September 28th. 8:15 P.M.
The Humvee was silent, a silence more terrifying than any roar. John focused through the haze of pain.
The vehicle had landed on its side, the driver's door now the floor, and John was hanging from the seatbelt in an unnatural position. The impact had left him with a deep ache, a stinging friction that was hell with every shallow breath he tried to take. His armored suit hadn't prevented his body from becoming a map of bruises and forced bones.
Next to him, Ada Wong was dead weight. Her body hung limply, the scarlet trench coat stained and torn. She was unconscious, a luxury John could not afford.
The immediate danger wasn't the attacker, but the most basic law of survival. A pungent, chemical smell began to flood the cabin, distinct from the burnt rubber. John focused his gaze on what was once the hood, now inverted and wrinkled against the asphalt.
A column of black, greasy smoke rose from the shattered hood, and a few orange flames licked the sheet metal. The Humvee, his mobile fortress, was rapidly turning into an oven. The heat began to radiate from the metal, transforming the cabin into a suffocating, toxic air trap.
Death by asphyxiation or ignition was a timer that ran much faster than the Punisher's arrival.
The pain screamed at him to stop. To give up. But John didn't deal with pain; he simply used it as fuel. The sense of urgency rekindled his most primal instinct.
The first goal was liberation. With a stifled groan, he lifted his trembling hand toward the seatbelt buckle. His fingers, usually steady, slipped on the sweaty, hot metal. His body tensed, and John felt waves of agony run through his rib cage.
Failure. Retry. The process is survival. The command was not an emotion, but a protocol.
John gathered all the residual strength in his bruised left arm and pressed the release button with the base of his palm.
CLICK!
The buckle yielded. John's body fell from the vertical to the horizontal position against the driver's door. The impact of his own fall made him gasp, the hot air scorching his lungs.
He was half-buried under debris: broken radio equipment, empty shell casings, and several boxes of ammunition that had come loose. His left leg was trapped under the control panel, immobilized. The heat was suffocating, the air thin.
"Shit," he muttered, the word barely a whisper that admitted his state.
He needed to free Ada. He had to get her out.
As John struggled with his leg, the dry, heavy sound of the Punisher became audible from outside. There was no rush in its steps, just the terrible confidence of a hunter who knows his prey is bloody and trapped.
John managed to turn his head to look through the cracked windshield. He saw a massive silhouette, blocking the faint twilight.
The creature was not in a hurry. The Humvee was already doing the work for it, cooking its occupants.
John ignored the sound of footsteps. Time was now his most pressing enemy. With his right hand, he blindly searched beneath the lining of his suit and found what he was looking for: his combat knife, an elegant fixed-blade instrument. It was his most reliable tool.
He crawled, using his elbows to gain inches as the metal creaked and the heat rose. Smoke was already stinging his eyes, blurring his vision. He saw Ada, hanging inert, and the sight of her helplessness provoked an icy determination in John's heart. It wasn't anger, but the absolute functional necessity to preserve the asset, the only key that connected him to Umbrella. He couldn't afford to let her die.
His mind worked at lightning speed: if she dies, he is alone with no information to go against Umbrella.
But the motivation wasn't purely transactional. In the brief, tense interaction they had shared, Ada had proven to be, despite her flirtatiousness and secret agenda, an equal.
She had handled pressure and threats with a wit and precision that John deeply respected. It had forged a grim, fleeting comradeship between two elite assassins.
He braced himself against the passenger seat and raised the knife with a forced movement. The belt was made of extremely tough ballistic nylon webbing. John inserted the tip of the blade beneath the strap, right where it joined the clasp. He made a first cut, but the blade slipped from the tension.
John's blood, mixed with sweat, made the handle slippery, but his grip tightened. Concentration. He had to cut without stabbing her and without missing.
KSHHHH!
The first section of the strap yielded with a snap. John repeated the movement on the second section, forcing the blade until his arm muscles trembled from the effort. The pain in his ribs intensified into agony.
KSHHHH!
The belt snapped completely. Ada's body slumped heavily against the side door, now the floor, right next to John, slightly shifting the metal and causing a fine shower of shrapnel to fall upon them. He gasped for air from the effort, and the pain returned, a tidal wave.
