Part Two: The Bitch in the Red Dress
A woman without a key.
A key without a lock.
Two bound souls looking for freedom.
Helsinki -2009
The echo of gunfire chased her into the cold room. Ada slid against the wall as she slapped the door shut and wedged it with the desk beside her. She very nearly swallowed her heart at the voice that joined her in the shimmering dark.
"...well...you're fucked."
She spun, the gun came up and was caught in a fist and jerked from her grip, and a hand grabbed her throat and thrust her against the wall as it was her own weapon was used to push against her ribs. "Ease down. It's me."
Me.
Me?
Her eyes tried to make sense of his face in the dark as she wondered, "...Leon!?"
"...seemingly. You expecting someone else?"
Her hand on the taser secured to her thigh slid away as she whispered, "What the hell are you doing here?"
His snort was quiet as the men outside rushed around trying to find the intruder. "...I imagine the same thing you were, but with less of a mess. What the hell did you do?"
Ada hissed, "Someone triggered the silent alarm."
His breath tickled her ear as he leaned in close, "Yeah? Not as good as you think you are then."
Ada curled her hands into his vest and growled, "It wasn't me, you jackass. You come alone?"
"Lately, doll face, I always come alone."
Ada rolled her eyes and returned, "Somebody screwed me."
The second she said it, she wished she could get it back as he answered, "...well...that actually was me."
She shoved him away as the noises died beyond the door. "Focus on what matters here. Who knew? Besides us...who knew?"
The shared data between them over their naughty night together had obviously gathered them both at this little obscure lab to grab onto a sample of the prototype mutagen that the missing Alex Wesker was rumored to have stored here.
So far, it was just a lot of danger and not a lot of reward.
They studied each other as their eyes adjusted in the dark. She was in black and outfitted with a vest and the occasional flicker of knives. No red dress, no seduction, no games - this was a woman on a mission. Leon shifted in his own tactical gear and returned, "No one. I'm here on my own time - furlough- and off the grid."
She sighed, "Damnit...me too. Ok.." The noises picked up again as the men kept shouting about intruders, "We need to get out of here. Let's pool our knowledge and make it count."
Nodding, Leon mused, "I scaled the western wall and came in through the courtyard."
Ada, impressed, told him, "I submerged and entered through the lower level water reservoir."
There was a quiet moment before he suggested, "So what if we go right out the front door?"
Surprised, she turned her head over her shoulder as he clarified, "They're gonna be hitting all the major hubs of escape right? They'll leave one guy guarding the main gate at most. Hell, they might leave it totally unstaffed checking the egress points that seem more obscure. If I can set off some false alarms..."
Ada finished, impressed, "We can walk right out without a battle."
"Exactly." He opened the communicator on his watch and filled the dark with silver light, "I'm gonna hack into the main security and trigger some alarms in the compound."
Ada moved to the desktop on the darkened console, "Give me five minutes and I can do it faster."
"Yeah?"
"...yep."
Leon shrugged, "Game on."
She started typing furiously, he tapped his watch and stuck something in his ear. Ada saw him slide on glasses and lift his hands. With awe, she speculated, "...you wily bastard. You have access to the VR being beta tested at the Pentagon?"
"Nope. Just playing Tetris." He quipped and the gloves on his hands lit up at the finger tips as he visually navigated the security in the lab.
Amused, Ada keyed in the first alarm. The world flashed red and white, the footsteps rushed past the door, and Leon told her, "Second and third ones should go off in a waterfall effect in about eight minutes."
She told him, "Release the locks on the main hallway."
"Already done." His hands lowered.
Ada watched him pocket the glasses and mused, "...you know I'm going to be taking that off you before we're done right?"
Leon smirked, "Give it your best shot, sweetheart."
He eased open their escape door and gestured her out with his head. They moved quickly and efficiently, slipping through shadows, and avoiding detection as they crossed the long corridor toward the main gate. When two men hurried by with guns, Ada tucked him into a corner with her and covered his mouth with her hand.
Eyes twinkling, he waited until she lifted her hand and wondered, "You think I was gonna shriek in fear and ruin our cover?"
