October 1, 1968: A manor in Devon, England

The day was shaping up to be bright, and unusually warm for October. Nineteen-year-old Marigold was steady enough to leave her bed by now for prolonged periods since the 'accident', but her father had cautioned her against going down into the rest of the house until her health had fully stabilized.

Meals had been brought up to her, and Poppy, already exposed when she had rushed out to greet them on arrival, was assigned to be the sole point of contact between her and the rest of the house staff.

The situation screamed quarantine. It wasn't something she could justifiably do anything about.

Dr. Edward Ashford had been documenting her vitals since they'd come back home. Her father had called in a favor at a London research hospital when they'd touched back down on English soil, taking over a room filled with bulky machinery and screens in the dark hours of the morning. His own lab would have equipment…but the ultrasound machine, an innovative new technology, was the thing that had consumed his attention.

Alexander had been by his side, whispering. He'd startled when Marigold had asked why he was being so bloody loud about it. The headache she was trying to fight off had taken up far more of her attention at the time, but she didn't miss the look the two shared, while they moved quickly to set up.

Earlier that year, she'd had an…indiscretion. She'd been the only truly unlucky one in the whole sordid mess (oh, but Luisa owed her, now, and she intended to collect, one day). The end result had left her insides scarred, rendering her sterile and with chronic pain. A mule for the marriage market. Joining her family in Africa had been a means to redirect her boundless energy to the family's blossoming venture.

Drained from her ordeal, the young woman in the hospital gown initially missed how they'd stilled when the screen started to show images of her internals. After a moment, she narrowed her eyes. "What is it?"

Alexander had blinked owlishly, asking carefully, "How are you feeling?"

"Like I didn't eat or move for far too long, and then got bundled into a plane for over a day," she snapped back. "I'm tired, and I want to sit in the bath for a week. Assuming that my plumbing hasn't officially gone AWOL, instead of just being broken. What's happening?"

Her father spoke softly. "Lysis reversal. I was right…Marigold, dear, look at your hands."

She'd down so, puzzled, realizing after a moment that all of her little nicks from fencing, the tiny scarring of living had disappeared. Even the smattering of freckles across her arms had gone away. "I don't understand," she had said finally, mind refusing to process the implications.

Her father had squeezed her hand then, and told her to go dress. They could discuss it when she was rested, and in her own home.

She finally spoke up an hour into the drive back. "Why the secrecy? Isn't this the goal of what you're trying to do?" Marigold had kept her eyes down, looking at her hands. Edward Ashford had paused for a long moment, settling upon, "The manner in which this happened worries me. I think it's best to get you home and work out what's happened before bringing Oswell into the loop." There had been an edge in his tone, and Alexander had glanced at her with some worry.

There had been a hard glint in her brother's eye that hadn't been there before. Whatever had happened had malicious intent backing it.

Someone had tried to hurt her, and now something was rolling back all of the damage that she, and others had done to her body in the past. Making her into a blank slate.

Her father and brother had started the trip open and trusting to that little circle of researchers they'd gathered. Now they…weren't.

Marigold had kept her eyes trained on her hands, only glancing up to gauge their faces. After a long moment, she finally spoke again, voice quiet. "Anything could happen, and no one would ever know, would they."

The three of them fell silent for the rest of the drive, never quite realizing that those words had held the chilling weight of prophecy.

Now, Marigold made her way to her father's study, letting herself in to sit in front of the huge desk which dominated the room. On the wall behind the desk, Edward had mounted his old messer blade from his university days. A faint dueling scar from a similar blade was on her father's jaw, the old badge of honor of the men of the ruling classes.

She still felt tired, though it was a normal sort of tired, not the consuming fatigue that had defined the last week and a half as…Sonnetroppe…had settled into her system.

The desk was piled with diagrams, notes. Not all of it was research, Marigold realized. Some were schematics of a building.

Edward found his daughter hovering over a blueprint, not quite willing to actually touch to document. "You don't leave these out," she said slowly, trying to work out the shape of the reason he'd asked her to meet him in here.

"No," he allowed. "We took control of an old iron mine a few years ago. It's ideal for deep research- the climate is a bit hostile, but it manages any containment risk we may run into. Whoever runs it will have to live there, of course. Oswell was finished with these plans, so he passed them along."

Marigold watched him, wary. "You weren't planning to tell me this before." It was said as a flat statement, an expectation. There had been no reason to bring a young girl with no real scientific acuity into such a sensitive enterprise, and they'd all known it implicitly. It hurt being cut out, certainly, but they had always seen- and more importantly, expressed -it as a protective measure.

