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Chapter 57: Ada: Down to the Last Round
In the dim chamber, Pesanta dipped his head. The black robes he wore were the kind that seemed designed to fill whatever space they entered.
"Your faithful servant Pesanta obeys."
"Good. Go."
Salazar dismissed him with a wave and returned his attention to the face in the mirror.
How many layers was that now, and he could still see the blue veins through the skin.
A flicker of irritation crossed his eyes.
Rain was coming down in sheets.
Ada was crossing rooftops at a dead run.
Behind her, several Las Plagas-infected dogs the size of a grown man ran with their tongues out, red-bulging eyes throwing points of dim light through the wet dark.
She kept changing direction, using the grappling hook to swing between buildings and stay ahead of them.
"I really did underestimate these people."
She reloaded the MP5 without slowing.
The running fights had burned through most of her ammunition. What she had left was not much.
This was not a video game. Enemies did not drop rounds when they went down. There were no supply crates built into the environment for someone to kick open at the right moment. When the bullets were gone, they were gone, and after that the only option was to find somewhere to disappear.
One of the dogs came at her through the rain.
She didn't turn around. She brought the shotgun up toward the sound and fired.
The blast at close range was enough to tear apart a human torso. It did the equivalent here. The dog's body came apart, and through the ruin of it she could see the Las Plagas parasite connecting spine to brain, exposed now, doing nothing useful.
The two halves hit the rooftop and kept moving. The parasite crawled out through the gap and thrashed. Then it went still.
"Catch her! Get her!"
A ladder went up against the rooftop edge ahead of her. Then another. Dozens of figures came over them.
Ada's mouth pulled to one side.
"They never stop coming."
She stopped at the roof's edge.
Below: dense forest running toward the sea. Through the trees, torchlight. Troops down there too.
She looked back at the closing line of dogs and soldiers. Then down at the forest and the coastline beyond it.
No hesitation.
She fired the grappling hook at the roof eave, locked the line, and jumped.
A red shape fell toward the trees below.
Midway down, she saw the Verdugo.
It was clinging to the outer castle wall, all four limbs locked against the stone like a scorpion pressed flat, head tilted back, watching her descend. Something moved across its face that, on a face like that, read as satisfaction.
Got you again.
Prey.
The tail came back.
Three meters of stinger split the air at her.
Ada looked at what was coming and let go of the grappling hook.
Instantly in free fall, she dropped below the stinger's trajectory. It passed through the space she had just been in and found nothing there.
The Verdugo watched the woman who had chosen to fall freely rather than take the hit. Something moved through its expression. Not quite frustration, but in that direction.
It drove a strike into the grappling hook still hanging from the eave and smashed it to pieces. Then it opened its mouth and produced a sound from somewhere in its chest, high and buzzing, a sound that belonged to things that were no longer fully one category or the other.
In the forest below, Pesanta heard the Verdugo's call.
His expression communicated what he thought of the situation.
So after all that, the brute still couldn't finish it. It was going to come down to him after all.
Although.
If the woman had broken her neck in the fall, that saved everyone the trouble.
Above, falling through the dark and the rain, Ada brought her arms up to cover her head and neck.
Branches came up fast. The sound of them snapping moved through the downpour in quick succession.
She pulled herself up from the ground.
Her red sweater had been shredded on the way down. Tears and gaps across most of it.
What had saved her was the surface she landed on, which turned out to be soft mud and compacted dead leaves rather than stone. A natural cushion she had not planned for. At the height she had dropped from, anything harder and the number of lives she had would not have been enough.
She worked her shoulder and lower back, both of which had strong opinions about the landing, and moved deeper into the trees without stopping to address them.
She was already regretting abandoning the patrol soldier's uniform.
With that on, she could have moved back among them without attracting attention.
She stopped.
Actually.
Why not do it again? Find another patrol soldier, take their uniform, and walk straight back in. The approach had worked once already. The number of times a tactic had been used had no bearing on whether it still worked.
She moved to a new position under cover of the dark, found a tree, and climbed.
Time passed.
The rain was heavy enough to wash the scent from the forest floor and give the Las Plagas dogs nothing useful to track. Their noses were working against noise.
Eventually a figure came through the trees below her. Shield and chain hammer. Moving alone, looking around.
Ada checked the nearest other patrol. Twenty meters, minimum.
She dropped.
The dagger went through the back of the soldier's skull on the way down and drove him into the ground. Two more followed, throat and heart, before she was satisfied. Then she stripped off his clothes and put them on.
"And just like that, we're back to hide and seek."
For buying time, nothing beat hide and seek.
She picked up the shield and chain hammer, covered the body with leaves, and stepped back into the patrol rotation.
The rain got heavier. No sign of stopping.
Pesanta watched the Las Plagas dogs circle through the trees, noses down, finding nothing. The anger in his chest was climbing.
"Disgusting humans. Always hiding."
A dog nudged at his feet, looking for acknowledgment.
Pesanta looked down at it.
His boot came down on the dog's skull with full weight behind it.
The head caved.
Worthless creature.
He looked up at the rain. As he did, something at the edge of his vision made him stop.
Blood?
He crossed to a pile of dead leaves nearby and crouched down.
Underneath: a body. Stripped of everything, down to the undergarments.
Pesanta straightened.
"Hide and seek again." His voice carried something cold in it. "That works on Verdugo. It doesn't work on me."
Something came together in his mind.
A plan.
***
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