Grayson kissed Alexia good-bye that morning in front of gate 6 at Arklay International Airport, and watched her board the plane, feeling his heart sink a little. She'd only be gone for a couple of days, but it would be a couple of days of intense cross-examination by highly biased feds, and parties with certain vested interests in the corporate and military sectors. He couldn't help but wonder if Alexia was ready for it. The government sharks were out for blood, and there was already a list of senators and house reps as long as his arm lining up for first lick of the chum.

Beyond the airport glass, Grayson watched the plane taxi away down the runway, then take off with a roar. He didn't leave until the plane was just a glint on the horizon. He drove away from Arklay International, down I-73 toward the city, and wondered how his dad was doing; he hadn't been looking so hot lately, and Alexia was acting real funny about it. She was supposed to call him once she hit DC, so he'd cajole her a bit, maybe shake something out of her.

Halfway down I-73, he hit traffic, so Grayson turned off the road at the next exit, finding himself on a lonely stretch of rural asphalt. He passed a squat brick roadhouse which doubled as a strip-club, a cluster of Harleys and Indians, and an '87 Plymouth Horizon that might have once been blue but had since turned a weird grayish color, parked outside it. In the windows, inert neon advertised Budweiser and Busch among several other shitty beers, and LIVE GO-GO GIRLS. Grayson snorted; he hadn't seen the term Go-Go Girls since the 80s.

The trees and shabby houses dissolved into concrete and glass, and he hit more traffic near Spencer Parkway. Another anti-Umbrella demonstration was in full-swing, a hoard of unemployed college kids with too much time on their hands, and aging hippie activists who'd yet outgrown their social outrages, swarmed the road, chanting through loudspeakers and generally making a nuisance of themselves to the USS and ACPD. Grayson drove, wanting to slip away before someone recognized him. He'd accumulated a fan-club of sorts, mostly middle-aged women and young college girls, thanks to a slip-up a few months ago: a reporter with the Arklay Sun, the county's premiere tabloid, had accosted Alexia and him while they were having lunch, plastered their faces all over the front page. Alexia, too, had, thanks to the Sun incident, acquired her very own fan-club of creepy male devotees, the sort of guys who congregated on message-boards and in Yahoo chats to discuss what sort of panties Alexia liked to wear, and all of the weird sexual shit they fantasized doing to her. One guy had even sent a letter to Umbrella headquarters, addressed to Alexia in blocky, awkward handwriting, and he'd asked for a photograph of her feet.

He made it to Murray Hill without incident, and managed to get into the house without some reporter waylaying him on the sidewalk. That had happened once, a few weeks ago, when a particularly determined journalist had followed Alexia and him to their home. Alexia, however, had threatened, in her calm and weirdly charming British way, legal action if the woman didn't leave at once, and sure enough, the woman had gone away before Grayson could even nod in agreement. She'd been lucky, that reporter; had it not been in the middle of the day, Alexia would have probably killed her.

He found Sherry playing with Veronica in the living-room. Veronica was sitting in her play-pen, sucking down a bottle of Alexia's—Grayson didn't want to think about where the milk came from, because it just seemed oddly dehumanizing, even if he knew, rationally, it wasn't dehumanizing at all—while Sherry cooed and babbled at her.

"Where's dad?" Grayson asked. "He was with Veronica when I left the house."

"I dunno," Sherry said, looking at him. "Just got home from school and saw Ronnie was by herself." She stood up, then said, "Scott probably just stepped out to sort the recycling or something."

Veronica dropped her bottle and started to cry, and made grabby hands at Sherry.

Sherry giggled, scooping the baby up; the crying stopped, and Veronica, having gotten her way, entertained herself with Sherry's school tie. "You're a little manipulator," Sherry cooed at Veronica, gently poking her in the belly. Then, to him, "Just a reminder that Eva's sleeping over tonight, Grayson."

"Haven't forgotten," he lied, and looked at Veronica. "You take after your mother. You know that?"

"Alexia cries when she wants attention?" Sherry joked, grinning.

"No, she mostly just demands it. But if that doesn't work, then she cries."

"I've never seen Alexia cry."

Grayson thought back to the night Alexia had drunkenly stumbled into their bedroom reeking of bourbon, and he'd accused her of cheating on him with Albert, and how she'd ugly-cried, not at the accusation, but at whatever thing had driven her to the bourbon in the first place, into his chest. "Oh, she does," he said, feeling ashamed, absently jangling his keys in the pocket of his jeans. "Always my fault when she does. I can be a huge asshole."

"Maybe you should fix that," Sherry suggested, helpfully.

