Author's Note: I've gotten a few emails for an update. I apologize sincerely – I wrote two chapters then dropped off the face of the Earth. Life has happened and gotten REALLY crazy. I'm talking bonkers… but I'm back now! And I come bearing a 15-page gift!

Also-this is really cool! This story is getting way more views and visitors than I thought it would. Almost 70 individual visitors in five days, and even more views than that. That may not sound like much to some people, but the fact that even 1 person is reading my stuff let alone 60-some in a single week just blows me away. Hopefully you guys that are reading it are enjoying it so far. I appreciate all the reviews! Thank you for being here! Grateful we get to go on this little journey together, and for each of you.

Thanks for your patience! Let's do this!

Austin, Texas

March 18, 2014

6:42pm

There were five. Three soldiers – two men, one woman - parked on a rooftop across the street from the church that matched the address Ada had been given, and two men positioned on either side with sniper rifles. One on the roof of a tall bank building a few hundred feet away, another parked in the window of a nearby apartment complex.

They were novices, at the very most. The man in the window was wearing a watch with a glass face, which reflected every speck of light that fell across him, and the other was uncovered, black business suit against the grey concrete of the rooftop. Their weapons and clothing said "professional", but their functional field skills suggested a lot of money for the window dressing, with not a lot of experience to put under it. Upon admiring the lines on the woman's suit, Ada spotted a patch of a bright color sewn onto the right sleeve. Two crossed swords under a crucifix. She frowned.

"Now, what are you doing all the way out here…?" Ada asked, to nobody in particular.

Ada sat in her hotel room, on the top floor, with drapes drawn. She'd asked for a smoking room, which meant she wanted a room where the windows opened – they normally didn't, not in hotels like this. When the clerk informed her they were a no smoking establishment, it sounded more like a challenge, a step in a dance, than a definitive statement of fact. $2000 was not a lot of money, but it was enough for a woman making minimum wage to suddenly materialize a room where the window lock hadn't yet been seen by maintenance. A room she'd previously forgotten existed that enough greenbacks just happened to shake free in her memory.

The room was blackened around a single rectangle of blinking blue-grey light - the screen of Ada's small handheld computer, linked to a camera the size of a pencil eraser that she'd placed outside the drapes on the windowsill. She'd been watching since this morning, and the soldiers in the business suits had been watching since noon. Victoria – Ada's prized sniper rifle who'd been so long in service, so thoroughly customized that she had a hard time recalling what stock body the gun started as – was propped and loaded on her tripod, by the window behind the curtain. For this assignment, Victoria been freshly oiled, serviced, and cleaned, tested and re-tested.

There had to be more of the soldiers. Nobody who had even the slightest idea who Leon Kennedy was, who his friends were, or what they were capable of, would send only five people. Not unless they were stupid, or suicidal, which admittedly didn't rule out a lot of organized crime syndicates.

A steady parade of taxis were pulling in from off-screen, stopping mid-street to offload their passengers and then leaving as soon as the doors were shut. Ada settled down behind Victoria, lifted the drape and placed it over the barrel of the gun. She set the computer aside and aligned her eye with the viewfinder, clicking the dial until the picture was large enough to make out sufficient detail, and waited.

Out of one taxi climbed a familiar figure, tall and well-dressed, all wide shoulders and long arms. Leon straightened his suit jacket, pulled the cuffs down.

The soldiers on the roof watched, body language unimpressed and distracted. The man in the apartment window was puffing on a cigarette, a greasy trail of smoke coiling into the evening air. The man on the roof was watching through his own viewfinder, his finger off the trigger of his rifle.

A man Ada didn't recognize greeted Leon with a casual handshake, a hand braced on the back of Leon's shoulder. They talked for a brief moment, then walked into the church together without incident, Leon taking the steps two at a time with his long strides. When he was inside, Ada turned her gun back to the man with the cigarette, only his disembodied nose and cheek exposed behind the angle of the building.

The church bells started ringing, loud and deep, signaling the 15-minute point before the ceremony was to start, and Ada took a slow breath. She leaned on the windowsill, into the weight of the gun, counted her heartbeats against the wood, paused.

Then, she pulled the trigger.

The recoil rocked the rifle back against her shoulder, hard, shaking her down to her bones. A spray of dark pink mist puffed from behind the windowsill of the apartment complex nearby, hitting her target but missing the wood behind him, a shot that sliced through a very small space. An outstretched arm landed against the bottom of the sill, ending in a point towards the sky as if indicating the stars. She pulled on the metal rod on the side of her rifle, racked another round into the chamber.

