Chapter XIV

Annette stirred a little in her sleep. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realised that someone was touching her head, but then she'd been drugged and moved around, bandaged and stitched and injected and she hadn't opened her mouth to complain, just overwhelmingly grateful in her rare moments of consciousness.

She opened her eyes slowly, the room going in and out of focus until her mind readjusted and the next thing she knew she was opening her eyes to a bright light screaming in her vision. Groaning, she tried to move, but found that she couldn't and strangely this fact didn't bother her as much as it should have. Everything hurt, her whole body was aching and throbbing, but there was something fuzzy at the edge of her perception, something that stopped the pain from being as bad as it should have been and she welcomed it.

She was surrounded by warmth, a clean smell of antiseptic and something soft propping her head. And then she remembered what had happened, the men and the guns and before that...everything and a knot formed in her chest through her painkiller fuelled confusion and she tried to move her head, suddenly feeling sick.

"Albert...?" she slurred, sinking back and letting her eyes close for just a second.

A nurse hurried to her side and put a soothing hand on Annette's own. "Everything's okay," she said slowly. "Dr Wesker is sleeping. You're in safety now... just relax."

Annette blinked at the strange woman in front of her. Unable to comprehend how, or why she was suddenly here, she mumbled aloud, "Are we home...?"

A gentle hand pushed some loose strands of hair out of her face. "You're in a hospital now. Your friend is right here." She moved out of the way somewhat, so Annette could see.

With a groan Annette half sat up in bed, watching Wesker's steady breathing in the bed on the other side of the room. Apart from the nurse they were alone. There were two doors and a window, but Annette was still too dazed to really take in the details. The nurse gave her a pat on the shoulder and she complied, lying back down.

"You should rest some more," the woman instructed, gave her a reassuring smile and left the room.

Annette resisted the urge to call her back. She didn't want to be alone... she couldn't bear the silence at the moment, the solitude that forced horrible images into her mind whenever she wasn't distracted.

She didn't know how long she lay, staring at the clinical white walls and reliving the past twenty four hours. She must have fallen asleep at one point, because the next time she opened her eyes the moon dimly illuminated the window. In a rush of panic Annette looked over at the neighbouring bed. For a moment, she had feared she was alone, some new chapter in Alfred's game. But Wesker was still there, and this time, he was awake.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she told him back. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel great. I've never been happier to wake up in a hospital." He smiled a little, but his next words were filled with concern. "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine..." she said perhaps a little too quickly. "Glad to be home." She smiled that smile, the much-too-bright one that she reserved for when she was feeling utterly dreadful and trying to hide it at all costs. The one that got her through countless early morning board meetings after she'd been up all night with Will, trying to calm him down when things went wrong in the lab. Wesker didn't question it, but he probably saw right through.

"They told me we're in a hospital close to the coast," he explained instead. "Our condition was too bad to transport us directly to Raccoon, but I've been assured it's only a matter of days until we can go home."

"Okay," Annette said, then paused. "Thank you." The two words really weren't enough to convey how grateful she was to him, for everything. She was in no doubt that she'd have been dead several times over were it not for Wesker. She tried to find something to say to make him understand that, but it seemed like far to big a task. "Thank you..." she repeated again, softly.

Wesker settled with a silent nod, propping himself up in bed. She didn't know if he was intending to respond or not, because at that moment the door to their room opened, and a man dressed in a black suit stepped in. Annette looked at the newcomer for a moment, puzzled by his sudden presence. He wasn't a doctor...or at least, he wasn't dressed like one. She guessed he was in his forties. He had two pens in the front pocket of his suit and carried a brown leather briefcase. He was obviously some sort of business type. She briefly wondered if he was from insurance and came to tell them that their department wouldn't pay for the costs of their hospital stay. It seemed a little far fetched, but you never know.

The man nodded at them both in turn as he set his attache case on a nearby plastic table. "Dr Birkin, Dr Wesker. It's good to see you awake again. How are you feeling?"

"Have...we met?" Annette asked, searching his face for some kind of familiarity.

He smiled thinly and shook his head. "My name is James Grey, I'm with internal investigations." He pulled up a chair between the two beds and sat down, producing a notepad. "If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions about your...ah...time at Rockfort."

She wanted to tell him that yes, she damn well minded, but she just nodded silently, hoping that he wouldn't ask her to go into too much detail, and that this was simply just a case of checking boxes where procedure was concerned.

Wesker nodded in approval for the interview to begin, and she felt sure he wanted this over and done with as much as she did.

Grey nodded and flipped his notebook open. "We'll start easy," he said, looking first at Annette, then at Wesker. "Did you notice anything unusual after your arrival on the island? Before the... accident, I mean?"

