He'd slept for what had felt like an eternity, dreamless and deep. He woke to the soft incandescent glow of the Victorian lamp in the corner of Alexia's bedroom, atop a spindly antique end-table with curved legs. Alexia wasn't in the room. He wondered if he'd dreamed it all, and he was still on Rockfort, in Alexia's doppelganger bedroom, waking from another drunken stupor.

The door creaked open. Alexia stepped inside, carrying a tray with a tureen of something, a bottle of scotch, and two glasses. She closed the door with her foot, then set the food down on a chair.

"It's just some soup I'd heated up," she told him. "The scotch, however, is vintage. 1971, to be precise." Alexia chuckled. "Fitting, isn't it? A bottle of whiskey that's been in storage since my brother and—well." She gently cleared her throat. The dress she wore looked old, like something some turn-of-the-century debutante would have worn to the theater, cut from lacy dark fabric. Her ruby glittered on her neck, on a strap of black Italian leather.

"You and the scotch got a lot in common," he said, sitting up and grinning. "Born at the same time, sat in storage for some years, but even so, gets better with age."

She snorted. "Listen to that, a bloody poet."

"Maybe." He got up and strode over to the tureen; it was still hot. He used the hand-towel she'd brought to remove the lid. Canned chicken noodle soup. "I'm surprised you even managed to heat up the soup, Lex," he teased. "You're a shitty cook."

"The directions are on the bloody can, Grayson. I'm not mentally-challenged." She sighed, looked at him and smirked. "But you're absolutely right. I'm horrible at cooking. That's why I have you, my dear."

"That dress," he said, picking up a spoon and helping himself to the soup, "looks nice on you. Where'd you get it?"

"It was my grandmother's." She paused, gave him a once-over, and then joined him for the meal. Fifteen years in cryostasis had left her a very hungry woman, and she dug into their meal as if it would evaporate at any moment. "Well, the woman who was married to Edward." Alexia frowned, spooned more of the soup into her mouth. "You'd read my diary," she added. "You know about Code: Veronica, I assume."

"You're an Ashford," Grayson assured her, uncorking the scotch and pouring two fingers into each of the crystal glasses she'd brought. "Your dad had to use some family DNA or something, because you look like an Ashford. You have the same long, thin nose as the Ashfords in all those portraits. Same blue eyes. Same jawline and cheekbones." Grayson sipped his scotch, and it was probably the best scotch he'd ever drunk; it evaporated in his mouth, leaving behind a smooth, smoky flavor. "Only difference is you're not a redhead like most of them," he added, and drank. "Like Stanley, Thomas, Arthur, your grandfather when he was younger—I've seen pictures—and Alexander. But make no mistake, Lex, when people see your face they know you're an Ashford."

"My 'long, thin' nose," she said, and laughed. "Should I be insulted?"

"I like your nose," he said.

She moved closer to him and smirked, nursing her scotch with the cautious air of someone who didn't drink very much, or wasn't even sure that they even liked to. "It's just my nose you like, is it?" she said, and she set her scotch down and started to undress. "There isn't anything else you like about my body, Grayson?"

Grayson grinned. "When did you get this goddamn smooth?"

"Paying attention to you and taking notes," she teased, and kissed him. "And," she said, between kisses, "I had fifteen years to think about it."

Within seconds, they were both naked and on the bed, Alexia straddling his hips, raking her nails down his pectorals and peppering his neck with branding-iron kisses. Her skin was soft and fever-hot, the muscles underneath it taunt and lean.

They came together with a mutual grunt, and she rode him sinuously and slickly, her hips rolling in storm-blown waves. Gradually, her slickness became something uncomfortable, almost painful, like the rash of a stinging nettle. But then that pain transmogrified into a weird sort of sadistic pleasure, and he found himself rocking desperately between her pale, wet thighs, pushing her down onto the mattress and pinning her there, muscles rippling with the effort of sex.

And then their climaxes shook them suddenly and violently, and Grayson kissed the sweep of her neck, down to her pink-nippled breasts, their bodies trembling, hard, as the last volts of pleasure circuited their nerves and fizzled out. She moaned underneath him, fingernails clawing his back, leaving in their wake ten painful welts, like cat-scratches that hadn't quite broken the skin.

Alexia kissed him, hungrily and deeply, and wound her arms around him, pinning him against her damp body with a strength that belied her willowy form. Then she grinned, smug and triumphant, and said, "When I initially imagined this scenario, it involved a fireplace, wine, and music. Too many movies, I suppose." She giggled and squeezed his ass, adding, "Someone's been diligent with their squats."

"Couldn't seduce you with a flabby ass," he teased, and rolled off the cradle of her hips, lying beside her on the musty, sex-smelling duvet. His lips burned from her saliva, and so did his crotch, as if he'd rubbed poison ivy on it. Uncomfortable, but the pain slowly subsided, and when Grayson looked down to assess his flaccid parts, they seemed fine, if a little red and itchy.

