Chapter 58: Reinforcements Arrive
Compared to the Verdugo, Pesanta's capability required a certain amount of setup to deploy.
He could inject Las Plagas into a target and then use the parasite to induce hallucinations — something that functioned, in practical terms, as a manufactured illusion.
The limitation: Ada had never had any physical contact with Pesanta. No parasite in her system meant no hallucination. The ability had nothing to work with.
But Ada not having the parasite did not mean the patrol soldiers around her didn't.
Pesanta's plan was straightforward.
Trigger hallucinations in the patrol soldiers and observe their reactions. Eliminate them one by one. Anyone who failed to react at all was Ada.
At this moment, Ada was moving with the patrol through the forest, unaware of any of this.
She kept the shield at her side and her pace unhurried, indistinguishable from the column around her.
Whatever else could be said about the situation, the sensation of moving through a crowd actively searching for you was something else entirely. If she had to compare it to something, it was probably not unlike the thrill of doing something indecent in a very public place.
Ada was at the rear of the column, eyes working continuously through the trees past the edge of her visor.
Then she picked it up: a figure in black robes, nearly two and a half meters tall, moving through the forest without making a sound.
Her chest tightened.
More than that — she noticed that each time the black-robed figure stopped in front of one of the patrol soldiers, the nearest man responded in a way that had nothing in common with the man before him.
One recoiled in fear. The next dropped to his knees in reverence.
Ada filed this away without understanding it, and held position. Breaking from the column right now was not the right call. Whatever was happening, the correct response was to stay and adapt.
What Ada didn't know: the alternating fear and reverence was entirely by design.
The fear came from a hallucination of Pesanta raising his arm and bringing it down at the soldier's head. The reverence came from a different illusion entirely — Pesanta projecting the likeness of Lord Saddler, leader of the Illuminados, stepping out from the trees in deep blue ceremonial robes. For bodies already saturated with Las Plagas, that image landed somewhere between a deity manifesting in person and the complete collapse of rational thought. The infected soldiers responded accordingly.
Two opposite reactions, neither of which Ada could predict or imitate. Between them, Pesanta had closed off the only camouflage available to her.
Time passed. About thirty minutes in, Pesanta turned his attention to Ada's column.
"Stop."
Ada's stride stopped. She stood still with everyone else, the column halting and turning toward the robed figure coming through the trees.
Pesanta moved down the line, looking at each face in turn.
Nothing from the outside. No visible anomaly.
He reached the front man and held his gaze.
The hallucination engaged.
In that soldier's vision, the dark forest brightened. Then Lord Saddler stepped out from the trees, moving toward him at a deliberate pace. The Las Plagas did the rest. The man dropped to his knees before the vision had fully resolved, pressing his forehead to the ground, shaking.
Consistent with the illusion. Pesanta moved on.
The next soldier's reaction was the inverse. No Saddler. Instead: dozens of Pesanta-shaped figures in black robes closing in from every direction at once, raising their right hands in unison and bringing them down at his skull.
The man screamed and crumpled, hands clamped over his head.
Pesanta nodded once and continued down the line.
Third. Fourth.
He arrived in front of Ada.
His gaze settled on her.
One second. Two. Three.
Nothing.
He focused harder, pressing the hallucination forward.
Ada moved first.
A flashbang, pin already pulled, rolled quietly from her foot across the ground.
Pesanta: ...
Ada turned and ran.
One second later, light tore through the dark between the trees. Pesanta's scream went through the forest and kept going.
The Verdugo, conducting its assigned patrol across the castle grounds, heard the sound from a distance.
The corner of its mouth moved.
Tsk. All that, and he's no further along than I was.
"After her! Move! GO!" Pesanta was screaming somewhere in the trees.
The problem: the flashbang had treated the entire patrol with the same impartiality it had applied to him. Every soldier in the column was blind, ears ringing, receiving nothing.
Ten minutes before Pesanta pulled himself back together.
He looked down at the patrol soldiers still groaning on the ground at his feet. What came out of him at that point bypassed any filter that might normally have contained it. He grabbed his black robes with both hands and tore them off, putting whatever was underneath on display.
"I am DONE with this ridiculous cat-and-mouse! DONE!"
"DISGUSTING HUMANS!"
In the forest ahead of him, running, Ada heard the roaring echo behind her.
The corner of her mouth moved upward by approximately two pixels.
That was the end of Pesanta's participation in anything requiring subtlety.
Ada was still working through her next move when the sound reached her through the trees.
Rotor blades. Getting closer.
She stopped running.
The exhaustion that had been sitting in her face rearranged itself. A proper smile crossed it for the first time in a while.
"Looks like it's time to wrap this up."
She paused for a moment.
"This time, we're the hunters. You're the prey."
She swapped what remained in the MP5 for tracer rounds and aimed at the sky.
Red lines cut upward through the dark.
On the helicopter.
Hunk and Leon picked up the tracers immediately and directed the pilot toward Ada's position.
The tracers also did something else: they gave Pesanta and Verdugo her exact coordinates. Both of them turned and moved toward the source at full speed.
They looked up at the helicopters circling overhead. Something moved through both their expressions.
Humans. Always calling for backup.
Searchlights locked onto them.
"Targets acquired."
"Requesting drop authorization."
"B.O.W. drop authorized."
Two yellow cargo containers dropped from the helicopters.
Before either Pesanta or Verdugo had finished processing this, both containers hit the forest floor between them with an impact that rearranged the ground around the landing site, and settled squarely across the path forward.
At the same moment.
Hunk's team and Leon's team fast-roped down from their respective helicopters simultaneously.
Under thirty seconds. Both teams assembled alongside Ada.
"Sir." Hunk scanned her condition — mobile, operational, no visible injuries — and keyed his radio. "Target confirmed alive and mobile."
Matthew's voice came through: "Get her weapons and ammunition. She moves with you."
"Copy."
A full equipment kit dropped from the helicopter.
"Ms. Wong." Hunk was already looking past her at the cult soldiers converging through the tree line. "Please gear up as quickly as you can."
Both teams raised their rifles.
"We move."
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