In Raccoon City, Kate Everett fumbled her keys, barely managing to hold on to her coffee. Clear as a bell, Marigold's voice rang out in her head. I think you're running out of time to decide. If you're going to run, GO... I'll do my best to buy you some time. Maybe a few hours.
It was strange, how easily Everett had been able to accept this state of things. She'd packed a bag the night before. She had downloaded her email over the last year or so to several disks. She was often up on late night calls for work, long enough to be wired into the network from home, so she had gotten up extra early this morning to grab anything not flagged. Kate had used the download time to take plenty of notes on anything more secure.
Kate had called her ex one last time, so early that morning and spoke to their daughter. While they hadn't worked as husband and wife, theirs was a bond forged under pressure. He knew the score. Better yet, he'd understand. Implicitly. Hell, it was part of the reason that they'd agreed to his getting sole custody - she brought in the hazard pay, and the arrangement worked out with few hard feelings, in the end.
He also knew that anyone who could take time off right now, or get a transfer, was doing it. Everyone was feeling the heat these days.
It had been a shock that STARS really had been the vaunted contact for a safe exit. It made sense, on examination. Marigold's trust in Umbrella was probably thinner than her grasp on current events, so why not reach out to the only visible people in opposition, the ones who'd been battle-tested?
A gruff-sounding man in the background of the call had seemed hesitant to trust her, which…honestly, that seemed fair. Intel for safe passage seemed a fair trade, and she couldn't expect a warm welcome from…anyone, these days, regardless of how sweet Rebecca was on the phone.
Besides: an offer to run had to also be an offer to disappear, and this group…seemed prepared to do just that.
Kate had meant to head into the office briefly today. The staff was plenty distracted, and she could slip out at lunch while copying her hard drive. That wasn't an option now. Wherever Marigold had run to, she had been burned. Kate didn't want to think about how.
Heading back into the house, she ripped the plugs to the computer tower from the wall to haul the thing to her car. It would have to do. She called the number for the team- a groggy voice began to speak before she cut them off. "I'm coming by early. I'll explain when I get there, but I may have been burned, or I'm about to be. Our friend reached out to warn me. I'm out of time." Without waiting for a reply, she hung up and walked out of the comfortable little house she'd spent so many nights alone in after work.
This time, she didn't look back at all.
Wesker had worked with rookies before. It was normal in his position- especially over the last few years.
Normally he didn't have to convince those rookies they had to learn to fight at all. STARS had been full of recruits like this. Once they realized that they were in a position to leverage their own training into something truly exceptional, they were all in.
Ashford, however, was already deeply wary of him - that would have to be dealt with head-on. From his research and previous experience, she was quite lethal with edged weapons. Firearms were also not much of an issue for her.
Hand-to-hand though? Without training, no one had corrected her form, and she relied hard on brute strength. It wasn't as bad as it could have been - she had good reflexes and decent balance.
She also telegraphed almost as badly as Redfield had on his first training session. She overextended and didn't know how to use the power that she was relying on to compensate.
The temper was also a handicap, although today, for him, it would be a gift.
Marigold surveyed the gym as they reached the threshold. After a moment of thin-lipped apprehension, she crossed the room and sat back on one of the training benches, off to the side. She waited.
Wariness was to be expected, he supposed. It wasn't, however something he would allow to stand.
After a long beat, Marigold said "I don't understand why you're doing this."
"You don't understand why you shouldn't be caught flat-footed in a confrontation." Of course, that wasn't it, but she was going to have to walk through that door herself. If he wanted her cooperation, it was the only way.
"I don't understand what you want from me here." She swept an arm around her. "I lost seventeen years because of you. Then you just, what? You fake your death, and we're square? Let's have a wrestle?" Her lip curled. " I had to find an actual witness to even halfway believe that stupid bloody story, by the way."
"You did visit one of the survivors."
She paused. "I only needed to be sure he was dead. He said he was going to find me." The horror and disgust pushed into those last few words were a lens into the nightmares of the last week or so.
Marcus. She'd visited Chambers, them. Sweet, helpful Rebecca Chambers, who had managed to put down the source of the leak with the surreptitious assistance of a felon being transported through the area.
Marigold was watching him, calculation writ large in her narrowed eyes. An anonymous phone call from him would likely seal Ms. Everett's fate. For that alone, she'd followed him here. To hold his focus, and buy time.
In theory, it would be a simple matter. But in practice…she seemed deeply nervous about what might happen in holding it. She'd fallen back to breadcrumbs and was now trying to bait him into a slip-up.
He'd have to give her a push, then. Ashford's temper really would be a gift today.
"You would know better than anyone. No one just leaves the company." He took a step forward. "There are incidents. Accidents. Ah," he said as her face grow stony. "No, I don't have to tell you. it's become part of the machinery now. Do you realize that there's a whole paramilitary arm of the company now? Who do you suppose is more than happy to manage their training? I suppose watching you work all those years, he wanted to put a new spin on an old family recipe."
"Leave my family the hell out of this." Palpable fury rolled off of her as she started to rise. She'd begun to rise from the bench without realizing it. He grinned at the display; he couldn't help it. There was a dark hilarity to someone being insulted on behalf of that little prat, playing prison warden on his secluded little island. "You said it yourself. Seventeen years in the dark for Spencer's project to unfold practically unimpeded. And believe me, your nephew- who also runs the prison facility out there for Umbrella, I might add- knows exactly the kind of people he's working for."
