Note: takes place alongside Chapter 8 of The Antarctica Incident
The oppressive weight which had locked Wesker's limbs in searing agony slowly began to abate. He arced in pain, trying to loosen the bars locking him in place to the ground.
The majority of the flock (murder) had taken off some time ago, having found the regeneration of his flesh too much work to continue to deal with after their bellies were full. A few stragglers had retreated, likely waiting for the involuntary twitches of his body to subside so that they could feast upon a silent, still carcass.
He turned his head to look at the damage, though the effort left him light-headed from blood loss. The birds had torn at the flesh around the rebar that Marigold had punched through his bicep, and into the ground below. In the process, he had mostly torn free of the piece of steel. His arm had regenerated from the damage, leaving only the tattered sleeve and blood-stained skin as evidence.
Which meant that his right arm was now freed.
The steel in his shoulder actually helped in its own way, to keep his body still as he grasped the first of the spikes protruding from his abdomen and began to slowly extract it from the ground beneath his body, then through himself. After several long, excruciating moments, the piece of steel clattered to the ground behind him with a hollow ring. A warm spurt of blood followed it, then grew warm as the wound began to knit itself closed. He let his trembling arm fall to the side for a moment.
He'd have to get the other one out of his gut this way before he could free his upper body, lest the internal bleeding continue to weaken him.
Several long moments passed this way. The birds were not all gone. He could still see their little forms in the dark, watching, eyes gleaming, waiting for him to go still so they could resume their meal. When he got out of this, he'd have to secure some of them for study; a mild infection where the subjects maintained a sense of restraint against their hunger was deeply unusual.
For now, his hatred of them kept him from passing out, denying them their easy meal…again.
The second piece of rebar clattered to the ground, and Wesker gave a grunt of satisfaction. The others would be harder to get, but his regenerative factor could tend to the worst of his deeper injuries, while he took his time with the rest.
Marigold had been too frenzied to aim for critical points with the first two hits, but the iron bars had been left driven through him, and the crows hadn't helped. The trap - she had somehow been cognizant enough to lay one - had held him there, in agony, for nearly an hour. She'd remained connected insofar as to keep him down - finally, he'd felt her riding the pain, using it to drive herself forward, and draw something else in. It had felt like a subtle working, though he had a sinking feeling that the results had been anything but.
The damage was not on the massive scale as he had experienced at the Arklay lab, but she had essentially pinned him like an insect in a collection, to experience the aftermath while fully present. Fully aware.
She'd known, then. Marigold had known this place was the target.
She'd planned for this.
Spencer had been sure she had fallen out with the family, and the family had drawn inwards, slowly dying out soon after she had been taken in. How much of the picture had she - had they -managed to keep secret? The way she had signed to the cameras - something he had remembered the twins doing when they had visited the botanical lab at Arklay in 1983 - told him that she had been much more involved than popular wisdom insinuated. She'd covered her tracks, and the family had followed suit, for years.
One of the two bars in his shoulder came free, and he yanked out the second before the regeneration could close it in any tighter.
How in the hell had he managed to forget that he was dealing with another Ashford? But of course, he knew. The way she had yielded to him after the Raccoon City mission had drawn a warm fog over his mind. He'd stopped asking questions.
Why had he stopped asking questions?
They…bite, don't they. To infect. Marigold's horrified face as she touched her mouth, back in the van outside the warehouse. Her horror hadn't been only shock - it had been recognition.
Marigold's teeth sinking into his shoulder after the mission, and again so many nights after. And here he'd thought it to be simple reciprocity. Wanted it to be. Reverberating pleasure and pain between the two of them, his focus held away from how that might be turned against him.
Looking at the monstrosity of metal above him, it was suddenly all to easy to imagine how her agility was built on a foundation of pain. How she might have trained herself to endure and hold it. In order to keep him from breaking away, she'd had to immerse herself in it, and had hardly flinched.
How deep did that corruption run? The pain-fogged thought began to sharpen as he worked the final piece of rebar from the ground beneath his shoulder. That he had not succumbed immediately seemed to have unnerved her, back in the remote lab.
How much has she corrupted his mind?
And how much control had he ceded in the process?
