Preface: Ada Wong tries to coax a local to lead her to the operating location of the Los Illuminados. Things get a little weird.
**Capcom owns Ada Wong and Mikhail Victor
Wong, Ahmad, and Mahmoud all went through the orange wooden gate of their designated compound. The special forces Afghan, Mohammad, greeted them as they entered. Mohammad's face was weathered and his forehead's frown lines were deep, but his beard was well trimmed and greased with conditioner. He had clearly washed his face and cleaned up from his duties, even though he still wore the dark camo uniform of the Afghan military. Wong went into the back room and cleaned the hookah thoroughly while Mahmoud, Ahmad, and Mohammad, prayed their evening prayers.
Sure enough, she heard Mahmoud's questioning voice become heated as she walked into the room, ready to invite them to a smoke. Ahmad translated tiredly and without passion. He hated having to be the messenger in arguments.
"Bashir! Why do you not respect our customs when you come to our country?"
They had rolled up their prayer mats and placed them against the wall, now just sitting together in the carpeted room.
Ahmad and Mohammad were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, but Mahmoud was standing defiantly. The lack of inflection in Ahmad's voice was making Mahmoud even more angry. Wong's heart was quickening.
"I am a military doctor trying to stop weaponized illnesses. I want Afghans to finally stop pointing their guns and pick up books. You know I am an honorable person Mahmoud, in your heart."
She heard Ahmad yelling doctor a few times (and also Mohammad too) and let out a very tiny chuckle disguised as a cough, while he finished translating. Mahmoud pointed at her sharply as he yelled. Ahmad said calmly,
"All we need to read is the Quran, all we need to write is the Hadiths; we already have all these things from birth! You are poisoning our culture and we don't need you here."
Mohammad was trying to get Mahmoud to sit, waving his arms for attention, while Ahmad was translating impressively fast.
"But that is not the whole truth Mahmoud. You knew it you know it. I am here to remind you again. Your life is much more important than your death."
Mohammad was very much afraid for Wong, as he looked tersely at Mahmoud. Whatever Ahmad was saying about religion to Mahmoud, Mohammad quickly was agreeing to it, sometimes adding more.
Mahmoud was arguing still. She could see the huge battle on his face. Then, he was crying again. There was, from his one good eye, a part of him that now agreed with her, even as his upbringing from birth told him differently. And yet, she knew enough about his beliefs. There was a chance that if he killed her, he would get an extra reward upon his death-where he could finally be with his parents. But, after everything he had been put through, Wong had made a risky bet that he would not choose this. He announced now that he would be taking a walk.
She commanded them all, "Let him walk, and Mahmoud go in peace. Salaam."
Mohammad argued but let Mahmoud go, glaring at him hard as he escorted Mahmoud out of the compound.
Ahmad told her, "Mohammad says you should have beat the boy for his shameful outburst in front of the group. Mahmoud soured your gracious hospitality in your house with threats. I think he should be followed."
"I'll think about it. Thanks Mohammad. Tashakur. Mahmoud hates the Students, but…its hard to say; he may bring them back here anyways because I am a kaffir. You talk them down from inside, and I will meet them outside."
Wong went towards the backyard to speak to her go-to therapist, their dairy goat Marsha. Except that when she moved the curtain back to peek, she saw a humanoid grey and translucent creature bending down, attempting to sodomize the goat. She yelped-as did poor Marsha.
It wore no clothes over its translucent skin because it was too disfigured. The eyes were milky white. It's mouth was an open flower petal, razor fangs decorating the inside. It's forked tongue was out, because it was panting. Its legs were bent backwards and its feet were also bent backwards. She could see black writhing worms from within its torso. They were moving down its lung area as it desperately worked to bury itself into the goat.
"Nonoo not Marsha!" She pulled out her pistol, took aim, pulled the safety back, aiming right for those lungs.
She hit it a few times, and it quickly leapt upwards high into the air, out of the compound. She could see the worms wriggling their way into Marsha, but she still couldn't bring herself to shoot her goat. Marsha was screaming and rolling on the ground. Mohammad pushed Wong back protectively and spoke some curses as he got his knife out and went towards Marsha.
"Ahmad tell him he needs to stay back! It could infect him!"
Ahmad was already translating as she spoke, and Mohammad was more than relieved to back up. They went into the house together as Marsha continued bleating. Wong stared at Mohammad saying, "We gotta burn it."
Mohammad knew what she meant and said simply, "Waltz." They all nodded together.
She got out her radio, "Gecko to Assblaster, over."
She heard a loud exhalation in return. She said, "Party rock. Over."
Waltz lumbered inside shortly after, while Mohammad left to patrol. He grumbled as he went into the back room and changed into a thick biohazard suit.
"Gecko! You should be doing this. NOT me. Mikhail got this all backfucked; I should talk to the locals and you should be doing cleanup."
"If you didn't look like a Norse invader, maybe Mikhail would've listened-but you also look like a giant baby. That's the real issue; nobody wants to talk seriously to a wailing baby."
He indignantly spat with a cracking voice, "Wailing?!" He marched past her into the yard.
She heard Waltz put a bullet into Marsha and sighed sadly. Waltz let out little high pitched screams, so Wong peeked through the curtain. A long black thin worm was wrapped around his leg, trying to secure a way into his ass. There were small tears in his gear as it squeezed its way upward. Ahmad threw his own pocketknife beside Waltz's feet, and Waltz was quick to start slicing and dicing at the worm with his thick black rubber gloves. It looked like he was back in control.
Wong slapped the side of her head in shame. She thought back to earlier. Her body turned to mush and slid onto the persian rug in a pile.
"I can't believe I was so patronizing to Mahmoud. I honestly thought he didn't understand CORDY13. I'm so dumb."
Ahmad consoled her, "He was speaking in half sentences Wong, so I was having a hard time understanding too even. He was really excited to show you whatever it was?" His voice hitched up intentionally into a question. This was as close as he got to being direct.
"Imma get a torch for this hookah, it was wild Ahmad."
"Get that mint flavored tobacco!" Waltz asked from the yard. She heard a big thump as Waltz threw the goat over the wall of the compound, outside.
Ahmad did the honors of setting up the hookah, coughing horrendously. He handed the extra long leather hose to Wong.
Ahmad brought up a topic he'd been wondering about since the outbreak.
"You know the cities got it the worst, CORDY13; Afghanistan is the still the best place in the world right now. Even with students, the nationalists, Karzai's-"
Waltz sat down, laughing hard at Ahmad. "Go on with the groups Ahmad," he managed to get out as he hit his head gently on the wall.
"I got it Waltz" Ada wong's hand held the hose out carelessly. "Even…with the fathers, the old men, the old wives..yea that sums up the groups. I think you're right Ahmad about the landscape, but you are sooooo dead wrong about the kind of culture we got stuck in. They don't want us but we can't leave."
"They don't want you, Wong." Waltz said. He let out a rolling tsunami of smoke very slowly.
"They do! They want Bashir! They loooove Bashir!"
"Everybody knows you're a fucking woman!" Waltz cried out-he'd said it quite a few times before. He'd seen her without the thick contours of makeup and war paint.
Ahmad cut in, "A lot of them don't. I'm always so impressed by her makeup skills. She plays the part well, even though her voice might be the tip off point sometimes. The real problem is that she kind of looks like those Shiite Hazaras."
Waltz cared nothing for the local politics. He lay down heavily, saying, "Hazara smara, I think I want to stay. Become American-Afghan. Ask to join a tribe like the Tajiks."
Wong poked him with her hookah hose. "Americans aren't tribal! No! Waltz we have to colonize everything!" Waltz' eyes lit up.
"You talkin about that Manifest destiny?" Ahmad said curiously. He sounded a bit concerned.
"Im joking you guys, I'm just joking ok? I don't think that any 18 to 25 year old American soldier really wants to stay in a place where every man is out for themselves." Wong said. Ahmad looked visibly relieved.
Her mission had changed a few times while she was here. First, as a new member of the BSA, she had to hold a timer and watch people turn.
By the time 2014 hit, a few locals had entirely different symptoms from the outbreak. Their skin would become translucent and their organs would glow strangely. This caused the schism, wherein BSA split to BCS. Going around the city, it was very easy to convince people not to take unprescribed medication. But going around the outskirts where the warlords holed up, it took more inventive processes. Wong complained to her group now,
"I shouldn't have to give you 100 dollars -I'm sorry 8,723 Afghani-so that you avoid poisoning yourself. Right Ahmad?"
"But this poison gives me a preview of my 72 virgins. So now you definitely have to pay me five times that amount."
Waltz nudged Wong "Ahmad really wants those virgins Wong. He's taking them from you. You just gonna let that happen?"
"Those virgins are gonna race back to me cuz I'll be dishing out pizza. What else am I gonna do with 72 virgins?"
"About that goat" Ahmad said cautiously.
