Occurs alongside Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24
The creature that had once been Alexander had slowed to a slow, deliberate stalk once it had gotten clear of the wing Marigold had filled with undead. Once the bodies had begun to clear, she quickened her stride to almost a jog.
The corridor she had followed it into was unlit. Ahead of it, the intersection of the main hallway seemed to almost shine in comparison. She could hear the gunshots and muffled swearing ahead, along with the moans of the infected. From the sound of it, he wasn't shooting all of them- just enough to pass through.
Then he was there, framed in the corridor, aiming a handgun and squinting into a hallway that must have appeared pitch black to him. Grayson Harman looked so much like his father that she had to blink back the wave of déjà vu, of that terrible, hopeful night they'd strong-armed their way into the devastated lab in Paris.
Grayson had survived the horror of Raccoon City before, she remembered. Dealing with zombies wasn't a new experience for him.
The sound of the creature's heavy gait caught his attention. Alexander had drawn close enough to become visible to him; Marigold could see his face fall with a sense of exhausted resignation. He wasn't totally in the dark, it seemed, but he seemed at his wits end. As he aimed, the appendages on his back snapped out with a taut snap. It had found something up here it could hunt after all.
Run, Marigold thought hard at Grayson. With his particular strain of infection, there was a chance he'd pick up on it. If he heard her, it only seemed to make things worse, make him hesitate in confusion. Angling her gun to get him out of her trajectory, she started shooting.
The shots jarred Grayson into motion. She fired another into its back, trying for the spine. It snarled, furious at the prospect of having another hunt despoiled. Marigold ducked as Grayson fired three more shots into it and finally took off back towards the elevator.
More importantly, it was having a hell of a time turning in this narrow little hallway. She could almost sense the moment when it decided to go for fresh meat rather than try to fight her in here. It surged forward, using those legs to punch into the walls and pull itself forward with speed she still managed to find shocking.
Marigold tightened her grip on the chair and dashed forward after it. As she rounded the corner, she could see it slicing its way through the zombies Grayson had left behind. Grayson was at the lifts, waiting for the doors to open again - she could see the coiled tension in the set of his back.
The creature was nearly on top of him, and she could hear the lift trundling to a stop as it reached their level. Grayson had glanced back and caught sight of what was about to overtake him, freezing up. "Grayson," she barked out, gripping the chair and moving into a full run. "Get in the bloody lift!" She could see his eyes flick past the creature to meet her own, a flicker of recognition joining his confusion.
The elevator doors chimed just then and he tore his eyes away. Grayson pushed through the opening elevator doors and slammed the CLOSE button before they'd gotten halfway open, to ride upward in safety. The creature slammed itself into the steel doors with an angry howl.
That howl was cut short as Marigold shot forward into a jump, planting both of her feet into its back. From this angle, the legs couldn't bend back to spear at her. Marigold took hold of the base of one of those sharp, jointed appendages and ripped it from its back, getting another and finding her feet again before it could finish falling. When it tried to turn and spear at her, she grabbed the legs of the chair she had brought along and bashed it into its back, snapping the sharp legs and forcing it down to the ground, taking a little longer to try to push back upward every time.
Before her eyes, the appendages were beginning to regenerate, the damage beginning to right itself in it's mutilated flesh. "I really hope you're not still in there," she murmured, "but I don't think any of us ever had that kind of luck." She dropped the chair in her hands, now a mangled wreck, and carefully took hold of one of the hard, broken-off venomous spines of its legs on the ground. "It's hard for me to get angry at you for going after him, especially after I did worse barely a day ago. You might be an uncle, by the way." The spine felt oddly dry in her hand, almost brittle. "I can't afford to be squeamish anymore. Not when the kids are in danger." The husk of Alexander was trying to rise again. She imagined, in the pause before it moved this time, that he recognized her voice.
Then she buried the spike between its shoulder blades, face tightening as it shrieked. Maybe the venom would take. She hoped it would at least put it - him- out of commission for a while. Long enough to get the medicine finished, and get back to the kids. From the look on Grayson's face, she'd likely have a lot of explaining to do, all over again.
It scuttled away from her, and she let it clamour to its feet to flee deeper into the level in the opposite direction.
