Occurs alongside Chapter 33

As soon as the elevator doors began to crack open on the live feed, Wesker had been on the move. He'd timed the blocker perfectly; while his core senses were still fully intact, he could no longer 'hear' Marigold's presence, nor sense her physical distress. He had enough data on those fronts, and he'd need to shield himself from a repeat of what she'd pulled off on Rockfort.

Dividing and conquering could have been better, but as battlefields went, he'd chosen worse.

As he strode towards the despoiled laboratory, a man began to scream - a shocked sound, full of pain. It wasn't Alfred, from what he could tell. Something - the hunters meant to clear the upper floors, perhaps- must have got down here once this floor had been breached. Nosferatu, as far as he could tell, was stalking other prey, who were currently seeking their exit.

The show provided by camera feed to the hanger had been delicious. That little red plane Redfield and Valentine had taken in had burnt beautifully.

Other voices joined in the cacophony, though the words weren't clear at this distance. A woman's voice began to bark something at the others, higher and sharper than Marigold's. Doctor Ashford had finally emerged from their hiding place.

As the crumpled door of the laboratory came into sight, he paused in the corridor. They had gone quiet again.

The corridor out here was narrow. The inside of that lab was large enough that he could be surrounded. And McNally had left a rather disgusting mess behind him.

This was the best staging point, then.

Alexia Ashford, grown and practically glowing from what T-Veronica had afforded her, stumbled out of the lab with Grayson Harman, who was clutching a bleeding wound on his arm. Odd, knowing that the man had an interesting healing ability from his file. Irrelevant. Her brother ran out with them in a tweed Brooks Brothers suit. They all looked worn and rumpled. They stopped dead when he stepped from the shadows, making his presence known.

They all looked like they had been caught in some sort of scuffle. He knew McNally was loose; and their fourth was missing from the group. He'd not received any indications of pain through their connection. It was highly likely Marigold had been delegated to hold off the intruder, who was proving to be highly resistant to taking lasting damage.

Alfred and Grayson (wincing in pain) seemed to freeze, Alfred glancing back in alarm. Something in there was snarling. The hunters hadn't made it down that far. Had Nosferatu been interrupted mid-meal?

Alexia looked at him as if she detected the scent of shit in his direction. "Ah. Skulking about, are you? Why am I not surprised." Her voice held a touch of strain, the way someone carrying a heavy weight would sound. But Alexia only carried a small pack with her.

"Because Spencer's itching to blow this place apart." Wesker said, manicuring his tone into something bored, measured. "Do you really think he'll suffer you to live, even if he know you're alive by now?" He allowed himself a faint smirk. "Haven't you heard? Umbrella's practically dead in the water. You really don't have many options to get out of here. McNally wasted his opportunity to get clear of this place, and you saw where that got him. Can you really afford not to negotiate?"

Alexia sneered at him, a spark of cold anger in her face. "The vote's done, you idiot. I'm well aware of what you've been up to." Her lips turned into a cruel smirk, like he was something she was contemplating feeding to those ants upstairs. "I see the other sample you tried to steal slapped you around a bit already. But that's just the kind of day you've been having, isn't it?"

Alexia had started herding the other two backward from the door into the corridor, watching him like she was sizing up a wild animal. Having two injured dead weights at her side was putting her at a disadvantage, and she knew it. If they ran, at least one of them would die. Which to choose, though…

Wesker stepped forward to keep her from getting too much room, stopping in front of the ruined doorway. Alfred started to snicker. Harman looked at Alfred sharply, then back to Wesker, expression warring between concern and a contemptuous sort of satisfaction. Wesker tilted his head.

The snarling inside the lab had stopped a moment earlier, and Alexia's expression had slacked, letting go of…

Shit.

That was all the warning he got when a bolt of pain shot through his head, and a blood-soaked feminine creature slammed him into the back of the corridor, then tossed him bodily into the abattoir of a lab, following close behind.


Alexia herded the others back out of the line of impact, glancing back at Alfred. Her brother looked perturbed about something, but there was no time. "We need to run," she hissed, wrapping Grayson's uninjured arm around her shoulders, and keeping to the center of the corridor. The last thing he needed right now was more contact with the hyphae slowing down any hope of recovery. "I have a chelator in my pack, but we need to get somewhere safe enough to administer it." And, she had to admit to herself, it was much easier to unleash the feral creature her aunt had shifted into rather than struggle to contain her the entire way to the lift.