"No." Wong commanded sharply. Her painted warface soured. But the tobacco was very strong on her, so she softened quickly.
Waltz said, "Maybe Wong would be a good trade-off to settle into some la-"
"Shut up Waltz. That's NOT funny. I'm not a pokemon. Yea lets talk about the goat."
She got up, stretched out in her white parahun, and went to the back room-her lab. A bunch of pallets served as tables, and a few big solar batteries were shoved neatly to the corner of the room. They also had solar panels in the back of the compound to help keep the small lab fridge running. She kept talking to them as she turned on the thick laptop. Beside it was a tray of tiny rainbow-colored vials and a big thick needle.
"These country bumpkin Afghans need to stop fucking with my goats!" She yelled.
Ahmad added, "Stop doing haram things to our goats."
Wong opened up the lid to a heated container filled with warm water. A single tiny vial floated within a plushy circular tray.
"I've got the plasmid here, ready for activation-and now no goat."
"You have me. I volunteer!" Waltz waved his arm high in the air as Wong turned around and laughed at him.
"If Ahmad wants to milk you…"
"It's 100% Halal Ahmad, totally." Waltz flicked his eyebrows up flirtaciously.
Wong took pictures of the captured parasite with a small camera, and then cabled the camera into the computer. As a countermeasure operative, her duty was to carefully document each encounter and send it via satellite to the BSA checkpoints in Kunduz City. BSA had extracted this same exact parasite from other victims in the city, but those had not been so large and…aggressive. She started typing up her report while Ahmad and Waltz continued talking in the other room.
"Ahmad you need to tell the Afghan I can't take him to the states." She threw out the words to the other room. If a woman can't get back, no one can. It's just the truth, it won't stop a friendship."
Waltz asked Ahmad, "Why aren't you translating what Wong wants Ahmad? You don't trust Wong's intuition? She's the one that figured out the plasmid software on the computer." Even though his tone was nonchalant, Ahmad's job hinged on a proper answer.
"Uhh.. intuition? Nah. Wong…I'm just trying to protect her. I am doing my job Waltz. I am translating as literally as possible. Besides, he's too conservative. He doesn't want to go to America either, he just likes the possibility. Just like any teenager." Wong still didn't agree with this, but she also was afraid for Ahmad, so she said he was right anyways. In her opinion, if you make a promise as a foreigner; as a guest-especially as an unwelcome one-you better find a way to keep it.
Mohammads voice came through on the radio. "Party ready."
"Shitttt." Wong saved her report and got a mirror out from her bag. She needed more war paint, and her chin contouring had gone flat. "That was way too fast. What the fuck."
She heard an engine outside. "Waltz, I give the orders now. I don't know what the Afghan did. I don't know what he wants. But don't get trigger happy." Waltz scrunched up his face in emotional pain. He'd practiced this but he still remembered how out of hand the Afghans had gotten when she first started. It infuriated him to no end to watch some of these exchanges, but he got around this emotion by staring at the dirt and using his foot to draw penises. Rocketships, he called them.
Waltz responded. "Copy that. Birds?"
"Winter Murders. Over."
Wong lamented, "I should've just gotten pregnant right before deployment like all the rest of the females. But I didn't want 18 years of responsibility-they didn't get pregnant and I'm the fool now." She was breathing a bit fast, but she put on the rest of her contours, grabbed her Walkman and went to the front of the compound. The Afghans were loudly boisterous, and the engines-it sounded like three-were running; all of which were a very good sign to her. Of course, for Wong, there were only good signs, never bad. They were trying to break through the wooden frame.
Ahmad sighed loudly, "They think they have right to come in here. Just like my mother-in-law." Ahmad asked why the men were here, and Mahmoud answered for the group.
"Mahmoud says he brought fighters to help with the terrorists. From Kuchi tribe."
What were a bunch of Kuchi guys doing out here, when they were supposed to be tending their livestock in Badakh province up in the east?
Wong projected her voice, "Tell them to wait outside the gate while we greet them one by one." She heard Mahmoud saying, "Bashir, Bashir, Bashir" to the men. She rubbed at her bristling skin.
"Tell them that, they are honoured guests and we would like to know each one personally. One at a time, they can come inside." Ahmad translated for her, and then also for Waltz on the other side.
She turned on her Walkman, double checking the song's volume as Waltz announced himself behind them. She chuckled when some of the men screamed in surprise. She heard them shuffle, dropping their weapons into the trucks.
Ahmad tapped the top of the CD player. "What's your music of choice?"
