This story is a collaborative work with MidoriLaboratories, who you can find on this website and on Ao3. Marigold Ashford, who appears in this chapter, is their original character.
His veins burned like hot copper wires, bleeding dark varicose lines of wet ink across his paper-white skin. The wound on his arm, where Nosferatu had barbed him while he'd been scavenging the facility for fuel, still hadn't healed all the way: a wet, half dollar-sized divot that was black around the edges, where the tissue had necrosed. It looked and smelled rotten.
Don loaded a new canister of torpor liquid into the hibernaculum, then set the timer (once he was sure the drain was still operational) and lowered himself into the bath, the liquid hitting his fever-hot skin like liquid nitrogen. Inhaling sharply at the painful hypothermic shock, Don fumbled to secure his respirator, then willed himself down into the bath until he was submerged in icy needle-pain.
Gradually, the pain ebbed into numbness as his pores nursed the cocktail of paralytics and soporifics, and Don could feel himself slowing down. His heartbeat slowed, then his breathing. The fire emptied from his veins, replaced with ice, and his body stiffened, lying stock-still in the torpor-bath like some sci-fi Ophelia.
His thoughts retreated into comfortable gray fog.
A final conscious thought before torpor took him: the antivenin, how close he was to finishing it, and who was that strange woman on his toughbook's cam-feed?
Grayson insulated himself against the cold, then made his way down into the facility, hand resting over the gun-bulge of his coat. The infirmary wasn't too far from the mansion. If he hurried, he could reach it within fifteen minutes—but that depended on how many obstacles, undead or otherwise, were standing in his way.
Fortunately, zombies were easy to deal with. They were slow and stupid enough that he could juke or outwalk them in most cases; it was only in tighter quarters that they became problematic.
And this was problematic. The hallway was tight, a cramped corridor that funneled to the mansion's restricted-access lift on one end, and to a T-intersection on the other. Zombies squatted at the intersection, divvying up the remains of an unfortunate maintenance worker. Grayson counted thirteen carriers. Great, something with his voice said. Unlucky number. Not portentous at all.
One of the zombies raised its head, a pinkish-red tube (Raccoon City had taught him a thing or two about human anatomy, and it was either the esophagus or part of the large intestine) dangling from its mouth like a grotesque egg noodle, and stared toward him with the glaucous, hungry eyes of some starving deep-sea fish.
Sensing fresh people-meat, the others lowed like cattle and stood up, pitching themselves forward in a collective headlong stumble. Grayson kneecapped the first two infected he could effectively sight down, and they toppled forward in a spray of blood, the others tripping over them and sprawling down to the concrete. Then Grayson ran, his long legs propelling him forward in an awkward lope, and he clambered over the pile-up, cutting right, tearing himself free from the snag of eager fingers.
Grayson twisted around, popped two more zombies in the head, and ignored the rest. No wisdom in wasting ammo. He encountered a couple more infected, these ones wearing the scraps of H.C.F polar gear, but he was able to weave around the one, and duck and scramble past the other just as it lunged at him.
As Grayson swung around a corner and slowed, he listened: someone was dragging their feet across the concrete. But it wasn't the mindless shuffle of a zombie; there was a different rhythm to this, a kind of menace.
He readied his gun and squinted into the darkness—there were no lights in this hallway, but there was power: he noticed a tiny red light up on the wall, the glint of a camera's lens watching him with insect-like calm. But Grayson didn't remember there ever having been cameras in this hallway.
The menacing thing drew closer, and slowly the shadows resolved into the tall figure of a man. As the man stumbled closer, Grayson recognized the tatters of a tweed suit. Alexander. Alexander's back heaved and burst, and several long, segmented things, like razor-sharp spider legs, unfurled and snapped taut like a sail.
Run, he thought he heard someone say. A woman. She sounded familiar…
Gunshots, and Alexander snarled in pain. The shots were coming from somewhere down the hall, from deep in the darkness, but Grayson didn't stick around to see who it was. He needed to help Alfred. He fired three shots at Alexander—Nosferatu, he corrected himself. That thing isn't Alexander anymore—before turning to flee in the opposite direction. It would take longer to reach the infirmary now, but he could loop around through the research labs to reach it. Zombies lunged, and were quickly julienned by Nosferatu's limb-mandolin.
