"Miss Harman?"

Sherry peeled her eyes off the window and blinked away the sunspots. Mrs. Hartley stared at her from the front of the class, mouth set in a hard line. Sometimes Sherry forgot to respond to her new surname; privately, she was still a Birkin.

"We were discussing Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury." Ms. Hartley's face was set in a permanent scowl, lips pursed. She looked like a rodent who had just sucked a lemon.

"Sorry, Ms. Hartley," Sherry said.

"Of course. You were too busy staring out the window."

A few kids giggled. Sherry blushed, dropped her gaze to the desk. Sherry hadn't really spoken to anyone in Chapman since she'd started; she was the weird, quiet kid, and on more than one occasion she'd heard the other kids talking about her, calling her names, saying she would probably shoot up the school like those guys in Columbine. She'd thought being around other kids, in an actual school, would make her happy, usher some normalcy back into her life; but Sherry was steadily realizing that, maybe, Grayson and Alexia had been right, and she should have been tutored at home.

At least some good came out of being ignored, Sherry told herself. None of the kids knew about her parents, and they never asked. None of them knew she was one of only a hundred or so survivors who had made it out of Raccoon City. To the other kids, Raccoon City was something that had happened to strangers, far away.

The day ended. Sherry walked out of Chapman, alone, clutching the straps of her heavy backpack to ease some of the strain on her shoulders. Dark clouds were gathering over Arklay City, threatening rain. Kids trickled out of the school and opened their umbrellas, and they got into expensive cars and were driven away.

"Rough day?" she heard a girl ask. She was dark-haired and very pale, and her eyes were the color of bleach.

"Yeah, I guess," Sherry said, and shrugged. "Who are you?"

"My name's Eva," the girl said. "I've seen you around."

"Sherry Harman," Sherry said, and smiled awkwardly.

Thunder rumbled. Sherry stood in the entryway of the school, beside Eva, watching the rain wash the trees and the hedges into hazy abstracts.

"Are you waiting for your parents?"

"For my dad, yeah," Sherry said.

"Parents will do anything for their kids," Eva said, unprompted, staring out into the rain. "Like pick them up when it's raining really bad."

A car pulled up to the school, but it wasn't Grayson's car. Sherry was surprised to see Alexia step out of the vehicle, thunking the door shut behind her. She turned up the collar of her dark raincoat, hurried across the slick asphalt.

"Scott wasn't feeling well today, so your father's home with him," Alexia said as she walked up the concrete steps toward her, hands in the pockets of her coat. She darted a look around. All the kids had gone away, except for a small group of guys kicking around a hacky-sack. "Have you been standing here by yourself all this time, Sherry?"

"I was standing here with another girl," Sherry said, puzzled. Eva must have gone back inside while she hadn't been paying attention, she decided. "Maybe she's shy, and took off when she saw you? You're kinda intimidating, Dr. Ashford." Sherry was glad Eva had gone; she didn't have to call Alexia mom now, for the sake of appearances. Sherry had only ever had one mom, and she was gone, forever.

"So I'm told," Alexia said. One of the hacky-sackers lost control of the bean-bag, and it arced toward Alexia. She kicked the bag back to them with a quickness that surprised Sherry, and she found herself staring at Alexia, lost for words. "Grayson used to kick one of those around when he was a boy," Alexia explained as they walked toward the car. "Learnt it from him. I'm not very athletic. I hate working out."

"But you do work out, and you jog," Sherry reminded her.

"Yes, but only so I stay in reasonable shape."

"You do it because Jill did it," Sherry said, candidly. "You're jealous."

Alexia said nothing. Alexia's face was fascinating, Sherry thought, as if it were stuck, permanently, in neutral, like something carved of marble.

"My mom never worked out, and Grayson liked her," Sherry said.

"Enough, Sherry," Alexia warned.

Sherry shrugged.

Alexia drove, and Sherry hunted for a song that she liked on the radio, eventually settling on the local rock station, because Sherry liked rock, and it was usually the station Grayson put on when he wasn't listening to his CDs. It had also been her dad's favorite station when he wasn't in the mood for country music; her mom had liked the 80s station.

"You're quiet," Alexia said after a long, awkward silence.

"Yeah."

Alexia drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. "Any particular reason?"

"You've got more important things to worry about, Dr. Ashford."

