Chapter 94: A "Generous Gift" for Miranda
My name is Miranda, and at heart I am a researcher.
I was born in a village in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century.
The Spanish flu was moving through that part of the world at the time. My daughter caught it. She died in the epidemic.
I had nothing left after that, and I had no intention of continuing without her. But in a cave somewhere in those mountains, I came across an ancient mold unlike anything I had seen in a lifetime of research.
By some accident of circumstance, the mold's root source, the Megamycete, formed a connection with me. Through that connection I discovered something: it could absorb and store human consciousness. Hold it, preserve it, indefinitely.
My daughter Eva is one of those stored minds.
That is why I have continued. Every year of study, every subject, every method I have applied, all of it aimed at a single outcome. The day I bring her back.
Whatever stands between me and that day, I will remove.
By any means. Good or evil, it makes no difference.
Inside Ada's villa.
Miranda sat with a dark expression and reviewed the day's performance in her mind.
She had cross-referenced every word, every movement against the details in the diary. By all reasonable measure, there should have been no errors. She had even chosen Ada Wong as her entry point because Ada had recently been filling in for Eleanor in public settings, giving Miranda a complete reference to study and replicate. The mimicry was never going to be perfect, but with the diary's specifics behind it, holding the disguise for a few days should have been entirely manageable.
So why was the man named Matthew already looking at her differently after a single day?
Had she made some mistake in her conduct?
Miranda leaned against the desk and turned the question over, tapping her fingers slowly against her chin.
She had lived for more than a century. But a great deal of that time had been spent as an ordinary person, unremarkable and unnoticed. Later she had become a researcher. After that, Umbrella. Anything resembling spy tradecraft or combat training had never been part of it.
That was the flaw. When you tried to wear the skin of a veteran field operative, the gaps showed.
"The plan needs to change." She said it quietly to herself, to the empty room. "I need to move quickly. The longer I stay near him, the more suspicious he becomes."
On the other side of the city, Matthew looked at his phone screen at the synchronized feeds from several pinhole cameras and listened to every word of Miranda's private monologue without missing a syllable.
Move quickly. Finish it fast.
Funny. That was exactly his thinking too.
Evening came.
The office was fully lit.
"Ada" and Matthew sat across from each other at the low table, eating the takeout that had been sent up, as though nothing of note had occurred that day.
Seeing Matthew apparently returned to his normal manner, Miranda felt the tension in her chest ease slightly. But her eyes kept drifting toward the balcony, where the potted plant had been moved.
The plant was Donna Beneviento's medium, the conduit for triggering her mental ability. With it out on the balcony, the pollen couldn't be inhaled, and without that, Donna's power couldn't be engaged.
Miranda had asked why the plant was on the balcony.
Matthew's answer: "I consulted a wise man from the ancient East. He said the feng shui is better out there."
Miranda stared at him for a moment.
She looked back at Matthew, who was currently attacking his stir-fried noodles with focused intensity, and kept what she thought about this strictly to herself. The atmosphere remained, against all reason, civil. They exchanged the occasional bland remark and the conversation continued at the unhurried pace of two people with nothing particular to say.
Then, in the middle of eating, Matthew set his chopsticks down.
"Found it."
The two words arrived without preamble or context.
Miranda looked up. "What?"
Matthew looked at her across the table and smiled. "Nothing. Eat up."
A brief pause.
"Better finish while it's warm. Once things go cold, you won't get another chance."
Miranda looked at him with faint suspicion, found nothing conclusive in his expression, and lowered her head back to her food.
Approximately forty minutes later, Miranda cleaned the last of it.
"Done?" Matthew asked.
"Yes."
"Good. Come downstairs with me. I left something down there."
Miranda agreed without thinking about it.
The elevator.
The enclosed space carried a weight that had nothing to do with the mechanism.
Miranda stood behind Matthew and watched his back. Her fingers closed slowly at her side.
If she moved now... she could probably kill him here, couldn't she?
The thought came and went. Security cameras covered the interior. This was the security division's headquarters. Killing him was one thing. Getting out afterward was another problem entirely. Modern firepower was not something to be casual about. Even she could not walk away unmarked from sustained heavy fire.
She followed him.
Level minus twenty.
The floor had once been the space where Matthew and Hunk did their daily training. Since then it had been renovated twice over. The ceiling had been raised to thirty meters. New equipment throughout. The space was enormous in a way that no company document she had reviewed had ever mentioned.
Miranda noted the surprise that moved through her and kept it off her face. She turned. "Did you leave something down here?"
"Yes." Matthew nodded. He gestured toward a cardboard box sitting a short distance away. "Open it. That's my gift to you."
"Gift?"
She turned it over briefly. Had the boss's earlier approach failed, and now he was falling back on money?
Miranda set the speculation aside and did as she was told.
She bent down and opened the box.
No gold. No jewelry. No luxury item of any kind.
What she saw: half a burned driver's license, one flat-soled shoe, and the remains of a half-smoked cigarette.
The moment she took them in, Miranda's pupils contracted sharply.
Her breath stopped.
She looked further down. A plastic divider sat across the middle of the box.
She removed it.
Beneath the divider: a head, its expression fixed in something between hatred and fury.
And a smashed doll.
Donna Beneviento, and Angie.
"Surprise." Matthew's voice was warm and even. "Were you surprised by my gift, Miranda?"
"Because if you were—"
The warmth left his voice entirely.
"Then stop parading around in front of me in that face."
"Let's dispense with the pretense. Don't you think that's overdue?"
Blood mist churned up around his entire body as he spoke. His suit dissolved under it and was replaced by a streamlined armored combat suit. His right hand twisted and reformed, becoming a blade of flesh and bone, grotesque and precise.
"This game of playing house has run long enough." Matthew's voice was cold and level. "Wouldn't you agree?"
The words were still in the air when something that had nothing to do with temperature settled over Miranda like a physical weight, and the air in the room dropped toward freezing.