Ada took another deep breath, turned her gun slowly on its tripod, and adjusted the viewfinder to focus on the man hunkered on the rooftop. He recoiled as if someone had boxed him in the ear, putting his hand up to the side of his head and mouthing a word Ada couldn't make out. He'd heard the shot through his earpiece, and was struggling to plug his other ear against the bells to hear a response that wasn't coming. Ada waited for a second ring of the churchbell, and squeezed off another shot. The top portion of his head was sheared off into a v-shaped splatter of gore, the bullet leaving a deep crater in the cement. The man's body rolled onto its back, hands and feet outstretched.

The three in the business suits were standing idly, watching the procession, arms crossed. The woman said something while indicating a female guest, and the man beside her nodded.

Ada raised her head from her viewfinder. It would make more sense to intercept Leon on the way out when his acuity and reflexes were bound to be less sharp, thanks to fatigue or alcohol. Something still smelled off about this situation, and her internal voice solely responsible for self-preservation didn't scream; but it did start trying to get her attention, warning about the good possibility of a fashionable early exit.

Then one of the men placed down his briefcase, opened the clasps, and started divvying what looked a lot like grenades between the three of them.

The voice of self-preservation in Ada's head fell silent, shouted down by the tedious and predictable consideration of the greater good.

Ada sighed from deep in her chest, shaking her head, resigned. "Just can't stay out of trouble," she mumbled.

Whether this was the entire cohort or not, it would be a good start. She needed at least one of them alive, and their lackadaisical body language suggested they were unaware of what had already transpired to their companions high above. They were out here alone and didn't know it, which worked to her advantage, but only until they tried to contact them.

Ada got to work dismantling her gun, and though she was wearing gloves since her arrival, wiped down the surfaces she had touched with a buffing cloth, shut the window and left the room. Ada waited until the hallway was clear and turned back through the maintenance exit of the building, towards the stairwell that would lead her to the street.

Austin, Texas

March 18, 2014

6:57pm

Leon sat in the small crowd, shoulder-to-shoulder on each side with chattering strangers. A hushed conversational buzz hovered over the crowd, and though he took a cursory look around, he could locate no familiar faces.

Leon peered up and around at the chapel; cozy, laid with white stonework and lit with mismatched clusters of white pillar candles. Dark stained glass windows loomed high on the walls, half-illuminated in shades of purple and blue and green against the sunset outside, ominous in their antiquated severity. The Virgin Mary, a figure familiar from the Sundays of Leon's childhood, stared over the ceremony with her hands clasped in piety, her face suggesting she was nonetheless unmoved.

The soft chatter ceased with a whoosh when a man, thin and birdlike with a long ponytail and glasses, played a cascade of warm, silvery notes on an acoustic guitar connected to an amplifier, from the church pulpit. The crowd was silenced, informed without words that the ceremony was underway. He played a song that was slow, and to Leon's ears, sounded like nostalgia and tenderness, plucking at the strings with experienced control.

Claire was wearing a green dress and missing her normal ponytail, in favor of a spill of auburn curls over one shoulder. A tall, bear-like man with a thick, dark beard joined her. He was wearing a black tuxedo, his tie matching the color of her dress. Leon realized, belated, that they were the entirety of the auxiliary wedding party. The two stood on opposite sides of the pulpit, and Claire gave the man a nervy grin of excitement. He returned it with a smile that was both paternal and gentle, crinkling the network of deep crows' feet around his eyes.

It was the groom's turn, and though he tried, Chris was a man who never seemed to be able to shake the determination from his walk. Chris looked straight ahead, intentionally not looking at the crowd; Claire rubbed his shoulder when he approached, leaned in to whisper a few motivational words, and he nodded, his expression serious.

Jill walked down the aisle by herself. She wore a short dress in a similar shade of off-white, cut to drape beneath her breasts. She held a bouquet of white and green flowers. Leon looked back to Chris, who looked like he might pass out at any given moment.

The vows were brief, heartfelt, with a theme of protection, loyalty, and duty. There was a palpable connection that sung between Chris and Jill that Leon wasn't sure how he missed. He'd been to many weddings, seen many happy couples take vows in front of a crowd, but didn't know if he'd ever seen two people look at each other with such plain and naked devotion. They were responding to the officiant with words, but they were alone in this chapel, their hands clasped together, everyone else forgotten.