Over by the gate, a soldier had begun to haul himself over the gate - and froze. "Holy fuck," Wesker heard the man breath, then shout, "Sir? Are you…oh my god. You're alive," the man - Segers, from the sound of his voice, turned his head back to someone on the other side. "The commander's been ambushed! Get your asses back to your posts and send a fucking medic up here now." Segers dropped down inside the gate and moved to unlock it from the inside.
"Not…yet," Wesker said, gritting his teeth as he worked the final bar out of his body. The sense of relief was indescribable. His glasses had fallen off his face during his struggle to free himself, but they were in one piece, if scratched. He reached for them before Segers could get a good look at his eyes. The healing was one thing. The somewhat demonic cast of his eyes might be asking too much for one to accept.
He heard Segers' footsteps approach, then stop and veer off towards the track - towards his radio. It had been going for some time, but the pain and effort of getting free had stolen his focus away, save for the increasingly panicked tones coming through. "Sir…can you move? The medic is on their way." Segers hesitated, then, "That's a lot of blood, sir. How are you.." Segers trailed off as Wesker climbed to his feet. His shirt was torn badly, and he likely looked like he had been dipped in blood. The regeneration and blood loss had sapped his energy terribly. There was pain when he moved, slowly fading to a dull throb.
Wesker would need a few hours and a decent meal before he was anywhere near fighting shape again, but he could function. "The mission?" He rasped.
Segers hesitated, then. "A lot happened, sir. We didn't get orders to move in on Ashford - startin' to see why, mind - so we held steady on position and held guard on escape points. Ashford didn't seem to be throwing anything at us for a bit. Then that woman came through- from the control tower. She had someone with her, inna big poncho, hood up." Wesker watched Segers fight to maintain composure. "She said this had been a weapons test, sir. When she put a knife in one of my men - two of them, but I got the other out, we were convinced it was a liquidation. Some ex-USS personnel had seen Ashford do that with prisoners, and when things started to go crazy…Davies stayed back to hold her off."
Wesker sighed. Davies had been a hothead, but he had had enough years out in the field to be the sort that actively lived for blood and glory. HCF had offered him money and monsters to fight, and he'd brought several equally talented, though less bloodthirsty comrades along for the ride. But against a woman who could take out a pack of hunters with an improvised shield and light weaponry? "So Davies is lost."
Segers hesitated. "No, sir. Davies is loose. I don't know what the hell that woman told him, but he's been cutting a swatch through our defenses. We've been tracking him - he's starting to flag - but he's gone fucking wild. And Ashford's jet is…gone." Segers voice twinged on the last word, but he maintained steady eye contact.
Fuck. Fuck. Wesker closed his eyes a moment. "Has anyone checked the palace? You said there was only one other person with her."
"Yeah, but also there's no need. We gotta lead come in. You're probably going to wanna talk to this guy." Segers dug a card out of his vest. "Says he's a Monitor going from way back, in the Antarctica lab. It's their real territory." He handed Wesker the message, who took it from him, then looked at him sharply. "The source is real. Seems to be getting real antsy about all the T-virus coming into the facility from here, and is looking to cash out. Whoever it is has done work on the comms frequencies here on the island - had a backdoor to get straight through to us." Segers swallowed as the blood-soaked man continued to read silently. "We assumed you were dead, sir. Quite a few others believed the rumours."
Wesker had started to smile as Segers had nervously unspooled the previous hour's happenings. In his hand, one Donald McNally, head of maintenance, had gained access to the deeper parts of the facility, as well as the mansion itself. In doing so, he had discovered Dr. Alexia Ashford, slumbering peacefully in a stasis chamber beneath the facility. T-Veronica was real, all right, and Doctor Ashford had taken precautions to ensure it bound properly to her cells.
"You said people evacuated there, from the fighting here?" Wesker asked.
Segers nodded. "Ashford's jet shows a trajectory going in that direction. It looks like everyone's flight paths were locked to those coordinates, actually."
"So the one the men saw in the palace.."
"Not her. Ashford - the one we've been fightin' - seemed to have cracked a lot more than we assumed. It was him the whole time." Segers began to fidget. "Sir, whatever your deal is, that's way above my pay grade. But, can I unlock the gate now? The others need to see that you're alive so we can regroup and focus on locking Davies down….the blood will probably convince people that…" Segers trailed off.
