The gym was small, approximately the size of a classroom. Mats lined the floors across an open area in the front half of the space, while equipment - weights, benches, a couple of treadmills, a stationary bicycle- took up the rest of the space. There was a light layer of dust on the weights, but the rest of it looked clean. Marigold breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of a stack of towels and spray bottles; managing the contamination of her surroundings was too deeply ingrained.

Alexander had had a treadmill shipped to her home one year, although she had rarely used it. There had been trails all over the grounds, gardens, and woods, and a little brook passing through it. It had been one of the little pleasures she had, where she truly relaxed. If she tried to run like that on this, she'd likely break the bloody thing.

Wesker cleared his throat behind her. "I don't suppose you have any sparring training? I got used to it for a while. Now…it's less than ideal. It might be a means of calibrating strength."

Hard to find a partner he wouldn't break, most likely. "What with your hand-raised team going off to slaughter, I imagine it's even harder to find partners for that. I gauged mine quite nicely when I arrived here, thanks." Marigold forced back the edge in her tone. Experienced or not, she was still a civilian. Physical confrontation hadn't gone well for her in the past so far. "You're breaking a lot of doorknobs now, aren't you."

Wesker didn't answer, though he stepped around her to slowly circle around. Prowling, almost.

After a moment's stand-off, she stepped around, wrapping her arms around herself defensively. "No. I watched things in films and tried to work out the mechanics on my own. Actual practice with other people would have caused… problems." She grimaced. The few times where she had used even a fraction of her strength on other people had been…unpleasant. For everyone involved. "I try not to touch people, as a rule. Distance has always been better in most situations." Stepping around Wesker, she looked away. "I'm already getting far more input than before. The external viral vector is enough to pile on the rest of it." She rubbed at the side of her nose. That had been him, tracking her through the forest to that little truck stop diner. There was no use pretending otherwise.

She missed her gloves.

"This should be fine," she made herself say, walking quickly over to the treadmill. This conversation was veering into uncomfortable territory. She didn't need to prolong it by asking for shoes. Back home, she often hadn't bothered with them on her own lands, away from prying eyes.

The controls were easy enough. After a moment's fiddling with the speed settings, she settled into her normal running gait. Even without the actual mobility, running helped ease Marigold's nerves. It always had, ever since she had started her late sojourns through the moors back home.

Marigold began to let her mind drift as she fell into a rhythm. She thought back to the hurried conversation over the telephone with Alfred, just before seeking out Ada Wong for passage from the city: "The company won't matter for long. She...we made a plan. You'll see." He didn't actually answer the question when she asked if Alexander and Alexia were truly gone, she thought.

Could it be possible?

And why was Wesker keeping her here? To what end? She was useless as a test subject, given her stable virus, and belligerence towards the company at the end.

Useless.

As a research subject.

They had struggled with the pure virus for years before tweaking it to create ghouls rather than corpses. And...golems? She thought of the beasts in the mansion lab, guarding and moving their heavy burdens. Why was a Soviet soldier behind the evacuation of the other creatures? The entire experience had the fantastical grotesque sheen of a Goya painting. Had this been the end goal for Umbrella all along?

Yes. Yes. It had always been. Her little incident in the Balkans, back in '72, should have been enough to see how bad things could get. Now, it seemed, it was obvious that she had lacked imagination.

And…Everett had told her that Wesker had gone into intelligence years before. And here he was now, officially dead and changed into something that felt fundamentally different to her. She thought back to the woods, that feeling of anticipatory stillness bearing down on her. She felt it now.

He was still hunting her.

As a research subject, useless...maybe. As an intelligence asset...or even as leverage?

She cast her mind over the last few days. She didn't think she had given away much but it was hard to say. Once again Marigold cursed herself for the recklessness of going to Arklay in the first place, of hopping into Ada Wong's car only to disappear into yet another lab. Nothing jumped out at her but...it had only been a few days.

She had difficulty remembering the hazy days after her capture - something with Spencer's voice on a speaker, a woman's kind voice monitoring her vitals, and the voice of a very frightened woman calling for her mother somewhere in the background- but there likely wasn't anything new.

Did he know how easily she had passed through the woods?

She had stopped running, and the treadmill had powered down in response. She paused, then stepped absently off the machine as thoughts crowded in.

She'd been going without a clear plan since waking up in the mansion. At most, she had been scouting, divesting information and evidence of her identity as quickly as she could shed them. That needed to change fast, even if it was only to determine where it was she stood now. She needed to figure out her priorities.

One, and most immediate: Protect her vulnerable outside links. Everett. Rebecca, with her biochemical knowledge, and the precious little vial of blood left to her following their talk. They were likely in the most danger now.

Two: Protect her family. Whose collective fate was ambiguous at best. Alfred seemed secure in his position at Rockfort, but whether that was an accurate picture of the situation was murky at best.

