Cannibal, Cannibal

[Ada Wong]

At the center of the industrial neighborhood that the late Viola Burns had once called home, a towering multi-story complex jutted out against the pale-colored sky, the tall upper-floor windows staring out across the boulevard to where yet another retro-futuristic behemoth was in the process of being constructed. The monotonous droning of machinery overlapped with the stream of noise from off the street, sounding like a nest of angry wasps getting tossed around in a metal bucket; while it was yet another much-needed addition to the impressive commercial district of Tier Three, the construction created a near-deafening cacophony of sheer air pollution. It was this chaotic jungle of sound that Ada and Aello found themselves in, the directions provided by Captain Yung providing a clear course between the city-verse’s tiers.

Ada stopped her motorbike at the curb, the tires spinning out over the concrete and rolling to a smooth halt. Sharp-eyed and wary of the airborne vehicles flying several feet above her position at ground level, Ada slid off her perch in a single fluid motion, removing the lightweight, aerodynamic helmet she had summoned along with the bike. She smoothed away any flyaway strands of her short black hair with a hand, looking up at the building and committing the height (seven stories) to memory. Compared to what limited information Yung had provided to them about the dead intern, every detail fit this location to a T.

This was ideal, of course. Even something as simple as pinpointing the right dwelling would go a long way in making this mission easier to handle, and Ada intended to take full advantage of that.

She turned as a sort of purring hum spiked in volume from behind, a warm gush of air stirring the red folds of her qipao and hitting her exposed shoulder blades and legs. Ada watched as Aello hopped off from the seat of a bulky hover-bike, the thing unpainted and dented in places, deep grooves digging into the metal carapace until bright silver glinted through in shiny, scratch-shaped marks. It was almost as if a wild animal had attempted to latch onto it, the battered state reminiscent of the punk rogue’s cyberkinetic arm. The bike whirred and bumpily lowered to the ground following the other woman’s dismount, the undercarriage hitting the pavement with a dull clunk.

Aello shot her a quick, sharp-toothed grin upon seeing the secret agent’s grudgingly-impressed expression, but all mirth dropped from her face the second she caught sight of Ada’s own ride. Her eyes widened, lips falling open in shock. “Yo, is that an old Earth bike?! That baby has gotta be an antique or some shit.”

“Really?” Ada asked, busying herself with latching her helmet to the bike’s bars. It was a simple thing, her bike. It had been a spur of the moment decision to summon it using Omnilium, done more out of a need for efficiency than anything. Although… the bright red paintjob was attractive, and the shallow buffer made of dark bulletproof glass at the front appealed to her immensely. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that Aello might be interested in its origin. Maybe she should have expected it.

Cocking her hip to the side, Ada smiled and gave the hotrod red bike an affectionate pat. “Maybe where you’re from, but for me, she’s top of the line. Though I really must admit, I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” she said, nodding to indicate the parked hoverbike.

“I’ll bet. This Omni-place is kinda fucked up, you get me? But that, that is pretty cool. And I’m deadass serious when I say that,” Aello drawled, stomping onto the curb. She squinted a bit as Ada removed a pearl-colored gun from a hidden side-compartment, eying the weapon guardedly in her peripheral view, but relaxed somewhat when the gun was quickly stowed away in the woman’s thigh holster jutting from below her hip.

Her gaze dropped lower as Ada withdrew something else from the compartment, a loud snort leaving her nostrils. “So what’s the deal with pipsqueak? Is it some kind of terran-culture thing to carry fuzzy animals around with you all the time?”

Ada glanced down. The duckling was half-tucked inside an additional thigh holster, one which Ada had been in the process of strapping to her other leg, fast asleep and curled in on itself. She had determined that it was unsanitary to just be carrying it around, and because there wasn’t much else she could do with the poor displaced creature at the moment… well. She wasn’t cruel.

Shrugging, Ada sealed the compartment shut and began to walk toward the apartment building’s front entrance.

“Not exactly,” she called over her shoulder, side-stepping several meandering pedestrians who looked at her funny because of her blood-stained appearance. “This is more of a special case. To tell you the truth, I don’t fully understand it myself.”

