The Raccoon Trials lurched on, and though things appeared optimistic for Umbrella, at least for the time being, Grayson found himself waiting, each day, for the other shoe to drop.
Veronica fussed noisily in her crib. She looked just like Alexia, but had his thick, dark hair. "Getting hungry, huh? Let's go get mom." Gently, Grayson picked Veronica up, a tiny pink thing in his hands, and carried her downstairs, into the basement, where Alexia had been working in her laboratory since early that morning.
A row of large cylindrical tanks, each one containing a different ant colony, stood opposite the stairs. A computer sat on Alexia's desk, in the corner of the room, a glass-fronted bookcase beside it; the shelves were lined with plastic binders, and books on botany and myrmecology. Beakers, flasks, burners, microscopes, centrifuges, and other pieces of equipment he could not identify, were spread out among the counter-tops and shelves.
Alexia was perched on a stool in the annex, on the other side of a Plexiglass partition, peering into a high-powered microscope, her fingers twisting chromed knobs and objectives. More tanks stood in the annex, each one filled with sand and ants. One of the colonies had died; the queen ant, a swollen red thing, lay curled on its side, motionless, in its chamber.
"You're not listening to the baby monitor," he said to Alexia, and made his way into the annex, Veronica bubbling and sputtering in his arms until her entire face was as red as a tomato. "Daughter's hungry, Lex. Afraid the only thing she'd get outta my nipples is disappointment."
"Sorry," Alexia said, raising her head and looking at him. Wincing, she rubbed at one of her breasts underneath her lab coat, and said, "She's gumming my nipples raw, I bloody swear." Sighing, Alexia swiveled the stool around and stretched her arms out. "Give her here, then. Come on, Veronica. Mum's got things to do."
Veronica's birth had taken a toll on both of them, but more so for Alexia. The T-Veronica virus had made the entire procedure a nightmare: a doctor had burned alive, and so had a nurse, and Veronica would have, too, if Umbrella's doctors hadn't administered a neutralizing agent to Alexia, to put the T-Veronica into temporary remission. Except, as it turned out, once Veronica had been safely delivered and nobody else had died, the remission hadn't been temporary; Alexia had lost access to her mutagenic abilities, became a prisoner of the ordinary.
Alexia, since then, had been feverishly hunting for a cure, using the resources provided to her by Umbrella and The Connections. She'd consulted with a scientist, a woman named Miranda, on the matter, too, but nothing had come of their discussions; both Alexia and this Miranda person seemed to have irreconcilable differences when it came to their philosophies, and their approach to bioweapons research.
"Just be a little more mindful?" Grayson said, and he passed Veronica to Alexia. Veronica squirmed less in her mother's arms, for she knew the food was coming.
Alexia unbuttoned her lab coat and her blouse, and she nursed Veronica. "I'm utterly scatter-brained these days," she said, and she looked at him, almost pleadingly, dark circles under her eyes. "It's been bedlam, Grayson."
"On the plus side, dad's been doing better, thanks to those trials you got him into," Grayson said, and sat on the edge of her workspace, careful not to knock over any equipment, or scatter any papers. Alexia was very particular about the orderliness of her workspace; she had labels for everything, and specific places for specific things. "He even went for a walk around the block," he told her. "Few months ago, dad could barely walk a couple feet."
"The Connections have access to medical technology that won't be widely available for another decade," Alexia explained, stroking Veronica's head. "It's shameful how much Umbrella is lagging behind the competition under Spencer's regime, Grayson. He's so bloody focused on helping himself that everything else is falling to the wayside. I think he knows he's going to die soon. It's making him desperate, tunnel-visioned." She frowned, shifted Veronica in her arms. Then, "Grandfather is undoubtedly rolling in his grave, seeing what's become of his company. But I'll fix Umbrella, once Spencer is out of the picture."
"What about The Connections? Wesker?"
