The succeeding few hours of the morning found the sun higher in the New York sky, shining through the skylight in Ada Wong's office. The warmth soothed her if only a bit as she researched the elements of her and Leon's next case, standing before a desk that rose to the level of her and, on which rested a top-of-the-line supercomputer that looked like it belonged in a space shuttle, one that any billionaire would bend over backwards to buy. Right now, it showed a few open windows that concerned reports of a handful of missing kids and young adults, all girls and women, as well as a history of the one place those incidents had in common - a Gothic-styled mansion on the outskirts of a nearby small town, situated on a forest-covered peninsula.

Ada couldn't help but shake her head, her eyebrows furrowing and lip pursing in troubled concentration. Too much of it reminded her of what happened back twenty-plus years ago, the spark that lit the dynamite keg that was Raccoon City. The difference being that even Umbrella didn't use children as their test subjects before tossing them out like garbage. That aspect alone threw her back to memories of her abusive childhood, her father with his alcohol and beatings until...

Shaking her head again, bringing herself back to the present, Ada promised herself that she wouldn't let the past get the best of her - after all, it was the past. The present was here; she needed to be too.

"An old mansion with mysterious murders around it, I can't think why that sounds familiar."

Leon's gentle voice brought Ada to turn and look at him, a smile slowly spreading to her face as she saw him dressed in a casual dress shirt, slim stone-washed blue jeans, and the old leather jacket he'd worn back in Tall Oaks, fitting him as if it hadn't been dragged through Hell with him. She herself was already freshened up and dressed in a dark scarlet blouse, form-fitting skinny jeans, and black combat boots. Considering the way Leon looked at her, it was clearly paying off already.

"Yeah, except this time, the test subjects aren't the walking dead, but just dead", Ada replied, turning back to the computer screen. "Still, I suppose that's preferable."

"Fair point", Leon growled before standing beside her, leaning a hand on the desk. "What else is there to know about this place?"

"Let's see...aside from the murdered victims, there's also a few old ghost stories floating around this place. Apparently, this place was thought to be guarding some sort of secret to immortality, a modern fountain of youth of sorts, purportedly kept up by someone known only as 'the Countess'", Ada stated, turning to see Leon's face furrowed in disgust and sadness at the crimes.

"Kinda ironic, considering the people who went there weren't exactly given the royal treatment. Still..."

Ada turned back to the screen, scrutinizing the articles. "And these say that the victims were all found with a pint of blood drained from each of them, replaced with a dash of cyanide, and what looks like needle marks in their arms to match. A fair amount of blood was drained from each victim as well, but as to what caused that…" Ada trailed off, a shudder in her voice.

Leon let out a hollow huff of breath, a sarcastic chuckle combined with it. "The blood of kids to fuel the fountain of youth. Makes perfect sense."

"It gets worse than that though", Ada replied sadly. "You remember that last client we had, Michael?"

"The hotshot ginger who moved back here from Japan with his wife to match after the show he was on over there ended? Yeah, why?"

"Well...the most recent victim was their daughter, Elza. The news just hit the town's local paper today", Ada reported, a grim note in her dulcet tones.

At this, Leon ran a frustrated hand through his blond hair, exposing the few salt-grey locks that were cropping up beneath the cornhusk mane, his true age showing even further through his sigh. "God...as if this mystery couldn't get any worse."

As if to answer them both, a blaring guitar riff faded up from Leon's pocket. Digging into it, he pulled out his smartphone and tapped the screen. "Hello? ...Yeah, I heard. I'm so sorry, Mikey. Oh, the police want us there too? ...Yeah, we'll be on our way."

Then he turned back to Ada. "Apparently, both Mike and the cops want us over there helping out with this."

"Well, then we don't have any time left to lose, so we?" Shutting the computer down to rest, Ada started to leave the desk for the nearby weapons cabinet that contained her and Leon's sidearms, an H&K VP70 for her and Leon's Grey Ghost handgun. "Well, let's see how the water tastes, I suppose", Ada sardonically stated.

She handed the Grey Ghost to Leon before striding past him, leaving him to watch Ada's luxuriously feminine form saunter away.

"Damn, those pants are tight. How'd you get into those anyway?"

The sly grin from Ada was matched by her dangling a familiar set of keys on her finger - the keys to Leon's dark blue Impala that shed helped him reclaim shortly after they'd established their business. She'd jacked them from Leon's pocket.

"When we're done with this case, I'll show you how, handsome", Ada promised, tossing the keys back to him. "Ready?"

Leon held her gaze as he slung an arm around her waist, holding her close as she held him around his back. "With you beside me and watching my back? Always."

The next couple of hours found them on the road, the rumble of the Impala's engine vibrating comfortably throughout the entire frame. Yet Leon's gaze never wavered from the road as they traveled to their destination, now only a few hours away.

Throughout his whole life, Leon Scott Kennedy was brought up with a strong sense of justice and morality. This, combined with an aversion to see anyone else go through the same kind of pain he now had on his shoulders, a calm demeanor in the face of danger, and a snarky sense of sarcastic humor, helped give him a fair amount of ballast in his life. He knew in his case, what he now had in his mental wiring was mild at best and was very specifically sparked up. But he also knew how serious it could get when it did flare up - one more thing for him to keep track of.

Still, with his rather quieter occupation of security consultant and detective, Leon could console himself with the knowledge that this job wasn't as risky as his prior occupation, just risky enough.

That, and having Ada with him would make all the difference in the world. If there was anything that he needed now, especially considering most of his friends thought he was dead - Ada's last mission tracking down the source of a clone of him along with bio-organic weapons made sure of that - Leon needed that valuable support.

And when they finally pulled up to the mansion on the outskirts of the small New York town of Delucia, the house itself surrounded by cops and witnesses, the reassurance that that support was there came up immediately.

"You ok?" Ada asked.

"All things considered", Leon nodded, looking over at her. "You?"

"All things considered", she repeated, punctuating it with a kiss to his cheek before they stepped out of the car, Leon locking it before they walked over to the yellow security tape barring the crime scene.

The first cop they saw, a tall and bulky dark-haired man, turned to them upon noticing they were approaching. "You two must be from Kennedy Investigations, right?" he inquired in a quiet, deep voice.

"That's us, Officer Roth", Leon stated, noticing the name tag while shaking the cop's hand before the cop did the same with Ada's. "So what exactly is going on here?"

"Right now, some of our squad is looking around the place to see if there are any more vic's aside from the one kid we heard about from Mr. Simon. There's also a few federal agents here aiding the investigation - that's been a big help. They're talking to Mr. Simon right now."

"Federal agents, you say?" Ada asked, rather perplexedly. "Who contacted them?"

"We're not sure, but at this point..." The officer shrugged lightly, letting the sentence trail off.

It was then that Ada noticed a darkly inquisitive squint in Leon's eyes as they locked onto the three suits talking to Leon's friend. One of them had long brown hair trailing down to just above his shoulders and curtaining his scruffy face, the other a blond crew cut above a strong-set expression, and the third with a mild face set below a crop of raven hair and a trenchcoat covering his dark suit.

"You think there's something off about them, honey?" Ada asked.

"It certainly seems that way...I just can't put my finger on what", Leon answered.

The weirdest facet then sprung up clearly in Leon's mind - they'd never heard any more news about those federal agents since that first bit about them coming into town, and the police stayed in constant contact with him and Ada about everything.

One way or another, something was definitely very wrong.