Grayson found Don in the power room, checking up on some rookies performing routine maintenance on the generators—hulking diesel things that had been powering the facility since the 1970s. The Scotsman didn't look happy to see him; he knew Don hated being bothered while he was working.

"You're not wearin' PPE!" cried Don as he approached. Grayson asked him to repeat what he said; he could barely hear him over the rattle and whir of the generators. Don rapped his knuckles on his hard hat, raising his voice: "Need one of these if you're goin' to be in here, you fuckin' bawbag!"

Grayson waved off the Scotsman's concern. "I need your help, Don. Step out with me for a moment? It's too fucking loud in here."

Don glanced at his crew. "Take ten," he told them, and followed Grayson across the expansion-grate catwalk, out into the transport terminal where, below, terminal workers were stacking boxes onto conveyors, then loading them onto pallets and carting them out to the hangar for transport. "What's so fuckin' important you needed to interrupt me at work?" grunted the Scotsman, stripping off his rubber-insulated gloves and tucking them into the back-pocket of his coveralls. He eyed him, suspicious. "Dinnae have your own work to do, Grayson?"

"I need your help getting into Alexia's level," said Grayson.

Don stared at him as if he didn't quite hear him correctly. He stroked his beard meditatively. Then, "You want me to help you break into Alexia's lab?"

"Yes."

"Yer aff yer heid, Grayson Harman!" exclaimed Don. "If the bossman finds out, my arse is cooked. I did a stint on Rockfort. I've seen what Alfred fuckin' is capable of, and it's nae good."

Grayson blinked in surprise. "You were on Rockfort?"

Don nodded. "Aye, but nae as a prisoner if that's what you're gettin' at. Umbrella sent me there to help upgrade the island's water and power infrastructure. Saw Alfred blow a man's head clean open, then trot off like it were nothin'." He leveled a hard look at him, then said, "I got family back home, Grayson. Dinnae want to wind up dead like that eejit on Rockfort got his head splattered eh?"

"Alfred won't know," said Grayson, putting his hand on the Scotsman's burly shoulder. "In and out. Maybe we can get to the bottom of this Nosferatu thing. Bet the wailing keeps you guys up."

"Aye, it does," agreed Don. "But this is nae 'bout Nosferatu. What's the real reason you want to go down there, you numpty?"

"It's…" Grayson trailed off, hunting for the right words—and failing to find them. How did someone describe instinct? He wasn't Alexia; he couldn't launch into a treatise about ionized gas and magnetic fields, and explain to Don, just as Alexia had explained to him the mechanics of the aurora australis , the precise mechanics of his intuition. "I dunno," he said, after a moment. "It just feels important."

"So you're askin' me to put my arse on the line 'cause it feels important to you?" Don heaved a sigh, then said, "Even if I were to entertain this notion, I already told you: I dinnae have access to that level."

"But you can get it, just like Peter did."

Don snorted, then said, "You want me to ask Alfred, real nice-like, to sign off on temp access?"

"Tell him there's some kinda mechanical problem," suggested Grayson. "He's usually too involved with Rockfort to give a shit what happens in Antarctica. He'd probably sign off on it."

"One problem: the bossman is here in Antarctica, not on fuckin' Rockfort."

"He's going back soon," said Grayson.

"Mate, you'd probably have an easier time askin' the bossman for temp access."

"Trust me, Alfred wouldn't do it," said Grayson. "He's hiding something from me, Don, and I think it's down there."

Don sighed, taking off his hard hat and pulling down his hood, running his fingers through his sweaty hair. "I gotta man owes me a favor in Security," said the Scotsman, wiping his face on the sleeve of his coveralls. "He could print me a temp access card. They give 'em out to people who misplace their assigned cards while waitin' for a replacement."

"So you'll help?"

Don nodded. "Aye, but I hope I dinnae regret it."

"Why the sudden change of heart?" Grayson paused, then added, "Not that I'm complaining."

"'Cause you're fuckin' obsessed, mate, and cannae let it go 'til you've had a chance to sniff Alexia's fuckin' chair or whatever, hopin' to whiff an auld fart." Don lifted his chin slightly and scratched his fingers through his beard, then said, "And I'm curious myself 'bout what's down there. Tired of listenin' to Nosferatu wailin' at all hours, so if there's a chance we can shut up whatever's makin' noise, I'll be a happy man and so will everyone else in this fuckin' place. Nobody's had a proper sleep in yonks ."

"I've never heard the wailing," said Grayson.

"You wouldn't. Mostly hear it down in the labs, or comin' up from the vents in the barracks."

"Also," said Grayson, eyeing Don, "'whiff and auld fart'? C'mon, man, that's gross."

"Mate, you'd lick the sweat off Alexia's arse if she told you to."

" Really , Don?"

Don boomed a laugh. "Tell me I'm bloody wrong, Grayson Harman."

"Anyway," said Grayson, shifting the subject, "when do you think you can get that temp card?"

"By Friday, maybe," said Don. "I got some shite to tidy 'round the facility first, but I'll ask my man in Security 'bout the card tonight. We're havin' a poker game in the barracks. You want in?"

Grayson shook his head. "No thanks," he said. "I'm a Blackjack guy."

"Suit yourself," said Don, and shrugged. "Anyway, I better get back to those rookies before they do somethin' stupid." He went back into the generator room, and Grayson went back to the mansion.