"Whitney Houston, I wanna dance with somebody." He shook his head at her as he opened the gate, and a man popped through without a gun. It wasn't Whitney Houston, it was some Afghan music she'd bought at the bazaar back at Bagram.
"Salaam alaykkum, Bashir, American commander." Wong introduced herself, and Ahmad finished the rest.
She handed the headset over, and Ahmad had to explain in detail what to do with the headset several times. The guy looked a bit spooked, but he finally put it over his ears. Aside from his head jerking from the noise, he looked at Bashir with eyes as dead as her own. The noise from the Afghans was loud enough so they wouldn't hear their exchange.
"Who sings this song?" She demanded.
"Aryana Sayeed." She raised her eyebrows, and nodded at Ahmad. "Who are you?"
"Hadji Bilal, here to fight off the devils infecting our people." She directed him to stay in another part of the yard where she could face him but the newcomers could not. She noticed that some of them wore the pants of the Afghan national army, and although the majority of them appeared to be the same age as Mahmoud, there were quite a few middle aged bearded men as well.
15 people later, she spoke briefly-Ahmad was definitely working overtime and she didn't want to tire him too much on top of being scared.
"Welcome to our compound. Let me show you the infected goat."
Mahmoud's ears perked up. As she motioned for the group to follow her back out of the compound, he was asking Ahmad about it.
"This goat was infected, it has many worms inside of it that are deadly." Wong pointed at the burnt carcass just outside the compound wall. The stench of gasoline was strong.
"A bioweapon is infecting livestock in this area. It's still out there."
Waltz came up behind her. "Dude keeps fucking goats. Haram stuff guys, extremely haram." Ahmad didn't translate any of that. He was still trying to figure out 'bioweapon' in Pashtu.
Wong leaned over the head, with its tongue stuck out. Now that Waltz was here, she was relieved to have someone by her side that she could simply talk to without waiting. "This would be easily worth $100,000 back in the states. What a fucking travesty." Seeing the goat again was a huge blow to her, as she thought about how many thousands of times she'd stuck the needle into Marsha's veins, trying to get the new gene to "stick". When she (after a full year of trying) finally stuck the milk vein, within a few hours, Marsha's teats started dripping milk.
The Afghans were excitedly chatting with eachother, but Wong wanted to show them the source. She walked with them back inside the compound. She made sure that Ahmad told them a few times that they were very welcome to stay inside the American compound. She felt her eyelids, self-consciously.
Inside, she directed Ahmad-in front of the Afghans-to get the chai ready.
"But Wong, that means disconnecting your lab equipment; are you sure?" He meant the heater that was keeping the plasmid in its activated state. Turning it off would kill the vector.
"Fuck it. Listen just do it I don't want to dwell ok?"
He got busy in the back room. Wong switched the CD out of her Walkman and put it into a radio/cd player, turning on the music.
She snapped her fingers, danced a few seconds in the way she had seen from Kunduz city, and smiled at the Afghans. She cleaned up the hookah and passed it around. Once the Afghans eased up from the strong tobacco, they started dancing.
Waltz went into the room and sat down beside Wong.
"How'd your test go?" He whispered. Ahmad served tea to Wong, who tested the flavor and nodded approvingly at Ahmad. He went and placed the tray in the middle of the room.
"Uh… it wasn't really conclusive. They didn't know what a headset was. But looks like they're all having a good time now. I was thinking we let them tell poetry?"
"No, I would suggest some tv. They won't fight, they'll just fall asleep."
"Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of babysitting? How many times did you babysit, growing up, Waltz?"
"I babysat my little sister all the time. I know the deep secrets Wong."
With her approval, he got out his laptop from another room and hopped back over quickly with a pallet, turning on a bootleg copy of Pashto Spongebob.
The men were very confused to see a sponge talking, and Waltz had to put his hand in front of the computer to stop them from touching it.
"Mahmoud, how you find these guys when you go on a 'walk'?"
Ahmad tiredly translated for her. Waltz noticed the tea was getting low and went to the back room to refill. He kept his eyes on everyone.
Mahmoud smiled at her proudly. "Where the war is, there will always be a Kuchi guy. They love to fight."
Ahmad's eyes were involuntarily closing now, so Wong knew she had to get them out.
She quickly went into the back room and grabbed the glass container with the black parasite.
When she showed the men, they were appalled.
"Ahmad, tell them again. A terrorist is infecting Afghan livestock. It's wounded but still alive; so they should be careful. Wear protective long sleeve clothing-"
"-And cover their asses." Waltz cut in.
