In the beginning, she couldn't remember anything from before that day. It was wet, cold, and she could faintly hear people talking. She looked up into a camera, there was a flash, and she was down.
The next thing she remembered, the one thing that would sit, concrete in her mind for the coming days, months, would be laying in a bed. It was large, large enough for her to stretch her arms out and not reach the edge, and soft, with heavy sheets and a clean smell. She indulged herself, laying there with the eyes closed, when she heard the floor creak, felt the bed dip.
Opening her eyes, she looked up into the face of an older man, greying hair and greying skin looking down at her. She can't quite remember him, but she knows she loves him. Adoration bubbled up from inside her, and she felt a small smile form as she pulled herself up into a sitting position.
The man is relived when he sees her sit, and when she pulls a hand from under the blankets, he grabs it. "Oh thank god, Ada. You're alright, dear heart."
She's startled, but tests the name in her head, in her heart. 'Ada'…It sounds right, like her.
"What happened? Why can't I remember anything concrete?" She says, her voice rasping in her throat, like she was testing it out.
The man releases her hand, and replies. "You fell, while at your lab. You hit your head, and they said there might be some memory loss. Do you remember me, darling?"
She looks at him, really looks, before she tests a name that's come floating up. "D…Derek? My Derek?"
The man smiles wide, laughing and soon she is caught up, laughing with him. As she laughs, memories come floating back. She can't exactly remember what she had been doing before her fall, but she remembers the important things.
She had been a spy, hired by Simmons to retrieve a sample of a virus from Raccoon City, but he had been so taken with her, he'd asked her to stay, work for him instead, and she had agreed. Her skills as a biologist shined through to him, and soon she found herself head of several labs, working for him, his family. Not too long after, they had started a relationship, one of love and trust.
"Which lab was I in, darling?" She asked him, and he turned to her, holding a tray.
"The Tall Oaks lab. Don't worry, nothing got out. Do you remember, then?" Derek asked, placing it on her lap. It held breakfast, and she looked down in surprise.
"Oh, yes. Not everything, but I do remember some of the important things…I think. What's the occasion?" She lifted a fork, cutting off a slice of omelette and putting it in her mouth. It was delicious.
Derek sat again. "Don't worry, it may take time for everything to come back." He paused, stealing a bite of her toast. "And I thought it would be nice to celebrate you being up and awake. Not to mention you've been unconscious for our anniversary."
She flushed, unable to believe she'd remembered everything but that. Before she had a chance to say anything, to apologize for forgetting, Derek stood, his mobile in hand. "I have to take this call, sorry dear heart. I may have to go back to the facility in London as well. Call me once you feel ready to return to work, okay?"
She nodded, wordlessly, and watched him leave the room. For a moment something felt off, but the feeling quickly passed, and she continued her meal with a smile.
Through the next months, she continued her work in the various labs under her control, sometimes traveling between them by submarine, sometimes by ship, sometimes by personal plane. Face to face meetings with Derek were few and far between, but filled with passion, longing, and fire when they happened.
It was around four months after her fall when she noticed strange boxes appearing in her living quarters. There were at least two in each room, including her bathroom, and she brought up the issue to Derek during one of their more intimate Skype calls.
"Derek," she started, lounging in her bra, picking at the one strap, "What are these boxes for?" she pointed up at one that was directly over her bed on the submarine. She was on her way to the Tall Oaks lab for a bi-monthly report.
He appeared startled, but quickly answered. "We've had new smoke detectors and CO2 monitors put in and they are…unsightly, to say the least. I thought I would spare you the sight of them."
Looking back, it was a flimsy excuse, and she could hardly believe that she had accepted it for the truth. But at this moment, she held nothing but love and trust for the man, so she accepted it, and for the moment, but it out of mind.
That was, until a week later, on her way back to the Chinese facility in the oil rig, when she was playing with fire, so to speak, testing out something in her rooms. The flesh sample she had been fiddling with, trying to make the C-Virus more…concrete, had sparked and caught fire. She hurried to put it out, before frowning. She let the dish flame and smoke some more, frowning up at the white boxes.
She grabbed one of the chairs and climbed up. It was unlike Derek to install something without checking the batteries, she though, wrenching the box away. What she found though, was not a broken or dead smoke detector, but a video camera.
She stared at it, her mind taking time to comprehend what was in front of her, before she stumbled back, falling off the chair and landing on her bed. She looked up at the camera, eyes narrowing. Why had Derek told her there was a smoke detector under the box?