Alexia looked at him. "Both are a means to an end," she said, as if that should have been obvious. "Wesker's going to do my dirty work, and his employers in The Connections are going to fund Umbrella's return to glory with their money and their data. Do you really think I've been feeding Wesker legitimate Umbrella intel?" She giggled. "I've been selling him convincing fakes, Grayson. Like the knock-offs old people buy in antique stores." Alexia looked down at Veronica, her shirt bunched between the baby's tiny fingers, and said, "But you heard none of this, little dear. Isn't that right?"
"Weird as it sounds, I'm kinda glad it's a con," Grayson said, fiddling with an empty beaker. Alexia smacked his hand and told him to put the beaker down before he broke it, and Grayson did, gently placing it on the counter. "I dunno what I'd do if you were suddenly working against Umbrella. Wesker? I expect that from Wesker because he's got no stake in the company, and he's always been a snake. But you're Edward's granddaughter."
"As if I'd piss on my grandfather's—my family's—legacy," Alexia said, and she glanced down at Veronica and smiled. She combed her fingertips through the soft, dark waves of Veronica's hair. "It will, after all, be hers one day, Grayson."
"Not for a long, long, long time," he said. "You're only 29, Lex. You're not going anywhere anytime soon." Grayson glanced at the tanks, at the dead queen ant, feeling a weird pang of uneasiness. Then, "What's The Connections got you doing anyway?" He slid his gaze to her. "They wanted you working with that Miranda chick on something, I think."
"The mutamycete," Alexia said. "Developing bioweapons with it, I mean. Specifically, something they've dubbed the A-Types. The Connections still haven't formally onboarded me to the project. I don't think they entirely trust me yet, which is smart of them, but very inconvenient for me." Veronica finished gorging herself, and started falling asleep in Alexia's arms. Careful not to wake the sleeping infant, Alexia passed Veronica to him, then fixed her blouse and said, "Get this little glutton back to her crib." She smiled, tugged down the hem of Veronica's shirt so it wasn't riding up over her belly. "I'll be listening to the baby-monitor this time." She looked at him. "Promise."
"Just don't be down here all night," Grayson whispered. Veronica curled in his arms, pressing her cheek against the soft black linen of his shirt. "I don't sleep well when you're not there."
"I've noticed," Alexia replied, smiling with white teeth. "You're a clingy bloke, I swear. I have to untangle myself from you every bloody morning."
"You gave me abandonment issues, which, having been left unchecked, snowballed into severe separation anxiety." Grayson snickered, leaned down and kissed Alexia on the lips, and he couldn't imagine himself ever kissing anyone else ever again.
"Stop listening to Sherry. Girl reads one chapter in a psychology book, and suddenly thinks she's bloody Freud," Alexia said as she drew back, still smiling her perfect magazine smile. She stroked his scruffy cheek, then said, "I'll be up later. All right?" Knitting her eyebrows, Alexia rubbed her fingers over the bristle on his face as if she'd never seen a five o'clock shadow before. "And shave your bloody face, Grayson, or you'll soon have a proper beard. I could light a match on your cheeks."
"Don't think I could pull off a beard?"
"Not at all, darling. Besides, it would be positively criminal to hide that strong jawline of yours." Alexia tipped her head on one side, then said, "You don't have any grays anymore."
"Origin's good for something, I guess," he said. Grayson still felt like a stranger in his own skin; his mutation, though it had several benefits, scared him, and always in the back of his mind was a desire to return to normal, to be cured. And there was some bitter irony, Grayson thought, that he was the mutant now, and Alexia was, with T-Veronica lying dormant in her cells, the normal one. He envied her for that, and on some level, maybe even resented her.
"You look upset," she remarked.
"You know that story about the monkey's paw?"
Alexia tutted. "Is that what you think this is? A wish for normalcy gone awry? A spiteful genie's trick?" She frowned. Glancing down at her pale, manicured hands, her expression sank. Alexia looked genuinely dejected, lost. "Can't even conjure a bloody spark," she told him. "I don't feel like me anymore without the T-Veronica, Grayson."
Grayson sighed. "Sorry," he said, and meant it. Veronica stirred in his arms, scrunched up her face as if she was about to wake up bawling. Then she relaxed, drooling on his shirt. "I better get this one back to her room."
