Back at the mansion, Hunkin said to her, "Going to drop by the infirmary, Dr. Ashford." He took off his mask and wiped his sweaty forehead on the sleeve of his U.S.S fatigues. In the light, Hunkin looked worse. Alexia could see every little bruise and cut: some of the bruises were deep, painful-looking purples, and others had started to yellow and green; the cuts were bright red with infection and beginning to scab black. As he walked, she noticed Hunkin seemed to favor his right leg. "Once I get the all-clear from the doctors," said Hunkin, his cigarette-roughened, too-old voice rumbling in his throat, "I'll head back out with some better gear and get the bitch myself. Fuck the others. 'Want something right, do it yourself'. Incompetent assholes, Dr. Ashford. Next round of rookies better have some fucking balls. You know one of 'em actually cried? Deserved getting his arm ripped off."

"He reminds me of John Wayne," said Grayson quietly, watching Hunkin limp steadily away, then vanish through a door. "Jesus. It's hilarious." He splayed his fingers across his chest, and said, "Bet he's got chest hair on his chest hair."

Alexia smiled and said, "Shut up."

Grayson leaned over and pecked her on the lips. "I'm gonna shower," he said, and he turned around and went upstairs.

A shower sounded like a good idea.

Once she'd gotten her shower, Alexia re-watched the Trevor tapes, hoping to find something pertinent to her investigation—a devil in the details. Nothing so easy, however; she'd turned up nothing. All of the tapes were related to Lisa's Q and As with the research team, and nothing at all related to her life before Umbrella. Though Alexia supposed it wasn't that surprising; if there had been family tapes from that time, Umbrella had probably destroyed them. After all, she thought, it was standard protocol: destroy all evidence, and wait for the police to get bored.

Alexia would have asked Birkin or Albert about the train and the old Stoneville-Raccoon route, but they'd been young children when the rail had closed; and Alexia wasn't even sure if they had been natives of the area. Birkin had something distinctly East Coast in his accent like Grayson, and Albert sounded like he might have come from a Welsh family.

She thought of asking Scott about the old Stoneville-Raccoon route, and after some deliberation, decided she would; Scott wasn't from Raccoon, but he'd been around when her grandfather had been around—and her grandfather had been around Raccoon, back when Umbrella was beginning to groom the hillbilly town as their ground zero.

Alexia called Antarctica, and Scott came in over the mansion's extension. "Hey, princess," said Scott amiably. "How's Raccoon City?"

"Good, Scott," she said, staring absently at an oil painting of the Arklays hanging on the wall. "How's Antarctica?"

"Same as you'd left it," said Scott, and he chuckled. "Cold, boring. Alfred's been sick, so I've been taking care of him."

"Nothing serious, I hope." Alexia honestly wasn't worried, but had asked anyway because it was the polite thing to do. Alfred was a diva, and he had this awful habit of exaggerating everything for the attention: what was a paper cut was a severed limb, and what was nothing more than a passing cold was a certain-death pneumonia.

"No," said Scott, and he laughed. "Think it's one of those two-day stomach bugs. Has a mild fever, and he's been throwing up. I'm telling you, kiddo, he was probably sneaking junk food from the staff cafeteria again, and he ate something contaminated. That food is highly suspect. I certainly wouldn't eat it."

"Precisely why I always take my meals at the mansion."

"I wouldn't let you eat that garbage, princess. You're a growing girl; you don't need some weird pseudo-food stunting your growth. Alfred, he just sneaks behind my back." Scott snickered, and he added, "He's paying for it now. Serves him right. Maybe he'll listen better next time."

Alexia had been enjoying their conversation so much that she'd nearly forgotten about the entire reason she'd called him. "Scott, sorry, there's a reason I'd called you," she said, and she sat down in the chair at the desk, wrapping the accordioned phone-cord around her fingers so her hand had something to do. "Do you know anything about the old Stoneville-Raccoon rail?" asked Alexia. "The one that had closed in the 60s."