Then another though hit her. What about the boxes in her bathroom? With dread in her heart, she dragged the chair over into the tiled room, before ripping down one of the white boxes. Underneath, to her dismay, was another camera. The other box also hid a camera, one aimed right into her shower.
The fire in her dish of C-Virus infected flesh had burnt out, but she ignored it. Instead, she turned to her computer and started searching. At first, all she was looking for was the camera feed, to see what they had recorded and to remove the footage of her discovering them, when she stumbled on something else.
It had been hidden away, under encrypted files, in deceivingly named folders, but she still managed to dig it up. An entire folder of voice files. It wasn't what she'd been looking for, but at the same time, she was curious. Something that was hidden so well, protected so tightly, must be important.
She clicked on the first one, and her entire world view changed. She sat there for three hours, listening as Derek, her Derek, screamed and yelled at his men, her men, as he tried to recreate Ada Wong.
At the end, her heart was dulled, unfeeling, and she slowly closed her laptop. The last two recordings had been hard to listen to, listening to a woman scream, her, before the change, and listening to the man she though was hers crow his success at destroying a life to create another.
She sat there, for another hour, silent, scheming, before opening her laptop again. She needed to doctor the video feeds so they looped, so he couldn't spy on her again. Then she sealed her cabin, air tight, before releasing the virus. She had been keyed into the virus, as a leader, so her men, her monsters, wouldn't attack her once the process was complete.
And so she sat there, listening as the men and women outside screamed, a smile on her face, planning her revenge.
It was a slow process, combined with the fact that she still had to pretend to be loyal to the son of a bitch. She tried to keep things the same as they had been before her discovery, but she wasn't sure if he was buying it. Whenever they were together she would catch him shooting her weary looks, muttering to his lieutenants, before checking something on his PDA.
She had caught one of his men snooping, looking for god knows what, and she drafted him, creating a monstrosity loyal only to her. The loss of his sight and right arm was nothing with his other sense increased, and with the construction of several custom prosthetics. She wasn't sure what to use him for yet, so he stayed with her at all times, hidden in a container and waiting for orders.
So when he sent her orders, for her to go out into the field, she at first though he meant for her to die. At first she though it would be best to fake her death, dying in the act of helping Muller and Birkin escape in order to further her plans. But he had sent her 'reassuring' text messages, reminding her of an important meeting of the Family members. But she knew he just wanted to show her off.
She flooded the Chinese facility with the virus while she was on her way to Edonia, tapping away on her phone, a high-tech oddity, only available to the Family. She watched as some merely became J'avo, her clever name for them, while others mutated, taking out those lucky, or unlucky enough to be away when the gas was released. She also activated Ustanak, sending him out after the boy, Muller.
She had read up on him, on his father, finding most of what he'd achieved more humorous than impressive. She chalked Albert Wesker up to be an idiot, but looking into his son, there was some potential. Or, at least, a good survival instinct.
Once she landed, she grabbed her case, filled with syringes and a special treat for any pesky soldiers, before hunting out Muller's mercenary troop. She counted herself lucky to have found him before the Birkin girl, and easily passed off the virus as an energy booster. She knew that only time would tell if he really was immune, and she lurked, watching him inject himself and timing him, to see if there was any mutation. There didn't seem to be one, and she smiled. His immunity to the virus then would be just perfect then.
She dashed off as Birkin arrived, but before she could get to her evac, she encountered the B.S.A.A in the city hall. She quickly passed herself off as a simple worker, even though she knew there was no way this town would have someone like her working there, even with the laboratory underneath. She led them towards the exit, before she sprung her trap.
She was annoyed, her reflexes good, but not good enough to trap them all, but she didn't worry. The two not caught by the metal gates would be dead soon enough. She tossed the sphere, something her boys had come up with, filled with syringes, into the room, before leaving. It wouldn't be good if she missed picking up her prizes, after all.
Ustanak had a track implanted in him, and she tracked it, directing her 'men' to a village, Birkin's original evac location. Too bad for her, Ustanak isn't as easily defeated as they must have though. She smiled as Muller turned, ready to dive for the girl, already protective it seemed, before he too fell. She held up a hand, calling Ustanak off momentarily so they could talk.
"Albert Wesker was a colossal imbecile." She said, looking down at the confused mercenary. He really had no idea what she was talking about, and after a moment, she let Ustanak strike.
For those six months, routing Simmons was easy. False reports, false smiles, false feeling kept her safe, her pet project a secret, and she used the time given to experiment. On Muller and Birkin, of course, but also on herself. Testing her limits, what she felt she could take. She also looked into the person she had become, Ada Wong, going through government pages, banks transactions, learning everything she could about her.
