Kate Everett, senior corporate manager for the Raccoon City Umbrella headquarters, had begun seriously examining her life choices once again since the Arklay disaster.
Another disaster. More 'accidents'. Except this one was so bad it had taken out two STARS teams, a train, the old training facility and the Arklay mansion itself. Most of the work kept her tied between New York and the town; it wasn't the only lab, or even the important one. But damn.
She had barely paid attention to the recent uptick in murders until the STARS team was announced, with their shiny new roster. Most of the old lab crew had transferred away since the eighties. So when the paper had shown pictures of the team, her eye had caught upon a face that snagged in her memory: the Arklay researcher that had split off to parts unknown several years earlier. He was older, and had clearly done a few tours out...better not to think too hard on that. Still, the face in the photo was unmistakable.
Something…really bad was expected to go down soon. She'd put in a call to her ex back in May and asked him to let their daughter stay with him in New York for the summer. She couldn't get away herself, but she felt better for making the decision. He had worked in the same office as her during those rocky years after the training facility had been shut down. Some things didn't need to be said.
Sometimes Kate Everett really, really hated being right. The officers went in. Most of them didn't return. One helicopter returned with only a few survivors.
And then things started to get really weird when her phone rang late that same night.
"Where have you been?!" Kate had sat down hard in her recently redecorated kitchen. It had been years - a broken marriage, a daughter, a house, and a promotion, in that order, but that voice transported her back like it was yesterday.
"Same place you left me, obviously. I'm glad you weren't there for it, but it is what it is." The mansion...oh, god. Somehow, it kept slipping out of her head that she had left the woman there. The connection just wouldn't hold. That was likely why no one had looked to hard at her following the mysterious incident that had occurred on the same day. Walls ripped apart. A couple of guards, and an office manager had died. A few others had been quarantined for a few weeks before being released. Their frightened, haunted eyes shone in her dreams.
Marigold...somehow...had warned her of what was about to happen, that cold November day in 1981. "You told me to run, back then, didn't you."
"Yes." She sounded distracted. Then: "The newspaper said that the researcher you had me meet...there...was leading a rescue team into the mansion. Are they all company?" So careful to avoid names.
"The...oh!" Everett stammered, picking up the thread of the question. "They're all cops, I think. No, he went into the Intelligence Division years ago." A cold pit was forming in the pit of Kate's stomach. She really hated being right. At least the one name on that list that actually caused any concern for her team hadn't survived the mansion. Umbrella had sent an email out to the senior heads at the office to prepare them for the impending shitstorm about to hit them all.
Marigold - good lord, she was alive - then had to run off, and Kate had to hold down the fort while the bombshell of the mansion exploded all over the town for the next few weeks. Doctor William Birkin had withdrawn into his work, and his wife had recently been ambushed by reporters who knew a bit more about her work than was strictly safe at this time.
Kate Everett was a survivor in a million little ways. Sometimes that meant avoiding seeing things that would put her on someone's hit list.
Sometimes it meant wondering if this was the right time to leave the company.
Twelve days after that call, Kate woke up early. She was still groggy. She'd been sleeping poorly lately. If this kept up, they'd notice at work.
Kate kept a legal pad and pen on her bedside table with a telephone. Reaching for the pad automatically, she jotted something down without thinking, then went back to sleep. When her alarm rang, she got up as per usual and went about her day.
She'd just stepped into her bedroom to change out of her work clothes at the end of another long day, when she saw the note she had written herself.
rchambers IF YOU WANT OUT: BE SURE. -MAAt the bottom of the note was a messy scrawl of the Umbrella logo. In her own handwriting.
The call is coming from inside the house, she thought, bleak. R Chambers...was the biochemist who had signed on as a medic for STARS. Marigold was offering her a way out. Or you're losing your mind.
Well, she had the email. Did she want out?
Yes. Yes, she did. Her estranged family was bundled away in New York. She was suddenly sharply glad they had agreed to stay there for the summer.
She looked at the note. There was only one way to be sure whether this was real or not.