"That's a weird thing to call someone up for," said Scott, and she could picture his face then, his hard ex-marine features pinched with confusion. "You have Grayson doing some kind of history assignment or something?"

She decided to go with that, and said, "Yes. A history report."

Silence. Then Scott said, "But you're the one asking."

Alexia smacked her forehead.

"Nice try, kiddo. You're real easy to catch in a lie." Scott laughed warmly, and he said, the start of a lecture in his voice, "You know I don't like lying, Alexia. You tried pulling this crap when you were younger, remember? When my candies started going missing? I'd caught you in the lie, and you'd tried blaming Alfred. Then there was that other time you'd pushed Grayson when you were about five because you both had been fighting over a Magna Doodle, and he'd cracked his head open. You'd lied again, and you'd blamed Alfred. So I got a history lesson for you: what did I tell you back then?"

Alexia couldn't quite remember, and she hesitated, "'Don't blame Alfred'?"

"Well," said Scott, "that was part of it, certainly. But I told you that lying is wrong, and honesty is the best policy, kiddo. You might not believe in God like I do, but believe me, He's watching."

"Please spare me the hallelujah rubbish, Scott. I don't care about God," she said evenly, because they'd been over this a thousand times before. "God is a morality construct. God is a concept humans came up with in order to compartmentalize good and evil. In reality, good and evil is just human nature, the product of synaptic activity in the brain. It can't be separated into clear black and white; it's gray, and it always will be gray."

He sighed. "All right," said Scott, and his tone implied he was done with that discussion. Then, "So what's this call really about, kiddo? Why do you want to know about the old rail?"

"Something happened in Arklay, and before you panic, I'm fine. The rail factors into the problem, and that's why I want to know."

"Good. Glad you're all right," said Scott. "I suppose you can't talk about what happened?"

"No," she said, "I can't."

"Right. Umbrella," said Scott, and he paused, a thoughtful silence. Then he said, "Well, I don't know much personally about the rail, considering I'm from New Jersey, and I'd only ever visited Raccoon, so I'm not very familiar with the local history. Your grandfather and I rode it once to Stoneville, back in '62. It was a civilian rail then. Stoneville was a pretty popular weekend getaway for folks. Real nice part of the Arklays up that way, especially in autumn, when the leaves get all pretty. It was one of those touristy towns, the ones full of bed and breakfasts, and little gift shops for the bored middle-class weekenders. Autumn Fair was really popular; they held it up at the fairgrounds there. Fair would run from early October, and to about the end of November. I remember me and Eddy going up there on Halloween, or it might've been a little bit before Halloween. I don't quite remember. We'd gotten loaded on Schlitz, so most of that night past a certain point is a little blurry."

Alexia chuckled. "Admitting to being drunk, Scott? Not very godly of you."

"I'm human, kiddo. Nothing godly about me."

"At least you realize that," said Alexia, and she paused, cradling the handset between her shoulder and jaw. "Do you remember anything in particular? Anything that really stands out to you." It was a shot in the dark.

"I remember this little girl," said Scott. "She was fussing about her doll, and I'll never forget it because I'd never seen a little girl look so heartbroken over a doll. She'd lost it, and I think I remember her mentioning her daddy had bought it for her. Her mother, a very nice-looking woman from what I remember—though not nearly as nice-looking as Alice, mind you—was trying to calm her down and help her find it. They got off at Stoneville, and I didn't see the doll in the little girl's hand. She had the saddest damned expression on her face; it broke my heart, kiddo. Eddy and I tried to find it, but we never did."

Alexia suddenly felt uncomfortable, thinking about Lisa like that, like a normal little girl who'd only wanted the doll her father had bought her. "I see," she said, and she frowned thoughtfully. That explained why Lisa had been hanging around the train; she'd been after the doll, not Hunkin or Grayson. And it hadn't been the doll, precisely, that she'd wanted; she'd wanted the memory of her mother, the traces of her still clinging to the doll. "Thank you, Scott," she said finally, and Alexia smiled.

