The message from McNally had been illuminating, to say the least. The board- that was to say, Mark Oliver - had authorized the same deal they had been ready to offer Zinoviev, assuming the information was good. He'd said as little as possible about Marigold's involvement in the escape.

"Be mindful of confronting them on their own turf, though," Oliver had cautioned. "Green told me once those landed gentry types are like swans - pretty enough, but they'll beat you to death if you look at their nest wrong."

Wesker had suppressed a sigh on the call. "I've been getting that impression, yes."

"Green worked out of London at the start of his career. He bowed out of the politics, but the older families absolutely buy into their own mythos. Frankly, I'm surprised he voted the way he did to let you proceed there with her at all, much less champion it during the vote."

Mark had paused. Then, "Proceed. Secure T-Veronica, but do not lose that asset. Board support for funding past this mission rests on that last part."

While Wesker recovered in an empty office within the military facility's office barracks- the explosion had taken out the labs under the facility, but left the administrative section relatively untouched- Segers took a team up to the palace to confirm that it was truly empty. They found plenty of evidence of the "false" Ashford…and a dearth of old photos in the control room. Segers had come into his own since his field promotion after their rendezvous, and had the pragmatism to quietly collect and deploy the information necessary without drawing attention, or compromising the unit's morale.

A smaller team, trained in sample and BOW management, collected the specimens from the training yard, nervously noting a large amount of blood still pooled and partially dried in a prominent location. The corvid population was strangely reticent for infected, sensing a trap, but they were making progress.

The mission was far from over - Rockfort lay in ruins, yes, but Alfred Ashford had fled, and the force he commanded were hungry for payback. In the meantime, Doctor Ashford's T-Veronica was ripe and ready to be collected, and he had an asset to re-secure. The survivors had fled in the same direction, infected and doomed. Where she - they - were headed, there would be nowhere left to run.

The rest of the mercenary company had already begun their hunt for the rogue soldier while reinforcements were prepared for the next phase. Davies had last been sighted near his first stationed location, by the shell of the military facility. He'd been going for the weapons cache there, to stock up. The last report had come in ten minutes earlier, confirming that they had taken Davies down with teargas rounds, and were bringing him back to base. Wesker got on the comm and made a request: "Bring him to my location first. He has intel we need to move forward."

Wesker now heard the men dragging a screaming, fighting Davies down the hall, and he got to his feet, turning to the door. He had left his battered and torn uniform on, and had only done the most cursory cleanup following his ordeal. When the soldiers dragged Davies, through the door, the look on his face told him that he had made the right call.

Davies began screaming even louder. His hands were cuffed, but his size still made it a struggle for the two men on both sides of him to contain.

Wesker nodded to the two men. "I'll need a moment, if I may."

"Sir, he took out half a unit before we could…" the soldier trailed off, seeing the state of his attire properly. "Ummm. We'll be…down the hall." The other soldier blinked in confusion, but the two of them still heaved Davies into the room and left quickly, shutting the door behind them.

Davies roared and lunged at him, only to be thrown violently against the wall. He tried again, to similar effect. After spitting up blood, Davies crawled to prop himself on one knee, looking like a cornered animal. Wesker stood before him, calm, ready to put him down again if needed.

The blood on Davies face almost obscured the swollen cut on his lip. A quick, precise bite. "I've been told you tried to fight her alone. Do you even realize what you've done?"

Davies glared up at him with hazy eyes, filled with rage. "We were bein' liquidated. You set us up."

Wesker almost had to laugh. "There are people who can make that claim, but not today." Marigold had turned this man into a live grenade, and lobbed him back at the HCF while the Ashfords made their escape. "This is my mission. That directive did not come through me. Someone used you and your unit to start a rumour, in order to get you away from Ashford's jet, and your unit fell for it. It's going to take some time to deal with the damage you've done here."

Wesker stepped forward and removed his scratched glasses, letting his anger rise. An interesting effect of the virus was the bioluminescence of his eyes when strong emotions rose through him. The way Davies tried to move back from him at the sight made it clear that they were doing as much now.

It had been years since he'd gotten his hands on one of Marigold's little sleeper thralls, not since Arklay and never one this fresh— although the thought really should have occurred to him but…ah, yes. Wesker knelt down, putting himself at eye level with the other man.

