Chapter 23: Ada Wong: Wait, Is This the Right Script? How Did I End Up Getting the Full Promotion and Raise Package?
Cards on the table. I've been messing with you the whole time.
And I know your name is Ada Wong.
So. What of it.
Matthew had his legs crossed and was looking at her across the desk with the unhurried expression of someone who held all the cards and knew it.
The desk between them was not much of a buffer. The atmosphere in the room was the kind that preceded something.
"Mr. Lawrence." Ada's voice was even. "Do you find it entertaining to play games with people?"
He considered this with visible enjoyment. "Very. Genuinely, very entertaining." He looked at her. "Watching a top-level operative run errands all week without realizing her cover was already blown. That specific situation doesn't come along often."
Ada studied him for a moment as though she were seeing him for the first time.
Then she smiled.
In the same instant she was on top of the desk, one fluid motion, the small pistol from the small of her back pressed against his forehead before he had finished tracking the movement.
"When did you make me. From the start?"
Matthew didn't bother being coy about it. He lifted two fingers and moved the barrel aside with no particular urgency.
"From when you walked in the door."
He paused.
"Actually, I'd been paying attention to you before that."
He stood and walked to the coffee machine, made her a cup himself, and set it on the desk.
"You're talented. Talent is worth paying attention to. It stands out." He settled back into his chair. "So. Tell me who sent you."
Ada looked at the coffee.
A brief silence.
"Wrong water. Not the purified water from the office kitchen." She looked at him. "Evian. From the shop downstairs."
"..."
"Still funny when someone else does it, isn't it?"
"Not even slightly." He watched her. "We're past the game. Does this really need to continue?"
"Of course it does." She put the gun away, picked up the coffee, and drank it with every appearance of satisfaction. The particular satisfaction of being served by someone she actively disliked.
The flavor was decent. The technique needed work, though. Someone should really spend more time on grind consistency and water temperature.
She set the cup down and said nothing about who had sent her. Protecting employer information was the first principle of this work. She wasn't going to answer a direct question just because he'd asked it pleasantly.
"I'm curious about something," Ada said. "You've known who I am this whole time. Why not just have me taken into custody the moment I walked in?"
"Just for the entertainment value?"
"Entertainment value?" He shook his head. "No. I told you. Talent is worth something to me. And you happen to be exactly the kind of talent I'm looking for."
"And you're not worried I'll use my time here to get whatever my employer sent me for?"
"No." He let a small smile through. "Let me take a guess at who sent you and what they want. Then you tell me if I'm close."
"Spencer?"
Ada was already forming the expression that went with a dismissive correction when he continued.
"Not Spencer. That old man isn't your employer. My guess is Albert Wesker sent you. Target: the G-Virus sample."
She said nothing.
Matthew's reasoning was straightforward enough. Tracking the timeline from when the Raccoon City outbreak should have occurred, Wesker would have already executed his disappearance by now and positioned himself inside a new organization. To establish standing within that organization and advance his own agenda, he needed G-Virus research.
Spencer's operation was too fortified to penetrate at this stage. Matthew, newly installed as security chief and the officer who had personally run the Birkin retrieval, looked like the more accessible point of entry.
"Ada." His tone shifted slightly. "I know exactly what the person behind you is trying to accomplish. What I'm telling you is: it won't work. For him or for you."
"You're a genuinely exceptional lone wolf. I'll give you that."
"But a lone wolf doesn't make it to the end. Not in a world like this one. You either find a pack or you find a partner. Those are the options."
Ada's expression carried the edge of something that wasn't quite amusement. "So you're the partner. And I survive by attaching myself to you."
"Not attaching. Cooperating." He held up a hand. "There's a difference. I believe in arrangements that work for both sides. Think about early humans and hunting dogs. Humans recognized that dogs had senses they didn't. Dogs recognized that humans had a quality of thinking that nothing else in the natural world had. Neither one was subordinate to the other."
She smiled a little more. "Cooperating."
"And do you really expect me to stay in arm's reach of someone who had a gun to my head ten minutes ago? Or that you'd genuinely trust a contractor who's worked for half the interested parties on the map?"
She crossed one leg over the other on the edge of the desk, the black heel of her shoe coming to rest on the arm of his chair, and watched him with the particular expression of someone making a point without words.
Matthew glanced at the heel on his armrest, then back at her face.
"Your history and your methods are not things I particularly care about," he said. "You're smart enough to understand what that means. If I actually cared, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would have had you detained when you came through the door."
"Detained." Ada looked him over with something close to skepticism. "By you."
She genuinely did not think he had the physical capability to stop her if she decided to leave. The conversation had gone this long, she reasoned, largely because he knew it too.
Matthew didn't respond with words.
He reached over and picked up the small, well-made pistol she had set on the desk.
He placed it between both palms.
Then he pressed them together.
The sound that came out of the room was the kind that metal makes when it is being convinced to occupy less space than it was designed for. It lasted for about two seconds.
He opened his hands.
What had been a precision firearm was now a compressed block of components roughly the size of a large bar of soap.
Ada's expression did not move. Something behind it did.
She understood now that what he had said was accurate. If he had wanted to stop her, the conversation would have ended differently.
"Ada." His voice was straightforward. "Whether you want to join or not is not something I'm asking you to decide right now. I'm not interested in keeping you here against your will."
"But based on what your employer needs from you, you're going to be around for a while anyway. So here's a thought: stay on as my assistant for that stretch. Actually do the job this time. You might end up getting access to things you came here looking for." He said it as though pointing out something self-evident. "Genuinely. Not a trap."
"And the pay would be what it should have been from the start."
Ada looked at him.
"...How much?"
"Same as Eleanor. Three million four hundred thousand a year. You can leave whenever you want. Whatever's owed gets paid out immediately. And I won't make things difficult for you."
[System: +10 points. Ada Wong is genuinely surprised by your offer and is beginning to weigh it seriously.]
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