The crows were massing towards the training facility.
Alfred had noticed them starting to flock in that direction, but he had been occupied with the Tyrant, and the mysterious figure who'd turned out to be all too familiar. He was noticing them now.
He glanced to a photo on the wall, taken back in 1976, when he and Alexia had been five years old. Marigold had been carrying him on her back by the seaside, while Alexia ran alongside. Those visits were the equivalent of summer vacation for Alexia, who would be largely released from the brutal pace of her curriculum to spend time with the both of them.
Marigold had been reading them Lewis Carrol in a Devon brogue - something she'd do when feeling playful or angry, he found out later - and teaching then the building blocks of British Sign Language out of a book she'd brought along. The local murder of crows had learned that they could beg her for treats when she visited, and had even started to mimic their voices when prompted.
His father had hated those crows, but hadn't the heart to do anything about them. Marigold had only grinned and pointed out that they massed about the house anyhow - they might as well be taught to be decent neighbours. Their father had simply sighed and dropped the argument, something he was rarely wont to do for anyone else. She'd apparently picked out Alfred's name sign that very afternoon. Marigold herself had chosen "flower" to go with her name, and Alexia had outgrown hers as a moniker, Alfred would always be Crow to his Aunt Callie, shortened from the Latin Calendula asteraceae (the common marigold), **and he'd kept using it long after Alexia had tired of it.
The flock itself had grown a little stranger each year she visited the dreary little island, but they recognized her and the boy- and to a lesser extent, the girl and their father. Their descendants had learned to give him some distance, but still came to him with shinies for treats, much to the chagrin of the local training population. They had learned to keep away from the prison facility out of sheer self-preservation, but the pale, gaunt human on this side of the island was a safe harbour.
Inside the control room, Alfred was reeling. He was suddenly a child again, hearing that she was dead, then reeling again from that brief call that summer. And then…what?
The crows were massing toward Matilda.
Aunt Callie was headed in that direction. Alfred leaned toward the screens. Of course. The few bursts of communication she'd managed since the summer had been strained, as if under duress. He'd had a heartstopping moment where he thought…but no. Aunt Callie had come with a plan.
The Matilda has been constructed as a means for his aunt to test her agility and endurance, but the training camp had taken notice of the difficult nature of the course only a few years after its initial construction. It was a rite of passage for the USS recruits to try their hand at the twisted, obstacle course. It was almost more rusted junkyard than a professional course, but that was the point. A clean test on a simple military course would have prepared no one for how difficult an outbreak could get. It was better to need a tetanus shot (and most did, after running it) than to go into the field with a false sense of confidence.
The official time book, the list of finishing times of those who did finish intact, was held by the officers, and by Alfred himself. Most of the really talented ones finished out around four or five minutes. Of course, the rules allowed for…shortcuts. Managing to complete a shortcut would test the very limits of human endurance, but they existed, and were marked out every time a run touched upon one. Those marks were the bane of a candidate's existence, teasing the idea that someone else had managed to cut through the course in a seemingly inhuman act of strength, when no one else had.
The other bane was the high score at the top of the list, cutting even the best time almost in half. On Marigold's last visit, back in 1981 (seventeen years, his mind reeled) she had hit a new 'skip' point, right at the very end. She'd made it look easy, even though using that point meant that they'd had to install a 'brake' wall so that she wouldn't crash right into piles of rusting scrap metal from the momentum she'd built up.
No one else could navigate those grounds like she could. When he was eleven, she'd walked the three of them around the grounds and pointed out all of the places she'd hurt herself, learning to navigate and build her strength. It had been a gory story, mostly designed to ward Grayson off the idea of trying to run it himself as a pre-teen. It had also been completely true.
If she had managed to fend off a Tyrant (how?) and was still nervous of this trap, it would be wiser to stay in place, and monitor the camera feeds to see where this was going.
He would watch, and wait.
And help, where he could.
The sound of the crows caught her attention, and Marigold looked up. Even they were infected now, but also still functional - only more aggressive, more hungry. The flock here had grown a little strange since she'd begun to visit here, likely because she'd taken to feeding then for a few summers before Alexander found out, and requested that she stop. Alfred had kept up the practice as a child. They knew to trust the gaunt, pale humans that spoke in clipped tones, and the virus in them pulled them now, drifting toward that part of the island.
In her semi-delirious state, the T-Virus and a sort of deep familiarity had pulled them in to where Marigold needed to go.
They wheeled and dove around the prison, drawing ever closer to the target. Marigold looked off in the distance, towards that rusty old yard. I think I know just the place. I can't come here without paying the old girl a visit.