In that instant, the Punisher stopped right next to the vehicle. John could feel the massive shadow covering the cabin. He heard a guttural sound, a kind of wet, rasping breathing, amplified by the proximity. The creature was assessing the vehicle, planning the final blow.
The metallic click of the rocket launcher readjusting pierced the dull hell of the cabin. It wasn't just the sound of a weapon loading; it was the cold, mechanical confirmation that the Punisher didn't consider its job done. It was going to finish off the vehicle and its occupants.
The priority had shifted: Weapon. The creature was too close for escape.
He searched blindly beneath the shattered dashboard. The Colt Commando, his assault rifle, was out of reach, trapped under the passenger seat. But his MP5 was in its sling, fallen upside down across his waist.
With an effort that cost him a muffled cry, John twisted, ignoring the tearing in his side, and unhooked the submachine gun from his body.
He barely had the weapon in his hands when a horrible sound of stretching and tearing metal confirmed that the Punisher had arrived and was ripping off the Humvee's rear door. John could hear the creature's thick, guttural breathing.
The top of the rear door peeled open with a metallic wrench. A massive arm, encased in black leather and ending in an industrial gauntlet, thrust through the opening. The arm went straight for the center of the vehicle, aiming for total destruction.
John reacted out of pure instinct, his mind in autopilot mode. He raised the MP5 and, without precise aim, emptied half a magazine into the armored arm forcing its way in.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
The 9mm rounds, designed to neutralize humans, ricocheted off the thick leather and armor with surprising force, sending sparks and a horrible metallic sound, as if hitting reinforced concrete. The shock wasn't the noise, but the absolute lack of effect. It was like shooting at a block of steel.
The arm momentarily withdrew, not from pain, but from the surprise and the sudden violence of the cabin. There was life. There was resistance.
John felt a burst of pure adrenaline that temporarily drowned the pain of his broken ribs. The plan was simple, brutal, and immediate: get them out through the windshield.
The windshield was already cracked from the impact. John raised the MP5, not as a firearm, but as an improvised battering ram.
With an inarticulate cry of effort, he turned the weapon sideways and slammed the buttstock against the glass, widening the opening. The windshield buckled outward, leaving a ragged opening.
Now or never!
Ignoring the scrape of the metal against his suit, John slid under Ada's inert body. He grabbed the spy firmly by the torso with both arms. He lifted her with surprising strength, considering his state, and pushed her through the hole in the windshield with a calculated tilt.
With Ada out, John used his knees against the seat and the pain as leverage. With tremendous effort, he propelled himself forward and up, sliding through the newly created hole. The sharp metal tore a layer of his suit, but his body passed through.
He barely fell onto the dirty asphalt when the fresh air filled his lungs. He didn't stop. John braced himself on one knee, grabbed Ada by the collar of her trench coat, and began to drag her away from the smoking vehicle with frantic urgency.
As John moved away, the impatient Punisher returned to the charge. The monster didn't bother to search through the ripped opening; it simply leaped onto the overturned Humvee, tearing its way through the trunk door with a deafening roar. Its goal was to shatter the cabin to finish its elimination mission.
John reached the two-meter mark. His body screamed for rest, but his brain was counting the time until ignition.
It was right then, with the Punisher half-inside the cabin and its hand blindly searching the metallic hell, that the engine fire reached the vehicle's most volatile cargo. The Umbrella soldiers had stored several high-explosive fragmentation grenade packages for an emergency. They were the powder that ignited the inferno.
WHOOOMPH!
The Humvee's explosion was cataclysmic. It wasn't a muffled gasoline blast, but a concentrated fury of metal, fire, and shockwaves. The vehicle became an iron supernova; the blast wave hit John with the force of a truck.
John and Ada, dead weight in his arms, were thrown through the air. The impact caused John to lose consciousness for an instant, the world becoming a deafening cacophony of white pain.
The Punisher, caught inside the Humvee as it tore through the seats and dashboard, took the full brunt of the explosive wave and the grenade fragmentation. The air filled with the sound of tearing metal, scorched flesh, and a gut-wrenching, unnatural howl that echoed through the streets of Raccoon City.
John landed heavily against a brick wall about four meters away, with Ada still partially cushioned by his own body and suit. His vision recovered enough to see what was left of the Humvee: a burning, twisted mass, spitting molten metal debris and strangely colored flames.
