9:00am

The van rolled to a stop after a tense half-hour of driving. No one stopped them, even as the beginnings of a blockade went up around them. On the public radio, there were reports of an investigation of radioactive activity within the Raccoon City limits.

On the hacked government radio, coordination for the first wave of evacuation was finally getting underway. The evacuees would be relocated to a field hospital inside a two-hundred-mile exclusion zone around the city, to be examined, then released.

"How far inside that zone are we," the blood-spattered young woman sitting on the floor of the van had asked during the drive. She'd said her name was Marigold, and the older scientist's eyes had taken on a horrified gleam of understanding when she'd offered it during an awkward pause. In a gruff voice, Bradley had replied "The drop point for you is about one hundred-sixty miles outside the city. Headquarters is a few more hours, well outside that."

The scientist had stayed quiet, even as the younger brood in the back seat whispered to each other in confusion. Then, he said quietly, in a voice of quiet resignation. "So you never left, then."

"It really wasn't left to me, Doctor Blackenberg," she had replied in a gentle voice.

The older scientist - Blackenberg - sighed. "I wish you hadn't shown up at my conference. Remember, back in Munich?"

She laughed a little. "I remember." She paused. "I didn't know. What…they were capable of." She had given him a little smile. "For what it's worth - not much, I know - I'm sorry for that."

Bradley hesitated now, idling in the warehouse parking lot. The van was now thoroughly contaminated, and the other passengers would continue with him in another car. The supplies he'd brought into the city were all thoroughly distributed to his designated drop points. Marigold hopped out of the car, looking pensive and a bit more tired than she had been at the beginning. Adrenaline highs are followed by a crash, he reasoned to himself. Somehow, that reasoning felt hollow, but it was a simple and sturdy thing to cling to.

The woman was assigned to do her decontamination and initial debrief here, before the final evacuation. The spook who had brought her was waiting inside and had issued the order for them to go ahead. She was staring at the building now, a tightness around her eyes. At some point, she had pulled a small padded envelope from her bag, and was now clutching it resolutely.

Bradley took a step toward her to ask if she would be alright - and froze when she turned to look at him. The van had been dark enough to miss the detail, but out here in the sunlight, with her complexion, it was striking. "Miss, your eyes…" He stammered.

She stared at him, then gave a tight smile of resigned comprehension. "Ah. Thank you, Lieutenant," she said, taking a few steps back, and away from him. "I will be fine. It will, however, be much safer if I do not accompany your group the rest of the way." She looked back at the warehouse, expression turning grim. "You should be off. I'll be fine. But…thank you." With that, she ducked her head, turned, and pushed her way through the warehouse doors.

Then she was gone.

They stood frozen, the soldier and his four ex-Umbrella charges. The car was an old station wagon, and the truck would barely fit the meagre notes they had smuggled out with them.

It would be a tight fit for the next several hours. It was still vastly better than what would have befallen them had they stayed behind, and they all knew it.

Doctor Blackenberg broke the silence. "Come on," he barked at his team, breaking them out of their reverie. Bradley blinked, then followed.

The keys had been stashed under the sun visor, and a cooler of sodas was dug out of the back by one researcher, while another found snack bars. Food was gratefully passed around. Several minutes passed, and the researchers - slightly less cramped, began to fidget in the back under the weight of their curiosity.

Bradley glanced back at them, then at Blacksburg. He pulled over, and reached for the cigarette lighter. With his knife, he pried it open, revealing a blinking green light. He met Blackenberg's eye, whose mouth tightened with understanding. The device, a disguised audio recorder, he tossed out the window, before putting the car into drive again and starting back down the road. Fuck protocol. They had all the recordings they could ever want from the van. "I would also like to know. What she said she did on that course is impossible." He paused. "But what we saw was also…"

Blackenberg laughed sharply. "Hardly, but for a normal human, yes." He sighed. "It's not impossible, but the company never could make that kind of function without the mutations."

A researcher in the back, a small woman with a tight black ponytail, spoke up. "But you said -"

"That they couldn't make it." Blackenberg said, voice patient now that they were on the road. "That woman back there was Edward Ashford's daughter. One of the founders. I was a junior researcher back when her death was announced. Her nephew is the only Ashford left known to be alive." He paused. "Was known. There were quite a lot of mysterious deaths in that family after the company had announced hers, back in the early eighties."