Edward gave her a sad smile. "You didn't seem interested, dear." His jaw shifted in that way he had when he was skirting the truth. "And that was fair enough, letting you get on with your own life. But…this infection ties you to the project. No one else knows what's happened, but eventually, they'll need to. As soon as we understand what we're dealing with." He pulled out a plan from the pile, unfolding it. "Alexander mentioned that your memory retention has been improving, and you have your mother's eye for security. If something-"

Marigold looked up sharply at the sound of approaching footsteps. "Alexander's looking for something. Probably rifling through the waste bin again."

Edward chided her as gently as he could manage. "It's not like anyone had time to take baseline samples to compare what's changed. Everything happened so quickly…"

A perfunctory knock came at the door, and Alexander let himself in. "I just got a call from the Paris lab. They've finished setting up. I told them we're booking passage on the ferry for two days from now. We can pack light and have the rest sent later." He looked up from his notes and seemed to brighten. "That's for the new lab? You've decided, then."

"Decided is a strong word, but it seems like I'm in for the ride," Marigold said, a touch waspish. She frowned, pointed to a spot in a hallway that had been crossed out. "This goes nowhere. Why?"

Alexander drifted toward the desk and looked at where she was pointing on the blueprint. "You were serious about putting that in? I understand the need to keep quiet, but this…"

"It's a contingency," Edward said in a tight voice. "If James really did try to…" his voice faltered a moment. "He clearly felt secure enough to try it, and there was almost no reaction in the camp about it. I don't wish to be caught flat-footed like that again." He sighed. "The stakes are higher than I originally thought."

Marigold looked at the blank space behind the marked wall on the plan, looked at the floor number. Whatever it was led below the very bottom of an already cavernous facility. "You're hiding something in there? Why…" She stopped. four years of Swiss boarding school had taught her a thing or two about civil defense. "You're building a bunker. In your remote lab." She looked between the two men before her who seemed suddenly uncomfortable. "And you're trying to hide it?"

Alexander grimaced. "It's just something on the plans for now-" he started, but fell silent at Edward's look. Alexander sighed. "I need to finish packing, if you'll excuse me." He stepped aware from the desk, and left the study.

Edward sighed, looking older than he had a moment ago. "He still wants to trust them," he said wearily. "So do I, but I can't ignore what's right under my nose."

"Why on earth would we need to go so far?" Marigold asked, watching her father closely. "The project seemed to be going well for all of you. Doctor Marcus seemed unhappy, yes, but that seemed normal enough, for him."

"Oswell and I have…differing opinions on what the virus can be used for. Studying a virus and weaponizing it overlap so heavily that it seemed like there was no real, practical problem with the project at large."

Marigold's brow creased, and Edward waved his hand as if to clear the dark atmosphere from the study. "These are contingencies, at present, nothing more. I simply mean to be a bit more alert going forward. Harman should be returning from Arklay soon, and we'll have a little more security in the future."

Marigold could sense that her father desperately wanted to talk about anything else. "So, why has Alexander been raiding my toiletries bag? What's the baseline even for?"

Edward seemed to sag with relief at the merciful change of topic. "Alexander's been mapping its genome. Even if what happened to you can't be replicated - and I think that might be true - he'll be able to identify which switches get thrown when Sonnetroppe finds a viable host. That might be something we can work with."

Marigold stared at her father, then bit back a laugh. "His Veronica project. Well, both of yours. You mean to tell me that he's going to identify the intelligence gene by studying the most-" she broke off, but still gave a bitter little laugh. "That's a bit much to swallow."

Edward fixed her with a sharp look. "No one thinks that of you, dear. Your brother always made it clear that you're far cleverer than you let on- probably more so than is really good for you, to be honest. I really thought giving you some structure for the last few years would make it easier for you out in the world when you were grown."

Marigold darted a wary look up from the plans at her father, and he made a small derisive sound in response. "Oh, come off it. I know I let you run a little too wild after…when your mother died. You looked after your brother like raiders would come carry him off if you stopped. I thought it would do you some good to get some distance."

Marigold said nothing, but recalled how his researcher 'friends' had helped the decision to send her to a Swiss boarding school along. Prison does teach you to be a better class of criminal, she thought, so he's not exactly wrong.

He reached out and tipped her chin up. "Besides, the family can only manage one genius per generation, anyhow. Too much ego, otherwise. There has to be a lot of muscle, a lot of cunning, to leverage that into something that's actually usable. That's your job."

Marigold's jaw tightened, mouth firming into a hard line. When she spoke again, her voice had grown small. "What's going to happen to me?"

Edward took his daughter's hand, gave it a squeeze. "You're safe. We'll monitor what we can - especially once we're settled in Paris - and figure this out. It's safer if you stay out of sight of the researchers, especially Stateside, but we will all work the problem out together."

