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As Ada is swiftly discovering, leaving Raccoon City is nowhere near as easy as getting inside.
She limps doggedly through almost knee-high sludge, dragging her now bare feet through unidentifiable muck at the tunnel floor without a second thought. Her heels had broken in the fall, and she had thrown them to the side when she began her ascent upwards, taking a circuitous path in some small effort to go unseen on her way back. Of course, that hadn’t exactly worked. She’d seen him, locked in combat with that fucking Tyrant, still desperately trying to escape the hellhole of this city despite all he’d been through.
Not for the first time, Ada rubs her forehead, at the spot where a truly prodigious headache is beginning to needle its way into her brain. Soft. She can’t believe that still, after all this time, she remains as she always has been: goddamned soft when she needs to be the least.
How many times has she scolded herself for her sympathy, that little tender part of her heart that she can’t ever seem to harden? How many times has it proven a liability on a mission? With the last one, she thought she’d scrubbed that weakness out, but Leon had brought it right back with nothing but a smile and those big doe eyes.
Under the water, her foot makes contact with something hard, and she hisses through her teeth at the pain, stumbling briefly before regaining her footing. Leon. Leon, the rookie cop with the pretty face and the big, open heart; the foolish boy with a death wish that she can’t keep off her mind. Even now, she remembers how it felt to kiss him. How he had seized up, ever so briefly, under her touch, and how when she had pulled away he had looked like he’d experienced revelation.
Ada can’t decide if she loves or hates him. She settles, for now, on hate, because it’s easier.
Wesker is going to kill me, she thinks sorely, grimacing when the sewer sludge splashes a little higher than usual and threatens to soak the bandages around her thigh. Putting this much strain on her recent wound is clearly a bad idea; the fabric is nearly saturated through with blood, and every move she makes sends lancing pain up her spine. But she has no choice but to keep going. There’s no knowing how the government is going to respond now that the infection is so obviously uncontainable, but she doubts it’ll be friendly.
As if reassuring herself, Ada pats the pocket hidden under her dress, on her torso, where she can feel a little packet against her skin. A scrap of flesh, nothing more, stripped from the shambling form of William Birkin. She hadn’t seen the monster himself, only the bloody trail he’d left behind, but there was enough of him torn off that she’d managed to take some with her.
With a little bit of luck, this packet of gore will be her ticket out of Raccoon City. And, if nothing else, she has always had fortune on her side. Even if it takes a while to get there.
She wades for a few more minutes in silence, until she’s suddenly stopped by a fork in the tunnel. Admittedly, she isn’t fully certain where she is. Her winding path has taken her far past her original entrance point, and the underground network of tunnels seems needlessly complex, no doubt in order to hide Umbrella’s shady underbelly from the populace it held such control over until it ate them alive.
To her right is a mere continuation of the chamber she’s been forging through, just as cloaked in darkness as the rest of its length. However, to the left, moss is growing along the waterline, streaking up the brick walls, and she thinks she sees tiny pinpricks of light far off in the gloom, although that might just be the pain getting to her. Either way, Ada chooses the right. In Raccoon City, anything new is dangerous, and as she is now, she isn’t ready for some challenge she doesn’t quite understand.
So she pushes onwards to the right, hoping and praying that there isn’t something waiting at the end with its jaws open.
Of course, Ada’s good fortune often takes quite a while to catch up to her. Especially when she wades further into the tunnel and something in the darkness opens its eyes and snarls, low and rumbling, dead ahead of her.
With an enormous splash, something bursts from the water, and she gasps and stumbles backwards as its gummy mouth stretches unnaturally wide, exposing four fleshy mandibles studded with razor-sharp teeth. She nearly falls down entirely, but manages to catch herself before she does— even though this B.O.W. is somewhat ponderous, she’s certain it’s fast enough to catch her at the very first slip. Surely enough, when she turns tail and begins to run, cursing the pain that flares through her body with every step, the monster easily gives chase.