Beside them, Claire wiped her eyes, and almost missed her cue to pass them the rings.

When the ceremony was over, Chris grabbed his new wife and planted a huge kiss directly on her mouth. The crowd erupted in cheers and whistles, a standing ovation. Beside Leon, a man with unkempt, dark hair and a five o'clock shadow wolf-whistled so loud it hurt Leon's ears.

"IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!" The man yelled with his hands cupped around his mouth, and a loud peal of laughter erupted over the applause.

Jill raised she and Chris' clasped hands like she was crowning a boxing champion, and the cheers got louder.

Ada sidled along the grate that ringed the squat brick building, which upon further inspection appeared to be another installment in a cluster of worn-down apartment complexes. It was tall enough that any occupants on the roof couldn't be viewed from the street, which was likely all they cared about.

The soles of her boots pressed against the inner edge, her body wedged against the wall. These grates, made of hollow metal, rang like a bell with every step – slow and silent was preferable by orders of magnitude to fast and noisy.

She waited for what could have been hours, listening the moronic drone of conversation from the people above her; who was fucking who in the organization, who got promoted and didn't deserve it, who habitually showed up late but got away with it because they were the "favorite". Organized crime syndicates tended to be breeding grounds for drama and power struggles, at least on the lower levels, where upward mobility was crucial and rare. This one was no different.

One of the men walked in her direction. A cigarette butt tumbled end over end through the air and plinked off of the metal scaffolding in front of her. Ada turned, leaned her chest against the wall. His boots scuffed against the cement as he turned around, and she leapt, thrust a hand up, grabbed him by his belt and pulled him backwards, dropping him with a flailing scream to the concrete so many feet below.

A beat of silence elapsed. Ada crouched and listened.

"Did… did you hear that…?" Asked the woman. Then, her voice tiny and vulnerable, "Where… where's Daniel?"

"Shit… oh, shit. Daniel?!" The man called. "Fuck. Fuck!"

Ada waited until their shoes scuffed away from her position, jumped up, grabbed the ledge, and pulled herself up into a crouch on the edge. The woman was looking in her direction, the man's back turned. The woman gasped and unholstered her pistol, but Ada was already upon him; she lunged and grabbed him but he was quick, wiry and strong, and twisted out of her grasp with a hard jerk. He took a haymaker swing at her, that had it connected, would have had her seeing stars into next Tuesday. Unfortunately for him, it had no chance of connecting, not today, not in any other life.

Ada wound back out of the way, his knuckles grazing the fabric of her shirt over her breasts. She slapped her hand onto his upper back, over his shoulderblade, to give her knee a target. She twisted on her heel, slamming her opposite knee directly up and into his side, over his kidney. He crumpled sideways with a cry of pain, his knee buckling, and Ada grabbed him by a rough fistful of his hair, unholstering her pistol with the other hand.

"Evening," she said, over his shoulder, the wind tousling her hair into her face. He wore a pollutive combination of inexpensive cologne and cigarette smoke. "Nice suit. Tom Ford?" The man grimaced, and sniffed hard with a muffled grunt of pain.

"Well," Ada said, nodding to the pistol in the woman's hands, "You know how this works. Drop it."

"No," she said, looking back and forth between Ada and her hostage as if asking for a cue or some sort of guidance, rocking to and fro from foot to foot. She was young, with long red hair, bright grey eyes. The job hadn't had time to un-pretty her yet. "F-fuck you. You drop your gun."

Ada laughed. "Easy to say when you're not the one with the muzzle to your head. I highly suggest you encourage your friend to be more empathetic to your situation, Tom Ford."

"Rhea," the man said, his voice a strained warning, hands in the air. "Do what she says, okay?"

Rhea gave her head a little sideways shake, her expression tortured.

"It's a good idea." Ada agreed.

Rhea swallowed hard and then crouched, slow and unsure. The pistol clicked against the pavement as she set it down. She backed away.

"Good girl. Compliant. I like that." The man shifted, Ada yanked back hard on his head as a warning, and he was still again. "We should cover some basics first. If you give me the answers I want, this charming gentleman here will go free." Ada said. "Do we understand each other?"

The woman's eyes shifted to him again, then back to Ada. "Y-yes."

"Good. Do you know who I am?"

"You're Ada."

"Ada who?"

"Ada Wong."

"That's right. How many of you are there?"

Rhea's eyes flashed to the man. "It's just us three."

"Just three." Ada repeated, sounding impressed.