"No problem, kiddo. I hope it helped."

"Immensely," said Alexia.

"She reminds me of you. In hindsight, I mean," said Scott. "You weren't born then, obviously. But thinking about it now, I can draw comparisons because you exist now, kiddo."

Alexia was still smiling. She loved Scott like a father, and he had a certain talent for making her feel like the most important person in the world, and Alexia liked that. She liked feeling like the center of a father's world, because she'd never known that sort of thing when Alexander had been alive.

Silently, Alexia admitted to herself that she did, in fact, enjoy being a daddy's girl. Then, "How does the little girl remind you of me?"

"You kidding?" said Scott, as though she should have already known how the little girl reminded him of her. He laughed. "Kiddo," he said, "you know how many times you'd cried because your favorite toy at the time had broken? Because you'd hurt yourself? Because I'd told you no? I'd need a calculator."

Alexia giggled. Scott had this habit of affectionately waffling on about her, her brother, and Grayson, and, on several occasions, he'd even waffled on about them to perfect strangers; he'd always spoken with such enormous pride, too, like they were his Medals of Honor.

"When you were three, you'd cried your eyes out because you'd lost one of your favorite Weebles. Girl genius Alexia Ashford crying over a damned Weeble." She could hear the massive grin in his voice. "Turned out Alfred had hidden it on you after you'd broken his favorite G.I Joe. And when you were six, you'd fallen off that carousel in the attic above your room. I'd told you to stop monkeying around on it because that's how people got hurt, and sure enough, you monkeyed around on it, Alexia, and you fell. You remember what happened? You cut your leg open, gushed blood everywhere."

She remembered. She still had the scar on her shin, although it had faded considerably to an off-white color. "Grayson dared me," said Alexia. "He kept telling me I wouldn't do it."

"If Grayson dared you to jump off a bridge, would you?"

"I was six."

"With the brain of an adult," said Scott. "You knew better, Alexia. But Grayson knew better, too; I whooped him after that carousel business." He paused. "You know," he said, "out of the three of you, Alfred's been the most well-behaved. I'd spent more time disciplining you and Grayson than I ever did Alfred."

"More so Grayson," she pointed out, helpfully.

"That kid's too wild for his own good," said Scott ruefully. "Hope he settles down when he's older and wises up. He won't make a good husband for you if he's always doing the first stupid thing that pops into his head."

Alexia blushed. "I'm only thirteen, and you're already talking about marriage. Stop being so bloody old-fashioned."

"It's just a gut-feeling, kiddo," said Scott. "You and Grayson got something I've never seen before, something real special. I'd bet money you both wind up getting married as soon as you're eighteen."

She was still blushing. Her cheeks and ears felt as if they'd caught fire, and she knew if she looked in a mirror, she'd see her entire face was bright red. "You're being absolutely ridiculous, Scott."

"Hey, it's nothing to be embarrassed about, kiddo. Some people spend their entire lives, and to no avail, finding their soulmates. And here you both are, thirteen and fifteen. But I swear, if you both are doing anything—"

"We're not," she whined. "We're not doing anything like that, Scott."

"Good. Save it for marriage," said Scott. "Because I swear, if it goes beyond kissing, I'll whoop you both from here to kingdom come. And when you reach kingdom come, I'll whoop you back to here, and then back to kingdom come again. Capisci?"

"Scott, we're not having sex." The heat in her cheeks had cooled to a dull warmth. "I promise. Not for several years."

"Good. That's my girl. And remember, if you're lying, I will catch you up in it."

"I'm not lying."

"Good. I'll look forward to walking you down the aisle on that day. And looking forward to my grandkids."

"Scott," she said, blushing furiously again, "I'm hanging up."

He laughed, said, "Good night, kiddo. Sweet dreams," and hung up.

Alexia put the handset back on the cradle, and stood. She glanced at the bay window, watching the trees fluttering beyond the glass. Stoneville. She'd never been to Stoneville before.