They drove in silence, and a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers played on the radio. Sherry knew the song, and liked it, and she turned it up. Alexia, as always, remained perfectly unreadable, but Sherry sensed that she, too, liked the song.

They passed Spencer Parkway, where the Umbrella building stood. The police had shut down the subway station, the park, and had barricaded the street, and were only letting Umbrella and police vehicles through the checkpoints. Protesters swarmed the area, held back by cops in riot-gear. It reminded Sherry of Raccoon City, made her stomach knot up.

Alexia sped up the car, cutting off a RIZZO BROTHER'S PLUMBING truck. The driver laid into their horn, nearly careened into a curb.

"You almost made that guy crash," Sherry said.

"People die all the time, and in even more mundane ways than that," Alexia replied, her coldness chilling Sherry's blood. Then, "Shall I schedule an appointment with a doctor? Wouldn't want you going off your rocker like Alfred, relapsing into some precarious mental state. I have enough problems in my life."

Sherry shook her head. She'd had enough of doctors. After Raccoon, she'd undergone several psychological evaluations because the government people had made her, and she'd hated every moment of it. "No," she said, finally, "I don't want to see any more psychologists, Dr. Ashford." Sherry hesitated for a moment, biting her lip. Then, "I'm sorry about your brother. I met him once when I was little. He looked like a Disney prince. I remember telling him that."

Alexia's expression was unreadable. "Is that so?"

"He told he'd give me a five dollars if I left him alone," Sherry said, trying to coax a laugh or even a polite chuckle out of Alexia, and failing. Grayson seemed to be the only person who could make Alexia laugh, and even then, her laughs always telegraphed as polite reflexes, a trained habit. "So I left him alone, and I got ten dollars, because Alfred thought he'd handed me a five. I bought a lot of candy."

Alexia didn't chuckle, and she didn't even smile, not even a little. "Alfred was never good with children, though I was sure he would be the one to supply an heir for the Ashfords. Not me." She rubbed the space between her eyes, like her mom used to do whenever one of her migraines were coming on. "I miss him," she said, as if she were telling Sherry a secret. But there was something empty in her words that bugged Sherry, as if Alexia felt more inconvenienced by Alfred's death than sad. "Then again," Alexia continued, "he'd probably want children with me. No thank you. The Ashfords are not the Habsburgs."

Sherry screwed up her face. "That's gross," she said.

"It was gross," Alexia agreed. "I never said I reciprocated my brother's unhealthy feelings, Sherry. He was my brother. My twin. His questionable feelings aside, he was loyal. Inept, but extremely loyal nonetheless."

"Like Grayson?" Sherry said, staring at her.

"Grayson isn't Alfred," Alexia said. "I've loved Grayson since I was a girl. That reality never sat well with Alfred, and was often a point of contention between the two of them." She glanced at Sherry, then said, "That said, Veronica should be proof enough of how I feel about Grayson. Don't you think?"

"People have kids all the time. Doesn't mean anything these days." Sherry looked out the window, watching the cars pass by. "I miss my parents," Sherry confided, folding her arms over her chest. "And I miss Claire and Leon."

"I know," Alexia said. There was something in Alexia's tone that always sounded hostile whenever Sherry mentioned Claire, and she couldn't figure out why that was, and Alexia never told her. "But you know the deal. If we're to keep your location a secret from your former government handlers, you can't see them, Sherry. Either of them. I went through great pains to make you vanish."

"But you let me go to school," Sherry snapped. She knew Alexia hadn't actually wanted her to go to a school at all; she'd done it to make Sherry happy, or maybe, she thought, the realization slowly dawning on her, just to shut her up.

"And I'm taking a great risk letting you attend Chapman," Alexia pointed out, her tone calm, smooth as ice. "I worry every day some busybody is going to discover who you really are, who your father was. You do realize Umbrella blamed William for Raccoon City, don't you? That Annette's name was publicly released, and she was labeled as one of your father's accomplices by the media?"

"You're Umbrella," Sherry said coolly.

"I am," Alexia agreed. "But I'm not Spencer's Umbrella. He's a usurper, and he'll be dead soon."

They arrived at the house. Alexia parked in the garage, then went inside, and Sherry followed her. Grayson met them at the door, holding Veronica. "I need you to come look at something, Lex," he said to Alexia, stroking Veronica's hair.

