Note: this chapter refers to two brief encounters with Annette Birkin in 1981 (Flowers and Ash, chapter 12) and in 1998, early in the outbreak (Ashes in the Fall, ch 18, 24)

The unit of HCF recruits from the first wave had been badly maimed, and the survivors had been thoroughly shaken by how damned prepared Alfred Ashford had been for them. It almost seemed like he'd been waiting for someone to come at him, so he could finally unleash the horde of monsters and traps that had awaited them.

Unleashing the T-Virus had bloodied the military and prison population just as badly, if not worse. The second wave came in strong, backed by a fresh wave of T-Virus victims, and swept up the field-tested survivors with them. Those recruits would be on their way to forming the core of a true BOW control force with a few more missions.

The second wave set up a sandbag-sided foxhole by the wall of the training facility while the first wave settled in to regroup and lick their wounds. One of these solidiers, a young man going by the name of Segers, saw a huge mercenary carrying a slight figure draped over his shoulder. The figure was lean, in the same uniform as them, but with a black bag over their head and wrists bound in front of them with zip ties. The soldier, having seen too many zombies in one day for their liking, stood quickly. "Dude. Take the wounded OUTSIDE the barrier!" He shouted. "Do not let them reanimate in here!"

The mercenary grinned at the man, crossing the space to set the figure down against the sandbags. The figure was a woman - slumped against the barrier, limp. She had the same armament as the rest of them, with an additional bandolier of throwing knives. A specialist?

"Not wounded," the mercenary explained. "This little thing was brought in with the commander. Special toy to point and release when the time's right. She ain't bitin' nobody, or she woulda done it already. See this?" He pointed to a tube protruding from the bottom of the bag. A canister on the other end was clipped to the gun harness around her shoulders. "P-Epsilon gas. It's what they use to knock down the really big ones, but it stops working after a while. Hadda keep 'er quiet for the ride in, and I got one more can we can use until they're ready to let 'er loose. If they try to hit 'er with more of it after that, it'll probably just piss her off. We just gotta babysit a little bit in here until the party's ready to start." The mercenary glanced around at the wounded who'd headed infection and gave a vicious grin. "Let's see that skinny fucker in his fancy house deal with this."

The two surviving prisoners fled the palace on foot, heading for the airfield. Wesker sighted them both through his binoculars and allowed himself a low chuckle. Two young people with red hair. One, almost unbelievably, was the younger sister of Chris Redfield. The logs had shown she had been caught raiding the Paris facility and had done significant damage.

From Agent Wong's report, the girl had been one of two - the other an RPD rookie - that had managed to take down William Birkin in his fully mutated form. Chris had clearly taught the girl a few things when she was younger, and she'd had the grit to use those skills to survive.

The other, Steve Burnside, had been caught stealing data with his father in the black market. The boy was clumsy, and unpredictable. More often than not, Ms. Redfield would constantly have to stop and protect the boy from his own stupidity. But the records reflected that the boy's father had been introduced to Alfred's favorite means of interrogation, and hadn't survived the experience. He was unpredictable, had a petty criminal's grasp of improvised weapons and explosives, a seasoned protector (the girl was just as much of a bleeding heart as her brother), and a hardline vendetta against his former warden. Mostly an idiot, but an idiot with a grudge, left alone was the best sort of distraction, so long as one kept out of the blast radius. Chief Irons had been living proof of that.

The girl only wanted to get off this island. The boy though, might not care so long as he took his enemy down with him. Wesker had ordered HCF to give the prisoners a clear berth while the second wave settled into their encampment. Alfred had noticed, and focused in on the pair like a hawk sighting prey.

And proceeded to underestimate them. Wesker could hear Alfred screaming incoherently from his viewpoint on a nearby hill. The rumours of his deteriorating mental state had been true, it seemed. The rumour that Alexia had been sighted within the place itself were still unconfirmed, although several men from the first wave had reported as much around both the palace and the facility.

Wesker considered the scene below. Chris Redfield's tenacity at the mansion had been admirable initially, trending into annoying when he and the other survivors had blasted his involvement over any channel that would listen. It had also cast doubt over the viability of any data he brought to the table for HCF. After all, if a few well-trained officers could take out a Tyrant, what use was their data to HCF?

Wesker frowned. Something was off with the Alexia sightings. Furthermore,the two children below were managing what the entire first wave had failed to accomplish. They were making them look incompetent.

The radio crackled to life, Segers' voice registering as lightly panicked. "Sir, the…subject? That stuff you gave us isn't going to keep working so good soon. I think she's waking up. But we got bigger problems."

He'd slipped the mask over Marigold's face on the plane, and she'd only had a flash of understanding - of panic, and white-hot anger - before slipping into unconsciousness. The gas was designed to keep down BOWs by going after the virus directly, but it was an older, imperfect formula. The virus was documented to adapt and sometimes even convert the gas into a sort of venom that a BOW could turn back on its assailant. Using the gas this way would keep her down for a time, and the new tolerance would, in turn, go a long way toward preventing any stray USS forces from taking her down themselves. He'd slipped the information card into her shirt pocket to look over later, and understand what had happened.

He tapped the comm at his ear. "What problems?"

"Something big is headed toward us. Not like the worm thing. Those kids took care of that. Something's being funneled through the ground toward our position. The scout called it a troll. But that ain't right."

Wesker sighed. "You're about to meet the berserker of the Umbrella arsenal, I'm afraid. Get the mask off of the subject, uncover her head, and hope that you can hold it off until she wakes up."

The dream came down again. The bright observation room, with a woman in a lab coat and respirator. Behind her were the small anxious sounds of people moving, watching.

