The Ghost Survivors: Last Escape

by antihero276

Emerging from ground zero of the T-Virus outbreak and the destruction of NEST stumble two greatly differing corporate spies believed by the world to be dead. U.S.S. Special Agent GHOST and Organization operative "Ada Wong" cross paths and are forced to work together to survive and escape the infested Raccoon City. Short story. Aftermath of RE 2. RE 6 Ada/Agent origin story.

2. Chapter 1: Spy vs Spy

Lord Reyne: I hope not to disappoint, friend. And that you enjoy this short story.

LyKaiosK: Glad to hear it ;) hope you enjoy the story.

Akira-Hayama: Wouldn't be surprised if that comment were mine lol I throw ideas out there and test for feedback sometimes.

There was a good opportunity in the GHOST Survivors DLC to work with the lore a bit, and turn Agent from RE6 into someone, instead of just a patched in 'character' so Ada could have a co-op partner with no creative thought put into him, a blank slate. I like working with the lore that way, combining characters and explaining things Capcom doesn't, the potential. Rest assured, GHOST will 'die' in Raccoon City... Agent will be reborn through the ashes lol. But yes, Raccoon City was an outbreak waiting to happen thanks to that asshole Birkin deliberately sabotaging the Dead Factory and NEST. And pointing a gun at a heavily armed team of Agents and expecting not to be gunned down for it. He bears the vast majority of the blame, not GHOST, not that he won't feel any guilt for his role all the same. Birkin was an idiot on every level, betraying Spencer and trying to steal his property (NEST and The G-Virus belonged to Spencer thanks to his funding and Birkin's employee status) to sell it to the U.S. Government and thinking that would end well. As if Spencer wasn't going to send a hit squad to raid NEST. Hell in the remake he gets an ominous warning letter from Umbrella HQ to 'expect our official response' Lol. Hell, this is the guy who saw what Spencer did to his own mentor Marcus courtesy of a U.S.S. team... I'd say Birkin was a monster and an idiot who had it coming. Unfortunately he took many with him. As people like him always do.

Above all, GHOST is a rookie on his first job unlike HUNK, so isn't jaded the way he is, and isn't special or important, doesn't have his own cast and whatnot. He's a redshirt who managed to survive. But he is sarcastic and at the end of his rope after surviving NEST for days. He isn't scared of his own shadow anymore, even if he is terrified of all the shit. He's more angry now. Think the progression of Ash Williams (one of GHOST's inspirations for me in this story) between the original three Evil Dead movies. Terrified college kid out of his depth, to clumsy, sarcastic survivalist, to moronic badass. I'd say GHOST is at Evil Dead 2 by now when we meet him in this story. His Evil Dead 1-2 transformation took place off screen. And yes I liked comparing GHOST and HUNK, the differences, of course GHOST is going to think more about his team leader and the legend of U.S.S., have his own perspective on the man, being in his shadow and a nobody in Umbrella. Whereas HUNK mostly just remembers GHOST as the fuck up rookie who helped screw everything up. The way I see it, GHOST is partially HUNK if Raccoon City had been HUNK's first mission. Opposite end of the U.S.S. Agent spectrum from HUNK. And yes, you can expect more banter out of GHOST than you get out of a cold, reserved professional like HUNK who is more about what he is thinking than what he is saying. GHOST being a rookie and more 'human' character. Also HUNK is very much in the know on Umbrella's workings, knows everyone and has a place there, while GHOST has to depend on rumors he's heard for the most part. He carries much less baggage than HUNK.

Ada is indeed the HUNK counterpart of this story, more cold, reserved, competent, experienced, secretive and professional... though more playful than HUNK, experienced with that. As the femme fatale spy type, socially adept and witty, unlike Judge Dredd HUNK, teasing. A big contrast between more human but experienced, grounded, good Jill, and grim stone wall HUNK. The Catwoman and Black Cat comparisons are apt, though she has other inspirations too, similar ones. I very much enjoyed writing the dynamic of Ada and GHOST. Basically Catwoman meets Ash Williams and Jack Burton lol. A clash of personalities, though both have the sarcasm in relation to each other, as well as having just narrowly survived hell on earth. Escaping NEST after facing the horrors there.

Thank you kindly as ever friend, hope you like what is to come.

Jinero: Honestly HUNK won't have the first clue about how to be a father or parent. He was not made for it, would need Jill and any other backup big time. Would take quite some doing, but I'm sure he'd eventually get there. He would certainly care about the kids and do his best. Though I'm partially of the mind he needs to resolve things with Lady Spencer's kids first, even if that meeting doesn't go so well.

Would be an interesting universe for them to work in, I'm sure some writer out there has done it already, or will at some point. To me a complete societal collapse doesn't work for the Resident Evil universe, it should be about the struggle to keep the apocalypse at bay, not the aftermath of it. Though I'm sure HUNK would fare well in that rough Last Of Us universe after the end of the world. Probably be more at home there than he is in the civilian, non battlefield one.

Well you know me and unique ships that haven't been done before, odd couples, (Jill/HUNK), why stop now? Lol. But yeah there are already countless Leon/Ada stories around, as well as canon material for the ship. I'm more of a Leon/Claire than a Leon/Ada (Chris needs the sacred Redfield Bloodline extended). One Ada/Agent story around, something different, won't hurt anyone. Like trying new things that haven't really been done. There are few of those anyways, with how big the fandom is. I don't intend to disrespect Leon (Agent will be doing that lol), he won me over as a character in the RE 2 Remake... and to me the Ada and Leon thing will just never realistically work. Too different, too opposite, and Leon is a good guy at the end of the day, while Ada is Chaotic Neutral at best. He could have went with her, to the dark side, at the end of 2 but he didn't. Whereas someone like GHOST as I see him? Yeah he would make the wrong choice and go with her alright. He's sort of the Anti Leon, has some similarities, the rookie thing, but opposite in most other ways. GHOST is a rookie gone bad, being corrupted as HUNK once was, and as Leon would have been if he stayed with Ada.

Echo Five: Probably 6 long chapters. Didn't require more than that really, learned to be concise and tell a story as it is, for how long or short it needs to be, instead of rambling for more chapters than required. Filler chapters basically.

Would be tempting for HUNK to messily gouge out Nikolai's other eye in my take on him in a Resident Evil 4 story. Could see Leon standing there grimacing, shaking his head and going "Yeesh..." But by that point in time I think Ashley would have been through the shit and grew up a bit more, HUNK kicking her in line, and her going through some survival lessons from him. Learned to pitch in and be useful. Probably feel some catharsis, since in this universe it would be Krauser and Nikolai who kidnap her. Not sure if HUNK would gouge out the last eye painfully, or if he would simply shoot Nikolai through it with Matilda and finally kill him once and for all. Or perhaps Ashley would shoot him through the eye with Matilda. Either way, there would be some sort of reckoning, poetic justice for Nikolai involving that eye. I don't see Nikolai making it out of that story, him and Krauser would be two of a kind, getting their just desserts as similar villains. Maybe falling or being thrown off the side of a cliff into the water and being eaten by Del Lago. The Peter Pan/Captain Hook comparisons would be apt, and fun to work with. The ideas really form themselves sometimes, don't they? xD.

FL4K: I'll uh... pass on the messages lol.

G. Fawkes: Thank you kindly.

Well canonically GHOST was killed in the fight with mutated Birkin, never crossed paths with Ada or the others, except perhaps as a zombie, but in this universe I've canonized his Ghost Survivors scenario and combined him with Ada's future co-op partner in Resident Evil 6. Was sort of a two birds with one stone maneuver, to craft a character who could be Ada's partner and have an actual human connection to her, turn a 'character' who was only there so Ada could have a partner in two player mode, and actually create a dynamic from it, as Capcom could have done if they weren't lazy, if Agent was merely a patched in placeholder. I enjoyed the challenge of that. I like welding together two separate pieces of lore, or characters, where it works. Sort of like how some movies adapt several characters into one character for the movie version of a story, combine them together for simplicity's sake. That was indeed the argument I had when I considered this story, figuring out if Ada would kill him or not, I could make an argument for either one, but the fact is Ada is in a piss poor state by the time she escapes NEST, especially if you see how she is in her Umbrella Chronicles scenario Death's Door, hobbling around all bandaged up and injured, a wreck, not too long before the nuke flies into Raccoon City. I've realistically acknowledged how injured she is here from the events of Resident Evil 2. Gal needs the help, and their paths happened to cross at just the right moment, perfect opportunity for a tense team up and escape for both who have just been in the meat grinder and are still in the middle of a very bad situation. One they don't know if they can survive alone.

Thanks again, I do hope you enjoy what I have planned for the story ;).

Yup, GHOST and Ada are a foregone conclusion in this story, given what we see on the other chopper in Their Last Escape as the Dead Factory survivors leave Raccoon City. One of the downsides of prequel stories, foregone conclusions, but the journey and character development is what I'm really interested in for prequels, the story. Surprises and spoilers only work the first time when you read them, are more of a gimmick, it is the themes and substance that matter much more to me. Why I would never write a whodunnit type of story where the reader has to figure out who the murderer or traitor is. Prefer the tension of us the audience knowing who it is, and the characters not yet knowing until it's too late. Waiting for the guillotine to fall, basically.

As for Wesker, yes indeed, the man is a walking cliche theatrical cartoon Supervillain, and I like poking holes in him for that, as I will in this story, undermining him in realistic, small ways. One of them being a lack of creativity in naming things. He has that egomania of his, on par with Spencer's... given Spencer basically shaped him as an heir of sorts, or figurative son of his. For how intimidating, mysterious, badass and dangerous he is to many, others just see right through him and his act and recognize all the tropes he has draped over himself, aren't afraid of or impressed by him and his Bond villain persona/act, unless he gives them a good reason to be. The best way to depict villains is to show how powerful and/or dangerous, crazy or scary they are, but to also show why they are pathetic at the same time. The two often go hand in hand.

Nightroad816: Thank you kindly friend, glad to hear you enjoyed my other story, and hope you do this one :).

I lean towards an eventual Leon and Claire pairing, which I think even the games generally do (not only because of the Sacred Redfield Bloodline meme either lol). I just could never see anything more for Leon and Ada than a flirtation and 'will they or won't they' thing that never goes anywhere. Care, but not enough to change either of their natures entirely. If Ada and Leon were going to be hooked up they would have a long time ago. It doesn't work, as they don't in real life either. Leon is a good guy, Ada is not. Even though she isn't evil, she'll never be a good girl. Damaged goods, and too cold, too part of another criminal world of espionage that Leon isn't. Leon and Claire is also a much healthier relationship, or would be, with genuine mutual respect, two heroes who would be a zombie fighting power couple. Fact is birds of a feather usually flock together, why it made more sense for me to have Leon/Claire and Ada/Agent.

AxDevilman: Thank you kindly ;) I hope it is.

It's definitely true I get wordy and descriptive lol habit of mine as a perfectionist, I like to vividly set the scene and setting, surroundings in someone's mind with details. I've eased up with it compared to how I used to be, but everyone has their personal style of course. I like to restrain the action a bit, build up to it, instead of fast paced, rushing through it. Characters and setting first, making the person care about them and what's going on, then the problems and action come. The difference between writing a story and writing a video game, where you always have to have action happening, you know? Can't really take time to breath and set up. I like the less is more approach for the monsters as well, build up to scenes with lots of them.

Thank you, and yes indeed, if GHOST/Agent comes off as less impressive than everyone else, I'm doing my job right depicting him. He's a rookie out of his element and kind of bumbling, not lucky, things don't really go his way. He's the antithesis of HUNK and the 'heroes' of Resident Evil, really, and a 'bad' parallel of Leon, with some light similarities to Jill and Carlos. He's lucky in that he survived in this universe, and will get out by the skin of his teeth, but to me he's sort of a 'reality ensues' character, where the story cliches don't work out as well for him, and he is a bit more sarcastic from his experiences and is somewhat genre savvy. Though not enough to know that he's the sidekick who thinks he's the hero of this story, essentially. Ada is the protagonist of this story in a way, while GHOST is the primary POV character.

I realized early on that Ada works better being introduced from an outside POV, because she is indeed a very mysterious individual, one who I'm still figuring out, coming up with a backstory. It's sort of like how I presented HUNK for awhile strictly from Jill's POV, held back from slipping inside his head earlier on, so Jill and the reader could figure him out a bit before I delved into him. I want Ada to start a mystery to the reader and to GHOST before slowly pealing back the layers a bit. GHOST is the more 'normal' of the two, an everyman, to Ada's enigma and professionalism, her attractive glamour, seemingly the femme fatale superspy. Also, Ada simply knows too much for me to make her the primary POV... better to have GHOST serve the role because he only knows so much as a rookie new to the business. Seeing how little he knows, his views on Umbrella, U.S.S. and HUNK and such. Ada, her knowledge and personality would overwhelm the reader for sure as the primary POV, better the reader be new to this like GHOST, learning as he goes along.

Spartan: Likely Rebecca would let Bella have it now and again about what she knows, the fucked up things on the Ecliptic Express, the monsters, the leeches, Lisa Trevor, James Marcus, the Training School, Spencer Mansion and Raccoon City over the course of the story. Really rub her nose in it, her complicity and what her father has done. And along with everything else happening in the story, the burdens placed upon her, the knowledge, Bella's disillusionment with her father, it would help lead to her decision to sacrifice herself to save the world from Cameron. Save the world from her father, really. In my universe Cameron's Executer Virus was an attempt by Spencer to have Cameron create an immortality virus for himself, as part of his path to wanting to become a god. Just as he has Alex Wesker researching another different immortality virus for him. Cameron's Executer Project worked in a way, makes the infected immortal, can transfer consciousness to different hosts, but by the time of 2001, when the story would be set, it will have mutated and turned Cameron basically into The Thing while she was disguised as a researcher at the DEN facility, working on a cure for the virus for herself in secret, with the different parts of her becoming independent beings. When she goes berserk, loses control of herself, different parts of her splitting off from the original, killing and infecting staff, releasing the T-Virus and B.O.W.'s at the facility, and the facility goes dark to Umbrella, the official mission for Alpha Team will be to investigate what the hell happened. But Spencer will secretly command his daughter (who knows everything, like him) to retrieve a sample of the Executer Virus to return it to him, so he can continue to experiment on it and perfect it for himself, unknown to HUNK and Alpha Team. Yet over the course of seeing how uncontrollable the Cameron Thing is, how much the Executer Virus mutated, how horrific it is, what it does to the facility and to Alpha Team, she will opt to bury the secrets of the Executer Virus, the DEN facility, Cameron's original form, and herself far beneath the ice of the Antarctic. Activate the self destruct sequence and sacrifice herself while HUNK and Rebecca (the sole survivors) flee, to keep it out of her father and Vladimir's hands.

Could be a hell of a story, but would be a hell of an undertaking.

Bella wouldn't treat her as a guest... she would treat her as HUNK's guest lol. Because Bella will see early on that HUNK knows Rebecca and doesn't want to kill her, suggest to Bella perhaps that she could be more useful to them in one piece, so she allows Rebecca to live, and be present during the duration of the mission/story, investigate the facility with them. And they quickly realize they're going to need all the help they can get against the Cameron Things. Rebecca ends up being one of the three survivors by the time Bella decides she needs to sacrifice herself to destroy Cameron and the DEN Facility, and seeing the opportunity pushes HUNK to defect from Umbrella, and tasks Rebecca with helping him do so, keeping him safe. Rebecca, after all the shared experiences and struggles of the story, agrees to it. And to keep it all a secret, for HUNK's sake.

