Rhodes Hill was a small town, the sort most people drove through while on their way to more interesting places. It had a main-street, which tributaried into neighborhoods and parks, and the most interesting thing about it, according to the woman at the counter of a local mom-and-pop, was that it had been the birthplace of some writer Grayson had never heard of.
He got back into the car, passed Sherry her hot chocolate, and Alexia her coffee. Alexia was on the phone, bitching out the moving company. Veronica was strapped into her car-seat, cooing and kicking her legs.
"Ow, Ronnie," Sherry said, carefully untangling her hair from the baby's fist. Veronica giggled. "That's not nice," she chided, and sipped her hot chocolate.
"If anything is broken, I swear I'll have your head," Alexia was saying to the person on the phone. "Those are antiques, you idiot. Worth more than your whole bloody salary."
Grayson drove past glass-fronted shops, and chain-stores which turned up everywhere, no matter how small or isolated the town was, like a bad rash. The local shops were overpriced boutiques which catered to a clientele of big-city weekenders seeking the pastoral, small-town experience; to them, Rhodes Hill was nostalgic, representative of an idyllic, rural Americana that had never really existed outside of domestic post-war propaganda.
The town gave way to the county road, hilly woodlands encroaching on either side of the asphalt, and a smattering of tiny road-stop shops that looked as if they hadn't seen a renovation since the 1970s. Occasionally, a seedy-looking brickwork advertised ADULT VIDEOS, or LIVE GIRLS. As opposed to what, Grayson thought. Dead girls? Like the zombie-hookers I saw in Raccoon?
In the back-seat, Sherry's Gameboy jangled, and Veronica babbled and stared out the window. Alexia had put her phone away, sipping lukewarm coffee and checking her e-mails on a brand-new BlackBerry.
"When the hell did you get that?" he asked.
"From the company," she said, and sighed. "I hate this bloody thing. They want all of the executives to have one." Alexia rolled her eyes, then said, "I miss the days of faxes and phone-calls. Technology just keeps becoming more invasive, more demanding of your bloody time."
"You used to love technology as a kid," he reminded her.
"I am now thoroughly disenchanted with it," Alexia said.
"You're just getting old, Dr. Ashford," Sherry teased.
"Perhaps," Alexia said, and chuckled. "Even so, what ever happened to separating your private-life from work-life? Years ago, I could just hang up on someone when I didn't want to talk to them, or ignore their faxes. Now I have e-mails constantly streaming into my bloody inbox, and people ringing my mobile at all hours."
"I blame the internet," Grayson said, and sipped her coffee. He wrinkled his nose and popped it back into the cup-holder. "Jesus. Want some coffee with that creamer?"
"Should have gotten your own, then," she said.
"I didn't want coffee at the time."
Old Furnace Road was a dirt lane that stretched deep into the Arklays. The mansion at the end of Old Furnace Road looked as if it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be Baroque or Queen Anne, and so it had decided to be both. It looked eerily familiar, too; and Grayson, after staring at it long enough, realized why: it was the Spencer Mansion, if the Spencer Mansion had had an identity crisis and decided to start a new life as a Baroque-Queen-Anne monstrosity.
"What the fuck is with your family's taste in architecture?" he asked.
"My family has always been rather… flamboyant," Alexia said, and got out of the car.
The moving company had arrived ahead of them, and they were steadily unpacking their things from the Murray Hill mansion and loading them into the house. Spencer had bought the Murray mansion from them, in full, and he'd footed the bill for the move on the expectation that Alexia would double-down on her research regarding a cure for his disease. Alexia, of course, had confided to Grayson that she had no intention of doubling-down on anything, and would continue to drip-feed the old bastard just enough information and prototypes to placate him, and keep him off her back.
The interior was austere, with dark wood wainscoting and marble floors. A large staircase stood opposite the door. Antiques furnished the foyer: glittering armor displays, showcases, decorative panoplies of weapons. A ghost of Oriental pipe-tobacco, Edward's favorite kind, haunted the air, tinged with dead flowers and varnish. Just like Antarctica. Just like home.
"Now this feels like home," he said to Alexia, who'd just finished haranguing the movers over the handling of her antique chaise lounge. "It also," he said, and gave a decisive look around, "feels like the Spencer Mansion. I fucking swear, Wesker's theory about Trevor running some kinda wholesale deal has gotta have some merit."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Alexia said, and then she was off again, yelling at the movers about something else.
"Dr. Ashford sure yells a lot," Sherry said, Veronica wiggling in her hands and trying to get over her shoulder. Then she said, "Ronnie, knock it off," and shifted the baby into the crook of her arm.
"She's a wiggler," Grayson said, taking Veronica from Sherry. "Isn't that right, princess?" he asked Veronica, grinning. The baby smiled and petted his cheek, absolutely enthralled by his stubble. "Just like your mom was."
