Chapter 122: Another infiltration

It was a moonless night. Perfect for cover operations. That was if said operations happened on an open field. It mattered little if there was the moon shining its light or not when agents were inside a building or underground. The only instances it did were when they were getting in and getting out of it.

Rick checked his weapon one last time. A simple Broom HC equipped with a silencer. That was all Ada had to share from her own gear. He had bought himself some black clothes and a night blue turban he wrapped around his head to hide his face. Ada may not care about being recognized but he did and for plenty of reasons. If his face was caught on frame, he wouldn’t be able to work openly for the BSAA anymore.

The Broom’s capacity was only nine bullets and he had two spare magazines. On top of that it was a small caliber. To counter balance this lack of firepower, Rick had stocked up on knives. They weren’t tactical or military knives but they were long enough to reach and pierce a human heart when used to stab in the chest. Finally he bought a huge meat cleaver he attached to his lower back.

“You’re sure you got enough knives?” Ada came out from her hotel room’s bathroom dressed much like he was. Gone were the red clothes and in were black ones.

Rick just shrugged. “They will probably serve me better than the pea shooter you lent me.”

She went to the bed and picked up her own pistol. A modified Blacktail with four spare mags to which she checked if everything was in order with. “I can always take it back.” She screwed a silencer to the muzzle.

Drawing the gun from the holster at his hip, he turned it around and handed it grip first. Ada gave it a side glance but made no comment, choosing instead to put the magazines at her belt and put her Blacktail in its holster.

“Since we’re about to go, I guess it’s the appropriate moment for threats.” Rick reholstered the Broom where it belonged.

“I'm hurt you'd think I would betray you.” She pressed a hand to her chest in mock offense. Her tone changed to petulant at his unimpressed gaze. “Not cute at all. Fine. No double crossing, no matter how tempting it is, and no disappearing once the job is done. At least not before I give you the information on Wesker.” Ada picked two more items on the bed. A grappling gun and something Rick couldn’t make sense of. It looked like a gun but didn’t have any barrel or muzzle at all. It was as if sawed in half.

“Take all the fun out of it, why don’t you?

“As long as you don’t try to kill me again…”

That made him chuckle. “Again? I never even tried. If I wanted you dead back then, you’d have died.”

Her gearing up complete, Ada was ready to go. She gave him an unimpressed look that said everything about how much she believed it. Without a single word she picked up a long coat and walked outside of the room, Rick doing the same and on her heels. Deep into the night there weren't many people in the corridors of the hotel to catch a glimpse of them. To be sure to remain unseen, considering their appearance, they left the building through a side entrance reserved for the staff.

Oasis Remedies was only three streets away and there was no need for them to take a car to reach the building. Yet Rick stole one so they could get away as fast as possible if things turned south. It shouldn’t as Ada had shared that security, while heavy, wasn’t composed of guards. Everything was technological, mostly sophisticated locks on doors, cameras and possibly traps.

“It always amazed me that bio-terrorists build their own lab at the heart of cities. Underground or not.” He commented.

Ada had her special gun pointed at the electronic lock of the staff door at the back of the building. “Amateurs most of the time. Or they intend to use the city as a testing ground, like Umbrella did.”

“Still idiotic. You don’t eat where you shit.”

“In Oasis Remedies’ case,” she opened the door and quickly stepped inside, Rick in tow. “They’re relatively new.”

“Not enough money to create something in a remote place? Or do they not care if an incident happens?”

“It doesn’t really matter. They’ll soon be closed for business.”

Ada had a point. The answers to his questions weren’t of great importance beyond his own curiosity. One thing was certain, security wasn’t that great. Barely one lone camera at each corner. A stark contrast to what he was told awaited them. In his opinion, either Ada’s information was faulty, she intended to betray him, or security was poor because it was the official and relatively public area of Oasis Remedies.

‘I’ll know which once we’re underground.’

After deactivating a camera with her weird pistol thingy, Ada called for an elevator in the lobby. Twenty feet away was a night guard, foot on top of his desk station, eating some cold pizza and drinking a can of cola from what Rick could see through the dark. If at any moment the guard turned around, they’d be discovered.