HUNK and Bella (were she alive by this point) would be glad to hear that Vladimir is dead. HUNK will be annoyed though as well, wishing he had been able to be the one to kill Vladimir. Rebecca will find out about Vladimir from Chris and Jill, since she will be part of the pre B.S.A.A. 'Private Anti-Biohazard Service (See Resident Evil Wiki entry for more details) that was hunting Umbrella in 2003. More of a liaison at this stage, mostly remaining in Alaska, close to HUNK, and a scientist/consultant for the task force and later a founding member of the B.S.A.A. Rebecca will keep HUNK a secret from her team until the feds find out about him. How will they find out? Because Wesker will know about HUNK still being alive as well (him and his supervillain genius and connections lol) and decide to tip off Simmons when the time is right (an advisor for President Graham as well in my universe, who will have a serious grudge against HUNK after the Sherry situation and HUNK deliberately maiming him while kidnapping her for Alfred Ashford from The Family who kidnapped her lol throwing a wrench into the works of the C-Virus) to have the feds capture and bring him back to the world stage, to be Leon's partner in retrieving Ashley. Wesker would want another opportunity to recruit HUNK for what will end up being Red Umbrella, and would basically conspire to dust him off and return him to his old ways, post U.S.S. See if he's still got what it takes. Wesker would get his way by the end of the story, have Ada approach HUNK to recruit him after saving Ashley and returning to America, with HUNK disillusioned with America, the government, and deciding peace isn't for him, going back to the life of crime. With HUNK and Ada as Wesker's right hand man and woman. With poor Agent tagging along at Ada's heels, of course lol.

Conflicted, relieved he's dead but not. He's a monster, but still her father, and she has serious father issues. Part of her has wanted to kill Spencer over the years as well, but she can't do it. If he did die while she was alive, she would gladly take over his role afterwards though. Not be quite as batshit crazy a villain, a more cold and pragmatic one, than an Oswell or Wesker type villain. If only Spencer had been ousted or killed much sooner, Bella in charge of Umbrella would have been an entirely different story, but on the downside HUNK would fully become the Darth Vader to her 'Empress', and become an outright villain instead of a conflicted man Jill was influencing for the better. It's best for HUNK that things played out the way they did.

Storm: 14 Year Old HUNK seeing BOW's and that battle, Jill and the Nemesis "Oh shit! Monsters!" *Flees for his life screaming his head off* Lol. Don't think he'd have time to develop a crush. Too busy running for his life, he'd be scared out of his mind. Was a whole other person back then. Innocent. Until Lady Spencer got her hands on him.

Thank you all for the reviews as ever. I'm glad to see my idea has interested you folks, and appreciate it as ever. Now, on with our exhausted, worn down 'heroes' next journey. Assuming they don't just shoot one another instead, of course:

---

September 30th, 1998, 9:01 AM

Cable Car Interior, Underground NEST Transit Tunnels, Downtown, Raccoon City

"Oh shit! Weren't lying about the ride, were you, lady?"

GHOST cursed loudly, unable to hold back, as the detonations of the NEST facility's core began to chase them when they were some ways up the tunnel... a distant explosion overtaking the facility entrance and train platform down there. Engulfing the horde of freaks and evaporating it in a bright bursting flash. Concrete raining down all over the area down there. The entire shaft of the line and the train itself began to rumble and shake on the rail like an earthquake... and GHOST held on to a nearby railing tightly, bracing himself for the worst. The roar of the engine and shifting and creaking of metal only growing more audible, and alarming. Sparks flying by each window courtesy of the rails outside, the cable car's shadow flying by the lights along either side of the tunnel. The U.S.S. Agent tried with all his effort to relax his muffled breathing, pulse pounding rapidly in his ears... murmuring to himself inside the mask, praying aloud they weren't too late. That the train wouldn't be engulfed in a firestorm, cooking them alive within the twisting metal. It couldn't end like this. Not this close to escape... within sight... within reach. For her part, the injured woman calling herself Ada had finally taken the seat behind the controls, in front of his array of weapons she'd disarmed him of... though remained turned partially in his direction, pointing her pistol at him. Watching him silently, more closely than she was the explosions behind them, the great fireball chasing after them as hungrily as any of the infected freaks. He wasn't sure what she was so worried about with him and the G-Virus... it was one of the last things on his mind just now. The inferno of death occupied it more than the sample ever could. The danger posed to their ascending cable car didn't seem to perturb her, the firestorm pursuing them relentlessly. She continued watching him with that trace of a smile on her full lips and bruised, bloodied, attractive features. Somehow, she not only wasn't afraid of it... and seemed to be enjoying herself, even. Watching his own panic rising. Seeing how much of it he could take, maybe.

All the same... now and again something glazed and distant touched her eye. Almost dazed... but she would catch herself quickly each time, jolting attentively. Forcing back that cool control over herself.

The blood loss, perhaps. Exhaustion... from the look of her. Whatever she had survived below was taking its toll and then some.

After what he had... he didn't want to think about any of it.

The cable car continued shaking around them as it shot closer towards the surface, and he held on tighter to the railings, remaining down in the seat... silently hoping beyond all hope that they would make it. Huddling as low in the seat as he could... ready to cover his head. Closing his eyes tightly and praying quietly for deliverance. He had survived too damn much just to go now, more helpless than he had been against Birkin, unable to even fight back or to flee as he had been able to with him. Down there at least he could bring the war to the freaks... had killed his fair share of them... but an element like fire could not be fought at present. He was at the mercy of it, in this cage... and of her taking command... in bringing him up here like this disarmed. He hated the feeling of helplessness, as much as he feared it. Still... even if it ended now like this... he had escaped from NEST, at least. Would not die down there with those freaks. At least he could take that as a small victory. Such as it was. Minutes passed by that felt like eons. He waited for the flash of pain... the burning... and for the end. Then... at the last moment, when he was certain that it wouldn't... deliverance came for them... in the form of an accented, familiar, artificial voice blaring through the cable car's loudspeakers.

"Now arriving at Sewer Treatment Pool to NEST docking platform. Docking sequence initiating. Please stand by."

A RED QUEEN no less, bringing him news of escape that he could scarcely believe. Didn't dare to believe right away... even as they hurtled out of the firestorm raging below. The muffled explosions and shaking gradually ceased, and the cable car raced ever higher... and eventually reached the top platform that awaited them. Gradually coming to a stop with a rumble and series of automated sounds as it docked and was secured into place. When it had, the engine powered down slowly, and the silence returned over the interior of the cable car... save the ringing in his ears and muffled breaths through his mask. As well as her own slight labored breaths. A relative silence she was the first to break. Wry tone bringing him back to the world.

"Agent? You heard the lady. Last stop. End of the line."

But still he remained as he was, eyes still shut tightly, not daring to look... frozen stiff to his spot in the seat, gloves tightening on the railing... until that quiet, sharp laughter came back again.

"You can stop cowering under your seat now... Agent GHOST. The danger has passed. Some of it, at least. The most immediate. Rise and shine. Get your ass over here... and see for yourself. Seeing is believing."

Her silky but pained voice spoke to him, at last forcing his eyes open again and drawing his attention back up to the control panel again. To her, finding the young woman in the red silk dress and black stockings already standing up again from behind the controls, keeping her pistol directed his way. Leaving blood stains behind on her chair, the smeared scarlet liquid still dripping from her, running down her arm and to the floor. She seemed a bit shaky as she rose... but again caught herself quickly. Not likely one who wanted to betray any weakness. Especially to her prey... to him. She motioned to the back of the train with her pistol, and at the prompting he looked in that direction to the back window of the cable car... to find, sure enough, the inferno had fallen behind them some distance. It had stopped advancing, though was still visible even from their position, burning down there far below in the depths of the tunnels. Engulfing much of it... the thick smoke rising even now and pouring into the sewers around their train. Though a number of the vents and fans about the sewage treatment pool area carrying it away. And he had the feeling the smoke would be welcome compared to the foul smells out there in the sewer. Thank God for his mask. Let her suffer with the lack of it instead. But just now, he was still coming to terms with how close it had been to form many vindictive thoughts. Somehow they had managed to outrace death... at least for the moment. The nightmare that had been NEST was gone... all the infected and mutations within incinerated and buried down there... reduced to ash... Birkin and his abominations evaporated... the giant lumbering freak wearing the long black overcoat, fedora and big boots as well. Hopefully. Whatever the fuck that had been, trudging through the corridors of NEST. One of Birkin's, or from the outside... from Umbrella.

He wanted to breath with relief... but the sewers remained ahead of them, now. As did the surface. Raccoon City. The nightmares of NEST had already poured out into the city like a Pandora's Box... and the chaos of it was still out there, waiting for him. For them, trapped in her company as he was.

"So it is..."

All the same... he never thought he would be so glad to be back in the sewers.

At last, gripping the railing, he rose unsteadily to his combat boots again, working to ignore the dizziness it drew, the returning aches through what felt like every joint. He opened and closed his eyes a few times, trying to get his head on straight again... to ignore the worsening headache especially. His exhaustion. The last thing he needed was more eyestrain fucking with his vision... his aim... at the worst possible moment, as it had several times below. Forcing him to hide and wait it out. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept, just now, at one of the few safe spots he'd located back down in NEST. Even then... it hadn't been long enough... how could he sleep, in the middle of hell? With those freaks all around? When he had recovered enough of his senses, and the aches a bit more bearable, he looked to the closest window... all of them on the train were stained with the bloody hand prints of the zombies, from back down in NEST... the smears already drying there on the reinforced glass. He looked away from them and turned to look up at her where she remained standing... and then beyond her out the front window, to the Sewer Treatment Pool area beyond the cable car docking platform. The various familiar walkways on their level and above, the doors around the area. The dropping pipes running about the area. Having been through here with Alpha Team, before, the memories came back from days ago that felt like an eternity ago. And there were zombies out there now as there hadn't been before... of course, several of them staggering out there... not having noticed the cable car, or at least the survivors within it. Dressed mostly in tattered, stained sewer maintenance uniforms, former city workers. Belonging to an infected city... a city of freaks and monsters inhabiting the sewers and the city over their heads. Somehow in the midst of the destruction of NEST, in her sudden arrival, he had almost forgotten all about Raccoon City for a few minutes. Until it all came right back to him. Reminded him how much surely lie ahead yet.

It figured... they'd merely gone from one circle of hell and right back to another one. They were not free of anything. Life should be so easy on him.

"Out of the frying pan..."

GHOST muttered tiredly under his breath, grimacing bitterly within the gas mask, not finishing the rest of the phrase... earning a speculative glance from her, between him and the window. The freaks beyond in the sewer. He was never going to get a break from them, with his luck. Then again... several years break from them wouldn't be enough. Didn't matter what experience he'd racked up down in NEST managing to survive them. Or the training at Rockfort Island. There was nothing right about battling monsters... nothing sane about any of this... and never would be. Freaks from movies that had no right to exist... but did anyways. The blood stained woman in red smiled thinly at his situational assessment but did not reply to it. Meanwhile he looked on from the window, and towards the control panel covered in his weapons she had forced him to remove earlier before the departure. There was no chance he was leaving it all right there... all that hardware... especially not in light of the current events. The present. They were going to need it all and more, no doubt. Meeting her steady gaze and pointed Broom Hc pistol, he spoke up to her again at last, approached the subject wearily.

"What about my weapons?"

"What about them?"

"Well... I'm sure as shit not wandering around this infested sewer without them. There are goddamn zombies and mutated freaks out there, if you hadn't noticed, between the kidnappings and nearly getting us set on fire."

The U.S.S. Agent pointed out with a grimace, remaining where he was between the closed cable car door and the seat he had vacated. Looking back up to her at the top. He knew he would be pressing his luck... risking his life with that gun on him... with this morally ambiguous woman with 'femme fatale' written all over her. Looking like she'd wandered into his life straight out of a spy movie. Or a comic strip more likely, from how ludicrous this was. All the same... he was not going to let himself be killed by the zombies and monsters... like damn near everyone else had been. A bullet from her would be preferable, so it was a risk about as worthy as he wanted to be taking. That he had managed to survive the ones he had was still difficult to believe. Still... he opted to try his luck yet again. What the hell did he have left to lose, at this point?

"If you were planning on trying to make me do that... you're better off just shooting me here and now. Ain't setting one foot off this fucking train unless I'm packing heat."

The young woman in red looked to his weapons over on the control panel that he gestured to thoughtfully, then, for a moment. Pursing her lips as she considered it visibly. Before returning her gaze to his. For an instant, he thought she would call his bluff and pull the trigger, that it would be over before he even knew what hit him. He was pleasantly surprised instead. She nodded at last, stepping back slightly out of the way of the control panel. Revealing all of his weaponry awaiting him and gesturing to it, calm clear voice washing over him again. Still with the touch of pain at its edge, kept under control.

"Very well. Come up here. No sense putting them to waste. Deserve a chance to make yourself useful, for a change. But you will keep them holstered... and use only the weapon I tell you to. When I tell you to use it. You will go just ahead of me... and clear the way of infected... while I observe."

"Yeah. Make me do all the heavy lifting. Figures. Just like a woman, huh?"

"Or we could always go another way, here. If you don't like it. If you have any complaints.", Her red lips smiled thinly at that, raising the pistol slightly in his direction, gripping it tighter. And making her point perfectly clear. The leverage she held still. "Never against renegotiating a contract. Happens all the time... especially in our line of work..."

"I see. Fair enough terms, then. We'll play it your way. For now."

GHOST returned bitterly at last, though hesitated a moment, looking to the gun and to her bloodied, bruised visage. He didn't like the sound of it... the control she wanted to exert over him... but knowing his options were limited, he relented. It would do no good to keep arguing with that gun. Maybe the blood loss was making her more reasonable, able to be negotiated with. Light headed. About the only reason he could think of for why she hadn't pulled the trigger and simply stole his weapons for herself. She was very clearly not in a good way. Worse than him. He was partially curious about it... and even more so worried of how it might escalate this situation. A match touching a powder keg. What was to stop her from deciding to take him with her in death? Getting him killed? Out of the fire... and into another fire. Already he knew he was playing with it, as long as she was around. Terrific. Just what he needed, about now. Hostiles in front of him and hostiles behind him. Though which would prove worse was yet to be seen.

Finally, holding his hands up reluctantly, he very slowly began to move away from the seat she had shoved him in before. Moving up to join her behind the control panel and next to the bloody seat she had vacated. More of the Sewer Treatment Pool and its bridge beyond were revealed to him through the window. The zombies shambling out there... former maintenance workers mostly, and a few former civilians, all in tattered, bloodied clothing, from what he could see. As rotted and mutilated as many of the freaks in NEST had been, the former facility personnel down there, in their bloody ragged lab coats, maintenance uniforms and security uniforms. Memory returned of them shambling down the corridors, or feasting on corpses... especially from his vantage points in the vents. Early on it had been all he could do to keep from puking inside his mask at the sight of what they had been doing. Later on, somehow, he'd gotten more used to the decaying facility. Forced to navigate around it. He kept as much distance from the bloodied, tattered young woman in red as he could, though her hand moved with the sidearm to track him each step of the way. Her red lips smiling again, as she breathed slowly, painfully. What the hell was keeping her going, even standing, he wasn't sure. Her state and how she was bleeding, she should have dropped by now, but still she managed to remain standing, even on those heels. Of all the footwear she could and should have been wearing in the middle of a mess on the scale of this outbreak.

GHOST looked to her bloodied, tattered form as he approached... to find it dripping and running steadily from her injured shoulder and collar. Her bare and gloved hands respectively stained with it. She was dead or dying on her feet. It was as if she hadn't even realized it yet. And closer to her, he took notice of how pale and sick she looked... pallid, nearly a corpse herself. Her voice spoke up again as he crew near, cutting across his troubled thoughts on the matter.

"That's it. Closer. Don't be shy. I don't bite..."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Your pistol sure as hell does. So why take chances?"

"Clever... for a rookie. You aren't wrong. There are specialized armor piercing rounds in this magazine, for the record. In case you get any bright ideas. Think you are more protected in all QUARTERMASTER's gear from me... than I am from you in this dress..."

"Of course there are. Wouldn't want to go making things easy on the rest of us, huh?"

"Quite right. Though just now, stay as quiet as you can... and do only what I instruct you. As a U.S.S. Agent, I imagine you are no stranger... to stowing the complaints... and following the orders of your superior..."

"You are not one of my instructors, girlie. Not my team leader or a superior. That gun sure as hell don't make it so."

"Is that something you care... to put to the test? Do not try me, agent. I've had a bad enough morning as it is. As have you. Neither of us needs more added to it."

He couldn't argue with her there, at least. Much as he wanted to argue with her. Holding his tongue as she went on.

"Now... put your weapons on, soldier boy. Before I change my mind."