Open-air traffic whirred high overhead as Ada studied the clear and metallic grid-style front of the apartment complex. Through the shifting reflections on the sliding glass doors, she could see a doorman standing at attention just inside, a mail collection area, and a set of elevators designed to take residents and visitors to the upper floors. After a moment of deliberation, Ada’s gaze slid to the side and she began to walk purposefully right beside the building’s wall, gesturing mutely for Aello to follow.

Fortunately, the complex was not so tall that it didn’t have a fire escape attached. The fire escape, as Ada quickly discovered after slipping around the corner, was in a narrow alleyway on the building’s eastern side, scarcely wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder between it and the neighboring laundromat. When Aello rounded the corner soon after, her face creased by a defensive scowl that seemed to be her resting expression for now, Ada made sure to stand back and make plenty of room for her in the closed space. The area was rather stale and dark in comparison to the openness of the street, large garbage bins littering the claustrophobic area and the audible scrabbling of something— most likely rats— coming from a nearby plastic sack. An occasional draft of fetid air stirred around the two women, ruffling Aello’s shock of spiky hair and carrying with it the oily, artificial stench of urban life.

From where she was standing, Ada could just barely catch an occasional glimpse of the busy street that laid beyond the mouth of they alleyway, lit up with glowing signs and rife with the ever-present hum of speeders. The Chinese-American woman eyed the folded fire escape with a tactician’s eye, the light of Omnilium having already manifested in an ever-shifting banner of color that swirled and palpitated like a heartbeat around her hands. The crystalline pulses of red, cyan, yellow, and green hummed gently from where they were cupped between her palms, already beginning to take on a slender, lumpy sort of shape, like a piece of folded cloth rendered in dozens of shimmery rainbows. She twitched her fingers experimentally, observing as the particles would shift and twist with the slightest movement.

“No offense,” Aello began, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, “But… remind me again why we aren’t gonna use the goddamn front door like normal people? Not that I’m complaining, but it seems kinda pointless to do the whole breaking-and-entering bit when you’ve been handed permission to waltz right on in. And, uh, why are we even here. We already know where that grody thing was headed, shouldn’t we just go... y’know, to wherever the hell it is?”

Her eyes flicked to Ada quickly. She crossed her arms over her chest, lips pursing further. “Again. No offense.”

Shaking her head, Ada glanced up and met Ada’s expectant look head-on. “We don’t know who, or more importantly what, could still be in there. Who knows, that creature might have left a scrap of itself behind… this is the best way to get in and get out without causing a disturbance for the other residents… or immediately getting our faces eaten off. As for why we're here first...”

There was a pause as Ada warred within herself, questioning whether what she intended to say would reveal too much of her blood-spattered history. Finally, she gave herself a light shake, narrowing her eyes determinedly at the Omnilium in her hands. Did it really matter if Aello knew about Umbrella? The others? Surely not. For the first time in her life, she could say whatever the hell she wanted.

Still looking at her hands, Ada glanced at Aello out of the corner of her eye. "Well, let's just say I need to see if an old employer has a stake in all this."


“Right, right. Like that's not ominous as hell,” the punk girl muttered, head bobbing up and down as she processed this. “Wait. How d’you know that there’s not something waiting on this side if we take your way in? That shit could be anywhere. I don’t think it’ll have the smarts to hang around the front door waiting for dinner to walk in.”

The pulsating, Omnilium-based light receded abruptly, a pair of elbow-length gloves left resting in Ada’s hands. Not wasting a second, the secret agent slipped the gloves onto her arms one hand at a time, flexing her fingers and marveling at the strange warmth of the black leather, mouth curling up into a faint smile.

Brandishing her hookshot gun, Ada discharged the long chain with a pull of the trigger, humming in satisfaction as the metal hooks latched onto the retractable stairs with a harsh scraping sound that echoed off the alleyway’s walls. Two hard tugs on the chain had them sliding out and down, the grated, black metal steps striking the damp ground with a deafening kuh-clang!

Ada leapt up onto the first step, shifting onto the blades of her feet as her black stilettos balanced precariously on the metal grates. She turned to look at Aello, an unrepentant smirk on her lips.

“Well, if that is the case, then we will just have to remove it from the equation.”