September 23, 1998

"You...won't...get away that easily." Birkin rasped. He could taste blood. There was shockingly little pain. If he lasted beyond the next minute or so, that would change, and fast. The gunfire had ripped into him, leaving him a crumpled pile against the wall. Every breath he took had a wet, bubbly quality.

How was he so cold, all of a sudden?

The Umbrella Security Service had moved in on him to take his life's work away from him. Someone had betrayed him.

Someone...

No one.

No one was getting away with the G-Virus. He had finally told Annette what was happening not half a day earlier. He'd stowed away go-bags for her and Sherry in the car. They had been so close...

They had taken the case of samples, but missed the injector in his hand. Fuck them all, he thought and drove the injector straight into his own heart. It burned. He welcomed the pain like an old friend. His precious G-virus would at least afford him his vengeance.

The world dulled, then grew sharper. William Birkin realized he could suddenly climb to his feet. G raced through his veins, feeding his desire to take those bastards apart.

Annette's footfalls in the hall. Her eyes landed upon the injector, and the bloodied form of her husband, his eyes now alight with single-minded rage. She cried out in dismay. "William. What have you done?!"

Days had passed since the connection had been made, and life had returned to an oddly comfortable rhythm.

The facility wasn't furnished as a military installation, and Wesker only maintained his own gear. He had requisitioned tactical gear for a potential female operative and potential weapons. There would be enough to choose from, should she ever need to be tested in the field. Given the breadth of what Marigold's version of the virus had manifested, that was becoming more and more likely. There were records of her having some firearms experience, at least on a recreational level.

When taking her vitals that day, he had asked her if she were still confident with a blade. It was a challenge more than anything. Marigold had shrugged, snagged a pen from off the table - a nice little thing that had a touch of weight to it - and balanced it atop her hand. With a casual flick, the implement was suddenly embedded an inch deep in the wood door. "Passable," She had responded. Wesker fought the urge to smirk.

He finished taking her samples, then glanced back at the computer. Pulling a disk from his breast pocket, he loaded it in to check her recollection from the scant recordings Umbrella had recovered. She'd only filled out a few months of data, partially owing to the unfamiliar technology. "It's a match," he confirmed after a moment. "And you added information?"

Marigold shrugged again. "Much of it syncs to events, headaches, that sort of thing. Living in the city was reckless, but necessary. That first book was rubbish. I got better at it over time. I can read my own shorthand, at any rate." She always seemed to curl inward, just a bit, when she was discussing her condition. Not hiding, but…filtering.

"So then 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern' was an event."

Oh, that one got a reaction. Marigold visibly ground her jaw. "A headache." She paused. "Technically, also a field test." She curled a lip in contempt at the memory. "It also said Rasputin on that line, yes? Have a guess at how I learned I could tolerate toxins."

"Hmm." He let it go. They had traced an incident where a well-bred junior executive, known for wandering hands, had suffered a progressive breakdown over the course of the last few months of 1969. He had transferred to Paris after the new year. There he remained as if trying to fade into the background. Wesker had met the shade of a man back in the early 1990s, while procuring a sample of the Nemesis parasite for Arklay. The man had had a deathly pallor to him, glancing around constantly like a hunted rat. If she had caught him trying to poison her, the traces of retaliation had certainly lingered.

But there had been two names on that line. "There was a second one?"

She smiled, a little sad. Regretful. "And he got to be the control variable. It was instructive." Marigold remained quiet for a moment. Then, "Umbrella's falling apart, isn't it." She didn't sound surprised at the idea.

He eyed her, considering. "I was wondering when you were going to start asking. Yes. They may not survive much longer. "

"Alfred told me." Wesker blinked at her. She made a face. "Oh, obviously I would call. On the telephone." She made a circling dialing motion, then paused and scowled at her own hand. "I needed to confirm that he was even alive, and I couldn't risk the amount of energy to try reaching out that distance. I'd already been told about...the others." She seemed to curl inward. "He didn't seem to think Umbrella was going to last for long."

She looked tired. This had been what had been weighing on her earlier, then. He wouldn't even confirm if they were dead. she finished, silently, looking straight at Wesker.

Interesting. And relevant. "Veronica, then?" His question seemed to electrify Marigold. She narrowed her eyes. "What? No. Alexander published that already. The genetic map for intelligence? Quite literally the only useful research application for a live, unreproducible subject." She waved a dismissive hand at herself. "Probably much closer to the original core principles for the company." Marigold was clearly getting wary. She still wasn't lying, exactly. For so long as she was talking freely, he could take in what she offered and fill in the blanks. "For someone so obsessed with eugenics, Spencer choosing the weapons angle still seems just...baffling."

Wesker filed away that piece of information for later. The term clearly had a different meaning for her than it did for him. "Alexia was working on splicing the virus. It's rumoured that everything on t-Veronica went up with her lab. It's been lost for years."

"I didn't see enough of her work to comment. She would name it after herself though." Wesker stared at her. She snorted. "I can practically hear the gears grinding to a halt between your ears." A long pause, and she stilled. "Is that why I'm here? My niece's research?"

"Nothing came out of that lab for years," Wesker said slowly, after a moment. "Without a virologist, any work on the virus would have stalled."

"Yes. Strange." Marigold paused. It was sardonic in tone, but something was bothering her. Not defensive. Like she was putting something together.

Wesker decided to take a different path for now. Her guard was up, but she was slowly working through to the correct destination. This too was a door he couldn't force her to go through without her cooperation. "William is making the same mistakes Doctor Marcus did, I think. Patterns repeat in Umbrella."

Marigold's mouth firmed in a hard line. He'd hit a nerve. He could sense it in the air.

The chance to pick at that nerve slipped away in an instant when Marigold's eyes went wide. She staggered to her feet with a look of wild panic, then went still. A blankness entered her eyes, seeing some other place.

"Won't get away that easy," she whispered in a toneless voice. There was a nasal rasp to the words that raised the hairs on the back of Wesker's neck.

In Raccoon City, Umbrella operatives were torn apart like toys under William's rapidly mutating hands. In that little room hidden in the Appalachian Mountains, Marigold Ashford shuddered and pulled herself out of the vision. Sagging back against the table for support, she looked to Wesker, who had bolted to his feet at the sense of incursion.

"They killed him. Your William, I think," she said, not quite able to meet his eyes. "Now he's killing everyone. Under the city. It's started."