"You mean besides the fact that Alfred was clearly mentally ill, completely incompetent and blatantly using company resources for his own amusement while producing absolutely nothing of worth?" Annette asked. "No, everything seemed pretty much above board."

She winced a little at the expression on Grey's face. It probably wasn't the most tactful way of going about things, but she wasn't exactly in the mood for diplomacy.

"And you, Dr Wesker?"

"Apart from what Dr Birkin already said..." Wesker began, approaching things with a little more composure than Annette. "The laboratories weren't producing anything useful. They hardly compare to the Arklay facility. It seemed as if Ashford infected Umbrella prisoners at random, simply for his pleasure. But overall, the facility seemed safe. Safe enough for an outbreak of such scale not to go unnoticed."

Grey nodded, and wrote it down. Then he asked, "What happened later? When the evacuation alarms were launched?"

Annette shook her head, half struggling to remember. It seemed like an age ago. "I don't know... I was sleeping, then the sirens went off, and everything was chaos outside... I knocked on Dr Wesker's door and we went to investigate and... there were already carriers everywhere. In the residence, in the courtyard... it was a full scale outbreak. We tried to make our way to where Ashford kept his plane,

hoping there would be some kind of evacuation procedure, but there were too many of them..." She bit her lip. "...so we ended up going through the labs instead." She looked at Wesker, hoping he'd finish off the story, not wanting to relive what had happened next.

Thankfully, he obliged. "We barricaded the entrance to the labs and managed to find a way to the control place had a map and we headed into the direction of the underground airport. On the way there... there were a few obstacles. An encounter with one of the MA-121s and another BOW. It was an original Rockfort creation. I don't remember its name."

"The Albinoid," Grey offered. "We already wondered about the origin of yours and Dr Birkin's injuries. A Hunter. Impressive. And you killed it?"

Wesker nodded and Annette shuddered. They'd been damn lucky. Grey urged them on. "What happened next?"

Annette glanced at Wesker doubtfully. "We were both in really bad shape, I was unconscious by that point. Dr Wesker got me to safety and barricaded us in a storeroom. We rested briefly and then carried on. There was another BOW a...Bandersnatch?" Grey nodded in recognition of the name, so she carried on. "It attacked us and we killed it, and then we were almost out of the labs when..." her fists tightened at the memory, "...when we heard Ashford's voice over the intercom, mocking us. He'd set up a series of traps in the underground part of the facility, and we had no choice but to..." she choked a little. "Well by that point there was no going back...and...and..."

Grey looked at her sharply. "Please, Dr Birkin, do go on. I'm intrigued to find out how much your story differs from Mr Ashford's..."

Wesker tensed, gripping into the covers. "Mr Ashford's story? But... that can't be."

Grey looked at him and raised an eyebrow, scribbling something on the paper. "Mr Ashford, yes. He's recovering just a few rooms away from here."

"He survived?" Wesker blurted out, and there was no mistaking the anger in his voice.

"He did indeed. But please, continue. There are a few things that need to be cleared up on this matter. We want to hear both sides' versions."

Wesker looked at Annette in confusion, a pang of worry crossing his features. Annette started to cry quietly, tears pricking her tired eyes and streaming down her cheeks. Alfred couldn't have survived. Wesker had killed him. She had seen the body.

Eventually, Wesker went on. "We took the only way possible, a stairwell leading down into some kind of stone labyrinth. There were Cerberus in there... five, possibly more. I managed to kill some before we could escape through another door. The next room was empty apart from an exit on the other side. But we never got that far... as soon as we left the Cerberus behind, gas started filling the room. We both lost consciousness. When we woke up again..." he stopped, and she could understand all too well why he didn't want to continue. Alfred's torture chamber had been the worst of it all. He'd humiliated them, hurt them, nearly killed them and that all for the sake of twisted pleasure.

Grey waited a few seconds, but upon not getting a response, he turned to Annette. "Mrs Birkin?"

The memory was too recent, the wounds too fresh. She didn't even know how to begin saying it out loud. With a quiet sob, she kept her eyes fixed on the view outside the window, took a deep breath, and spoke in a dead, flat little voice. "When we woke up he'd restrained us both. He came in, told us that the entire outbreak had been his doing, and then he..." she trailed off. "I don't want to go into what he did, but I'm sure you've already read the doctor's reports. In the end... he stabbed Dr Wesker and let him down, thinking he was dead, and started to... well he was going to... but..." her hands started to shake wildly as she clutched at the bedsheets to steady them, shaking her head over and over again as she didn't trust herself to speak any more.