Thankfully, the door to the elevator opened and without a sound. The pair quickly got inside and Ada pushed the button for the penultimate floor. It was where the security room was but also the access to the underground lab. Another elevator bringing researchers straight there. Something, Rick had to admit, was new. Usually the regular elevator led directly to the multiple officially non-existing basements where everything illegal was happening. More than new, he considered it clever. Much like he did at Andrews Air Force Base, anyone could drop down to the lower levels. By putting the elevator inside the security room, infiltration became much more difficult.

The soft ding of the elevator and the sudden jolt through their navel told them they arrived at their floor. The doors opened and once again, Rick let Ada take the lead. She took care of two more cameras before they arrived in front of the security room.

Rick, gun in one hand, opened the door slowly without making any sound. The building was rather recent, a couple years old so the hinges didn’t creak. After listening carefully, he determined there were two people inside the room from the number of hearts he heard beating. The guards exchanged a few words and he was able to roughly learn their location. He didn’t waste a second and opened the door wide, gun raised and aimed. Two shots were fired. Two headshots. Two dead guards.

“Impressive,” Ada whispered while closing the door of the room behind her.

She immediately went to check the guards to search them. It didn’t take long, what they needed was around their neck. Access badges to which she tossed one at Rick. He caught it without even sparing her a glance, too busy looking at the main console to search for the command opening the secret elevator.

“Well?”

He didn’t answer Ada with words. Instead he acted and swiped the badge into a card reader. A window on the monitor turned green with a barely audible alert ringing. A pan of the wall at the end of the room slid to the side revealing the familiar metallic double door of an elevator.

Ada got to it and stepped inside. Her weird gun in hand she pointed it at the floor panel. While the activation of the elevator from the security room necessitated a guard’s badge, it didn’t work inside the elevator. A researcher badge was needed for that and they didn’t have one. Hence why the femme fatale had to use her gadget.

Receiving a nod that everything was ready on her side, Rick swiped his badge again, this time with the Authorization program for the elevator open. It was the double security Ada had talked to him about. A simple security measure but a very effective one in case of a lone spy infiltrating the complex.

Everything didn’t go as per the plan however. The second the authorization was given, the elevator’s doors began to close. It wasn’t supposed to happen.

With a coy smile on her lips, Ada waved at Rick. “Sorry.”

Time almost came to a stop for Rick. It was obvious that the Chinese woman was double crossing him. Why? He wasn’t sure but if he had to bet, it was either because she felt like it, because she really didn’t want to give him information about Wesker, because she didn’t have it in the first place or because she didn’t want him to get access to the illegal lab’s data. With no access to the elevator and alone, there wasn’t a way for him to reach the underground complex. Not without raising an alarm. No one could make the distance between the main console and the elevator before its doors closed completely.

Unfortunately for Ada, Rick wasn’t no one.

In a burst of speed, he slipped inside the cage and pinned her against the wall, before he could be locked outside. His forearm against her throat, it was with wide, dumbfounded eyes that Ada was forced to look up at him.

Rick looked at her like she was insignificant. “Bad. Move.”

“You’re like him.” Her voice was above a whisper.

“I’m nothing like him.” He denied.

Looking him in the eyes in silence for a couple seconds, she spoke. “No… he has red cat eyes, yours are normal.”

Rick buried the topic about Wesker and their similarities right then. “I let you live in Afghanistan as a gesture to Leon. Do not try that again if you know what’s good for you. Now put your pea shooter away before you embarrass yourself even more.”

She may have been shocked by what Rick had just done but her body was well trained. Out of instinct, she had drawn her gun and pointed it at Rick's side, aimed up, right for the lungs and heart. After a few seconds of heavy silence, Rick let her go and backed away, never letting her out of her sight.

“I don’t know why you played that silly little game and unless it’s because you have no information on Wesker, I don’t care as to why.”

Taking a few steps to get a bit farther away from him and despite knowing it would be fruitless, Ada asked a question. “Why the interest in him now?”