The woman nodded. "Y-yeah."

"Rhea," Ada said, "Do you think it's a good idea to lie to me when I have my gun against your friend's head?"

Silence. The woman licked her lips, her eyes darting to the man and then back again.

"Do you think it's a good idea, Tom?"

"There's fifteen of us, okay? Fifteen." He said. "You got your information, now let me go."

"Fifteen," Ada said, with a note of amusement. "Five times the original number, Rhea. That's quite a miscalculation."

Rhea swallowed. "I-"

"Is he correct?" Ada asked Rhea.

"Yes." A note of defeat. "But-"

Ada shot him. Rhea started, her eyes wide and her mouth open, and screamed.

"Why did you do that?! Oh my God!" She screamed again.

He fell to his knees, then his head – what was left of it – hit the ground with a hollow thump. "I find telling people not to lie to you doesn't carry the same illustrative properties as showing them what happens when they do." Ada said.

Rhea lunged for the pistol on the ground. Ada aimed her own downwards, cracking off a single shot through Rhea's outstretched hand, blasting a chunk of meat and blood the size of a golfball onto the roof below her. Gun forgotten, Rhea clutched her hand, screaming, and fell onto her knees. Ada circled out of the pool of spreading blood with practiced balletic grace, put her boot against the side of Rhea's head, and pushed her down, hard.

"Reach for it again and I'll give you and Tom over there a matching set." Ada warned, the mirth drained from her voice. "Do you understand?"

Rhea nodded, sobbing under the sole of Ada's boot, clutching her hand. She squinted through tears at the corpse across from her, and finally squeezed her eyes shut, having seen enough. "Please don't kill me." Her voice shook.

"That depends what you tell me and how fast you do it." Ada said. Her shadow stretched, long and skeletal, as the sun finally set. "Tell me who ordered you here."

"Hugo Chamberlain," Rhea said, pausing for a heavy swallow. Her voice carried a note of finality, as if uttering the name had signed her death warrant. "It was Hugo Chamberlain."

Ada scoffed. "Now what does a man like Chamberlain want with Leon Kennedy?"

"Nothing," said a male voice from behind Ada. The cold ring of what could have only been a shotgun barrel pushed her head forward. "But he does want something to do with you."

Leon sought Chris out at the reception. They exchanged a shake, a brief clasp of hands at the chest and a quick hug with the other arm.

"Congratulations, man," Leon said.

"Thanks," Chris said, with a puff of breath. "Glad that's over." There weren't many men who towered over Leon that didn't play professional basketball, but Chris was among them, powerful and broad. His facial expressions tended towards the choleric, with a heavy brow and a natural frown.

Leon laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. It was like clapping a cinder block. "I was starting to wonder if you needed a paper bag. Got pretty pale."

"Crowds aren't my thing," Chris shook his head, cocking a embarrassed half-smile. "Thanks for coming, Leon. Glad you could make it."

"Wouldn't miss it."

A woman wearing a blue dress, pretty and pale, tapped Chris on the shoulder. They exchanged a hug and brief pleasantries, when Chris remembered his manners.

"Sorry. Leon, this is Jamie; Jamie, Leon."

"Nice to meet you." Jamie said, tucking her hair behind her ear, nervous. Leon had been the victim of many "accidental" set-ups, and this was a set-up.

"Pleasure's all mine." Leon said, glancing at Chris with a flat expression that said I know what you're doing, and I'm not sure I approve yet.

"I'm gonna make the rounds," Chris said, with false enthusiasm, jabbing his thumb back in the direction of the main table, "it was good seeing you, Leon." He gave Jamie a smile and a familiar tap on the shoulder, and left.

After a beat of silence, she turned to Leon, the blonde curls that had escaped her updo bouncing around her face.

"So I'm not really good at this," she said in a blurt, "but didn't I see you on TV at one point? It is killing me."

Leon shrugged. "Depends on the show, I suppose."

"Ha, ha. I meant on the news." She said. "Long time ago. The incident in…" She groped for the right name, but couldn't find it. "The President's daughter. Wasn't that you?"

Leon's smile faded. "Spain. Unfortunately. At least I've aged well."

"That's an understatement," she said.

Leon laughed and raised an eyebrow. "And you say you're no good at this."

Her laughter ended with a sigh. "But seriously... that was really impressive. I'm not sure if it applies, but - thanks for your service."

Leon smiled with a humble, noncommittal shrug that suggested it was all in a day's work. "That's very kind of you. You want something to drink?"

