she cuts through the night like a serrated blade. something meant to bite down and break bone while wearing perfectly contoured rouge on her lips. " who are you? " it is said with a grin of a vulture on her features.
Ada Wong, you say, but she slits your throat and the words bleed into gravel lined with yellow markings. You hold your neck, try to keep it all in, but it runs, and runs, and suddenly you see your favorite color spread across the floor. The woman in blue rests on top of it. You look at her the same way you look into a mirror.
Ada Wong, it’s your name, but it’s also hers.
(It would’ve been, if you were the one lying on the floor.)
It should’ve been, the words form on the woman’s lips.
Suddenly, you’re the one on the ground.
Ada Wong, you say to yourself, it’s my name.
(But it isn’t. It wasn’t, it wasn’t ever anyone’s name, it was a face a woman in black made and you killed her for it.
It’s not a name.)
You feel hands choking you, squeezing everything that makes you Ada Wong and it bleeds into the ground. In your favorite color. You are looking into a mirror, and she screams at you for taking what’s hers and her hatred fills you with color. (Was it black or red or blue? She couldn’t tell anymore.)
Ada Wong.
You hear the voice, and you rise up from your bed, hand gripping your face.
“A job so soon?” you say.
Ada Wong, they say to you, because that’s who they think you are. You are going to America.
America it is, then. You finish getting ready within an hour, weapons and clothes packed, taxi arriving exactly in time.
When they ask you for identification, you tell them your date of birth, country you were born in, and a name.
June 3rd, 1974, the United States of America, Angela Zhang.
They let you in, and you take your passport with you. It’s blue.
You think a red dress would’ve suited Carla, too.