Bradley stared. "Rockfort Island," he stated, and Blackenberg nodded. He'd seen the resemblance to the man who ran the training facility but had set it aside. Anyone who wasn't in on the secret would do the same. It was a clever bit of camouflage. It had also clearly, at some point, failed catastrophically. "She didn't break a sweat with those hunters either. I know that the one snagged more than just her jacket. I saw the blood."

After a long moment, watching the fall countryside roll by, Blackenberg spoke again. "Someone was testing her abilities, weren't they? Your man on the radio." The man tapped his own ear the mimic the headset Bradley wore. "They did it when the mansion fell- it was all that was left for them to do. All I know for sure now is that if you ever see her again, the situation will be much, much worse." He turned away, to the window. The researchers in the back huddled together like frightened puppies. Bradley suddenly wondered just how much this man had left behind to escape.

Probably not nearly as much as the woman they had just left at the warehouse, growing farther away with each passing moment.


Back in the warehouse, the heavy door shut behind her with a firm click. The fluorescent brightness of the place last night had changed into something more comfortable, and mostly lit by the light coming in a few high windows.

Her body had thankfully, amazingly, been free of that throbbing, insistent ache during the fight, but it had returned with a vengeance as they approached the warehouse. It was an unfortunately familiar feeling. She was good at masking her discomfort for the sake of those around her - the little birds in the back had had no idea what to make of her, and their poor hearts had been beating so fast she had feared they might give out. But that other feeling…

Arriving at the warehouse was an unexpected relief. Even with what Annette had told about Wesker.

Especially because of it.

She had been absolutely honest when she had told Valentine that they wouldn't deserve what would happen if she had gone off into the wild blue yonder with them, to hunt Umbrella down. And it would be inefficient to work with someone whose humanity waxed and waned on a cyclical basis.

Almost on cue, the cramps whispered their imminent arrival. Before, she would have isolated herself well before this point - except she had only ever gotten this bad the first time it had happened, back in 1972, when she had exiled herself to the moors behind the house out of fear of hurting someone.

Right now, her skin was nearly buzzing with hungry need. She shrugged off the belts that held the chest to her back - the weight of them had given her something else to focus on during the drive - and lowered the chest gently to the ground. When she looked up, Wesker had emerged from the office at the far end. He had lost the jacket and tie at some point.

Once again, she couldn't quite follow the movement, and he was suddenly before her. She stepped back in reflex, but he followed, capturing her jaw in one hand, tilting it up to look at - oh.

That.

I need, I need, I NEED, her body screamed at her, and she felt Wesker still. "A shower," Marigold blurted out, barely able to breathe. "I need a shower." She looked down at herself. She'd managed to use her makeshift shield to block the worst of it but…"Viscera is a touch messy." She thrust the envelope in her hand at his chest, forcing him to take it. "Please tell me there's a shower that's rated for first-degree burns."

"To treat?" Wesker asked. He was still looking at her face with frank interest.

"To give." Pain would redirect the feeling. Had to. Had she really been considering…in this state?

Wesker watched her for a long moment. Studied her. Finally, he nodded past her, deeper into the gloom of the warehouse. The bathroom light was still on, visible through the door on the far wall. "There's a shower back there." He hesitated a moment, then offered, "Six hunters with that equipment was certainly something to see."

Marigold began to drift back towards the bathroom, but smiled in spite of herself. "That kind of fun," she admitted, and turned, calling back over her shoulder, "I mighty I scared your pickup crew though."

She felt the weight of his eyes follow her as she left.


Marigold stared deadpan at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was almost worse than she had feared.

The pale blue of her eyes had shifted to a mottled bloody and orange mixture. It almost looked natural, in a twisted way. She's been expecting damage, burst blood vessels, anything that spoke to pushing her body past its limits.

