Occurs alongside Chapter 17 and Chapter 18
"Gamma Unit, this is Albert Wesker." The captain halted in the corridor ahead of the last surviving member of his unit, touching the SEND button on his headset. "Sir, we're reading you, what's your report?" They'd been placing BOW crates on some of the upper floors to clear out the infection, and any witnesses. Timers had been set to release them thirty minutes after they'd cleared their respective floors.
It would have been an easy job, except that they'd run into the ants. The two of them had been separated from the unit, and the few who were left on the other side had fallen back to a defensive position.
The commander responded. "Mission parameters have changed. An unidentified BOW is on the loose. Dr. Ashford is now your priority. Beta is gone."
"Fuck," The captain said, keeping his voice low. He glanced up at the one surviving member of his team. Segers looked back at him, relieved. "We're getting away from the ants? Yes, please." Those fucking ants were infected with something, and had just taken out all but two of their unit.
"Beta's gone. Let's just get moving. We'll stand a better chance once we link up with the commander, and there's no sign of Delta up here," the captain replied, referring to the BOW that had sown so much chaos on Rockfort Island.
"Would we even know?"Segers muttered, jogging behind his captain toward the elevator. Wesker had briefed Gamma about "Delta", a codename assigned to the tertiary target for this mission. They were not to attempt to engage Delta in combat, only delay and report on movements. Most of Gamma were fresh recruits, unsure of the reasoning behind this. Segers had quietly filled the captain in on the damage a cornered Delta was capable of, from his own experience.
Wesker had also mentioned that Delta reacted like a civilian, and would thus attempt to either de-escalate or flee whenever possible.
On the flight over, Segers had found a moment to ask Wesker what would befall Davies. The commander hadn't responded immediately. Finally, he had only said, "He should remain stable, at this point. Bringing him into further contact with Delta would make him a liability, I believe. If you locate a botanical lab, report its location. It may be connected."
The Gamma captain- Segers didn't actually know his name, some plank-faced ex-army guy - glanced over at him when they entered the elevator. "It's a dark forest scenario," he said, voice on edge."
Segers stared at the man, who seemed not to notice, but continued his thought. "It's one of those theories for why we haven't seen alien life out there. Anything that survives learns to keep quiet. Life learns to assume that it's either hunter or prey, and no one knows where on the food chain they are. I don't think we're gonna see Delta before Delta sees us."
Segers hummed in response. He hadn't expected the captain to get philosophical about but maybe several days of fighting mutated horrors brought that out in some people. "Delta's a civvie, though. You didn't see what happened on Rockfort. She might get overconfident."
The captain grimaced. "Still a problem. I'm glad that's a strict non-engagement situation. It sounds like things are messy enough as they are down there."
A voice came through on the comm channel, warning the surviving forces that a small aircraft had just arrived with a shockingly small force - only a few soldiers, alert and carefully moving through the facility. Some NGO force, but the BOLO had still been issued.
Right, Segers thought. As the elevator door to the BOW level slid open, he eyed the slick-looking black material coating the walls. Doctor Ashford is in play now. At least a sleeping scientist will have less of a temper than the twin did.
Slowly, Marigold had come back to herself in that small, confined space. The link with Wesker - that little surprise that just kept on giving - had been a dangerous liability from the beginning, ever since she started playing his game with the aim of flipping the board. If she'd given away her position down here…
Marigold had let her mind relax, feeling out what was roaming through the facility while actively shying away from Wesker as he passed the lab she was hiding in.
Zombies roamed throughout the facility, but there was more than that. Someone had placed hunters on the upper levels. They hadn't been there before, which meant Wesker had brought some little friends along. The creature who - Marigold's mind had stuttered over it, noting that it had returned to deeper within the level. From her memory of seeing the plans for this place, the older labs were down there.
All throughout the facility were the hyphae, a presence that felt like more of a void space in her mind, whispering and sliding through the walls. It was, she thought vaguely, somewhat like being inside a somewhat menacing hedge.
And somewhere upstairs, somewhere nearby, were the roses.
