Marigold huddled in the cockpit a moment longer, then gave up on waiting, easing herself out of the slender little plane. Alfred had spotted something- someone- near the hanger bay doors, and had sprung from the cockpit in hot pursuit as soon as he'd powered the engines down. That quiet internal calm that had let her seek out the sparks of life she had sensed months earlier there had been obliterated on Rockfort Island, and wasn't coming back anytime soon.

It didn't matter. Something here had changed around the time they had made their escape from the island. She'd felt that much. She didn't dare go deep, not with Alfred shaking violently as he was. The emergency dose she'd found had been enough to quiet the tremors, but she feared the effects wouldn't last. It was the same prototype dosage that they'd given Grayson immediately after exposure during her last visit last year - no. Seventeen years ago.

Seventeen years. She'd missed the children growing up. She'd missed the window they'd so desperately needed for someone to be there, to help them prepare for the world. Marigold was suddenly sorry she hadn't stuck around the Matilda longer than she had. Why hadn't she? There had been plenty more rebar lying about, more than enough to hammer home the damage Wesker had wrought in the lives of everyone who mattered worth a damn.

But of course, she knew. It was as the same reason she had frozen when that poor office manager had thrown herself into the line of fire at Arklay in her defence, with countless more ready to follow. Having the ability to throw lives into a meat grinder didn't mean she had the stomach for it.

And poor Alexander had been left to flounder. Alexander, who rarely listened until he could see the evidence with his own eyes. The last time she had visited the family on Rockfort, he had only begun to notice the seething resentment his little girl harbored towards him. He'd been totally unaware at how alienated Alexia had begun to feel.

The dose had been enough to quiet Alfred's tremors. He'd looked askance as soon as she'd focused in on the problem, and she'd been able to pick up that ephemeral scent of the roses about him. He'd also been kept awake, and on a manic hair trigger, for at least a day now. If amphetamines weren't in the picture by this point, she'd eat her own boots.

Which meant he'd be coming down soon. Even if he'd taken a pill before they'd left the palace- and based on how he'd disappeared into the back for a bag, he'd had a window for it- they wouldn't last forever.

So she'd done what she'd promised, during the flight, and talked. Marigold told him about what had happened down in Arklay, that one hazy interrogation. Waking in July, alone. The forest.

She left out her visit to STARS. She left out the details with Wesker, and avoided mentioning his name. Alfred had seen what she had done to him on Rockfort. That would be enough until they were safely back on the ground.

Alfred had asked the real question after a while. "Why didn't you run?"

"They were ready for me. I never really learned how to fight properly, and in an even match that's a problem. And…I didn't know if they had done anything to me. Not for a while."

"Did they?" Alfred's voice had been tight with anger.

"No. I don't think they did. They would have, eventually. I made enough of a mess on the way out that they wouldn't risk my waking. The virus itself had changed, but I had already been starting to pick up on the variants. I'm not as quick on the uptake, but I put it together eventually. I sent Poppy a warning." She'd chuckled darkly. "They really couldn't leave me alone for a single moment. I had more old allies left alive than I initially believed. I'm quite sure I would have been locked down somewhere right now rather than here if it weren't for them."

Something within the facility was blooming. Why did everything remind her of the roses all of a sudden? Yet this was a quieter thing, an unfurling. She reached for the feeling, and felt it pull away. Whatever this was had been quietly protecting itself for a long time.

She shivered, and shrugged on the coat that had been left for her. Something hard was in the breast pocket, and she discovered a little silver keycard, embossed with her nephew's name. Alfred had promised he'd only be gone a moment, then disappeared out into the snow with a worried glance back at her. This place had been the only safe harbour to escape the attack. It felt the way Raccoon City had during the beginning of the crisis, and the power had been cut.

The virus had come over with the survivors, then.

Something below shifted in unease. The thing she had sensed before Wesker had uncovered that facet of her abilities, blind, in unending pain. Hesitating, she reached out, then flinched back.

It knew the twins' names. Had been calling for them.

You knew what might have happened, she told herself firmly. Especially since you never made it home. But being this close was a different matter.

There was so little left. Would she even know her niece's face?

The sound of gunshots rang out almost as soon as Marigold's feet touched the ground, cutting through her reverie. Two voices, male- one younger, with a tough affectation. Fighting. Alfred's voice, shrill with pain.

