Beyond the wide Plexiglass window, Grayson watched the southern lights ghosting across the sky in bright fluorescent ribbons, absently fingering the box in his pocket and feeling a little self-conscious.

"Grayson."

Startled, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and said, "Heya, Lex."

Alexia stepped out from the shadows—the facility turned down the lights during winter to conserve power—and regarded him with a smile so faint that it was hard to tell it was there at all. She was still dressed in the gray cardigan and plaid jumper-dress he'd seen her wearing that morning (though Grayson hesitated to call it morning, because time was a nebulous concept on a continent that was daytime for half the year, and nighttime for the rest), and she looked exhausted.

"I knew I'd find you here," said Alexia, watching him with eyes the pale color of verglas. She looked strangely ethereal in the ghost-glow of the aurora australis— that was what Alexia told him it was called, and she'd told him something else too, about ionized gas driving solar winds away from the sun, and into Earth's magnetic field, where they rode magnetic field-lines down into Earth's atmosphere at the poles. Grayson hadn't asked her what the lights were or how they got there, but Alexia liked to talk in treatises whenever the opportunity arose, and he liked to listen because it made her happy.

"You look like you're about to fall over."

"Just tired," she replied, stopping a few paces away from him. "I'm working on a rather large project." Alexia yawned, and added, "It's been keeping me quite busy."

"I know. I never see you anymore."

Alexia closed the gap between them, took his hand into hers. She squeezed. Her hand felt cool and frail. She stood next to him, and they watched the lights flickering in the sky like neon chemtrails. Her head found his shoulder. "I'm sorry," said Alexia, finally.

"It's your job. I get it," he said.

She moved closer, pressing herself up against his side. Their hands came apart, and they wound their arms around each other, enjoying the closeness. Then, "If Scott finds us like this, he'll lose his bloody mind."

"I'd be more concerned about Alfred finding us like this."

"You've trounced my brother before," she reminded him, politely. Alexia looked up at him, the secret smile on her face divulging itself a little more. "What's one more time?" she mused. "He's the muppet who keeps throwing down the gauntlet."

"He's been acting more unhinged since your dad disappeared."

Her expression became unreadable. "Yes," she said, softly, "it seems so."

"You seem to be taking it pretty well."

"Father had a lot of enemies in Umbrella."

"You think he's in hiding?"

She shrugged.

They let the silence settle between them. Neither of them spoke for several minutes, comfortable enough in each other's company to know small-talk wasn't needed to make a moment feel unwasted. He took the box out of his pocket, offering it to her.

"Are you proposing to me?" she teased.

Grayson felt a nervous prickle on his nape, and his palms began to tingle and sweat as he anticipated her reaction. Blushing, he stammered out, "N-no, you dweeb." He pressed it into her hand. "Just open it."

Alexia opened the box. She said nothing at first, and his neck and shoulders tightened with nervous tension. His stomach knotted up. She stared at the barrette, said, exhaling the words like a held breath, "It's absolutely beautiful," and swept her hair behind her ear to clip it into place. Then she went up on tiptoes to kiss him.

Grayson stared at the barrette, turning it between his fingers. When there had been a whole ocean—two, he supposed, if he counted the Southern—it had been easier not to think about Alexia as much, because there had been distance between him and those memories, and there had also been Annette Birkin. Those things were gone, and now Grayson found himself surrounded on all sides by Alexia, and it was hard not to think about her all of the time.

"What have you got there?"

Grayson looked up into Alfred's cold blue eyes. "Nothing." He tried to pocket it, but Alfred snatched the dragonfly out of his hand before he could. Alfred inspected the barrette as if he were appraising its worth and finding that worth to be very unimpressive. He fiddled with one of the wings and snapped it off, and Grayson almost lost his shit, but managed to swallow his anger. "Give it back, Alfred," said Grayson, manicuring his tone into something curt but polite.

Alfred pursed his lips, glowering at him. " You bought this offensively cheap trinket for my dear sister?"

"She wore it," he said. "Guess that means she liked my offensively cheap trinket."

Alfred considered the barrette for a moment longer, then dropped it, and the broken wing, into Grayson's outstretched hand. "You have chores to do, Grayson," he said. "Get off your arse and get back to cleaning. I was serious when I said I want this bloody mansion in tip-top shape."

"I was taking a break." Then Grayson asked, "Is Spencer visiting?"

Alfred's nostrils flared. "What makes you think I'd willingly invite that fossil into my home?"

Grayson shrugged. "Just seems like you're expecting someone important to visit."

"I am," said Alfred, without elaboration. "That said, I'll be back in a few hours. I want this foyer spotless by the time I return." He left, and Grayson sighed, staring at the broken dragonfly in his hand and wondering if he could solder the wing back on. Then, pocketing the barrette, he got up and got back to work.

Alfred didn't come back until late that night, just as Grayson had finished re-staining the balustrades. "Don't touch the railing," he warned Alfred. "It's not dry yet." His brown-stained fingers made quick work of the folded paper in his waistcoat pocket, opening it. On it was the list of chores he'd finished. "So you know I'm not just sitting around doing jackshit," he said, tersely. "I even time-stamped and initialed everything."

Alfred didn't even bother looking at the paper. He looked tired and put out. "I don't need a bloody logbook," he said, crumpling the woodstain-smudged paper and pushing it into Grayson's hand. "Besides, taking the time to write a list is a waste of time. But I don't feel like fighting, Grayson." He looked at him, something almost sad, resigned, in his eyes. "Make us a cuppa, will you?"