GHOST stared back at her in silence for a moment... studying her numerous wounds again. Especially the gunshot. Seeing the difficulty she was under. No way would she make it back to the surface as she was. No wonder she wanted him doing all the dirty work, while she hung back and only had to point her pistol at him. Maybe all he had to do was wait her out... let the bleeding do the job. Assuming she didn't just put a burst of shots through his head before succumbing. He wanted to say something... but another wave of the burst pistol convinced him otherwise. Sighing quietly, he reached for the combat knife as her weapon tracked him, and resheathing it, before tucking away the MUP pistol back into his holster, slinging the modified grenade launcher along with the MP5 both across his back. Lastly he recovered his boot knife and slipped it back in the concealed sheath in the combat boot under the undersuit's pant leg. Once he had, he rose his hands slightly to show her he wasn't getting any bright ideas, to pretend he wasn't, at least, looking back her way. She nodded when he was done, satisfaction on her bruised, bloodied features, speaking through the pain.

"Good. Now... move down to the cable car's door. Stop, equip and ready your MP5 when you get there. Make sure there are no uninvited guests out there, once it opens. Go... ahead..."

The rookie agent turned on the spot and moved down from the control panel and towards the locked down automated metal door on the side of the cable car. Feeling and almost certainly looking every bit like the fool he must have been... imagining how he would have looked to any of his squad mates, if they were watching. And if they were still alive, for that matter. HUNK and the Instructors on Rockfort Island especially, watching him follow the commands of some civilian, fed, or spy, or whatever the hell she was. She knew things, clearly, and was working for someone in the espionage business. He would never hear the end of it. But if he had any self preservation, and he did, he would have to play along with this bullshit. Better her than burning in NEST... at least he hoped. Once he reached the doorway, he stopped, slowly and carefully unslinging his submachine gun and taking it up in both hands, as she had ordered. Staring straight ahead to the red light on the door... and bracing himself for anything that might lie beyond it. He heard her tap a button on the control panel behind him, and there was a beep as the red light turned green. The moment it did, he heard the clicking of her heels on the interior floor of the train, moving down to join him... standing just behind him. The seals, clamps and locks on the door parted with whirring sounds, unclicking, and he snapped up the MP5 as the door drew back, revealing the cable car platform just beyond. Smaller than the one down in the NEST, he remembered... though there were a number of them throughout the underground of Raccoon City. This one had been the closest, the reason HUNK had brought Alpha Team here.

No infected or mutations lurked on the platform area at least, thankfully... nothing tried to seize him. He slowly lowered the submachine gun once more, once he deemed it clear. Then her quiet but steady voice spoke up again behind him closely... he could almost feel the burst pistol hovering behind him.

"You are... to remove all the infected in the area. Then we will cross the bridge over the treatment pool... and make our way to the monitor room. You know the way, I'm sure. Now... advance out on to the platform. Slowly and carefully... it's not safe here, yet. "

"Carefully? Aw. Didn't know you cared. Lucky me. Hate to see how you treat those you don't like."

"I have a soft spot for blundering rookies. You're like dogs. You need a firm hand of guidance like mine... and I like to discipline. Now make yourself useful... and move out."

GHOST's jaw tightened at her cool silkiness... tempted to return another cutting, sarcastic remark, say something, anything... he didn't appreciate being used like this, like a robot. A dog, as she said. And from a civilian no less... no matter what capabilities she had. Spy or no spy. She was not an authority figure... not U.S.S. Nor had she likely been down there in NEST as long as he had been... but here she was, acting like she was above him. But... under the conditions he was realistic enough about his situation. This was about the best chance he had. Maybe when the time was right, he could make a move. Escape her grasp, try his luck with the freaks of the sewer by himself. He didn't need a gun pointed at him while dealing with the monsters... undermining him. One that could shoot him any minute, the moment she decided she didn't need him anymore. In the meantime, he would wait for his opening. Play along with the crazy bitch. With a slight nod of his scarred, dented helmet, he stepped through the open door, dark combat boots clattering on the metal platform. Her dark heels clicking after him at once in slow, methodical pursuit. The RED QUEEN closing the automated door to the cable car behind them once they were both out of it. He looked over the small docking platform area a moment... to a trolley with a computer and some other equipment on it. Then on to the path down towards the treatment pool area, walkway, and bridge that awaited. Studying some of the visible, rotting, shambling hostiles... grimacing within the gas mask. He tilted his helmeted head from side to side, popping the muscles in his neck and resolving himself for the next fight. Sighing wearily.

"If that's how you want it. Let's rock and roll then, motherfuckers..."

The U.S.S. Agent looked back to the injured woman standing before the sizable red and white Umbrella logo imprinted out on the side of the cable car... looked to the gun aimed at him, and she nodded encouragingly. Turning back around he began to move down the train platform and up to the pathway around the treatment pool. Her heels clicking further behind him, along with the tapping of his boots, echoing about the platform and section of the sewer. Moving up on to the walkway he walked down towards the railing around the perimeter of most of the treatment pool area, save the bridge down the middle of it leading to the monitor room. A number of infected were scattered around the are, close to a dozen... all former civilians, maintenance and city workers... mostly bloodied uniformed men... but a couple women zombies, all of them in varying states of decay. Most of them concentrated on the bridge area... shambling aimlessly... and a few at the perimeter of the pool, on either side of it. Some bumping into one another now and again. There were some on the upper level walkways as well, high above... far enough not to be trouble. Too high to even detect GHOST or the woman in red. Shambling right by his field of view. There were already some bullet ridden corpses floating down in the pool and around the area... and between that, blood stained footprints along the way in both directions and shell casings littered about the path glinting in the light, it was clear someone or others had been through here in the past days. Survivors... though if they were still survivors was anyone's guess. There were several exits around the chamber that could have been entered and vacated through. It didn't look good... but still... there were at least no sign of the more heavily mutated freaks... for the moment. None of the croaking plant-zombies, mercifully. Likely all those had perished in NEST. All the same, he kept one eye on the ventilation shafts for the clawed ones with the tongues, just in case, and had no intention of getting too close to them. They had a distinctive scream at least, and were quick to give themselves away if they spotted prey. Primal beasts... somewhat predictable, except when it came time for them to lunge. Though with his luck that would mean he would be on their menu before he could do anything about it. They were fast, strong and savage... he remembered the short work they had made of the NEST staff, scientists and security alike. Once they got on top of you, you were pretty much fucked. He'd been careful never to let them get close enough.

Them and the reptile-like Hunters, freshly woken from their cryo pods. Set loose in the madness by Birkin. Another variety of freaks he hoped not to encounter. Nearly as much as he hoped not to encounter any more of Birkin's G offspring. Any in NEST would have perished... but the sewers were a big question mark.

His eyes lowered from the upper walkways and balconies the infected occupied and away from the ventilation shafts, then back down to the bridge over the treatment pool. Shrugging his aching shoulders with a grunt and popping the muscles there as well. Readying himself. It was too easy. A turkey shoot. No corners he could be ambushed from... everything directly ahead, and no out of sight areas he could be surprised at. He had to silently psyche himself up and remember that. They were all at a safe distance from him, at least... and had no means of attack from a distance. The day zombies could use guns or vehicles would be the day he hung up his gas mask and retired. Raising the MP5 to his shoulder, looking down through the infrared scope, settling on the former maintenance worker closest to the start of the bridge and aligning the shot, he squeezed the trigger once. The submachine gun kicked against his shoulder, the sharp echoing rapport echoed through the entire chamber, and the round tore through its head, spraying blood, bits of flesh and brain matter about around it. It moaned and collapsed forward over the side of the bridge, landing with a splash in the sewage water below. GHOST began to do the same to the rest of the infected workers and civilians around the area, one after another, cleaning house. Steadily clearing them a pathway to the monitor room. Holding his breath and squeezing as accurate of shots as possible. Not wanting to waste shots. No telling when or if he would find any more ammunition on the surface... and how many of them he would have to tangle with. He grunted every time he missed, a shot going wild, slamming into concrete and breaking it or sparking off metal. Even with training and a scope, head shots could be more difficult than one would think. It was no movie. Especially with how much they lurched about, always moving their heads and limbs. All of a sudden quite excited by his and the woman calling herself 'Ada's presence the moment they became aware... hungrily moaning and gurgling, shuffling down the bridge towards the walkway, intent on making their way around to their position to feast. Maybe her fresh blood in the air helped give them away as surely as the gunshots... though he wondered how they could smell it over the likely foul stench of shit. Not for the first time, he thanked QUARTERMASTER for the gas mask. There had been places down in NEST where the corpses had rotted awhile, leaving him unable to take it off until finding a good ventilation shaft.

"That's it... come to daddy..."

He wasn't about to let the sewer zombies get any closer than they were. They could be unpredictable... even as they were predictable in their stupidity. Even one of them could be damn dangerous, especially in cramped environments and other circumstances. Where you fought counted for a hell of a lot. Somehow... he had almost gotten used to them in the past days in NEST, since the outbreak. Even if this was only the first mission he had handled them in before. The woman aiming a gun at the back of his head had been the first living person he'd seen in days that felt like years. One after another they fell as his bullets struck them, shell casings flying around him and landing with a clinking sound, rolling on the grating and floor. Cursing in his father's tongue under his breath when some shots veered off course and sparked off railings or slammed into concrete, breaking chunks. Or slammed into torsos, spraying blood and torn clothing and knocking them back... but not down. Still, he refocused his efforts for their heads, and managed to make fairly short work of them. Some of their bloodied corpses littering the walkway, most of them falling over the side into the pool of sewage and floating on the surface. In spite of his confidence, how prepared he was... they scared him more than the pistol trained on him did. She was human, it had almost been welcome to see her, another human face... she could seemingly be negotiated with, or so he thought. Still needed him for some reason. They were inhuman... even while being infected humans. HUNK was insistent on calling such things 'infected' only... had been plainly and coolly irritated if anyone referred to them as zombies. But the plain fact was that these were fucking zombies, through and through. The rotting, living dead. Being infected by a virus didn't change what they were at the end of the day. Monsters. Ghouls. Dead things that should only have existed in horror movies... but didn't. Umbrella had seen to that. Bringing nightmares to life. Or a hideous, mocking imitation of life.

"Eat shit and die, freak!"

Somehow HUNK had been able to look at these things and see them as a normal, casual part of his life. A testament to how fucked up it must have been, and that a number of the stories about him must have been true. The rookie couldn't see how anyone could get used to this... and doubted it was a healthy sign if they had. But if the incident at Umbrella's Plant 57 in West Africa were true... these sewers of Raccoon City would have been a cakewalk for a man like the Alpha Team leader. Still... scared as he was, these things angered him more than they frightened him at the moment, had steadily irritated him more and more over the days of fighting and evading the horde that had been down below. He just wanted to get the hell out of here... and wasn't about to let any of them stand in his way. Freaks with no business or right even existing. GHOST mopped up the last of those zombies in his visual range from their position on the overlooking walkway near the train platform, before continuing down and around it, scope sweeping the area. Firing now and again at the heads of the fallen, stubborn corpses that insisted on not dying yet... exposure to the T-Virus made them more durable than they should have been, it seemed. Especially as the days went on, gradually mutating many of them further. Freaks that tried to crawl and reach towards him, gnashing their teeth, blood and saliva flowing from their maws. As well as targeting the others he had not been able to reach from his position. Showing no more quarter for them than they would for him, if they got into arm's length. The woman in the red dress did not pitch in during the fight, merely remained closely behind him, observing all the carnage in silence.

"And stay down..."

Reaching the start of the bridge together, him and the woman calling herself 'Ada' remained standing there... GHOST targeting and shooting the last of the zombies, blowing its head apart with the last bullets of the magazine. He ejected the spent magazine, hearing it clatter on the metal bridge at his combat boots, before fluently and rapidly securing a fresh one into place. At Rockfort Island they had been taught reloading quickly was of the essence. Every second counted on a battlefield, making use of them... every move had to be calculated. Complete situational awareness and combat readiness. Umbrella Security Service was the top private corporate military in the world for a reason... Lady Spencer had seen to that, with the brutal training regimes and tough as nails instructors and policies she had mandated. Top of the line weapons and equipment. How difficult it was to achieve full Special Agent status, and the high washout rate. Even with his best efforts, he and many others who graduated had only barely scraped through a pass. Especially in his case. He kept the submachine gun at his shoulder, even with all the visible zombies taken out of the equation. It was still an active, hostile battlefield... he would not lower his guard while standing on it. There were still the zombies on the higher up balconies, shuffling about those walkways leading elsewhere through the sewers... and there were still those ventilation shafts. He was prepared to deal with any of the rising corpses as well, or any that got too close. He and the other agents had been taught the basics of a blend of fighting styles... inspired in part by C.Q.B.Z... a cheap, cookie cutter imitation form at best of what War and Death had devised together... but a useful one nevertheless. GHOST had no doubt War and Death had never fully taught the fighting style to anyone else in its entire form. A secret, among many others, they had almost certainly shared together. GHOST wished he knew what it was, that fighting style of theirs... wished he could have got a glimpse at HUNK using it... but it was just as well. He preferred not letting any infected get close enough to grapple with anyways. If they did get close, he mostly focused on shoving or kicking them away, keeping them at a distance, and going for the coup de grace as quickly as possible. And even then, that was as a last resort. One mistake, one bite in the right place that his armor didn't resist, and he would be a goner. A fate worse than death, eventually, undeath, unless he put a bullet in his own head. Worse than that would be if one of the more mutated freaks managed to get to him... he would be a goner, against their enhanced strength.

He was content battling the zombies from afar. Especially the B.O.W.'s. Better safe than sorry. Grappling with monsters wasn't for any sane man... if indeed he had any sanity left. After what he had been putting up with, of late.

Drawing a muffled breath through the gas mask, he started across the bridge of the treatment pool with the red woman in tow, submachine gun at the ready. Roughly kicking aside a couple of the fallen, twitching bodies into the sewage water below, landing with a splash. One that fortunately didn't reach their height standing up on the bridge. They passed down the entirety of the bridge and turned around the corner, passing the bridge control panel and reaching the metal monitor room door, finding it already ajar. Drawing a breath, GHOST moved into and in the doorway slowly instead of bursting into the room. Stealth was a viable option, even against the freaks... one that had saved his life as many times or more so than his weapons had. Picking and choosing his fights. The sick, pulpy wet sound of a feast were underway within... as three former maintenance workers feasted on a fourth underneath them on the floor. Wet red mouths biting into flesh ravenously, soaking the fronts of their uniforms, lost in the blood lust of the T-Virus on their mutated, dead minds. Tearing the corpse apart, muscles, bone and entrails exposed. They had been at it for awhile, clearly. He had to resist the urge to gag at the sight... feeling her hand settle on his shoulder to brace herself when she got an eyeful of it as well... and he slowly looked over to the woman in red. At his side, her bruised face and sole exposed eye looked back at him, lined with revulsion... and she nodded almost imperceptibly. No words needed, sharing a momentary understanding, despite the tense situation and circumstances between them, about what needed to be done. She rose her burst pistol, and not in his direction this time. Just past him, sole eye peering down the sights. GHOST following her aim, looked back to the feasting maintenance workers, and took aim as well at the side of one of their heads, MP5 rising in both hands to his shoulder again.

"Dinnertime's over, assholes..."

GHOST muttered tersely, getting the head carefully in the red cross hairs of the scope, he squeezed the trigger and fired a burst through it. The rounds roared through the monitor room, tore out both sides of its head, and it collapsed heavily, slamming into concrete. It tumbled with a moan, blood spraying everywhere... and to GHOST's surprise the others feasting on the corpse didn't so much as look to the door at the noise... didn't rise to try to come down after them. Neither the sound of the shots or nearby dropping of the other infected alerting the other two. Feasting was all that mattered to them... sustenance they didn't need. They just kept right on eating... the rest of the world didn't exist to them. At his side, the woman calling herself Ada gripped on to him tighter, but did not join him in opening fire, instead lowering her pistol again with a shaky, blood stained hand, as though it suddenly weighed a ton... looking pained and disoriented... leaving the infected for him to mop up. Too weak to help out, he reckoned. Getting worse. She looked half out of it by now, despite her best efforts to keep it from showing... must have been close to passing out. Was holding on to and leaning against him. He silently took note of it, while at the same time GHOST shot down the other two as well, taking his time and dropping the infected in puddles of their own blood near the other corpses, collapsing noisily against the floor and twitching, before going still. At his side, her pistol moved again, though returned in the direction of his back, naturally. They stood there in silence for a long moment in the doorway of the monitor room, staring at the blood soaked, rotting corpses... before her carefully controlled voice spoke up again, her pistol rising again and pointing further into the room.

