Part Three: The Legend of Leon Kennedy
A painful truth.
A perfect poison.
A rending heart without a hope of healing.
Syberia- 2010
There wasn't much left of what had once been the last station in a wasteland of white.
A flashy, splashy, very pointed, very AMERICAN missile had made sure that what had once been Syberian Outpost #9, was now nothing more than a wide spot in the middle of a blackened road.
Curiously, she studied what was still smoldering. It might have been a pretty little snow crusted haven once, in all truth, although it was nothing more than a hot mess now. The stomping ground of the former most powerful man in the Western world was utter desolation. It was derelict, offering just an out cropping of cave among the ruins.
It never failed to surprise her how American's were so easily led to destroy their own lynch pins. She wondered what manner of fuck up resulted in the need to nuke an entire populace. Likely, Ada mused as she gingerly eased down the ruined edge of the stone wall into the water, it was some man's mistake. Scientists playing god in labs creating viruses to perfect the ultimate soldier…
She laughed lightly, slipping on her respirator as she zipped into her wetsuit, "...dicks in the wind…the lot of them."
With a little chuckle, she dove beneath the churning water.
It wasn't hard to find what was left of the lab beneath the churning water, after all, her contact had been pretty clear on the coordinates.
Back packing through the Chaos Crags, Ada had found herself side by side with a former BSAA agent named Jessica Sherawat. The woman had been ready to share intel. They'd traded what they could and left with their secrets still in tact.
Something was here, that much was clear. After digging through the disjointed information Sherawat had fed her, Ada had found enough to pinpoint this hole in the ground as a site for something worth stealing. The problem was, someone had known that and bombed it into oblivion trying to hide it.
So here she was, raiding around in what was left of the lair of a likely mad scientist, looking for what?
That part was unclear.
But there was something down here worth finding.
She muttered, "What am I...a stupid tomb raider?"
The door in front of her was half under water. It was ringed in snakes and gold. It was ostentatious and enormous and spoke volumes about the man whose kin had been buried here. She paused, her radars started spinning, and she used her waterproof camera to snap a picture of the emblem. It was a crest. Whose? She'd damn well find out.
The wet suit kept her legs dry as she eased through the waist high water, moving into the enormous open space.
Something besides the bomb that had struck had dealt damage here. There was evidence of a battle against god knows what kind of creature. Pieces of blubbery flesh lay scattered over the slimy ground like obscene confetti.
A whale?
Inside a lab?
Should she really be surprised? She'd seen sharks and any number of other nasties being used like pets with perverted play parts all over the world. Why should a killer whale, that literally killed, be shocking?
Amused, she eased into the inner sanctum of the destroyed lab. There was little to pick from among the mess left behind. There wasn't much of value. A single ring floated in murky water – intricate and heavy. She palmed it, eyeing the matching snake design that had been upon the door.
She pocketed the ring and eased forward. A single sarcophagus remained untouched in the middle of the water laden dais. A strange thing to find inside of a laboratory, but again...these were people who made sure to put their labs under water. Moving toward it, Ada studied it where the lid was ajar, revealing the rotting corpse within it.
Ada eased the lid open, grunting with the effort of it. It hit the water logged stone with a splash and crash of noise. The body within the coffin was long dead.
The thing attached to the wall of the coffin wasn't. It was gross. It was covered in slime and smelled vaguely of mold and was pulsing. It was about the size of a soccer ball. She poked it with her pistol to see if it cracked or leaked or burst like a pustule. It didn't.
What had Sherawat said? The pods had hatched here and released clones or something; mutated, deformed, monstrous clones. It was best to destroy it.
She aimed the pistol at it.
But it wasn't hers that went off.
Another one above her echoed in the small chamber.
It was luck that saved her life.
Ada ducked and the bullet struck the stone sarcophagi an inch from her face and a voice called, "I don't care for killing, but I'm not opposed to maiming. Drop the gun and step away from the pod."