Marigold had been having some version of this dream constantly since awakening back in July. Doctor Annette Fletcher, who would later marry William Birkin, had drawn the short straw to interpret her responses in the short time she had been granted consciousness, just enough to draw out a few morsels of information. Any longer would have been deemed too hazardous if the destruction she had left in the basement of Arkaly were any indication.

Spencer had tried to steer the interview towards implicating her brother in something untoward, but Annette had seen her response, whatever she had done, and but a stop to that line of thinking.

For that alone, the woman had had her gratitude. Enough to initial a risky phone call from Chief Irons' office in her brief foray into Raccoon City, before the real chaos had come down hard upon the doomed city. That conversation had played into her dreams more and more over the last few months, weaving into her dreams in an ongoing conversation with a dead woman.

In the dream, Marigold stepped down from her restraints easily. They might as well have been made of smoke. The others in the room, somewhere behind her, receded into the fog of the dream. She raised a hand to her face, remembering the mask that had been slipped over her face on the plane, that moment of panic before the gas had stolen away her strength and consciousness. "Back to games," she murmured.

"Did you expect any different?" The figure in the gas mask asked, voice tinny and distorted.

"No," Marigold admitted. "I wasn't trying to change him. I just needed them to let their guards down. I couldn't have managed this without Alan to convince the others."

'Annette' went quiet. When they had spoken in Raccoon City, Marigold had been about to run aher own personal test on whether she could remotely keep the mutated William pinned down for long enough to let Annette procure some critical supplies. They might have prolonged her life, but in the end, the woman had still died. Her words replayed in the dream, disjointed, but still largely prescient. "You wanted to know what you're dealing with. That. That is what you're dealing with. That, but more…more willing to get blood on his hands. Others' hands. I don't think I'm telling you anything you haven't guessed at yourself." The bitterness began to creep back into her voice, and the words began to come faster. "I lied to them, you know. All of them. They would have torn you apart if they thought you could viably reproduce. I didn't want any part in it - I hadn't developed the stomach for it yet - so I falsified the report so they'd close the damned file. Tell me you haven't wasted that."

Back in that police station office, Marigold had been momentarily stunned. "I never asked if they'd figured it out. Annette…"

Here in the dream, Marigold simply nodded. "I did the best I could, but it's catching up with me. If they'd waited a few more weeks I'd have an entirely new set of troubles."

"Don't assume you can manage this," The memory echoed. "You might do marginally better than others if only because you were a project. You're symbolic. If you're offering what you're offering, then you know what people are willing to throw away for-" Annette cut herself off, breathing harshly.

"I have an idea, now." Marigold said quietly. She looked around, brow creasing. "I can smell flowers. If we're where I think we are, they should have been moved to a different lab. Did Alexander leave them here?" She sniffed the air. The roses. Her roses, troublesome little things that they were. Why were they crowding into her dreams?

There was a distant sound of shouting from down the hall. A deep thump of inhuman footsteps, and the emergency lighting switched on to bathe the room in a deep, bloody red. The faint details of the room began to fade, and Annette receded back into the fog. Her voice took on a distant echoing quality as the dream began to break down.

You wanted to feel normal. You wanted to feel real*. Can you let go of that?*

I wish I'd been able to get to know you. Marigold thought. I'm glad Grayson found you, even though it probably means he thought Alexia was dead. When I was told she was dead I was ready to burn it all down, for a while.

I'm scared to see them all again. I just want them to be okay.

And then what? The phantom asked.

I don't know. I never know. I only act, and react, and hope I don't destroy everything I care about in the process.

The phantom persisted. What do you want, Marigold Ashford? This is still in your hands, but it won't stay that way.

I don't know.

A lifetime of talking to researchers blending into one dissonant voice. Let's abstract away the idea of you then. What does Placidia want?

…I think Placidia was the wrong name. Do I look calm to you?

The voice chuckled. It's what they wanted from you, and they got it, for a long time. You hit the next stage the instant you let him in. You better figure out who you are then. What that makes you.

…I know.

I know what I am.

Segers had drawn the bag off the woman's head- and immediately realized that it had been there not so much as to obscure her vision, but to protect her from vengeful allies until she awoke. The woman was very like a dead ringer for the dead twin that Alfred Ashford had been screaming about. The mercenary who'd brought her in -Davies - glanced over with a grim nod. "Mask off, but I think hood up, yeah? It's probably a lookalike they fixed up with a dye job, but she gave everyone the willies at base camp. A little extra effect to break 'im, I think."

Segers nodded, pulling the mask off her face and reaching to grasp the hood clipped to the back of her tac shirt. Someone had been thinking ahead there.

The woman's eyelids twitch and began to flutter open as he raised the hood. Only years of training kept him from falling back on his rear in instinctive fear. The woman's eyes were a mottled orange-red, struggling to focus, and the low light gave them an unearthly sheen.

Beyond the sandbag walls, the deep, rumbling footsteps were drawing closer. Someone behind them shouted, and opened fire. The beast roared picking up speed.

The commander had told them it was a Tyrant.

The woman's gaze sharpens at the sound and focused on Segers' face. She sat up with a groan. "Tell your idiots," she said in a crisp British accent, "to cut that noise out and get to cover. Those rounds aren't nearly enough."

Segers went numb. The accent was close enough that she might have been a relative. How long had they been prepping this one? "What are you going to do?" He crept back from her, stamping down the animal drive to flee.

The woman smiled, a sharp mirthless slash across her face. With a sharp pull and a twist of her forearms, the zip ties snapped and fell away. "I'm going to get rid of it, of course." With a fluid, almost boneless motion that he associated with dancers, the woman got her feet under her and straightened, turning toward the sound of the approaching Tyrant.