But first, she'd need a glass of wine to fortify her nerves.
Rebecca sat in Chris Redfield's living room, surrounded by Chris, Barry, and Jill. Brad had begged off. They hadn't fought him on it. Brad would get off light with the precinct for 'just' being branded a coward. What was being said about them...
Jill looked steadily at Rebecca. "Okay. We're all here now. We need to figure out what we're going to do next."
Chris looked crestfallen. "I can't believe Irons was in their pocket the whole time."
"Can't you?" Barry replied, just as dejected.
Chris hesitated, then shook his head. "I wanted it to be over so bad. Can we even do anything from here?"
"Um...I mentioned to you guys that someone came over with a tip the day after, right?" Rebecca started, timid. She had moved over to Jill's computer and logged into her old university email address. After reading through the contents of the notebook from her visitor, she's started checking it two, three times a day. So far, nothing.
"You did. Sorry, Rebecca." Chris had the grace to look embarrassed. "I...I kind of thought someone from the company was trying to psyche you out, with everything that's gone down since."
"Well, I didn't want to get into all of it over the phone. I had to check over the notes that she gave me."
Jill perked up. "Notes?"
Rebecca pulled the lab notebook from her satchel. The bracelet and the ID card were tucked inside the cover. She held it out to Jill. Frowning, Jill took it. Flipped it open, saw the ID card of Doctor John Clemens. "That's...he was just outside the lab with the...holy shit." She plucked the ID up and handed it to Chris before refocusing on the other object inside the cover. "A patient bracelet? It's from the mansion." She looked back up at Rebecca. for answers.
Rebecca sighed. "She was in the lab - she said that Doctor Clemens managed to get her out - she was a little sketchy on the details of how. I might have just missed crossing paths with her if that's true." She looked miserable. "I know how it sounds, but just look at what she's giving us."
"Beck, we were all in that forest. even if she got out of the mansion..." Barry trailed off. Both teams had lost people in those trees on arrival. So many people, just gone.
Jill broke back in, flipping through the pages. "Guys, Rebecca's right. A lot of this stuff is old, but it's all of the internal structures. Maps, corporate structures. I think she uses a different name for the virus. There are pages here on the mansion in the late seventies to '81." Jill went still. "Wesker's in here. Jesus, Rebecca."
Rebecca nodded. She had their attention, now. "She really, really wanted to be sure that he was dead. I told her what I could. She...seemed annoyed." At Barry's incredulous look, she kept going. "No, not like that. She just thought it sounded like a stupid way to die. Just walking at the Tyrant and being the biggest target. She said it sounded sloppy for him. She's written up what she knows there, too."
Jill opened her mouth to argue, then stopped, nodding in agreement. "...kind of, yeah. You would have had to be there." She skimmed through the section. "It stops in 1981. Because that's when they grabbed her then, you said. Was she a spy?"
"No. Worse. She got infected with a version that stayed…dormant, I think, about a decade earlier, and managed to hide it. Apparently, she was a senior bigshot for a while. But it made them pretty mad when they found out." Rebecca glanced at the computer screen again, frowning. She continued. "She was able to back up some of what I saw before Alpha team arrived - and she was able to corroborate my description because she recognized him." Rebecca reached into her bag again for her thermos, packed with dry ice. Popping open the top, she showed them two and a half small vials of blood. "That brings me to the other reason I think she came to me. I was able to take these."
"She let you?"
"She insisted. I think she was afraid I wouldn't believe her. Wouldn't stay more than an hour, and she said she was skipping town as soon as we were done." The thermos had a special cold seal for portable sample storage. "I was able to duck into the university between sessions on a Saturday and check it out myself. I couldn't do much, but...I believe her, for what it's worth." Rebecca glanced back to the computer screen, refreshing the browser window. A small green flag for a new message appeared.
Jill noticed. "That's not all, is it."