Marigold would either take Wesker out or slow him down. Alexia had enough insight into the pheromones' effects to get the sense that she'd be the only one unlikely to be physically harmed. She glanced back, the sound of shouts and snarling fading behind them as the three made their way to the lifts.

She just hoped she'd made the right choice for them all.


Whatever had befallen the group had driven Marigold completely feral.

Wesker wasn't unfamiliar with the state; he'd been more than happy to drive her to that point in their bed. Like earlier, he'd applied too narrow a scope to the condition.

Like earlier, that assumption had come back to haunt him.

The blocker had kept him from picking up on her state. While it blunted the edge of her attack, her movements were faster now - not on par with what he could do, but her reckless feral fluidity chipped away at his slight edge.

And whatever was left of her in there knew how he moved, now. He was back on his feet quickly, avoiding the mess. Marigold shot towards him, coming in low. She grappled at him and tried to swing him into the wall. When he braced against it, she held firm and kept running up the wall to land on his back, trying to strangle. Wesker struggled for a moment to loosen her grip, and when the edges of his vision began to darken he swung around and crashed back into the wall to loosen her, flinging her off towards the far wall.

As she struggled to stand, Wesker finally got a good look at her. The woman's head jerked, then went tense and still. Marigold had become deathly pale, veins stark against her skin in a way that suggested her virus was in overdrive trying to preserve its host. Her eyes were both bright and somehow vacant. The las part was familiar, he confirmed, the way he was familiar with the feedback of pleasure before being recently introduced sharply to how it also fed pain.

He was prepared, this time, for the impact. Marigold, as a conscious entity, was barely a part of this. Rather, this was the feral, fluid creature that stepped in when she'd finally given in completely following the mission in Raccoon City -

There was a blade in her hand.

It was less a knife than a shortsword, the sort that had been popular amongst the old men in continental Europe, when dueling scars had been common. A family heirloom, no doubt. Touching. And a problem. He braced for the onslaught.

When she rocketed towards him, Wesker caught her wrist, twisting, forcing her to drop the weapon, and pulling her forward in a headbutt meant to stun. Tossing her down on a lab bench, he reached for a sedative, holding the weakly struggling, still-feral woman down by the neck.

This - the sedative - wouldn't last long, he still needed to search for what the Redfields found. Alexia would be useful to interpret the data, but a viable sample would take them nearly as far, with some time. "So much trouble, and for what?" Wesker gritted out between his teeth. Her eyes dulled, then closed when the needle found its familiar place in her neck.

Something small, a white plastic stick, was poking out of the front pocket of her vest. Wesker cocked his head, reaching forward to investigate. He found three of the objects - preliminary testing devices - each with a strong plus sign in the little window.

Oh.

Wesker's brow furrowed, slowly realizing what he was looking at. The patches would simulate such results, but the way Marigold metabolized toxins…there was a possibility this was real.

"Tch. Sentimental," He murmured to the unconscious woman. It would explain why she'd been avoiding a fight since breaking off from HCF. He let his thumb drag across the front of her throat, possessive. The pheromones, he realized, were part of a functioning reproductive drive. Someone had falsified data, back at Arklay, out of a misguided sense of mercy.

The sedative had only lasted so long, and, between Margiold and the husk of her brother, his invasion force had been shredded during the last few legs of this mission. He found another patch in his kit, placing it directly on her neck to prevent her from snapping back to lucidity too quickly.

By the elevator door was a set of meathooks, sloughed clean of occupants during the skirmish. Her eyelids were already twitching. A cruel smirk played over Wesker's mouth. "Turnabout is fair play, pet." Leverage was a problem for when they were ready to leave, and beyond. For now, a punitive measure would match the one she'd taken earlier on him, though in this case it was corrective.

Marigold woke briefly with a shriek when the hook pierced her shoulder, the gun harness taking most of her weight when it snagged and caught in the intrusion, but he avoided hitting major arteries while he worked before she slipped back under from the shock.

Wesker lingered just long enough to admire his handiwork, shut the vent - the stench really was getting unbearable - and leave a brief message behind before riding up the elevator, into the mansion.