Her mouth twitched as she stepped away from him and hurried toward the expansive lobby. They cleared as they ran, covering balcony and main level in sweeping turns. Ada pushed open the heavy doors and Leon joined her in the courtyard. Lights flashed and swirled around them. The guard towers had their spotlights aimed over on the eastern side as more alarms began to blare.
They hurried toward the main road and one landed on them. There was a shout, Ada grabbed his vest from behind and warned him, "Grab on."
"What?"
"Grab me."
One of his hands grabbed her vest, the other grabbed her ass, and she hit the trigger on the grapple gun as heavy artillery fire ripped up dirt and grass at their feet. They were jerked up and away, flipped over the barbed wire fence abroad, and landed in the thick marsh on the other side. They split, started running, and Ada called softly, "...I said grab me...not grab my ass."
"...I'm a man of opportunity, doll face. It's what I do."
She laughed. He snorted. And they hit the heavy line of forest and kept on going.
After about an hour of picking through the forest, Ada let her guard down enough to tell him, "I think someone might be playing us both."
He stepped up beside her, lifting an arm to bat away low hanging branches so they could slip through a narrow passage of heavily gnarled trees, "How so?"
"The mutagen should have been there...the only way it wasn't was if someone knew we were looking and led us on a wild goose chase."
"Hmm."
Ada sighed as she lifted her phone to key in some data, "...I'm not usually wrong. The damn thing should have been there."
After a long moment, Leon finally admitted, "...it was."
Her gaze shifted from her phone to his face. His smile lifted and he told her, "...I have it. I got to it before you did."
She lowered her phone to stare at him, "...you what?"
"I got it. I have the mutagen. You want it?"
Her lips pursed, "...what do you want?"
He shrugged and started through the trees again, "I've had it. There's nothing you can bargain with now, sweetheart. Been there; done...well...that."
Ada rolled her eyes. She started after him, musing, "I can have a vaccine produced before anyone in Washington...you know that. It's not personal, Leon, it's business. Let me help you...and you help me. Whatever you think, it doesn't have to be more than that."
He paused, he turned back to face her, and remarked, "You really believe that?"
She shrugged, "You made it personal, remember? You grabbed me. You threw me down. You had your way with me. You made it personal. Now you want to...what? Punish me because I didn't feel the same way about it? You wanna punish me, when you know I can get an inoculation in the works so much faster than you can, because I don't love you back?"
The humor on him shivered, "...nobody said a damn thing about love, Ada. I think you're overestimating yourself."
She flicked her gaze over him, "Am I? That's what you want right? You want me to love you? You want to be my lover?"
She took a single step forward, "You can be my lover, Leon. I enjoy you. I think we have chemistry. We can do that...but I think you want something I can't give you. I think you want love in a way that wouldn't suit either of us at the end of the day. Don't make a stupid decision because your feelings are hurt."
He started to say something snarky and angry and the red dot on her forehead had him springing forward instead. She tried to back off and he tackled her, taking them both down as the tree where she'd been exploded in a scatter shot of bark and boom. Ada clutched him, he rolled left with her against him, and threw them both into the cover of the filthy swamp.
They sunk into the murky water as more bullets lit the top of the mossy mess above them. When he handed her a heavy reed, Ada used it like a snorkel and poked it above the water as they kept submerged and started moving. They sounds of pursuit were lost more and more as they went. They both felt the movement of things in the swamp with them and kept pushing on.
Ada was really hoping there wasn't an alligator waiting to eat her face off on the other side. As she emerged from the filthy dregs of stagnant stench, Leon remarked from the shore, "Sorry about the hard tackle back there."
She turned her head to look at him as she brushed moss and moldy water off her face. "...don't be. I'd be either dead or in their custody if you hadn't...so..." The quiet stretched out before he looked down as he cleaned the filth off his weapon.
And she added, softly, "...thank you."
Surprised, his gaze flicked up to her face and she was already looking away into the dying day. "I don't have a clue how close they are. I think we need to make a break for the safe house I have in place beyond the pines over there."
Curious, Leon narrowed his gaze, "What kind of safehouse is it?"
She smirked, "The kind where you don't die and nobody comes looking for you. What do you say?"
"What the hell, right?...lead the way."
Her mouth twitched, "I thought that wasn't your style."