Don stood in front of his bank of screens, the afterglow of the antivenin serum he'd just given himself still humming in his veins. He'd expected it to hurt, or at least make him fatigued while the T-antibodies he'd harvested from Wesker did their work.
Don hadn't expected the complete opposite. He felt like he could fight a damned bear right now. Fuck T-Virus, this was what those pharma assholes should have been selling.
A private security force, only two people - a man and a woman- had shown up on the monitors a little while ago. They'd tracked down the two surviving prisoners and seemed to be managing the ant problem with far more finesse than any of the grunts from earlier had managed. They seemed antsy (heh!) to get out of the place. He'd need to keep a wary eye out for them out in the facility. Hero types were good at meddling where they didn't need to be.
On another screen, Grayson Harman was fleeing back to the elevators, Nosferatu quick on his tail. "Ah damn, kid, ye knew he didn't like ye sniffin' around that girl."
Another figure appeared on the screen, running with the relentless sort of gait he'd seen in the Hunters HCF had brought along. Grayson seemed to recognize them, slipping into the elevator in the very last second, the lucky little shit.
The figure - fuck, was that Alexia? - slammed her feet into Nosferatu's back. There was nothing delicate in the way the lithe blonde woman pulled those sharp little legs off. Belatedly, he realized that she'd brought a steel chair along with her, like some WWF stunt. Those things were fucking sturdy, and she fucking bent it with each hit.
As the rest of the scene played out, Don spotted the blade hanging from the woman's belt.
That wasn't Alexia, who'd been cold enough to create the beast, but not this sort of hands-on brutal in attempting to dismantle it.
This was Delta. Delta had tracked old Alexander to this spot and staked the monster with his own broken, venomous spines. Don laughed, recursively grinning at the strength of the sound. "Oh, that's fucking poetry for ye, Nosferatu."
Don had assumed that he'd been dealing with someone quick and quiet, with some sort of anti-BOW tech. Delta was clearly young, somewhere around twenty, with a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. She'd know about the BOW labs down here. After a moment's thought, Don decided Grayson wouldn't have mistaken anyone else for his Alexia even though the resemblance was uncanny.
So who the fuck had Wesker dug out of the woodwork for this?!
At that age, she would have been born in the late seventies. Given the dead sister and no cousins, that meant…oh fuck. A story began to piece itself together in Don's mind, and he started to laugh. "Though he only knew how to brew 'em inna test tube. Guess I know why no one talks about you, love."
Don zipped up his parka, strapping on a vest with some extra ammo for his gun. Grabbing his toughbook, he paused by the door to pick up a special item he'd liberated from the security footlocker. The anti-BOW gun didn't have a lot of pEpsilon pellets left for it, but there was enough to take down anything particularly nasty. He'd seen for himself that Nosferatu would be out of commission for a bit.
That last data packet he'd sent Spencer would hold them for another few hours, with an automated smaller taster set to go out in two hours to extend their deadline a bit further. Oswell Spencer was a desperate man, willing to let the facility's life spool out for a few hours more, and a few hours more if it meant consolidating what little solid intellectual property was remaining within the company. After all, lawsuits were expensive fucking things.
He'd need to find Wesker soon, but it seemed like they'd need to grab the girl first. That would be an entertaining first stop.
Besides, he had to hear this story for himself.
Jill glanced around the foyer, watching Grayson Harmon disappear up the stairs within the mansion. He'd come across her moments after they'd discovered that Steve was gone.
Grayson had been her neighbour back in Raccoon City, in that old apartment building. He'd been a bartender at Jack's Bar during her days at STARS. The guys had been like Teflon - easy-going, nothing stuck to him. She knew he'd been seeing a married woman at the time - hard to miss her visiting. She winced again, remembering the crack she'd made about Annette, and how Grayson's face had crumpled when he informed Jill of her death, just for a second.
There was a haunted look about him now that hadn't been there before. Barry and Chris both had it. Carlos too, though he hid it better. So Grayson hadn't just been out of town when the city fell. He'd been there after the quarantine came down.
She wondered if Nemesis had taken out his apartment when it had smoked her out of her own. Given that he had only lived two doors down, it was likely.
