They sat in one of the sitting rooms, where Alexander had often entertained guests, mostly suits from the Board of Directors who had come to tour the facility. It had been chilly in here, so Grayson had piled wood in the fireplace (there had been some wood on the log-rack, still wrapped in the plastic) and used the pages of a book on whaling scrimshaw for kindling. He found some nosing glasses in a nearby cabinet, then opened the bottle of the good bourbon he had found in his father's room.

Alexia could not really hold her liquor, but that did not surprise Grayson. Her only experience with alcohol had been at thirteen, when he'd stolen a bottle of whiskey from his father. They had gone down to her office and worked through the entire thing, and Alexia had spent that evening throwing her guts up, in the funny, inglorious way of a young teenager who had never touched booze before.

Right now, Alexia was struggling through her fourth glass, and it had taken her a long time to even reach number four. She had been steadily diluting the drinks with water, and now looked mildly nauseous, so Grayson dragged the waste-bin over and told her to throw up in there if she had to.

He was already feeling a good buzz: not shitfaced, but not very sober either—a comfortable in-between. He was hungry too, and luckily had found some canned beans in the Ashford's private kitchen. Alexia had only touched a little of it, and had complained it was terrible. He'd already gone through one can, and was working through a second.

"Alfred would be pissed," said Grayson, finishing another drink. The bottle was nearly empty. "Sitting around and drinking when there's zombies out there. And a kid who needs to die. But dammit, the bastard deserved a wake." There was an uncomfortable feeling in his chest, as if his emotions had suddenly collected in the cavity of his rib-cage and gotten lodged there.

Alexia finished her fourth drink, and bent over the waste-bin, like she was sure she'd throw it all back up. When nothing came, she said, "My poor brother didn't deserve to go like he did." In her current marinated state, Alexia was more emotive, more human, like the Alexia he'd known. "Shot in the back!" she declared. "That's how bloody Jesse James died. That's how a bloody thug died, Grayson." She leaned against him, eyes glazed, staring in the direction of the fire.

Grayson slipped an arm around her. He finished the bourbon, straight from the bottle. Then chucked the bottle at the wall, and it shattered, the little pieces of it catching the firelight, glittering on the floorboards like rubies.

"We can't stay here," he said. "Not enough food in the facility to last longer than a few months, and that's if we stretch it. No animals we can hunt, because nothing lives this far fucking inland. The power-grid might last another year or two, give or take, and then we'll fucking freeze to death in this shithole. And if one of us gets hurt, there's no fucking doctor we can call, because the communications are shot. We're fucking alone." He heaved a sigh, feeling sulky. "Maybe Alfred was the lucky one, dying like that. He left a jet behind, but I don't know how to fly that fucking thing." Grayson paused, a sudden strange clarity hitting him: "You know you could have died if the auxiliary power went down? Your tube would have shorted, and then you'd have died. Alone. In the concrete dark. With nobody to hold a wake for you."

"You're certainly poetic when you're drunk, Grayson," said Alexia, closing her eyes. "Proper Shakespearean."

"I'm being serious, Alexia," said Grayson, staring at her. "We can't survive in this fucking place. Sooner we take care of Burnside, sooner we can figure a way off this godforsaken, ass-end-middle-of-fucking-nowhere, piece-of-shit facility." His head started to ache. "Isn't there an Australian observation base nearby? There used to be, unless it's been abandoned too."

"You sound worried. Don't be," said Alexia, with her usual cold confidence. She tipped her head back and kissed him, then said, "We're going to take care of Burnside, and then we're going to take care of Wesker."

"Wesker isn't here," said Grayson. The last time he had seen Wesker, it had been on Rockfort, and Rockfort was gone now.

"He's here," said Alexia, smiling.

It was an unsettling smile, the sort of smile he imagined belonging to female serial killers. But there was something about her smile that struck a deep, primal chord inside him, excited him on some daredevil genetic level—probably the part of the brain that had excited his caveman ancestors, when they had hunted dangerous predators, naked, with just their spears and bows.

Alexia stroked his cheek and kissed him again. "Don't worry, darling," she said, between kisses. She stopped, started to trail her lips along the line of his jugular. Her lips were warm and soft. "I'll take care of everything. I simply need you to follow my lead."