He laughed and fell into step beside her, "I don't think I know what the hell my style is anymore with you, Ada."
She couldn't stop the wink as she hurried forward into the encroaching darkness. He blew out a heavy breath and followed her righteous ass right into the unknown. God knew, he couldn't be sure she wasn't leading him to a slaughter.
He was just trusting she'd keep him alive long enough, at least, to get the damn mutagen he had on him.
The place beyond the pines was the damnedest thing he'd ever seen.
It was just beyond them, it was in them. She had a safe house in the trunk of a pine tree. Like something out of a fantasy movie, Leon watched her touch a notch on the big tree and step through the opening that appeared.
He followed her down a narrow set of stairs as the last of the lingering sunset was swallowed by the door that swung shut in their wake. The dark curled around them until she touched something on the wall and filled the eerie black with flickering bulbs. The small chamber at the base of the steps was somehow classy despite behind austere.
The two bulbs that dangled were battery operator, but the computer sitting on a roughed out box turned into a desk was powered by some kind of power cell that was run into the ground beneath them. The bed was full size, on a pallet laid on the ground to hold the mattress, and covered in a set of black sheets draped over by a blood red comforter.
A tiny shelf graced the floor by the bed and had a handful of books set on it. Some were dusty and untouched, but the one with a dog earred cover drew his attention. As Ada started typing on her computer, he picked up the book and felt his mouth turn up into a smirk.
"...Annalise knew it was wrong. It had to be...it had to be wrong to want him the way she did. She was a woman with more sense than to crave the son of a simple man like the butcher...and yet his smile haunted her as his hands did, skimming down her long white legs to the c-"
Ada gave him a murderous look over her shoulder and had him grinning. "Laugh it up, Kennedy. You find my taste in literature amusing?"
"...you have War and Peace over there and an entire set of books about hacking various systems...and this. This trashy romance novel. Those look basically unread, but this one? This bad boy has seen some lovin."
When she ignored him and went back to typing, he mused, needling her, "...did she end up with the butcher's boy in the end? He clearly knows how to handle his meat."
Ada rolled her eyes and turned back to face him, "I have an evacuation in play for six a.m. Help yourself to the book and find out, we've got plenty of time."
As she turned toward the small shelf beside her computer stocked with bottled water, Leon teased, "...I'll just skip to the good stuff. Does she learn how to handle his meat too? Or what?"
Ada said nothing as Leon leaned against the wall with the book lifted for his amusement. He whistled low and told her, "...apparently the answer is yes. Annalise seems to understand all about his sausage...does he learn about her rump roast?"
She sipped water and arched a brow, "...you're having way too much fun with this."
"...I'm mostly just curious if she has roast beef curtains..."
Ada heaved a heavy sigh, "Give me the mutagen, Leon, and make life easy here."
He shrugged a shoulder and kept on reading, "We back to this? I'm not interested in dealing. I'm actually starting to think I might do better handing you in."
She set down the water. He lowered the book when she was silent. They stared at each other until she finally spoke into the silence, "...give it your best shot. You're in my safehouse. It's my team coming to extract me. I can see you to safety, and you can make it worth my while, or you can take your chances up there on your own. Either way? I'm not offering you a deal, I'm offering you a chance to come out of this with your life."
His brows arched up as his mouth twitched, "You threatening me?"
She tilted her head, "Do I need to? You're being petty. You're acting like a rejected prom date. We both know I could take the damn mutagen from you if I wanted."
Annoyed now, he tossed the book on the bed. "Yeah? Let's see what ya got, princess. Nothing but time here, right? Come and get it."
They stared at each other. They both vibrated with energy. Finally, she warned him, "...don't be stupid here, Leon. You have a chance to keep things like they've always been between us."
Surprised, his teeth flashed, "How's that, Ada? On your terms? I'm bored playing it your way. You want what I got, sweetheart, you're gonna have to take it from me."
She tossed the water bottle before he even finished taunting her. It smacked into his forehead as he met her halfway. She swept for his feet, he crossed shins with her and grabbed her throat, she over rotated and dropped her arm to free herself from his grip and he hooked an ankle behind hers to spill her backward into the wall.