"I wasn't really going to, but I could be convinced, if that's an offer."

"That's convenient, because it's an offer if I can convince you to."

Jamie smiled at him, color rising on her cheeks. She went to speak and then started laughing again, bashful. "I swear you're not the first man I've ever talked to. God, this is embarrassing." She ordered a Jack and Coke from the bartender and sat on a stool beside him. They talked over the loud music and the swell of happy chatter for the better part of a half hour, only separated by Jamie leaving to participate in traditional activities, activities that included flying bouquets and garter belts, both of which Leon was happy to dodge.

Ada turned her head, slowly, but said nothing.

"Drop your gun," the man said. Like Rhea and the man she'd shot, he had a deep southern accent, twangy and alien to Ada's ears. "And any other explosives you got on you. Slowly."

Ada complied. She tossed her pistol to the ground with an angular, noisy clatter, and raised her hands.

"That's it," she lied.

The man made a low noise in his throat. "Bullshit."

"You wanna frisk me?" Ada asked.

The man ignored her. "How bad are you hurt?" He asked around Ada's back to Rhea.

"My hand is fucked," she sobbed, clutching the wrist of her injured side. "God damn it. She killed Eli, Gabe." She sniffled, and her voice cracked. "Just shot him..."

"Damn..." the man said. "I'm sorry, Ree." He turned back to Ada. "I should blow your fucking brains out."

"Let me know where to send the flowers." Ada said.

"Shut up," the man said, pushing her head forward with the barrel of his gun. "Rhea, hold her. I gotta call this in, then we can get you patched up."

"What?" Rhea asked, in protest, holding up her injured hand. "Look at this!"

The man gestured to Ada's pistol, gleaming dark gunmetal in the dim, orange-black light of the sunset. "Go on. Just for a minute."

Rhea scooped the pistol up, almost dropped it thanks to the slick of blood on her good hand, and aimed it at Ada's face.

"I should blow a hole right in between those dirty ugly fucking slant eyes of yours." Rhea snarled. "Cunt."

"Which one was Eli?" Ada asked. "All you wannabe Neo Nazi peons look the same to me when there's a hole in your head."

Rhea glowered at her and pressed her lips together, pistol barrel against Ada's forehead. Ada locked eyes with her. If weakness had a smell, this girl was rank with it. All anger and impotent emotion, no close.

"Go on, Rhea," Ada said, her voice a low, challenging whisper. "Hold me."

"I'm gonna fuckin' shoot her!" Rhea screamed.

Behind them, the man with the shotgun dialed a phone number on a touch pad – beep, boop, beep beep, boop. Brrrrrrrr. Brrrrrrr. "You do that, you'll wish you shot yourself instead, when Hugo gets through with you. Just ignore her."

Rhea squeezed the trigger, just slightly, her hand shaking. Then she abruptly let go, looking all at once ashamed and disappointed.

"You're no soldier. This mercenary gig wasn't your idea, was it?" Ada asked.

Rhea looked up at her, snarling. "Excuse me?"

"You followed him into it, didn't you? This Eli character. The dead one."

Ada glanced back. The man with the shotgun was pacing, talking to someone on the phone, his back dangerously close to being turned to her.

"Yeah, we got her. Yeah. Y… yeah, I think so." A pause. "Two. One's in front of me with a hole in his head, not sure where the other is. She threw him off the building."

Rhea took a deep breath, said, "You don't know anything about me. Or Eli."

"I know you're holding a pistol that needs my fingerprint to fire." Ada said, low and pleasant. It wasn't true, but it made Rhea turn it away from her to look, and Ada saw her opening. Ada stuttered forward, kicked her in her lower stomach, and then Rhea crumpled over, Ada slammed her knee straight up into her nose, without touching her foot to the floor. The crunch of breaking cartilage was low and sickening. Ada grabbed her gun out of Rhea's hand, and slammed into her hip-first, knocking her to the ground.

"What the fuck?"

The man turned, dropped his phone, the display cracking into a spiderweb of a hundred pieces. He leveled his shotgun, but Ada was faster. She squeezed off three rapid-fire shots, one into his shoulder, one into his neck, and one beside his eye. She turned the gun on the woman on the ground, who held up her hands as if to block her face, and emptied the last two rounds into her chest. The slide of her gun cocked back, the clip empty, ejecting smoke into the billowing night air.

His lifeless body fell with a hard thump, Rhea's arms drifted, gentle and dreamlike, down to the ground, and once again Ada backed away from the spreading Rorschach of blood.