On instinct, she reaches for her gun, holstered ever-present at her hip. Her first shot yaws wide, striking the brick wall in a shower of sparks; the second hits, and the monster shrieks in fury and increases its pace. Juggling her only weapon and avoiding piles of trash while running as fast as her wounded leg can take her is too much for her exhausted hands, and she’s woefully low on ammunition. When she reaches again to grab her last spare clip, it slips from her grasp, and she can only watch in horror as it falls into the sewer water at her feet.
There’s no time to go looking for it. Even her miniscule pause has brought the beast far too close, and it snaps its mandibles together in an attempt to swallow that barely misses. Frustrated and more than a little afraid, she holsters her gun again and focuses entirely on running from her pursuer.
Its thundering footsteps remain just a few heartbeats behind her own as she flees, skidding back through the sewers and arriving at the same junction as before, having barely made any headway before disturbing the beast. She has no time to think about it— she races into the mossy tunnel, dispelling all concerns as her only worry becomes evading the bioweapon. It roars when she looks behind her, vestigial arms flapping uselessly at its sides as it charges single-mindedly with the goal to eat her whole.
Focused as she is on evading the B.O.W.’s jaws, Ada is only barely able to notice the changes as she scrambles further down the tunnel. The water lowers and the moss grows thicker, clumping in enormous piles against the walls. Above her, a tangled web of thin vines is climbing the ceiling, studded with those faint, glowing dots she had spotted before. The further she goes, the lusher the plant life becomes, until the air is heady with some unidentifiable, earthy scent and she’s liable to trip over a coiling vine.
And, much to her surprise, with the flora comes animals. Rats and frogs desperately dive out of their path as Ada and the bioweapon splash recklessly through their habitat, hiding in corners and convenient gaps in the thicket. Dozens of fat moths scatter from their clusters as the two pass, fluttering in their wake like dust motes, and all the while, the spots of glowing gold simply become larger and brighter, transforming into odd-looking patches of pods.
Many of those pods break as both she and the monster stomp through them, each one bursting with an explosion of glittery dust that soon fills the thick, heady air of the tunnel. Ada gulps great lungfuls of it down without thinking, blinking the powder from her eyes as much as she’s able to, ignoring the way it sticks to the back of her throat in favor of pushing herself towards some imagined safety.
By the time the end of the tunnel looms ahead of her, the chamber looks wildly different. The vines are thicker around than her leg, heaped up in piles against the walls, and the glowing dots are more like lanterns in the darkness, lighting the area with surprising strength. It’s more than enough for her to see the rusted door set into the wall that’s fast approaching, held firmly ajar by yet more vines.
Hope bubbles up in her at the sight, just as sudden as the bioweapon chasing her had appeared. The door looks far too small for the beast to fit through, and hopefully whatever’s beyond it isn’t anywhere close to as deadly. Gathering her strength, Ada crouches and flings herself at the opening— but at the last moment, her leg screams in agony, and she gasps as her desperate jump fails to cross the threshold and she’s left prone in the muddy water.
The B.O.W. doesn’t stop, bellowing in victory as it continues to charge, opening up its mouth again and exposing its slavering maw. Ada can’t look— she tenses and throws an arm over her face. So this is how I go...
Despite it all, however, fortune has always, always favored Ada Wong. Before the monster can reach her, something snaps out of the door, lightning-quick and clearly deadly. Her pursuer bellows in pain, thrashing around as the vines around suddenly spring into life, coiling around the creature and trapping it in place as surely as a steel net.
Breathing heavily, she lowers her arm to look at the scene, eyes wide with shock and horror. The monster convulses in its new bonds as the thing from inside the door snakes itself around where the beast’s neck should be and pulls it down to the ground, rearing up as it tries to expose its toothy mandibles again.