"Just remember, Grayson. Origin saved your life." Alexia turned around, and went back to staring at things in her microscope.
"I know," he said, mostly to himself. "But I miss being nobody." Rocking Veronica, Grayson headed upstairs, the wooden steps creaking under his weight.
His father had returned from his walk, and was in the living-room, telling a story to Sherry about Edward Ashford and an unfortunate dinner incident in 1965. "Poor Edward was mortified," his father was saying to Sherry, nursing a glass of bourbon. He looked more spry, alive. His hair had returned to its original thickness, and he was beginning to grow a mustache, which looked odd on his face, Grayson decided, and seemed, somehow, against his character; his father had always been clean-shaven. "Wine all over his dinner jacket, right in front of Spencer and Marcus, and a few potential investors who, needless to say, did not invest. So the three of them collectively thumbed their noses and raised the money themselves. A big gamble for them, but it paid off. Three years later, Umbrella was born."
"My dad didn't like Spencer," Sherry said. She was sitting on the couch, her homework spread out on the coffee-table, sipping a hot chocolate with too many marshmallows. "Almost as much as he didn't like Dr. Ashford," she added, licking a mustache of chocolate and marshmallows from her upper-lip.
"You know why William didn't like her?"
"Why's that, Mr. Harman?"
"Scott. Call me Scott," his dad said, and sipped his bourbon. Then, "Your father didn't like Alexia because she was smarter than him. Simple as that. Until my little girl showed up, William had the distinguishing honor of being Umbrella's youngest employee. And then he wasn't Umbrella's youngest employee anymore, and he took that personally."
"You know my dad had a dartboard with Dr. Ashford's picture taped to it? On the door in his study."
"Alexia used to draw buckteeth and pimples on William in all of the research team photographs," his dad said, amused. "I felt a little bad for your father, truthfully. Struggled with acne for the longest time." His father paused, looked over and said, "Hey, son. Just having a bourbon, and I'll do some cleaning in the kitchen. My sweet little granddaughter just finish eating? She's out like a light."
"Alexia wants you to take it easy, dad," Grayson said.
"I'll take it easy when I'm dead, kiddo," his dad replied, and he finished his bourbon and stood up. He didn't have his cane. "Remember, you're not officially the Ashford's butler until I step down or die." His dad grinned a huge grin, kissed Veronica on the head, then walked off toward the kitchen, humming New York, New York.
"Is Dr. Ashford almost done with work?" Sherry asked.
"Probably not," Grayson said.
Sherry sighed, picked up her pencil and tapped the point of it against a math print-out. "Could use her help." She looked up at him, worked her mouth in thought. Then, "Do you know anything about trigonometry, Grayson?"
He shook his head. "Never been really good at math."
"Oh," she said, and she scratched behind her ear with the metal band of her eraser.
"Sorry, Sherry."
"It's okay," she replied. "I'll figure it out." Sherry tore another sheet of graph-paper from her notebook and started drawing shapes and angles with a plastic ruler, and writing equations that were more letters than numbers.
"All Greek to me," he said to himself, and he went upstairs, shushing Veronica, who started to wriggle and make waking-up noises.
The next morning, Grayson groped for Alexia, but found her side of the bed empty. The covers were flipped aside, the mattress dented where she'd slept, and still warm. Rain pattered against the window, watery gray light filtering through the glass, washing the room into a gradient of grays and blues.
He showered in their private bathroom, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, trying to ignore his eyes in the mirror. Then he dressed—he'd consigned his monkey-suit to the armoire, despite Alexia's and his father's protests, because, in it, he was uncomfortably reminded of Albert Wesker—in a gunmetal button-up and dark jeans, and the dress shoes Alexia had bought him for his thirtieth birthday. His eyes vanished behind tinted sunglasses.
Alexia was sitting in the nursery with Veronica, conducting another association test with Veronica's wooden blocks on the rug. In the test, Veronica was tasked to match the letter she heard Alexia say with the corresponding letter on her blocks. In Alexia's hand was a clipboard. Veronica gummed a stuffed sheep, watching Alexia with the same ice-blue eyes as her mother, unnaturally cognizant for an infant.