The Punisher was no longer in the cabin. It had been ejected by the force of the explosion. The creature slowly rose from the rubble about ten meters away, its figure covered in oil and chunks of Humvee.
The rocket launcher was gone. Its armored skin was severely damaged, cracked, with areas glowing with a feverish red from burns. Its right arm hung at an unnatural angle, and it staggered as it tried to regain its balance.
It was hurt. John had bought time and secured the tactical advantage he needed.
But John, bruised, bloody, and his ears still ringing, looked at Ada. She was still motionless. The advantage wouldn't last if he didn't move.
John lifted his head, seeking the massive figure of the Punisher.
The creature, now a smoking silhouette amidst the burning wreckage, was not moving toward them. It had slumped onto one knee, the other leg extended, its mutilated right arm dangling. Its head was tilted, as if processing a fatal error. The Punisher had entered a forced recovery mode, a brief pause to stabilize its severely damaged combat systems.
This was not a truce; it was an opportunity.
The surge of adrenaline that had allowed John to move and breathe during the explosion was at its peak. He had to use that hormonal spike.
With a forced grunt, John pushed himself to his feet, every movement an act of pure will. He bent over Ada, lifted her in an improvised fireman's carry. She was a dead weight of bruised flesh and trench coat, but he held her firmly.
Running was a generous term for what he did. It was a slow, laborious pace, a kind of limping trot that kept him in constant motion as he moved away from the hot zone. John forced himself to ignore the blurred vision and the stabbing pain in his ribs, glancing sideways as the Punisher's large hand weakly twitched, as if still trying to reach him.
About twenty meters away, he spotted what looked like an old bookstore or post office. It was a brick building with a heavy wooden door.
With Ada still loaded, John lunged toward the entrance. Upon reaching it, he stopped only long enough to gauge the target. He raised his good leg and slammed it with all his remaining force against the lock.
KABUM!
The door didn't open gently; the frame yielded and the wood groaned in protest, giving them access. John entered, immediately turning and releasing the door to slam shut with a dull thud. He briefly glanced through the dusty window. The Punisher was still kneeling, immobile.
They were inside.
John slid toward the nearest wall, away from the light. With extreme care, he lowered Ada, letting her rest against the cold surface. She was breathing, but her face was pale and covered in soot.
Once she was safe, John slumped down next to her.
The silence of the abandoned building was a brutal contrast to the chaos outside. The roar of adrenaline faded, and in its place, the unbearable pain returned, this time unfiltered. John gritted his teeth, his body shaking.
He let out a harsh, low growl, and his face contorted in an agonizing grimace as he leaned his head against the cold brick. They were alive, but now they had to deal with the consequences.
John forced his mind into tactical inventory mode. The pain was nothing more than body telemetry data.
With slow, precise movements, he slid his hands beneath his own armored suit. Shrapnel and twisted metal from the explosion had opened several deep, bloody cuts on his forearms and a particularly annoying one on his right thigh. Internal bruising was inevitable; against those, he could do nothing but endure.
He needed to stop the bleeding. His eyes fell on Ada's inert figure. He tore a section of the cleanest, toughest fabric from her scarlet trench coat. With trembling but firm hands, he used the cut fabric to tightly tie the most bleeding wounds on his limbs. The flow stopped.
He turned his attention to Ada. With a delicacy that belied the pain he was feeling, he removed her damaged trench coat. As he did so, Ada's body was revealed. Underneath she wore a silk, red, off-the-shoulder evening dress, a choice so absurdly impractical that John couldn't help but let out a dry, raspy laugh, which instantly turned into a grimace of rib pain.
"A dress like that in this situation," he muttered, shaking his head.
He examined the spy. Multiple bruises and superficial cuts, but nothing serious. He bandaged her shoulders and knees with more pieces of the trench coat. As he did so, he noted her physique: a perfect balance between aesthetics and efficiency, a discipline that confirmed her professionalism.
With Ada stable, John leaned back, forcing himself to calm his breathing. He reviewed the attack: the speed, the strength, the indifference to bullets, and the fact that the explosion had only forced the creature to its knees.
In the middle of his thoughts, he remembered. Jill.