Her savior is some kind of plant, that much she can tell. Its leading appendage seems to be a strange bulb on the end of the biggest vine yet, a smooth crimson extremity shaped somewhat like a pistil that splits itself into four, surrounded by a mane of pointed petals. Bug-like claspers come forwards as plant and amphibian wrestle, thorns from the vines digging into the monster’s slimy skin as it fights desperately to be freed. As she watches, the plant’s pistil opens wide, exposing a thick golden stem that it proceeds to thrust violently into the B.O.W.’s skull, piercing through bone and muscle until, finally, the beast stills.
Lungs heaving with shock, Ada stares as the vines drag the corpse to the side, the pistil sliding out wetly from its ruined brain matter and shaking hot bioweapon blood off, like a dog shaking off water. Slowly, it turns, and her heart leaps to her throat as the ‘head’ of the plant leans over her, opening and closing its pistil in small increments, as if it, too, is breathing.
As it draws nearer, she locks eyes on it, instantly fearful that it will treat her as it treated the amphibious creature not moments before. It lowers itself to her level, and— frozen in terror— she can do nothing as it gets closer and closer and...
...gently nudges her shoulder, as if asking whether she’s all right.
She flinches at first, of course, with adrenaline still heady in her veins from her reckless escape. The plant rears back a bit when she does, petals drooping, but it doesn't leave her, instead staying a polite distance away. It tilts its head from one side to the other, no longer invading her personal space, and she takes a deep, shuddering breath.
"You... you saved me," she mumbles, feeling the energy fading from her limbs. Tentatively, she reaches forwards, brushing the tips of her fingers against the plant’s pistil. It’s just as silky as it appears to be, faintly tacky with remnants of blood; the moment she makes contact with it, it pushes in further into her grasp, rubbing its length along her hand like a nuzzling cat. Faintly, she can feel it trembling against her skin.
Assured that she really is safe, Ada takes a few deep breaths, finally taking note of the sweet stickiness that’s coating her throat. She swallows, but it remains, teetering on the edge of sickly against her teeth with its intensity.
“What...?” she mumbles, hand still resting on the plant, squinting in confusion. Was it always this hot in this tunnel? Was she always so sweaty...?
She looks down at her arms. Every inch of her skin is glittering under the bulb-light, flickering gold and green in a delicate sheen that coats her, head to toe. It’s an oddly familiar sight, although she can’t figure out why, until—
Leon’s fingers at her thigh, carefully bandaging the puncture wound still leaking crimson steadily down her legs. Even though the light is low, he looks bright, happy to see her. There’s a relaxed tilt to his shoulders that wasn’t there before, and when his hands flex as he ties off the fabric, she catches a strange shimmer on his skin.
“Did something happen to you while you were getting here?” she asks, and blinks when unmistakable heat flushes to his cheeks.
“No,” he says, looking more than a little embarrassed. “Not really. Here, let me pick you up...”
“He was here," she breathes, eyes wide. She stops petting the plant, and it opens its pistil in question until she turns to squint at it. “Leon was here, wasn’t he?”
Naturally, it doesn’t answer her, but it does shrink back a bit in confusion at her accusatory tone. Taking pity on the thing, she sighs, reaching forwards again to cup its head between her hands, trying in some way to soothe the shiver she feels when she touches it. Close as she is, Ada can really appreciate the sheer size of her rescuer; the pistil between her fingers is larger than her head, and the vine it’s attached to dwarfs her entire body in girth. Around them, rich green tendrils settle back into place, shuffling back to lie against the floor.
“I don’t want to think about him right now,” she mumbles, cursing her pettiness, the childish words coming from her mouth. But it’s true. Right now, all she wants is to get out of this godforsaken city, and forget everything until she’s holed up safe and warm and very, very far away.