"I have a hard time imagining Dr. Ashford as a baby," Sherry said, hooking her thumbs in the straps of her backpack.
"She wasn't born a 5'11 woman, Sherry."
"Duh. I was thinking more like… she came out of a test tube, or something. I dunno, I just find that easier to imagine."
Grayson smiled awkwardly.
"Dr. Ashford says she doesn't remember her mom."
"Her mom left when Lex was still a baby," he said. The truth, however, was that Alexia's mom had been borrowed flesh, and once her contractual agreement to deliver the twins had been fulfilled, she'd fucked off into the ether, check in hand, never to be seen again.
"Does she know anything about her?" Sherry asked.
"Just that she existed."
Sherry nodded.
Jill hung up the phone and looked at Chris. "Results just came in from the lab," she said, making her way into the living-room and sitting down on the couch.
Chris looked up from his video game, then set the controller on the glass-topped coffee-table. "What did the lab-guys say?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Found fungus in the blood. It's Grayson's," she said.
"Fungus?"
Jill nodded.
"So it was Grayson got attacked that night in Murray Hill," he said.
"Called every hospital in the area, but he's not checked into any of them," she said. She threw her arms across the backrest of the couch and tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling. "So that's how Grayson survived."
"Which means Umbrella's probably treating him," Chris said. "What's the deal with the fungus?"
Jill shrugged. "Labcoats aren't sure. Need to run more analyses. But whatever it is, it's not good." She paused. "Grayson died in Antarctica, Chris."
"We never actually saw it."
"Claire saw it."
Chris nodded.
She stared at the television, at the paused screen, and said, "Went over to the house to grill Ashford. Whole house is abandoned. Just fucking empty."
Chris sagged into the couch, then asked, "Any idea where they could've gone?"
"Not a clue," Jill said. "We'll have to do some detective work."
The basement of the mansion was a half-finished laboratory. By the looks of things, construction had ground to a halt halfway through the project: there were plastic tarps tacked to the walls, exposed electrical wiring, unfinished piping, whole sections of walls and floors missing. Materials were stacked on pallets, forgotten and gathering dust.
"My guess," Grayson said, to Alexia, "is Spencer was building something here, but shit fell through when the Arklay Laboratory blew up."
She shined her flashlight over the piles of materials and tools, and nodded. "He did mention this was planned as an extension of the Arklay Laboratory. Likely to take some of the load off the main laboratory at the Spencer Mansion."
"Great," he said.
"Probably research that was deemed low-priority at the primary lab," Alexia said, making her way past empty windowframes and doorways. "Project Neptune, and such. Perhaps even the Plant 42 project. Spencer wanted the Arklay Lab to focus on Tyrant research for their military contracts, if I'm not mistaken." She stopped, stared at the wall of junk in their way, and said, as if envisioning something grand, "It's going to require a lot of work, but there's potential here."
"Isn't it enough you've got NEST 3?" he asked.
"No," she said, just as he'd expected her to say, "it isn't."
They walked down a set of concrete steps painted in yellow latex paint. At the bottom, they found an empty train platform. The tracks hadn't been laid, and the platform was bare concrete and metal, devoid of wiring and light fixtures. "Was this for the Ecliptic Express?" he asked, looking at her. "I thought that only ran in one direction, from Raccoon to Umbrella's Executive School."
"It did," Alexia said. "But there was talk, apparently, of turning it into a subway line that connected Umbrella's laboratories."
"All of them, or just the NESTS?"
"All of them."
Grayson nodded. "Good to know. And speaking of labs, shouldn't we check out that shelter off Misery Road?"
"There's no telling if it's a laboratory, darling."
"Still worth checking out."
Alexia nodded. "I know. But one of us will have to stay behind to watch Veronica and Sherry."
Grayson almost said his dad could do that, but then he remembered his dad was gone, and his chest tightened. "Should let me go," he said. "Your T-Veronica's been acting wonky, right?"
"Yes," Alexia said, meeting his eyes. "But," she continued, "I think it would be best to let me go, darling. I'd feel better if you were here to protect the girls."
"Alexia."
"Grayson, think about it." Her tone was firm, her listen-to-me-now voice. "Your mutation is stable," Alexia said. "Should Miranda turn up again, you can protect Sherry and Veronica precisely because it's stable. Were I to remain here, there's no guarantee I could use the T-Veronica against her. I could die, and then she'd take the girls."
"You could die either way," Grayson said, trying his hardest not to beg and plead for her not to go. "Miranda could be there."
"That may be the case, but you'll be here. Sherry and Veronica will be safe. I can't protect them as I am, not in the way you can, Grayson."
And so it was decided, there in the subway station to nowhere, that Alexia would go, and Grayson hated the fact she was right.