"Don't they do this shit with monkeys?" Grayson asked, making his way over to Alexia. He glanced at the clipboard: observations written in Alexia's spidery cursive, and cryptic hand-drawn diagrams and charts.
"She's already learning to spell," Alexia said. She was dressed in a plum-colored blouse, and a dark skirt. Her ruby glittered on her pale collarbone. "She can even associate the words with pictures." Alexia pointed to the open picture-book on the rug, and on the page was a cartoon dog sitting on its haunches, a bone in its mouth. "What does a dog look like, Veronica?" she asked the baby.
Veronica put her hand on the picture of the dog.
"Very good. Spell 'dog', Veronica."
Veronica put down her wet sheep, arranging three blocks into the word DOG.
"What does a bone look like?" Alexia asked, and she scribbled on her clipboard.
Their daughter put her hand on the bone in the dog's mouth.
"Spell 'bone', darling." Alexia wrote something else down, smiling to herself, proud.
Again, Veronica arranged her blocks into the word BONE.
"Excellent, my dear," Alexia said, and she kissed Veronica's cheek, smudging it with lipstick.
"Jesus Christ," Grayson said. "She's only a few months old. How's she already doing this?"
"When my father made me," Alexia said, and she looked at him, "he modified the gene—or, rather, the genes—that contribute to human intelligence. Those modified genes were inherited by our daughter."
"So Veronica's basically you?"
"Yes," Alexia said, and she smiled.
Grayson looked at Veronica, picturing her as a woman, seeing, in his mind, a dark-haired Alexia. "Christ," he said, and shuddered involuntarily. "She's gonna look exactly like you."
"You sound horrified," Alexia observed.
"One of you is enough, but two? Pushing it, Lex." He grinned.
Alexia stood up, scooping Veronica into one arm and tucking the clipboard under the other. She stooped, grabbed Veronica's dripping sheep with a grimace, and passed it to her. Then, glancing at her watch, a Rolex on a thin silver strap, she said, "I'd be heading to bloody NEST 3 by now, you know." She looked at Veronica, who was curled in the crook of her arm, gnawing on the sheep again. "Hope you're satisfied, darling, depriving your mum of her work."
Veronica looked at her, offered the sheep as if it were a consolation prize.
"No thank you, dear," Alexia said to Veronica. Then she looked at him. "I'll be in my laboratory, Grayson. Veronica's been fed and changed already."
"You actually changed a diaper?" he said, surprised.
"Of course not. Scott did," Alexia said, and she passed the baby to him, who protested slightly, but went back to eating her sheep, the fleece sticky with drool.
"Alexia, you're her mother," Grayson said. "We change her diapers, not dad. He did his time already taking care of us."
"Soiled nappies aren't my thing, Grayson," Alexia said, and she was already walking away. "I don't particularly relish the idea of being wrist-deep in shit."
"Alexia," he snapped.
She'd already gone.
"Your mother needs to grow up," he said to Veronica, and he kissed her on the cheek and went downstairs.
Sherry had already left for school, and his father was, against their wishes, straightening up the living-room, dusting and wiping shelves. He wore a gray houndstooth suit. "Alexia just walked by looking a little miffed," his dad said, spritzing warm water on the mantel of the fireplace and wiping his rag across the marble. "Didn't even chew me out for cleaning. You two fighting?"
"No," Grayson said, and he went over to Veronica's playpen and set her down in it. She crawled over to her favorite blanket, piled high with stuffed animals, and played. "You shouldn't be changing Veronica's diaper, dad. It's not your job."
"I like spending time with my granddaughter," his dad said, and he made his way over to the playpen and watched Veronica playing with her toys. "She's just like her mom was at that age." He frowned, fiddled with his watch. "I wish Alfred could have met his niece."
When his father's health had started to recover, Alexia and Grayson had told him everything. About the T-Veronica, about Rockfort and Antarctica, about Alfred's death. Although his father had finally accepted that Alfred was gone and never coming back, he still found it difficult to talk about it, and so he rarely did, and Alexia and Grayson never brought it up.