Ada hit and slid down it as he grabbed for her throat again, she pummeled toward his groin, and his other hand snatched her wrist to sling her forward before she struck. Ada rolled and whipped around to throw her leg out to take his, and forced Leon to stagger as she grabbed for his belt, rolled to her back, stuck her feet in his belly, and slung him up and over.
He hit on his back on the mattress and she rolled into a hand stand, pushed herself into a cartwheel, and came down atop him on the bed.
It was a half hearted battle at best.
They both knew it.
As she landed, she grabbed for the knife at his vest and jerked. It came free, he caught her wrist as she angled it at his throat, and he wedged his pistol into her ribs as they faced each other from inches away. Breathing heavily, he urged, "...go ahead. Can you cut me before I blow apart your sternum?"
Ada panted softly above him and finally answered, "...why didn't you let them finish me off out there in the swamp?"
They continued to mesmerize each other in a tense silence until he uttered, "...I don't fucking know. I hate that I don't fucking know."
She kept on watching his eyes as he added, "...wanna tell me why you don't just kill me to get what you want? What's the games, Ada? What's the point? You let me fuck you, you let me touch you, you run away and taunt me...why? Why not just ask me for help? What good does it to play with me?"
She wanted to give him something for saving her life. She wanted to give him some kind of reward. She couldn't give him the love she knew he wanted. She wasn't built that way, but here and now? She could give him the truth.
"...I like games. I'm good at them. I'm even better with men. Men are simple, they're mostly controlled by their dicks, and their dicks rule the world. To operate in a world of dicks, I become the thing they want to fuck. I knew you wanted to fuck me, I knew letting you just might work to make you chase me even harder...tell me I was wrong."
Their gazes clashed for so long that she was pretty sure he wasn't going to answer her, and then? "...you don't have to play games with me anymore. You want to work together...let's work together...but no more goddamn games."
Quietly, she let their lips brush as she returned, "...you like the games."
He shook his head and she added, "...you wouldn't play them if you didn't. What do you want from me, Leon? Right now, in this moment, what do you want?"
Their noses brushed. Their eyes held. He didn't look away and she loved that he didn't. He might have been a puppy once, but he was a wolf now. He wasn't just chasing her...he was hunting her. It made her blood boil with excitement.
After a handful of seconds, she urged, "...you want me gone? Say the word, tell me you're done, and we'll deal with each other like two men brokering a trade. Is that what you want? You want to stop playing games?"
Her nose brushed as her mouth did, over his like butterfly wings with each word she whispered, "Just...say...stop."
To her infinite surprise, his voice came low and grumbling, "...stop."
If he'd slapped her, she wouldn't have been more surprised. Ada drew the knife away from his throat and sat up. She flipped the blade over and offered it back to him, hilt first. He kept the pistol on her as she rose up, straddling his lap, but he took the knife back.
Without an edge of anything, she informed him, "Fair enough."
He watched her slip left and roll to her feet beside the bed. She moved and sat down in the chair beside the computer to face him. He watched her on his side on the bed until she finally told him, "What do you want?"
His brows arched and she added, "For the mutagen, for the VR capabilities, what do you want?"
Leon scoffed and rolled to his back to look at the ceiling, "...why not? Let's bargain. What do ya got?"
Without missing a beat, Ada told him, "...Jill Valentine is alive. Albert Wesker is using her to harvest antibodies for the T-Virus and create a devastating viral agent capable of complete global annihilation at an undisclosed location near Mauti Kifo, Africa. My guess would be Kijuju - since it's in the midst of a political coup and looking for a new dictator. A perfect opportunity to use it as a stomping ground for a near fatal attempt at genocide."
Leon stared at her on his back like she'd grown a second head. Ada held his gaze equally and finished, "If he succeeds, everything I've done is for nothing. I need him stopped. I need the intel leaked to the BSAA in a way that they know it didn't come from me. They need to track a shitty arms dealer by the name of Ricardo Irving. He's the mouth piece between Wesker and the dregs of what's left of Umbrella. He's working in conjunction with a black market syndicate known as Eiderdown. Their main line of operation is out of Klagenfurt, but I can't find the base of operations. I'm hoping you can help me there."
Leon kept on staring at her until she prompted, "...you're familiar with Austria?"