"I've got things to do, Grayson. Isn't it enough that I picked Sherry up, when that's your job? I told you Scott would be fine, once he took his medication."

"What the fuck is your problem these days?" Grayson asked. "Just five minutes of your time, your majesty, and you can go back to playing with your goddamn ants."

Alexia sighed in resignation, waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. Sherry flinched a bit, out of habit, feeling the familiar tension, thick as butter, between them. The same tension she'd felt between her own parents when things had started going south in their relationship.

"I hate to ask," Grayson said to Sherry, "but do you mind watching Veronica for a minute?" Veronica, hearing her name, perked, gazing attentively at Grayson as if she were waiting for some kind of elaboration, slobbering all over her favorite stuffed sheep, the one Sherry had bought her from Toy Uncle.

"Okay," Sherry said, sliding off her backpack and setting it by the door. She took Veronica from Grayson. Veronica fussed and wiggled, ramming the top of her skull into the bottom of Sherry's chin. "Ow, Ronnie. Watch your head," she chided. Veronica, finally, got comfortable in her arms, bunching Sherry's school tie in her tiny fist and yanking, squealing with delight. "Do I look like a lamp? That's not a pull chain, Ronnie. Stop it." Then, to Grayson, "Is the important thing about Scott? Alexia mentioned he was sick."

"We'll be right back, Sherry," Grayson said. "Only a couple minutes." Alexia and Grayson vanished down the hallway, neither of them speaking.

Sherry looked at Veronica, who looked right back at her, then pushed the wet sheep into Sherry's face. It baaed halfheartedly, and it smelled of baby drool. "That's icky, Ronnie," she said, nudging the sheep away. She stared at the infant. "Why do your parents always treat me like a little kid?" she asked seriously. Veronica babbled at her, and the sheep baaed again. Sherry started down the hallway. "It's not like Alexia was in Raccoon City," she said to Veronica. "She never saw the things I saw. You're lucky you weren't born then."

Scott's room was at the very end of the hallway, in the corner of the house, with a good view of the street. The door was cracked. Sherry heard Grayson and Alexia talking inside, in hushed voices, and the conversation sounded angry.

"He's been like this all day," Sherry heard Grayson say. "Just lying in bed. Won't respond to anything. It's like he's gone catatonic. What the fuck is happening to my dad?"

"Have you given him his medication?" Alexia asked.

"I don't trust that shit, Lex."

"Grayson," Alexia hissed.

"Those pills gimme a bad feeling, Alexia. They look… off. Smell godawful, too."

Sherry peeked through the crack, saw Grayson and Alexia standing beside Scott's bed, framed in the glow of the window. Scott lay in the bed, motionless, like a dummy made of pillows. His television was on, the volume turned low: a black-and-white movie about a hard-boiled detective played on the screen. Sherry was sure she'd seen her father watch that movie once, and was pretty sure it had something to do with a bird statue.

"They aren't the most fragrant things, yes, but they help him," Alexia said, hands on her hips. Even under pressure, Alexia had a way of carrying herself that made Sherry envious, as if nothing bothered her at all, a snobby queen untroubled by peasant problems.

Grayson shook the container of pills at Alexia. "You didn't think to run a fucking analysis on this shit, Lex?"

"Between everything going on right now? No, Grayson, it slipped my mind."

"Who's funding this clinical trial?" Grayson asked, suspicious. "Is it Umbrella?"

"No," Alexia said. "The Connections. Umbrella doesn't have access to the medical technology that The Connections do—though that will change once I'm in charge."

"My dad's lying here, fucking looking like a zombie, and you're worried about Umbrella's fucking market-competitiveness?"

Sherry couldn't take it anymore: this was how the fights had started between her parents. In rooms away from her, in low, angry voices. Disagreements about Umbrella became disagreements about their research, and then, ultimately, became her mother's disagreement with her marriage to her dad. And then Sherry had heard something about zombies. She burst into the room. Grayson and Alexia whipped around, startled.

"Stop it," Sherry said. Veronica made a blubbering noise, then started to bawl.

"I thought I told you to watch Veronica, Sherry."

"I don't wanna hear you guys fight, and—Scott, is he a zombie?"

