Chapter 22

My God is she beautiful…

Crow really couldn't help himself from admiring her, even when he had cut her loose. He tried to force himself to push her from his mind, but she always seemed to come to the top of his mind and cloud his thoughts, like an incessant butterfly floating around a flower. A flower was pleasant to watch, and a butterfly was an amusing surprise, but after a while, it was only a nuisance.

Ada stared back at him from across the rotunda with hidden fire that cut the air between them. Powerful, even when it was dampened as she stared through the sight of her gun. Few women could muster a gaze like that and remain beautiful, even when furious. She truly was unique.

She wasn't wearing extravagant red, much to his own disappointment. Crow would have liked to see her alive for the last time in one of her flowing red gowns that seemed to set her passion ablaze. Her black combat pants and body armor was marred with scars and grit, splashed with white plaster; black to mourn her own nearing funeral. Favoring armor over heels and a slinky dress was astounding. She must have been so committed to killing him that she would relinquish one of the things that defined her.

But even when battered, dirty, and angry, Ada Wong still emitted this unseen radiance like an exotic particle. The very look of murder in her hazel eyes across her elegant Asian features screamed louder than any words could. Crow felt a tingle of excitement run down his spine, even though that hatred was directed at him. It almost felt like an honor to be hated by such a beautiful thing, to know that you could attract such wanton emotional fire from a single woman. At the same time, he knew he should be afraid, no, outright terrified. But everything was under control now, and he had nothing to fear.

He would have enjoyed watching that intoxicating gaze all day, but he doubted his men up on the upper balcony would welcome holding their weapons on her for that long. Neither would the ones scattered about the rotunda. Still, he wanted this moment to last an eternity. It had blossomed so fast out of the chaos. He would admit that he had felt fear, but above all he felt excitement, the same excitement whenever he got a glimpse of her performance.

Simply magnificent…

He shook his head dreamily, amused as he folded his hands before him, his revolver firmly in his right hand. The hammer was already cocked back and ready to fire a round. He didn't need to train the weapon on her, though, not with a dozen others already on the task. "You really are something, Miss Wong…You know that, right?"

The tip of her tongue poked from between her lips, wetting them. Other than that, she stood motionless. "Yeah, I do."

"After all the years of overseeing your operations, I never could quite fully understand you," he said thoughtfully. "Whenever I thought I had you figured out, you would pull one last twist. You performed years of faithful service, a willingness to do anything you were ordered, and suddenly, you were nearly my demise."

"Don't count that out just yet…" she purred quietly. There was a gentle rise in her arm and shoulder as she realigned her shot minutely. "I could hit you from a lot further away than this."

I don't doubt it. I wonder if she's aiming for my head or my chest?

She was standing on the other end of the rotunda, a considerable, yet close enough distance away, roughly ten meters away. Nothing stood between them other than tiled floor and open air. Too far to attack physically, well within her talent to shoot him, eyes closed probably.

"I could have offered you the world you know," Crow reminded her, still undeterred by the weapon and her threat. Ada was passionate, but not suicidal. "Anything you desired would have been at your fingertips. You could have been the queen to a new world order…But instead, you insisted on continuing to poke about in matters that didn't concern you. Why?"

"Because maybe I found something better than the world," Ada said coolly. "Maybe I was sick and tired of being used." She shrugged elegantly, the muzzle of the gun barely moving. "Or maybe I just felt like it."

"You're not going to pull the trigger, Miss Wong," Crow said simply.

"And why won't I?"

"Because if you shoot me, you die. You won't because you're not willing to sacrifice your life so needlessly. It's never been a flaw, if you consider it one. Your abilities have always been enough to surpass the odds you fought. You have never had the need, although…" Crow smirked. "…that didn't stop you from trying about six years ago, did it? After seeing how that worked out, I'm not surprised you never considered it again."

He was pleased to see a twitch run across her face, from her lip to her brow, even if the gun didn't waver. It was only one minor blemish that revealed itself only for an instant.

"After that, I think you had somewhat of a crisis. You didn't want to repeat the mistake you made, yet you were drawn to it all the same. I believe that's when I began to lose my best operative…pure speculation, of course, as you performed quite well up until now."

"Do you really think I'm going to stand here and let you shoot me?" she asked back. "If you or your thugs shoot, you go down just as fast."

She was right about that, which is why they were locked in this standoff. The silence between them was so thick it could be cut with a knife. A gunshot, or any loud noise for that matter, would cause everyone's reflexes to snap, and he and Ada would probably die. Well, Ada would for certain as dozens of rounds from his guards tore her apart, but Crow might escape with a wound only, depending on how fast she shot.

Unless she shot him in the head, of course, and that was also assuming he would be hit in a non-vital area. Knowing Ada's skill, he decided not to risk the gamble. For now, she had to be taken alive, preferably without gunfire. Once in his possession he could personally take her apart, then dispose of her properly.

