behalf."

Josefina drums her fingers against the table, her brown eyes flickering to the door as she watches some boring presenter drone on and on about the monetary detriments of Blue Umbrella's existence. Ada, who's been sitting next to her, looks like she'd rather die than listen to his spiel. and, if she's being entirely honest? she doesn't blame her for thinking so. Had Josefina and Apolo been presenting, they'd be able to make things interesting, but they're only supposed to be listening tonight.

blue umbrella: the proverbial albatross around her neck.     you help destroy one company only to watch another rise from its ashes, their sulfur-fired wings wrapping around the world. it coos gently under the guise of making amends, a tall story no matter how prettily they try to sing it. the man up front is just one voice in its throat, warbling the same old money-hungry tune it always does— the woman beside her is another, though josefina, in all her glitz and glamour, captivates the audience more than any other speaker ada's had the displeasure of sitting through. still, there's only so many ways you can try to weed out intel from lyrics without the songs sounding the same; at some point, it all turns into one long, boring note.

she's partway through a sip of champagne when josefina’s easy smile slips into her peripheral. ada arches a brow curiously, watching the other jot down a short note before covertly sliding it beneath the table. 

the insignia catches her eye before the message does. wedges of dark blue attempt to wash away the blood of its predecessor, filling in the logo she’d sported nearly a decade ago. the spy forgoes the temptation to gouge it out with her pen, instead writing her first response.   welcome to the club. now we're a party of two.

𝑻𝑯𝑨𝑻  𝑹𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻  𝑰𝑺  𝑵𝑶𝑾  𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑬. 

the connections don't humor failure and neither does zeno. crushes it beneath the grind of a finished cigarette, leaves it for ash beneath his boot. which is why they favor his… finesse when it comes to assuring progress as well as discretion. redemption's bullets don't miss, after all; reduce whole skulls to bone-flecked mulch and leave little to any imagination if he so wills it. and while most investments require only a few stern reminders and his stare razing its imperious blaze to nudge them back on track, there are some that demand a firm hand. or complete and utter termination.

which might be the case with tonight's assignment; a hospital's wealthy director whose secret research wing has been for the connection's benefits, but is currently suspected to be hoarding valuable information without disclosing all they'd agreed upon — a rich man's greed getting the better of him and potentially plotting to blackmail them for a fatter cut, a larger chair at a table with only so many seats. zeno's been told he needs to either persuade the asset to see the error of his ways or become the last thing he sees if he refuses to. and during a gala at the man's mansion, too? they'd told zeno it would make more of an impression that way.

his chopper lands, dropping him where both his ride and escort lie in wait. another thing the connections had insisted upon — a body guard, a second set of eyes, an espionage expert who will help obtain hidden files and wipe away any evidence left behind. he'd objected firmly, but their say is final. and has his lips thinning an unimpressed line as he approaches her where she's been waiting with the car and its driver.

she thought it was a bruise, at first.

the mission beforehand had been a particularly nasty one. a subsidiary’s mercenary had turned on his organization in favor of another outside of the connections’ web, and it was ada’s objective to take him down. that led her to the seedier streets of manhattan, vaulting across rooftops in quick pursuit of a man on the run. but the spy is no longer the spry twenty-something swinging from cliff-sides and flimsy walls— while she gripped her grapple gun with the same surety she always has, the frigid air made her bad hand a little worse, the landings less soft. still, the connections doesn’t pay her as well as they do for nothing, and though the two swapped a few missed bullets, he met the same fate the rest of her marks have.

by the time ada made it back to her flat, the scrapes and bruises she’d earned had painted her skin in mottled hues. she examined them in the fog of her scalding-hot shower, the water easing some of the tension in her shoulders as dried blood raced down her forearm. that one, though… that blotch on her thigh. it stuck in her scar like the sharp point of a fountain pen, spilling ink into the cracks and crevices that’ve lightened over the lifetimes since it’d been drawn. ada’s memories sit idly behind frosted glass, too blurry to make out anything more than shapes and colors, but with distinct clarity she recalls thinking, even then, that something was off. it was only a matter of weeks before the bruise was darkening, then rising, then writhing, its pitch-black tendrils coiling around her leg. it’d been nearly three decades since she’d first seen the birth of a mark like that, and yet, there was no mistaking it once it started: the t-virus she foolishly thought she’d dodged had reared its ugly head, sinking its teeth into a scar that had never quite felt like it healed in the first place.

it’d been a slow enough infection for the connections’ researchers to piece their theory together— ada’s preventative treatments following raccoon city clearly hadn’t worked out like they thought, instead only choking the virus until the right circumstances allowed it to bloom. throughout each new blank, sterile room they shuffled her into, ada stayed cautious in concealing her surprise. she had expected an outcome she’d delivered herself time and time again, had even considered doing the job for them if only to make it quicker than they would.

but then zeno stepped in, the usual splotch of white, the unusual splotch of black, and just like that, it all made sense.

none of them ever stood a chance.

thus began the new regimen: mouthfuls of immunostimulants with varying degrees of success; weekly weight and wound checks to track their fluctuations; infusions that helped until they didn’t; periods where it seemed they were making headway, only for their progress to backslide. over and over, around and around.

it hadn’t helped that they kept her working. ada isn’t stupid— she’s well aware that all good experiments need a test subject of some kind. give the lab rat a job, and see how fast she runs the maze. in the ten months it took for them to find the treatment that only stalled the infection, she often wondered what hypothesis they were running on zeno. they’d only seen each other a handful of times since that first reveal, though whether that was a misalignment of their procedures or curated by their research team had yet to be determined. he was, after-all, the connections' best-kept secret— the shadow of a man long-lost to them, a well of untapped potential, the crown jewel in their bloodied coronet, no matter how synthetic. ada wasn’t sure whether they were making a weapon they could patent, or a cure they could sell out of him.

then again, she wasn’t sure what they were making of her, either.

not that it mattered. neither of them could leave the organization even if they wanted to, especially now that their health lay in the palm of their benefactor's hand. besides, it was more thought than she liked to give him, which, in retrospect, could have contributed to them being paired up tonight. the connections does what it is: it connects. it’s certainly not the first time ada’s been on his detail, but after such a long tunnel of trials, it’d come as a rather unwelcome light. nevermind that they couldn’t despise each other more if they tried— she’d bet ten-to-one bailey even preferred it that way. hell, she’d go all-in that this is just another experiment.

zeno steps off the helicopter with all the pretension of old money, a notion ada couldn’t find funnier given his petri dish origins. then again, her and her own humble beginnings are matching in kind— the spy’s crimson gown falls to her feet, its caped detail draping behind her shoulders to meet her heels. she’s speckled in gold jewelry that glitters under the sinking sun, dressing her in starlight. it’s a look that, paired alongside his own, would give anyone a dreamy impression of old hollywood.

as long as they kept their distance, that is.

the two’s mutual distaste sours the air even as the rotors do their best in breaking it apart. she throws out her quip, he bats one right back— it’s a game they’re well familiar with by now, a tedious, endless love-all. and when zeno nears the car, ada looks upon the perfect mold of albert fucking wesker— save for where it isn’t— and simpers as he passes by. “such a gentleman.”

she follows him into the backseat, where the acrid scent of smoke thickens upon the door closing. it’s been years since her last cigarette, and yet the smell isn’t unpleasant— it simply makes her think of the mountains, a memorial to a man who’s long since rotted by an indirect consequence of zeno’s progenitor.

that, and it has her craving her own.