The longer she sits there, however, cupping the plant’s head in her palms and trying to regulate her breathing, the stronger the oppressive heat becomes, and the richer the taste on her tongue grows. She runs her hands over the pistil until the last of the stickiness is gone, wiping it away with her thumbs, and each movement sends sparks thrilling up her nerves, pleasure singing where it wasn’t before. It’s addictive, washing away the aches and pains of the last hours and filling her chest with warm bliss.
Without thinking, she rubs her thighs together, the plant drawing closer, nearly at her chin. The resulting thrill of heat makes her gasp, and when she looks down— Ah. I’m hard.
“So that’s what this is all about, huh,” she whispers to the pistil. It opens up, darker on the inner curves, slick inside with something that isn’t blood at all. The scent of honey fills her lungs, so intense she feels as if she might choke on it.
Squaring her shoulders, Ada makes a decision.
Using the plant as support, she hoists herself to her feet, and it follows her up like a frightened pet. Much to her satisfaction, her legs only tremble a bit as she steadies herself, gripping tightly onto one of the silky petals behind the pistil. Already, her brain is going blissfully foggy, smoothing out the edges of pain that’s been dogging her for hours and soothing built-up tension from her muscles.
“You won’t hurt me, will you?” she asks the plant, and in response, it rubs its pistil up the length of her body, briefly bunching up the fabric of her dress and exposing her hipbone. Delicious sensation follows the plant’s path up her form, and she shudders, feeling her dick twitch.
It’s more than enough of a ‘yes’ for her, so she lets the plant guide her through the rusted-over door.
What greets her beyond it is an immense room, with a tiled floor and domed ceiling crowned by a long-ruined fluorescent light. It doesn’t matter that the bulb is out, however, as the room is filled nearly to bursting with the rest of the plant, coiling over itself in a massive, dense thicket. No matter where she looks, more vines fill the space, slowly moving on the spot like a nest of thorny, leafy snakes. The pistil returns to what must be its usual spot, extending itself high above the rest of its form, watching her carefully as she makes her way towards the center of the space.
Despite the clear disuse of the room by humans, she can see just fine— because the entire place is lit by the glow of the plant’s countless bulbs. Ranging in size from enormous to barely larger than a finger, each one is illuminated from within by a rich golden glow, hanging at random intervals from the nest of vines and pulsing like the beat of a heart. When she steps closer, the beat quickens.
Her pantyhose are ripped beyond repair, and her dress is hideously stained. Ada feels absolutely no remorse in peeling them off, careful not to disturb the bandages around her leg. A few questioning vines come to curl up around her ankles, not venturing higher yet, soft on her bare feet. An inquisitive touch.
Ada is no stranger to sex. Men, women, people of all stripes— she’s been around, more often than she can count. But this is new, as she stares down the coiling vines, cock hard and sweat shimmering with the dust on her skin. In all her years, she’s never done something like this.
With the haze of the pollen swallowing her whole, she extends her arms and takes a step forwards. “Pick me up.”
The words are barely out of her mouth when the plant obliges, vines shifting nearly immediately as they coil up around her thighs, back, arms. Before she knows it, she’s sitting in a tangle of plant matter, surrounded entirely by the plant’s all-encompassing touch and several feet above the ground.
As it holds her up, the foliage explores across her skin, and Ada whines; the onslaught of stimuli is enormous, and her hips twitch forwards without thinking. Every inch of the vines against her body sets off sparking fireworks, blood boiling hot and heavy between her legs. Barely clinging on to reason, she thrusts upwards again, and the head of her cock bumps against a woody tendril, causing her to cry out in delight and repeat the motion.
She’s close to orgasm before she can really process that it’s happening. The pistil looms above her, watching every second as she grinds herself against the silky curves of its body, honey-sweet fluid dripping from its parted segments. Crying out, her hands snap out and clutch desperately around two of the vines as she comes, spilling milky white against a backdrop of green.
But when her vision clears, however briefly, Ada is met by two things: the first being that she’s still hard, somehow. And the second is that, despite everything, the plant has stopped. It doesn’t let her go, but the insistent movement is now just tingling pressure as it holds her above the floor, supporting her entire body.
