Kate Everett experiences several incidences of sleepwalking over the next few weeks, and will wake crying up from dreams she can't remember for the next several months before they suddenly stop. She tells no one, and her fiancé agrees to do the same.


In the chaos following the Arklay Incursion, as it will be called later, Doctor William Birkin receives a cryptic telephone call, with strict orders not to damage the VP in his care. While the young scientist relished the idea of striking at Alexia, he is more obedient than his predecessor. The matter remains under wraps. A sedation regime is enforced, and it is quickly determined that the subject was too dangerous to be allowed to surface unless under heavily controlled circumstances.


Marcus is reported nearly catatonic with terror in his nearby laboratory, refusing to leave his bed for two weeks. He recovers slowly, but finds that there was an odd cloud of silence that would fall over a room when he appears in the door - more so than before. A few weeks into his recovery, he overhears interns quietly discussing conflicting rumours that Ms. Ashford suddenly retired following her recent visit to the mansion facility in the mountains. He realized that his head is clearer than it has been in years. An exit strategy suddenly seems like a good idea.


Alexander sends the twins to Antarctica and goes back to Rockfort to hold things down following the event. A protocol is in effect. Spencer calls to congratulate Alexia on her debut once she arrives in, and someone else in attendance called Spencer specifically to let him know of their departure. Alexia casually denies that her aunt ever had much time for them, when asked if they had spoken recently about her future in the company. Alfred will as well in the future, after his sister 'passes', though the sense of abandonment hurts far more. The girl is too deep in her ambition, and the boy has been isolated for years.

Soon enough, Alexander will have far more immediate problems of his own to deal with.

A cairn is erected outside Rockfort Island's little graveyard. No body is ever sent home. Alexander is alone now, but not for long. In a few short months, he'll return to Antarctica, where his nightmare will truly begin...


Umbrella operatives- their full militarization is still years away, but mercenaries exist for a reason - move to raid her home a few weeks before Christmas and find the place cleaned out and abandoned by the staff. They note a library with perhaps a handful of fresh ledgers, but the rest has been stripped bare. The unit secures two of the ledgers and is bringing in the team's van when the house goes up in flames. Moments later, explosives are remotely detonated in the basement.

The staff is never found.

The arsonists are never found.

The village is suddenly at the gates, dour eyes and angry questions. The mercenaries leave quickly, with the few scraps they have left. Someone fires a warning shot at the van as they leave. The mercenaries never stop, nor turn back. It's not worth the trouble.


January 1982

"Subject has been brought back to consciousness incrementally. Ludocaine and nitrous oxide feed is currently being administered for the safety of the staff onsite."

Doctor Annette Fletcher had been brought onto the project a year earlier from the New York facility. She knew that they trode on unstable ethical ground with their work. The secrecy alone might not have tipped most researchers off - the pharmaceutical industry was cutthroat over the most banal of matters. The woman lying on the table before her had elevated that creed into an art form, and the company had venerated her for it. At least they had, before they had realized she had been holding out on them in a monumental way.

The respirator was critical, today, in this room. The exposure mechanism wasn't well understood, but they'd cleared the facility for a few critical hours while they ran this test; the events of last November made the necessity of that step clear.

She'd watched the tapes, over and over again. This had been the goal all along. How long ago had she been hiding it? If it were the natural strain, it might be almost useless to them, given how invested in Prototype they were at this point.

Spencer hadn't known; Spencer had insisted on being tied in on a call while they questioned the woman, and decided what they would do next. The thought that they might have had a blueprint all along...

Doctor Birkin (William, she corrected, he said it was alright to call him William) had been irritated following the shock of this woman's display of power while attempting to escape the facility. They had been lucky. Doctor Wesker had been suspicious of this woman for ages (William had finally broken down and told her the story the following day) and had been tinkering with a highly concentrated sedative for a while. Birkin had seen it as frivolous, but had quieted when Wesker mentioned noticing something back at the old lab.

Annette cast a glance toward the two men seated behind her. Both had been sworn to remain silent during the interview to avoid agitating the subject. Spencer calling in might make that effort moot, but they'd do their best.

Sitting this close to a disoriented woman, strapped down and blinking bleary eyes at the ceiling, she felt less than comforted at the notion.