"I do too," Grayson agreed, and he left it at that.
"I'll watch Veronica," his dad said. "I have a list of things I need you to pick up for dinner tonight." He fished out a many-folded piece of paper from the chest pocket of his blazer and proffered it. "I'm making spaghetti alle vongole, my mother's recipe."
"Dad, you're retired."
"I've decided to come out of retirement, now that I'm feeling better. That medicine from that clinical trial has me feeling twenty years younger, and healthy as a horse." He shooed him away, and said, "Just get those things I need, kiddo. Please."
Grayson drove to the Italian market his father had begun frequenting, and bought all of the things on his list. As he walked out of the shop, someone grabbed his arm, and if he wasn't carrying bags of expensive groceries, he would have swung.
Jill Valentine stared at him as if he were an alien. "Grayson?" she said, dumbstruck. She wore dark gray fatigues, and a bulletproof vest. PRIVATE ANTI-BIOHAZARD SERVICE was printed in white above a flap on her vest, and below that was a brass pin that gave her name. "You're dead," she said.
"You're not dead," he said, unsurprised. "You were looking for me?"
"Looking for Alexia Ashford's butler," she corrected. Then, "Come with me. Can put the groceries in the trunk."
They walked around the building to the small parking lot on the side of it, where, in the spot next to his car, was parked a black sedan, P.A.B.S stenciled on the passenger-side doors. It looked like a modified cop car, and probably, at some point in the distant past, had been a cop car. Grayson put his groceries in the trunk, then squeezed into the passenger's seat. The interior smelled like new upholstery and old coffee.
Jill got behind the wheel. Rain splattered on the windows. "I saw Steve kill you," she said after one of those long, uncomfortable silences which usually preceded awkward conversations. "How did you get out of there?"
"Alexia," he said. "One of her tentacles."
"Are those tentacles still gonna be a problem?"
"Don't know," he said, and shrugged.
Jill drove, the lights of cars scudding past the windows. "P.A.B.S is investigating Alexia," she said, without looking at him. "My superiors wanted me to question the butler."
"Wasting your time," he said.
"Yeah, I know," she agreed. The wipers slooshed heavily across the windshield, smearing the city into an impressionist work. "Sherry Birkin's also missing. Been missing since last year. Claire's frantic. Hasn't slept well at all."
Alexia had been careful, and had pulled in a lot of favors, to keep Sherry's location a secret. Grayson kept his features composed in a look of vacant boredom, arms crossed over his chest. "And, what? Your people think Alexia kidnapped her or something?"
"Possibly," Jill said. "Sherry's infected with the G-Virus. Her disappearance has Umbrella written all over it." She glanced at him, expectant.
"I don't know anything," he lied. "I'm not one of Umbrella's people. I'm just a butler."
"You used to be a cop," Jill reminded him.
"But I'm not anymore," he replied.
"Aren't you worried about Sherry? About the shit going on?"
"I dunno what you want me to do, Jill."
"You know what I want you to do."
"Alexia has nothing to do with anything going on."
"She murdered Steve Burnside," Jill said. "She conducted illegal bioweapons research in Umbrella's Antarctica facility."
He said nothing, just in case she was wired.
"Grayson."
"Mind dropping me off at my car?"
"Grayson, Alexia may be one of Oswell Spencer's favorites now, but her usefulness is eventually gonna run out. Just like yours will."
"My car, please."
Jill drove back to the Italian market and let him out in the parking lot. Then the window hummed down, and she said, "You're on the wrong side, Grayson."
He grabbed his groceries from the trunk. "See you later, Jill."
She opened her mouth, then closed it. He watched her drive away.
When he arrived home, his father was playing with Veronica on the couch, gently bouncing her on his knees and holding her hands so she didn't tumble out of his lap. He was singing Fly Me to the Moon to her, Veronica smiling and squealing with delight at the performance. His dad had a good voice, and maybe in another lifetime, could have been a crooner like Sinatra or Martin.
"Got your stuff," Grayson said.
"Thanks, kiddo," his dad said. "Just set the bags down, and I'll get them."
