Alexia registered the gunshots before he did, and before Grayson could ask if she'd heard that too, she'd already gone.
In the foyer, he found Alfred hunkered down behind the balustrade. Grayson started toward him, and a bullet (he realized, later, that it had been pretty stupid of him to go bumbling into crossfire, and that the bullet, had it hit him just an inch or so to the right, would have killed him) cut a hot, bloody line across his forehead, and lodged into the wall.
"Stop hidin'!" cried Steve, from somewhere below. Then, with all the bravado expected of a seventeen-year-old boy who overestimates himself, he demanded: "Come out and fight me, Alfred!"
Grayson leaned over the balustrade and peered down: the kid was pressed up like a spider into the corner where the stairs joined the wall, out of the Walther's sight-line. If Alfred wanted to get the kid, he'd either have to go down there himself, which would leave him wide-open, or he'd have to keep blind-firing and hope the panic would be enough to jostle Steve into his sights for a take-down.
Steve noticed him, then, and he popped off a shot, but Grayson swayed back, and the bullet missed, punched a hole into the ceiling. A rill of plaster trickled onto his shoulder, and Grayson coughed. "You keep firing like that," he said, reasonably, "and you're gonna waste what little ammo you probably got, Burnside."
"Fuck you, Harman!" Another shot cracked off, but it went wide and struck the section of balustrade ten feet to Grayson's right, chipping the lacquered wood. Then Steve's voice came out like a scrape: "I want Alfred down here, right fuckin' now !"
Alfred looked at him, and Grayson wanted to tell him to not even think about it, to keep his fucking head down, but the words never made it from his brain to his mouth: Alfred rushed the stairwell and fired at Steve, each shot straying a little too close for the kid's comfort because he was running like a panicked rabbit and clambering over one of Alexia's doll showcases. The glass shattered, and Steve yowled; several large shards of glass bristled like sharp, jagged diamonds in his face.
"Alfred, come on," said Grayson, loping down the steps after Alfred. Alfred ignored him, striding toward Steve with the unhurried pace of a hunter who knew his prey was cornered and wounded, cold hate freezing the blues of his eyes into rocks of ice. Then he stopped. Someone pushed a gun to Alfred's head.
"You're done, Ashford," said Jill Valentine. Grayson guessed she'd been hiding, waiting for an opportunity to get the drop on Alfred. Then, to Steve, "You okay?"
Steve was whimpering, sitting cross-legged and doubled-over, picking glass out of his face. Blood dripped onto the marble. "Fuck," he hissed, digging his fingers into his skin to push out a big piece of glass, "this fuckin' hurts ." He managed to get it, pulled it free with a howl of pain. Blood gushed down his cheek; that particular shard had been lodged pretty deep, just under his eye. "I can't goddamn see outta my right eye," he whimpered, stumbling to his feet.
"Your eye's still there," Jill told him. "You've probably got glass in it. Tiny particles."
"Fuck this stupid thing!" Steve cried, kicking the showcase. What was left of the glass exploded and tinkled to the floor. Making his way to Alfred now, his right eye screwed shut, Steve put out a hand to grab him. But never made it that far. The tile erupted behind him, and one of Alexia's hypha uncoiled and snapped like a whip, catching Steve around the ankle and throwing him to the floor like a sack of rocks.
Alexia was standing at the balustrade now, gloved hands curled around the railing. "Enough, Valentine," she said, looking down at Jill. "Let my brother go."
Jill ignored her, and said to Alfred, "Drop the fucking gun."
The hypha whipped Steve up into the air, and he dangled there like a hooked fish, wriggling and swearing, his head swelling with blood as it all rushed down and settled there. Grayson saw something fall out of his pocket, but neither Alfred or Alexia seemed to notice it, or maybe they just didn't care. "If you don't lower your bloody gun, Valentine," said Alexia, acidly, "I'm going to fling Burnside so hard against the ground he'll be nothing but a meat stain."