"The area is clear. Safety and holster your MP5... store all your weapons... in that storage container down there. Then drag these corpses outside. Throw them into the sewer pool. I don't need that smell of rot in here as well. And you wouldn't happen to have... another gas mask among all that equipment... would you?"

"No."

"Figured as much. Just not... my morning... is it? Go on... then."

GHOST's eyes within the intact and shattered red lenses followed her gesture down to the end of the room... where a television monitor sat on a desk, while just off to the side of it was a reasonably sized storage crate. Not the first container of its kind he had seen... there had been some down in NEST, as well as back at the Paris Facility. Even Rockfort Island. Umbrella must have been purchasing or producing them in bulk. GHOST had to bite his tongue not to shoot something back at her. Tempted to refuse to comply with being deprived of his God given right to bear arms. She was probably a commie broad, a spy for the CCP... with his luck. Instead, studying her deteriorating condition, certain it wouldn't be long, now... he silently nodded, complying for the moment, hitting the safety and slinging the MP5, moving into the monitor room. Passing around the four corpses within and heading down to the container. Reaching it, he popped it open audibly, looking inside to find it empty, and then began to store away his weaponry. As he did, he glanced down to his left to the only other part of the monitor room, to find an electronically and mechanically sealed metal door with a number of cables running into it... from six power boxes, three on each wall in the small area ahead. They looked like they had chess pieces of all things inserted into their slots. It was a damn weird town, GHOST knew. There had been puzzles of sorts to deal with on the way to the NEST, and once inside. The people in this city had a strange fascination with making things more complicated than they had to be. He'd heard the Mayor of Raccoon City was a crook on the Umbrella payroll, like the rest of its elected officials... maybe he was a kook as well, with a fascination for puzzles. Funneling tax payer money into creating them, instead of ordinary locking mechanisms. Nothing would surprise him.

Or more likely it was crazy old man Spencer... the true power who owned this city, before the outbreak. Reputed to be a real Howard Hughes type. The strange old bastard certainly seemed the likelier of the two... but he knew very little of Spencer. Few did, outside Umbrella's 'Inner Circle'. HUNK probably knew a fair bit... but GHOST doubted even he knew the full story. Lady Spencer would know, of course... and Colonel Vladimir likely would as well, these days, having gotten close to the old man, according to the rumors floating around Rockfort Island and the Leviathan.

He looked away from the panels, shaking his head, not envying whatever poor bastard probably had to scour the infected sewer or even the city looking for plug in chess pieces. He spotted another door off to the side of that generator area, and the sign denoting washrooms. About the last thing on his mind, in the present, still feeling the Chinese pistol aimed his way. When he had finished tucking away his weapons inside the container, finishing with the boot knife, he closed back up the container and turned around, raising his gloved hands to show he held no weapon. To find the blood stained woman calling herself 'Ada' had moved down to and taken one of the two seats at the small break table, getting off her by now trembling legs. Breathing slow, pained breaths. Even sicker than before. Her pistol still trained on him from where she was, gesturing him to come down to her. To tend to the bodies next. Wearily, ignoring the worsening throbbing in his temple, he moved down towards the former maintenance workers, boots tracking through the blood puddles. Reaching the corpses, he started with the mangled, torn up man they had been feeding upon, covered in bite marks, flesh torn out of his body, along with pieces of his maintenance uniform, like the other wore. He reached down and grabbed the corpse by its ankles with a grimace, and began to drag it towards the door. Its back sliding over the slick, bloodied concrete, staining it further. He grunted with exertion and annoyance within the mask... cursing under his breath. He hadn't had to drag around bodies down in NEST, had just left them where they were. But here he was now, playing undignified mortician for some crazy, blood soaked Asian spy chick with a gun in the middle of a probable zombie apocalypse. Yeah... life was swell alright. This was exactly what he had signed up with U.S.S. for. If only his father could see him now... he would be gloating about how right he had been... and it would be much deserved.

GHOST was no more than halfway to the door when its upper body lurched upright with an echoing moan, shocking him, freezing him in his tracks, heart all but bursting inside his body armor.

"Fuck!"

The corpse had merely been slumbering, even as it had been fed upon. It snarled and snapped bloody teeth at him savagely, struggling to try to rise, kicking at his grip on its legs, trying to break free to attack him. His heart seized in his chest as it moaned ravenously... half its face gone, but its brain intact, and dead eyes still seeing him, and torn off nose still smelling him. A rotting freak in a soiled, torn maintenance uniform that did not know death, innards exposed... and did know a hideous hunger. One it had for him. But before he could do anything more, engage in fight or flight, there was the powerful echoing rapport of a gunshot through the monitor room. A trio of rounds tore through the zombie, splattering its brains and blood against the floor and nearby wall, the rounds punching through the concrete and breaking off pieces of it... causing GHOST to curse again loudly through the gas mask and drop the body quickly on its back. Jolting backwards. As it twitched and died for real this time like the others, gurgling, he looked up and over towards the seat she had taken and remained in. Her burst pistol was risen higher, aimed with a by now quite steady, blood stained, fingerless leather glove clad right hand, the look in her eye peering down the sights cold and hard for an instant... until it faded away in front of him. Lowering her burst pistol again, though still aiming it at him with one hand, a faint, knowing smile returning through the pain, shrugging very slightly, nonchalantly. Speaking up again, with effort, keeping her pained, exhausted, yet oddly satisfied voice under control as it washed over him.

"Hmm. Good. I've still got it... a little of it, at least. Enough of it..."

"Holy shit. Guess you do..."

"You missed its brain. Thought it was far enough gone. Easy mistake to make, from the look of it, what they did to it... but a dangerous one. Even if you do shoot them in the head, between the skull, the durability of the mutations of the T-Virus... and simply unlucky shots... sometimes they survive head shots. Fall down... and rise again later, when your back is turned. Be sure not to make that error again. Confirm all your kills. Like you did on the bridge. Might not always be there... to bail you out... next time..."

"Uh... yeah. I'll try to remember that..."

"You're welcome.", Her smooth, silky voice assured him calmly in return. None of it having affected her overtly. Simply nodding once more towards the corpses. "You can get back to work now... agent. Haven't earned your coffee break... just yet."

He stared back at her in silence for a moment... hesitating. Wanting to argue with her... and call it a day... but that pistol wasn't going anywhere. She was good. Damn good. Had bullseyed it in the head from over where she sat across the room, one handed with a pistol. Even with her injuries, blood loss, shaking hand from before, and one eye seemingly out of commission. She had to be some kind of deadly spy... had infiltrated NEST... probably killed her fair share of monsters and people alike along the way. Kicked some ass. Again he relented, not about to disobey that look or that gun, despite the wish to. This time the shots had gone into a zombie... he would prefer they didn't end up in him, next time. Not about to give her a reason to. Instead gritting his teeth, he seized the thing's ankles again. Pulse balancing out again a bit. Dragging it towards the door, leaving a long trail of blood the entire way. Dragging it out on to the walkway towards the bridge over the pool. He didn't bother going all the way to it. Instead dragging it over close to the edge of the walkway and kicking it roughly with a grunt over the side, watching it splash and float in the sewer water below with the other corpses down there. One after another he did the same with the other infected corpses. Dragging bloody trails, leaving bloody boot prints behind back and forth. Again resisting the urge to gag in the proximity of the corpses, even with the smell mercifully kept at bay, filtered out. There was nothing right about this sort of work. Wasn't something he intended to make a habit of. He was an agent, not a cleaner. Finally, exerting himself, he threw the last corpse over the side, watching it float with the others a moment... then turned and didn't look back... returning to the monitor room and stepping back inside. The moment he did, her steady voice greeted him with yet another demand.

"Now... you may close and lock the door behind you. No need for any more uninvited guests. Right?"

"Right."

GHOST's muffled tone echoed stiffly, and looked back at her wearily again... the orders already growing tiresome. The expectations. From someone clearly not a superior. Still, he wasn't arguing with the gun just yet. Not to mention her display before on the infected. He didn't need a trio of rounds going in the direction of his helmet as well. And as she had kindly warned him before and demonstrated to him now, she made use of armor piercing rounds. He glanced at the broken concrete of the bloody section of wall, where the rounds had passed through the zombie's head. Blood and brains dripping down along it still. All his body armor would be for nothing in that case, despite how small the pistol was. He turned on the spot and closed the metal door behind them, spotting the lock on it and clicking it shut. Finally turning back to face the injured young woman in red and await her next command reluctantly.

"Very good. You follow orders well. A mandatory requirement of your profession of course. Of Umbrella. They don't tend to be the most... flexible employers. There are... advantages to doing freelance work instead... you know.",

The woman calling herself Ada spoke after a pause, with visible satisfaction in her battered, bloodied features. She gestured with the gun, beckoning for him to move deeper into the monitor room once more. He did so while holding up his hands, boots echoing through the room, and she spoke up as he did again.

"Oh... and you may speak candidly now, Agent GHOST. No reason to stand on ceremony with me. I am not Admiral Maxwell or SHIPMASTER. Or SENTINEL for that matter... you may lower your hands as well."

"Oh? May I, your highness?", The words burst out of GHOST's mask at once without waiting, lowering his gloved hands back to his sides. Heavy with sarcasm and derisiveness. Unable to help himself, with how disconcerted with the situation he was. How insane it had all become. "I'm honored to be given permission to speak by a half dead civvie in a cocktail dress. No, you ain't them, you're a hell of a lot worse, Princess. None of them pointed a gun at or kidnapped me."

"Yes, you may speak... but do be careful with that tongue... or I... might rescind that permission...", She warned him slowly, with just a hint of teasing. Red lips quirking a bit, in spite of the pain she was clearly holding back. Grappling with. Unperturbed with his irritation. "You did well so far though, for what it's worth. For a rookie."

"Did well? That's it? I smoked all those bastards for you, did your dirty work, the heavy lifting, and that's what I get?"

"Oh. But this is touching. Were you looking for a pat on the helmet... like a good dog after all? Consider my not having left you... to burn... my gratitude, Agent GHOST."

"Yet."

Her cool smile deepened at that terse retort, uttering another slight, appreciative titter of laughter, but saying no more on the matter. GHOST forced himself not to bite at the bait she offered, thinking up a few more cutting insults to shoot back her way... but deciding against it. There was no sense escalating it any further... testing how much she would indulge before pulling that trigger. He wasn't sure how thin the ice was that he was standing on, but he was in little hurry to find out one way or the other. He swore under his breath, repressing his resentment, and moved back deeper into the room, past the blood stains on the floor, avoiding them. He caught his reflection in the observation window in the monitor room... looking at his battered, tattered, stained body armor and uniform, worn down from the past days. Looked at his battle scared, dented helmet and broken lens on his mask, breathing silently through the mask. Studying the three jagged claw marks, deep scratches that ran down from the top of his helmet. Birkin's handiwork... literally... or the thing the crazy bastard had become, after infecting himself with his own virus. Batshit scientists. What he would give to get his hands around their collective neck. He should have emptied his entire magazine into the hysterical, corrupt bastard. All of this could have been avoided... instead of becoming what it had been. A fucking catastrophe he couldn't escape from. He looked beyond his own reflection and into the area the monitor room observed. It looked like a garbage containment room... a spacious chamber with all manner of trash and scrap metal, piles of it, dumped in from high above. And a sealed bulkhead door at the far end of the chamber. A security camera like the many around NEST and other areas of the sewer, visibly mounted above and off to the side of the bulkhead. He remembered the maps had included the locations of the cameras... and with remote EMP jamming devices, courtesy of QUARTERMASTER, they had taken them down remotely and temporarily. Made NEST security believe they were just malfunctioning, and turned them back on after they had passed the cameras by. It was probably where the filtered out garbage from the treatment pool room was taken after being dumped in the pool from the sewer pipes, to be compacted down, eroded with acids, perhaps.

He saw no stirring movement of zombies or mutations within the chamber... but doubted even if there were, they would have had any chance of getting out. Not in a concrete room with a sealed steel door. But at this point, he wouldn't put it past the monsters, or a new one to pop up that could do it.

Something like Birkin.

GHOST wondered if there were any more of that exact mutation... with the giant eye that had been forming on its shoulder. He repressed a shudder from the chill remembering that image gave to him. Hoping its offspring had not become exactly like that... if any of them remained. Then her calm, cool voice broke over his troubled thoughts.

"Come back down here and... take a seat. Beside me... GHOST. You've earned that break... now."

"That a request, an order, or a threat, your highness?"

"Whichever one does the job best... with you."

GHOST did not look back at her right away... rather he looked to his own reflection... and hers, somewhere behind him, sitting where she was. The woman in the red dress. She wasn't pointing the gun at him, for the moment... it was down at her lap, her good exposed eye studying him enigmatically. Jaw tightening within the mask, with a sigh, GHOST finally turned around to face her, looking at her a moment, and then obeying, crossing the room again. Moving to the seat across from hers that she indicated with a wave of her pistol. Reaching it, he settled down in the seat and took a low breath. Unable to deny it felt good to take a load off for a bit. His feet and legs were killing him... damn near everything was, at this point. He'd been up and moving for too damn long. He sat there with her, the minutes passing in silence... feeling her watching him. Waiting for her to speak and tell him what was going to happen next. But she didn't... she remained silent, considering something. A plan maybe... or whether or not the strange bloodied, bruised woman was just going to shoot him. When. Or maybe she was fully delirious, by now, the way the blood kept dripping from her. Maybe all he had to do was wait for her to die. Whatever the case, the silence started to concern him more than the idea of more zombies or freaks arriving... and finally, he broke it first.

"How long were you planning on us sitting here?", GHOST asked her at last wearily, glancing between the pistol in her lap, and back up to her exposed eye. "If you were planning on us leaving, let's go. I don't like doing nothing. Should be trying to escape, not holding up in a room. Good as it is to sit down."

"There's time... and it's safe here. I need... some of it. I've been better... if you hadn't noticed. We both have..."

"Yeah. No shit, lady. Look like you were hit by a truck."

"I should be... so lucky. You should see... the other girl. Not much better off... yourself. Look like... death."

"Tell me about it. Plenty of that going around, lately."

They fell back into that awkward silence for about another few minutes or so after that, neither one of them seemingly knowing what to say. Where to go from here. A silence in which she seemed to grow distant again... and GHOST didn't take his eyes off her or the gun. It didn't point at him again, but remained angled down in her lap that it could again with ease. Her intact, pained eye looked on, from him and around the monitor room... to the assorted monitors and equipment, machinery along some of the walls... though most of the sizable room was unoccupied. Plenty of space. He looked on, until settling his gaze over to the window overlooking the garbage chamber beyond. Finally, with a slight, pained breath, she forced herself to rise up to her heels. It was clear some vertigo nearly overtook her, made her stumble... GHOST started to rise to grab her before she hit the ground, reacting on instinct... but the pistol snapped back in his direction, keeping him where he was. Holding up his gloved hands slightly to assure her he hadn't been trying to make a move to kill her. Though why he hadn't been, he was uncertain, he realized. Maybe that was exactly what he should have been doing, before it was too late, and she killed him.

"Remain seated, Agent GHOST.", The red woman instructed him quietly as she remained standing, still a bit shaky. Forcing herself to remain standing, on those heels, recovering herself through sheer willpower. "Just need... my second wind. A few minutes. It'll all come back. What I have to do... where to go... just need to... think..."

"Yeah... you do that then. Don't let me stop you. I'll just sit here and wait for you to decide when you're going to blow my head off and keep moving without me."

"So pessimistic... embittered, for a rookie... is this how you all are straight from... Rockfort Island?"

"No. This is just me, straight from the NEST. Ain't pessimistic. Realistic, I'd say. About how much of a longshot getting out of here is. With good reason."

"Such as...?"

"If you hadn't noticed, I don't have the best luck."

"You're still alive... aren't you Agent GHOST?"

"More or less. Alive and in a world of shit. Literally, from where we're sitting."

"I can live with that. Been in bad places, before. Survived them. Learned there's still a chance for something better... as long as there is life... death is so final..."

"Get that from a Hallmark card? You're easy to please. Me... I'd settle for being thousands of fucking miles away from all this. With a stiff drink in hand."

