Segers was speaking into his headset when Delta came back in through the door. "Affirmative, will reconvene at the hanger bay in thirty. Just waiting for the bogey to be cleared from this floor before making a run for it."

Segers moved his hand away from his headset when Delta scowled at him. Off her look, he glared back. "I'm the one going back out there. Why the fuck would I not coordinate. Pretty sure you left an impression."

"He's not dead." she replied, making a beeline for the centrifuge.

Segers snorted in derision. "Guess I know you weren't lying about that, now."

"That's not-" Delta's face went blank, and she scrambled over to the nearest sink before dry-heaving into it. Her whole body shuddered violently from the sensation.

Segers froze. "Um." She didn't have any obvious bites, but some of the men on Rockfort had tried to hide theirs.

Delta looked up at him after a moment. "I'm fine."

"Really doesn't look that way. You caught up with it?"

After a long moment, Delta nodded. "As I was saying. He's not dead."

Oh. Him. "…where's your chair?"

Delta grimaced. "I…lose my temper when someone goes after one of the kids. You've seen." She pushed herself back up. "I don't think he knew I was alive before now."

"Did it tag you?"

"No, I got behind…him. Those spines can't bend that way. Charging from the front seems too much like suicide." She looked back at the counter, moving to start packing up. She'd had him section the remaining powdered extracts into sections, presumably to more easily manage smaller batches.

Segers sidled up to her. Delta looked drawn and hollowed out, somehow. He glanced to the packages of solidified powder she'd brought. "So it's…what, side effects? From the other stuff in your system, from before?" If he could keep her distracted for a few minutes, he could keep her from noticing that some of it was missing.

Her voice got tight at the question. He'd hit a nerve. "Sure. You could definitely say that. Stop it." Delta's voice was peevish at the intrusion. Closing up the two packages, she shoved them both into the bottom of her pack.

The centrifuge beeped, and she all but sagged in relief. Segers kept talking. "So I take that, and what happens?"

She glanced at him. "I thought I said earlier?"

"Lady, there was a lot of shit going on."

"Hn. You'll be wiped out for a while."

"And you're not taking it?"

She actually smiled at that a little. "It wouldn't help me. Why would I waste the dose?"

"So what's Calendula-B extract?" He stepped away when Delta actually shooed him away from the centrifuge to start sealing the phials shut. A small stash of injectors had gone into the bag.

Don't worry about it. It'll help your friend." Segers has taken a vial worth of each extract and hidden them on his person while she was out

"But it'll cure Davies."

Her hands froze, and she stopped for a moment to think. " I'm not a biochemist." She began.

"Strong start."

"It should help him. It's designed to counter…what I did. Among other things." She looked uncomfortable. "You ever hear of toxic neuropathy?"

"Ah yes, me an' the boys talked about that over a snifter of brandy last weekend."

She rolled her eyes. "That's a no, then. It takes time to become a problem, but you'll have one without this."

Segers decided to switch topics. "So it's still running around out there?"

Delta sighed. She didn't slow her work, but she still seemed to deflate from her bristling state. After a moment's hesitation, she answered. "He's still moving around. Licking his wounds, but definitely not dead." She made a disgusted sound. "High toxicity thresholds for everyone."

"Good thing you had that steel chair, then." It was weirdly fun to bait this woman.

She snapped back. "The chair is absolutely dead. It's just not fond of its own venom."

"How did you-"

"How do you think?" Delta interrupted him.

He blew out a breath in frustration, looking at the mess the Hunter had left. "So Nosferatu is still active."

Delta went still and looked hard at him. "What…?"

Segers winced. She hadn't known. "Local designation. Dunno why."

Delta stared at him. Her eye was actually beginning to twitch. With some sarcasm, he asked, "Are you having a stroke?"

Delta continued to stare. Finally, in a very small voice, she said, "I might have staked him."

Segers snorted, then realized that she was absolutely serious. "Jesus," he said.

"And you're telling me…"

Segers nodded. "I get it, yeah."

"Huh…" she turned so she could lean on the counter for support. "He would have hated that so much," she said, letting out a choked little laugh.

They are siblings. Were. Segers thought. Out loud, he said, "You seem weirdly calm, considering."

"I've had an idea of what to expect for a while."

"They told you?"

Delta glanced at him, then turned back to resume packing the phials into padded canisters. "No one told me anything. Do you think I'd be here if anyone thought I had a damned clue?"

Segers thought a moment and took a calculated risk. "You realize how fucked up all of this is, right? Like, you can see it, can't you? I can take a pretty easy guess how he got like that." He gestured out the door, where 'Nosferatu' had stood.

Delta, to her credit, didn't flinch. "I'm aware," she said, voice hardening. "I'm not blind. They were thirteen, and I wasn't there to do a damned thing to stop it." She stepped back, hands going into fists. Segers had touched a nerve. "Umbrella has a lot of dead gifted children in their collective closet, if you're trying to play for guilt. My…" She shook her head. "Spencer made sure no one was going to get in the way of that. If I'd just let the old man have an aneurysm, none of this might have happened." She blinked. "Oh."

"Oh?"

She looked back at the door, mouth going firm before resuming her packing. "It really has been that way all along."

Segers watched her, nonplussed. With one hand, he reached up to his radio and eased away the rubber band current holding down the SEND button on his radio. He'd pressed his luck enough.

The signal from Segers' radio clicked softly out in Wesker's earpiece.

