A limo pulled up to her, and Alexia didn't even need to look to know who it was.
"Dr. Ashford," greeted Simmons, in his genteel Louisiana patois, "that was a job well done at the hearing today."
She didn't even bother looking at him. "I've nothing to say to you, Simmons."
"Your daddy ever teach you manners?" replied Simmons, amused. "Goodness gracious, pretty as a magnolia but prickly as a honeylocust. I just want to talk, doctor. That's all."
"I have nothing to say," Alexia repeated.
Simmons vanished behind the tinted glass. The limo stopped, and two feds got out, grabbed her, and shoved her into the backseat. Simmons, clean-shaven and pomaded, and the sort of handsome only money could buy, sat opposite her in a seat of plush, hand-stitched Italian leather. He smiled with teeth as white as his suit, smoothing his dark silk tie. His tie-pin was a magnolia flower, worked in silver.
"I really hate resorting to such barbarities, especially with a lady. You'd think I was a Yankee," he joked, and poured a glass of bourbon from the limo's bar. He offered it to her. "Here," he said, "it'll settle those nerves, doctor."
"My nerves are fine," she said, waving away the drink.
Simmons shrugged, and sipped the bourbon.
"What do you want, Simmons?"
They were headed south over the Anacostia. The urban sprawl slowly gave way to hilly woodlands and back-roads, and Alexia knew, then, what Simmons wanted. The feds sitting on either side of her said nothing, their arms crossed, faces unreadable.
"You look so suspicious, my dear," he remarked, affably. "Is this an English thing? Come now, there's no need."
Alexia said nothing.
"Fine, suit yourself," Simmons said, and drained the whiskey, setting the empty glass on the bar. "I suppose you haven't heard the news, what with all the fuss around this Capitol business." He leaned toward her, smiling, his hands resting on his knees like pink animals. "Someone broke into your home, over in Murray Hill."
Alexia started. "What?"
Simmons steepled his fingers. "So you didn't know," he said. "Yes, someone broke into your home. Your family's missing. And something very interesting was found in the house: a girl's room. There was blood, too, but that doesn't interest me. Not unless it's hers."
She felt the blood drain from her face.
"You don't have an older daughter, doctor," Simmons said. "Just the little one. So why is there another girl's room?" He eyed her coldly, then said, "Kidnapped someone, perhaps? With Catherine's help."
Alexia didn't answer. The fed on her right noisily cleared his throat.
"Fine," Simmons said, and shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I know Sherry Birkin is with you."
The limo stopped, and the feds dragged her out of the car. They were on some wooded back-road near Accokeek, and they marched her through the trees, Simmons strolling behind them, smoking a cigarette in slow, gentlemanly puffs.
They walked for twenty or so minutes, in the dark, and stopped at the edge of the Potomac. Simmons finished another cigarette, flicking it aside and grinding it under the toe of his wingtip. He casually produced a gun from his blazer.
"If you kill me," Alexia said, her mind racing for some sort of out, "people will look, Simmons."
"Honey," he said, and grinned, "I'm the government. We're the lookers. We'll just devise a tidy little cover-up, like we did for Raccoon City. The public isn't going to shed any tears over you. You're just another Big Pharma suit to them." Simmons raised the gun, and said, "I don't need to keep you around anymore. I know Sherry's in Arklay City."
Heat prickled under her skin, burning steadily hotter. Simmons shot her twice in the chest, but the casings blew through her, and the wounds knitted back together. Where her blood was spattered on the ground, it ignited into white-hot flames, the tang of butane in the air. Alexia threw her head back and laughed elatedly, feeling vindicated, freed. The problem had fixed itself, she thought. Whether permanently or temporarily, it didn't matter: she had the advantage over Simmons now, and Alexia saw the fear in his eyes.
"You," she said, flames erupting in her hands, burning away the sleeves of her blazer to the elbows, "are going to regret this, Simmons."
He shot her again.
"They say," Alexia began, unfazed by the hole in her chest as she sauntered toward him, "that to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome is the very definition of insanity. And they call me a madwoman."
Simmons emptied his gun into her, then bolted into the woods. She torched his men before they could run from her, hoping Simmons could hear their screams as they cooked alive. One sped past her, shrieking and flailing his arms, and dove into the Potomac, but was dead before he even hit the water. She watched the current carry his charred corpse away, idly wondering where he might wash up. Would he make it all the way to the Chesapeake, to the Atlantic?
The limousine was gone when she reached the road. Alexia tossed off her tattered blazer and burned it. "A perfectly good Prada ruined," she griped.
She started walking, and eventually found herself in an Accokeek convenience store, some off-brand 7-11 called Snackz-N-Stuff. It was tucked away in a dingy little strip-mall between a laundromat and a liquor store. The clerk, a boy who looked no older than eighteen, perhaps nineteen, stared at her as she approached the till. Tinny music played over the store's radio, and it took her a moment to identify it as Bye, Bye, Bye. Alexia only knew that because Sherry liked the boy-band who sang it.
"Is there a bloody phone around here?" she asked.
"There's a payphone down the strip," the boy said.
"Excellent," Alexia said.