The "ghost" comment worried her a little more. Jill had all but demanded to follow Grayson back to this fucking mansion - because that was a great omen in a T-Virus outbreak - to get ahead of Steve. Now…
Kate had told them plenty about the woman who'd supplied them with the foundational data they were using to build their database on Umbrella. It had been thorough, and it had come from someone who had been pissed with Umbrella. Imprisonment, dead family - all strong motivators. When Jill had run into Marigold outside the police station back in September, she'd had a nervous look to her, hunted. Despite taking out Jill's pursuers in that little alley, and the cool, clipped demeanor, she'd seemed to want to get away from Jill as quickly as possible. Given how their information still seemed good, for what it was, the woman had actively concealed what she'd done.
And she'd tried to tell Jill what was about to happen.
But she'd still left this place out of her intel. And now her niece - Doctor Ashford, decidedly not dead, although that didn't seem to be public information - wanted to meet with her to negotiate passage out of this frozen cesspit.
"Just a quick little rescue, they said," Jill told the echoing foyer. "One-and-done, and then right back to the plane. No drama. That's all I asked for." She glanced up at the stairs again, checking her ammo. She'd be fine, if things went smoothly.
Jill heard a creak behind her. Her mouth tightened. You fucking jinxed it, she cursed at herself. Drama City, here we come. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the source of the sound. There was a partially closed door to a hallway there, just beyond a bank of photos - presumably, the family. Just past the door was a scowling seventeen-year-old who had clearly not thought this plan all the way through.
Or worse, from the glint in his eye, had, and had decided her didn't care how it ended so long as he settled a score. "Steve," Jill said evenly. "Claire is going to kick your ass when we get back."
He stayed where he was. "She knows I'm not lettin' it go. That asshole brought you here?"
Jill skipped over that part and nodded. "Said Alexia wanted to negotiate a way out. Outbreaks and self-destruct sequences go hand in hand, and I don't think Umbrella knows what's going on here."
"Why fucking not?!" The boy sneered.
"Because I would have seen more of it in Raccoon City when it was falling apart," Jill said evenly. "But I didn't. If we have to hang around here longer - thanks," Steve winced, looking away, "I'd like to know what we're dealing with."
"Ashfords are Umbrella, though, you know what they're capable of."
Jill let her eyes wander across the photos. "I know, Steve. Our captain was one of them. He set all of us - STARS - up to die." She hissed out those last words, fighting to keep her voice from rising. Steve, to his credit, looked faintly abashed. "There's only four of us left from two whole teams. I know, Steve."
Steve narrowed his eyes. "You're not telling me something."
Jill glared at him. "Me? Not give sensitive intel to a hothead like you that runs off at the first opportunity? No shit." She glanced back at Steve and attempted a softer tone. "If this is in good faith, I should see what they have to say, at least. There's a lot of shit going on up there that we're not aware of." The photos on the wall were a mixture of posed family photos, with a few that seemed more natural. Alexia and Alfred had been young teens in some of them, with a few of a bearded older man with red hair.
One of the photos caught her eye, and Jill drifted towards it. Two little blonde kids who must have been the twins - were playing at a table. A woman sat with them, looking shockingly like Alexia. The woman's hair was so blonde it's almost white.
Jill turned her head. There was another one, portrait of an older man with a red-headed teen on either side of him: a boy and a girl. The boy's face was pinched, but the girl's face was smirking with some hidden mischief. A plate on the bottom read: EDWARD, ALEXANDER, AND MARIGOLD. 1967. She returned to the photo again, looking closer. The hair was different, but the face, and the expression, were the same.
Oh, fuck, Jill thought. It was exactly as bad as she thought.
There had been people monitoring the woman -this woman- in Raccoon City. She'd been tight-lipped about what had happened, but something about it must have gone wrong.
Steve crept up in curiosity, next to her. "Think that's their mom?"
"No," Jill said faintly. "Close, but It's not." It's their ghost, she thought, remembering what Grayson had said downstairs. And she finally came home.
Looking at the photo, Jill was starting to get an idea of why. She kept the words back- Steve was still a powder keg, and there felt like there was a piece missing.
Maybe meeting Alexia would help.
"Steve," Jill said. "Claire mentioned that someone shot at you outside. Can you describe what happened for me again?"