Grayson slapped the pills into Alexia's hand, then walked over to Sherry and Veronica, the floorboards groaning under his shoes. "Dad's not a zombie, no," he said, and he took Veronica, who gradually quieted in his arms, rubbing her eyes. Grayson shushed her, wiped a few tears from the baby's pink cheeks.

"You sure it's not the T-Virus?" Sherry asked. "Could the water supply still be tainted?" she continued, fear mounting in the base of her spine, riding up her nerves like an electrical current. "Could one of the infected have survived Raccoon City? Maybe a rat carrying the virus?"

"It's not a T-Virus infection," Alexia said. "It's his heart cancer."

Grayson put his hand on Sherry's shoulder, steered her out of the room and closed the door behind them. "Let Alexia handle it," he said. "Even if I'm starting to question the way she's doing things these days." Grayson frowned, walking alongside Sherry, Veronica dozing in his arms.

"What do you mean by that?" Sherry asked.

"She's getting sloppy, and that's unlike her," Grayson said. "Feeding my dad fucking pills without finding out what's in them? That's not the Alexia Ashford I know."

"She's got a lot going on right now, Grayson."

He sighed. "I know. I'm worried about her. Seeing her like that, it reminds me of Annette. How the stress just kept whittling her down, you know?"

"You still think about my mom?" Sherry said, surprised.

"Of course I do," Grayson said. "I loved your mom."

"More than Alexia?"

"As much as Alexia," Grayson said.

Sherry smiled. "She loved you too, Grayson." Her mom had rarely smiled, but when she'd spent time with Grayson, her mom had always smiled, had always laughed and enjoyed life. And that was how Sherry wanted to remember her mom. Not as the dying woman in a laboratory several meters underground, her bones shattered and poking through the skin in some places, blood on her lips as she begged Claire to save Sherry, to find Grayson and tell him how much she loved him…

Sherry wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist. "I miss mom so much, Grayson," she told him, barely holding back her tears. And then the tears came unbidden, and she cried in painful, lurching sobs.

Grayson slipped his arm around Sherry's shoulders and pulled her into a one-armed hug, careful not to disturb Veronica. She'd barely noticed until she was pressed against Grayson's side, comforted by the familiarity of the gesture. One of the few familiarities she still had left in her life after Raccoon City.

"Even dad. I miss him," Sherry said. "Yeah, he could be an asshole, and he wasn't the best person to mom. But he was still my dad." Her chest tightened as if someone had taken both lungs into their fists, and squeezed. "It's Umbrella's fault," she continued, the words pouring from her like water from a burst pipe. "They murdered my dad, Grayson. My handlers showed me the footage from NEST. The USS came into his lab, and they gunned him down. Then he injected himself and became that thing that—" Sherry stopped; she didn't want to remember what that monster had done, what it had put inside her body. She was cured now, alive, and that was what mattered. Claire had always reminded her that that was what mattered: they were the lucky ones, the survivors.

"Why the fuck would they show you that?"

"They said it would happen to me too, if I didn't cooperate with them. That Umbrella would come, and—I don't want to talk about this anymore, Grayson."

"It's fine," he said. Then Grayson leaned down and kissed her cheek, and he said, "I'll put Veronica to bed, then make you some hot tea. Okay?"

She nodded, then retrieved her bag and waited in the living-room. Rainy light illuminated the white curtains, gave the impression of ghosts flanking either side of the window, and Sherry imagined it was her parents standing there, and she found that strangely comforting, like Grayson's hugs.

Sherry distracted herself with homework, an essay on William Faulkner she'd started a few days ago; but she had only gotten two paragraphs into the rough draft before she'd hit a block. A lot of Faulkner's stories, Sherry knew, revolved around wealthy families who had fallen on hard times. Like the Ashfords. She thought that would be a good place to go with her essay, but Alexia would never let her write about the Ashfords in a way that compared them to the Compsons or the Sartorises. Alexia still took immense pride in her family legacy, to the point it almost came across as delusional and sad.

"Where's Grayson, Sherry?"

Sherry looked up, saw Alexia standing in the doorway of the living-room. "He went upstairs to put Veronica to bed," she told her.

"What are you working on?"

"An essay," Sherry said. "On Faulkner."

Alexia made a face. When it came to books, Alexia was a snob, and she preferred gloomy Russian literature, and the work of Tolkien, which she considered an untouchable British masterwork, to anything the Americans put out. "The man who writes depressing stories about Mississippi?" she said.

