Alfred leaned forward in his command room chair, rapt. Aunt Callie had told him to try to shine light in the man's face - the one who was running the mission. Why did he look so familiar? Unimportant. The crows, while infected, had retained some small part of themselves, and that flock mentality strengthened that. There was no audio, but it seemed that they'd even retained some level of generational memory to say the magic words that often got them food.

Auntie Marigold had laid out her bait, and the commander had gone straight for it, watching the digital timer that Marigold had activated on starting down the track.

It was probably for the best that they'd recorded Marigold's average time that summer in 1981, rather than her best. The men had trouble enough believing that the top time was real as it already stood. She was moving through the course more quickly than normal, somehow, but there was a careful precision that suggested she was trying to do so quietly. Compared to the USS candidates that had bloodied themselves on the course over the years, it was like watching a spider monkey move through a tree.

The commander straightened up with one of the emergency injectors specifically formulated for Marigold in his hand. His brow creased, puzzling something out.

The man stood a mere six inches in front of a brick surface that Marigold had slammed into deliberately a dozen times before, in an effort to not damage the outer walls of the yard itself. His father and old Scott Harmon had hated seeing her use it - they'd calculated the force once between the two of them and come up with grim expressions - but it was effective, and Callie's cracked ribs always healed rather quickly on landing. She'd learned to land better over the years.

A runway of rebar had been scattered and driven into the soil between the finish line and the wall itself. How much force, Alfred wondered, did it take to pulverize a man standing in that place, when his Aunt Callie drove herself into it this time?

If Aunt Callie was trying to make up for lost birthdays, this was a wonderful place to start. Alfred's grin was unsteady, but it was also merciless. He was about to bear witness to a slaughter.

Marigold began to rise from her crouch on the high steel perch she had claimed, forty feet up. The Kevlar vest had hindered her flexibility a bit- she'd always done this run in athletic gear and little else- but she was glad to have it now. Ahead of her was a clear path to the finish line. Wesker had dismissed the idea that the crows would attack them in favour of getting a better look at the injector she had "hidden" in a gap in the wall.

It would pique his interest, of course. The idea that years of secret, independent viral research existed, well ahead of Arklay had clearly been a burr in his brain since he had started dropping her nephew's name into his line of questioning, all those months ago. The sudden slip-shift change in their dynamic had tamped down on these, but he was always going to come after them, here. She'd worked hard to appear accommodating, as much as seemed plausible, while revealing…almost nothing, save from what they could extract from recordings and her body.

That ended, now. The moment she had climbed out of that sandbag shelter, that outcome had been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt.

The air up here was cool, with a slight breeze. A mere moment and an eon ago, she'd found this little perch while the family crowded down below. The twins had barely been eleven at the time. Now the island was a war zone, and the cause had been lined up perfectly below, so long as she could take that final step.

Marigold shifted her leg into a bracing stance, moving the other foot the other down to press against the front of the girder. Her focus shifted to a crossbar about fifteen feet below and in front of her.

She kicked off the girder as hard as she could, and launched herself down towards her target.

As the seconds changed between 1:48 and 1:49, a pressure lifted in Albert Wesker's head, and he looked up.

Those tiny eyes were everywhere. Waiting.

Because they had an ingrained expectation to be fed.

The sound of a sharp footfall came from behind him, and the numbers froze at 1:49. He turned, suddenly fully alert for the first time since entering this yard. Marigold had touched down, had ripped a piece of rebar up from the dirt, and was rocketing toward him with murder in her suddenly all too clear eyes.

She'd led him right into a trap, and it was now snapping shut around him.

He barely had time to brace himself when she spun at the last instant and put her shoulder into his diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him while punching them both through the bricks behind him. The shock of the moment was such that he barely felt the rebar pierce his guts before he landed on his back in the rubble. The birds took flight, squawking indignantly.

He felt the second one, though.

And the next three, piercing his shoulder and biceps when he instinctively attempted to reach for his gun. The crows were getting louder, and drawing closer.

They were hungry, he thought distantly. He bucked up, trying to gain some leverage to force the steel from his shoulder, trying to free one of his arms. Another piece of steel joined it in his shoulder, and thin, steel fingers hooked their way under his sternum with an almost gentle pull, and then everything transmuted to pain.

I told you to leave my family out of this, her cold voice came through in his head.

When the teeth closed over his windpipe, that delicate little hand pushing his chin back as the bloodlust took over the woman on top of him, his vision began to fade to black, and he finally felt nothing at all.

Marigold snapped back to awareness as Wesker passed out under her. After breaking through the little wall like a battering ram, the impact had done little more than slightly stun the man. She had planted herself on his torso, and stabbed every piece of rebar within reach into and through him, pinning him to the ground like an insect in a collection. She'd used their connection to divert his attention, but the pain feedback had driven her into a violent frenzy.

She didn't clearly remember doing all of this.

Somehow, those fucking glasses were still on his face, although now somewhat askew.

There was blood in her mouth. On her mouth. Not hers. Looking down, she realized she had clamped down on his throat like a large, angry cat suffocating its prey. The wound on his throat was already closing, but the other wounds…Wesker had lost an awful lot of blood. Could anything survive this?

Then she remembered the scar tissue on his chest. This would barely slow him down, once he broke free. Worse. he'd seen for himself how she managed to follow through once the first spike of adrenaline had passed.

Next to her, a crow cawed quietly, almost reticent. Scavengers. At some level, she'd known the problem.

Beneath her, Wesker coughed. Marigold rolled off of him and spat the blood from her mouth. His radio was still clipped to his vest, somehow intact. The headset was lying crushed several feet away, and the voice of one of the soldiers was coming through. "Sir, we're in position. Ready to move on your word."

"Are you, now," Marigold murmured, and unclipped the radio, tossing it lightly down the track. Wesker was beginning to wake, beginning to feel pain again, and the rebar began to move as he attempted to fight his way up.

Stay down, she directed at him with as much force as she could muster, and he collapsed back down, panting from the strain and watching her with mounting fury. You, was all he seemed able to manage. The venom in the word conveyed enough.

"Me," she agreed, voice soft. She wouldn't be able to hold on for long. You threatened my family. You had your warning. What did you expect? There was a note in her voice that seemed almost sad when she spoke aloud. "This couldn't have gone any other way."

She looked up at the camera- it had rotated to follow them through the wall - and signed to Alfred. I can't hold him for long. Garden. Now. Find something to cover your head. We have to go.

Her hands were beginning to shake again. Stumbling over to the sign, she peeled the sign back once more and extracted the remaining doses, taking one and storing the remaining three in her vest. It would have to be enough to tide her over for a while.

Wesker watched this with pain-hazed eyes, a suddenly passive observer. Then, the patience of the murder of crows around him finally broke, and he had much more immediate problems to worry about.