"I don't like tea."

"Then make yourself some bloody coffee, and meet me in the drawing room."

A marble fireplace stood on one side of the drawing room, a gloomy landscape done in oils on the other. The walls were wainscoted in dark wood. Antique Victorian couches crowded around a carved table of lacquered Vietnamese rosewood, two silver candelabras and an ikebana arrangement (he'd put it together earlier—poppies, snowdrops, and blue thistle) atop it. Grayson set down the tray of tea, coffee, and shortbread, and sat down on the couch opposite Alfred. "So what's going on?" he asked. "You look bothered."

"I can't remember," said Alfred, pouring himself a tea from the carafe.

"That… doesn't really help me, Alfred."

"That's what's bothering me, Grayson," said Alfred, shooting him a sharp look. "I can't remember. I'm relatively sure I knew what it was earlier, but then I forgot."

Grayson supposed Alfred had slipped into his Alexia persona at some point, and she'd distracted him from whatever it was he needed to do. But now Alfred was Alfred, and he still couldn't remember. That worried Grayson. Did that mean Alfred's condition was getting worse? "What were you doing, exactly?" he asked, patiently.

"I was heading down. I remember that much."

"To… Alexia's lab?"

Alfred's brow creased with the effort of recollecting so many vague details. "Perhaps," he said, unsure. He looked searchingly at him. "But why would I? There's an infestation down there."

"Does the name Nosferatu mean anything to you, Alfred?"

He blinked, furrowing his brow in confusion. "The… vampire?" Alfred slipped a Dunhill from the pocket of his blazer and slid it into his mouth. He lit it, leaning back in his seat, draping his leg over the other in the way old men did whenever they read their newspapers. He blew a cloud of fragrant smoke, watching him through the fug. "What the bloody fuck does Max Schreck have to do with my problem, Grayson?"

Grayson shook his head. "Not him," he said. "Some guys in the facility say they've been hearing weird noises. Call whatever's making them 'Nosferatu'." He shrugged. "Thought maybe that had something to do with you going down."

"Nosferatu was a silent movie," observed Alfred.

"Yeah, Don pointed that out too."

"That bloody jock spends too much time talking. If he wasn't so useful, I'd have thrown him out into the snow yonks ago."

"Alfred," said Grayson suddenly, "are the ants really the only reason you don't want people down there?" He peered at him, trying to read his face. But Alfred's reptilian expression betrayed nothing. "Come on," he pleaded. Grayson wasn't sure why, but it felt like something big was down there, and he needed to know what it was. "I know you're keeping something from me."

Alfred finished his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the ashtray. "How can I keep something from you when I can't bloody remember what it is?"

He wanted to accuse Alfred of playing stupid, but Grayson knew it wasn't as simple as that. Alfred had genuinely forgotten something important, and it was clearly bothering him. Maybe it was even scaring him. Grayson would have been scared too, if he were in Alfred's shoes. "Sorry," he said, and raised his hands, pacific. "Not trying to give you a hard time. Anything I can do to help?"

"Help me remember before I have to return to Rockfort," said Alfred.

Grayson blinked, straightening up in his seat. "So soon?"

"There are two high-priority prisoners coming in on the next transport," said Alfred. "A man named David Burnside, and his son, Steve."

"What makes them high-priority?"

"David was caught stealing company data," said Alfred.

"And his son?"

"He helped his father decrypt that data."

Grayson gave a low whistle. "Those two are in for it," he said. Of all the crimes someone could commit against Umbrella, stealing their data was a one-way trip to the hurt locker. The pharmaceutical game was a cutthroat business, and Umbrella had rigged that business into a lucrative monopoly that their competitors were aching to take for themselves. He'd once known a guy by the name of Rocky Schroeder who'd been sent to Rockfort for selling BOW data to the Chinese. After only a week, part of which was spent being interrogated by Alfred, Rocky came back as a drooling vegetable with every bone in his body smashed to a pulp. He died hours later, and the guards had dragged his corpse off in a plastic bag.

"Which is why I have to be there when they unload them," said Alfred. "It's my job to interrogate high-priority prisoners."

"'Interrogate'," said Grayson, quoting the air.

"Torture has always been a valid method for extracting information," said Alfred. Then he smiled with absolutely no warmth, and said, with an air of psychopathic zen, "I enjoy torturing them, Grayson. A cigar, some Shostakovich, a robust toolkit—it's quite lovely. And so cathartic."

"I've seen the 'room', Alfred."

"I still congratulate you for only vomiting once," said Alfred, cheerily.

"I don't care about the prisoners or what you do to them," he said. "That's not why I vomited. Just the fucking smell down there—would it kill you to throw some bleach down? I know a great way to take out bloodstains."

"Are you volunteering?"

"Alfred," said Grayson, evenly, "you couldn't pay me enough to clean that fucking abattoir."

Alfred laughed. "You know, it's funny," he said.

"What is?"

"How Raccoon City got to you so badly, but my 'abattoir' is nothing at all to you."

"I guess," said Grayson, "it's because the people in Raccoon City didn't really deserve it. A lot of them probably did, but not all of them. The assholes on Rockfort are there because they made stupid fucking choices. They, unlike the people in Raccoon City, had a choice not to die." He paused, then said, "And after the things I saw in Raccoon City, Rockfort is nothing. I'm numb to carnage now. So yeah, your abattoir is nothing at all to me."