Simmons had lied, obviously, about Ada. He had hired her to go into Raccoon City, and she had. But during the operation, she had met someone, a cop who apparently changed her heart. She got the sample, left the city, and sold it to someone else, someone named Trent, but that was unimportant. What was important was now she understood why Simmons had done everything to her.
Attracted to a woman who would have nothing to do with him, betrayed by her, he had become obsessed, spending money and countless man hours trying to find her, trying to make her his. Finally, he'd given up getting the real deal, and instead had settled to cloning.
She had no interest in reading about her own mutation, into another woman, instead sending out a call. She knew where spy would be, and left her a present, a tantalizing hook. She wasn't sure why she'd done it, maybe to take the woman out, maybe to have her take out Simmons. But once she'd started, she couldn't stop.
Then Simmons upped the ante.
Several weeks earlier, he had sent her a panicked email, fear evident in his writing, telling her that the President was prepared to tell the international community about Umbrella, about the Raccoon City incident, about the United States Government's involvement. He had detailed a plan to cause an attack, much like the one in Edonia, in Tall Oaks, taking out the president and the lab there.
She was annoyed that he was willing to sacrifice one of her labs, but had agreed to the plan. She had one of her own, of course, and not long after people started turning bloodthirsty in America, China started feeling the…bite.
Annoyingly, Wong was still alive, and had figured out that it was not really Simmons talking to her on the phone. She dropped any contact with the woman, and instead focused on Muller and Birkin. With their parts done, their blood taken and distilled and used in every way possible to better her project, to better three small samples of the virus, she simply left, taking with her a large portion of the guards, letting them loose on the population.
Her next plan was to target Simmons, give back to him the virus he'd used to destroy her, personally, but a run in with the soldiers from Edonia, the ones she was sure would have died, and Wong's pet cop changed her plans. She handed off the sample to a more stable of the J'avo, and started to drive. She led the B.S.A.A members on a merry chase, through the city, before flying off the pier into the waiting ship.
They followed her to the T, of course, crashing their vehicle in the ship. It wasn't as nice a landing as hers, and as they both lay there, unconscious, she weighed her options. She could kill them and be done with it, or she could see how they fared against her people. Maybe they would even take out Wong for her, if she happened to end up on board. She left them, eager to see how they would perform, the various cameras in the ship to record their progress and they eventual death.
Unfortunately, they were utterly determined to get to her, and she found herself standing on the edge, her case on the ground and one of her syringes in hand, gun in the other. She had not wanted to infect herself yet, but she got the feeling she would have no choice. She waved her hand, said something trivial, and the gun was knocked from her hand. With her weapon far below her, she got ready to inject herself, when the sound of a helicopter made her turn.
She looked up into the expressionless face of a mook of the Family, before she heard the shot, felt the pain. She muttered something, she wasn't sure what, and she fell. Rushing down to her death, she slid the needle in. Landing hard, her eyes slipped shut, the feeling of pain from the gunshot wound, from the fall mixing with the heat and rush of her virus.
She slipped away.
She woke up.
Someone was talking…someone was calling her the wrong name. Carla wasn't her name, she was Ada! She laughed, choking on something, and contorted her body, pulling herself up. Who was this woman, to dare look like her, act like her! This must be the fake Simmons had created. Well, she couldn't let an imperfect clone walk free.
A blind rage washed over her, and she barely noticed the changes happening to her body. She didn't care anyways. All that mattered was HAOS. All that mattered was the destruction of the world, destroying Simmons, the Family. Destroying that woman with the pitying eyes.
She collapsed into a thousand selves, minds reaching all through the ship, arms grasping from the fleeing copy, eyes watching her useless attempts to escape, faces gasping for air, biting for the woman. But still the woman ran, breaking free of the grasps, shooting her eyes, dodging the bites, running from her. But finally she had her trapped, the elevator hidden behind her face, her body behind her, moving in to push her forward, to be eaten, absorbed.
The woman said something, getting up after being knocked back by a spray of acid, before she felt pain. It was cold, aching and painful, before everything stopped-
-shattered.
Ada Wong stepped over the remains of the woman who had once been Carla, once been human. She hadn't known the woman, couldn't have said she would have liked to. But she still felt a pang of sadness as the elevator moved up.
"I meant what I said, Carla. I would have helped you, if only you had asked."
A/N: There's not much to say, really. Just a Carla centric one-shot.
(My headcanon is that Simmons implanted false memories int Carla, and that after she injected herself with the Cvirus, it addled her brain and made her believe she really was Ada, where as before, when she was running around causing chaos, she reverted back to being Carla.
idk. I hope you enjoy!