Takes place alongside: Chapter 9

They came to the lifts, and Alfred began reaching for his keycard. After patting his jacket a few times, he began to look panicked - until Marigold reached into her pocket and produced the open she'd found. "This one was in the jet," she said. "In my coat. Best not to leave it behind."

Alfred looked uncertain, but accepted it, and fed it into the card reader. "We need to go down, almost to the bottom," he said. "She'll be…Aunt Callie, are you alright? We have to move."

Marigold had started breathing hard, and appeared all but ready to bolt. "He's screaming," she whispered. Her body had gone rigid, a mechanism that had been borne out of a need to not cause damage if caught off guard. When he was a child, his aunt had always frozen up a little when he'd hugged her. "Has he been screaming this whole time?"

Alfred stilled, realizing what her words meant. Alfred had to get down there. Right now. But he also knew exactly what was down there. Who was down there. And how they got there.

And in a sense, so did Aunt Callie. Maybe in a truer sense than anyone, given her story, but she didn't know the details. She hadn't been there. "It's safe," he said, staring at the floor. We couldn't…he's sealed. You don't have to see."

Marigold remained locked in place. "Proximity. Not line of sight. Please. I don't think I can handle it yet."

Alfred blinked. She must have been in much worse shape than he'd realized. She'd always hid her pain if she could, before. "I can let you off at the mansion level, and then go back. You can rest there." Alfred paused. "She'll be happy to see you, I think."

Marigold finally relaxed enough for them to get into the lift and she visibly attempted to smile. The tremors in her hands had returned, and her expression looked wan, exhausted. "I'll be happy to see her too."

"Something new came here when you arrived. Someone. Who came back with you from Rockfort?" Alexia said to her brother, voice tight and as low as she could manage. They had just stepped in the front door of the mansion, and Grayson - hers - had finally stepped out of earshot to put his parka away. He'd been overwhelmed when she showed him T-Veronica. If Alfred had brought something with him from Rockfort, she wanted to know its nature now, not when it was breaking down the doors.

Alfred was looking, for lack of a better term, like a whipped dog. Good, Alexia thought, sour. He'd been so desperate to have something over Grayson that she'd nearly lost him entirely. What little color he'd had in his face had drained away. He looked at her sidelong, glancing to Grayson's back to make sure he wasn't overhead. "That was Aunt Callie."

Alexia stilled. "She died. Father said…"

"…that she was gone. From what she says, almost the same way you were. Not dead." Alfred's voice had dropped to a bleak monotone. "She's isn't hurt, but she's in bad shape from the fight."

"What fight?" The venom in Alexia's voice drained away.

Alfred looked away. Alexia followed his gaze to a pair of rough-looking leather boots, neatly set in the corner. After a moment he said, "…go see her first. I think she's waiting for you. None of the blood is hers." Throwing one more wounded look in her direction, Alfred limped off to his study, presumably to collapse like a marionette with their strings cut.

Grayson had turned to watch him go. "I should take a look at his leg. I dunno what happened, but it looks like he's been through it."

Alexia turned her glacial eyes to the stairs. The room they had prepared for Marigold back then would be up there. "Yes," she said distantly. "You should go. I need time to clean myself up in the meantime."

Alexia found her aunt sitting in a chair by the window of the room Harman had prepared for her all those years ago, staring outside. She looked like she hadn't slept in days. Marigold's light-reflective eyes tracked her in the dim room- she must have heard them come inside a moment earlier. Alexia paused in the doorway, taking in the reality of the situation, then stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind her.

Marigold looked…smaller than she remembered. Frayed at the edges. She had the same stillness about her, but there was a slackness in her posture that hadn't been there before.

Alexia stepped forward, gingerly, stopping at a safe distance. Who knew what had happened to this woman in her seventeen-year absence. Alexia needed to assess the situation for herself, which was why she hadn't told Grayson of this. He'd forget himself.

When Grayson forgot himself, he usually got himself hurt.

Marigold stared back at her. "You're here," she said, voice wondering and soft. Something, be it time or some trauma, had worn down the sharp, proud edge she'd once had in her voice. "I knew you would be, but I was afraid to hope."

"I was going to say the same. We were told you died." Alexia kept her voice level. She had left them, and afterward, everything had gone wrong. Perhaps correlation was not causation, but it had hurt them all deeply.

"No," Marigold said, eyes clear. "I misstepped with Marcus a few years earlier, and his proteges put it together. I walked into a trap. They put me under Arklay to stem the damage after I…lashed out. I keep thinking that was only six months ago." She looked down, staring at her hands almost without moving a muscle.

Alexia blinked. She's been to Arklay, back in the summer of 1983 to work with Henry Sarton on Plant-42. How would she have missed that? The proteges she mentioned - William Birkin and Albert Wesker - had kept a wary distance in that time, but nothing unusual. "I went to Arklay to get access to samples, I would have heard -"

"Placidia." Marigold said, voice bleak. "I'm told that's what I was called at the time. I was hardly in any condition to protest. It was rolled into something called the Tyrant program later on."