Words are difficult. Ada groans with distaste and casts her eyes up, where she spots the pistil, still close, almost... expectant in its hesitation.
Even with her mind clouded beyond recognition, desperate for more at any cost, a neuron manages to fire in her brain. She knows this— has seen it before from whining businessmen pinned to their office desks, from pretty girls tied up and dripping against her boots.
It wants her to tell it what to do.
The realization flips a satisfied switch in her psyche, the desire to receive transforming with a roar into the desire to take, and suddenly there’s a fire against her bones that wasn’t quite there before. She reaches up, makes contact with the pistil, and it opens up around her hand, drooling sticky fluid down her arm.
“Play with my tits,” she gasps.
The response is instant and so gratifying that she almost doubles over, curling around the vines that have crept up her body to coil their length around her breasts. They explore with just the right amount of gentleness and hot, popping pressure, trailing up and around her skin, cupping the fat until her tits are pressed together and she’s gasping with the feeling. One particularly curious tendril finds the peak of her hardened nipple, and presses on it, and Ada throws her head back to cry out in ecstasy. “Yes, yes, yes— that, more, yes, God—”
Ever the pleaser, the plant obliges, and another vine approaches her other nipple. They twist and press in on them, the rest of their length massaging the fat of her breasts, holding them up as she juts her chest into the air, begging wordlessly for more. Under the addictive effects of the plant’s pollen, it’s easy for her to let her mouth fall open, giving a constant stream of commands— “yes, more, harder, right there right there right there—” until a particular tweak brings her shuddering, breathlessly, to completion again.
The fire simply rages harder when she’s done, a fraction of a moment of clarity giving Ada just enough time to decide what she wants next. Above, the pistil dribbles even more, segments open wide enough that she can see the golden stem at the core.
“Suck me off,” she gasps next, before she can question how, exactly, a plant is capable of such a thing. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to wonder for long, because the pistil splits wider than ever before, insectoid claspers emerging from its mane of petals once more to firmly grasp her abdomen. Before she knows it, the pistil closes around her cock, and something thin and brilliant pushes its way inside of her.
It’s been years since she’s done this, and now— with the stiff, slick walls of the pistil around her, and the pressure inside of her dick— the sensation is twenty times better than any dull memory of the sounding in her past. Instinctively, she cries out, and her hands dart forwards to hold the claspers where they meet the plant’s base, burying her fingers in silky petals. The moment she makes contact, the plant twitches, and suddenly starts to buzz, sending vibrations up her cock and through her core.
It’s too much, far too much and yet not enough, and her hips thrust forwards automatically, into the slippery, tight passage of the pistil’s segments. It forces the vibrations further inside, and Ada can’t resist— she fucks forwards, again and again and again, and the plant takes it all.
“Good,” she mumbles, lost in it, the sticky slap of her flesh against the eager organism, tongue loose from a haze of pollen and sex. “Good. You’re so good...”
Much to her surprise, the plant shudders under her hands at the words, and the vibrations intensify. It’s so overwhelming that she lets go of the claspers and collapses onto the pistil’s broad girth, tits pressed up against the smooth vegetal flesh, still furiously slamming her hips against it as she desperately reaches for yet another climax.
With the increasing sensation, it doesn’t take long. Ada wails as she comes into the plant’s tight embrace, pace stuttering as it swallows her down, base to tip, and pulls away from where it’s left fluid drenched over the dip of her thighs. Freed from its grip, she aimlessly pets the pistil as she’d done earlier, sticky hands sliding easily down its length. “Good job... good job, darling, good job...”
It’s nothing she hasn’t said to submissives before, coaxing them with gentle words towards orgasm, but the plant trembles all down its inconceivable length when she speaks, and she can feel it in every vine. It makes her heady with power, telling this strange, immense thing what to do, ratcheting up her arousal through the thick haze already present in her mind. Sloppily, she presses a kiss to the top of the pistil’s smooth bulk, and it shivers pleasantly underneath her.