He finally nodded and remarked, "I am. We've been watching Eiderdown for some time actually. I have a contact on the ground there undercover."
Ada bobbed her head, "Good. Let me copy the mutagen and I'll show you how to get in touch with Irving and fake a buy. I'll take the copy and offer it for sale via a dumbie corporation to weed out the higher ups on Eiderdown. Your asset can use the opportunity to prove themselves by brokering the sale and get themselves inside the higher circles."
They held eyes until he eventually retorted, "...deal."
Ada nodded and rolled around in the chair to start typing on her computer as he watched her. After a few minutes, Leon remarked, "...you wanna come on board as a paid asset for me?"
She laughed, shook her head, and kept on typing.
Who was he kidding?
But at least he'd asked.
Into the quiet, he surprised her with a single statement, "...thank you, Ada."
She rolled her head over her shoulder. He held her gaze. They both kept right on staring until her computer beeped and she turned back to it, murmuring, "...you're welcome. Try to get some sleep. I'll wake you when the evacuation team arrives."
The absence of sound shimmered around them. Leon stared at the ceiling while she clicked on keys. She could have kept on playing, she had to know he'd keep on chasing, he just...he wasn't interested in a world where she wasn't. He didn't have to like the truth of that to admit it to himself.
She was bad for him. He knew it. His fucking bones knew she wasn't a good person.
But was she really a bad one?
He had no way of knowing the answer to that. What he did know was that somehow, she managed to help him circumvent things that might have been catastrophic if she hadn't intervened. As he tugged his communicator out to send an encrypted message to a server that the BSAA would pick up as intel, he wondered what prompted her to tell him the things she did.
It was likely manipulative, it was definitely in her own best interest, but did that really matter when it was for the good of everyone?
Did her motives matter if she was saving lives?
He wasn't sure.
It was a gray area. Ada was a gray area. She wasn't a good guy, but honestly...was anyone? He was willing to sacrifice pieces of himself for the greater good...but what was that? What was the greater good here? Protecting people from bioterror?
Was there really a way to do that when the bad guys were so willing to break the rules to get there? Did it make Ada bad that she was willing to do the same? Did it mean he was too? Was he a bad guy doing things for the good of the people?
Or a good guy doing bad things for the right reasons?
Hell, he didn't even know anymore. It was too much deep thinking on too little sleep. His hands scrubbed at his face as he let his eyes close. He wasn't even aware the he'd been drifting into sleep when her voice whispered softly, "...I always knew you couldn't kill me...but I can't figure out why the hell you just won't let me die."
His hand snapped to the pouch on his vest to check for the mutagen, but it was still there. She hadn't robbed him. It was a flicker of something curious to know it.
She was lying beside him on the mattress on her back. They were both in the semi darkness with just the computer to offer flickering shadows over her profile. When he said nothing, Ada added, "...what do you see in me that seems worth saving?"
After a long moment, Leon confessed, "...good. You're not a saint, Ada, but I can't say I am either...I think...maybe we're both just doing the best we can to fight the same fight our own ways...sometimes? Maybe that means we have to cross the wrong lines to do it."
She turned her face toward him. His eyes looked silver in the light from her computer. She shook her head a little and answered, "...what if I asked you to join my side for a little while?"
His mouth twitched as Leon responded, "...like taunting me to be yours?"
She denied that, "...I thought-I thought that's what you wanted. I thought you wanted the game of it. Your face..." Ada trailed off and sighed, "Your face always said you did...which sounds like a rapist but there it is."
Leon inhaled and blew out a hard breath, "...if I didn't...I wouldn't have played."
They both smiled a little sadly. Into the comfortable quiet, Ada finally asked, "...you sure you want to stop?"
His chuckle was gentle somehow, "No. I'm not sure of anything when you're around me, maybe that's part of the reason I seem to crave it like I do."
Surprised at the honesty, she dragged her gaze around that perfect face of his, "...maybe there's a part of me that would miss you if you were gone."
If she'd hugged him, he wouldn't have been more surprised. They both felt the arrow of that confession like she'd written him a note after gym class. Into the now tense moment, pregnant with truth, he confessed, "...maybe that's why I can't let you die...maybe there's a part of me that would miss you too."