Her red lips and bruised features smirked back at him grimly, looked as though she barely repressed a laugh... something appreciative there... and she shook her head, but said nothing. Instead she lowered the pistol off him and turned, moving down towards the observation windows. GHOST silently looked at the seat she had vacated... the fresh blood stains she had left all over it... and his eyes snapped back over to her at the observation windows. She looked down into the garbage room... or back at her own reflection. GHOST wasn't sure which. But she rose her free hand and touched the glass... smearing it too with her own blood. Then slowly, she turned back around to face him. For a moment he thought she would rise the gun again... instead she pressed back against the glass and wall... and slowly began to slide down it. Legs weakening beneath her, shaking and giving way... the blood on her back and shoulder smearing a trail down the wall with her. She leaned back against the wall, seated on the floor, legs crossed... looking weakly up and across at him for a moment. Eye dazed. A fear forming on her pale face that hadn't been there before... trembling in her hands. Something about the sudden weakness in her made GHOST's heart beat quicker. She didn't strike him as the sort to fear much... despite how little they had been around one another. Still, it was there, writ large in her features. The woman calling herself Ada closed her eye and slumped her head forward... going still. He heard her breaths... saw her chest moving... but she was weakened greatly. She had held on a long time, but couldn't keep it going. He hesitated for a minute, waiting for her to rouse again... look his way. But she didn't. Was it some kind of trick? To bait him into a false sense of security? For him to try to make his escape so she had an excuse to gun him down? Then again, would she need an excuse? Or was it the real deal? He gave it a bit more time, but she didn't stir, she remained as she was.

At last, GHOST slowly rose to his feet again, breathing through the mask, looking between the door and the storage container. Now was his chance, if ever there was one. She was dead or dying.

If he didn't move now, he might not get another opportunity to flee.

In a flash, GHOST made his way down to the storage container, popping it open, and began to stock up once more. Reslinging and tucking away all his weapons but keeping his MUP sidearm at the ready. Turning on his boot he marched hurriedly back down to her slumping, bloodied, unconscious figure, keeping his pistol trained on her just in case, and leaned over her, taking a look. Her burst pistol lay down at her side, hand no longer even on it... and without hesitation, GHOST seized his opportunity. Reaching down to her leather belt straps, he located and plucked the titanium encased Golgotha sample away from the pouch she'd stowed it away into, examining the bioweapon's ominously glowing purple contents a moment, before tucking it into the front of his battered armor with a satisfied nod. Relieved to have his life back in his own hands again. His future, with Umbrella. Secured and assured. But he didn't have time to gloat or congratulate himself, he needed to get moving, and get the hell out of here and the sewer. Back to Operation: NESTWRECKER. To the extraction point, outside the city limits through the sewers near Point K-12. Back to the Leviathan, somehow. Nothing had changed, this had only been an unexpected detour. An inconvenience... a strange one, of the many that had been plaguing him since the start of the mission. The last of them as far as he was concerned. He rose again away from her, turning for the door and going down towards it, in his mind's eye he already saw the treatment pools and walkways. Leading away to more danger... but to freedom as well. But before he could open and pass through the door and depart... he felt his hand freeze on the door's lock, preparing to draw it back... and he felt his boots lock into place on the floor. His mind going back to her injured figure laying helplessly behind him in the monitoring room. Bleeding away... with nobody in the world who knew or cared.

What the hell was he pausing for? Waiting on? She was dead or dying... and was some kind of corporate or government spy who had threatened to kill him... tried to kidnap him for unknown purposes. Who would have, as soon as she was done using him.

He'd seen enough spy and detective movies about femme fatales to know where this was going. Would have gone if he indulged her. How they worked. He wasn't James Bond, who would end up sleeping with her and converting her to Umbrella in the process. His prowess winning her over from whoever she worked for. Everything told him to leave, to abandon her to the fate she had made for herself. She wasn't his problem, had made one for him, and had likely brought it on herself, more than earned it by now. Lingering with someone like her was inevitable suicide, sooner or later. But... then he remembered something else that made him uncomfortable. The fact she hadn't simply shot him when she could have, back on the train. Thrown him out to the zombies. She'd had the drop on him... taken the virus from him... and someone as cold and ruthless as a spy would surely just shoot someone like him on the spot, wouldn't she? What use could he possibly have been to her... and what the hell had she meant comparing him to another 'rookie' and a 'consolation prize'? He felt his heartbeat quicken... and a conflict that he shouldn't have. A hesitation... the sort that got men in this life killed. Escape was so close... the walkways beckoned... all he had to do was head back to the surface... try to radio for NIGHTHAWK, and get the hell out of Raccoon City and back to the Leviathan. All would be forgiven, surely. This strange crazy woman meant nothing to him, nor him to her. Two strangers passing one another by in the night...morning, really, both happening to have the same mission, the G-Virus, and sharing the same escape route out of NEST.

But... she was also alone... in a T-Virus infested sewer. Bleeding out. He remembered his team dying... one by one, horribly... his own brush with Birkin. How much he had survived in all these days. And how much she must have survived to get to this point. It wasn't right... whatever else she was. She was a human being... one of God knew how few survivors that remained in the city. All of them suffering because of an outbreak he had caused in the first place, in shooting Birkin. In not finishing the job like he should have.

He should be abandoning her, or shooting her... putting her out of her misery or leaving her to it. HUNK would have done either without hesitation... even to someone better than the woman calling herself Ada. Someone he actually cared about... if there were any of those left in the world, after his old lady had abandoned him. The team leader was capable of doing whatever it took to accomplish the mission, get the job done, held himself to the highest standards, and had done the same of his men. No less had been expected of GHOST... but here he was... freezing up over a damn civilian who had tried to steal the only leverage he still held that could keep him alive after his monumental fuck up. That he could complete his mission with. He felt a weakness worse than any other he'd experienced in the past days, worse than the exhaustion. A guilt he should not have been feeling... telling him that this was seriously fucked up, just leaving her in this condition. Wasn't fair. Doing nothing for her. But why should she matter? What the hell should he feel guilty about here? Life wasn't fair for anyone, when it came down to it. All the same... he kept looking between her bleeding, unconcious form over against the wall, and his escape route ahead of him... so near... and so far... and felt like his insides were being pulled in half between the two clashing temptations.

At least until one of them won out over the other.

"Son of a bitch!"

GHOST cursed loudly at his guilty, hindering, self sabotaging conscience, muffled through his mask... but hard as he tried he could not will himself to take another step forward, to turn the lock and door handle. Frustrated with himself and with her. With his fate... the consequences of his stupid decision with Birkin. Now... another stupid decision apt to get him killed, even stupider than the one he'd made in NEST. At least there Birkin had given him little choice. Now he deliberately did a dumb thing. He could almost hear HUNK chewing him out again from here. He would quickly patch her up as best he could, make it quick, then leave her at least with a better chance. It wouldn't take too long if he hurried. It was more than she deserved, more than she ever would have done for him, if their positions were reversed... and at least he wouldn't be reduced to dragging her out with him. Carrying her around and doing all the hard work for her. Even if he took her back to the Leviathan, if she survived the trip, she would be interrogated, tortured and executed as a spy by the giant commie brute Colonel Vladimir or by HUNK... the Grim Reaper himself, or both of them. Or even sent to Rockfort Island for interrogation at the hands of the island's pompous, section eight, creepy little maricón Commander Ashford. Who would promptly turn her over to the concentration camp headed by his professional anatomist... that freak Dr Stoker, as he had so many other prisoners... Dr Death, and his torturous experiments. Probably the worst outcome of them all for her. A fate worse than death. Even potentially dying alone in a sewer was preferable to any of the Umbrella alternatives. And despite the way she'd threatened him, she had done nothing to his knowledge to deserve such a fate. He wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy... though Birkin would have probably deserved it, before meeting his own fitting, if costly, fate. Would have deserved whatever old man Spencer had been planning for him.

Slowly, he removed his hand from the lock again and turned back, keeping his pistol down at his side, gripping it tightly. Carefully moving back down to her on the floor below the observation window. He studied her silently from above a moment or two... before kneeling down reluctantly over the woman in the red dress. Grunting from the stiffness and pain of getting down on his knee, kneepad scraping on the concrete floor. Looking her over. Even now, he quickly saw that she was miraculously clinging to life... God knew how long she had been going like this. She was strong though, clearly, despite her deceptive appearance.

"Uh... hey, lady.", GHOST finally spoke reluctantly, feeling every bit as stupid as he surely was. Speaking to a woman clearly out of it. Trying to help her. "Earth to 'Ada'... are you conscious? You need to wake up. Talk to me, 'Wong'."

No response came... just slow breathing... and he lowered his pistol further... leaning in to get a better look at her. Gloved hand moving gently to her chin and tilting up her still, injured face. Somehow, in spite of it all, the plethora of bruises and other injuries... she was an unusually beautiful woman. Must have made her job easy, up until now. He wondered how many poor, dumb bastards had crossed her path before... and if he was merely the latest fool. Or at least one that might have been, had she not been so injured. Maybe. At least now she was in no position for such manipulations. To do much of anything. With a breath, he leaned in a bit closer as he examined her, looking down to her bleeding, bullet impacted shoulder with a grimace, and back to her pouches. Maybe she already had a First Aid Spray on her he could use... save his own equipment. He began opening up the pouches on her straps, examining them... finding little more than a few extended pistol magazines... apart from a makeup mirror... of all things to carry in an outbreak... she was a spy who used her looks alright. Or just vain... or both. And something else that drew his attention even more. A photograph... tucked away carefully inside one of the pouches. Removing it, he studied it closely beneath the overhead lights, eyes in the mask narrowing. The magnification of the camera's lense was zoomed in, or the subjects in it were standing close to it. There the young woman resided in it, wearing a red blouse from the look of it... looking happy, healthy and contented... and why shouldn't she be?

She wasn't alone in it.

"Who's this asshole?"

The agent muttered under his breath, studying the picture carefully... not recognizing the figure in it with her. A smiling, older, handsome man somewhere in his mid to late thirties from the look of him with short, brown hair, wearing a grey suit vest and white shirt stood with her, both his arms wrapped around her. It was sunny out, from the look of it... they stood together with a lush green forest backdrop behind them and blue skies above them. His eyes widened a bit within the gas mask... then he turned over the photograph to the back, to find some words scrawled in handwriting on it in a black marker.

John + Ada

Arklay Mountains

May 9th, 1998

GHOST studied the words for a moment, then turned the photo back again, looking to the man named John, then looked between the woman calling herself Ada in the photograph, and back to the real her in the present. Beaten, bleeding, shot and broken. Helpless. Was the man someone she had lost, in the outbreak? Someone waiting for her back home? He wasn't sure... she hadn't struck him as the type with anyone waiting for her at home. Or having a boyfriend. There was no visible ring on her exposed, injured left hand either... nor on her right hand, the exposed, bloodied fingers poking through her leather fingerless gloves. Either way, John must have been her previous fool. Some mark she had been manipulating to get her way, blissfully not even knowing she was a spy. That she had been using him, for whatever reason or mission. The Arklay Mountains... Umbrella's properties up there were known. Was this guy an employee? A scientist? He was certainly well dressed, as they all were. Was it Umbrella she had been infiltrating that far back, before all this? It would make sense, with her presence in the NEST. Why she had kept the photograph of her mark was another bewildering matter. Had she been searching for him? Showing the photo to people? Why else would she carry it? Jaw tightening within the mask, with a breath, he stowed the photograph back away in the pouch, closing it up again, along with the others. It wasn't his problem... whatever it was... though still, curiosity rankled at him a bit. He shook his head, and when he was done, he looked back at her again carefully. Looking between her, and down to the jewel-like red and black butterfly pendent upon her choker that glinted in the overhead light like a beacon, drawing in his gaze. Reaching forward, without thinking, his gloved finger made contact with the pendent... tracing along the wings.

But before he could reach back to unclip his medical bag and get to work, her eye had snapped open and she woke with a start, peering back at him with alarm his own eyes shared... and there was a flash of movement at his side. He saw and felt the barrel of her Chinese burst pistol press up against his chin from below, tilting it up... forcing his masked face to look back at her. His pulse raced in an instant in his chest and ears. Cold shock and numbness spreading. Despite all the pain and blood lining her features... her teeth were bared with exertion, eye turning frigid, incensed. Existing through sheer willpower, holding on to consciousness, pressing the pistol harder against him, finger on the trigger. Her voice lower and more terse, every word an effort, all the silkiness and charm of before evaporated from her, leaving only the ice.

"Not... dead... yet. Safety and stow the... sidearm. Give me... back...-"

"I put it back away already... I promise. Take it easy. I'm sorry... I didn't mean to...-"

"Bullshit. I see... it right there. Give me back... the fucking sample. Now..."

The sample. Of course. How fucking stupid could one man be, in forgetting about something like it... and her obvious priorities?

GHOST had not even thought to disarm her either... it was standard procedure... but he had thought she was too far gone, too out of it... had underestimated her, even in her condition. He resisted the urge to curse himself out... instead finding other weary, defeated words. Submitting yet again to her, as he had at the train. Such a pathetic excuse for an agent that he was proving to be. Had they gotten out after the mishap with Birkin, he remembered HUNK telling him on the way out of NEST, back to the sewers, that he was finished with Alpha Team. Would be transferred to another unit to be someone else's headache, or shipped back to Rockfort Island for mandatory retraining and advanced training. That he'd have GHOST scrubbing every U.S.S. barracks for Agent Raval back at the Loire Village facility and Paris Facility alike with a toothbrush. While he was living the high life up in that castle plowing his Countess and God knew how many other glamorous women, no doubt. Were there an Alpha Team left to kick him off, anyways. Even then, he knew he would have been getting off lightly, compared to the alternative. The same treatment he'd given Birkin, no doubt. He couldn't imagine what Death's old lady, Lady Spencer, would have done to him, based on her reputation and that of her father... but she had been before his time with the company.

Right now, he would take scrubbing those barracks over the position he found himself in. Yet HUNK had never threatened to have him kicked out of the U.S.S. Likely because there was no retirement plan once you became a U.S.S. Agent... short of an execution or death in the field. U.S.S. was not an official paramilitary for most of the public to see, the way the U.B.C.S. and other branches were. All the corporations had an official paramilitary for the world to see... and a not so public one... there were many other corporate counterparts of the U.B.C.S. and U.S.S. alike. They undertook clandestine, criminal operations. U.S.S. Agents existed, and they did not exist at the same time, an open secret. Their kind knew too much, saw too much of Umbrella's dirty laundry to be trusted to go back to the civilian life. There was no leaving the life in one piece, they were in it to the end. He hadn't even known that going in, hadn't thought about it. Served him right for not reading the fine print when he had signed up. Not caring for it... wholly buying the company's pitch at face value. Letting his hero worship blind him. Now look where it had gotten him... falling for the propaganda. The shiny surface. Not thinking things through was going to get him killed, sooner or later... and at present, he was betting on sooner.

Staring back at that cold eye... he felt that barrel of the burst pistol press harder against him, ready to spray his brains all over the inside of his helmet and over the ceiling. This was going to require a deft hand... not something he was well known for. But when a man was looking back into the face of his own mortality... not only did his life flash before his eyes... but he had a way of getting creative in a damn hurry. Improvising. Finding the angles and working them.

"Great. Talk about Spy vs. Spy. Fine... you got me red handed. Take it back. It's all yours. Can't blame a guy for trying."

GHOST's quiet, muffled voice muttered bitterly at last, complying, turning on the safety and slipping the MUP back into its holster. Then carefully retrieving the G-Virus sample again, looking to the titanium encased sample, that purple glow of the bioweapon through the clear section, and then back up to her cold, hard eye. A face he wasn't about to disagree with, just now, with her pistol where it was. Slowly slipping the sample back into its original spot within one of her strap's pouches, securing it. Looking back at her pale, bloodied, bruised visage again, jaw tightening. Looking down to the fresh blood running from her shoulder. The bullet wound. Maybe... that was his chance to get out of this. To try to talk his way out of it. Barter for his life. To make himself useful to her, keep her from pulling the trigger. It was a risk... but still... nothing ventured, nothing gained. He hadn't survived this long to go out without trying, unlikely as it was to succeed. It had been just as unlikely he would even emerge from NEST again... and here he still was. Still with a chance. Swallowing, his muffled voice spoke up again, feeling the pistol against him with each word.