"You shouldn't have to worry about me, not with everything ramping up the way it has been. I've been…" Marigold grimaced, thinking of all the trouble she'd gotten into. All that heartache.

Edward looked at her. "You aren't a burden, dear. Do you not see how much you carry?" He laid the diagrams on the desk, beckoning her over to fold the young woman into a rare hug. "You simply need to learn to carry it properly. You are my daughter, and you are a part of this family. What does that mean?"

Marigold smiled, in spite of herself. "None of us are in this alone."

December 1998 (alongside Chapter 14 of the Antarctica Incident)

"All of us have been in this alone, haven't we."

Alexia glanced at her, still a touch rattled from their discussion. She shut the front door to the mansion behind her, and the two walked side by side across the covered courtyard towards the elevators. "I suppose. Why?"

"I'm just thinking of something my father said to me. I don't think any of us came through whole, carrying all of this alone. No one's been safe." Marigold's mouth was set in a taut grimace. "Speaking of which, you know where the safe room is, yes? Alfred's probably not steady enough to fly for a while." Somehow, she had come out of this nightmare strangely sheltered, in a twisted way. She'd had people protecting her, some knowingly, some…less so. Don't think that you can manage this, Annette's voice rang in her memory.

Alexia shook her head. "Safety is relatively for the next few days, I think. I know of it, but not how to access it." The faint worry line between Alexia's brows deepened. "I don't like this. No one felt they needed to share critical emergency protocol with me before. Grayson's down there, and there are people down there. I don't like it. Are you sure you should go alone? The infestation's quite heavy."

After a moment's contemplation, Alexia added, "Also, Grayson's mentioned that the head of maintenance stole data when he was locked down in the stasis room. Donald McNally stole data and locked him down there before I woke. I'm not sure where he is, which means he's staying away from the hyphae. He's about…actually, your age. Large Scottish man, I believe." Alexia frowned. "Grayson liked him, but, well, you know how trusting he is. I never liked him."

"You don't like - no, wait." Marigold stopped herself. Alexia wasn't fond of most people, but she was telling her about this man specifically for a reason. "What was the matter?"

"He used to scare me, before. There's something wrong with a man who can seem that jolly without it touching his eyes. Now he's just a man, but…if Grayson is worried about someone, they've gone very visibly rotten."

Marigold fished a gaiter mask out from under her collar and slipped it up over her nose and mouth. "I'll keep my face covered, then. Just to be safe."

Alexia sighed. "You said that you were pregnant. How can you be sure it wasn't a false positive? Those patches are strong- they would have kept you fully viral for…"

"Three weeks. I'm lucky I caught it when I did, the patches started about 10 days later. And… there have been other indicators." Marigold fidgeted with the cuffs of her coat.

"How far along? Hypothetically speaking. If you find the infirmary, you should find more tests, by the way. They're more accurate than the store-bought variety, from what I remember. No one was willing to risk a false negative during a season where no one could fly out." She paused. "Bring as many as you can find back, you can get statistically significant results."

"Six weeks, as far as I can tell." Marigold's face was grim. "I haven't let myself dwell on it. I've barely processed that it happened at all."

Alexia nodded. "You said that's an issue for later, and I happen to agree. We are going to revisit that bit of whiplash when the time comes. You've dealt with an outbreak? The corridors are rather narrow."

Marigold waggled her hand in a non-commital gesture. "Only the edges of an outbreak. They really didn't want Umbrella to know I'd survived Arklay. I don't either. The zombies don't notice me, exactly." She squared her shoulders. "I can fight, If I must, but I may be able to just walk through." She huffed. "I can maintain a bit of control on a few at a time. It's not a comfortable thing to be aware of, to be frank. Someone showed me something called Thriller after Raccoon City. Let's just say it wasn't appreciated."

Alexia gave a sharp, nervous laugh. "Less Michael Jackson, more Ellen Ripley, with that look. Here," gives a copy of her keycard. "Hold tight to that, and avoid the ants. They're…active. He's…still sealed in Grandfather's old lab. I'd be worried otherwise, as he's rather venomous. If anything goes wrong, 'knock' as you did earlier. What did you do?"

Marigold tugged her mask down, licking her lips and rubbing the tips of her fingers across them before replicating the touch on one of a mass of hyphae in the hallway, across from the elevator. Alexia shuddered a little, both at the sensation and the sight of the hyphae withering into ashy nubs. Marigold grins at her. "That's precisely the face I made. I'm sure of it." She chuckled a little. "Oh, I missed our strange little family. No one else truly gets this."

Her smile faltered a little as soon as the words were out of her mouth. "It's the roses all over again," she said. Alexia looked at her sharply, just as the lift doors opened. The two stepped inside.