"That this is not a liquidation," Wesker finished. The fight itself would weed out all but the best for future missions, but there was no need to rub salt in the wound. Segers had proved himself to be a competent field captain. "They're cornered down there, if there's an outbreak in progress. Umbrella will remote detonate the facility if it is not managed…and if the neglect here is obvious, I can't image what a defunct lab would be able to do against that tide." Wesker took a steadying breath. He needed to rest, but time would be of the essence. "We'll need to get back the comms center. I want Davies alive - no one else has been exposed. I need to deal with this, and confirm it with head office." The sound of other soldiers, including the medic, began to rise from outside the gate. "We have fresh units arriving in a few hours. Anyone not ready to evacuate will have to be picked up on return." Wesker began to stride forward. Paused, then glanced back. "And find me the person in charge of sample containment. I want some - maybe a dozen - of these fucking birds secured alive for the main lab for observation, and the rest burned."
I told you to leave my family out of this, Marigold had said to him, almost calm against the feral fury of her actions.
Marigold had known, about Alexia. Guessed. Getting here, playing him, was part of her endgame. And if she were saving Alfred, then fleeing to a virally-enhanced Alexia behind their castle walls….
I told you to leave my family out of this. He scanned the ground, spotting the empty injector. It was a thin lead, but something to chase down. Alexia - or at least, the father - would have developed this, which Marigold had used to break the haze induced by the hormone and pEspilon cocktail.
Boats and planes have also been evacuating in that direction, toward Antarctica, carrying the T-Virus. Their fortress would become a tomb before long, courtesy of Oswell Spencer. The old man had been shutting down facilities left and right. Umbrella's coffers were running awfully low these days, and he'd likely need half a reason to pull the trigger on an Ashford-managed facility.
In the plane, he would find the vials of counter-serum that he'd made to manage Marigold's inevitable realization and retaliation. He had held it for later in the mission, as she had slipped her lead much quicker than anticipated.
Segers jogged ahead and unlocked the gate. Wesker kept his face grim when the others outside caught sight of him, and let that carry the message. Segers began to relay the orders he'd just been given, having won the trust of this particular group. Davies was to be secured, and they would be securing their forces before getting ready to move out in a few hours time.
In the distance, an alarm sounded, and soldiers began yelling to clear the military facility. Alfred had triggered the self-destruct mechanism for the labs beneath it; who knew how much of the overlying structures would cave around them.
They'd have just enough time to clear the grounds before the explosion. Then, they would have to triage the situation. Segers was already yelling orders into his comm, and people were moving out.
The next phase of this fight would be harder, and stranger. But, if Wesker played this right, he would still be able to walk away with everything.
Deep within a hidden chamber of the Antarctic facility, Alexia Ashford drifted between dozing softly and lying awake in the soft aftermath of a triumphant awakening. She felt…warm. Sated. Weak, for now (fifteen years of growth without muscle tone would have that effect) but pleased.
Grayson had been there to pull her out when she was ready, just as she intended. The shock on his face when he'd seen her speaking was…concerning. But he'd met her energy when she'd pulled him down into her arms. It seemed that the virus had certain drives that bore feeding, and she would, gladly. The rest could wait for later, all of it.
It had worked. T-Veronica had settled and entwined with her over all of those years. She suspected that the process of awakening might have been more traumatic, but the effects of the p-Epsilon liquid cast a soft blanket over her perceptions.
Alexia was awake. She was one with her virus. And the boy she had grown up alongside with her twin, had grown to love, had been waiting, ready to take care of her. He had tucked her in under the blanket after their exertions, insisting that she take the time to rest and recover.
The mutamycete root in the adjoining sealed chamber was beginning to stir. It waited, a part of her gone quiet in her drowsy state. T-Veronica, a blending of T-Virus, the primordial ant virus, and the mutamycete, all flexed its power while camouflaging its host.
Was this some of what Aunt Marigold had felt with the virus, before she had died? Alexander's work on a chelator had given Alexia access to to a scant portion of Marigold's "field notes", as she'd liked to call them. (The cool anger and latent terror in Alexander's eyes during that one horrid week in late 1981 had suggested strongly that her aunt's end had been imposed from without, rather than as a result of her condition. He'd refused to speak of it.) She found herself wishing she could ask. Alexander was in no position to answer that sort of question, if he ever had been.
Later, she could explore. Later, she could plan. For now, she turned in her sleep under the wool blanket which smelled like Grayson, content that all was well in the world.