Two: My Perfect Pet
Disclaimer: I made up anything that wasn't explicitly in the series, but I tried to keep the interactions the same. If I messed something up about Wesker I am so sorry! Just pretend I didn't! Timeline: RE1
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The honking of a horn outside her window signaled the beginning of tonight's work. Ada looked into her vanity mirror one more time, slipping her left earring into place. Time to go.
She swept her fur coat off of the vanity chair, and left the room quickly. Her bedroom was much nicer than the one of her youth. Now, it much closer resembled a penthouse suite in a famous hotel. Wesker had allowed her to pick out everything herself, from the tall velvet curtains to the dark cherry furniture. In this way he could be quite generous.
Her current residence was rather plain from the outside, considering the interior decorating. A simple two story house in a suburban environment. Wesker had thought having a high property value might intimidate some of her clients. Either way, Ada did not mind.
John was waiting in the driveway for her. His car wasn't as nice as hers, but he would never know that; she left the convertible at Wesker's mansion. He smiled at her as she entered the passenger side.
"How are you doing?" John leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, his face scratching her. Didn't have time to shave, she noted. Must be busy at the office.
"I'm fine. We had a little trouble today; an allergic reaction to a perfume sample." Ada was supposedly working cosmetics at a department store. John would have been pretty surprised to know what she really spent the day doing; researching information she thieved during their dates.
Ada placed her hand over his and squeezed it gently.
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A few hours later, she was back in her own house again, placing a bouquet of roses in a vase. The movie had been uninteresting, but the dinner had been good. Wesker immediately detected her return and buzzed her internal ear piece. She pressed a button upon it.
"That seemed shorter than usual, anything wrong?" The ear piece, possibly of his own design, allowed Wesker to listen in on Ada at any time. It also allowed them to talk to one another. He sometimes seemed like a part of her own thinking process.
"He seemed under pressure. Things must be going badly at Umbrella." She headed up the stairs.
"They are. Police are getting suspicious because of some recent deaths. There's talk of sending us in to investigate." Wesker was working as part of S.T.A.R.S. on the side. Ada didn't quite understand what it was; some sort of law enforcement.
"Do you want me to come see you tomorrow?"
"No. I will contact you later this week. Do not go out with John again until I do. Tell him work is busy." And with a small beep, Wesker's voice was gone.
She removed the ear piece and changed her clothes for bed.
Ada still remembered the day she had met him. It had been a few years ago, close to her nineteenth birthday. By this time she no longer saw Charlie; his occupation was involved with children only. Her boss, whose name turned out to be Mr. McCullough, was her only human contact outside of missions.
She had been called into the conference room. Its purpose was to introduce spies such as herself to potential clients. This would be her last visit and her last client.
What interested her about Wesker from the beginning was how cold he was. Ada was trained to read people and manipulate them, but there were no obvious cracks in his demeanor. Hair slicked back, eyes obscured with sunglasses, he was more like a sculpture than a person. She still remembered thinking: He's missing the same thing that I am. How many times had she looked at her own face in the mirror, trying to analyze what that missing thing is?
Mr. McCullough was also in the room. "Here she is now, Mr. Wesker. Our top prize." He offered her a seat across the table from the stranger. She sat down, and the two of them stared at one another, Wesker not even lifting his chin off of his hands. If McCullough was uncomfortable, neither of them noticed.
Finally, he spoke to her. "I read all your records. You never fail."
"No." She wasn't bragging, just stating a fact. His eyebrows lifted a little.
"How do I know that you will be loyal to me?"
How many times had someone asked her that? Ada didn't even understand the question until she was fifteen. Years of experience had taught her the correct answer eventually, however. "I don't have any aspirations or goals, Mr. Wesker. To me, there is no reason not to remain loyal."
And with a hard smile that made her feel strange, he bought her. Permanently. Ada had a skewed concept of the worth of money, but from the way her old boss's eyes bugged out of his head, she knew it had to have been an outrageous amount.
They lived together for awhile, and he had tested her capabilities repeatedly. Back then they often studied together in his library, or sparred out on the grounds. He was always impressed with her, and over time she looked forward to seeing him smile when she completed some objective for him.
Although she now knew his first name to be Albert, Wesker preferred her to call him by his last. "You are my pet, Ada," he said to her occasionally, "my perfect little pet. Let's just say I enjoy it when you're servile to me. You can understand that, I'm sure."
