Chapter 56:
The Verdugo watched Ada disappear from the window with a flicker of something in its eyes that, on a face like that, read as irritation.
"Disgusting human."
It could not call her a disgusting insect. The distinction mattered to it. After the modifications the Las Plagas parasite had made to its body, it had arrived at a considered position on insects: they were superior organisms. The parasite had clarified this. Insects were evolutionarily advanced. Calling something a bug was a compliment.
Which meant the only adequate description for Ada was the lesser category.
The lights caught the black carapace. The marks left by the SMG rounds were already pushing back up through the shell, the material flowing back to its original surface in real time.
The Verdugo turned toward the window, preparing to go up the wall after the prey.
A flashbang, pin already pulled, came through the window without warning.
The detonation against its face produced a flash at roughly eighty times the brightness of sunlight. The sound component followed immediately after, the kind of sustained high-decibel impact that went through ears rather than around them.
The shriek that came out of the Verdugo was something specific to things that were not entirely human anymore. Its tail, three meters of it, swept the corridor in every direction at once. The combined blindness and ringing and burning sensation eliminated any immediate plans it had about pursuit. It moved on all four limbs back into the dark.
The rain had been getting heavier.
Ada was in it, tucked against a wall she could not currently see clearly, working on regulating her breathing back to something she had control over. The equipment had performed exactly as it needed to. She noted this with the grim satisfaction of someone who had just been correct about something in the worst possible way.
"That was close." She got her breathing down.
Then she thought about the armored thing in the corridor.
"What exactly was that. Why did the rounds do nothing. Is that some organization's biological weapon?" She turned it over quietly.
She had a better understanding now of what she had walked into. The situation had the specific texture of something that was going to get significantly more dangerous before it got less dangerous.
She thought about it for a while.
Then she called Matthew.
Backing away from a fight you could not currently win was not a character flaw. It was arithmetic.
"Hey, boss." She kept her voice down. There was tiredness in it.
"Ada." His voice came through clearly. "How's the trip going?"
"Trip." She allowed herself a quiet sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "If playing hide-and-seek with B.O.W.s in a foreign country counts as a trip, your definition is broader than mine."
A brief pause on his end.
"Ada. If I remember correctly, what I said was: find the Amber, bring it back if possible, and if the target can't be safely acquired, retreat and report the location. That was the brief." Another pause. "But based on what you're telling me, you knew there were risks and went in anyway?"
"Don't focus on those details."
She shifted her position slightly. "I just wanted my operative career to have a little more variety. Personal development."
"So why did you stop developing?"
Ada didn't answer immediately.
Nobody had told her there were biological weapons in there on top of the private medieval army. The SMG rounds had done absolutely nothing. Not even a scratch. That thing's exterior had the approximate durability of something that should not have been possible to build out of organic material.
"I was thinking about the mission." She kept her tone light. "I can't pinpoint the Amber's exact location right now, and I didn't want to let that slow things down. So I called for support. Good resource management."
There was a moment on the other end.
Then a quiet exhale.
"Fine. Send me your current coordinates. I'll arrange people to go in and retrieve the Amber."
"Be safe until they arrive. Don't take unnecessary risks."
"Relax." She glanced toward the far end of the castle grounds, where the soldiers who had heard the gunfire were now converging toward her general direction. "If all I'm doing is buying time, these things can't catch me. I am, after all, the talent you paid good money to hire. I'm not going to get taken out like this."
They exchanged a few more words. Ada hung up and started moving with the grappling hook again.
Simple objectives now. Report position in real time. Wait.
An Umbrella cargo plane was already lifting off from the airfield with the company's red-and-white logo on the fuselage.
The gunfire had carried.
The castle had gone to elevated patrol status. The frequency of the sweeps had increased significantly. Someone had released the Las Plagas-infected large dogs to track her by scent.
Ada kept moving. She was fast and she knew the grappling hook's range well by now. But the patrol density was high enough that she was occasionally spotted, her position reported before she could clear the area.
The Verdugo, its vision and hearing restored, made a decision.
It did not go back after Ada.
It went to the castle master's chambers.
The room matched what the exterior of this place had promised.
Dark silk on the walls, the fabric slightly faded from age but still carrying the family crest worked in gold thread along the borders. Vases of indeterminate vintage on the furniture. The fireplace sent unsteady light across the room, pulling shadows long and inconsistent across every surface.
The owner of this castle, Ramon Salazar, was sitting at a vanity mirror.
He was applying white lead to his face with the careful attention of someone for whom this was a serious occupation. Standard cosmetics had long since stopped being adequate. The wrinkles, the dark veins visible through the skin, the general condition of a face that the Las Plagas infection had been quietly dismantling for some time: none of it yielded to ordinary powder. White lead, the medieval solution to all visible skin problems, covered enough of it to approximate the face he preferred to see.
The Verdugo entered and dropped to one knee.
"Master. I failed and let her escape."
Salazar glanced at the Verdugo's reflection in the mirror. He did not stop what he was doing. The powder went where it was directed, and some of it drifted into the surrounding air.
"I'm aware of your failure. I have no interest in pursuing the point." The brush kept moving. "You can go."
"Master." The Verdugo did not move. "I am concerned that the intruder will reveal what she saw here. If word reaches the wrong people, it could affect your plans and the lord's."
Salazar's hand stopped.
"Your meaning?"
"Request your permission to deploy Pesanta alongside me to run her down. Together, there would be no possibility of escape."
"Pesanta." Salazar tilted his head slightly. "Pesanta is my personal guard. His function is my security. If he leaves this floor and the intruder reaches me in his absence, what then?"
"Master. The permanent solution is to capture her. That resolves every concern."
A pause.
"...You make a reasonable point."
He looked up.
"Pesanta."
The door to the chamber opened slowly, pushed by a figure considerably larger than the doorframe seemed designed to accommodate.
"Go help Verdugo catch this mortal fly." Salazar turned back to the mirror. "Be quick."
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