Alexander had explained this to her once when it had started happening - when she overexerted her abilities, it likely damaged her optic nerves, and the virus rebuilt it to suit itself better. Medicating over the years had tamped down the temporary changes, to a point- but going after Birkin as hard as she had had clearly tipped a balance, and they had settled into something that looked alarmingly stable. She'd pushed well past her previously held limits, after all, without the buttressing effects of her suppressant medication preserving her appearance.

It seemed that a new equilibrium had emerged.

She stared for a moment longer. The reflection failed to retrieve what had been familiar. Finally, she admitted defeat and hung her bag on the hook next to the shower. The sleek bandoliers meant to house the knives she had distributed about her body. She placed them carefully on top of the diaries, then discarded the rest of her attire on a waiting-room chair set by the shower. The little books were small enough to fit snugly at the bottom of her bag, and the chest hadn't been full, to begin with. If anything would draw notice, it would be the pills and tests taken from the drugstore.

If he chose to pry, Marigold could live with Wesker following that narrative if it kept certain underlying truths obscured. She'd been refining that form of misdirection ever since she'd arrived back home on a dreary fall day in 1968.

If she followed through on this, she might not have to resort to paper-thin old tricks.

The water was as hot as she'd expected, though not as hot as she'd hoped. Steam began to fill the room. Marigold began to scrub the errant spatter from her skin, mind drifting back to the warning Annette Birkin had given her in exchange for a few precious moments of time.

You may wish you'd never woken up before long, Annette had said. I can't imagine a more dangerous person alive holding your leash. He's very good at people, but I'm not sure he ever really learned to be a person. Everything he's ever done has an agenda. You may fare better, if only to spite Spencer, but you're playing a dangerous game. Even William was discarded once the company wasn't good enough anymore, and they were like brothers once.

Maybe. Probably. Almost certainly. Don't assume you can manage this, Annette's embittered voice pleaded from her memory. She'd told her more, a great deal more, in that too-short amount of time they'd been able to speak. Knowing what she knew, confirming it with another person who understood that intending kindness was never quite enough…

Knowing that had been worth the cost.

The more immediate problem was that her situation was still the same as it had been last night, with more context. Getting out still meant playing along. Considering how hard the cramps had been coming on, she physically could do little else.

Marigold touched the fading bruise on the back of her neck. It was barely tender now. Almost in response, her insides seized in on themselves once again, worse than before. Startled out of her thoughts, she doubled over with a cry, then leaned back against the tiles to breathe through in ragged gasps until they passed. Dry swallowing several of the pills that Ada had directed her towards while sitting in that tiny bathroom stall at the police station had done exactly fuck and all at stopping any of this at this stage. Just another thing she was hardly managing at this point.

You know exactly what will make this go away, a quiet voice from the bottom of her mind whispered. You were thinking about it the whole way back here. You have the same hunger, but he doesn't starve himself of it.

I was thinking about it the whole way back here. Marigold thought, her mind fogging with pain and that damnable need, because this is the one case where he absolutely deserves what happens.

It was time to take control of the situation. Even if it meant breaking one of her most carefully held rules.

Even if it meant letting go.

Soft cautious footsteps approached the room from outside. He'd heard her, just then. A languid torpor settled over her, a deep calm. Wesker opened the door, seeming to hesitate.

"In here," she managed to croak, voice thick. Footsteps, and then the curtain was eased open. Wesker had one hand carefully easing down to his gun. She remembered the creatures that had been investigating the van when Nikolai had arrived to the pickup. Mutations, he had said. Like it was something commonplace.

She closed her eyes, telling Wesker, Same problem as earlier. No meds. Don't tell me you haven't figured it out.

Wesker visibly took in the sight of her - wet and naked against the wall, flushed and pliant, breathing hard.

Yielding.

"I was under the impression that it was rude to tell a woman she's going into heat." He managed to make the remark sound dry, but it held a sharp edge of want.

She tried to smirk, but it turned into a grimace as another wave of pain rolled through her. "It hurts," she said, like admitting it was worse that the actual pain. Given what Annette had told her, it might have been. She squeezed her eyes shut. It always hurts when it happens. Help me?

(give in)

He was much too far gone to make her ask a second time.

Once he had shed his clothes and stepped inside, burying himself inside of her, Wesker barely seemed to notice when Marigold sank her teeth into his shoulder.