Marigold awoke again to bright, burning light.
Her hands were cuffed in front of her again, looped through a metal ring on a sturdy table, which in its turn was bolted to the floor. She blinked rapidly, trying to let her eyes adjust. her feet were free, though bare. She was wearing soft, clean clothes again - a sleeveless shirt and drawstring pants. Marigold had been sitting on a hard metal chair, slumped over said table while the drugs had run through her system. Possibly flushed out; she felt remarkably clear-headed this time.
The room itself was standard research sterility, aside from the restraint features. For all she knew, they were a standard for Umbrella as well. Had always been, beyond a certain clearance level.
Shelves, a bookcase, a sink. There was a mirror off to the other side. She could see the shadows just beyond it. One-way glass had become less effective on her as the light spectrum of her eyes had slowly shifted over the years.
The cuffs were uncomfortable. She contemplated leaving them on to let whatever little power game that was about to happen play out, but...well, why? If Wesker were running this interview, he knew damned well what she was capable of. Gentility was something that had benefited her in her role as a senior administrator in the company. That hardly seemed the role she was being assigned anymore. They ought to know better.
If not, then, well. It wasn't her problem if he didn't bother to warn them. Decision made, she twisted her wrist around until she could pry her fingers down into the loop by the hinge, and snapped the cuff open. The other one came easily once she had a free hand. Someone behind the glass shouted and dropped something.
Pushing herself up straighter in the metal chair, she clasped her hands together in front of her, and waited.
She was Marigold Ashford after all, goddamnit, and they could deal with her on her terms.
Wesker stared at the pair of lab techs who had decided it was a good idea to roust him from his office.
"Sir, I think she might eat us." The taller of the two men stood a good foot outside the threshold of his office. He clearly unnerved them.
Although, apparently not nearly enough to leave him alone.
He forced himself to look bored and irritated. "I don't recall her file showing that level of degradation. Has something changed since Placidia has woken up?" Within corporate structures, it had become policy to only refer to that particular subject by her designation. Spencer's odd sense of humor had landed Ms. Ashford with the name of an ancient princess snatched up by barbarians rampaging through the burning ruins of Rome. Spencer had thought it poetic. Annette had made a disgusted face, quickly masked over out of a growing sense of survival. William had (eventually) taken the hint and stopped asking Spencer to allow G-virus testing on the 'perfectly viable candidate'.
"She woke up and snapped the cuffs off like they were made of paper mache. Now she's sitting there looking like a demon librarian. She might eat us. Hans here cannot handle contact with a candy house, sir, it's beyond the scope of our work here." 'Hans' grimaced at the slight, but kept his eyes squarely on the new senior recruit. They had been told a little, but it was...enough. This was a lockdown facility, remote. This one hadn't managed to bring in the full promised dinette set, as it were, but he'd come in with an asset interesting enough to warrant giving him some space and a few technicians to make up the difference.
"You can stay right where you are."
Wesker stopped at the end of the table. "Considering the technicians are afraid you're about to cook and consume them, someone has to collect a blood sample."
That's not a reason for you to come any closer than that. That's the kit?" She nodded to the zipped canvas case tucked under his arm. "Set it on the table." When he failed to move, she rolled her eyes. "I isolated for years. Do you not think I monitored my own progression? My brother made sure I knew how to do it, and I had an awful lot of time on my hands to develop my own methodology. Case. Table. I'll want to use the notepad as well, obviously."
Wesker's brow furrowed. She was cooperating? Why? He slowly set the case down in the centre of the table, and she darted a hand forward to hook it towards her, glancing up to ensure he was maintaining his distance. She unzipped it, studies the contents, studied the contents for a moment, and sighed.
"Is everything plastic now?" Marigold murmured, mostly to herself. She slipped the strap over her bicep and pulled it taut, flexing the hand on the bound arm just enough to pop out the vein at the crook of her elbow. She eyed the small bag inside the case, and reached for the attached needle and tubing - everything had been prepared somewhere outside the room. Efficient. Probably smart. She pulled the needle towards her and inserted it with practiced ease, watching the bag start to fill. "This is easier than managing vials." She glanced up. "Getting back into a routine is nice, at least. I don't suppose there's a microscope in here?"
Wesker paused, then seated himself at the other side of the table. "This wasn't in your profile. Why not just stay at the Antarctic facility?"
"Exposure risks. Mostly. I like my house, and I can actually handle people." The bag reached completion, and she pulled out the needle. The tiny wound healed within seconds. She watched it happen, with a look of calculation. "Surficial regeneration is mostly stable, anyhow." She touched her neck, angling to see in the mirror. "I don't think your ministrations have left any bruising." With a shrug, she pulled the band from her arm.
After a moment's contemplation, she cleared her throat. "Microscope?"
He pointed to a cupboard, and Marigold was immediately in motion. There were slides and stains in the same area. He'd get much more detailed information in the lab later, but he suspected that she had had limited access to a mass spectrometer previously. "What are you looking for?"