The fury she projected took on an edge of pain in his head. If this was a passive ability, he'd need to wrap this up quickly before it boiled over into an active attack, or he would have a real problem on his hands. Wesker went in for the kill. "I met him once, in '89. One of the board members had told him he took after his father. He would have murdered that man on the spot if he'd been able to get away with it. You spend enough time around William Birkin and learn to pick up on that sentiment rather quickly." Ah, family. A reliable sore spot.
Marigold actually bared her teeth with fury. "What in the hell do you want from me?!" Marigold demanded, not waiting for an answer. She stalked up to him, attempting to feint a clumsy punch before catching his arm and tossing him over her hip. She seemed to know some things about sparring - leverage and dealing with a larger opponent, for example.
Wesker went down, but he did have training on his side. He kicked her legs out from under her, and they both rolled back to their feet. Marigold snarled and ran at him, pivoting hard at the last moment to kick out in a move she must have seen in a film at some point. It connected, but Wesker stepped out of it easily, catching her by the back of the neck - again - and driving her down to the floor, hard.
Marigold was furious. He'd goaded her into the same damned situation as last time, and here she was. Face planted into the floor.
She started to push back to her feet, when a knee was planted into her back, with her uppermost arm levered over it in a hold she didn't recognize. Fighting against it hurt, though. The other hand remained on the back of her neck, pinning her upper body effectively in place.
The hand on her neck squeezed, just enough to get her attention. She froze. Waited. Then, very slowly, let herself relax.
No blackout this time. No shock. She had been too dammed angry, and fury alone had overridden it this time until she could process it properly. In its place was a sudden sharp awareness of just how close he was.
Marigold had read studies on skin hunger. They had been looking at neglected children in those volumes, the need for familiar touch for the sake of developmental health. Isolated as she had been out of self-preservation, Marigold had struggled with depression for the first year or so after her affliction had set in in 1968. Those wild parties she'd attended from time to time had rarely been more than about simple contact for her, though the other attendees would attest differently.
That was academic, almost clinical in her own deployment. This…wasn't.
Marigold became aware of her own breathing, hard and harsh, unsteady. His thumb had started to push in a firm circle against the back of her neck. The adrenaline from her outburst was still coursing through her veins. The immobilization, combined with the contact and pressure came close to making her dizzy. Overwhelmed.
Finally, she found her voice. "You did that on purpose." Her voice pitched low, unsteady.
Wesker chuckled. The vibration of it traveled through his body into hers. The hand at her wrist relaxed, then released to start gliding along her back and side, alternating pressure. It was…soothing. Marigold pushed her body towards that sense of pressure on her skin.
The dizzy feeling shifted into something trance-like, almost euphoric. She'd experienced this once before, a very long time ago, before she had changed; it had become meaningless trivia when touch carried the risk of hurting someone. Now it was back, with all the accompanying scents, and sensations of her heightened senses. Warmth pooled in her belly. Her skin felt flushed. Warm.
Then the touch was gone. Marigold started, then sat up, slowly. Wesker still knelt over her. So close. She started to shy away, but a hand at her jaw stopped her cold. "Still in control?"
Marigold managed to glare at him. "In a manner of speaking."
"Then we may have a temporary solution to the sleep problem. You haven't been, you realize. Not really. I imagine you haven't since Arklay." She didn't need to answer that. She still felt a veneer of calm over her from a moment ago, though her unease was rising under it once more.
Wesker stood, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. This close, the gesture felt fraught, loaded. She knew that he had her off-balance. "It's been nearly a day and a half for me. I need less than before, but I still need it. There's something we can try." Marigold must have looked worried because he stepped in even closer. "If it doesn't work, no harm done."
Bad idea. Bad, terrible idea, and he hadn't actually said what it was yet, but he was close and she couldn't concentrate.
She was still wary. "No drugs. They only make it worse."
"No. This way." Wesker turned, taking her arm firmly in one hand. She trailed in his wake, realizing after a moment that they were going in a different direction. "Where..."
"The bed in your room is much too small for this. Unless you'd prefer that." The implications took several seconds to sink in. She felt her cheeks flush. This was such a bad idea.
But the siren song of decent sleep was so strong.
He released her arm at the threshold of his own door and let himself in, letting her flounder at the doorway. Sitting down on the bed, he pulled off his boots and tactical jacket, until he was down to just boxers and a t-shirt. He ignored her staring in disbelief.
It was one thing to understand that he had gone through military training in the intervening years, but now she could see just how much he had filled out. She'd seen her fill of eye candy, but touch was taboo, something to be snatched in meager scraps. And now…
Marigold wished she had something pithy or cutting to say, but all she could think about was how her mouth was watering. His scent was rising again. She'd been growing inured to it over the last half hour.
"I'll set a timer for three hours." He said, taking off his watch and activating the countdown. Enough for a REM cycle, and a bit more. Come on." He shifted himself over onto the bed, waiting.
She stepped through the threshold, and the door hissed closed behind her.