They’re not done, however. Ada can feel her dick still hard and hot against her legs, and the inferno inside her still burns, snarling for her to take more, demand more, until she’s sated her hunger. She slides her ass backwards, riding a convenient vine positioned between her legs, and the plant nudges forwards with her, following her every move.
Lazily, she leans backwards until the thicket catches her back, hiking one leg up to expose herself further. A long string of fluid drips from the pistil’s tip.
“Fuck me,” she coos, and the plant quivers with eagerness.
Snaking up further, the pistil parts itself to let the stem at its core drool exorbitant amounts of slick down over her hips and aching dick, already sticky with their previous activities. She brings her legs up further towards her chest, letting it flow between the curve of her legs and over her hole, luxuriating in the coolness of the stuff on her skin. Errantly, she trails a hand down her own body and pushes one of her fingers inside of herself; she’s wonderfully relaxed, and the honey-thick fluid squishes pleasantly between her knuckles, making her moan.
She nearly gets lost in fingering herself when she feels something tentatively press at her hand, requesting entrance. When she looks down, there’s a vine at her ass, already soaked and teasing gently at her rim. She chuckles and pulls her arm back, giving the tendril as much space as it wants to do what it likes.
It’s hesitant at first, pushing but not breaching her, sliding up against her perineum and brushing her balls before it settles back down. Then, penetration, hot and bright, as the vine finally slides inside, let in easily by the excessive amount of liquid that douses both of them. Ada bites her lip as it fucks in further, thin at the tip but swiftly growing thicker, and the heady substance in her veins ensures that she feels every imperfection along the stem.
Above, the pistil is still open wide, glowing stem thicker than before, dense with that gelatinous substance covering every inch of her body. Still being rocked by the vine forcing more and more of itself into her waiting body, she gestures towards the plant’s head, bidding it closer so she can reach up and grab the pistil’s core with one wet hand.
Its reaction is immediate, the vine inside of her shuddering with enough force that it brushes her prostate. She throws her head back and cries out desperately, tightening her grip on the stem, smooth and almost warm under her fingers, twitching with desperation as much as she is. When the plant recovers, it resumes fucking her with increased intensity; the tendril in her ass forces in at least another inch deeper and runs its entire length over her sweet spot with renewed vigor.
The sensation is too much to bear, pleasure raging through her in deep, overwhelming waves, consuming her from the legs up as she gasps and keens. But Ada is not one to be dissuaded from her goals, and, with immense force of will, she tears her mind away from the urge to go utterly limp in the face of her ecstasy and runs her hand up and down the stem.
Under her grip, the plant shakes so fiercely she’s briefly afraid that it’ll throw her off its coils, shuddering apart when she pumps it harder, faster, tighter. Much to her satisfaction, it stays obediently still in her grasp, even when its bodymass twitches and twines over itself with desperate pleasure at every movement. The vine between her legs reaches a frantic, punishing pace, shoving itself in before pulling nearly entirely out, jackhammering her with inhuman strength— but she still wants more.
“Another,” she gasps into the pistil’s open segments, and her request is granted mere moments later, a second vine joining the first, sliding into her hole with surprising ease, forcing her ever wider to accommodate. They quickly pick up an intense rhythm, pushing and pulling in and out in tandem, and she feels herself fall apart, arching her back at the relentless pressure against her prostate.
The entire time, however, she doesn’t let go of her grip on the pistil’s stem, furiously pumping up and down, feeling the plant quake under her command even as each vine punches a new sound from her throat. Somewhere, deep down in her pleasure-addled mind, her roaring inferno latches onto the challenge, the race: Which one of us will give in first?