"Hello? Virgil? Virgil, answer me." The voice was no more than a quiet buzz, blinking insistently into the dark.

Ada scooped the phone up, with a feigned sigh of exertion. "Phew. Sorry about that, Virgil is indisposed at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?"

"You are a fucking piece of work."

"So I've been told."

"You're going to regret this. I promise you."

"Give it up," Ada said. "Your woman here just happened to let it slip that you're not here for Kennedy, you're here for me. I know your game."

"We'll see about that. Let's talk business." The woman said. Ada heard a lighter spark, and there was a pause and a soft crackle through the other end of the line. "I know you killed four of my men. I'm not happy about that."

"Five." Ada responded, kneeling to rifle through Virgil's pockets. Nothing of use. "Does this mean we're not friends?"

The woman laughed, a wretched sound that started quietly and ended as a gloating cackle. "Oh, no, no. But we're about to become real good friends. Real good. Look in the building beside you."

"I took care of them for you," Ada said, "that makes five."

The woman was silent. "I'm sure you think you have this all figured out."

"Your peons said Chamberlain wants me alive." Ada started walking towards the edge from where she'd come, ringed by metal lattice work and ladders. "There's nobody left here to take me alive, so I figure I'll leave you to your little rooftop party, if you don't mind."

"That's true," the woman said, "you can walk away. But if you decide to, your daughter – Charlotte?" The name froze Ada in mid-stride, sent her heart lurching in her chest, blood tingling with a sudden electric current of dread. "She may have some issues doing the same."

Leon drifted over to give his regards to the bride. This was a vital part of the wedding self-extraction plan: chat with the groom, chat with the bride, let people see you in the common area, find someone cute to talk a little but not too much with, then disappear before it got too late, or someone asked you to take pictures in one of those goofy photo booths. It was too late for that last part, however. He'd have to ask Sherry for a copy of the print so he could destroy it.

Jill was busy receiving a gift from a small, frail brunette woman and a larger man who floated nearby, aimless and awkward. When they left, Leon approached. When she spotted him, Jill beamed in his direction, and to his surprise, stood to give him a hug. Leon had to bend down to return it. She was an uncommonly pretty brunette woman with the most beautiful crystal blue eyes Leon had ever seen on anyone in real life. She was short in stature, but was infamous for her tenacious, hellishly tough spirit, but to Leon she had been nothing but sweet and kind.

"Gorgeous as ever," Leon said, looking her over. She was glowing the way women did when they were truly happy, and he was glad to see it. "Congratulations, Jill. This is really wonderful. You guys are great together."

She shrugged, though the smile on her face said she probably wanted to split from happiness. "I guess," she said, "thanks Leon. And thank you for being here. We're really happy you could come." Leon offered up his glass and she clinked hers against it.

After saying his goodbyes, Leon left to retrieve his jacket from the coat check by the door. After shoving one arm in a sleeve, his eyes drifted to the main table where Chris returned with a slice of cake on a plate, and presented it to Jill. He sat beside her, and when she took it from him, pulled her onto his lap. She offered him a forkful of cake and he declined it with a shake of his head.

Leon had started to look away, uncomfortable staring at what had turned into a private moment. While everybody danced and drank and sang, attention devoted to their revelry, a subtle gesture caught his eye; Chris' hand drifted to Jill's belly, rubbed it with a tenderness he didn't think the man possessed. Her dress was cut to conceal it, but there was a telling bump starting to swell from where the flat of her abdomen used to be. From the looks of it, she wouldn't be able to conceal it much longer.

Jill yawned and snuggled down against her husband's shoulder. They watched the party together in comfortable silence.

Leon didn't consider himself a man of extraordinary sentimentality, but it was hard to remain unmoved by a happy ending for two people who deserved it so badly.

Ada took in a deep breath and stilled herself. Her knees suddenly felt less than steady.

"Hear that?" The woman laughed at Ada's silence, the smile obvious in her voice.
"Peace and quiet. Sounds like I finally found somethin' that shut you up."

"She's a child." Ada hissed.

"She's your child," the woman responded, her voice crackling and faint over the whipping night air. "Big risk, doing what you do and trying to have a family at the same time. Looks like the reward wasn't worth it for this one."

Ada's mind blazed with questions. She wanted to threaten the woman's life, tell her that if she even looked at Charlie cross-eyed, every way she'd flay her tendons from her bones and hang her with them. She didn't.