"But I stopped him in time," Wesker finished for her. "I freed her, but I hardly remember what happened after that."

Grey nodded. "You lost quite an amount of blood. That's normal." He finished noting something down, the flipped the pad closed again and took a long look at both of them, not seeming to mind Annette's emotional crisis. "However, what you've told me deviates a lot from Mr Ashford's story, especially concerning the last points. He insists that he had to defend himself against you. That you wanted to eliminate him. And that's why...uh… he had to use the knife." He gestured to Wesker.

"That's fucking bullshit!" Annette yelled. "How can you even buy that crap? What about the other wounds?" She looked at the investigator in utter horror, searching for some sign that he was messing them around.

"Dr Birkin," Grey responded coldly, "It's more than probable that you both sustained your other injuries during the outbreak. Which is certainly a more plausible explanation than your story."

"You found us bleeding half to death in a torture chamber!" she yelled, her stomach knotting itself in a mix of anger, anxiety and disbelief. "You can't possibly be that obtuse!"

"Calm down," Grey said, giving her a cold glare. "What you had to go through was, by all means, not easy. But it creates a mental and emotional stress that might distort your perception. All your other injuries can very well be explained. The cuts on your skin, Dr Wesker's broken ribs, there are reasonable origins to the-"

"Stop talking," Wesker interrupted, now truly furious. "Just stop telling those lies. Broken ribs? He goddamn hit me with a metal rod! If anyone acted in self defense, then it was us, not Ashford!"

Grey gave an impassive gesture which looked suspiciously like a shrug and Annette gritted her teeth.

"Your story is incredibly far fetched," he said with what was close to a sneer. "Obviously I will question Mr Ashford in more detaiI about your accusations, but I would have imagined that, given the time you've had to get a story together, you would have been able to come up with something a little more...plausible."

"How can you...it's..." Annette stammered in sheer disbelief. "This is outrageous! After everything we've been through!"

He looked at her coldly. "Then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, Dr Birkin, but we're looking, in all likelihood, at attempted murder charges here."

"What?" Wesker barked, as Annette stared open mouthed. It was getting more ridiculous by the minute. "Attempted murder, have you completely lost your senses! We were half dead by the time! What makes you think that we would chase Ashford through his facility in order to murder him when we were fighting for our own lives?"

"Well," Grey said. "It didn't stop you from attacking him with the metal rod you mentioned earlier, Dr Wesker."

"He tried to kill us, don't you understand? What was I supposed to do, watch him burn her alive? What the hell did he tell you? I want to know exactly what he said!"

"Dr Wesker, I am not here to act as your go-between," Grey said, visibly irritated now. "Suffice to say, that you two were distinctly unwilling to listen to reason during the day, that you disappeared during the outbreak, and then you ran into him at the courtyard, forced him at gunpoint into the underground prison and made to kill him, at which point he grabbed a weapon, hit out with it in self defence, and then you, Dr Wesker, attacked him with the intent to kill while Dr Birkin attempted to restrain him." He cleared his throat and looked at Annette, "And quite frankly, given your husband's history with the late Alexia Ashford, and his much-publicised hatred of the family, is it really such a stretch of the imagination to believe that his wife would want the last remaining Ashford out of the way? We have a clear motive, and fairly obvious circumstantial evidence which corroborates Mr Ashford's story."

Wesker stared at Grey, shaking his head throughout the speech. "I refuse to listen to this anymore. Please leave the room." He gestured to the door. Grey seemed satisfied enough with what he had obtained and was more than happy to follow Wesker's bidding.

"I'll contact Spencer about this," Wesker said when they were alone again. "Attempted murder?" he echoed, barely able to restrain the fury. "That's a bad joke."

"How... why... how can he even be alive...?" Annette was still crying, her shoulders shaking. "This isn't fair... not after everything... how can they even think that?"

But she knew exactly how. Alfred was powerful and his family name still carried more weight than both of their influences combined. They were all with Umbrella; it was company policy to eliminate your rivals whenever the chance presented itself. Mysterious 'accidents' weren't uncommon. Annette only had to look across the room to be reminded of James Marcus and all the things her husband had never said, but had given away regardless.

"God...if Spencer won't back us up, we're..." it didn't bear thinking about. Umbrella had its own way of dealing with employee misconduct. And she didn't even want to think about the impact this would all have on William, and his standing within the company.

"Ashford or not, Alfred won't get away with this," Wesker said. "Spencer sent us there to investigate against him, he will hardly change sides now, especially in regards to the destruction of a whole facility."

"How soon can you get in touch with Spencer?" she asked, desperately, realizing suddenly that despite her hopes, their nightmare wasn't over yet.