“He stole something from me.”

The conversation stopped there but Ada’s mind got curious. From what she had learned over the years, Albert Wesker was the number one target of the STARS survivor but also every intelligence agency and government in the world fighting against bio-terrorism. It was old news, yet Rick was only going after the man now. His answer made her think that he might be telling the truth rather than not. Considering he was a street kid, it was obvious that whatever her old employer stole from Rick, it must have been something very important. After all, street kids rarely fought for what they lost and out of reach. Her knowledge about it was first hand.

After stepping outside the elevator once they reached the bottom floor, the pair immediately sprung into action. Ada took care of cameras along the few corridors they went through without much difficulty until Rick heard a group of people talking. He signaled her to stop and glued himself to the wall, Ada imitating him on the spot.

To their surprise, the underground facility wasn’t as empty as they thought it would be at this time of night as a group of four armed soldiers passed an intersection without noticing them.

“Guards?” Rick whispered.

Ada frowned, not liking the situation one bit. “There shouldn’t be. My informant said they were moving the products in two weeks.”

“Either they lied to you and it’s a trap or they moved up the schedule. What now?”

Without a word, Ada crouched a little and followed the guard at a good distance. She made sure that should they look behind them she could hide behind a corner. A precaution which proved to be unnecessary, when they went through a double door and arrived at what looked like an underground delivery hangar. At least three 18 wheelers were being loaded with active pods containing diverse BOWs in them. He counted a dozen hunters, one Tyrant and a few lickers. Medical crates were being carried from another entrance to the trucks.

It was a grand operation. Not the biggest Rick had encountered but on a scale of small to big it was rather close to the latter than the former. The whole area was bustling with activity. That meant two things. Lots of noises and lots of things to observe. Distractions which allowed another group of four guards to take by surprise the pair from behind.

“Don’t move.”

Rick and Ada tensed at the authoritative voice at their back. They were caught and that was very, very bad.

“Raise your hands in the air and slowly stand up.”

Exchanging a side glance, the pair moved at the same time as ordered. When they were told to turn around, they did. Confronted with the barrel of three assault rifles, Rick wondered if he could kill them all before they made a single sound which would blow their cover even more. The idea was right out the window when more soldiers came from the side.

“What’s this, captain?”

The man in front of them, clearly in charge of the military force, answered to the owner of the voice coming from behind the duo.

“Rats, sir.”

“Really?” The voice had a tone full of surprise. “Bring them here.”

The captain made a hand sign and two of his men lowered their weapons. With confidence but also caution they stepped forward and disarmed both Rick and Ada, before turning them around by the shoulder. It had taken a bit more time for Rick with the numbers of knives he had on him.

Apparently, the man in charge was a scientist. From Rick’s opinion it was the run-of-the-mill nerd he saw plenty of times before. Short, thin, with glasses and a receding hairline. The man was dressed in beige pants, white shirt, necktie and white lab coat. The perfect stereotype of the little scientist.

The middle aged man made a gesture and Rick’s makeshift mask was removed from his face. There was no recognition on the former’s face. Only curiosity.

“I recognize Miss Wong,” The scientist's eyes drifted to her briefly, “You’re quite the popular mercenary in the pharmaceutical world after all but you,” the focus went back to Rick. “I haven’t the faintest idea of who you are. Miss Wong’s partner? Hm, no she’s working alone. Another company? A fourth party wanting my research? Curious. No matter. You'll both reveal everything soon enough. And then…" He smiled, adjusting his glasses. "I have a quarterly review coming up. New test subjects would look excellent on the slides."

Rick couldn’t help himself. He chuckled loudly. The man in front of him was even more of a cliché that his appearance let on. It was only because he was holding himself back that he wasn’t outright laughing.

“And you think we’ll let you do that?”

The scientist chuckled too but for different reasons. “What a cocky young man. Cocky but not very bright. You’re in the depths of my kingdom with no way out and surrounded. You’re not in—”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” Rick cut him off. “We’re not locked here with all of you. You’re all locked here with me.”