Alexander must have done something with them - hybridized them or something - because their presence was strong. She could almost let the feeling lull her into a much-needed doze. It wouldn't have been the first time she'd fallen asleep in her own garden, after all.
She might have, had a spike of pain not startled her back to awareness. She blinked into the dark, trying to locate the source -
The creature snarled, backing away before it fled the room. It was down several spidery limbs, and was hunched painfully with its arms cradling its chest. Two of those limbs - the ones on the ground - had come away bloody.
The creature had stabbed him once under the collarbone, and again under the arm. Another wound had hit his leg. He was bleeding heavily and…was taking too long to heal.
Albert Wesker pulled his gun and began to fire as his vision began to blur.
Marigold had snapped back to herself with a yelp. He's still sealed in Grandfather's old lab. Alexia had said. I'd be worried otherwise, as he's rather venomous.
She could feel it happening, and this time, she hadn't braced for it. It was the same sort of pervasive burn that some of the truly nasty poisonings of her past had been, and it was spreading through his system fast.
Marigold sank to her knees, overwhelmed by the sensation. She'd entwined herself so far into him earlier to keep him in place, and it was feeding back at her hard. She pushed back at the feeling, willing herself to wake up from the nightmare. Distantly, something -the creature - startled at this and fled deeper into the dark corridors, sheltering from a storm.
When she returned to herself, she found herself kneeling in a heap on the closet floor, hands clasped over her face. Some time had passed - from the clock on the wall, approximately twenty minutes.
Wesker's presence wasn't…gone, exactly, but it was muted. Something, someone had recovered him.
She didn't know who else was down here, but the longer she waited, the worse the situation was going to get. If she could get down to her father's old lab, she could get the final few ingredients and focus on getting her family safely out. She shifted the small pack on her back with its precious cargo.
There wasn't room for regret in this nightmare, least of all her own.
Nothing else could matter.
Segers and his captain had cleared to the end of a bloody trail, leading to an old lab. They'd come across the remains of Beta further up the corridor. "Fuck," the captain breathed out. A large pool of blood was in the center of the room, along with a few severed things that looked like huge insect legs. Towards the back was a nasty mess, but Rockfort had inured him to such, and he kept his focus away from it.
Segers spoke. "He got attacked on Rockfort and lost more than that. More blood, I mean. Was back on his feet really fast." Segers paused. "I don't think he's totally human, but," he pointed to a smeared spot on the ground. "I think someone came and got him. Do you think it's the contact?"
The captain sighed. "It's possible. Fuck. I actually miss the ants. Okay, Beta's trail was going to the contact, but the priority was switched to Doctor Ashford." The captain looked at the black material on the walls. "What do you think the odds are that she's still in stasis?"
"No bet," Segers deadpanned. "We're not that lucky." He started to back out of the room before pausing. "Fuck. I don't believe it."
The captain looked at him sharply. "What is it?"
Segers nodded towards a blown-up photo on the wall of Edward Ashford - the name of the Umbrella founder was on the nameplate. The scientist was seated in a plush chair. Flanking the chair were two teenagers - a boy and a girl. There had been a photo with a similar face in the command room on Rockfort, but he hadn't put it together. "We need to find the commander," he said in a shaky voice. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Someone had turned her father's lab into an abattoir, Marigold thought numbly, standing in the doorway. Her legs were refusing to carry her forward into the room.
Hooks had been hung along a far wall, the sort that farmers sometimes had if they butchered their own stock. Rather than pigs or sheep, these ones held people, impaled through the shoulder. She recognized a few of the uniforms from Rockfort, and a few more from the staff here at the facility.
Whoever had done this had taken their eyes before leaving them here. All but one had died, some crumpled on the floor, some still hanging in…pieces. One was freshly skewered, moaning weakly before finally passing out from shock. Blood and offal pooled beneath the bodies. It wasn't freezing- this room was being kept warm. And the smell…
She stumbled back out of the room as the small meal she had taken with her niece earlier came back up. Marigold bent over double across the hallway, barely getting the mask out of the way before wretching until all she could taste was bile. You have to go in there, she scolded herself. You won't get another chance.