Curious, Ada called back, "You know what this thing is? You're out of your mind if you think I'm going to let you run off with it while I sit here huddling in the water."
With a sigh, the voice returned, "Not a request. A command. Just do what I ask, please, and let's not make this harder than it needs to be."
Ada considered the alternative and mused, "This place is a shambles. Nothing here worth dying for. Do yourself a solid and just run. I'd hate to have to kill you."
There was a splash of sound and Ada looked up at the ten foot tall vision that rounded the sarcophagus to look down at her. "You're making this harder than I like," Said the glamazon with the raven hair and flawless dark skin. And her face was bored, "I like tough women. I'd hate to kill you over nothing."
"Well…that makes two of us then." Ada rose, watching her, "Shall we?"
The glamazon fought like a mad woman. She was fast and efficient. She was effortless. She wasn't better, but she was luckier.
A slip in the water on a slimy stone sent Ada to her ass in the waist deep wet. A fist in the face put her down like a kick from a donkey. She came to lying on slick ground. Honestly, she should've been dead, but the woman in the vest hadn't wanted to kill her. She'd beat the piss out of her and left her alive; she could've have let her drown and didn't.
Curious.
But she'd also escaped with the pod.
The even more curious thing? She'd left a little note with a kiss and a butterfly and a single set of words: Red River Mental Hospital. That was Ada's symbol. It was hers. Come to think of it...the woman...she'd moved like her. She'd talked like her.
She'd left a clue like her.
Annoyed, Ada grunted, "...fucking clone."
It wasn't often a bad guy pointed the way to their next destination. But something about the woman had Ada thinking, there wasn't anyone else on Earth quite like her. Well, actually, there was. Had she just been bested by her own clone?
The face was wrong, but maybe that was part of it. Maybe that bitch had needed that pod to steal her face too. Maybe she was on her way to make sure Ada Wong became a figment of her own imagination.
Why would she want to assume someone else's identity? What game was this?
Ada gathered what she could and made her way up from the lab. She took the snow cat back across the wide open white wonderland and emerged into the abandoned out post that waited. While her data uploaded and her server processed looking for links, Ada washed off the filthy grime and treated her aching mouth. Apparently, it had been two hits - mouth and eye.
She had a shiner in shimmering black and blue starting to swell. Annoyed, Ada treated it with poultice while the computer beeped behind her. She heard a rustling toward the front of the outpost and paused. Her hand was on her gun and the barrel aimed when a voice called, "Ease down. It's just me."
She hated that she knew who it was. She hated even worse that something in her belly tightened with emotion. "Nothing to find here, Agent Kennedy. That carcass was picked clean."
Leon appeared in the doorway in a heavy black parka and a thick set of boots that somehow made her warm just looking at him. His hair was hidden under a sock hot in dark blue. As he moved toward her, he remarked, "I know. I was there two days ago."
Damn him.
She gave him a withering look as he crossed the mostly empty chamber and stopped to scan her data on her computer. "...you didn't feel the need to let me know so I didn't waste my time there?"
He retorted, "You didn't feel the need to let me know you were trying to steal sensitive data from a top secret Syberian outpost? You realize this is under layers of security that even the President doesn't touch, right?"
Ada gave him a droll look. "Pillow talk is better than hacking when you want a man to squeal." She turned away from him to inspect the computer. It was linking the symbols to various mausoleums around the world. Where had she seen it before?!
His gloved hand curled around her chin and lifted it. Surprised, she turned her gaze to him as he murmured, "...somebody did a number on you."
She pulled her chin away and turned to move across the room to pick up her sweater. Ada rolled her eyes and winced at the pain it caused, "I'm fine. I've had worse, trust me. It was...it was the damnedest thing anyway."
"...what?"
"She...acted like me." Ada shook her head, "She didn't look like me, but she acted like me."
Leon tilted his head, "...cold and sexually repressed?"