It wasn't much of a plan. She was still playing defense, as much as ever, without clear aims. The field she was playing on, however, had drastically changed.

Weaker was playing his own game, like her. Umbrella thought him dead. To what ends?

And here she was, confined but kept comfortable, until...what? Confession? Her infection had never been replicated, not in the original strain. A dead end.

Collaboration? She had so many questions. The predatory feeling that emanated from Wesker hung over her senses like a shroud. When they had met earlier that week for the blood draw, her bluster had slowly withered and died on the vine.

When she finally found her voice, she didn't dare turn around. "I don't suppose there's a decent caber toss spot around here?" The summer of 1971 had been a fun season for her, although a bewildering one for the staff at the manor.

"I don't think they added it to the facility's blueprints, no. I'll see if there's something suitable.

"I can improvise." Marigold finally turned to face him, taking a good look at him now. He'd been young back then, tall, a little reedy. Reasonably good-looking in that bland, polished way that seemed like a factory setting for the sons of the upper class. But he'd stepped away from research to something in intelligence, (which sounded like the military to her. STARS had a paramilitary ring to it) and it showed.

"Yes, that's quite obvious by now," he replied, deadpan.

"Oh, the man who's been fake dead for a week is sarcastic. I'm sure being housebound is quite the burden for you." She paused. "Did Ivan leave that last little beastie at the lab just for you, then?"

He blinked at her, then laughed. It was.. less unnatural a sound than she would have thought. "Ah, of course. Sixteen years of missing time. You don't even know the Cold War ended, do you. Umbrella swept up a lot of military installations when that happened. Your nephew trains most of them, you know."

She went cold at that. "I don't." No use denying something she didn't know herself. "You didn't answer the question."

He began to advance on her, slowly., the way one might approach a skittish horse they planned to break. "Not specifically. Sergei's a favorite foot soldier of Spencer's. We disagree on some of the fundamentals of Spencer's...philosophical views, let's say. The video feed of you slipping away behind his back was a decent enough consolation prize, as it were...'Ivan' is actually the name of the guard that let you slip away, incidentally."

He was getting closer. Proximity was...not her friend in this situation. Whatever suppressants were left in her system might be enough to stave off the worst, her body had other ways to betray her.

She started to circle around in turn, trying to maintain distance to avoid being cornered. "Consolation? How so?" The scent was strong here. In the lab, the exchange had been mild, it had been mild-mannered, and she could distract herself with the data collection work. Here...that luxury was gone here.

"Try to hit me."

"What? I told you. That boundary is there for a reason."

"Try. I've seen what you can do to walls - the staff appreciates that there hasn't been a repeat of that here, by the way, whether they know it or not."

Something in the understated taunting of his words brushed against her straining temper, pulled taut, and snapped. Marigold lunged forward and spun into him to deliver an elbow to the solar plexus. Just because she couldn't afford to spar didn't mean that she hadn't picked up some forms for ending a fight fast. He own form was poor, but in her case, she could generally make up for it in sheer power.

Except Wesker was no longer there. Not even bothering to use the terrifying speed he'd demonstrated before, he grabbed her arm above the elbow and spun her out towards the wall. Landing hard, she rolled back to her feet and waited in a crouch, face furious. "Again."

The next strike was caught at full force, with a strained grunt. Letting go, she stumbled past him, confused. "What are you doing," she demanded. He stalked towards her in response, this time blurring past her, pinning her arms to her sides from behind. "Good. The impulse control is amateur, but for a civilian...good." She could feel his breath in her ear, and the contact made her shiver. A low whine can from her throat, unbidden. His grip tightened.

In the forest outside Racoon City, the day after Clemens had released her, she had been half herself and half pushing outward; there had been a sense of being submerged. Reaching, rippling outward, a tsunami crashing and repelling other remnants of minds touched by the T-virus. Now it was the opposite. A void space opened, and the inevitable crash of the wave back inward, to the sea.

Give in

The next few seconds were blank. Gone. Only the wave remained.

And crashed back down with the sensation of her back slamming against the wall, lips and teeth skimming against her throat, hands firmly pinning her wrists to either side of her head. Her body shivered violently, writhing under the sudden torrent of heat, and of pressure. Wesker had wedged a knee is wedged between hers; she was all but riding his thigh. She was panting again, high whining gasps.

I blacked out?

And all of a sudden, the tension snapped back out. Wesker froze against her throat. He released her arms, stepping back to allow her to scuttle sideways a few steps.

I blacked out

Blackouts were new. This was a new thing that had kicked through her iron grip on herself, hard-won and harder fought.

She was furious. And not a little ashamed that she had lost control.

"Control is probably the only thing I do have." Marigold snapped. She couldn't meet his eyes. "At least, I thought I did. This has been quite enough for one day." She turned to stalk back towards her room.