"We're doing a unit on him in class right now." Sherry watched Alexia cross the room, sit down on the couch. Alexia stared at her, and Sherry was reminded of a cat.

"Something wrong, Dr. Ashford?"

Alexia leaned toward her, brushed her fingertips across the rigid white collar of her school blouse. There were gray wet spots on her collar that Sherry hadn't noticed. "You were crying?" she asked, and she straightened up on the couch, hands folded primly in her lap.

"It's nothing, Dr. Ashford."

She crossed her legs. "Your eyes are still puffy," Alexia observed.

"I was just thinking about my parents. That's all," Sherry said.

"I wouldn't know," Alexia said, and shrugged.

"You don't think about your mom and dad?"

"I never had a mother," Alexia said, without elaboration. "As for my father? Well, he wasn't much of one. Scott did his job for him, I suppose."

"What about Alfred?"

"He's dead," Alexia said.

Sherry shivered involuntarily. Alexia could be pretty creepy sometimes, and the way she spoke, the way she conducted herself, was weird, as if she were taking cues from a technical manual. Sherry wondered if Alexia had always been that strange, that cold. She'd noticed it, here and there, but now Alexia's weirdness was so stark-naked that Sherry couldn't help but see it, in perfect clarity.

"You're making me kinda nervous, Dr. Ashford," Sherry said.

"How so? Are you worried I'm going to kill you, steal your precious G-Virus?"

"You're scaring me," Sherry said.

Alexia laughed, and it caught Sherry off-guard. "Oh, goodness, you should see your face. I'm not going to kill you."

"And the G-Virus?"

"Right now? Not very interested in it, after reading William's files."

"So you were gonna take it," Sherry said.

"Originally, yes," Alexia said, her honesty startling Sherry. "Not violently, of course. Just a small prick, my dear. Perhaps a teensy biopsy. But I'm no longer interested, so rest easy." She spoke so casually about experimenting on her that Alexia might as well have been commenting on the weather, and it made Sherry's blood curdle.

"You were gonna do what to Sherry?" Grayson said, coming into the room.

"Oh, please, Grayson. Nothing that would kill her," Alexia said, and rolled her eyes. "A dead specimen is a useless one."

Grayson looked at her. "Sherry, get your stuff and go to your room. I'm gonna have a chat with Alexia."

Sherry grabbed her things and hurried out of the room. But she didn't go upstairs: she waited in the hallway instead, outside the living-room, and listened.

"You're fucking unbelievable," Grayson said to Alexia.

"Grayson, honestly."

"That why you carried Veronica to term, Lex? To experiment on her?"

"It crossed my mind, yes," Alexia said. "But, again, nothing invasive. Grayson, she's a special child, and her—"

"Don't say another goddamn word," Grayson warned, and Sherry heard him kick one of the ottomans, and it skidded across the room and crashed into the wall. Sherry peeked into the room, careful to stay out of sight. She saw Grayson standing over Alexia, who was sitting on the couch, calm and icy as ever. "Not another goddamn word, Alexia," he continued through gritted teeth. "I can't fucking believe—what the fuck is wrong with you? She's a baby. A fucking baby! And you were gonna experiment on her? For what? Because of your problem? You care that much about helping yourself that you'd harm our goddamn daughter? Treat her like one of your goddamn lab experiments?"

"Not just me, but for Scott, too," Alexia said.

"My dad would never want that, and you goddamn know that," he said. Silence. A car sped past the house, outside, and splashed through a puddle. Then Grayson said, "You know what your fucking problem is?" His voice was an angry smolder. "You're a spoiled fucking brat who refuses to grow the fuck up, that's your problem. Having everyone kissing your ass all your life, telling you how special you are? And then you go around treating everyone like shit, doing whatever the fuck serves you, only showing favor to people who're willing to jump when you say so. Am I just Alfred's replacement, Alexia? Was Veronica just an experiment? You're her goddamn mother, and I swear, you touch a goddamn hair on Veronica's head, I'll—"

"I never wanted to harm her," Alexia shouted suddenly, and she stood up. "And you are not Alfred's 'replacement', Grayson. You're loyal, yes, but unlike Alfred, you're capable, and I love you. If I didn't love you, I would have killed you in Antarctica."

"Or maybe I just haven't outlived my usefulness yet?" he said.