She gave him a cool glare.
He tried again, "...humor challenged?"
Ada pursed her lips.
"...like she has constant PMS?"
Ada turned her back on him with a heavy sigh, "What do you know, Leon? Stop flirting."
He laughed and leaned on the wall, "Was I? I think it was called yanking your chain."
"...well stop yanking it."
"Why? You wanna yank mine instead?"
She couldn't stop it. She tried, she really did, but the yip of a laugh escaped anyway. Annoyed, Ada turned around to face him. "...you think you're charming."
"...it's crossed my mind."
Ada dropped the sweater and lifted her hand. She beckoned him forward with a curl of her finger. "Ok, Mr. Kennedy, come over here and let me pull it. Right here, right now. Forget the mystery of someone who is me but isn't me...I wanna yank your chain."
His teeth flashed in a smile. She batted her lashes like a vixen. Amused, he came toward her. She laughed, unable to stop it, and put a hand on his chest as he backed her into the wall, "...for god's sake, Leon..I was calling your bluff."
"Yeah? Who said I was bluffing?"
He lowered his mouth and she covered it with her hand, informing him, "I was. Go find some answers. I don't have time to play with you right now."
He glanced behind them at her computer as her hand slid away and told her, "...you got eighteen minutes before that computer finishes reconstructing data. You wanna stand here...or make use of that time?"
Softly, she wrapped her gloved fingers around his throat and warned him, "...you don't want to go down this road with me, Leon. It doesn't end where you think it does."
He leaned down. Their lips brushed. She tilted her head back to let him glide his lips down the column of her throat as he rumbled, "...I'll take my chances."
With a soft sound, Ada leaned completely against the wall. The hand around his throat tightened, the other slid up to tug the hat from his head and tunnel in his hair. She turned her face to his seeking mouth. A good kiss, slick and sucking, his hands cupping around the curve of her ass to lift her left leg around his flank and let him closer. It was warm in her hideout, offering the caress of the cold jacket against her skin as he pressed close.
Breath hot, she commanded, "...get rid of this fucking coat."
His muffled laugh was swallowed by her mouth.
The computer hummed while her hands shifted against him to tug on the zipper. The tactical vest against her naked belly was scratchy and rough as she freed his torso from the bonds of his thick coat. His arms wiggled to let it drop to the floor. They surged together with it gone, mouths and hands and heads moving.
He caught the hook of her bra between her breasts and tugged. His hands cupped and shaped, pinning her against the wall to mold her to his palms. Hers slid into his fatigues and gripped his ass, tugging him against her. The slick leggings she wore whispered as her pelvis tilted to the thrust of him against her.
The computer beeped and printed marking the sound of their panting and heavy petting. He gripped a handful of her hair, cupped her throat with the other, and tilted her face up with his thumb, voice rich and low, "...you miss me, Ada?"
She laughed and turned to plumb his mouth with her tongue.
Her computer pinged prettily and opened the transmission to fill the thick air with a mechanical voice, "...incoming message - 3rd I.D. in play. Dispose of double O's seven accordingly. Test subjects acquired."
The computer fell silent.
Ada realized he'd stopped kissing her. He pinned her to the wall with that hand on her throat and tilted her face back now with a different intent, "...they send you to kill me, Ada?"
Her eyes opened. She met his. Both sets were heavy. Their panting mingled as she confessed, without compunction, "Of course...twice...and yet you're still here."
His hand tightened and her eyes flared as he gruffed, "...I should kill you...whose side are you on here?"
She grabbed his ass and jerked him against her. He went, dropping his mouth to wetly kiss hers as she growled, "...mine, you fool. You know that...you've always known. Kill me...I dare you."
He made her gasp as his hand jerked on her hair, "...I can't...I fucking love you, Ada."
Damnit. Why did he keep saying it like that?! What did he think happened here?
