It's been a year since the Raccoon City incident.
Three years of entanglement with Umbrella and their secret virus projects, years of performing work for the elusive Family and aiding their schemes to cement themselves as the end-all-be-all of global power... not that they needed much help with that.
For Ada, it was a year of reflection.
She didn't used to have so many qualms or questions about the work that she did or why. Money was the real ruler of the world she lived in, a god that oversaw both state and sovereign. You either had it, or you didn't. You either survived, or you didn't. You lie, backstab, and fight to climb your way to the top and be careful about who you trust. You don't get sentimental in this life. Nothing was fair, and things didn't change. The CIA and any other organization could delude themselves with ideals and self-justification, but in the end, it was always about cash.
Or at least, she thought she had.
Arklay was just another job. NEST was just another job to her. She didn't expect interference from outsiders. She didn't expect an outbreak of that scale. She certainly didn't expect that there would still be people clinging to their principles of doing the 'right thing' when it made no sense to do so. And she certainly didn't expect that rookie cop, Leon, to still try to aid her even after she'd been found out for her lies.
The G virus was lost to her, the entire reason Ada had come to that doomed city in the first place.
She found a sample of Birkin's own tissue, and bartered it with Wesker for escape, then spent a year tracking another sample down, and traveling to find everything she could, even after taking grievous injury and barely escaping the bombing... and then keeping council and company with the people who recovered G-virus, debating on what next steps she should take.
HUNK had urged her to not go back to her boss, and run, and she'd left him with the means to stay ahead of Umbrella.
Those were her thoughts as she came back to herself, in the present time, glancing out of the window of her ride, frowning at the neon lantern lights and Eastern Dragons molded around the front of the restaurant. The line creeps out the door.
She was told there were reservations.
Thanking her driver, she states her name, and the reservation under Derek C. Simmons. He'd taken her to these kinds of places before to discuss business. It was still an odd place to her to be talking business, but the client insisted, and his unpredictable moods made her wary.
She turns, straightening out her red top over her black skirt, glancing over at Simmons, her employer, then looking down at a frail little girl in blue, holding out a rose with a broken stem.
"I do apologize for her behavior. She doesn't speak and gets overwhelmed easily."
"I wasn't aware we'd be having a guest. Hello, I'm Ada," Ada replies, taking the rose to be polite, and snapping the stem further to place behind her ear, to spare the guest of his disappointment in a show of her whimsy.
Roses? It's not exactly good news I'm bringing.
A gong rings out, and Ada turns to look at the procession that followed it, "I don't blame her, it's a little loud for a meeting- you had a table somewhere a little quieter, I hope?"