He pounded the UP button on the lift that would take him up to the research labs, but the fucking thing was taking too long and Nosferatu was practically on top of him, limbs unspooled and sawing at the air in some blind effort to kill him.
"Grayson, get in the bloody lift!"
The voice was clearer now. Grayson looked. The woman he saw wasn't Claire, but she could have been Alexia if it wasn't for the fact she wasn't. Her eyes reflected the light like a cat's.
The elevator dinged behind him, and he clambered inside.
Right before the doors closed, he saw the woman charge Nosferatu, moving at a speed that put in mind a sprinting Hunter. And then she was gone, and he was riding up to safety, his heart screaming in his chest.
The lift stopped, disgorging him into the research labs. He wiped the cool sweat from his face and continued on to the infirmary. Other than a few zombies Grayson was able to circumvent easily enough, the trip was uneventful. Up until he arrived at his destination, and found scorched concrete, broken glass, and several of those swarm-things crowding the infirmary and pounding at the doors.
But the strangest thing happened, as Grayson inched closer: they stayed docile. That didn't make sense. Two of the creatures turned to him, and they stared. He moved closer. I really don't want to deal with these fucking things. The fucking things shied away like nervous dogs before retreating entirely. Dumbfounded, Grayson stepped inside the infirmary and locked the doors—just in case. What the hell just happened? But there was no time to think about that, or about the woman. He needed to help Alfred. He could think about those things afterward. He could do all the thinking he could possibly want to do about those things afterward, when Alfred was on the mend.
"Grayson?"
Grayson nearly jumped out of his skin, turned. He recognized the woman from his apartment building—his neighbor two doors down. She'd also frequented Jack's Bar with the rest of S.T.A.R.S.
"Jill Valentine?" he said, surprised.
"You remember me," said Jill, grinning. She was dressed in blue polar gear, Private Anti-Biohazard Service emblazoned on the breast-pocket of the jacket, and on her knitted cap. "Small fucking world. Why are you here?"
"I could ask you the same," he said.
"But I asked you first," she said.
Grayson sighed, then said, "I work for the Ashfords."
Her grin vanished. Now Jill looked as if she were measuring him for a body-bag. "You're with Umbrella?"
"Not exactly," he said, peaceably. "I'm just the butler. It was my job before Raccoon City."
"You were a butler," she repeated, as if she couldn't quite wrap her head around the fact that butlers still existed in this day and age.
"That's what I said," he said. He glanced over at the medicine cabinets. Looked as if someone had raided them, and that made him worry. "I'm just here for some antibiotics," Grayson told her. "For my friend. There still some left?"
"Yeah, as long as they weren't in glass," said Jill.
"I saw the scorch-marks," said Grayson, making his way to the cabinet and rifling through the contents. "Molotovs?" He found a plastic bottle of amoxicillin at the back, and sighed with relief.
"Yeah, but it didn't work out too great," said Jill. "More of those ant-things came after we burned their buddies." She looked over at the door, furrowing her brow. Then Jill asked the question Grayson had been dreading she would ask: "How did you get past them?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said.
"Try me."
"I walked by them," he said.
Jill stared. "How?"
Grayson shrugged. "So now it's your turn," he said, pocketing the amoxicillin. "Why are you here? Judging by the name of the organization on your jacket, I'm guessing you're here to investigate Umbrella." He looked at her. "Right? Or you came with Chris Redfield to save his sister. Maybe both."
"You know Chris is here?"
"I didn't until now."
Jill opened her mouth, closed it. Then, "You gonna be a problem?"
Grayson shook his head. "I'm not, but my employer will be," he said. "If she can't cut a deal."
Jill watched him with narrowed eyes. "What kind of deal?"
"A way out," he said. "The particulars, however, you'll have to discuss with her." Grayson patted his pocket, and said, "I need to get these antibiotics back to my friend."
"You said 'she'," said Jill. "Alexia Ashford's your employer?"
"I guess Claire mentioned her."
"And her brother. That's who I'm guessing those pills are for."
"Guess I shouldn't be surprised you figured that out," Grayson told her. "You were S.T.A.R.S."
"Look," said Jill, "I'm going with you, whether you like it or not."
"Alexia's gonna want to talk to you, so I guess that's fine."