"You're scum," Ada said, "all of you."

The woman laughed. "Don't be mad, dearheart! Everyone's luck runs out sometime. Now – you need to listen to me and listen very carefully. Every hour you're delayed, your pretty little daughter is gonna lose something she'll miss. One of her toes, maybe. Then her fingers. Then when those are gone, we'll start on her teeth-"

"Stop." Ada snapped. She turned, the bootfalls of three more men alerting her to their arrival behind her, guns drawn.

"I expect your full cooperation. I wouldn't try to run if I were you." The woman said, "Or if I were Charlotte."

"And if I cooperate?"

The phone call disconnected.

Ada threw the phone down with a testy flick of her wrist, and put her hands up again. It went against the very imprint in her DNA to surrender; her body tensed up to jolt back, to throw a knee or a kick. Do something.

Convincing it to not as they rounded, three men she was sure wouldn't have made it out alive if circumstances were different, was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Her muscles twitched in protest.

"Get it over with," she said. "But if you hurt her-"

One of the men grabbed her by the hair and punched her straight in the eye; the world disappeared under a sharp, angry blast of pain, and then everything went dim. Something was pulled over her face.

Leon said goodbye to Claire, who was already drunk. She was singing along to a popular song by a popular boy band from the late 90s, with a group of other similarly drunk women.

"WAIT WAIT WAIT! Wait wait. Wait." Claire yelled over the music, and dragged Leon by his arm to the bar through a sea of bodies. She forced him to do a parting shot of something disgusting that tasted similar to how some cleaning products smelled. When she was drunk, her Texan drawl finally came out in full force, why and I both became ahh. It was cute, sort of.

"Don't be a stranger," Claire said, planting a sloppy kiss that smelled like whiskey on his cheek. "You've got my number! Use it!"

Leon edged between people, dodging men in suitshirts with the sleeves rolled up and women in dresses and sweaty makeup, and stepped out into the night. The street was dark and damp, sliced through with a ribbon of chill, unusual for Texas, but it felt good against his skin after being packed in with so many people for so long. He paused and sucked a deep, cold breath down into his lungs, released it into a cartoon bubble of steam.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Leon looked over – Jamie was near the curb, her hands in the front pockets of her coat. The moisture in the air made the curls around her face fluff out a bit. She looked like a cartoon character, under the halo of the streetlight in the fine mist.

"Well," Leon shrugged, "right now they include not listening to another song by N*Sync."

Jamie laughed. "Hey now, that's the soundtrack of my college days."

"And mine, unfortunately." Leon said. "Trying to get some fresh air?"

"Cab." Jamie said. She twisted her foot to expose the heel of her shoe. "The hotel would be sort of a slog in these bad boys."

Leon nodded, pretending to be concerned about her shoes. "Where are you staying?"

"The Hyatt," Jamie said.

"Hm… opposite direction from me," Leon said, "or I'd offer to split it with you."

Jamie shrugged, hesitated, and threw the pitch first. "We could still... split it. If you want."

Leon considered this for a brief moment. "Sure." He moved closer, and she smiled. "Make sure you get home safe, that kind of thing."

Leon's sentence was punctuated by a terrified crescendo of a scream ending in a sound that was partway between a crash, a splatter, and a crunch. Jamie backed against the wall with her hands over her nose and mouth.

He was frozen, but only for a second.

"Stay here," Leon told her, "okay?"
Jamie nodded rapidly, with an expression of shock. Leon reached under his jacket and drew his pistol, checking both ways before running across the street. His footsteps echoed back at him.

It was a man in a black business suit, lying on a pile of trash bags, all of his limbs broken in ways that made Leon's stomach do a flip. The man's skull was split in at least two places, fluid leaking out into his short, dark hair, pasting it to his head in a glistening mat. The stench of human blood and bile and gore was overpowering; it made Leon want to be sick, rolling over his brain like a signal he wasn't able to ignore or will away. Leon put the lapel of his suit jacket over his nose, and lowered his pistol.

"Sir, can you hear me?" Leon asked. Doubtful – he was dead as dead could be, but there was protocol that had to be followed. Leon holstered his pistol and kneeled beside him. "Sir?"

One eye bulged from the man's crushed socket, blind. The cushion of garbage bags was enough that he didn't splatter on the cement, but it didn't save his life.

"Call 911!" Leon yelled across the street at Jamie. She fumbled with her phone, dialing the numbers and drifting forward in concern. Leon held his hand up. "Stay over there until your cab comes." Jamie complied without protest.