"Have you been speaking to Albert?"

"He makes some good points, Alexia. Maybe you just say you love me because it keeps me under your control. Just like you let Alfred—your fucking brother—kiss you that one time, when we were in the fucking playroom, because it kept him compliant. You dangled yourself over him like a carrot. Who knows what the fuck else you two got up to when I wasn't around."

"I never let him do it, Grayson. Alfred did it himself."

"You didn't push him away."

"I didn't have time. Before I could do anything, you had Alfred pinned on the floor, and you were beating him senseless." Then Alexia slapped Grayson, hard, and Sherry heard it, Alexia's palm connecting with Grayson's cheek, out in the hallway, and she winced relflexively. "And how bloody dare you," Alexia continued, "making such disgusting remarks. I never did anything like that with Alfred."

"Implying you did something else," Grayson shot back.

Another slap, this one harder and louder than the one before. Sherry braced herself for the fight, a painful knot in her stomach, and she shook, gently.

"Everything I've done for you, that my family has done for you," Alexia said, her voice trembling in a way Sherry had never heard before, "and this is how you treat me? I had your child, Grayson. I married you. I've given you everything."

"Because I'm your little soldier ant, right? Males, after all, are disposable in an ant colony."

"Whatever Albert told you," Alexia said, "it's bullshit, Grayson. I'm not manipulating you." Alexia's aloofness began to crumble away, and for the first time since she'd met her, Sherry glimpsed the woman in the robot.

"I need some air," Grayson said.

Sherry hid as Grayson departed the living-room and vanished through the front door. She peeked into the living-room, saw Alexia standing there, perfectly still and perfectly expressionless. Then she growled in frustration, swiping porcelain coasters and the poppy-and-lily arrangement off the coffee-table, and they shattered on the floor. Alexia stormed off, and Sherry heard a door slam as she retreated down into her laboratory.

"It's just like mom and dad all over again," Sherry said to nobody, and she left, too, and walked, with no particular destination in mind.

The rain had let up. She walked past food shops and cafes, and eventually found herself in Raccoon Memorial Park, where she often found herself, the smell of petrichor thick in the air. A monument had been commissioned by the city from an artist who had survived Raccoon City, and it stood in Raccoon Memorial Park, in a flowerbed of poppies: an enormous slab of marble engraved with the names of everyone who had died in the outbreak, listed in alphabetical order. Her mom's name was on there, and so was her dad's. There had been protests and petitions, once their names had gotten out to the media, to remove them from the monument, but nothing had come of it, and Sherry hoped that wouldn't change.

Sherry sat on the bench opposite the memorial, clutching her backpack until her hands hurt. She was startled when Eva appeared, and said, "It's sad, isn't it?"

"Eva?" Sherry said, confused.

"Sorry," Eva said, and she sat down next to Sherry. She was dressed in a dark jumper dress, and her hair was tied back with a patterned scrunchy, and the design on it might have been branches or creeping vines. "I come here a lot. I noticed you, so thought I'd say hi."

"You lost someone in Raccoon City?" Sherry asked.

"Yeah," Eva said. "My family."

"I'm sorry," Sherry said, though some small part of her was glad that someone else knew what it felt like.

"Did you lose your family?" Eva asked.

Sherry nodded.

"I saw you go home with your mom," Eva said. "The pretty blonde woman. And you said you were waiting for your dad."

"My cousin died in Raccoon City," Sherry said. It wasn't a lie; her cousin Clancy Dunn really had died in Raccoon City, and his name was on the stone too, marked, like the rest of the dead police officers, by an RPD badge. "His name was Clancy Dunn. We were close. He was one of the cops in the Raccoon City Police station when they were sheltering survivors, and one of the last left when the station was overrun."

"Do you know anyone else on the stone? Like friends, or something."

"Marvin Branagh," Sherry said. "He was my cousin's boss. Really nice guy. He helped a lot of people get to safety. And Haley Dunn, Clancy's daughter. She was my best friend."

"You make any new friends in Arklay City?"

Sherry shook her head. "The other kids at Chapman treat me like a weirdo, so no," she said, sheepishly.

"You seem cool to me," Eva said, and smiled. "I don't really talk to people at Chapman either. Assholes, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she said.

"Your mom looked really familiar," Eva said. "Was she on TV?"