Damn.
She'd lost some level of control here. She'd stepped into a murky quagmire of feelings. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Feelings allowed her another playground of control that attraction kept limited, but there was something sticky inside of her own for him.
It wasn't the same as what was written on his face, but it was something. She liked him. He was impossible not to like - a perpetual boy scout with a heart of gold and willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of others. He was charming and quirky and cocky and cute. He'd risked himself, more than once, to save her.
She didn't mind liking him, that was harmless, but she didn't want the idea of it being more than that. She didn't want to start depending on him, or expecting anything from him but what she needed. She didn't want to care about him.
And yet?
The idea of another woman in his bed didn't sit well. It was jealousy in her chest at the promise of it. She didn't like that either, but she accepted it the same as the liking. She needed him focused on her to keep the ball rolling toward her end game here.
She didn't need to be bound up in feelings for him, but she liked him. She did. She liked his desperate want of her. She liked his willingness to deal with her and tease her and the moment he'd grabbed her to smear their juices together and he'd told her he'd claimed her.
She'd liked that. She enjoyed a good filthy fuck when it was all about control. She liked the feeling of knowing she had a man by the balls.
She wasn't sure how she felt about knowing she had a man by the feelings.
Surprising her, Leon finally said, "...maybe I can't let go of the idea that you might be a good guy after all."
Ada felt her brows arch, "...do you really believe that?"
He laughed softly and shrugged, "Maybe there's no good or bad. Maybe there's just people making choices...but I think that's how I make peace with it. I have to believe that what you're doing...it's not trying to tear down the world I'm trying to save."
After a heavy silence descended, Ada admonished, "...you are such a boy scout. You should have killed me on that bridge."
His self deprecating chuckle made her smile as he mused, "...probably...but you could have killed me, Ada...right there...and you didn't either."
Without a moments hesitation, Ada confessed, "I know...it was the first time I let my guard down enough to fail a mission. The first and only time...because you were too much of a fucking boy scout for me to finish off...damn you."
He laughed, turning his head toward on the mattress, "...and now?"
"...and now you're too much of an asset. Now I owe you my life. Now? Now I find myself questioning what the hell I'm doing here with you...when I should take the sample and leave you sleeping. I woke you up...because some goddamn part of me wants to see the way you look at me."
They couldn't stop staring until Leon invited, "...so I guess the question is what do you want here, Ada? What do you want?"
There weren't enough hours in the day to tell him all the things she wanted. So, she said, "...too much...and I wish it was really that simple."
She gripped a hand into his vest at the shoulder and tugged. He rolled atop him without hesitation. There was something smooth in the kisses and smoother still in the moment.
Feelings were dangerous things, but the risk was how to balance them and not get lost in her own game.
After a long moment of the shifting sounds of their mouths mating, her computer beeped.
The evacuation team was above ground and waiting.
The fingers gripped in his vest to hold him to her pushed him up a little so they could both breathe. The rapid thunder of his heart in his ears punctuated the raspy gasp of her intake of air. After a handful of moments, Ada whispered, "...it's time to go."
Their eyes opened on each other.
Softly, he told her, "...move your hand left six inches and take the mutagen."
Ada licked her lips. She tossed her eyes around his face. He was just waiting for her to help herself to it. Instead? She pushed him up and off her and rolled out from beneath him.
As she moved toward the stairs, she told him, "...there's lockers under the 12th street station in Whispering Pines. Leave the duplicate there and I'll drop the intel on Irving for your asset there as well...consider it a...drop point...locker 33B...it'll use biometrics to access it..see ya round, handsome."
He heard her head up the stairs and stayed on the bed until she'd gone.
His hand touched his vest to find the mutagen still there...but the watch on his wrist for the VR was gone. His mouth twitched. His laugh was amused and annoyed at the same time.
He had no doubt he'd find it, after she'd cloned it, waiting for him in the subway station locker they now shared like a secret between them.
His fingers traced his lips.
Whatever game they were playing - he had a sneaking suspicion somehow they'd both just raised the stakes. There was no getting around it either - before it was done- it was going to be winner take all. It was the first time since they'd started that he began to wonder if he just might be the last man standing.