"But unless I do something about that gunshot wound... you won't live long enough to deliver it. Wherever you're going. You still need me... alive. To get you there. I'm going to move my hands. I'm not going for a weapon. I'm going to help you. So kindly don't blow my goddamn head off... yet, at least."

The red woman did not speak, merely stared back at his lens and exposed eye in silence, listening, but giving no overt indication one way or the other. He wasn't even sure if she could hear him anymore, or understand. He took the fact she hadn't pulled the trigger as her permission to go ahead. With the pistol still poking hard under his chin, GHOST drew his fingers back from the pendant on her choker, and reached back into his medical bag, unclipping it and setting it down on the floor between them. Popping it open, rummaging around within and withdrawing the First Aid Spray there and bringing it out, all without taking his eyes off hers. He leaned closer to her, aiming the nozzle at the sizable wound on her shoulder. He began to lightly spray it, the cool liquid making contact with her wound, causing her to hiss with sudden momentary pain. When she recovered from the shock her furrowed eye looked back up at him, pistol pressing harder... bewilderment slipping into her icy features and voice.

"What the... hell are you... doing?"

"What the fuck does it look like I'm doing, lady? Trying to stop the bleeding. Hold still. Otherwise, pull the trigger already. Then we can both die. Probably be doing me a favor, at this point."

For a split moment after saying it, he thought she would call his sarcastic, irritated bluff... squeeze the trigger, that he had overplayed his hand... but she didn't. Instead she remained silent and still, obeying him, to his silent surprise and relief. It was actually working. She remained still, save her breaths, though she worked to get even those under control. Watching the bottle as it sprayed her... keeping the stinging pain it must have caused from showing again. She was silent for a long moment, before slowly speaking again as he worked away.

"Concern... for me?", Her low, stunned voice murmured with the same confusion etched in her bruised features. Keeping the pistol pressed against him all the while... but her finger leaving the trigger, moving it close to the side instead. Another good sign that encouraged him, one step closer to safety. She looked into his exposed eye set within the gas mask's shattered red lens, as though trying to make some sense of him. Figure him out... like she stared at some anomaly. "Shouldn't you be waiting for me to die? Hoping for it... so you can just steal back the sample... and run off? Back to your Umbrella masters? Or maybe... until I'm too weak to hold this pistol... so you can kill me yourself?"

Satisfied he had properly sprayed her gunshot wound, he turned his attention to her face. To the cuts there. Carefully reaching up and brushing aside some of her hair to expose the wounds. Slash wounds, cuts... some around her right eye that had swollen up and were puffy. He doubted she could see anything through it as it was. He got to work again, spraying very lightly at each of the wounds, rubbing it into her bruised, swollen flesh. She winced as it made contact, but remained brave, even as she was clearly afraid. Something told him she didn't frighten easily... but these circumstances were different for her. She wasn't used to being vulnerable. Counting on someone. And certainly not in the middle of a monster infested war zone. Nobody got used to such circumstances... nobody not codenamed HUNK, of course. At last he found his voice again, muttering bitterly through the mask, speaking aloud to her as much as his own thoughts. Trying to project a confidence he didn't feel.

"Yeah, maybe I should have just shot you while you were down and took off... to complete the mission. HUNK would have... but I'm not him. Already regretting that about now... but here I am. Don't make me regret it further. You're bleeding out slowly. You kept me alive for a reason. That's why you brought me up here with you. You need my help. We both know it. You won't make it a foot outside that door otherwise. You know about Umbrella Security Service... so you know we agents are all trained to have a good deal of medical knowledge. Carry the necessary supplies for it. For most injuries in the field that can be treated or stabilized. You knew I was your meal ticket out of here."

"Was that... why I did it?", The young woman asked quietly, more to herself than to him, dazed, before releasing a tired, bitter chuckle. Her intact eye visibly considering it. Drawing another quiet breath, summoning the effort to speak some more. "Maybe it was. Don't even know... when I'm manipulating men... anymore. Using them. Just do it. Comes natural. That's how bad I'm getting. Maybe you know me... better than I do myself. Better than he knew me... anyways..."

"He? Who?"

"A 'might have been'. A crossroads. I've stood at... many of those. Remember them all..."

"Fine. Keep spouting the cryptic bullshit. Comes with the spy territory, I guess. Femme fatales and their secrets especially. But for the record, just now, lover boy ain't here, whoever he is. You're stuck with me. All you've got, like it or not. Better start dealing with that fact."

GHOST muttered dismissively with a derisive shake of his helmeted head, the image of the chump in the photograph with her returning to mind, distracting him. A trace of irritation touching him as he pushed it aside, focusing on getting back to work... eyes following all the deep ugly bruises, running his fingers along them. She visibly continued to hold back her pain, breathing slowly, fighting. He couldn't imagine what she had been through... but there were no bites on her, at least, or visible symptoms of T-Virus infection. Somehow even in her getup she'd managed to avoid it... fought her way through the zombies and God knew what else. Armed only with the pistol pressed to him, it seemed. Unless she'd lost, burned through or thrown away other weapons along the way. Surely she needed better hardware than a pistol to make it this far. His weapons along the way were the only reason he had survived ground zero... apart from luck, and possible divine intervention. He couldn't explain it any other way. Surviving Birkin... evading him... surviving the Pandora's Box of horrors they had both opened together in that laboratory. A nightmare... surreal and twisted, made reality. He didn't want to think about it, even knowing it would never leave his head. Yet his curiosity of her continued to bother him, even during their silence, even with her holding his life in her hands... as he held hers. For some reason, he couldn't help himself but to ask her. Wanted to know. Deserved it frankly, for what he was putting up with on her account.

"Look... what happened to you, lady? How did you end up like this? Can you give me straight answer on that, at least?"

The woman in red studied him for a time at that... as though she saw beyond the mask. Or looked back at her own reflection in his intact lens. The gun loosened against his throat a bit, but remained there. He thought she wasn't going to answer, pursing her red lips, but she gradually found her words. Willing herself to speak, each word visibly taking effort, and a toll, thinking back to her painful recent past, clearly.

"The crazy Birkin bitch. She shot me... on our... on my way out. While I was distracted. By then... I was tired of it all... my mission. What I... what I had to do. Was expected of me, despite... my wishes. I couldn't... go through with it. I really wanted to escape... escape from everything. The bridge broke apart under me... after the self destruction sequence... was activated. I... fell. Took a dive down... NEST's central chasm..."

She went silent... leaving GHOST to consider it. Annette Birkin, Birkin's wife... she must have been who the spy was talking about. They hadn't run into her or her daughter during their time at NEST, or in the course of Operation: NESTWRECKER. The woman was equally culpable for all this and more as her husband... had been experimenting on children out of Umbrella'a Raccoon Orphanage, apparently. But they had not been under orders to bring her in as they had intended to do with Birkin. Perhaps old man Spencer had hoped to use Birkin as leverage against his wife, promote her to the head of NEST. Gain her obedience or her husband would die. Or maybe the sick old man had just wanted to bring Birkin in to torture him to death... put him to work in a lab for the rest of his short life. Considering what he'd almost certainly done to his old partner Marcus, among others, if half the stories about the crazy old bastard were true. Even Spencer's own daughter and heiress had turned her back on him in 94', the word was... but he hadn't been about to ask HUNK about the truth about all that. About Lady Spencer. Nobody asked HUNK about her... at least nobody who didn't have a death wish, to be carried out by the U.S.S. Grim Reaper. If there was a single weak point the legend himself had, it was that one. Her. Still... many of them wondered. He thought back, remembered the layout of NEST, after they had breached the facility... remembered first seeing the impressive central chasm the woman in red spoke of... and paused in his inspection, looking slowly back to her intact and swollen eyes again. Startled by what she was claiming, considering and questioning it at once.

"I've been in there. Took the central elevator up. Saw the facility core and the height of that chasm. How the hell did you survive that drop? Manage to grab a pipe, vent or ledge? Air duct? Break your fall on the way down? Shift your momentum?"

"I don't know. Don't remember. Just remember falling. And pain.", She murmured quietly, slowly shaking her head... a distant, troubled look touching her eye. Memory, perhaps... and for some reason, he believed her. Something about her tone. Pain beyond the physical. "That's the truth. I don't know how... but I did. I woke up down there, somewhere in the dark. Could still stand... still move. I'm here. Survived... long enough to bleed out in this... room, maybe. Only fitting... I suppose. Dying in a sewer. Better than I deserve. Or maybe I did die in NEST already... and I'm just dreaming this... as I go..."

She trailed off again with a sad, pained smile, eye teary... and going silent once more. Looking back at her... considering what she told him, the agent found he couldn't help feeling a pang of sympathy for her... even as he felt foolish about it. Maybe she was manipulating him, with a dramatic sounding sob story. Convincing acting. Crocodile tears. Or maybe it was genuine. The truth was, GHOST didn't know. Maybe she didn't either. He half wanted to help her and was half kicking himself for not leaving when he'd had the chance. Not shooting her. That part had been genuine, at least... she hadn't been pretending when she'd passed out, and would have died without his intervention. Might still even with it... he didn't know. She had made the choice to intervene and allow him to leave NEST with her... he had intervened here in this room, and was now up to his neck in danger because of it. Whatever the case... he was locked in now... and not merely because of that gun pressed up against him. He knew he wasn't strong enough to walk out that door again and leave her here. Leave her for dead. Another casualty of his and Birkin's actions. Another victim. How... why... HUNK had ever cleared him to join Alpha Team, he was starting to wonder. How he'd ever been considered to have the makings of a U.S.S. Agent. His own father had been right about him all along... had been right to want to keep him out of U.S.S... if not right about wanting him to follow in his footsteps. As an employee, he knew best of all what GHOST had been getting into... but GHOST hadn't listened. Had swallowed the hype and propaganda of the company. He was still just a kid, playing at being a secret agent... because he had thought it would be cool. Fun. Hadn't been ready for this shit, even with the intense training. Didn't have what it took.

Well... maybe that was so... but he supposed it really didn't matter now. He was still alive. He intended to make the most of that while it remained the case. He had not made it this far for nothing, would not let it be all for nothing. This was exactly where he was supposed to be... this strange woman in a red dress was who he was supposed to meet. To... help.

And down here in the darkness and grime was where he deserved to be anyways.

"Not going to let that happen.", GHOST replied tersely, resolved to his course of action. For better or worse. And he had a good idea which of the two was more likely the case. "So get that gun out of my face already. I don't enjoy helping someone under a death threat. Coercion defeats the purpose of helping. Remain silent and still until I say something, and let me work in peace. Or die without treatment. I don't care which."

A lie. He did care... for God knew what reason, or he wouldn't still be here, at her side, putting effort into her... and she almost certainly saw through it. But he said it for the sake of maintaining his own dignity all the same. For a moment he expected her to speak... or to press the gun against him even tighter. Instead her eye searched his... and her red lipstick covered pair smiled just a little deeper, appreciatively. He felt the pistol retract from his neck and saw it lower down to her lap, relenting at last. Ready for use, but not in his way. Breathing a bit easier, he got back to work, examining the gunshot wound, checking her collar and shoulder. It would have been better if there was an exit wound, a clean shot... but from what he could determine she had still lucked out. Relatively, anyways. Maybe enough to make a difference... and keep her alive. Still, he remained as careful as possible, double checking before making his full medical assessment. At last, when he was finished, he nodded to himself. Satisfied with the appraisal. Turning his tired, heavy eyes back to her own even more exhausted, pained pair. Muffled tone through the mask washing over her.

"You're a lucky woman."

"Do I... look lucky?"

"The bullet didn't hit any arteries... could have been better, but it also could have been worse. So yeah. Pretty fucking lucky. I need to get it out of you. You can't keep walking around like this. Losing blood. That I don't got in my medical bag to replace."

"Can you... do it? Down here... with your current equipment?"

His jaw tightened within the mask at the quiet, steady question, hesitating at it for a long moment. Glancing away from her watchful eye. He had been trained for it, yes... a good deal of training. But the fact was he had never done it in the field before, not under these conditions and without excess supplies or assistance. He had just enough to do it... but all the same... all it took was one mistake and he might botch it. The alternative was to patch her up as much as he could... maybe a safer option, but only if they could get her to an actual doctor and surgeon quickly. And... as it were, they couldn't. It was just the two of them, such as they were, holed up in an infested sewer, beneath an even more infested city. So much for sanitary conditions. Finally, he forced himself to meet her stare and nod and to answer her. An idea coming to mind, remembering his radio, despite the damage it had possibly sustained. Maybe now it could get a better signal than had been possible down in the NEST... improve her odds a bit, with some outside expertise. Some help.

"I think so... if you want me to, I'll make the attempt. I better try my radio again to call up Doctor Radames though, to be on the safe side. Part of Alpha Team's support team, a medical professional, among other fields of expertise. She can walk me through the the process, just to be sure I won't-..."

The Broom Hc burst pistol snapped up again in a flash at that, pressing against his throat. He rose his hands up slightly, heart beating quicker at the suddenness of it, coiling dread... but he fought to keep it in check. Mind racing, looking back at her now cold eye. A killer, if he'd ever seen one. This was clearly a woman who insisted on having control, being in control, whatever the circumstances. Even when she seemed ready to be lowering her guard a bit, a self defense switch inside her could be flipped in an instant... and it seemed he had accidentally nudged it with his suggestion. It gave her energy and life, before his very eyes. When she spoke, there was a trace of coolness in her voice to match her eye, mixed with the exhaustion and pain. Steel. Resolve. Forcing the words out with effort... though managing to keep her hand on the pistol quite steady. Steady enough.

"No. She won't. You will make no contact with Umbrella Security Service. You died in the NEST, remember, agent? With everyone else. With me. If you can remove it... do it here and now. If you can't... do what you can. Patch it up thoroughly. I can get it removed by a professional... later. I have... many contacts, for the necessities of my field..."

It occurred to GHOST that maybe he should just patch her up in a haphazard manner, let her bleed out slowly. Suffer more and die on her own. That gun being on his neck again told him to do it. Anger and spite returning to him for her. Patching her up shoddily was more than she deserved. He didn't deserve this treatment, had put up with enough shit as a rookie on Rockfort Island and the haughtiness of the scientists and administrators at the Paris Facility. Looking down their noses at him. He didn't deserve to put up with her bullshit as well. He probably should have left her for dead. But something in her eye told him otherwise. That palpable trace of fear, behind the anger and control. She didn't want him to go... to leave and abandon her. To be alone, he realized. However much she wasn't liable to admit it. Or maybe he was delirious himself, imagining it... even dreaming all this. He sure as hell hoped he was. He must have been delirious to feel sympathy for this woman. Casually threatening him with death at every opportunity. Kidnapping him... stealing his future with Umbrella, in taking that sample. HUNK would have simply shot her and moved on with his mission... and here he was instead down in a sewer playing doctor for what was evidently a rival corporate or government spy. Whatever the case... if he was going to do it, he would do it the right way or not at all. Not half ass it. He had been trained for a reason. To be among the best. He would do his best... even here and now, for her of all people. Whether she appreciated it or not. He wasn't holding his breath on that front.

Finally, he slowly set down the First Aid Spray bottle, moved a hand down to his medical bag beside her, withdrew his surgical clamps, and the right implements. Preparing them. As he did so, her eye tracked his hands, breathing again slowly, while he spoke up.

"I'll remove it. You'll just keep bleeding all over, otherwise. Bleed out, go into shock before you get to one of your contacts. Attract those monsters, with my luck.", GHOST muttered resentfully, breathing a low sigh. At his agreement, the pistol moved off his neck again, at least, back down to her lap. Though for how long was anyone's guess. "You'll want to take one of those leather straps you're wearing and bite down on it. Won't bullshit you. This is going to hurt."

"Figured as much. Been shot... before. Had it removed... without sedatives. Do you have some painkillers in that medical bag of yours? HUNK never carried them. Didn't want to be doped up if injured. Wanted his mind straight at all times on the battlefield. Always did things the hard way. Doesn't mean the rest of us have to."

"Is there any other way for a hardass? Yeah... right here, hold on a second... should help a bit."

"Any day now, GHOST."