Davies was beginning to put the picture together, taking in Wesker's blood-soaked appearance, and had switched gears from fight to freeze. Wesker watched him, and Davies finally spoke. "She changed sides."

"Long story short, but it seems that way. The hunting ground they fled to has nowhere to run to, and it's a much richer target." Wesker gave the man a cold, thin smile. "You're going to tell me exactly what happened, how it happened, and at what time. Your time on this mission is over - your faculties are beyond compromised. Still, you could be of use in another capacity."

"I'm already dead. She'll know. She just will." Davies looked a strange mix of fearful resignation with a thin edge of panic. Those in Marigold's strange little network, taken in an aggressive manner, taken in anger, had been easy to identify. The ones like Ms. Everett had been virtually unidentifiable. That one, also in the wind, out of his reach. Marigold hadn't simply been protecting a dear friend, or an old lover.

In a sense, they'd been her brood.

That instinct to protect her brood, was the key to locking her back down - this time in a more effective manner. The twins counted, he suspected, as much as the pets she made. Something about that thought twinged in his mind - her scent had changed - but he was too focused on his train of thought to stop and examine it.

This, before him, was what Spencer had feared enough to lock a treasure trove of data away for almost twenty years. "I think she didn't expect you to get far," he leaned down. His 'turning' could be turned to serve him, if he appealed to this man in the right way. "Do you see Umbrella sweeping in to protect this place? They were ready to let them all die here…. she told you to what? Disrupt the mission?"

"Make trouble. Slow the unit down." Davies had begun panting. He seemed to be on the edge of breaking through the delerium of the implanted suggestion, beginning to fight drowning under the weight of it. She'd left the details to this soldier, then. Davies had begun to relax a little, eyes glazed and dilated. "Is this why you kept her in a separate building, because of this?" Davies, in the throes of realization, appeared to be quietly breaking down with the brief realization of what had been reduced to on a mere whim.

Just like Marcus had, that fateful day Marigold had called into the lab back in 1978, triggering the breakdown which had facilitated the start of his own rise.

Wesker smiled, grim. Now they were starting to get somewhere.

Alan Green sat behind his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. "They thought we were going to what?"

"Liquidate the units at the end of the mission," Mark said in equally sour tones. Something had disabled Wesker just long enough to sow chaos while he couldn't answer his phone. If they hadn't stayed long enough to flush out the t-Veronica tip, I'd call this a wash and have it cut short."

Disabled. "What of the asset?"

Mark audibly groaned. "Unclear, but Ashford managed to take off in the ensuing chaos, and he's saying suspiciously little on that front. I mentioned what you said about swans and that particular tier, and he seemed to clam up rather tight."

Silence on the line, before Mark swore. "There it is," Alan said in a dry voice. "The other shoe just dropped.

"The instant there's a known outbreak, the detonation timer starts," Mark argued. "The informant has a way to forestall that. Either they negotiate for a way out, or all that effort they've put into the last fifteen years will have been for nothing. The reports I've been getting back on Earl Ashford suggest he was hardly in any condition to fly. If all flight paths hadn't been locked to Antarctica, I'd have my doubts about him making it at all." Oliver paused. "This is what you voted for, Green. The risks were understood from the beginning. I didn't even want her on the mission- what better way to shoot ourselves in the foot? But I was overruled so Wesker could have his lure."

"So long as your Terminator gets to them first. I heard reports of prisoners escaping earlier. They'd be on the same trajectory- and I saw the same list of names that you did, Mark. Having that Redfield girl involved is a wildcard. We're putting a lot on the line because of this faith you've placed, Oliver." Alan hung up before Mark could get in another word. "Fuck."

"Sweetheart?" Gemma's voice came from the door of his home office. She'd been standing there for a few minutes, he realized. "Is everything alright?"

Alan gave a harsh laugh, covering it quickly. "Yes and no," He replied. "She got what she wanted, I think, but the situation may become intractable very soon. That family's been more active than they've let on."

"Gemma gave him a wan smile from the doorway. "That sounds like a very Ashford situation, from what I recall of them."

Alan looked at her with a surprised chuckle. "My god, isn't it just?" He sobered. If Doctor Ashford really was alive, Marigold might be the only thing keeping the little misanthrope from killing them all.