Of course, Ada loses. There’s nothing she can do against the combined power of the pollen in her bloodstream, raging through her, making everything ten times as intense and twenty times as pleasurable, and she wails like she’s dying as she comes so hard it splashes up as far as her collarbone. The tendrils slow down as she heaves down cool, soothing air, shivering desperately as the last dregs of bliss fizzle out into something softer, sweeter.
But— as fuzzy, soothing exhaustion takes over, warming her body with its gentle embrace— she realizes that the plant isn’t quite done, not yet. It stays still in her hand, waiting patiently for whatever she deigns to give it, even as it trembles with desire. Fondness bubbles up within her at the sight, her compliant little pet, just the way she likes them.
With the last of her strength, Ada leans forwards and kisses the stem, right on the tip, jerking it harder than she has before. “...Come on, darling, you can do it. Finish for me.”
And that’s all it takes. A few more firm pumps and the plant shudders, quaking harsher than it has before, and the center of the pistil pulses in her hand as it explodes with an utterly unreasonable amount of that clear, sticky fluid. It coats her completely, drenching her arm and flowing down her bare body, dripping wetly onto her chin, and she laughs and licks off what lands on her lips even as her vision goes hazy.
Worn out, utterly and completely, Ada finally lets go of the stem and leans back against the plant, feeling its vines retract from her hole with faint, final pops of pleasure racing up her hips. She’s warm and content all over, and it’s easy to let her head fall back, her eyes slide closed, and her mind to slip into a dreamless, restful sleep.
She’s not sure how long she rests there, held safe in a nest of the plant’s vines, illuminated by its gently pulsing bulbs and protected from the world outside. When she wakes, it’s impossible to tell how much time has passed, but her new friend has lowered her almost to the ground, curled up around her in a bowl-like thicket.
Always the vigilant sentinel, the pistil looms over her, distinctly less drippy now that its desire has been quenched. When she opens her eyes and rolls her shoulders, it happily nudges her, checking her over until she chuckles and nudges it back.
“Good morning,” she mumbles, and it taps its segments together happily. Ada stretches long and lithe in the plant’s embrace, working out a crick from her back, and looks over the room with fresh eyes.
Mind cleared of its pleasurable fog, she can appreciate the little things, now; pink flowers springing from the vines and dropping teardrop petals when the foliage shifts, the thick black thorns jutting at random angles from the tangle. The bulbs are of particular interest, spotting a few of them having burst, seemingly from inside. A snatch of red catches her attention, and she raises onto much steadier feet to pull her dress from within the flora, leaving her destroyed pantyhose behind.
Once she’s checked that the packet is still tucked within the fabric, she exhales gratefully and pulls it on. Behind her, the plant looks on carefully, tracing her path through the room, seeming... nervous, if she had to guess.
She looks back up at it once she’s clothed, the pistil leaning forwards so she can rest her hands on its bulk again. Though steady under her, it twines around itself, tying knots in its own body before wriggling out of them seconds later.
“You poor thing,” she mutters, kissing the top of it as she had before. It trembles again, but it’s not so pleasant. It just seems afraid.
Ada frowns as she runs a soothing hand over the pistil, letting it cuddle up close to her, sorting through her thoughts now that she’s capable of such a thing. She has places to be, people to talk to, packages to deliver, and survival to bargain for. Even now, she isn’t certain what, exactly, is going to happen to Raccoon City, but there is no way it’s going to be good for the bioweapons within. And this plant is undoubtedly a bioweapon.
Errantly, in the back of her head, she remembers— Leon was here. Had he experienced the plant’s carnal delights as well? Had he commanded it as she had, or had the plant taken charge, reducing him to a mindless mess? It would have been a tempting fantasy had the thought of him not brought up irritation and longing in equal measure in her chest, and she shakes her head, pushing him away. Not now.
Instead, she focuses on the plant. The plant that almost certainly felt the destruction of NEST, far below, unknowing what it meant but scared nonetheless. The plant that had rescued her, had soothed her aches and pains, had listened to her commands with a gentle touch. The plant that is destined for death, if she leaves it here.