She dug her finger nails into his ass and hissed, "...what does that even mean, Leon?! You don't know a damn thing about me. It's not love...it's just obsession."
His hands slid down and grabbed for the tongue of her belt as he grunted, "...is it? What's your excuse?"
Her hand slid around his hip and fisted the sticky length of his erection as she purred, "...I'm obsessed with winning...every time you cum in me...I win..."
He laughed. He copied her and palmed her groin. She gasped, jerking against his surging fingers, "Yeah? I had you under me, Ada. I saw your face...that's not winning...that? That was surrender."
They stopped talking.
She swallowed his tongue. They coupled madly while the proof of his assassination echoed on her computer screen. They wanted him dead. Why? He had the power now, as the man in the ear of the President Elect Benford, to stop the world of bioterror with a single stroke. If Benford found his way to the platform of truth he'd won the presidency on, he'd bring the world together against the global threat of B.O.W.S.
The civil uprising in Edonia and the Eastern Slav Republic was being kept as closely under wraps as possible, but if the world were to be made aware of the black market trade of things that had once been nothing more than story book horrors - born and bred in their own backyards no less- they'd band together to make sure they took down the money behind the madness. Umbrellas collapse had crippled the bioterror game for almost a decade. It was still finding it's why back from the dark.
What would happen if Leon convinced Benford to expose the ugly bitch in all her murderous glory?
They wanted him dead.
They wanted his blood.
They wanted his body to play god with what was still inside of him from Spain.
They wanted her to sell him to them to buy her own freedom.
The first time, she'd burned her bridge to Wesker denying it. This time, she'd likely bury herself in the right circles buying his freedom. He was crippling her by simply existing. He was both her greatest weapon and her greatest weakness.
She wasn't sure how to extract herself from him. They were so tightly entangled now that it might bleed her to try. She knew the second she rejected the offer, they'd scout another agent to try. She had to protect him. She'd been protecting him against his knowledge for years.
Keeping him alive was a full time job.
She should turn him aside and cultivate a new asset.
She should let him fight his own battles and bury himself.
Instead, she let him lift her against the wall and bury himself in her.
London - 2011
The echo of the gun sent swirls of smoke up into the ink dark sky.
Ada watched the body drop with a thump and a gush of blood on the wet pavement.
She'd avoided him since that night. She'd made sure of it. She stalked him like a shadow, shielding him when he stupidly walked into danger like a hero, and nearly met his end. When he slept, she slaughtered those who rose like leviathans above him to end his life.
He was always leaving things in the little locker for her. She left only intel for him. She never, ever met him face to face. It was easier that way, safer, and more conducive to keeping him alive. She'd gotten too close, she'd wanted him too much, she'd let her feelings confuse what she was here to do.
He was an means to an end, not a man, not a lover, not a thing for her to hold and have.
Fucking him had nearly fucked her too.
Her body ached curiously at the loss of him. She wasn't stupid, she knew at the end of the day she was female, she had a range of feelings that were tied to the sex that was more than just bodies. She'd enjoyed, somehow, the closeness of him when he'd touched her. He'd looked at her as one might a thing that kept them alive in a storm or flood. He talked about love.
She believed him.
He loved the idea of her.
If he knew who she really was, his love would curdle in his mouth like spoiled milk.
He stepped into the hotel where he was staying and was gone as the wind and the rain whipped her coat around her legs. He'd had no idea that on the street corner, a man with a pistol had been about to put one in the back of his skull and leave his brains splattered on the wall behind him. A waste of such a beautiful face.
After a moment, she opened her phone and dialed.
He answered, sounding tired, "Kennedy."
"...you should be more careful who you take to dinner."
Again, he'd been out with the redhead. She'd watched them, quietly sitting in the shadowed booth across the way to observe their laughter. Redfield had touched his forearm. She'd tossed her hair and touched her forehead to his shoulder. She'd shared her beer with him and rolled her lips with a sparkling set of blue eyes.
