The first shuddering impact to the door brought Marigold to full attention. Segers whipped around, drawing his weapon and cursing. "Fuck. The cleanup crew. I forgot all about it."
Marigold squinted at the door, then gave an exasperated groan and started towards the door. She'd pulled the hood down, "Did the Hunters come with you, then?" Segers tried to grab at her arm - there was something so obviously reflexive about the gesture, like trying to yank someone out of the path of a speeding bus. She yanked her arm away from him as she passed him. "It's just one, don't be so dramatic. Not having a door is worse." She drew the blade out of her belt, then turned the knob and pulled the door open, letting the creature's momentum carry it inside into the opposite wall. It disappeared a moment into a stack of metal and plastic folding chairs stored in the corner, sending them sliding across the floor. The Hunter screeched, digging and pulling itself out from under the pile.
She walked up to the creature, which seemed to flinch away from her and skitter into the corner before taking a defensive swipe at her. Marigold parried its claws, swinging almost lazily to take its arm off at the elbow before stabbing the tip through the hunter's eye. She looked back at Segers, frowning. "This one was afraid of something - I'm not sure it could tell anyone was in here."
Segers started to retort, but his jaw clicked shut, eyes darting back to the door. There was that sound again. The heavy footsteps, and the occasional groan. "Shut the door," he said, very quietly.
Marigold's eyes widened, but she shook her head, backing up against the lab bench. She reached back and started tapping her hand against the hyphae. "It can break doors down. I'm seeing if we can get help." she glanced over at Segers, then to the spinning centrifuge. The machine had less than fifteen minutes left to run before they could get the phials out. So fucking close. She'd been able to sense Wesker moving around in a distant way, her senses blunted by interference by the hyphae, but still functional. He wasn't on this floor, but it mean that people were on the move now.
The creature - what had once been Alexander, now gaunt and mutated from T-Veronica, stepped into the doorway. "Ma…ri?"
That's so much worse, Marigold thought. To survive like that and have any mind left at all. It- he- still had a tattered rag over it's eyes, it's mouth a brown rotted ruin of jagged teeth. The tattered remains of a tweed suit still clung to his thin frame. The sternum had either split open or mutated around the massively mutated heart, beating in a weirdly unsynced pattern. It's spider-like appendages were splayed outward again.
In a distant way that Marigold recognized as a form of dissociation, she wondered if maintaining and re-growing all of that extra mass so fast was why it was still hunting after working through so many already. Spiders store food for later, a small voice reminded her, jarring Marigold back to herself.
Those legs had let it move quickly and quietly around. Those were probably the venomous parts of it. They'd all already regenerated from the damage it had taken below. She'd seen just enough of the razor-sharp appendages splicing through soldiers downstairs to know the thing was quick when it needed to be. They flexed in a threat display, like it was trying to decide if it could take her.
That kind of energy expenditure - regenerating limbs, moving between floors, all with little to no rest- might have left it weak. There was no room to make assumptions with that, though.
Trying to fight it head-on would be…bad, if the information she'd gleaned from Wesker's encounter had shown her anything. She drew her gun again and fired a round into its lead leg, and another into its chest. It fell back a step and howled. Probably a good idea to keep the door intact, with all this noise, she thought.
Forced out into the hallway and finding its balance, the wreck of her brother shrieked in anger. Marigold fired another round into its chest. "Get out of my room, then," she yelled back almost automatically.
Between the rounds in its body and the sheer wall of negation, the creature hissed one last time, then turned tail and fled back up the corridor.
Marigold stared out through the doorway for a long moment. Segers, who had sensibly shut his damned mouth to avoid drawing attention, finally spoke. "So I guess it can move between floors." Then: "You knew him. I'd almost convinced myself that picture down in the lab was someone else - the hair's darker- but that was you."
Marigold turned her head just a small amount. There was no real value in hiding it. "People expect that woman to be almost fifty. They also expect her to be dead." She met his eyes, finally. "What did you assume?" She pushed a little command into the question.
Segers swallowed. He hadn't realized what she'd done, earlier. Good. She'd needed him cooperative, and while he'd been mildly sympathetic to her in a few instances, she'd need to handle him delicately. His aggressive fear response to her was already receding. "We thought they just found made someone with the right build look like her. The doctor. Or that they'd found a cousin somewhere." He hesitated again, then gestured to the door. "Older brother?"