The clerk peered at her, then said, "You've been on TV. You work for Umbrella."
"Yes," she said, smiling mechanically, "that would be me."
"Dr. Ashford," he said, and nodded. "Yeah. My dad's been watching the news. He works for Umbrella. Drives trucks for them."
"How lovely for him," Alexia said, uninterested. She fished out a twenty-dollar bill, the smallest she had, and said, "May I change this, please?"
Alexia found the row of payphones at the end of the strip, beside a dusty storefront with a LEASE FOR SALE sign in the window, and fed her quarters to the slot. She dialed Wesker's number, and he picked up on the second ring. "What happened?" she demanded, without waiting for him to speak.
"Miranda happened," Wesker replied.
"What of my family?"
"They're here in my apartment," he said. "Would you like to speak to them?"
Alexia felt as if the world had been lifted off her shoulders. They were alive. Good. "Yes," she said. "Put on Grayson."
"We're all okay, Lex."
"Oh, darling, you don't know how happy I am to hear your voice," she said, meaning it. She leaned against the brickwork, and then decided not to lean against the brickwork when she saw two huge slugs inching their way down the wall. Then, "Tell me what happened."
Grayson told her, and when he finished, he asked, "What about you? You okay?"
"Simmons tried to kill me," she said, conversationally.
"Clearly he didn't succeed," he said.
"No, not at all. My problem fixed itself, I think." Then, with barely-suppressed glee, she said, "The T-Veronica."
"That's great," Grayson said, but Alexia knew he didn't mean that. He enjoyed playing protector. Not that Alexia minded; she'd always found her husband's protectiveness quite attractive. Then Grayson asked, "Aren't you worried Simmons is gonna come after you again?"
"He will, but he'll think twice about it before he does," Alexia replied, watching the car-park. It was dark and mostly deserted; her wristwatch gave the time as a quarter-past 10 o'clock. The lights went out in the liquor store, and an older man shuffled out and shuttered the doors. She watched him climb into an aging pick-up truck and drive away. "Right now, I find myself with other problems."
"What sorta problems? If there's something I can do, Lex, just tell me."
"I'm stuck in some backwater called Accokeek. Unless Origin gave you the ability to fly, then no, dearest, there isn't anything you can do."
"There any buses that go through there?"
Alexia wrinkled her nose. "I hate public transportation in America. I'd rather ride the bloody Tube, or a bus full of London tourists, and have some bloke from Rhode Island tell me all about how his great-great-grandfather was English and fought in the bloody Revolution."
"That sounds very specific," he pointed out.
"Happened the last time I was in London, straightening things out after our little misadventure in Antarctica."
"I don't remember that."
"You insisted on staying at the hotel. 'I hate London,' were your exact words."
"I fucking hate London," agreed Grayson. Then he laughed and said, "Anyway, it's either take the bus, or start walking."
"I'll pass," she said. "Bad enough I had to walk in heels from Piscataway. Why does America's public transit suck so badly?"
"I have this theory it's a Big Oil conspiracy to sell cars," he joked. Then, "You got your cellphone on you? I'd feel better if you stayed in touch."
"I left it at the hotel, unfortunately."
"Lex, come on."
"I'm not bloody glued to my mobile as you are, dear."
"Good point. You still send faxes when e-mail exists," Grayson said, and laughed. Then, "Okay, just call me when you get back to your hotel. Please."
"I will. I want to discuss this situation with Miranda more, but not here. Right now, I just want to get back to my bloody hotel. Love you."
"Love you, too. Remember. Call me as soon as you get back."
She hung up and went back into the convenience store. The boy behind the till was helping an older gentleman, his hands unsteady and slow, count out his change. Alexia bought herself a coffee while the man paid, and when she came back to the counter, the old man was gone. The clerk looked surprised to see her again.
"A question," she said, as she paid for her coffee, and, because it would at least be something to busy herself with while she waited for the bus, a pack of gum. "Are there any buses around here that go to D.C?"
"Yeah," the boy said. "The bus-stop is on the other side of the parking lot. You'll see the sign. Last one's in twenty minutes."
"Thank you," Alexia said, and she left, hurrying across the car-park. It took her a few minutes to find the stop, which was little more than a wooden bench with a signpost and trash-can beside it, and she sat down and waited, sipping terrible instant coffee.
The bus was ten minutes late, and the ride, which should have only taken thirty minutes, took an hour and some change, because some junkie tried to skip the fare and spent ten minutes arguing his innocence to the driver, who, put upon and unwilling to deal with the wanker any longer, let him go. She was deposited two blocks away from her hotel. Upon reaching her room, Alexia showered, changed into a slip, and sprawled out on her queen-sized bed, the television turned low on an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. She took the phone off its cradle, dialing Wesker's number.
Grayson picked up, as if he'd been waiting—and he probably had, the gigantic soft-touch that he was—for her to ring him. "You got back safely?"
"I did," she said. "Though it was bloody arduous." She rolled onto her back and stretched out her arm, flexing her fingers. She imagined her fingertips as lighters, but couldn't ghost a spark. Alexia swore under her breath.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," she lied. Then she said, "You said Miranda shape-shifted?"