Flirting.
He winked. He preened. He let her put her hand on his knee. He walked her under the umbrella she'd brought to her hotel. He'd let her rise up to kiss him beneath the same umbrella before they'd said goodbye.
Ada watched his shake his head at something the redhead offered - to bed him again?
Why was he still resisting?
Claire, laughing, had winked and gone inside with her umbrella.
He'd walked out to the road to get a cab. The man in the trench coat had followed in another. Ada had settled the helmet on her head and joined the caravan on the slick red Honda Shadow. A bike in the rain seemed risky, but she could have driven it on a snowy mountain top in the middle of a blizzard. Training made you able to drive anything, anywhere.
She carelessly toed the body of the dead man at her feet into a pile of newspapers as he answered, "...not sure why you care...or how it's any of your business. What do you want, Ada?"
She told him, softly, "Look out your window."
She heard the rustle and saw the light as he drew back the curtains on his hotel room. His gaze zeroed down on her in the rain and the dark like she'd waved a white flag. She toed the body again and tilted her head beneath her umbrella, "...stop being stupid. You're risking that girl every time you see her. You should know by now that there's no normal life for you. Not with a girl like that. Say goodbye, buy a hooker, and forget about romance."
He held her gaze through the window, "...nobody asked you to protect me...and next time I want advice on my love life, I'll shoot a red bitch signal into the sky to summon you."
Her mouth twitched on a smile, "...don't be bitter, Leon, it's ugly on you. I like the angry thing though...suits you. You miss me?"
His laugh was harsh, "Like a case of crabs that never stops itching."
She watched his mouth turn up in the window. The words were snarky, the face was gentle somehow, and they both stood in silence for a moment, watching the other. After a moment, she confessed, "...shame...I missed you...Good to see you, Leon...next time don't be so fucking careless."
She hung up. He quirked his mouth in the window and finally saluted her with a finger to his brow. She inclined her head, toed the body again to imply he should clean it up, and turned away into the rain. They both knew she'd keep on watching his back.
He watched hers disappear into the darkness.
He wasn't even bitter she'd left. He'd expected her to. He was a little salty that she'd hidden herself so well since she had. Almost a year now, with him expecting her to pop up and never even smelling her perfume.
She was good at hiding. If he wanted, he could hunt her, but he didn't want that either. He wanted her...to what? Well, that was easy too, he wanted her to want him. Chasing her was done...he wanted her to chase after him instead.
Turns out? She'd been there all along.
He lifted his phone and texted the number she'd called from, just a single message: I'll stop seeing her, but only if you take her place.
It was a handful of moments before she answered. We both know it's been her taking mine all along. I have things to tell you. Start looking into the mess in the ESR. Stay on your guard until I see you again. In the mean time...look in your closet.
He frowned, curious how she'd gotten into a government protected suite. Who was he kidding? It was probably cake for her. He turned toward the ornate wardrobe and tugged the doors.
A pair of red handcuffs waited on a hanger inside. She'd left them, and taken his black leather jacket. Mouth twitching with humor, he lifted his phone and told her - What's the game here?
Her answer made him laugh - You wear those, I wear the other. Fair trade.
He sighed, shaking his head. Maybe it was a game. Maybe it was her controlling him, but he knew she was right about one thing - he couldn't risk Claire's safety if he was under a kill order. He had to stop seeing her.
Without even trying, Ada had managed to evict her once more from his life.
Her final text made him lean on the wall with those cuffs dangling from his finger and a smile on his lips - Only way you get me...is in cuffs. See ya round, handsome.
He was pretty sure she was confused about who was supposed to be wearing them. He was also pretty sure he'd slap them on his wrists if it meant he'd get to see her again. He went to sleep imaging his hands behind his back and her on his lap in nothing but that leather jacket.
It was the worst night of sleep he'd had in a long, long time and the first time he'd soaked his sheets since he was a teenager.