He pulled out his phone. The screen was fragmented, but incredibly, it was still on. It took him several minutes to force his vision through the smudges and decipher the number of the last incoming call. He pressed to return it.
He didn't have to wait long.
"John! For God's sake, it's me, Jill. I haven't been able to contact you, I lost my phone fleeing from... well, from hell. Where are you?" The voice burst through, ragged with static and fear, but unmistakable.
"I'm... okay. Found a pit stop. And you?" His voice was a low growl, forced into calm.
There was a brief silence. Jill had caught the involuntary hiss of pain John let out between words.
"Don't lie to me," she said. "I can hear you. You're badly hurt. When I called you earlier... I... I'm sorry, I should have told you."
"Told me what?"
"The monster! The one who was chasing me," Jill revealed urgently. "I remember that before I lost sight of it, besides growling 'S.T.A.R.S.', it was also saying your name. 'JOHN.' I knew it was coming for you after me. I found a broken phone in a store and dialed as fast as I could. Did you find it?"
The information hit John with the coldness of steel. He wasn't an incidental target. He was a primary target.
"Yes. Well, it found me. It's... resilient."
"Resilient? How bad is it?"
"A bit out of commission momentarily," John admitted. "It was sudden with its attack, it caught me off guard. It's tougher than anything I've ever known, Jill. But I can still fight. I just need... half an hour."
"You don't have half an hour. I need to come get you now. You have to get out of there before that thing restarts. Where exactly are you?"
John forced his mind to orient itself through the stabbing pain.
"It's an... old brick bookstore, near an intersection with a broken clock tower. I'm about twenty blocks from the R.P.D., I think."
Jill let out a sound of recognition. "I got it! I know that place. It's the old library on Main Street, right next to the river. It's a good spot, the door is solid."
"It was."
Jill's voice tensed, but she sounded determined. "Hold tight, John. I have a relatively clear path. I'll be there in twenty minutes, don't move."
"Understood." John said, his breath catching.
John could only nod in the silence of the line, the final word barely audible. He hung up the phone. The contact with Jill had drained his last energy reserves. The pain returned, a furious roar that surpassed the ringing in his ears.
His eyelids felt terribly heavy, and the image of Ada resting beside him faded into a welcoming blackness. John didn't fight the exhaustion. He simply let the darkness claim him, falling into an unconsciousness induced by exhaustion and injury, his body finally forcing him to a stop.
About five minutes later, the world returned to Ada Wong not as a big bang, but as a dull throb behind her eyes, a searing pain that announced the forced return to consciousness.
She opened her eyes. For a confused moment, she only saw the dusty ceiling of an unknown structure. What had happened? She forced herself to concentrate. The sensation of being shaken, the screech of metal, a devastating blow... the Humvee. She remembered the brutality with which the creature had impacted them.
She tried to move her head, and a shiver ran down her neck. Her scarlet trench coat was gone. She was wearing her red evening dress, but several sections of fabric, roughly torn, were tied tightly around her shoulders and thigh. They were makeshift bandages.
Her eyes immediately went to the man beside her. John Wick. He was leaning against the brick wall, his ballistic vest torn in several places, revealing dark cuts and horrible bruises. His breathing was shallow and labored, an irregular rhythm that indicated considerable internal damage. He was deeply unconscious.
Ada felt the instinctive impulse of every agent: weapon inventory. She slid her hand beneath her thigh, under the soft silk fabric of the dress, to the hidden holster. Her trusty P-9 pistol was in place. The cold metal was a familiar comfort.
As her mind cleared, a single figure filled the void left by the concussion: 20 million dollars.
The High Table had made the price clear: John Wick dead to demonstrate their capacity for control. If she could deliver the head of the Baba Yaga, even if she didn't have the virus the Table had tasked her with. She could escape this city nightmare, leave Wesker and the chaos behind, and live the life much more luxurious than before.
It was the opportunity. The only window of vulnerability. The most dangerous man in the world was unarmed, injured, and in a forced, deep sleep.
The barrel of her pistol slowly and silently rose. The weight of the weapon in her hand was the weight of twenty million. Her eyes, now cold and determined, fixed on John's left temple.
A single shot. Quick. Clean.
Ada held her aim, her finger approaching the trigger, the awareness that she had just been saved by this man drilling into her head, a distant annoyance before the magnitude of the prize.