There was a patch on the sleeve of the man's jacket. Leon turned on his cell phone's flashlight to get a better look. Vital dark red blood was everywhere, and it glittered and glistened under the light.

The patch was also red, with a crossed set of black embroidered swords under a crucifix. Leon recognized it immediately – it was the callsign of the Bannermen of Purity, a notorious but thankfully small Neo Nazi outfit that had taken root in the barefoot down-home Evangelist church culture of rural West Virginia. Leon had tangled with the Bannermen of Purity before, a very, very long time ago during a Federal drug raid gone awry down in the Appalachias that was a part of his training. What they were doing here, now, was a mystery, but one that made him uneasy and licked against his lizard brain like a warning. It made no sense, and when things made no sense to Leon, it meant that a piece of the story was still missing.

Leon gave the man's body one final look, and stood up from his crouch, knees creaking. A tiny sliver of silver, tucked inside the man's jacket pocket, refracted a spark of under the roaming glare of Leon's flashlight. Slow and careful, Leon drew closer, touched the inside of the man's suit jacket with his fingers, and lifted it to get a better look.

A medical-grade canister of some kind, the size of a pill bottle. Scuffed but otherwise undamaged by the fall, made of thick glass, capped on each end with brushed steel. Inside, a blob of what looked like jelly, the color of amber. The blob was flattened against the inside of the canister nearest to the man's body, undulating, folding itself over. Leon watched it, fished a rumpled napkin out of his pocket, and used it to grasp the canister between his thumb and middle finger on each end. He stood with it held at a distance. The blob stopped moving, sliding down to the bottom of the canister where it laid at rest in a quivering heap.

Leon looked up into the night, the skyline suddenly threatening and ominous, like a row of jagged teeth in a huge mouth ready to close around him at any moment. A cab pulled up, bright yellow under the buttery street lamplight. Jamie hesitated, and got in. The car pulled away into the night.

Leon stood and dialed a number from muscle memory with his thumb, watching over his shoulders.

Ingrid's voicemail picked up. "Hunnigan, I need you. I know it's late, but this is important. Pick up."

A moment or so later, a click interrupted the silence. An unmistakably male grumble in the background preceded a small yawn. "I'm here." Hunnigan said. "What's going on?"

"Sorry to call so late, but it's important. I'm not sure," Leon said, "but I've got the dead body of a B.o.P laying right in front of me outside the Redfield wedding in Texas. He was carrying something in his jacket, and from the looks of it, it's some kind of biological agent."

There was shuffling on the other end of the line. "It's work," she whispered, and Leon heard a door shut. "A biological agent?" Hunnigan repeated. "Are you sure?"

"That's what it looks like." Leon repeated. "I was a criminal justice major, though, so take that with a whole shaker of salt."

"Kind of far out of the way for the B.o.P. What would they want with the Redfields, anyway?"

"A few hundred miles out of the way of their usual stomping grounds," Leon said, "and not their normal M.O., either. But outside this building at this time, where basically the entirety of the BSAA brass is having a party… It's too coincidental. Has to be connected."

"Let me guess, your cop Spidey-Sense is tingling?"

Leon laughed, despite himself. "When has that ever been wrong, huh?"

"I agree." She sighed. "I'm going to head in. I need to your documentation to be spotless, Leon. Everything, times, dates, names, descriptions. You've called the local P.D., right?"

"First thing I did," With a frown, Leon checked the bottom of his shoe; it came off the ground with a sick sucking noise, the sole caked with a stringy layer of congealing blood. He mumbled a curse.

"We'll get the local field office to clear a plane. I need you on it with that sample inside two hours. Get some sleep on the plane, if you can."

"You got it," Leon said, turning the canister over in his hand. The blob was still, outside of gravity, which dragged it down the side of the case like a snail with a glossy mucous trail.

Leon hung up his phone. The music from the reception hall played into the night, booming and muffled. Leon hovered over the broken body; it was leaking sordid mist into the cool night air from the man's multiple open wounds. Leon's eyes transfixed on the man's patch. He felt it burning a hole in his mind, like trying to remember a fact that was just outside your reach, dancing, taunting.

That feeling, like the breath of an intruder, tickled the back of Leon's neck again. He had learned to trust that feeling; it had saved his life too many times to count even on the entire party's worth of fingers, but that had never meant that he welcomed it.

Across the street, they danced, while Leon stood ready in the mist and the dark.