Marigold looked at him sharply, tensing up, then realized what he'd heard her say. What she'd let slip out. She felt herself deflate.
"Younger. He's never been in a fight. That was my job." Marigold's lip trembled before she ground her jaw to push it down. "Still knows who I am, though. It's worse, somehow."
There was nothing for Segers to say to that.
It was just as well. The sound of gunshots rang out from somewhere on their level, in the direction of the elevators. Wesker was still somewhere below. Alfred was (hopefully) off his feet with that gunshot wound, and Alexia likely wouldn't have seen the need for weapons. That left…
"Oh no," Marigold breathed. She hadn't run into Grayson yet since arriving, but he'd been around. Alexia had placed herself as a buffer between her and the boys when getting Marigold's story. Had she told him she was here?
Did Grayson even know about Alexander?
She would have run strong odds on 'no' for all three, with slightly higher chances of Alexia confessing to injecting Alexander as a safety measure. In a sense, there was a parallel to what Marigold had told the twins about her time since awakening - Alfred receiving a filtered version, and Alexia the whole story so she could brace herself for what was coming.
Even if Grayson did have that knowledge, the creature had taken off in the direction of the sound of gunshots. Marigold knew for a fact how effective those shots would be before it was on him.
Marigold knelt to pick up one of the steel folding chairs from the ground. In close quarters, a hammer would serve her better than a knife. "I have to deal with this," she said to Segers, voice going hard. "Its back is turned, and I think I know who it's - he's - going after next. Watch those," she pointed to the centrifuge, "and don't take off. I'll be back."
With that, she drew herself up and stalked out the door.
She wasn't losing any more family today. Marigold refused to let that happen.
Segers watched Delta (Mary?) stride out of the room with a gun in one hand and the metal folding chair in the other. She didn't bother to shut the door behind her. After a moment, Segers shook himself and ran to the door, looking out into the corridor.
The creature had left a damned mess. The mass of zombies in the hall has been torn to shreds in the wake of the creature Delta had just driven from the room, and there didn't seem to be others nearby to replace it. Delta herself had disappeared into the gloom after the creature.
Segers shut the door, backing into the room again. He sure as fuck wasn't going out there alone right now. He glanced back at the centrifuge. It still had several more minutes left to run.
"Okay," he said to himself. For someone he'd known to be an active hostile only a few hours earlier, they'd built up an uneasy camaraderie. With his unit either scattered or in pieces, and the commander incapacitated…
Allegedly, Segers thought, after a moment. Fuck. Even if she survived the encounter, Delta would be ready to take off again soon. There was a weird sense of dissonance - taking the chelators and finding the commander would buy some leverage against the Ashfords. Something about that thought grated at him badly, and he skipped over it.
Segers activated his radio, and spoke into his headset. "This is Gamma Three. Is there anyone still able to move out there?"
After a long pause, a voice he recognized spoke on their encrypted channel. "We might be the only ones, Gamma Three."
Segers sighed, relieved. "I heard you were incapacitated, sir. Any truth to that?"
He could almost taste the irritation coming over the airwaves. "The BOW that took out Beta team was venomous. Local designation is Nosferatu. The target for Beta team recovered me from where I fell. They had access to the camera feeds when it happened. We have an access point for Doctor Ashford, although it seems she's more lively than we anticipated. No sighting yet."
"Pretty sure Delta's made contact, sir." He hesitated. "Sir, she was talking to it. The BOW retains names. It kept saying hers."
He heard the pause, then Wesker spoke again. "Delta isn't with you."
"She's hunting it, sir. There were gunshots a moment ago and she took off."
There was silence on the line. "Have you been exposed?"
"Not that I'm aware of?" The note of doubt in his own voice surprised him. Segers pressed on. "Sir, I have some bad news and some very good news. There's an exposure hazard from being around the stuff that's all over the walls. Something fungal. Delta's definitely sick from it, but we're all breathing it."
"Delightful." Wesker said, voice dry. "What's your good news?"
"Someone here saw this coming and developed a treatment for it. It's the only reason she's still out here. I'll have a sample if I can get away clean. She'll come back to this spot as soon as she can manage it, if only to get back before the centrifuge finishes up. I also have reason to believe their only way out is incapacitated. If you have a location I can rendezvous at, I should have it with me."
Another pause. "If you encounter the contact before that point, do not follow him. Do not reveal intel. Switch to the designated secure channel for further instruction."