"If you really wanted to, Ashford, you could take me out with one of your tentacles," said Jill, staring up at her. "But I gotta gun to your brother's head, and my finger on the trigger." A smile curled her lips, strained with a certain nervous tension that was trying to pass itself off as confidence. "Don't want any accidental discharges, right?"
Grayson wondered why Alfred didn't just disarm Jill; he certainly had the necessary hand-to-hand skill. He guessed the chelator Marigold had dosed him with had left him feeling like shit, and on top of that, Alfred hadn't really eaten or slept since he'd arrived in Antarctica; he was in a rough shape—rougher than the rest of them. They, it seemed, were at an impasse. If Jill hurt Alfred, Alexia would kill her, and if Jill let Alfred go, Alexia, Grayson knew, would still kill Steve, to tie up loose-ends and to make the point that she wasn't someone to be fucked with. And Jill didn't stand a chance, in the end; she'd die by Alexia's hyphae, or die by Alexia's fire.
So he wanted to try something. Although it wasn't something he could consciously tap into, at least not yet, he could still feel the mycelium beneath the floor, in the walls. Grayson focused on it, concentrated on following its lines like the lines on a map, until he located a good entry-point.
There.
His vision fuzzed around the edges, and he pulled, as if he were ripping out an old ground-wire. Alexia swore as the hypha erupted from the floor in a spray of marble chips and dust, unfurling over the balustrade and pinning her to the wall. Jill took the opportunity to dive on whatever had dropped out of Steve's pocket, and to get the kid out.
Alfred said, "What are you doing to my sister, Grayson?"
"What's it look like?" he managed to squeeze out, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw began to hurt. Alexia was fighting him for control over the mutamycete, and she was winning. Grayson could feel his hold on it slipping. No surprise, he thought. She's got more experience with this shit.
Then his hold broke, and the control was ripped from his hands by Alexia. Steve never made it through the door, but Jill did. Grayson guessed she'd found one of Alexander's old keys while she'd been poking around the mansion. Steve screamed as the hyphae dragged him back, scrabbling at the tile for handholds that didn't exist, sucked down through the floor into the bowels of the mansion, and ferried to his final destination along the mycelium's tributaries.
A tense silence gathered in the foyer. Alexia was the first to speak. "How dare you," she said, descending the stairwell, watching him the whole time with a look of betrayal. "Who's side are you on, Grayson?"
"I don't want anyone to die, okay?" he said, because it was true.
Alfred joined his sister's side. "She was going to shoot me," he said.
"Yeah, I know," said Grayson. "But she didn't. Wouldn't. She did that, Lex would have killed her, and Jill knew that." He looked at Alfred, then Alexia. "Look," he said, "we've spent enough time dicking around." The twins stared at him, their expressions unreadable. His body tingled uncomfortably, like it was full of static, and his head throbbed. "We need to get down to that bunker before this place blows," he continued. "Who knows when Spencer's gonna pull the trigger? And that's the worst part. We don't even know how much time we've got. Could be days, could be hours, could be minutes or seconds. And you've both been squandering our graces with this stupid game of yours. Let them go. Maybe they don't make it out, or Wesker kills them. We have our own problems to deal with, okay?"
"What about a way out?" asked Alexia. "Chris Redfield is the only person who can fly the bloody planes."
"Fuck Chris Redfield," said Grayson, hotly. "Fuck that whole idea. Just suck up your pride, Lex, and call Umbrella once we're in the bunker."
"I could fly," said Alfred.
"Not in your present condition," said Alexia. "Perhaps we could still use Burnside as a bargaining chip."
"Are you really that adverse to calling Spencer?" asked Grayson, looking at her.
"For my own sake as much as yours," said Alexia. "If he finds out about your abilities, Grayson, Umbrella is going to make a study of you." She paused, then said, "Besides, if Spencer continues to believe I'm dead, it lends me the element of surprise. He won't be able to hound me whilst I make the necessary preparations to wrest the company from him. And I worry what he might do should he discover Auntie Marigold is still alive."