"Yeah. She was Eva the whole time. Maybe she's been other people, too." He paused. "Shit, it's like The Thing."
"Don't get paranoid, Grayson," Alexia said.
"It had something to do with the mutamycete. That's what Wesker said."
Alexia frowned.
"Lex?"
"Sorry," she said. "I think we need to check out the area around Misery Road. There was a fallout shelter there, abandoned."
"You think that's where she's hunkered down?"
"It's possible," Alexia said. "It's the only lead I have on Miranda."
"All right," he said. "Guess it's settled."
She put the phone up and stared at the ceiling. Tried and failed to conjure even an ember. When she returned to Arklay City, she told herself, she'd redouble her efforts on laying the groundwork for Veronica-Origin testing.
Grayson returned the cellphone to Wesker, and said, "Lex mentioned something about a fallout shelter off Misery Road."
The phone vanished behind the lapel of Wesker's blazer. Sherry had gone to bed, and Grayson had put Veronica to sleep, so it was just the two of them, Wesker and him, in the living-room. "I know it. Umbrella bought it. They were going to turn it into a laboratory, but funding fell through."
"Fell through?"
"Edward Ashford died. He was the one who'd bought it," Wesker said, leaning back in his chair, smiling in that meaningless way he always did.
"Is there a connection to Project Darwin?"
"Initially, perhaps. But as I said, the funding fell through when," and he dragged a thumb across his throat, "Ashford kicked the bucket. Alexander had no interest in pursuing the project. He was too focused on Code: Veronica. He sold the shelter to James Marcus, but Marcus never did anything with it either."
"But it could be a lab where Origin testing was done?"
"Yes, but it's very unlikely," Wesker said. "Marcus wasn't interested in Project Darwin or the Origin Virus. More than likely, it's nothing more than a hole Miranda has been squatting in. If I recall correctly, Marcus initially intended to turn the whole thing into another lab for his leech research, but never got that far."
"I barely hear anything about James Marcus," Grayson said.
"Nothing to really know about him. He was an eccentric, and intensely private."
"So did Edward make any other weird purchases around here?" he asked.
"All of the founders did," Wesker said, and shrugged. "If you're hoping that I know something about their business dealings, I'm sorry to disappoint." He straightened up in his armchair, regarding Grayson with stony calm, the lights of the skyline reflected in his sunglasses. He put his hands on the armrests.
"You're supposed to be the guy who knows everything," Grayson said, frustrated.
"Then you severely overestimate my resources, Grayson," Wesker replied. He took off his sunglasses, then, and his eyes glowed like hot coals—glowed like his eyes. Grayson became aware, at that moment, he wasn't wearing his sunglasses. Wesker said, "Nobody saw you," and offered up his shades. "I have others," he added.
He took them, automatically, and stared at himself, at his molten eyes, in the lenses. Then he slipped the shades into the back-pocket of his jeans. "I don't need them right now," he said. "But thanks."
Wesker smiled, and there was something almost genuine in it. But whether that was a good or bad thing remained up in the air. "You may need them someday," he said, cryptically. He stood up, then said, "The ACPD won't be your biggest issue. They're in Umbrella's pocket. This little investigation of theirs is theater for the public. You'll have a few doe-eyed rookies who wish to 'make a difference', and they will try to make a difference, but they'll be swiftly brought under-heel, and the case will be shut and forgotten about." Wesker looked at him, his eyes vertical slits suspended in pools of magma. "Your biggest problem will be the Private Anti-Biohazard Service. Specifically, your biggest problems will be Jill Valentine and," and Wesker's face gave an unpleasant twitch, "Chris Redfield."
"I kinda already figured that," Grayson said, helpfully.
"You can stay in my apartment until Alexia has a handle on the situation," Wesker said, absently cracking his knuckles. "I'm rarely ever home, so you needn't worry about having to see my face every day."
"Why are you helping us? You tried to kill us."
"You both escalated the situation in Antarctica," Wesker reminded him. "Had Alexia cooperated with me, things would have been friendlier, I assure you."
"You tried to kill me on Rockfort," Grayson reminded him.
"A fair point," Wesker said, and chuckled. Then, "I'm not helping you out of a sense of altruism, Grayson. I need Alexia where she is right now, in Umbrella. Ensuring your survival is the best way to keep her happy and cooperative." He looked at him, adding, "And we're like brothers, aren't we? Almost twins, in fact."
"I'm not your brother, Wesker."
"Not in the literal sense, no," Wesker agreed. "Had Alexia not interfered with your candidacy in Project Wesker, things would have been different."
"Or I could be dead like everyone else in the program," he said.
"Two survived: myself, and Alex. They say third's the charm, Grayson."
"They also say bad things come in threes."
"Indeed. Look at yourself and the twins." Wesker flashed a smirk, then corrected himself, "Twin." He checked his watch. "Well," he announced, like someone who'd stayed too long at a party and finally found their excuse to leave, "I've dawdled enough. I've some business to conduct. Make yourself comfortable."
"At this hour? You going out to sell drugs, or something?"
"To buy some, more like." Wesker left.