The U.S.S. Agent rummaged around inside the medical bag again... at last finding the rattling pill container within, unscrewing the top for her and handing them over. She took it at once, pouring a few pills into the palm of her hand. As he reached for his canteen, she tilted her head back and dropped the pills down her throat, swallowing them all down in one go, breathing a low breath. His gloved hand retracted from the apparently unnecessary canteen, reaching down and taking back the container with a nod, screwing the cap on and stowing it back in the bag. A tired, muffled laugh emerging from his gas mask, in spite of himself, unable to resist a comment as he looked back at her.

"Damn. No water first? Look out, we got a hardcore badass up in here."

"Shut up. Give me a little bit... of time. Let them kick in... before you start."

"Fine. You were shot before, you said? Well... you're gonna have a few more scars in your collection."

"Comes with the territory. Unavoidable. Doesn't matter how good you might be. Not a career for the faint of heart..."

"Yeah. Noticed. Got a few back on Rockfort Island. Instructors there don't fuck around. Would take all of them over these freaks, now."

"You can expect more and worse... in this life, agent. Espionage. It's not nearly as glamorous as it seems... sometimes..."

"Wouldn't know. I'm not exactly the kind of spy who dresses up fancy, seduces folks and attends parties, lady. Probably more your domain than mine. I'm the nameless, faceless, gas masked corporate henchman from the movies with a low survival rate. Expendable... and I'm not even wearing red."

"Well. For a henchman, with such a low survival rate... here you still are."

"So I am. Aim to keep it that way. Time's up on the pills. Now, do as I said, with the strap. Doctor's orders."

She looked at him for a moment, and to the medical instruments... and at last she nodded. Reaching up slowly and loosening one of her straps, drawing it over to her mouth and biting down upon it. Not taking her eye off him all the while... breathing slowly through her nose. Trusting him. Counting on him to do it right. GHOST felt a weight settling on his shoulder, heart beating quicker... and coiling dread, in spite of how calm he'd kept his voice. He was scared shitless, he acknowledged silently. Probably more so than she was. He forced himself to look away from her, turn his attention to her bleeding shoulder, taking up the forceps, while his other hand gripped her arm, holding it steady. Tears trickled from each of her eyes and down over her cheeks as he worked away, in spite of her silence. She could repress the great pain impressively, but her body could not. This was clearly a woman who was reaching her impressive limits. Needed a helping hand... and that happened to be him. Focusing harder. The pills seemed to have kicked in and were helping her, at least. Likely she would be screaming otherwise. Not the most comforting thought... but better than nothing. Throughout the procedure, he remembered his medical training on Rockfort Island, from the actual professionals... the steps, forced himself to think about each, to recall their voices, and tune out the rest of the world, even her. He wished she had let him call Doctor Radames... she could have calmly walked him through it herself, made all this stress much less so. All he could count on now was himself, now and the training back on the island. And hope not to fuck it up too badly. He put his odds at fifty fifty. And that was being generous. A little at a time he worked carefully while she bled, as her teeth gripped the leather tighter, grunting... and he made himself not look at her bruised, partially swollen, tear streaked face. He knew it didn't take him very long... but each moment felt an eon. Feeling beads of sweat form on his brow and trickle down his face as he worked. Until...eventually... in what seemed like a miracle, he was able to grip and withdraw the stained round from her bloody shoulder. Breathing a sigh of relief through his mask as he did so, heart still racing in his chest, as if it were him the bullet had been pulled out of. In the chaos of NEST, it was a wonder he hadn't gotten himself shot up like her, by the panicked NEST security.

It was done, at least... the worst of it was behind her... but by no means was it all over.

"Alright. It's finally out.", GHOST assured himself as much as her quietly, looking down to the dripping round between the clamps, turning it over a bit. At last, he forced himself to look at her, seeing her pained grimace with the leather strap remaining between her teeth. Looking between the round and her and making himself feign amusement with the messed up, stressful situation. "Want to keep it? Could make a nice souvenir... when you get out of here. Memento."

"Already... got one.", Her muffled voice murmured through the leather strap, looking between him and the bullet. Shaking her head very slightly. Managing to gradually regain her breathing. "Throw the goddamn thing."

"Yeah. Thought so."

GHOST studied the blood stained bullet a moment longer, before casually flicking it backwards over his shoulder. Hearing it bounce and come to a rolling stop somewhere upon the concrete floor. She spat out the leather strap at last, wincing, eyes remaining watery, but visibly gathering herself, closing them tightly. Then he looked back down and over to his medical bag and began to tuck away the bloodied implements. Reaching within and recovering the rest of the items he needed. Surgical stapling gun, military grade bandages and a packet of red, green and yellow mixed herbs. Given her state, he knew she could use the extra boost the yellow herb addition was said to provide. Doctor Radames was a big proponent of herbs being part of their medical kits... though from what he had heard it had been War's idea originally when she had founded Umbrella Security Service for her father. Had created the first U.S.S. Agents. They had saved many agents lives over the years, along with many lives in general. The world famous, much sought after herbs in the Arklay Mountains... before Umbrella had taken to also growing them in various other Umbrella territories around the world, Spencer's lands up there where they had been discovered. Or created. GHOST wasn't sure which, what with Umbrella's facilities up in the mountains. They had done their fair share in growing Umbrella's renown in the medical field, increasing revenue, revolutionizing the medical industry, in conjunction with all Umbrella's other medical breakthroughs. As much or more so than the more recent creation of the First Aid Sprays, the special healing properties and chemicals of it. He was no scientist like the many who worked for Umbrella... didn't know all the details, but couldn't deny the results. Umbrella made good products... whatever else came with the territory. Between the herbs, painkillers, the bandages, stitches and First Aid Spray, this spy calling herself "Ada" stood a fighting chance of recovery, perhaps. But it was still too soon to tell. After bringing it all out, setting most of it beside the spray bottle, he took up the surgical stapling gun in his bloodied gloves. Looking back to her bruised face again, her watchful gaze with a nod of his helmeted head.

"Now... hold still, the bullet's out, but you're not out of the woods yet. Need to stitch you up, treat and bandage you still. You'll probably want to bite down on that strap again."

"You didn't... strike me as the kinky sort, GHOST. Not even going... to say please to a lady... first?"

GHOST started to speak, but stopped, feeling himself instantly flustered for some reason. A warmth in his face and back of his neck that had nothing to do with the mask or uniform. Suddenly quite at a loss for words. She did not laugh, but there was something gloating in her eye, she smiled tiredly and did as she was bidden. Biting down upon the strap again, and nodding for him to get started. GHOST recovered his wits and obeyed at last, raising the First Aid Spray first and spraying along her shoulder some more, over the wound. Pain flickered in her eye, the sting most likely, and she bit down hard. Then he reached for the sizable packet of mixed herbs and began sprinkling a good amount of them over the wound carefully. Green, red and yellow ground up herbs, all adhering to the stickiness of the blood. When he had he set the packet back in the bag and gripped her shoulder again, keeping it where it was, he finally rose the surgical stapling gun in the other hand. Pressing it to the bloodied flesh. Not meeting her eye, he squeezed the trigger. She started at the sudden pain, biting down harder... but released no sound from her mouth. Though breathed harder through her nose. He glanced at her silently, apologetic, then examined the first stitch in her flesh, before aligning the gun again and continuing.

One after another he began stitching up the entirety of the wound. It went rather quickly and well, all things considered... just what it had been designed for. So even someone like him could operate it. When he got to the last stitch he checked the stapling cartridge... nearly out, but he had backups, in case he ever needed them. He set aside the stapling gun next to the bag and took up the military bandages, getting to work with them. Carefully wrapping them around her shoulder, over her wound and around her midsection, binding it firmly and tightly. She released a pained sound when he adjusted them more securely, fresh tears remaining visible in her intact and injured eye... but apart from that remaining as she was. When he had finished with her shoulder, he turned his attention to the fresh wounds on her right ankle... fortunately stitches didn't prove necessary he was certain, settling for spraying, more mixed herbs and wrapping it in bandages. This was the easier part, the gunshot had been the worst of it... and as he did this spot she kept the strap in her mouth as a precaution, still watching him work.

Next he did the same to her left wrist and hand and further up on her left bicep, treating and securing them in bandages carefully. Moving back her watch, bracelets and glowing green NEST visitor ID Wristband so the bandages wouldn't cover them, then sliding them back down into place after. Then he turned his attention to the bleeding, deep gash on her side, parting the torn material of her dress slightly, enough to take up the stapling gun again and press it to her rib cage, glancing at her apologetically... as she braced herself. Nodding when she was ready for him. He steadily closed up the long wound... rapidly but carefully, before repeating his technique of spray, herbs and a bandage. Setting down the stapling gun again, lastly he turned his attention to her cut forehead and swollen over, cut right eye. He repeated again what he had done with the spray, herbs and bandages, wrapping one around her head, beneath her hair, while her good left eye stared at him unblinkingly, watching him, making him uncomfortable, but still he went on. Knowing his life depended upon it. He carefully covered over her swollen right eye with the bandages as well, before tying them off securely... and leaning back to inspect her, setting the roll and bottle on the floor next to the bag. He had nearly gone through the entire roll, but like everything else there were spares in the bag. The U.S.S. cut no corners, no expense was spared by old man Spencer for the best. She looked over her bandaged form when he was finished as he did the same. In that moment she barely resembled the brutalized, bleeding out young woman who had ambushed him in the train... looking a bit more like a mummy in a revealing red dress and black stockings. The absurd thought and image nearly made him laugh, but he knew better with that pistol resting against her lap, and held his tongue.

Instead settling for a satisfied nod, breathing deeply through the mask.

"There. Done all I can. You just need some rest, now. To take it easy."

The woman in red calling herself 'Ada' looked back at his intact red lens and the broken one for a moment. Then back down to her own body. To the wounds he had treated. For a moment he thought she was going to comply... close her eye and rest... but she didn't. Slowly, she shook her head instead, keeping her hand on the pistol in her lap, even as she lowered it off him.

"No. Not yet.", The woman murmured at last, looking back his way again. Drawing a low, steadying breath, she reached for his medical supplies, including the roll of bandages. Eye settling on his tattered uniform at certain spots... raising a hand and tracing her fingers over it. "Let me... return the favor, first. Come closer. You're... hurt too."

GHOST hesitated at that, looking between the bandages she held and to her... another wave of her gun was all the encouragement he needed. She was insistent. With a muffled sigh, he drew in closer to her, watching as she took up the bandages and began to press them to him, wrapping them about. None of this was going to take away his pain, which was within instead of on the surface like her wounds. Part of him wanted to stop her, telling her it was stupid. But she was probably delirious by now... wouldn't even listen to him if he tried, so he let her have her fun. Humored her. God knew how quickly she might snap up that sidearm again if he didn't. Besides, waste of bandages or not, he had more in the bag if they needed them. And perhaps the bandages would be useful to help keep his torn uniform braced and together, at least. It was reasonably close to falling apart as it were, from the wear and tear it had seen since everything went to hell at NEST. It was telling of QUARTERMASTER's talents that it hadn't entirely fallen apart yet. Eventually, she finished bandaging up the tattered sections of his uniform and body armor... he looked down to find, embarrassingly, himself looking nearly as bandaged up as she was before long. Part of him wondered if she was really trying to help him in her own way... or take revenge for making her look like a mummy. Either way, whatever her intent, she wore a slight satisfied smile on her bruised face, hands retracting from him at last.

"Not much... but it's something..."

"Uh... yeah. It's certainly something. Thanks. I think. I'll just go take a seat... over in that chair... let me know if you need something..."

"No. You aren't."

"Huh?"

"Get down here. Next to me. You're not going anywhere. I'm cold."

"No shit, in that getup. Ever consider investing in a good coat?"

"I did, as a matter of fact. Lent it to another smart mouthed rookie. Never got it back."

"Major drag. Not going to make me store my weapons away again, first? So I can't fight back?"

"No. I don't think so. Might want to put them on the floor... though. Doesn't look too comfortable to lean against."

"Same could be said about the concrete. Don't look too cozy."

"Better concrete to rest on than that fiery tomb we got out of. Now, sit your U.S.S. ass down. No more arguing."

GHOST looked to the spot next to her on the concrete floor, which she patted lightly with her bandaged hand, the other still on her sidearm. Despite his unease with the situation, her request... command, really, GHOST was too tired to fight her, and the headache was only worsening by now. Instead he nodded his helmeted head and complied, taking the seat, unslinging his submachine gun and grenade launcher and setting them down off to the side, though keeping his knife and sidearm where they were. Pressing his back against the same wall she was. Uttering a low breath at the aching and throbbing in his muscles. In spite of everything, he couldn't deny it felt damn good to take a load off again. To relax. As much as one could with an armed half crazy femme fatale at one's side, in a sewer within a city infested by zombies and monsters. Still... he was exhausted... felt his exhaustion worsening, deepening. Tired in body and mind. Even with his weapons... drawing any of them was the last thing on his mind. Fighting. Either her or anything. He had been doing little more than fighting for days. Struggling. Barely getting any sleep in the relatively safe spots he had found in NEST. Afraid to be eaten alive in his sleep. And what little sleep he had that wasn't disturbed by the sounds of the freaks throughout the Umbrella facility, the screams and gunfire of surviving employees, or the RED QUEEN's grating, accented voice on the loudspeakers, was plagued by nightmares. He couldn't keep it up indefinitely. He wasn't HUNK, devoid of flaws and more machine than man. He had limits the infamous Mr Death did not. And just now... he knew he had reached them, just as she had reached hers. It all caught up with him. His eyelids grew heavier, blinking slowly... and nearly closing altogether, when her voice spoke up again tiredly at his side, laughing bitterly to herself. Forcing them open again. Her dryly amused words seemingly as much aimed at herself as at him, and he looked back over her way as she spoke.

"All this blood loss... sure I'm not hallucinating you, agent? Just laying here, dying... talking to myself? Conjured you up... as company? Make me feel like I've been... saved?"

"Think I'm an imaginary friend, huh?

"Something like that... even your codename is fitting... GHOST. Though it's a hell of a form you've taken... if so. Not sure where it came from... in my psyche... or why. Maybe my mind is trying to tell me something..."

"Maybe. Well... either way... my name isn't Agent Durden. Was looking forward to that damn movie adaptation too... but at this point, I wish you were hallucinating. Was starting to wonder if I was doing the same of you. You're the one who appeared right out of the fucking blue. I'm real... more than I wish I were, right now."

"Figures. God... I turned out to be such a... damsel in distress... didn't I? Don't know how I let it all come to this..."

"Bet you kicked your fair amount of ass to make it this far. Like me. It's not over yet. Might still get another chance to shine."

GHOST muttered back slowly, the words coming to him for some reason, the impulse to offer some comfort before he could stifle it... glancing over her way slowly. She didn't look at him at that moment, merely stared ahead with that one exposed eye, smiling bitterly in her contemplation, whatever she pondered. Slowly shaking her head, while he looked away from the red woman and back ahead. Offering some more reassurance.

"I'd like to see what you can do... when we get out of here. When we encounter more zombies and mutant freaks. Little as I want to see them again..."

From the corner of his perceptions, he saw her turn her head slightly. Watching him in silence for a long moment, considering him. When she did not look away... he willed himself not to look back at her, to play it cool and aloof. Everything he wasn't... until she spoke again.

"Oh... so it's we now? Already?", Her amused, coy voice returned a touch silkily. Speaking as she had earlier, aboard the train. The pain momentarily lapsing away, under her control. "My. But you do move quickly, don't you, Agent GHOST? A tad presumptive, even... for a hell of a first date..."

"Pffft. First date. More presumptive than an armed kidnapping? That how you get your dates? Yeah. 'We'. Assuming you don't execute me at some point. While I sleep. I'm exhausted. Probably more than you. Couldn't stop you... if I tried."

"Hmm. We'll see. I'll have to think about it..."

"You... do that. Least I wouldn't have to put up with you... anymore. Still... just remember I'm all that's keeping you alive. All you've got. Do it, and we're both dead as a door nail."

"So confident in yourself... for a rookie. A high appraisal of your worth. Not sure if the arrogance is endearing... or worrisome..."

"Ain't arrogance. U.S.S. Agent, Nikita. Even if I'm a rookie, doesn't change our training. What I had to survive. Be glad I wasn't some inept U.B.C.S. merc. Will actually be of some use to you... especially in a fight..."