"Nope," Rebecca suddenly grinned. "She - sorry, she seemed spooked about using her name, and I think I've picked up that tic as well now - she said that she would see if an old contact of hers still wanted to get away from Umbrella. One who could pick up the story where she left off." Rebecca clicked open the open new email. "And it looks like she's ready to talk to us. Listen." Rebecca leaned in the read the message aloud for the room. "A mutual friend reached out to me, in case I wanted to run this time. When she says it's time to run, it's a good time to listen." Rebecca glanced over her shoulder at the team. Her smile was pure triumph. "I have a phone number."
It was shocking, really, how much farther she could cast herself out since before that fateful trip to Arklay. Physically, she hadn't changed much. But this...she could sense dozens of people still out around the continental US alone- executives, organizers, intermediaries. People, places to intercept. She'd read about magnetic resonance for brain imaging, and wondered if that might be an option. The technology might just be where she needed it these days.
Of course, pursuing that would mean either escaping and hoping she could beg or borrow that sort of access, or breaking the increasingly uncomfortable holding pattern she had established with Wesker.
The old manor in England was too far away, but the people around it still lived, little fireflies in the darkness. Too far to reach, and the point of the exercise wasn't to push. Not yet. Just…observe. But with time? Perhaps more.
Enough to risk staying off her suppressants, at the very least.
She reached south, and west. Towards Rockfort. Alfred must have absorbed some of her staff. As far as they could tell, she physically affected her family less, but the connection wasn't any weaker. Alexia had been fastidious about containment. But Alfred...he had been too young to not seek hugs from his favorite (only) aunt. The little boy had just seemed so damned lonely when the others weren't looking. Her last conversation with him from Racoon City still bothered her. Alfred was also there. If she reached, she might see more. Too much for her to push through today. But also…
The Antarctic facility wasn't empty. Did any of hers take over the work? Possible. Alfred had mentioned a plan. None of it will matter, soon enough. What in the world had he meant by that?
Footsteps echoed in the hallway, approaching her rook. She'd been under for longer than she had meant to go. There no real way to mark time down here, and surfacing took time. Not much, but it would be noticeable.
Time to pay the piper.
There was a strange bubble of calm as Wesker approached Marigold's room. I'll know if something happens, you realize. Alfred Ashford's words echoed from his memories.
He reached her door and hit the release. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed.
Marigold, in the Arklay conference room in 1981, sitting very still in the plush conference room chair, head bowed and eyes closed, with hands folded primly in her lap.
A moment passed. Here in the present, Marigold's eyes flickered open, meeting his calmly.
"Your escort slipped out just after the meeting started," he stated. His mouth felt dry. "It was put down to nausea, even after you started trying to fight your way out. No one put it together."
"I'd know if something happened." She replied, in an eerie parallel to a conversation he'd had in New York nearly ten years ago. History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.
He could easily chase down this lead, but it would take hours to do it in person. Communication or inducement to filter was a possibility unless Marigold was sedated here and now. Frankly, it would burn the wrong bridge.
Besides, there was a wonderful opportunity right before him, if he let the lesser prey run free. A bird in the hand, and all that rubbish. The video feed had shown she hadn't moved in hours from that position. Back then, she had arrived to the meeting fresh, but under the influence of suppressant medication. She had grown suddenly exhausted over the course of the meeting, masquerading as a headache.
Dark circles had returned below her eyes. Her stomach gurgled in protest, and she winced.
"Gym. Get some water, but we'll go now. There's something I'd like to test, and you may prefer an empty stomach." He wouldn't get a better time.
She shrank back. "Neither of us wants another blackout."
His eyes seemed to gleam behind the glasses. "So it is reflexive. We can work around that." She didn't move, but a wariness was creeping back into her face. "I've seen you do it twice now if memory serves. Do you really want to worry about that catching you off guard?"
Marigold bit her lip, and closed her eyes again, for just a moment. He allowed it. The snare on the prey he wanted was already snapping tight.
Then she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She slowly unfolded her legs. "I may need a moment. I think my legs have gone numb. I could do with a glass of water, though."
He stepped into the room.