There was even one occasion when he asked her to have sex with him. For some reason he required this be done in complete darkness. Afterwards he had dressed quickly, told her they could never do that again, and slept in a different bedroom.
Recently, things had been going downhill at the Umbrella Corporation, and that was why she had to move out and do her own work separate from him. She knew Wesker was trying to take over the company, and her role was essential. It would become even more important fairly soon. She had stepped up her training in anticipation of difficult times ahead.
But as she lay in bed at night, sometimes... she thought to herself that she would rather be living back at his mansion. Ada never followed these thoughts very far, but she had to acknowledge to herself that they did happen.
As for the rest of that week, Wesker did not contact her and neither did John. Three more weeks would pass before she found out about the outbreak.
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It was the day of Charlie's funeral. An overdose on painkillers had claimed her caretaker. Most thought it to be a suicide, but there was no note. McCullough had invited her out to the ceremony. Charlie had no family of his own, only the children he had raised.
After they had buried the casket in company-owned lot, McCullough approached her with a pink envelope. To My Girl in Red was emblazoned across the front.
"There was a suicide note, actually, but we confiscated it," he confided. "I thought it fine to let you have this letter, however. Hopefully your employer won't find this objectionable." And then he left. She would never see him again.
Ada carefully opened the envelope. The letter inside, written in red ink, said:
"Dearest Ada,
"I am hoping this letter finds you, because it is very important to me. I want to apologize to you. I have lived a horrible life. My entire career I have spent destroying the free will of other people. I cannot express to you how enormous my regret is. But most of all, I regret what I did to you.
"You, of all my pupils, are damaged most, because your training was one hundred percent successful. Most of our graduates break down over time. They wear out, they defect to other lives. But you never will. Because you don't know how to.
"And this is even more painful to me, because I loved you the best, Ada. I want you to know that from the moment I first saw you, when we adopted you at two years old... you were so special to me. If I wasn't such a coward, I would have stolen you and we could have lived together someplace else, where you could have grown up happy.
"I may be gone now, but I still love you. And I want you to promise me, Ada, that if someone else loves you... promise me that you will try to love them. There is nothing more I want in the world than for you to become the woman you always should have been.
"With Deepest Regrets,
"Your Charlie."
Ada Wong reread this letter several times on the spot, and thought about it the entire drive back home. The majority of her life she spent analyzing information, and yet there was so much in the letter that made no sense to her. But what was worse than that was this wrenching sickness in her chest. Charlie was dead, yes, and so were many other people. Why was she feeling this way?
She didn't want to think about emotions. That was something Ada Wong did not do. Emotions, as she had learned her whole life, get in the way of efficiency. What on earth would Wesker say if he knew she had this pain in her heart?
Wesker. If someone else were to love her, she would try and love them. Would Charlie think that Wesker was such a person? Now she was torn on whether to investigate this train of thought, or leave it.
And there was his car in her driveway. Ada parked and got out, walking quickly into the house. If he was here, then it was no time to worry about trivial matters. She had a job to do.
Her door was unlocked and splattered with red. Albert Wesker was lying a few yards beyond it, clothes shredded and blood soaked. Body reacting while her mind whirred onward, Ada locked the door and went into the kitchen to find something to bandage him with.
He was breathing heavily, hands gripping the hard wood floor. "Ada," he said her name through gritted teeth when she knelt beside him. She lifted him into a sitting position and began examining his extensive wounds.
Wesker was not wearing glasses, and for the first time she saw his eyes clearly. A light blue that was completely at odds with his personality. He stared into her face, rasping for breath, as she continued to clean him up. There was something animal-like in the way he moved now, but she was in no position to ask him why.
His hands reached up to her shoulders, and he shook her before holding her close. "Ada, my pet..." he murmured in her ear, and then he began to laugh, the sound echoing through her mind. Placing a hand on either side of her face, he looked deeply into her eyes.
"It's all gone to hell, now. But you can get it back, can't you?"
"What do you mean?" There was a slight tremor in her heart. Much later, she would think that she must have known. That this was a moment that would change her life.
"You're the only one I can trust, and you'll succeed or die trying, won't you, Ada? You're the only one who can get the virus for me."
And, while rocking her slowly, he told her about the Tyrant, his own infection, and what to expect in Raccoon City.
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Next Chapter: Ada goes to find the coveted G-Virus for Wesker. To succeed or die trying; but both options become more complicated when she meets rookie cop Leon Kennedy.