Grayson put the bags down, and his father put Veronica on the floor. Veronica crawled toward Grayson, but stopped when she saw the grocery bags. She sat down and crinkled the brown paper, giggling at the noise. "You like that, huh?"
"Honey, that's not a toy," his dad chided, taking up the bags. Then, to him, "Should put Veronica down for a nap in her crib. Alexia just fed her not too long ago before disappearing into her hole again, and she's getting sleepy."
"She doesn't look sleepy," Grayson said.
"She's sleepy, son. Trust me," his dad said, and he walked off to the kitchen.
Grayson carried Veronica upstairs and put her down for a nap, and she fell asleep almost instantly, clutching her stuffed sheep. He double-checked the baby-monitor, then, satisfied it was in working order,went downstairs.
His dad was in the middle of preparing dinner, chopping a bulb of garlic and tossing the pieces into a pan of olive oil, letting them sizzle. "Alexia's been in her laboratory all day," his father said, and he fished out the garlic pieces, added the fresh clams to the pan. "She works too much. Hopefully she's not doing anything stupid."
"She needs to stop acting like an entitled brat and help me take care of our daughter," Grayson said, and sat down at the breakfast table in the corner of the kitchen.
His father stirred the clams, poured a glass of white wine into the pan, and, while that cooked, fed thin sheets of homemade dough through the pasta machine. The smell of garlic and white wine permeated the kitchen, intensely fragrant. "She lost fifteen years," his father said, reasonably. He spooned some of the clam-broth from the pan, tasting it. "Perfect. Just like mom and my nonna used to make it," he remarked. Then he continued, "And in those fifteen years, Alexia missed important developmental and social milestones. She never experienced puberty like you did, never endured the weirdness of being a teenager, never experienced her twenties, when most people are consolidating into adults."
"I get it, but now she's almost thirty, dad," he said.
His father sprinkled rock-salt into a pot of boiling water, then dropped his noodles into the water, stirring. "She's doing pretty good, all things considered."
"I suppose," Grayson conceded.
"Could be worse," his dad said, adding the pasta to the clams and mixing it together. Once it was done cooking, he sprinkled fresh Italian parsley over the pasta and clams. "Just give her time, Grayson. It's only been a year and some change for her, and she's got this mess with Umbrella to clean up."
Alexia didn't join them for dinner, so Grayson took her meal down to her, and a glass of white wine. She was sitting at her computer, reviewing something on the monitor. "Brought you dinner," he said, and he put her food down on the desk. "Ran into Jill Valentine."
She looked up at him. "Hardly surprised," Alexia said coolly.
"P.A.B.S is investigating you," he said.
"They're investigating anyone with even a tangential connection to Umbrella. Wouldn't be surprised if they were investigating Spencer's bloody cat." She looked at the food and the wine, and said, "Looks absolutely delicious. Thank you, Grayson."
"Dad made it," he said.
"I keep telling Scott to take it easy. The man doesn't listen."
"Jill also mentioned Sherry Birkin."
Alexia stared at him.
"They don't know she's here, but Jill suspects you've got something to do with it. But I think it's just a blind hunch."
She gestured at the screen. It was an article about a woman named Catherine Simmons, that she'd been found dead in her home in the early hours of yesterday morning. Authorities had initially ruled it as a suicide, the article said, but new evidence suggested foul-play.
"Who's she?"
"Remember that estranged cousin of mine, the one married to Derek C. Simmons?"
"Shit. I'm sorry, Lex."
"Don't be. I hardly knew the woman. I'm only bringing this up because it might have something to do with Sherry."
"Why would your estranged cousin's death have anything to do with Sherry?"
"She was the one who arranged for Sherry's return to you," Alexia said, forking pasta into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. She swallowed, slow, and sipped her wine. "Derek, her husband, wanted guardianship of Sherry," she continued, absently tracing the rim of her glass with a finger. "Likely for the G-Virus. He was also one of the politicians behind the missile strike that wiped Raccoon City from the map."
"You think he's using P.A.B.S to smoke out Sherry?"
"It's possible," Alexia said. "But I'm not sure. I feel as if there's something more going on."