"I'm working on it, believe me." Grayson heaved a sigh, then said, "Being married to someone like Alexia makes a guy real insecure, I guess."

"I know. My dad was that guy," Sherry pointed out.

Grayson cringed. "Yeah," was all he managed to say.

"Not trying to make you feel bad, Grayson," Sherry assured him, tussling Veronica's soft, dark hair. "Sorry."

"It's fine. I'm sure I didn't make things easy at home for your parents," Grayson said, and frowned. "But I swear, I loved Annette. It wasn't just a fling."

"I know. Mom loved you, too. That was what made things hard."

Grayson nodded, smiling to himself. "I'm gonna find dad," he said, and leaned down to peck Sherry on the cheek, then Veronica, who squealed with delight and petted the stubble on his face. "Be good, girls. I'll be right back." He headed into the kitchen, finding it empty, along with the recycling cans. Grayson poked his head outside, scanning the backyard for his father. Not watering his garden either. He frowned, shut the back-door.

After he'd searched the house and turned up nothing, Grayson looked in the last place he'd expected to find his father, and found him. His dad was standing in Alexia's laboratory, staring up at the portrait of Veronica Ashford behind her desk, muttering to himself and banging his head against the wall. A splash of blood glistened on the paneling.

"His ring's the same cut," his dad was saying to himself, before knocking his head against the dark wainscoting again. "But fuck you, fuck you. You're not getting that, or the girls." He banged his head against the wall again, and something cracked.

Grayson rushed over and pulled his dad away from the wall. "What the fuck are you doing, dad?" he demanded. The thing that cracked had been the paneling, thankfully; but there was a dark, angry bruise, almost black, blooming on his father's forehead, split by a bloody gash.

His dad didn't look at him. His eyes were vacant. Blood trickled down his face like brown sauce.

"Dad?"

Awareness flickered to life in his eyes, and his father turned his gaze on him, and winced. "Grayson? I thought you were at the airport," he said, and prodded experimentally at his bruise, recoiling at the pain.

"Stop touching it," Grayson said. "That's a nasty cut. Should probably take you to the doctor, dad. Think you're gonna need stitches."

"No, no. I don't need a doctor," his dad said, and pushed him away. "I'll be fine. I'll clean myself up. I just need some butterflies." His father went upstairs before Grayson could protest, leaving him confused and worried.

"Swear to God, Alexia, I'm gonna shake something outta you," Grayson mumbled to himself, and made his way upstairs.

He sat down to watch the evening news that night, wanting to follow the hearing as much as he could. Flipping to the news channel, Grayson reclined on the couch in his socks and pajamas, and watched the coverage. On the television, Alexia was sitting at a table, behind a microphone and a sign with her name printed on it, in an austere room in the Capitol, a row of suits representing the Committee for Bioterrorism Prevention seated opposite her behind a wide desk. The light in the room washed everything out, made everyone look pale and sickly.

The proceedings went as expected: the suits asked Alexia several questions regarding Umbrella's activities, and the allegations leveled against them, and Alexia answered calmly and intelligently, and was arguably more eloquent than half of the assholes sitting on the Committee. But Grayson supposed she had Umbrella's elite legal team to thank for that; they'd written a great script.

One of the suits shuffled some papers. An aging politician sporting thinning gray hair and a sober blue suit introduced himself as the Senator of Kentucky. "There are allegations that the Ashfords personally funded illegal genetic research in Antarctica, at a facility owned by your family. What do you have to say to that, Dr. Ashford?"

"The Ashfords have never funded illegal genetic research in Antarctica or anywhere else, Senator," Alexia replied, her features composed in a look of polite indifference.

"Code Veronica," the Senator said, "was the name of this project, and it was bankrolled by your father, Alexander Ashford."

Alexia's face betrayed nothing, but Grayson knew her well enough to know the comment had caught her off-guard. "Code Veronica was a project intended to treat congenital diseases in children, and was all above-board, Senator."

