5:13 a.m.

As they approached the station, Ada began to outpace Marigold by half a step, moving in front. "Are you clear on your cover story?"

"I don't mind if you keep calling me Callie, it helps keep things organized," Marigold responded in a dry voice. "I'll stick with what I have. Yourself?"

Ada glanced back at her. "They know me as a reporter around here. I'll have to be careful - one of the real reporters I work with got himself arrested fairly recently when he got into Annette Birkin's face one too many times."

Marigold blinked at the back of Ada's head. "They got married, then?" She shook her head. "I suppose they would have. I keep forgetting how incestuous the remote labs have to be if they're to avoid clawing the walls down with cabin fever."

Ada paused, then looked back, longer this time. "You know, it's really easy to forget that you're fifty, and then you open your mouth."

"Don't forget the seventeen-year blank spot where I keep wondering how to avoid a party for my upcoming thirty-third," Marigold shot back in a pleasant tone. "I'm glad Daniel remembers me, then."

They rounded the corner, quieting. The police station loomed up ahead. Marigold hadn't lingered long enough last time to take a good look at it, but…"wasn't that a museum, before?"

Ada snickered. "Good memory. Yes, and they've barely had time to move in. It wouldn't be possible for them to be less organized right now."

"It's quiet." Marigold said after a moment. "I didn't think it would be."

"Nothing's happened, as far as any of ours can see." Ada prodded.

Marigold shuddered, balled her hands into fists. "As far as you can see, yes. Let's just get this done and get the hell away from here." Below their feet, Marigold was beginning to feel that ice-pick sting of being this near the NEST, and the virus' more violent cousin.

Falling into a comfortable silence, Ada crossed the street, taking a well-worn garden park path through the trees to cover their approach.

Marigold followed.

The station was nearly deserted.

"End of a shift, and everyone's working overtime," Ada murmured, drawing Marigold into a hallway just inside the main entrance, on their right. One glance at the massive art pieces prominently displayed inside told Marigold more than she wanted to know about how this place was run, and she fought back a grimace. "There's a staircase on the far end that will take you to the second floor. Do you want to wait in his office?"

Marigold shook her head, shaking her hair out to obscure her face. "That will look too much like an ambush." It absolutely would be an ambush, but things would go more smoothly if Irons felt secure at the start. "I don't know if he'll be alone. We'll reassess if that becomes a problem. Besides, you may have more trouble than I will. You may want to wait a moment after I go in."

Ada frowned, not breaking stride. "We can work that out when the time comes. I don't like the idea of loitering around in the hallways, waiting for them to return. Too exposed."

The door to the stairs lay ahead. Ada reached out to push the door open, only to be stopped when Marigold placed a soft hand at her elbow, raising a finger to her lips. Her eyes darted to the bathroom, where she could hear a woman sniffling. Here in this dark corner of the station, she obviously didn't want to be found.

Marigold smiled at Ada, making an after-you gesture at the bathroom door. She slipped her other hand into her bag. Ada had snidely brought an issue to light earlier that Marigold had managed to overlook in the surreal little dance of the last few weeks. If they had to wait on Irons somewhere anyways, dealing with that now was as good a pretense as any.

Well, Marigold thought to herself. If Irons fancies himself an art collector, I wonder how he'll like a shiny new Trojan Horse?

Katherine Warren was having the worst day.

A police car had arrived at her door not two hours earlier. Her father, the mayor, had left the city on urgent emergency business. This kind of thing seemed to happen more and more these days. Katherine, all of twenty years old, was used to all of this. She had a good life: she was studying business administration at the university in town, all while campaigning for president in the school's sorority. Raccoon City's rise to prosperity had been the envy of the country, and it had all been done while her father was at the helm.

And the company, of course. Her father never let her forget where their good fortune came from. So what if the security at school suddenly was replaced by ex-military types? Big Pharma was a tough business. Security was critical for them.

Obviously.

This summer though…things had started to get really scary. A few of her classmates had stopped coming to lectures, and no one knew where they had gone. The polite fictions of her upbringing came under strain.

Looking back, she might have breezed by it had she not started meeting that cute reporter, Ben Bertolucci, for lunch on Fridays. He'd been a little scruffy, a little rough looking, but…different. Passionate about doing some good in the world. And the situation this summer…worried him. Too much got swept under the rug. Too many people looked away when terrible things happened. Just look at that awful business with STARS.

And then Ben had disappeared. Arrested, his partner told her when she had checked in after missing their last lunch. Kicked over the wrong hornet's nest at the wastewater treatment plant.

Now she had been escorted to the police station, for her own safety, so to speak. Uncle Brian would keep an eye on her while they got everything under control. Or so she'd been told, anyhow. Uncle Brian himself was out, talking to the goddamned FBI, apparently.

Meanwhile, she was hiding in a bathroom, trying not to cry in front of any of the other cops here.

Or she would have been, had Ben's partner not stumbled into the same bathroom, almost as if she'd been shoved through the door.

Katherine backed up, startled. "Miss Wong?" She asked in a weak voice. God, she hated sounding like a little girl at a time like this, but no one would explain anything.

Ada's eyes widened, and she gave the girl a tired smile. "Katherine Warren, I didn't expect to see you again." She stepped forward, suddenly softer and gentle. "I got a tip about Ben, so I came down here early. Are you alright?"

Katherine trembled and shook her head. "No one will tell me anything. An officer picked me up from home a little while ago. No one's even here." Her eyes shone with tears she refused to shed. "That hasn't happened before."

Another woman, probably around Katherine's age, stepped in behind her, looking dejected. The woman had light brown hair that reached her shoulders in a messy bob, and had her arms wrapped around her middle as if that were the only thing keeping her together.

