Chapter 90: A Plot Long in the Making
That night.
Ada stepped out of the Umbrella elevator after a full day's work and made her way down to the underground parking garage.
Bright white light filled the entire space, nearly enough to make you forget there was darkness overhead at all.
She let out a slow breath and pulled the car door open, dropping into the driver's seat with the particular fatigue of someone who had earned it.
She didn't start the engine immediately. Instead, she reached into her bag and produced a hamburger that was still faintly warm. She ate it where she sat, without ceremony.
Matthew had seen her working late and gone downstairs to buy it for her himself. Double-fillet cod with melted cheese, the way she liked it.
Feeling the warmth of it in her hands, some of the tiredness left her face, and a small smile found its way there.
Whatever else you could say about the man, his treatment of the people who worked for him was exceptional.
[System: +5 points. Ada Wong's regard for you has increased.]
She finished at her own pace, then started the car without rushing and pulled out toward home.
Home being a new location, on account of Nikki.
Nikki's ability had not gone out of control once since she arrived, but Matthew had arranged a more out-of-the-way residence as a precaution. Out of the way in terms of location only — everything inside remained at the same standard. A fully equipped luxury property with the same top-tier security as before.
Matthew had also arranged teachers to continue Nikki's education from the Nursery curriculum. They stayed on after Ada left each evening and gave Nikki one-on-one instruction rather than classroom lessons.
"Nikki's probably been asleep for a while by now."
On the empty road, Ada rested one hand on the open window frame and the other on the wheel, thinking half out loud.
Trees blurred past on both sides.
The cold air moved through her hair.
She was considering whether to wake Nikki up for a late meal when it hit her — a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the night air. Something wrong, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The next second, the entire frame of the car let out a sound like something in severe distress.
Every hair on Ada's body stood up at once.
Her spider-sense was screaming.
No time to think.
Ada drove her foot into the car door and kicked it open, and threw herself out of a vehicle still moving at speed.
But in the same instant she launched herself clear —
The sound of metal collapsing under catastrophic force tore through the air behind her.
The car, which had been moving at full speed, was reduced in an instant to something resembling a crushed tin can, folded in on itself by something invisible. The force was fast enough that it caught Ada's trailing foot as she cleared the door, and dragged her across the road for the better part of a hundred meters before it stopped.
The scraping of her body across the asphalt was audible for the full length of it.
Her iconic red sweater came apart within the first few seconds of contact, leaving the skin and muscle beneath it to take the rest.
Without the physical enhancement from both serums running through her system, a hundred meters of that would have been enough to leave nothing behind worth describing.
The flattened car came to a stop when it hit a tree.
The impact went through Ada's entire body.
She coughed blood.
The smell of fuel was immediate and heavy. Ada ignored the pain radiating from her side and her skin and forced her trapped ankle out from under the wreckage, rolled clear, and pulled herself away from the car.
She was still moving when a lit cigarette end came spinning out of the tree line.
The pool of fuel on the road caught instantly.
"Hell." Ada swore under her breath, moving faster on a leg that was already complaining about it, putting distance between herself and the fire.
Her spider-sense hadn't stopped.
Through the glare of the flames, she looked toward the forest in the distance.
Blood was running into her line of sight.
She couldn't make out what was in the trees, but she could feel with complete certainty that whatever was in that direction was dangerous.
She wiped the blood from her mouth and reached for her gun.
Then the world tilted.
Her vision smeared. A sharp pain went through her head, coming from somewhere inside rather than outside. It had the quality of the world deciding to stop making sense, the way everything goes when a wave of something bad hits the bloodstream all at once.
"What's..." Ada pressed one hand to her forehead and braced against a tree with the other to stay upright.
A scent reached her. Floral. Something she couldn't place.
Everything in her field of vision blurred and began to lose color. The edges went soft, then the middle, until she was no longer standing on a road in New York at night.
Without knowing how, she was somewhere else entirely.
A childhood she had long since stopped thinking about.
In the forest.
Miranda watched Ada's eyes go distant and unfocused, and gave an approving nod to the figure beside her.
Donna Beneviento, one of Miranda's four lords, was a puppeteer by nature.
The mold had found her, as it had found the others. But unlike the rest, her physical body had changed little. What had been enhanced was something else: her mind, her perceptions, and the particular ability she carried with her.
Donna Beneviento's body could produce a substance that, when released, commanded a specific variety of mold-infected flower. Once the pollen from that flower was inhaled, she could induce hallucinations in whoever breathed it in.
The original intention had been to bring Donna to New York so that Matthew would breathe in the pollen somewhere inside the company and die in what would appear to be an accident of his own causing.
Miranda had not anticipated the ability finding use this early.
"Well done, Donna." Miranda's voice was even.
Donna ducked her head with visible shyness.
The doll in her hands was another matter. Angie threw both arms up and began bouncing in place with uninhibited excitement.
"That was all Angie! Being able to help Mother Miranda is the greatest thing Angie could ever do!" She sprang from one foot to the other, delighted with herself.
Heisenberg, standing nearby, looked sideways at Angie with the expression of someone whose patience was already depleted.
"Shut your mouth," he said flatly.
"Angie's mouth isn't a problem!" Angie declared, unbothered. "And Angie thinks you're only yelling because Mother Miranda praised me and didn't praise you, so you're taking it out on Angie."
Heisenberg said nothing for a moment.
"Say one more word and I'll wire that mouth shut permanently."
Angie's hands flew to her face.
The moment that particular exchange ran out of steam, Miranda turned to Alcina.
"Knock her out. Bring her."
Alcina blinked. "Knock her out? Not kill her, Mother Miranda?"
Miranda gave Alcina a measured look. "If she were an ordinary person, it wouldn't matter either way."
"But as things stand..."
Her gaze moved to Ada, who had been dragged the length of a hundred meters by a collapsing car and had come out of it with scrapes.
Something like interest moved through Miranda's eyes.
"Someone who has never encountered Cadou, yet whose physical condition already exceeds anything ordinary human capability can account for — that is exactly the quality of research subject my work requires."
"Killing her now would be a waste."
"Knock her out. Keep her alive. I have a use for her."
"Yes, Mother Miranda." Alcina adjusted the wide-brimmed hat on her head, bent to clear the branches in her way, and stepped out from the tree line.
She looked at Ada, who had gone somewhere far away inside her own mind.
Without any hesitation, she brought one hand down against the side of Ada's neck.
Thud.
Ada folded and hit the ground.
***
30+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces