A Promise Made

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Adrian returned to his little den, shut the door, and looked at the silver-haired young woman rocking on the couch like a pendulum.

He dropped the bags in front of her.

"Try these on. See if they fit."

T-Lilith opened one of the bags. Clothes filled it, folded and packed in cheap store paper.

"For me?" she asked, turning that expressionless face toward him. Her red eyes almost seemed to shine.

"Put them on. You do know how to dress yourself, right?"

Adrian did not look at her. He only took off his coat and hung it by the door.

That seemed to count as permission. T-Lilith slipped out of the filthy coat and began working through the clothes in the bags. Fabric rustled for a while. Then she said, "Done."

Adrian turned.

The change was immediate.

She wore a white shirt with red Cyrillic lettering across the chest, a black biker-style leather jacket with a tan fur collar over it, black shorts with metal buckles, black thigh-high socks, and tan ankle boots.

The sizes looked right.

The coordination, on the other hand...

Adrian knew his taste in clothes was terrible. The old Voss's taste was even less useful. As far as that man was concerned, the less fabric a woman wore, the better. That was not a philosophy Adrian needed right now.

"Go look in the mirror," he said at last. "See if you like it."

T-Lilith shook her head. "No need. It must be pretty."

"Why?"

For some stupid reason, warmth moved through Adrian's chest.

"Because your food tastes good. If you gave me clothes, they must be pretty too."

The warmth in Adrian's chest froze solid.

'What the hell was I expecting?'

T-Lilith did not notice the storm moving across his face. She spread her arms and spun in place, humming a strange off-key tune.

"New clothes. New clothes..."

She looked happy.

"By the way, T-Lilith, what did you wear before?" Adrian asked.

"Usually nothing. Sometimes white clothes."

"White clothes?"

"Mm. Thin white clothes. Tight against my body. Then chains outside. Then anesthetic. Then the fathers watched me through thick glass."

"Fathers?"

Adrian's brow tightened.

"Mr. Freeman said they were all my fathers. I don't like the fathers. Their eyes are strange. Miss Kelly doesn't like them either. She would say bad things about them when she came to me." T-Lilith's voice stayed flat. "They never cooked anything good for me. They never bought me new clothes."

She lifted her head and looked at him.

"You are very good to me. Even Miss Kelly was not this good to me. I like you."

Adrian covered his face and turned away from those red eyes.

Damn it.

What was wrong with this woman? How was she this cute? He was not built for this.

"What is wrong?" T-Lilith moved closer when he did not answer. For the first time, her voice lowered with something like disappointment. "Are you unhappy? Or do you not like me?"

Adrian's face was hot. He refused to look at her. He only put a hand on the top of her head and held her at arm's length.

"I feed you once and buy you clothes, and that's all it takes for you to like me? You're that easy to steal?"

"No..."

She closed her eyes and rubbed her head against his palm like a cat.

"I heard Mr. Freeman tell the fathers my arm strength is over ten metric tons. Killing people is as easy as tearing a rag doll. Everyone is afraid of me."

That was one hell of a thing to say in that voice.

Tearing people apart like rag dolls. Arm strength over ten tons.

Adrian looked at her slender arms and legs, disbelief written across his face. A B.O.W. being strong made sense. Ten tons was another matter.

And besides...

"What good is strength by itself? Bad people have guns these days. Grenade launchers. RPGs."

He tapped the Glock at his waist.

"I'm not afraid," T-Lilith said, shaking her head. "In the white room, they injected anesthetic and tied me to the wall. Then they shot me. At first, pistols. Later, guns I did not know. One time they used the very fast spinning gun for a long time. It hurt. I thought I would die. But the wounds healed quickly. After that, they often used the very fast spinning gun on me. It hurt at first. Later, I got used to it."

The very fast spinning gun.

A minigun?

If she was telling the truth, what kind of butcher tied a woman who looked like this to a wall and hosed her down with heavy weapons? No wonder she thought he was good to her. What the hell had she lived through before this?

The old Voss's memories had changed him. He knew that. But the soul underneath still came from an ordinary, peaceful life where people were supposed to know right from wrong.

He began to waver.

If he returned her to the employer, what waited for her? A cold lab. No sunlight. Bare skin under restraints. Nutrient paste that barely deserved to be called food. More guns. More pain. More researchers telling her what she was allowed to be.

She understood many basic things, but her view of the world had been twisted into shapes that made Adrian sick.

What had those researchers poured into her head?

Should he really send her back?

'Damn it. Why am I even thinking about this?'

His expression darkened further. He even found himself wondering whether his soul had truly entered this world's Adrian Voss, or whether the old Voss had simply inherited memories from an ordinary man and grown soft.

Had the civilian become cold-blooded?

Or had the ruthless mercenary grown a conscience?

T-Lilith tugged on his shirt and pulled him back.

"Unhappy?" she asked, tilting her head.

"No. Just thinking."

Adrian shook his head.

She paused, then reached up and took the hand resting on her head. Gently, she pressed it against her chest, over her heart.

"This makes people happy," she said. "Every time they shot me and I lay on the recovery table, Miss Kelly would hold my hand like this. She said it would stop hurting and make me happy. I did not tell Miss Kelly it still hurt. But it did make me feel better."

Holding his hand with both of hers, she spoke softly.

"I like you. So I want you to feel better."

Adrian froze.

What the hell was this?

Had he just been comforted by a monster woman with ten-ton arms and enough bullet scars to shame a battlefield?

In that moment, his mind changed.

He was not handing her over.

The security team from the convoy had been wiped out. Freeman had gone over a cliff and was probably dead. The BSAA had been busy fighting Tyrants. No one had seen Adrian take her.

If the employer came asking questions, the story was simple. The mission failed. He escaped. The cargo was taken by the BSAA.

If the employer disliked that answer and wanted trouble, too bad. This was Loplers, paradise for criminals. Some illegal lab in the middle of nowhere did not get to make a mess here and expect clean hands.

As for the BSAA, they had already gotten the result they wanted. The convoy's cargo had been two Tyrants. After a brutal battle, the BSAA destroyed the terrifying B.O.W.s and prevented a new act of bioterrorism. Even if they noticed the third tank was empty, they would never imagine someone had carried the real target away under their noses. The first two compartments held Tyrants. They would assume the third had held another large monster, or that the compartment had been empty.

That was that.

He would lose several hundred thousand dollars, but money could be earned again. A silver-haired, red-eyed B.O.W. who looked at him like he was the first good thing in the world did not fall out of a tank every day.

As far as Adrian was concerned, everyone got what they wanted.

Except the inhuman lab that had lost its precious cargo.

A happy ending.

Mostly.

Adrian made his decision.

"T-Lilith."

He drew his hand back from her chest and placed both hands solemnly on her shoulders, looking into her ruby-red eyes.

"My name is Adrian Voss. I'm a mercenary. My job is to shoot people for money without asking whether they're good or bad. But right now, I want to give you something better than what you had. I want you to be happy. I don't want to send you back to that place."

His face heated, but he kept going.

"I want you to stay with me. From now on, as long as you're with me, I'll cook for you, buy you clothes, earn money, and take care of you. If that's what you want... will you stay?"

"T-Lilith. Adrian Voss. T-Lilith. Adrian Voss..."

She watched his serious eyes and repeated their names softly. Then she answered.

"T-Lilith likes Adrian Voss. T-Lilith does not want to go back. T-Lilith wants to stay with Adrian Voss."

Relief flooded through Adrian. It felt absurdly close to confessing his feelings and hearing yes.

His first real smile since waking in the Resident Evil world broke across his face.

T-Lilith seemed happy too. She had apparently decided her comfort technique had worked. She tugged his shirt like she was asking for praise.

"Then, Adrian Voss... dinner."

"Rice first. Tonight we're having beer-braised chicken wings."

He washed rice and started it, set chicken wings from the fridge into a metal bowl of water to thaw, then pulled out two cans of beer. Oil went into the pan. Once it heated, he cracked in two eggs, added chopped tomatoes, and let the smell rise through the kitchen.

T-Lilith stood in the doorway, watching his movements with wide red eyes and breathing in the scent.

"Adrian Voss is amazing..."

Her praise made him smile.

'From now on, I'm not alone.'

In a dark room elsewhere, a woman in a white lab coat stared silently at a laptop screen.

A red dot pulsed as the map zoomed in.

At last, the map stopped moving, and a line of text appeared.

TARGET LOCKED: EDONIA, LOPLERS.

The woman closed the laptop. The light reflected in her eyes died with the screen.

"Found you," she said.

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