Grayson wasn't too worried about the plan, because there wasn't much that could go wrong. There were no cameras on Alexia's level, because Alexia had been very particular about keeping her research secret, and since the place was shuttered down, Alfred wouldn't expect them to go down there. He just hoped Don could conjure up a good excuse for his man in Security, and that his man in Security wouldn't ask too many questions. After what had happened to William Birkin, and by extension had happened to Annette, Grayson trusted the USS as much as he trusted Alfred not to kill people.

That night, Alfred fell into his Alexia cabaret, and he knocked on Grayson's door, insistently, until he opened it and said, "Alexia, I'm trying to sleep."

"I have something to tell you," said Alfred-Alexia, inviting himself inside and, without warning, pushing him down onto the bed and kissing him. Grayson wasn't particularly enjoying the kiss, because Alfred, he decided, didn't know how to kiss. Alfred kissed him like Alexia had kissed him on their first try: awkward, clumsy, and with too much force because that was how it was done in the movies.

Grayson turned his head, and Alfred-Alexia's lips slid down his jaw. He put his hands on Alfred-Alexia's shoulders, and, very gently, pushed him off. "Look," he said, "I'm really tired, Alexia. It's been a long day." Alfred-Alexia tried to remove his hands, but Grayson kept them firmly clamped on his shoulders. "You said you had something to tell me?" he reminded him, helpfully.

Alfred-Alexia sat on the edge of his bed and said, "You never want to touch me anymore." Then, with a murderous scowl, Alfred-Alexia said, "Who's the other woman, Grayson?"

Grayson sat up beside him, wiping at the lipstick smeared on his jaw. "There's no other woman. Jesus." He looked at Alfred-Alexia, then said, "Look, if you're not gonna—"

"You know Alfred's lying to you."

He stared, furrowing his brow. "What do you mean?"

"He's lying to you. He wants to keep us apart."

"And… you came into the room, ready to fuck me stupid, to show him it's not gonna happen?"

"Yes."

Grayson nodded. Right now, he had to play things very carefully; when Alfred was deep in his Alexia burlesque, his behavior was unpredictable (even more so than it was when he was Alfred), and could change on a dime over the most innocuous things: a word he might perceive as a slight, a certain gesture or look that could be misconstrued as disrespectful—and disrespect toward Alexia, who Alfred worshiped as some consummate demiurge, was the highest form of sacrilege. "And what's Alfred lying about, exactly?" he asked, politely.

"I wasn't leaving you," said Alfred-Alexia. "I was only going away for a little while."

"Going away? But you're right here," he said.

"Yes."

"Why would Alfred lie about that?"

"My dear brother refuses to accept that I love you in a way I could never love him." Alfred-Alexia turned away, and stared into the middle-distance. "He's a good soldier," said Alfred-Alexia, something almost sad in his eyes, "but he's just a soldier. I suppose he lied because he wanted to have that one thing: to know something about me that you didn't."

Grayson watched Alfred-Alexia go as abruptly as he'd entered, without another word. He sat there on his bed in stunned silence, feeling as if he'd just witnessed some kind of revelation. The pieces of the puzzle were laid out for him; he just didn't know how to fit them together yet.

He brushed his teeth and showered, and then he slept.

Around noon the next day, Grayson decided it was time to go where he hadn't wanted to go since he'd arrived here, because there were too many memories there; they were good memories, sweet ones, but like drinking too much soda made your teeth hurt, surrounding yourself with too many good memories made your heart hurt.

He went into Alexia's room. Her room was spotless, suggesting his father had taken particular care and reverence when he'd cleaned it, like someone washing a headstone, replacing old flowers and candles with new ones. Her room looked the same: rococo furniture, and red-papered walls patterned in gold fleur-de-lis. Several of Alexia's more inoffensive dolls (they hadn't creeped her out as much as the ones in the foyer had) stared in profusion from a showcase opposite her bed. The room smelled of her, like gardenias, and underneath that, of old wood and old books.

Grayson plugged the vacuum in and ran it over the hardwood, then wiped down the furniture. On her desk sat a cluster of framed Polaroids, and he saw one of himself, Alexia, and Alfred, and they might have been twelve or thirteen, sitting on the stairs in the foyer. He and Alexia were smiling (Grayson couldn't believe he'd had that whole Rob Lowe mullet going on with his hair), but Alfred looked angry at the world.

You know Alfred's lying to you . Grayson tried not to think about it. He and Don would find out the truth soon enough, because whatever it was Alfred was lying about, it was in Alexia's lab.

He was sorting through the drawers on Alexia's desk (she stashed everything in her desk, and he was hoping that maybe she'd kept the box for the barrette) when something caught his eye, a paper sandwiched between notebooks. Grayson unfolded it, smoothing it out on the desk.

Some sort of rough technical drawing; it looked like a blueprint for some kind of fish-tank. It was hastily sketched, and not very precise by blueprint standards—it looked as if Alexia had drawn it just to get it down, out of her head. There were words and equations scribbled in the margins too, in Alexia's spidery shorthand. But Grayson couldn't really remember much shorthand; it had been years since he'd used it, and he'd never been good at math—and he'd especially never been good at Alexia's kind of math—so the equations were all Greek to him.

"Maybe Don can help me out with this," he said aloud, carefully folding the paper and tucking it into the pocket of his waistcoat.