I'm going to be annoyed if this is the beginning of morning sickness, the next thought chased in, and she finally unlocked once more, pulling the mask back up over her face and moving carefully into the room. There was more blood in the center, and signs of a struggle. This must have been where it had happened, earlier.
Marigold looked around, uncertain. Her father had run with a code she'd put forward, but she'd never seen the shape it was to take. The lab itself was innocuous, though there were still photos mounted around the room of the family. By the door was a drawing, framed and mounted. Anywhere else, it would have looked like a bit of science-themed kitsch.
Alexander hadn't had a good hand for drawing. Marigold had been the one who'd understood languages and art. She'd often done botanical drawings for him when they were teens, helped translate scientific papers from the continent. This was something a bit different. In the letter she'd found in his office, Alexander had left a very specific passage towards the end, completely out of tone for him:
'A document in madness! Thoughts and remembrance fitted.'
The framed drawing showed six plants: rosemary, pansies, fennel, rue, daisies, and violets. "Pray you, love, remember," Marigold murmured, touching the glass. The passage from Hamlet, where Ophelia had been maddened by grief, had been fast in her mind when she'd suggested this code.
Alexander had claimed two for himself through Laertes' line of the passage. "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance," she recited to herself, "Pray you, love, remember." Next to the photo of the three of them - god, they'd been so young then! - was a portrait of Alexander leaning on the mantle of a fireplace. She carefully took it down, setting it on the floor.
The tiles on the wall were nine-inch white squares. Someone had stenciled a spring of rosemary on one that had been behind the portrait, and another, further down, with another flower. She smiled at the crude little attempt at drawing. "And there is pansies, that's for thoughts."
The grout work had been hurried, and a few light taps loosed the tiles so that they could easily be pried away. The rosemary tile contained a leatherbound journal in Alexander's hand. Flipping through it, Marigold grinned, a fierce sense of relief washing over her. Alexia hadn't known enough about the emergency backup plan for it to have been much use to her, but Alexander had been preparing for the day when that would change.
The pansies tile was the motherlode, as far as immediate needs went. Carefully, Marigold reached in and extracted the sealed box of powdered mutamycete extract and deposited her treasures carefully into her pack. She had all of the binding agents hidden away upstairs. If she hurried now -
Marigold stopped, eyes straying to the drawing. Rue and daisies were to be hers, reserved for when she came to live with the family again. That had never come to pass. "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died," she whispered the final line of the passage to the room. Violets were symbols of fidelity, of faithfulness.
Now, fennel…
Her eyes found the photo taken on that fateful trip in 1968, her father posed with the two men he considered colleagues and friends.
Fennel was for betrayal.
She crossed the room before realizing she'd done it, tracking through the blood. Beneath the photo was the tell-tale stencil. Inside was another journal. She hesitated, then opened it to a hand she knew well.
Marigold stared, then flipped to the last few entries. He had never had enough time to finish. Her father had barely had enough time to save someone else.
She shut the book, stowed it carefully away, relic of a bygone era. Looking around, something finally clicked. The abattoir - that had been the right word she realized, it was a true slaughterhouse - was too organized, Someone had set this up with a purpose. If Alexander- if this lab had been sealed until only recently, there was a very short list of who could have done this. being done for a purpose. Something has been eating these people, who had been laid out as a gruesome feast. Was this the work of the man Alexia mentioned, McNally? Not to mention the cameras. What was the purpose of all of this?
Would he come back?
He used to scare me, before, Alexia had said. 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 glanced up, noting the camera over the door pointing at the dead and dying.
He likely knew she was down here then, prying and spying through the old secrets. The mask now seemed a stroke of genius. Even if she hadn't still needed to head back to her upper-level fallback point, revealing the hidden lift at the back of the room would have been folly. She wasn't about to lead a man willing to do this through the secret entrance to the mansion.
The poor man still clinging to life at the back of the room had fallen unconscious. His heart rate was slowing by the minute. Shock would claim his life before teeth could, and that in itself was a mercy. It was time to get out while she still could.
She'd barely stepped out into the hallway when she heard the sound of a gun being cocked from ten feet away. "Hello, 'Delta'," Segers said. A large handgun was pointing at her head. "I think it's time we had a little chat."