He stretched like a lazy cat. Raccoon City, Jill, Annette, Sherry, Claire, Steve, Rockfort, Alfred's death, Antarctica, Wesker—all of it felt like the events of someone else's life, pieces of another Grayson Harman. "You look mildly uncomfortable," Alexia remarked.

"Whatever cryo did to you," he said, wincing, "it's kinda painful."

"It won't last long," she assured him. "Chemicals in my blood, in my… well, you know." Alexia frowned. "I'll fix it eventually. I promise." She leaned down and kissed his forehead, then his lips, and left his skin tingling in both places. "The last thing I want is sex to hurt you, Grayson." She smiled, smoothed back his hair. "I want you to enjoy it as much as I do."

"Maybe I'm a sadist, because I kinda liked it," he admitted. "Or maybe I just got bored of regular sex." Grayson paused. "But keep the tentacles away from me."

Her smile immediately collapsed. "I don't want to hear about other women," she told him, scowling. Then she laughed at his tentacle joke, as she'd laughed at all his jokes when they were kids, and said, "Nothing will go near your bum, Grayson."

He still maintained several misgivings about Alexia's condition, but it was something he'd have to learn to live with, Grayson knew. Whatever had happened to her in cryostasis, it had changed her on a cellular level, turned her alien, and he still wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the surface, she was the same Alexia he remembered, just older. But in her DNA, in every cell and nerve-cluster, Alexia had become something else. It made him think of that movie Species, of the nympho alien shape-shifter.

"We have some time," she said, looking at him. "Redfield and Burnside aren't going anywhere. The nearest 'civilization', if you can even call it that, is that Australian observation base a few miles from here. So why not tell me a bit about the world these days? Technology moves quickly."

Grayson told her, and she listened with rapt attention. He told her about e-mail, the internet, home video game consoles that actually didn't suck ("Nothin' like that Odyssey shit we had as kids, or Calecovision or Atari"), computers that could display more than a couple of crude pixel pictures and text ("3-D is pretty new," he said. "Games look amazing these days. There's this one I used to play a lot in Raccoon City called Doom. You'd probably like it. And Mario, that little plumber guy from Donkey Kong? He's got his own games now")… Alexia nodded her head as he spoke, occasionally stopping him to ask questions ("Wait, darling, back up. Michael Jackson looks like what now? You can't be serious").

Then things deviated from the topic of pop-culture and technology, and he started talking about his time in Raccoon City, about Sherry and Clancy. Alexia only vaguely remembered Clancy, or at least pretended that she only vaguely remembered Clancy, and then she was prodding him about Sherry. He didn't tell her about Jill or Annette, at least not yet.

"So Birkin had a daughter," she said, incredulously. "I didn't think he'd ever reproduce. Annette has strange tastes."

He frowned. Grayson didn't want to talk about Annette right now; it still hurt, felt raw and painful like an open sore. "Alexia," he said, "what do you know about Project Darwin?"

She stared at him, shook her head. "Not much," she said, and he could hear the honesty in her voice. "Only what you'd read in my diary, Grayson." Alexia stood up and, naked, strode over to a full-length mirror gilded in scrolled French gold-leaf, absently studying her reflection. "Scott hid his research," she continued, without looking at him, the delicate lines of her scapulae tensing. "Initially, I thought it was because he didn't want us to find it. But I think it was Spencer he was hiding it from."

"Alfred didn't trust Spencer either," Grayson said. "He said he'd killed your grandfather."

"There's no definitive proof, but there were certainly rumors." Alexia turned to him, folding her arms across her breasts. "Even as a girl, I knew Spencer wasn't being forthright with the Ashfords. I understood that Umbrella was mine, but reasoned that it was because of my age that they didn't put me in charge, and that it would change in the future." Her lips became a thin, hard line. "But I was certainly old enough to head a family, it seems." She sighed. "Anyway," she continued, "I'm relatively certain Spencer had no intention of ever giving the company over to me. Those rumors of how he'd sabotaged my grandfather and exposed him to the Progenitor virus? I don't doubt that there's some truth to it."

"He put Alfred on Rockfort to keep him outta the company's business," Grayson said, and paused. "Just a theory, I mean."

"And a sound one," she said, looking at him. "Make no mistake, I will get Umbrella back from Spencer." Alexia walked over to him, and he automatically grabbed her hips and pressed his forehead against her navel. She combed her fingers through his hair and said, "I'm sorry I don't know much about Project Darwin. If I could provide answers, I would. But the truth of the matter is simply that I was too young, Grayson, and adults don't tell children anything."

He looked up at her and nodded, letting go. "I wish I could ask dad," he said.

"How is Scott?"

Grayson frowned, unsure if he should tell her. But, after mulling it over for a few moments, he knew that there was no hiding anything from Alexia, and so he told her. "Dad's dying," he said, bluntly. "Heart cancer. He's laid up in a hospital in New York, and he's been through three rounds of chemo. That's all I know."

Alexia said nothing. She seemed to be absorbed in thought.

"Sorry, Lex."

She nodded. "I'll worry about Scott," she assured him. Then, "We've dawdled enough. Redfield and Burnside are trying to escape." Alexia paused, as if listening for something, and said, "They found a snow-truck."