Grayson suddenly felt like putty. Alexia had always had a kind of beguiling effect on him, like every word she spoke was a powerful voodoo invocation. Alexia started to unbutton his shirt, and he couldn't decide if it was the booze that had loosened her up, or if it had been the fifteen years of cryo-storage. In one smooth motion, Alexia straddled him and started to undress. She removed the top of her dress, freeing her pale breasts, the nipples a rosy pink.

There was a sense of guilt then, sudden and sharp. "Should we really be doing this?" he asked. "We just held a wake for Alfred."

Alexia took his earlobe between her teeth and giggled, removing the last articles of her dress and tossing them aside. Naked now, Alexia started to work his zipper down. "My brother always wanted me to be happy," she murmured, and gently sucked at his mouth, an intense longing in the kiss. "Right now," she said, as she peeled her lips from his, her warm breath tickling his throat, "this is making me happy. Shut up and enjoy it." She took off his shoes, then his pants, and threw them aside. "You're problem, Grayson," she said, trailing kisses between his pectorals, and lower still, "is you talk too bloody much."

Sex with Alexia, he soon realized, was not a slow, affectionate affair. He decided Alexia was one of those women who could not get off unless she was hurting herself in some way, or hurting him in some way. She rode him like she'd gone several lifetimes without sex, rarely pausing between strokes, impaling herself on him with slick animal roughness and need. It had been difficult for him to acclimate, because Jill, his most recent failed relationship, had never been like that, and neither had the women he had dated before Jill.

Alexia was panting and sweating, rolling against him in the body-heated air of the room, a look somewhere between tortured pleasure and pain on her face. Grayson sat up, propped against the armrest of the couch, rocking powerfully between her wet thighs. She kissed him deeply, wrapped her long white legs around him, and told him, somewhere between the kisses and the moans, not to stop.

His orgasm came sudden and hot, blew his cognizance into a warm spray. He convulsed underneath her, and his body felt as if it had been reduced to liquid, like it would spill from the frame of his body if he moved too suddenly. Grayson lay there underneath her, panting, failing to remember the last time he'd had sex that great. Alexia rolled off him, pinned between his body and the backrest, her goose-pimpled skin slick with sweat.

Alexia traced the geometry of his muscles with her finger, and stopped just above his crotch. Her hair was a mess, like she'd just woken up after a rough night out. "It's strange," she said suddenly. "Waking up in 1998, when my last memories are from 1983." She frowned, then asked the question Grayson had dreaded she would ask, "Did you ever see another woman in those fifteen years, Grayson? Did you marry, like you'd planned to?"

"I was living in an apartment in Raccoon City." Grayson held her hand over his heart, her palm warm on his skin, the sound of his heartbeat thumping rhythmically in his ears. He smiled. "I was working out there as a bartender, and this woman Jill Valentine used to frequent the bar I tended at, a place called The Black Room. So we started talking."

Alexia scowled, her fingers digging tellingly into his skin. "Are you still with her?" she asked, coldly.

"No. Things didn't work out," said Grayson, automatically. His relationship with Jill had been complicated, and he'd realized, fairly recently, that he'd never actually loved her. She had been a distraction, a means to pass the time, a hobby. "The relationship ended a few months ago," he continued, and it was cathartic, Grayson decided, getting this shit off his chest. "We'd dated for two years, but I was hung up on you, and Jill didn't like that."

"Do you regret how things turned out?" asked Alexia, watching him like a cat.

Grayson turned his head, brushing his thumb across her white cheek and kissing her, slow and sweet. Her lips were soft, and he wanted to kiss those lips forever. "Not at all," he said, and meant it. "I love you. I'd do anything for you, and you know that."

Alexia kissed him. "I know," she said softly, stroking his cheek. "You've never been anything less than loyal to me and my brother, Grayson."

He smiled, admiring her face in contented silence. Fifteen years had turned Alexia's face into a work of art, a thing of delicate aristocratic angles. Then he said, because he couldn't really hold it in any longer, "God, you're fucking beautiful."

She chuckled. "You're not bad-looking yourself either, Grayson," she said, and grinned. "Time has been very," and she slipped her hand down, her fingers brushing his flaccid cock, "kind to you."

Something moved beyond the door of the sitting room. It wasn't the shuffling they had heard outside the bedroom door earlier, but slow, cautious footsteps. Grayson grumbled. Alexia slid over him and stood, dressing quickly and quietly.

"We have a guest," she said.

"Wesker?" he asked, irritably.

"No. One of his men. I think his name is Callahan."

"How do you—"

"I know everything that happens in this facility, Grayson."