Sherry wasn't sure if she should say anything, but it was nice, she thought, finally having someone around her age to talk to, and she found herself letting her guard slip. And anyway, Sherry told herself, Eva didn't seem dangerous. "Yeah," she said. "She works for Umbrella."

"Holy shit," Eva said, and grinned. "Your mom's Alexia Ashford? I heard she's worth a couple billion dollars, and owns a huge chunk of the company."

"Yeah," Sherry said. "My mom. Yeah, she's got a lot of money, I guess."

"Does she live over in Murray Hill? Hear that's where all the rich people live. I only got into Chapman on a grant. One of those for-underprivileged-kids things, you know? I'm a charity case." Eva laughed.

Sherry smiled. "Yeah, that's where we live. It's no big deal."

Eva stood up. "I should get going," she said. "Grandma's probably wondering where I wandered off to. I'll see you in school, Sherry." She waved, then walked off.

"Making friends?" Grayson sat down beside her on the bench. "Hope you're not telling her too much, kiddo. Remember what we talked about."

"It's fine, Grayson. Did you come here to visit the stone?"

"Closest thing I got to a grave for Annette, so yeah," he said. "Alexia's been pissing me off lately, so I come here to clear my head. Not surprised you're here. Same reason, I'm guessing?" He was wearing a black button-up and jeans, and his sunglasses.

Sherry nodded.

"I know you were listening to Alexia and me," he said. "Sorry you had to hear that."

"Were Alfred and her really… you know?"

Grayson shook his head. "Nah," he said. "Maybe Alfred wanted to do those things, and maybe he would have tried if I hadn't pummeled the shit outta him. But it always came across, least to me, as a one-sided thing."

"Do you really think Alexia's using you?"

"I'd like to think she isn't," Grayson said. "But who knows anymore?" He went quiet for a long moment, then said, "I don't think she is. She doesn't need me. She's got her money. If protection was all she wanted, she could hire a private security company, or pull some guys from the USS. If it was Veronica she'd wanted, well, she got her, so my part's done. Why not kill me? So no, I don't think she's using me."

"Alexia mentioned something about Antarctica?" Sherry said.

"We lived—the three of us, I mean, and my dad—in an Antarctic research base. Ashfords built a mansion underground. Spent most of our childhoods there. Isolation does funny shit to kids, I swear, when they got all those hormones. I'd probably be kissing my sister, too. Thankfully, Alexia isn't related to me in the fucking slightest, so things weren't weird." He stood up, walked over to the monument and touched her mom's name, tracing the letters with his fingers. "Hey, Annette," Grayson said to the stone, frowning. He held his gaze on her name for a long time. Then he turned away from the monument and said to Sherry, "Let's get going. Don't wanna leave Veronica alone. Shouldn't have left at all, but I was pissed and wasn't thinking." He walked faster. "Shit."

When they got back to the house, Veronica wasn't in her crib. Grayson panicked, ran downstairs, then into the basement. Sherry followed. It was the first time Sherry had been down in Alexia's laboratory, and it wasn't nearly as gruesome as she had pictured it.

Alexia was standing on the other side of a Plexiglass window, holding Veronica in one hand, looking over a clipboard in the other. Looking up, she stared at them, her eyes tracking them from the door of the annex, which, Sherry realized, was full of ant-farms and not dead bodies, and across the room.

"What did you do to her?" Grayson demanded.

Veronica looked at them with her big blue eyes, gumming her sheep. She almost looked confused, or maybe Sherry was just imagining that.

"I fed her, and now I'm watching her because you left the bloody house," Alexia said coolly.

"Can you both stop fighting?" Sherry pleaded, glancing between them. She looked at Grayson. "See? Alexia didn't hurt Veronica. If she'd wanted to do something, Alexia would've done it while we were gone, Grayson. Scott's sick, so he's in no shape to stop her. And look, Veronica's not crying or anything. She looks pretty happy, actually."

"She better be happy after sucking my bloody tit dry," Alexia said. Then she looked at Grayson. "Did you come down here to insult me some more?" she asked bitterly. "If so, get on with it so I can get back to my work."

"You guys need to work things out," Sherry said, and shook her head. She held out her hands. "I can take Veronica, Dr. Ashford."

Alexia passed Veronica to her, and said, "Thank you."

"Sure," Sherry said, and she went back upstairs, Veronica chewing on her hair.