Alexia stopped and stared. She had heard that word at Arklay, murmured in corridors and attached to some high-level clearance project. Birkin had darted a smirking look at her once when it had been mentioned. She had assumed that he was revelling that he had access to a toy she didn't.

She never would have thought that it had been one stolen from her family. "I'm going to kill Doctor Birkin."

"No need." Marigold's near-empty expression twisted into a cruel smirk, eyes remaining oddly blank. "Apparently, it's the hot new thing to inject yourself with your own research. Welcome back to the world, it's full of idiots, and any mystery they managed to dredge up before has burnt out."

Marigold blinked, and looked back up at Alexia. "I…sorry. That wasn't aimed at you, exactly. I managed to hurt him before he lost his mind entirely. It was rather satisfying, at the time." She turned back to the window. "The other one was more complicated, but he got what he deserved. Your brother said that he brought a recording of it back with him."

Alexia smiled back, in spite of her trepidation. Marigold had doted on them as children, but on occasion it had become quite clear where her own mean streak came from. She held a hand up in demonstration, letting the exocrine glands there express before lighting it up. "I would have helped, you know. It's almost a shame."

It was Marigold's turn to look surprised, and she shielded her eyes. "Are you on fire?"

"Are you covered in gore?" Alexia retorted.

Marigold shrugged, unrepentant, and looked down at herself. Alexia could see her already accepting that her niece could set herself on fire and was moving along. A little bit of her old energy seemed to spark back into being. "It's not that much. I let the crows do some of the work." She looked back up at Alexia, who had extinguished the flame. "You weren't alone? When you woke? It must have only been a few hours ago."

"No," Alexia said with a fond smile. "I wasn't alone. Grayson was there." Her face darkened. "He'd thought I'd died too, but he found out in time." She took a steadying breath, eyes narrowing at Marigold. She looks at Marigold. "I love you, and I missed you terribly. This still doesn't add up. They didn't just let you out, let you come here."

Marigold looked at her, expression steady. She'd anticipated the question, Alexia realized. Her expression was one that had waited for ages for someone to ask it. "Five, maybe six months ago. I…was alone. Everyone was dead, or worse. They…it had all gone wrong. I walked back to the city. Had about a day to try to work out what was happening." Marigold's voice had turned hollow at the memory. Suddenly Grayson's comments in comparing their situation to something out of Lovecraft seemed much less funny.

Marigold continued on. "People told me you died - the few I could actually ask, they told me - when I tried to find out what was happening. I…I felt ready to burn it all down. When I called here…Alfred wouldn't actually say it. It took me a while to realize that."

"And then?" Alexia's mouth felt dry.

"The wrong people hunted me down. They were prepared, this time. He was, anyhow." She looked exhausted. "Are we safe? I damaged them as best I could when we left Rockfort, but…" Marigold shook her head, casting a worried look out the window.

Alexia sighed. She needed to recuperate, and to clean herself up. Marigold clearly needed the same. The rest - the explanations, what came next - could hold until after at least that much. "As safe as we can be. We'll have to leave, eventually, if there's an outbreak. Spencer will have to clear it through the board before he can pull the trigger."

"The Shire was saved, but not for me." Marigold gave her a small smile.

Alexia couldn't help but return it. She'd remembered how much Alexia had loved her Tolkien. "There are other places we can work from. Places that are ours."

"You were only fourteen when you went away," Her aunt said looking at her with hollow eyes. "You grew - you're grown - but you weren't there for it, weren't you? Closed your eyes in one decade and woke in this one. I fear we have a shared experience in that department." Marigold shut her eyes for a moment, and wilted slightly in her chair. "I don't think he - Spencer - knows I survived Arklay. If that changes and we're still here…" she winced and leaned back, bringing a hand to her belly.

"Are you sick?" Alexia took a step toward her, halting when Marigold held a hand up to stop her. Marigold reached into the tactical vest she was wearing - where had that come from? - and fished a laminated information card from a pocket. "I found this a little earlier. They used it to get me to Rockfort so I wouldn't fight them on it." She held it out to Alexia, and she took it. "Do you know what it is?" Marigold pulled out a square package that looked like it contained a bandage, or a patch. "These as well. He was putting them on me a few times a day. These are likely spares. I think they got much stronger a few days ago." Marigold paused. "That's likely not the only issue, but it's not an immediate issue."

Alexia looked down at the items she'd been handed. She was already intimately familiar with pEpsilon gas, given her work in converting it into a sophoric liquid to slow her metabolism over fifteen years and let the virus bond to her. While Marigold's metabolism would adapt rapidly to the gas, it was an admittedly sensible short-term solution. Infuriating in how it might have been - would have been - used against them, but sensible.

The other was a strong hormone patch. Given the medications her aunt had had to take in those last few years, the inverse effect these would have had on her system would have meant...bad things. "You let them put these on you? These would have wreaked havoc on your self-control. That's not like you, Auntie."

Marigold gave a small shrug. "Not as much as they thought. Enough to convince them. They obscured my bloodwork, and I was able to snap out of it, if only just in time to keep Alfred from rushing out at them. Only barely, though." Her face grew stony. "I mean it, Alexia. I made him pay for that. For all of it." Her jaw tightened. "I hope it was enough."