"Suppose that is some silver lining. Colonel Vladimir sent in four platoons of them from the Leviathan to the city, you know... on the 25th. To rescue civilians and put down the horde of infected that spread. While the army and U.S.S. set up the Quarantine Zone... while you and the others were down here underground."

"U.S.S. and the U.S. Army are working together? Really?"

"Yes. SHIPMASTER is ferrying the Leviathan's agents, air support and resources to the Quarantine Zone. Joint operation, run by him and Colonel Trautmann. Coordinating with the U.I.D. as well. Shooting down, flamethrowering and blowing up anything and anyone trying to get out of the city. Infected or otherwise. U.S.S. even brought some of the high tech experimental weapons. The ones specialized for B.O.W.'s. They have every road and path out of the city surrounded and sealed off. Barricades, walls, machine gun towers with spotlights, rocket launchers as support, helicopters patrolling the skies... Humvees and APCs, tank support, boats patrolling the Circular River... everything, really. City's locked down tighter than Fort Knox... with us inside it."

"Jesus... I have been out of the loop...", GHOST muttered under his breath... all of a sudden a bit more awake than before, in spite of himself. Throbbing in his skull worsening just hearing it. But curiosity not abated. Now he knew if he had tried to escape on his own, if NIGHTHAWK was unable to extract him, chances were he would have been gunned down and burned if he had tried fleeing the city on foot. Umbrella or not. How they were going to get out... he hadn't the faintest idea. But was too tired to push it, much. "Do you have any good news?"

"We're still alive?"

"Yeah. Truly amazing. I missed out on a lot... too much. Been down here too damn long. Over a fucking week, by now..."

"Yes."

"And? What else? How did it go for the mercs that commie prick sent to the city?"

"How do you think it went, agent?"

Her tone was silky and amused again, releasing another slight laugh... oddly pleased with his summary of Vladimir, perhaps... and GHOST considered her words in silence for a moment. Before releasing a short, involuntary laugh through the mask as well, unable to help himself. It figured... those two bit mercenary thugs who thought themselves competition for the U.S.S. Interservice rivalry... yeah right. Maybe with the Elites and Monitors, but not the rank and file mercs that giant Soviet bastard scraped out of prisons or got out of death sentences... only to promptly send them on a suicide mission anyways. Criminals, psychos and unprofessionals. Just like their boss. He didn't understand why old man Spencer had allowed the Colonel to join the company, to form his own paramilitary faction, as he had allowed his daughter to. To rise as high in the ranks as he had. Did he consider the Russian to be like a son he never had, or something? The Colonel was certainly fanatical about serving the old man... at least according to some stories. A sycophantic type, probably grateful for being given the chance to kill again, a purpose he'd lost with the Soviet Union. To him, every day with Umbrella must have been Afghanistan to him. Like everything else though, it was all too high above GHOST's paygrade... so he moved things on to where they were inevitably headed.

"Thanks... needed a good laugh. Figures. Four platoons of them and they still couldn't do shit. Romero and Biohazard movies all over again... always an incompetent military, and unstoppable civilians."

"Wouldn't know. Not into 'zombie movies'. So... if you say so, GHOST."

"I do. Now... let's just shut the hell up... and get some sleep. This headache is starting to kill me..."

"I am tired as well... to say the least.", The woman calling herself Ada returned slowly, pursing her full lips. Slipping into contemplation again. Looking between him and the door of the monitoring room. "But what if more infected arrive? These sewers are vast... and infested. Even if this area is secure... for now."

"Door's closed and locked... pretty sure we'll hear them coming. That moaning and banging on the door. Ain't exactly subtle. I'll throw their rotting asses down into the sewage pool... with the others. Waking me up early... tends to put me in a bad mood anyways..."

"Enjoy my beauty sleep too, tough guy. And if it's any mutations? B.O.W.'s? Tyrants, for that matter? Going to wrestle with them too?"

"Well. I don't think either of us would be in much shape to do much about it. I can always blow us up with my grenade launcher, if that works for you. We wouldn't feel a damn thing... and maybe take the bastards with us..."

"Heh. Eternal optimist. Maybe you're not half bad... after all... for a rookie."

"Flattery... will get you everywhere... Nikita."

"I'll keep that in mind. Usually does work on men. Especially unappreciated ones. And Nikita? You imagining me after some movie spy?"

"Remind me of her. Though if you're her... would that make HUNK Victor The Cleaner?"

"Is that creepy Undertaker Commander... still with Umbrella?"

"Yeah. He was skulking around the Leviathan, last I saw, on the way here. Always wears that voice modulating mask... a getup similar to a Battle Suit. Spends lots of time down in the cryogenic hold for his B.O.W.'s. Probably doting on and cooing over them like a father. Those short, weird monkey sounding things with gas masks and uniforms, help him in his mop up operations. Made to dissolve when they die. Cleaners who clean themselves up. And can carry and use guns... parachutes. Take commands from him. Freaky shit. SHIPMASTER keeps them under lock and key, at least. No fan of the bioweapons aspect of Umbrella... can't say he was wrong, under the circumstances."

"I've met him before. Worked with him in Bosnia... in 95'. Him, HUNK and Silver Wolf. His Undertaker Unit as well. Taking care of a good deal of dirty laundry, there. Seen the way he operates. There is something quite... wrong... about him. Good as he is at what he does. Never took his mask off either... was worse than HUNK in that regard. I'd say if anyone is like 'The Cleaner' from your movie... it's him. Briefcase of acids, dragging around corpses by the ankles and melting them in bath tubs without batting an eye, and all."

"So you did watch it too."

"I do try to live a little, in my down time. Hit and miss success rate, there..."

"Interesting. Have to tell me more, sometime..."

"We'll see. So... why U.S.S, rookie? What makes a young man join up with that outfit? More of a veterans thing. People with experience."

"Well... as far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster. U.S.S. Agent status is basically the same thing. Like being a made man. Just more modern. Wanted to be a spy too, so it was two birds with one stone. Lucky me, huh?"

"Funny." She laughed at that, in spite of herself. "Seriously, though. Why U.S.S.?"

"Wasn't a joke. I'm not Italian, so I could never move up the ranks. Get made. Real greaseball shit. Not the case with the U.S.S, and becoming an agent. Anyone can try to go for it... long as you pass the high standards. Survive the training. High washout rate... like Delta Force. Not many women make it through... Lady Spencer was a regular Iron Lady type, didn't buy into that weak Feminist or politically correct shit when she set the standards and training regimes... no affirmative action to be found at Umbrella... so the few who do pass are pretty badass. But... there was more to it than that."

"Such as what?"

"Stories, from my old man, and his coworkers. About what U.S.S. got up to around the world. Umbrella's reach, and private military. Seemed cooler than the conventional armed forces, joining up with the U.S. Army. Especially the stories about War and Death. Times they saw the two, and some of their accomplishments. It got me interested. Umbrella and corporations are the future anyways. Corporate warfare. One of my dad's friends at the company put me in touch with the recruiters. Now here I am. Stupid me... didn't think their stories left out a good deal, though... that's for sure. Like fucking zombies and monsters. Think I understand now why it pissed my old man off so much, my joining up. But... they made a hell of an offer, and it sounded good."

"I see. Well for what comfort it is, you're far from the first to get into something like this with rose colored glasses. Jump in, and have the rug pulled out on you. Reality rarely matches a dream... or propaganda."

"No kidding."

"When did you first encounter him?"

GHOST thought back to then, at her prompting, the images and sounds of the island returning. Years that felt like another lifetime ago. Hell... for him, it had been.

"Couple years back, I saw him when I was a trainee. He was on Rockfort Island doing some advanced training. For the Tyrant Program, apparently. Came there on a private jet, dressed in an awesome black suit, white shirt and red tie... with that sexy blonde French woman of his. The Comtesse, Director Henri, in a red dress. Along with a bunch of Umbrella scientists and Colonel Vladimir. At Ashford's B.O.W. training facility. Top secret though... the containers holding the Tyrants were brought in the night before, while most of the island was asleep. Never got a look at them. At any of it. We recruits weren't allowed to go in and watch, tried to pick up what information we could. Still, should have seen the look on the Colonel's and scientists faces after it was over, and HUNK came back out alive, not a scratch on him. That blonde on his arm. Ashford singing his praises. Real gangster shit. Nobody fucks with him or looks at him the wrong way. Saw it back at the Paris Facility as well, and on the Leviathan. Walking down the halls, everyone getting right the hell out of his way and bending over backwards to acknowledge him. Commanding respect and fear alike. Attraction even, should have seen the way the secretary girls and other female employees look at and talk about him. Flirt with him. Well... at him. He barely acknowledges most of them. Too cool for that shit. Wouldn't mind having that myself. So... not all the propaganda was wrong, now that I think about it. We grunts would have given our own arms to have watched that fight."

"I see. HUNK has many gullible young fans... it is not hard to see why. Though he is no fan of them. Basically a one man recruiter without trying or wanting to be. Didn't get a choice in it. He's as much corporate property as he is an asset. An unofficial mascot. Couldn't imagine living like that. Might be why he's so uptight. Thankfully I still have my relative anonymity... am not sought after."

"Yeah. Ashford clearly had the hots for him, that day I saw him on the island... was looking at him the same way Director Henri was... so it can't all be fun, being him. SENTINEL calls him 'golden boy' though... and not in a friendly sort of way. Think they were friends, once. Or at least on good terms. Did some work together."

"They were. Made a hell of a team, too. But friendships and partnerships rarely last, in this business. Times and people change."

"Well, I'm sure you'd know. I wouldn't. Just a figment of your imagination, remember? Not really here."

"Heh. Right. I just hope... that you are real... been alone... most of my life... lives. I'd rather not be... in my death... or undeath..."

"Well... you ain't now. For whatever that's worth. I'll be here when you wake. And you're not going to die. Besides... these don't seem to be entirely Romero zombies. Where if you die from anything you come back a zombie. So... even if you bleed out in the middle of the night... least I won't have to wake up in bed with a zombie chick..."

GHOST reassured her wearily, at last closing his heavy eyelids within the mask slowly, feeling himself begin to relax. As much as he could under the circumstances. Until, moments later, he heard a slight movement beside him, a sliding across the floor. And he opened his eyes to find her red, black and and white form pressing against his body armor... her pistol tucked away safely at last in its holster. Not aimed at him. Both of her pale arms intertwining around his body, holding him tight. His eyes widened with alarm, suddenly quite awake, pulse quickening, at the sudden, unexpected contact from her. He remained still as a statue against the wall, frozen, startled as she leaned into him, laying her head on his chest and getting comfortable there. As though she were an injured cat, curling up on him. She took and rose up his motionless arm and draped it around her bare back, encouraging him to hold her as she was him. He caught sight of the goosebumps along her arms... the occasional shivers against him, and understood. Not the least bit surprised, between their surroundings, her dress and her wounds. Her exposed, relaxed brown gaze rose to his one within the damaged mask, and the slight enticing smirk touched her full, red lips again.

"Shush. Not a word. Remain silent and stay warm... and I might... consider keeping you, Agent GHOST. Now hold me. Let's just lay here awhile... see what happens..."

The U.S.S. Agent's gloved hand remained hovering just over her waist... clenching and unclenching. Reluctant. But her eye did not leave his... and finally when he saw she was determined, he acquiesced, hand slowly settling and closing on her waist... and at last he merely nodded back at her, understanding. Her smile lingered, something appreciative to it, and she slowly closed her eye, breathing more relaxedly. Heart beating quicker within his armor, still uncertain with this bizarre situation. Surreal, beyond all words. All of it was something out of a movie... between the zombies, mutant freaks and her... and even himself working for... or having worked for... an evil mega corporation, for that matter. It was all surreal... a blur of memories and conflicted feelings, what had happened to get him to this point. Still... to have a sexy femme fatale spy pressing up close to him in a dress like Nikita? Though a red one, in her case. He wasn't about to turn that away anytime soon. She might have been bad news... of course she was... but how could the situation possibly get any worse than it currently was? Especially in a godforsaken sewer... and considering the likelihood neither of them were getting out of here alive anyways. Out of the city. Their poor fortunes to this point. However remote, maybe there was a small chance with her. Maybe. He tried not to imagine the surface... what must be lurking in wait for them up there. The sewers and NEST, ground zero, were bad enough... but NEST had been cleansed... as had this particular area of the sewer network. Raccoon City had not. It had spread... mutated most likely... the G and T-Viruses escaping into the world and worsening. There was no guarantee it hadn't spread beyond Raccoon City already... for all they knew the apocalypse waited for them up there, spreading in a tidal wave of death over the country.

Maybe even infected people boarding planes and travelling all over the world. Little as he wanted to ponder a zombie and mutant freak apocalypse, a full blown global pandemic of the T-Virus. Chills ran down his spine at the thought all the same. That he had doomed the world. Either way, the military and Umbrella must be up to their neck in it by now, doing all they could to prevent it. To clean up his mess for him.

The truth was... GHOST was afraid. Had never been more afraid and almost certainly never would be. And likely so was she, regardless of their differences and experiences, to be latching to him the way she was. If this was his last night... or morning on earth... GHOST didn't want to spend it alone. Didn't want to die alone. It had been too long since he'd last had human contact... and she seemed to have yearnings of her own. There was only them, now... and they were stuck together. He would take the comfort he could from whichever woman's arms that were holding him. Regardless of the intent of the one they belonged to. If she was going to be using him... he would use her right back. Fair was fair. Screw John... whoever and wherever the hell he was. This broad clearly wasn't loyal to him... and there was no reason for GHOST to be either. He didn't even know the sap. And for all he knew the guy was dead, and there was an apocalypse raging above them on the surface. His arms slowly wrapped around her as well, at last, of his own accord, and he leaned in close, holding her as tightly as she was him... closing his eyes again. The exhaustion setting in again, and replacing the surprise. He listened to her breaths and his own... sensing her drifting off first... peacefully... and once she had, he allowed himself to do the same gradually. His mind grew distant and hazy... relaxed, as it hadn't been in a very long time. Like slipping into a bath. Her grip around him helping... knowing he wasn't alone any longer.

It felt... nice. However long that feeling lasted. Not having to look over his shoulder either. He was grateful to her, right now... to have run into her... even if he couldn't tell her that. Even if he shouldn't be feeling this way, he did. He couldn't remember the last time he'd shared something like an embrace. He'd never even... been with a woman... that way. Hell of a state for a man to die in. Still, somehow, it felt like this was where he was supposed to be. In spite of it all... the circumstances. Not aboard the Leviathan in his quarters... or in the barracks at Paris, Loire Village or at Rockfort Island. Here... now... with her. The world was strange like that... or maybe he was just a romantic fool... staying to help her, when he could have fled. Likely he had doomed himself already, that helping her had all been for nothing.

It didn't matter now, he supposed. What was done was done. Now he had to live or die with the consequences. With his choices. There was a strange peace and contentment to be found in that resignation... giving in to fate instead of struggling, as he had been for the past days. Even if it meant being fate's fool.

As he lapsed towards sleep in her arms, he prayed to God the sights and images of the past days wouldn't follow him. Everything he had somehow managed to survive. He deserved a peaceful rest, for a change... not for them to chase him again down into his slumber and turn his troubled mind to towards nightmares.

Wasn't it enough that the world had already become one?

---

GHOST you dunce, she was talking about Leon, your good guy counterpart, not Doctor John Clemens lol. I quite enjoy writing him, less uptight, younger and more sarcastic than HUNK. Not as smart or professional either. I had to write him basically with '"How would this young man on his first mission be after surviving the hell of NEST?" In mind. There would be a night and day difference between how I portray him now and how I would write him when Operation: NESTWRECKER began. Much happened between the two times for him, character development, with more of it to come here with Ada. This thorough chapter was about plot, character introduction, interaction and development over action, getting a feel for our two 'heroes', who they are and where they are at. Two people at the end of their rope taking shelter and much needed rest and recovery. Imagine you are Ada or GHOST at the end of RE 2, all they went through... I'd say they've earned it. Like Their Last Escape I like to build up to the action, restrain it to make it have more impact when it happens.

Well, they haven't killed one another yet at least. That's saying something. Not the worst start. Hell of a first date, huh? We'll see if things improve. More to come, friends, thanks for your patience, shouldn't take me as long to do the next chapter, where things get going. Stick around ;).