Senator shuffled some more papers, asked a few more questions about Umbrella's role in Raccoon City, about the T-Virus, about the allegations the company had been funding gain of function research and selling the findings to America's enemies—specifically to China and Russia. Alexia expertly circumvented his questions in an impressive razzle-dazzle of abstracts and refutations, and Grayson could see the frustration mounting on the Senator's face at his inability to coax a straight admission out of her. The questioning went on like that for the next half hour, and then Derek C. Simmons, the current NSA, was called to speak. He spoke about Umbrella's alleged backroom deals with various military powers, and his role in the 'necessary sterilization' of Raccoon City, and how it was such a tragedy he'd needed to make that call at all because of corporate negligence and overreach. Morgan Landsdale, piggybacking on what Simmons said, urged the Senate to push anti-bioterrorism legislation, and pandemic response reform—essentially his pitch for the Federal Bioterrorism Commission—to 'prevent something like Raccoon City from ever happening again'. The whole hearing was a political circus, which soon devolved into a shit-show of arguments and everyone talking over each other while ignoring the Chairman's calls to yield back and give people their time to speak. Alexia, stone-faced, just watched the chimps fling shit at each other from behind her microphone, but Grayson knew she was probably laughing her ass off on the inside, marveling at how any of these fuckers had ever made it to a political office.

"Wow, they sound pissed."

Grayson nearly jumped out of his skin, and fumbled to put his sunglasses back on. Eva stood behind him, clutching her overnight bag, Sherry right beside her. "Don't sneak up on me like that," he said. "Goddamn, I almost shit myself."

Eva laughed. "Sorry, Mr. Harman."

"No problem."

Eva looked at the television. The Chairman had finally instilled some order in the proceedings, and the Senator from Kentucky began another round of interrogation, Alexia deftly deflecting and side-stepping the accusations, or turning them back on the Senator in a way that made the man stutter over himself and pause, narrow his eyes. "She's good," Eva remarked, grinning a little.

"Dr. Ashford's a genius," Sherry said. "She's probably smarter than everyone in that room."

The girls went off to get settled in Sherry's room, and Grayson watched the hearing until its conclusion, in which nothing was neither lost or gained by any of the involved parties. When it finished, Grayson called in some pizzas, then waited for Alexia to call. He picked up on the first ring, and said, "You were supposed to call me when you landed in DC."

"I wasn't aware you were my father, and that I needed to check in with you," came Alexia's voice.

"Sorry, Lex. Didn't mean—"

"It's fine. I simply got a bit side-tracked, and I forgot to call you. How are things? Are Veronica and Sherry all right?"

"They're fine, don't worry. You calling from the hotel?"

"No," Alexia said. "From a payphone a block away from it."

"You did great in that hearing," he said.

"Admittedly, some of it caught me off-guard. I wasn't aware they knew about Code Veronica. I know Umbrella had, ah, glossed over some details regarding the project to keep things above-board, but that's about it."

His gut told him she had Jill, Chris, or Claire to thank for that. They'd probably found and turned over some data—not enough to indict anyone specifically, but enough for the feds to start nosing around. Grayson didn't tell Alexia that because he didn't need to; she'd already figured that, he was pretty sure. "Have you had any problems?" he asked.

"Simmons has been sniffing around me. Even stopped me outside the Capitol to talk. Nothing important was said, however. I think he's prodding me to see what I know about my cousin's death, considering he was the one who more than likely murdered her."

"How's that going?" he asked.

"Fruitlessly. I don't give a shit about the woman. I hardly knew her. But it makes me wonder if he's trying to find out about Sherry, considering it was my cousin who'd helped me smuggle her away from the feds." Alexia paused, and then, as if the topic was boring her, she shifted the subject and asked, her voice softening a little into something that could almost pass as compassionate, "How is Scott?"

"I found him bashing his head open against the wall in your office," Grayson said, his calmness surprising him. "You wanna tell me why?"

A long, uncomfortable silence on the line. Then Alexia said, "No. What else happened?"

"Dad was mumbling something about a ring, I think. What the fuck is going on with my dad, Lex?"

"I'm not sure," Alexia said, but a feeling, one he'd cultivated and honed over a lifetime of knowing and loving her, nagged at him that Alexia knew more than she was letting on. "When I return, we'll go to NEST 3 and run some tests, Grayson," she told him. "I don't have the necessary equipment in the home lab."

"When are you coming back?"

"Sunday night."

"Okay, good," he said.

"Grayson, I will get to the bottom of it," Alexia assured him, as she always did whenever he felt helpless about a situation. "I promise. I love you, and I love Scott like a father. Tell Veronica mummy loves her, and she'll be home soon."

"What should I tell Sherry? She misses you, you know."

"Tell her that I miss her, too. And to put my bloody vinyls back when she's done listening to them."

That made him chuckle, despite his insistence to remain surly and pissed off. "See you soon, Lex. Love you. And watch out, okay? You're in Washington, the country's viper pit."

"More like a den of African wild dogs."

"African wild dogs?"

"Absolutely vicious creatures who will quite literally eat their prey alive. I saw a documentary." She paused, then said, "Perhaps I should send Albert to Africa."