The sense of melancholy dropped away, and Marigold's head turned sharply to source the direction out in the blizzard. With a long steady stride- panic would just get her lost in the storm- she began to walk out of the hanger, ready to chase the interloper down.

Claire found Steve crouching over Alfred's bleeding and collapsed form. He'd caught the bastard in the leg- a good shot, from the amount of blood soaking into the snow around them. "Steve?" She said in a low voice. She'd get that way sometimes, like she were talking to a pissed-off zoo animal. It had pissed him off at first, but ever since he started working together to escape with her, and learned that she'd survived Raccoon City? He'd probably see crazy around every corner too. "Steve, we need to get out of here. He's down, and we don't know where we're going. We'll freeze if we don't find shelter."

Claire was pretty goddamned good at this, truth be told. It didn't hurt that he spent a lot of time running behind her…and she was hot as fuck. He'd learned pretty quickly to reel the moves in with her, if he wanted her to hang around.

Something silver and shiny had called out of Alfred's pocket during the fight. It looked like a keycard. Steven grinned viciously and pocketed the little treasure. "I gotta be sure," he said, and picked up his gun. He could end this, point blank, here and now.

A gunshot rang out from near the hanger doors, and the both of them looked up, sharply. A figure in a hooded parka was walking toward them, having fired a single shot upward, into the storm. They didn't change their pace when they lowered their aim in their direction.

There was something weirdly…shiny about their eyes, the only clear feature he could make out in this white-out. Claire swore and grabbed him by the shoulder. "We need to get out of here," she hissed at him."

Did they make a third Terminator movie already? This one kind of sucks, Steve thought incoherently. Still, he had enough presence of mind to nod, and clamor to his feet, ducking instinctively as the gunshots rang out behind them. He yelped as a bullet grazed his arm a little too close, ripping through the parka's thick padding, and let Claire drag him to another low building for shelter. There, they waited, hiding, staring out into the driving blizzard for several minutes.

The gunshots stopped. Nothing followed them. Steve finally spoke. "I think that…whatever…was tryin' to scare us off. I sure as fuck wouldn't give a warning shot. And they stopped as soon as we left. Maybe they work here? A guard? Someone from Rockfort maybe?"

Claire looked at him. "Maybe," she said. "They came awfully quick after you shot him, so they would have had to have been in the hanger. But I'd rather not call the bluff until I have to. Something about them got my hackles way up, and I'd rather not find out why."

The choice between pursuit and retreat was in the end, an easy one. Alfred was bleeding badly from his leg - he would freeze out here before long. "Come on," Marigold said, pulling him up by the arm and ducking under it to support. "We need to get inside, now." If he had been exposed to the roses, if the shot hadn't hit something vital, he would recover quickly enough. Given the stressors on his system, he'd need any advantage he could get right now.

Once through the hanger, the temperature got a little easier to bear… and things began to get strange.

Black tendrils had begun to push their way out of the walls. They waved like sundews, tasting the open air. Marigold, with eyes better suited to the gloom, got a few steps inside the hallway before stopping dead. "Keep away from the walls," she said to Alfred. "Something is growing. It's all over the facility. It's coming from down below."

Alfred blinked in the dark. "Describe it," he demanded, and Marigold told him what she was seeing. "I think she's been waking up," she finished. "Something changed when we were in the air. I didn't want to distract you with something of that magnitude while you were trying to fly." The sundew tendrils stretched in their direction as they passed, tentative.

Alfred stared. "We have to get down there," he said in an urgent tone. "She needs…we have to go down. The elevator." He began to try to push forward, then frowned when Marigold didn't move. "Aunt Callie?"

"They don't seem aggressive, even with you here. That's a good sign. Let me try something." Marigold had passed a hand over her mouth with one hand, and was already reaching for the nearest sundews. The tendrils stretched out in turn…and then flinched back, turning white and shriveled at the tips.

Mold, Marigold thought, feeling numb. It's like Grayson. She used it in her virus.

"Alright," she said, voice hollow. "That's what I needed to know. Let's go." Alfred's brow furrowed, but he nodded, and they resumed their trek to the elevator ahead.

Below, Alexia stopped in mid-sentence, as she attempted to explain how her hyphae were certainly not Lovecraftian, and looked up. Someone had deliberately touched the hyphae up above, and had…repelled them. Not aggressively, but they had been burned in some way all the same.

It was a curious feeling.

Either someone was very foolish, or someone was very deliberately telling her they were coming.