Thunder cracked overhead, wind howled through the walls.
In the distance, gunfire and explosions from Leon's group still flared in fits and starts, firelight staining half the sky a dull red.
Out here on the Castle's outer gallery, though, it was quiet as another world.
Having just dispatched Salazar's troublesome Left Hand, Ada was grudgingly settling into her new gig as an overpaid babysitter. But before she could cross into the Hall of the Sacred Path, the scent of blood drifting through the rain told her tonight's overtime wasn't over yet.
Ada rested one hand on the weather-worn stone balustrade, letting the cold rain soak through her red dress. She stopped walking and watched the man slowly emerge from the shadows ahead.
Scar across his face, built like a half-sized iron tower. Jack Krauser.
He held his signature tactical combat knife in a reverse grip, the special forces tattoos on his arm looking savage in the lightning. A choking wave of violence rolled off him.
"Ada." Krauser's voice was a low, rumbling thunder, unconcealed contempt running through it. "Move. Wesker's lapdog. I don't mind cleaning you up on the way."
"Krauser, so you've betrayed Wesker? A power-obsessed maniac like you, willingly reduced to Saddler's guard dog?" Ada gave a soft laugh, a trace of mockery in her eyes, her body coiled like a drawn bowstring, ready to move.
Krauser snorted coldly and wasted no more words. His huge frame surged into a step.
Crack!
The marble floor split under that casual foot in a web of cracks. Krauser blurred forward, shadow laced with pressure, and his tactical knife shrieked through the air straight for Ada's throat.
Fast.
Ada's pupils tightened. She knew better than to match raw strength against a human-shaped monster like this. She bent backward, supple as a willow leaf, and the edge of the blade whispered past the tip of her nose, shearing off a few strands of her black hair.
From that arching posture, Ada kicked her long right leg up, the heel of her shoe driving at Krauser's wrist. Krauser's reflexes were just as inhuman. He blocked with a vertical left arm. Thud. He absorbed the kick cleanly, his massive body not moving an inch.
"Too weak!"
Krauser grinned viciously and shot his left hand out, trying to grab Ada's ankle.
Still in midair, Ada twisted her core and fired her grappling gun. The hook bit into a gargoyle on the wall above. With a sharp hiss the line reeled in, yanking her up and clear of Krauser's reach.
She flipped cleanly in midair and landed on a stone pillar more than ten meters off, whipped out a compact submachine gun, and poured a full burst down on Krauser.
Ratatatatat!
Rounds hammered into the flagstones at his feet, chips flying. Krauser only raised that left arm, the one showing faint signs of mutation, to shield his face, letting the bullets glance off his iron-hard muscle. Just a few shallow cuts of blood.
"Operation Javier showed me the hypocrisy of the US government. It also showed me how short-sighted Wesker is!" Krauser lowered his arm, a brutal red light flickering in his eyes. "Only the power Saddler has granted me, this perfect evolution, is the real order!"
"And? You fully-evolved beast, you came out here for that Amber?" Ada kept talking as she leapt lightly between pillars, keeping a safe gap between them.
"That belongs to the Holy Church. I don't care about dead objects, but Saddler wants it, so I'll bring it back." Krauser's eyes went cold. "And on the way, snap your neck."
He launched at her again, faster than before, carving a white streak of vapor through the curtain of rain. His fist shattered the very pillar Ada had been standing on, flinging stone fragments like buckshot.
A shard caught Ada on the shoulder. She grunted, rolled back with the impact, and came up against the railing at the edge of the cliff. Behind her, a bottomless chasm where the wind howled.
Krauser closed in step by step, spinning his combat knife in a lethal flourish. "It's over, little mouse."
Ada leaned against the railing, chest heaving, but the corner of her mouth, trapped here at the edge, curled up ever so slightly.
She knew a head-on fight was a death sentence. But she had never been an agent who relied on raw muscle.
The instant Krauser was about to pounce, Ada drew the "counterfeit Amber" Ryan had handed her from inside her jacket. Under the lightning, the fake Amber gave off an alluring, eerie glow.
Krauser's gaze locked onto the glowing container, and his movements stalled for the barest fraction of a second.
"Since you're so eager to prove your loyalty to your new master, go fetch."
Like tossing a worthless pebble, without a flicker of regret, Ada hurled the container out into the screaming wind over the cliff.
Hmph.
Krauser's pupils shrank. In that instant, his obsession with power and the mission overrode his urge to kill. He didn't hesitate. He abandoned Ada and flung his huge body straight off the cliff after the object.
In midair, drawing on inhuman explosive force and that mutated left arm, he barely managed to catch the glowing container. Then he drove his tactical knife hard into the cliff face, sparks screaming down the rock as friction dragged him to a halt.
"Wesker's dog, crawl home with your failure." Krauser hung off the cliffside and gave a cold chuckle. He stuffed the container into his belt pouch and vanished into the thick fog below in a series of powerful drops, heading back to the Island to make his delivery.
Ada stood in the rain, watching the retreating figure, a sly glint settling in her eyes.
"You're the perfect courier, soldier."
With the threat gone, Ada lifted her wrist and opened the encrypted channel to Wesker. She took a deep breath and her tone flipped in an instant, turning cold, bitter, full of regret.
"Wesker, there's been an incident. Krauser intercepted me. He's betrayed you. He took the Amber. His strength now is far beyond what we estimated. I couldn't retrieve it. He's taken it back to the Island, to Saddler."
The other end of the line was silent for a full five seconds.
Then came a low, hair-raising snort, the sound of rage pressed down under ice.
"Jack Krauser... very well." Wesker's voice was like poisoned shards of ice, seething with annihilating fury. "Since he wants to die, I'll go to the Island myself. I'll retrieve what's mine, and his life with it."
The line cut off.
Ada stood in the wind and rain and gave a helpless shrug.
"Now Wesker's off to settle things with Krauser." Ada gently brushed her damp hair back, the corner of her mouth tilting up in a stunning little curve. "Ryan, oh Ryan, you really are a piece of work."