She was clutching a small pharmacy bag in one hand. The woman flicked her eyes up to meet Katherine's, giving a strained smile. "Oh - I'm sorry," she said in a soft voice. Miss Wong glanced back a little sharply but stepped aside to let the other woman in. "My brother called me and told me to meet him here a little while ago. I didn't want to get kicked out before he showed up." She smiled at Miss Wong in apology. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. You looked like you knew where you were going."

Katherine's eyes sharpened. "He works for Umbrella?"

The woman blinked at her. "I - yes! I just moved here for a job, so I'm staying with him. He wouldn't tell me anything either though." The woman bit her lip. "I'm Callie."

Katherine's eyes fastened on a small box clutched in Callie's hand. She hadn't become president of her sorority by being inattentive. More to the point, here was a lovely, mundane thing that she knew how to deal with. "I'm Katherine. Does your boyfriend work here too?"

Callie made a face and actually blushed. Katherine, so, so desperate for a distraction, missed how Ada's eyebrows rose, just a bit. "Noooo. He's not my…I just needed to take this." She nodded to the stalls. "I just wanted to do this somewhere quiet."

Katherine smiled, practically shining with relief. Dealing with pregnancy scares in her circle of friends was one thing she absolutely knew she could handle right now. Given how weird and scary the last few hours had been, this was practically a gift. "Don't worry. Honestly, it's better not to be alone right now."

Callie gave her another shy smile, and stepped past her towards the stalls. Katherine's eyes slid over to Miss Wong. "Can they keep holding him? I thought they had to press charges."

Miss Wong sighed, and slumped a little. "That's normally true. I was supposed to talk to someone in a bit, once the shift change happens." She gave Katherine a sad smile. "I'm sorry, dear, I don't know much yet. I'm afraid that I have few friends here…"

"So you're hiding near an exit," Katherine finished. "There's a big office upstairs you could wait in - they…um. Stopped using it earlier in the summer." STARS had indeed stopped using their office since the team had been dismembered, then disbanded, in that order. Some of the stories she'd been hearing around campus were horrible.

Stop it, Katherine thought. Out loud, she called over to the other woman, now shut inside a stall. "I think I want to hear more about Callie's boyfriend!"

"Not. My Boyfriend." Oh, Katherine could hear the gritted teeth. She grinned at Miss Wong, who gave her a bemused smile back.

"One-night stand?"

"…no."

"Oooh, a regular affair! Colleague? Is it someone you work with?" Ada supplied, getting in on the game. Katherine gave a small laugh, wagging a finger at Miss Wong in approval.

"I don't want to talk about it, and you are both horrible human beings." came the slightly sullen voice in the stall.

Katherine gave a theatrical gasp. "Is it your boss?!" Miss Wong pressed her lips together to suppress her laughter.

Callie's voice rose just a little, in almost a hiss. "I am trying to pee!"

Katherine snorted. "I am trying to write a soap opera where you are running away with your secret mobster boss, who is secretly your brother's mortal enemy. Of course, you moved here after coming out of a coma, with amnesia. Don't kill my dreams, Callie."

A long pause and the toilet flushed. After a moment, Callie exited the stall. "It's possible…" "Yes?!"

"That I would watch that show."

Miss Wong looked at Katherine fondly. "Clearly Miss Warren is missing her true calling, not running off to Hollywood."

"Ah..." Katherine shrugged. "Everyone thinks they want to do something like that. I do fine here. Maybe one day, though."

Callie pocketed the test - wrapped up in toilet paper - and stepped out to the sink to wash her hands.

Katherine sidled up to her, raising her hands and crossing her fingers like a game show contestant. "No baby, no baby, big money?"

Callie stared at her, then gave a little laugh. "That sounds about the size of it," she replied.

Outside, several police cars pulled into the parking lot. Chief Brian Irons had been up all night. Talking with Umbrella. Talking to the Feds, who were, in turn, starting to talk about the CDC and the military.

What an absolute shitshow. It was Umbrella's shitshow. But of course, they'd been paying him all these years to shovel up all of the shit that leaked out of their polished pristine offices.

He wasn't sure he had a big enough shovel anymore. Umbrella brass had assured them that they were quietly deploying a private security service.

Fuck. If their man on the inside, Alpha Team Captain Albert fucking Wesker (may he rot in hell for leaving him to handle all of this himself), hadn't been able to make it out of the absolute clusterfuck of the mansion incident alive, what good would throwing more meat into the grinder do?

First things first. He needed to check in at base. Mayor Warren had jumped ship at the first opportunity - dispatch had confirmed that little Katherine had been brought in. He'd settle in, get a few winks, and then deal with the rest of the world.

But not before a drink. Irons figured that he'd earned that much. **

In the tiny bathroom, three women looked up as headlights lit up the bathroom window. Several police cars had just returned to the station. The gruff voice of a man who was running up against fifty and losing, barked orders. Katherine stopped laughing, going still. "He's back."

Ada looked at her with sympathy. "They've probably been up all night. I'm not sure I want to run into any of them right now. Everyone's wound so tight that someone's bound to snap."

Katherine sighed. This had been fun, but the real world always seeped in around the edges. "Yes. You're right." She pushed away from the sink. "There's a quiet place on the third floor where I can sleep. I'll walk you up to a place you two can wait first, though."

Callie frowned then touched Katherine on the arm to get her attention. "Hey."

Katherine turned, and Callie was holding a negative test up for the both of them to see. "Big money."

The three of them laughed, a sound born out of desperation to find anything normal, anything controllable in all of this.

As Katherine led the two other women upstairs, it never occurred to her that she would never get a moment of peace like that again.