“I wish I could bring you with me,” she whispers to it, pressing her forehead against its smooth surface. “We’d get out of here together.”
The pistil opens and closes its segments with a faint snap, as if in agreement. And then it pulls away, just a bit. It’s barely enough for a vine to creep in between them, ending in one of those luminous bulbs, about the size of a watermelon. She’s close enough that she can clearly see that it’s not just full of unnamed fluid, but something else— a curled-up form, unidentifiable but obviously there.
Doing what it obviously wants her to do, Ada cups the protrusion between her hands, peering closer in an attempt to determine the identity of whatever’s inside. “What...?”
As she holds it, the pistil throws itself back, pointing up at the ceiling, and begins to shake. These aren’t the pleased shudders of before, or its twitches of fear from earlier— this is like nothing she’s ever seen before, jerking back and forth, segments splaying wide enough that it seems as if they might split right off. Every bulb in the room glows incandescently bright, blinding her as she feels something push against her palms.
Squinting through the light, Ada watches as the shadowy shape in the bulb unexpectedly shifts, moving in its containment, pressure poking out from inside as it gains movement enough to press insistently against the vegetal casing and warp it outwards. It takes a few tries, but the creature seems determined, and, eventually, there’s a faint ripping noise and a green tendril breaks through the bulb, spilling liquid over her palms.
It tears itself free as the room’s brightness begins to dim, thick vines curling inwards on themselves, going stiff like the limbs of a dead spider. Ada gets to observe as more tendrils emerge, followed by a tiny red pistil like a rosehip and eventually, the last source of light in the room: a tiny pod of gold, just like the ones that had started this whole mess, held carefully within a tangle of those same tendrils.
Like a hatchling fresh out of the egg, the little bundle of vines in her hands looks around tentatively, pressing curiously at her skin, opening up its rosehip head in four tiny segments. She stares, utterly taken aback, and casts her eyes back towards the plant around them.
Every glowing part of the massive thicket has gone completely still, dark and lifeless, surrounded by sharp-angled vines that no longer coil over themselves in a living harmony. The pistil stays splayed directly up, stem inside just barely visible in the low light, brown from base to tip. There’s no two ways around it: the plant is now obviously dead.
Cupped in her palms, the little rosehip bobs up and down, as if pleased.
Realization dawns only seconds later. She leans over the new creature, recognizing it for what it is. “Is— is that you?”
The segments open once, twice, three times, leaning up to nearly brush the tip of her nose. It reaches down, rubbing its head against her arm, and she knows. She knows that despite it all, this lovely little plant is one and the same.
Ada can’t help it— she grins, wide and honest, in the gloom.
“That’s good,” she says, eyes bright with hope. “That’s very good. We’ll start a new life together, how about that?”
She lets the plant crawl up her arm, resting like a parakeet on her shoulder and tickling her neck with its soft coils. As it wriggles into place, Ada wonders how she’ll ever care for it, how she’ll hide it in the future. Is it even possible for such a thing to have a life outside of Umbrella, outside of the once-in-a-lifetime circumstances of an infected sewer and a ruined city like this? Will the world try to eat it whole, and will she be able to stop it?
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the plant lean forwards eagerly as she opens the door opposite the one she entered through, on the other side of the room. It may have never been outside of this cramped tunnel, or even out from underground, hidden deep down where no one could see. If they manage to get topside, it will be under the stars for the first time.
Taking that step through the door feels like freedom. It feels like a stolen kiss during a long tram ride. It feels like throwing a rocket launcher down an elevator shaft, praying that it’ll save who she needs it to save. It feels like a soft spot in her heart that she never wants to harden.
“No time to waste,” Ada murmurs, eyes trained on the darkness ahead. There’ll be light eventually. “Let’s leave this shithole of a town.”
And so they do.