"Miss Ashford, can you hear me." The woman jerked against her bonds, then fell back in confusion. The drug cocktail she was on was meant to have a numbing effect, combined with a light, floaty sort of disorientation. They'd timed the dosages to give then a few short moments of semi-lucidity, enough to answer questions, before going under once more. If they were lucky, she'd think she was dreaming. "You've been sleeping quite late. Tap your finger once for yes, twice for no."

A long pause, and a tap.

Here we go, then. Marigold Ashford tried to wrench her head to the side, looking around wildly. Her field of vision had been restricted as much as possible without blindfolding her, as they needed to record her reactions, but a strap across her forehead denied her leverage.

Denying leverage seemed to be one of the few defenses they really had, at the moment. Annette had a feeling that the patient would be darkly amused at the sentiment.

An unintelligible murmur came from the patient. Annette pressed a straw to Marigold's lips to ease her parched throat. IV fluids really did so little for the feeling of thirst, that was just hardwired. Not too much- just enough to let her speak.

A click, and a burst of static from the conference phone behind her told her that Spencer had been patched in. Bully for them. He cleared his throat noisily, and the patient froze, tracking to Annette with narrowed eyes. So much for avoiding agitation. So much for 'maybe she'll think she's dreaming'.

Spencer spoke through the speaker. "Marigold." His voice sounded dry, almost mournful. "You were always such a dutiful girl." He sighed. Marigold rolled her eyes at Annette, making a face. So dramatic. "So much trouble, all of a sudden. One has to wonder if the Antarctic facility has been hiding a breakthrough. I wouldn't have thought young Alexander would stoop to testing the virus on family, but here you are."

The patient looked nonplussed for a moment, then snorted in derision. She met Annette's eyes in -was that pity? - and shook her head minutely. Annette looked at the two senior researchers behind her. William was looking openly confused and annoyed that they still had to speak with this woman at all.

Wesker...had gone very still. He'd been the one to put this all together in the first place, and either the old man was way off the mark, or he was looking to manufacture an excuse for something.

Annette took a breath, then addressed Spencer directly. "Sir, she seems to disagree with your last statement." Silence on the line. She looked back at the patient. They needed to move this along. It wasn't like the board was on this call. "Her file says that she was on bedrest due to post-malarial issues stemming back to the late sixties, and practically cloistered over the past few years. She would have been about nineteen at the time," Annette said, then really looked at the woman on the table, who by all accounts was in her early thirties. Scrubbed clean, she seemed barely out of high school. She glanced back at the others, nervous. "Sir, have you actually seen her recently?"

Spencer's silence told her what she needed to know. So did the patient's sharp grimace as she looked away. Annette frowned at William. "Prototype is too new for that. How on earth-"

"Sonnetroppe," the patient rasped from the table. She didn't seem interested in putting up a fight. "Not...no." She hadn't known anything about Prototype. How could exposure have even happened? They were so careful.

The three fully lucid people in the room jumped when the sound of glass shattering sliced the tension in the room. Spencer had a fondness for scotch on these calls - just a little, something for the nerves. He'd thrown it with surprising force for a man of his failing health, against the wall. The other two men bolted to their feet, while Annette remained frozen in place. The patient was the only one who seemed calm. She continued, "Father was so excited to tell him...wanted to let me recover first. Away from his little pet," she spat out the last word. Tears streamed down her face, unnoticed.

William finally stilled as the implication sank in, then looked at the phone. "Sir...that facility is secure, is it not? That form..."

"Doesn't survive outside of that facility, no." Spencer still had patience for William, but only barely. "My co-founder brought his children to the site once we broke ground. There was an incident, but...Marcus was quite convinced that his mischief had rather luckily failed. Sonnetroppe doesn't leave survivors." A pause. "That we knew of. There was a rather large pool of evidence."

"The locals," the patient murmured. She seemed to be fading. They didn't have much time. The patient's face tightened as if experiencing a mild headache. She looked at Annette, almost sharp. "Cytopathic effects of norovirus in a macrophage culture," she said. The patient was receding back into oblivion, grasping at any debris she could to keep from sinking, finally failing.

Annette blinked. "That's right, she responded slowly, "I presented that at the Atlanta conference three years back."

"Hmmm," the patient replied, seeming to rest back against her bonds. "Someone outside is calling for their mother. She's been doing it the whole time. Can't you hear her?" The patient's eyes slipped closed, and she fell silent once more.

For once, no one in the room had anything to say.


**Author notes:**
Cytopathic effects of norovirus in a macrophage culture is a semi-random name for Annette's PhD thesis. Marigold is basically telling Annette that she knows who she is.