Marigold fixed him with an annoyed look. "Prototype, or whatever that was being called now - is a new factor, and I'm interacting with it. I want to see if there are any morphological differences from last I checked. I saw a lot of mutations when I left that basement." For the first time in their conversation, a note of anxiety entered her voice.
Of course. The T-virus had barely started in animal trials when she had been caught, and Marcus's Prototype work had barely moved beyond cultivating bacterial strains at the time. Given where she had found herself on waking, it wasn't an unreasonable fear to have.
There had been a small incident of note when they had questioned her under heavy sedation following the capture, where she had asked about the woman crying in the other room. It had only been several years later when Lisa Trevor had regained some of her faculties thanks to the Nemesis parasite, that the full scope of that throwaway comment had been realized.
She glanced back at him, nervous. I'm interacting with it.
Oh. Perhaps there was more than bad memories behind the mandated distancing. To her, this was very much a new development. "Did you still require your medication?" It had been something easily recreated by any junior chemist. Birkin had surmised that it was used to suppress the creation of pheromones in her system. Without it that disabling effect, that day might have gone quite differently. Even so, they had almost moved too slowly to restrain her then.
She seemed to pause, consider the question, then shake her head. "Not...yet. Maybe eventually." Stepping back over to the case, she pulled the needle from the tubing, and jabbed it deep into the tip of her index finger. A few drops welled out before it closed over, which were deposited onto the slide itself. She glanced at Wesker. "I know it's not standard, but I'd rather not break that bag open. Stay over there."
She was running out of steam to give orders, or her nerves were getting the better of her ability to hold the embargo. Either way, the slide was prepared in under a minute. Marigold spared one more glance back, and bent to peer through the lens. After another minute, she stepped back, frowning. She turned over her healed hand, examining, before returning to her seat.
Wesker raised an eyebrow at the display, and Marigold looked up sharply, remembering that he was still there. "Oh. No. Nothing obvious. Any markers are the same as they were in the last years. They're stronger after a high-stress event, so well..." she gestured vaguely towards the microscope.
"There were barely any surviving records when Umbrella tried to recover them from your home - what was left of it, anyhow," he said, trying to tease out the data. Two notebooks had been recovered from the study when they had entered the home. One written in Alexander Ashford's hand, covering near-baseline conditions from late 1968 to early 1969. The man had disappeared by the time anyone reached out to him.
Another had been written in Marigold's hand, overlapping the last few days of 1968 to late 1969. It was heavily coded, partially written in a form of shorthand. That work had begun unsteadily but had rapidly improved to a near-professional degree throughout the volume.
To his surprise, she gave a short bitter laugh. "Sure. Of course. The house." She pulled the notepad towards her, sketching a horizontal line with a tick mark on either end: 1968 - 1998. A few more were placed along the line: 1969, 1972, 1976, 1978, 1981. Two vertical lines slashed this axis at 1981 and 1998 - a 17-year period gone dark, in her eyes. "I didn't leave much in the house to be found. Spencer's set traps before - he does love his little loyalty tests. Good to know the staff was willing to follow through though."
Under each date, she added a series of symbols. Not shorthand, but some personal key that he recognized from the scant notes he had available but had no available index to clarify. She'd used the Greek alphabet to categorize symptoms into a full syndrome of abilities, presumed triggers, warning signs, and event types. And here they were again.
She paused at 1981. Something was bothering her. Then she sighed and filled in the rest in that cryptic script. A line was added to the bottom of 1981. A plus sign with a question mark to the bottom of the notes for 1998.
Something had developed in that gap, Wesker realized. Or something had made itself known. It very well could be why she hadn't run for the exit as soon as the door had opened. Something had changed, and she was trying to divine what, and why.
Marigold tapped at the paper a moment longer, then pushed back from it, clearly frustrated. She settled for glaring at Wesker. "I was told you'd died in a very stupid and graphic manner." Ah, back to needling. In all honesty, this was oddly civil compared to the fear or rage responses he'd learned to expect from both research and interrogation subjects. "Was that just a lucky pratfall, or is that the new Umbrella protocol?" There was acid in her tone.
The agent had reported that the target had been actively evading Umbrella detection. Thus it was possible that she hadn't put that part together. Likely, even.
"If I did my job, Umbrella thinks I perished under the mansion. Despite the prevailing rumors, I doubt there's enough convincing evidence for them to think any differently of your situation." There it was: the flash of surprise, followed by wariness. She hadn't known for sure that this wasn't an Umbrella facility.
Reaching forward, he was gratified to see her shrink back in her seat as he pulled the open case back towards him. There was a good few hours of work ahead of him to process the samples, and the subject had sketched out just the barest hint of historical trends behind her infection. It was more than they had had before.
Standing, Wesker packed up the case with easy efficiency. "That's enough for today. You have quarters prepared - unless you're holding out to antagonize the staff some more." The door slid open. He stepped back and waited. After a moment, Marigold Ashford seemed to steel herself. "Alright," she said in a small voice, and got to her feet.