"I have no intention of killing you, Ada, at least not right here. You still possess a few pieces to the puzzle that I would like to have. Unfortunately for your sake, my previous offer has expired. You'll tell me what I want to know, but you're far too flawed to be the one at my side."

For the first time since her entrance in the rotunda, Crow took his eyes off of her to catch the eye of one of the guards behind her. With a simple flick of his vision, he gave the order. Two guards behind her moved in, their automatic weapons pointed to the small of her back. She bristled, but held her stance.

Crow looked back and smiled confidently at his former operative. "Now, why don't you be a good girl and drop your weapon. If you cooperate, I might not have to be so hard on you."

Ada's gaze flickered, first to her peripheral, then back to him, then to the men at his flank, then back to him. She pursed her lips, no doubt thinking hard for some way to turn things in her favor. But there were some things even Ada Wong couldn't wriggle out of.

With a slight sag of her shoulders, she turned the gun away from him, then let it fall to the ground with a loud clatter, raising both hands in defeat…

…and that's when he saw the twirling object fall to the ground between them. It bounced with a metallic click as it hit the tile floor rolling, then came to a rest and spun wildly at his feet.

His eyes bulged in horror as he looked back to Ada. She was smiling, hands still raised, as if the biggest prank was being played out before her. A grenade pin was wrapped around her finger like a ring, the bomb it was pulled from now coming to a halt an inch away from his wingtips.

It was suicide!

"NO!" he screamed, but pandemonium had already erupted.

The gunfire beat the explosion by seconds. Rough hands grabbed his suit jacket and jerked him backwards. For a brief second, he saw a blur of motion that was Ada, perhaps tucking, or leaping, but then the world was tumbling over as he was flung in some direction, and then the grenade exploded. It was louder than he could have ever imagined imagined, but it only lasted a second. The concussion from it felt like getting kicked in the chest, rattling his rib cage and shaking his entire body violently. His heart felt like it gained a new rhythm of wild beats, and then it was over, everything quiet save for the ringing in his ears.

Time seemed to move slow, dripping like molasses. When he was able to orient himself – he was laying face down – Crow rolled over to try and pull himself into a sitting position. He hadn't even seen a heavy conference table get knocked down in front of him, or who even did it, though it was probably the motionless corpse next to him, the front of which was a shredded mess of flesh and blood. There was a distant twinge in his shoulder, and the sensation of something trickling down his arm beneath his shirt sleeve. Red spread across his fingers, but only in a light trickle.

He finally succeeded in sitting up, and that's when he heard the distant popping of gunfire start up again; only it wasn't distant, it was right in front of him.

Somehow, Ada managed to survive the blast grimy and tattered, but still somehow beautiful, and currently had one of the guards – also somehow still alive – that stood behind her in her hands; or more precisely, his arm. The guards from the balcony above were laying down fire, but their shots were wide, both from the stun of the blast and for fear of hitting their own men. The rounds did little else than pepper the ground around her.

She slammed her arm into the guards elbow, snapping the bone with brutal efficiency and a dull scream of effort. The guard's submachine gun dropped, but not before she caught it by the shoulder strap and yanked it free from his falling body. A bullet hit her square in the back, and she jerked hard as her shoulders contorted in agony, stumbling to a knee, but stood her ground and chambered the gun to her shoulder as she spun very slowly around and aimed upwards. Other parts of her armor showed liberal abuse, covered with pockmarks, scarring and divots. And blood.

The gun quietly fired a salvo of bursts, taking out and suppressing the guards shooting her from the balcony. She turned slowly again and trained the gun on a cluster of two men to his right, but one of them fired before she did. That's when he saw the spray of crimson shoot out from her inner thigh. She screamed distantly and almost went down again, but managed to turn the gun up in her hands and kept firing wildly.

A bullet or two nicked the table he was behind, sending splinters flying. The first guard, the one who shot her, took a bullet in the shoulder, and then a second which exited clean out the back of his skull from her wild spray. The other guard was clipped in the stomach, and then received half a dozen rounds to the chest as she put another burst into him.

Slowly, she turned towards him, and then locked eyes. Soft, hazel, but fierce and burning with hatred, from behind matted bangs that hung askew over her face. Time sped back up.

No…no no…

The gun locked onto him immediately. She pulled the trigger.

Click.

Crow scrambled to get up, every joint and limb suddenly protesting in some form of agony, but made it to his feet. His black, polished, and treadles dress shoes slipped on the dusty, debris-littered parquet tiling, and he almost went face-first back to the floor. This was his only chance to escape, while she was out of ammo.

Ada, normally as graceful and lethal as a panther, stumbled forward on her wounded leg as she dropped the spent machine gun, scrabbling frantically towards her fallen handgun amidst the wreckage.

What terrified him the most before he turned and ran for the door was the look in her eyes, and the way her lips were parted back in a grimace. It wasn't a look of sense or pain; it was a look of pure, unadulterated revenge. The cool-thinking woman he saw behind it earlier had vanished, possibly even killed in the explosion.

She was an animal now.