Don had returned him to the old lab where he'd been found earlier. Some of the photos on the walls had been removed, with tiles deliberately removed to reveal empty spaces - perfect for someone to hide documents, or small items. Don had nodded to them. "That scout - weak stomach, that - was in here earlier and picked those clean. I think there were some books, but I couldn't get a bead on any of the other stuff. Whatever intel they had on the family, it was still good." He'd eyed Wesker. "Guess you'll see for yourself inna bit."

Don had then waved to the rest of the space with a dark chuckle, edged with hysteria. "Don't mind the mess. "The beastie needed a bite before you all arrived. I wasn't expecting it to have as much of an appetite." The back half of the space into a functional abattoir, a sort of feeding trough for the beast.

Segers has been able to keep her talking. Wesker was fairly sure at this point that Marigold had, in fact, dosed the man, especially given how she had suddenly trusted him alone with the samples to deal with Nosferatu. Actively intercepting now would likely lose him a solid soldier, but Segers was doing a competent job of keeping her talking, inasmuch as she ever did. Confronting her now in an attempt to secure would also give away his position to Alexia, if Don was right about the growths all over the facility.

He'd initially thought he'd needed to intercept quickly, but that might not be easily done, with Nosferatu still in the picture. Marigold's ability to navigate an infested field was a huge advantage; Segers had reported that she'd walked him through a wing packed with infected workers with next to no resistance.

He had known that something, arrogance or necessity, was preventing the Ashfords from fleeing. They had to be well aware of the outbreak by now. Now he knew that they might actively be impeded from leaving, if their pilot were incapacitated.

He let himself relax, just a shade, and take in the space. This room had once been a functioning lab, but it held the air of a mausoleum under the gore. Two pictures have been taken down, tiles set carefully on the desk.

No tiles for rue or daisies were marked. The little inscription by the door was in a hand he'd come to recognize, reaching for Shakespeare rather than mythology. The symbolism reminded him of the Arklay mansion. She'd reached for Hamlet - a tale of family, betrayal and death, with Ophelia delivering flowers of portents through the court. He might have guessed King Lear, with the children giving their false promises of devotion for the family, but this likely pre-dated the twins.

The tile under the photo of the founders was an intriguing missing piece. Had Alexander hidden evidence against Spencer? Given Marigold's known hostility, it stood to reason that Alexander had offered some level of support, and that theory was looking more likely all the time. The Ashfords weren't isolated islands, but tightly connected below the surface, like an archipelago. For some reason, it made him think of his own sister. The rectangular void in the dust of the previously concealed space was all the clue he could see there. That left one last hiding place, if there was anything else worth salvaging.

That left violets. In the passage, violets were a symbol of fidelity, all gone in the wake of betrayal. There was no evidence that Marigold had pulled down any other photos, reasoning that there wasn't a space for violets.

He'd have to work his way up to Alexia's research level after this to get any real intel on T-Veronica. Any notes, any context on her research might be on one of the other restricted lab levels. The more he knew about what was awaiting him in the mansion, the better off he'd be. He needed leverage.

More to the point, he needed as much data as possible to build on the body of work he already had, and to leverage as insurance later.

There was still Don to consider. The man was holding a drive of Dr. Ashford's T-Veronica data, payment for his way out of this frozen hole with a cash bonus.

Marigold would have to be handled on her own, hopefully while her guard was down. Whatever was affecting her at present would continue to work on her. Just being down here was forcing her system into an acute stress response, rather than the normal chronic one suggested to be coming for everyone else in proximity. Segers would be coming back to meet him, with that intel.

So long as Don didn't get too creative with whatever he was up to, the Ashfords in their mansion could be, in fact, well and truly trapped here. All he'd have to do was to get ready for the right moment to collect.

A framed photo of an older couple was hanging over a desk. If Marigold hadn't been here before, someone else had been the one to choose the locations. Striding over to the desk, Wesker carefully took the frame down from the wall, smirking when he found a tile painted with a delicate purple flower.

Insurance truly had been the right word for what he'd find in this rotted, frozen little corner of the world.

Delta had mostly packed up the containers when a thought occurred to him. "Those things," he waved to the growths on the walls. "They aren't…attached to her, are they?"

Delta looked startled at the question, then genuinely amused. "What? Oh, no!" She thought about it for a moment. "I can see where you're coming from, but no."

He looked up, taking in the destroyed camera in the corner. "What's the story there?"

She followed his line of sight. "I don't know who else has access to the feed. It seemed safer." She thought a moment. "I assume the name McNally is familiar to you."

Segers fought to control his face, but not well enough. Delta frowned and nodded. "I wondered why your lot were so quick to follow. That man you were all so keen to dig out, he let him," she nodded past the door, referring to Nosferatu, *"*out for a reason. If he stole from the family, he's clearly desperate for a way out. Three full units coming to his rescue, as far as he knows. So why would he sabotage that?"

Segers felt uneasy. "I'm not sure."

Delta sighed. Then, her demeanor changed, becoming sharp. "Someone's coming," she said, reaching up to pull the mask back over the bottom half of her face. "You said that you assumed I was a cousin, yes?"

"Or something." Segers said, looking towards the door. He couldn't hear anything.

Delta's voice shifted into something was still nominally British, the way white and raisin bread were both technically bread. She slouched a little. "I can work with that. Let's see what the shitbird wants." There was now a slight burr to her r's, now.

Segers felt his eyebrows go up into his hairline at the transformation. He could now hear the sound of heavy footsteps, moving quickly through the infected that Nosferatu had wiped out. "Glad I'm not on cleanup duty," a man's voice muttered.

The door to the lab opened, and a huge, broad-shouldered red-faced bearded man in his fifties with reddish-gray hair and stained coveralls peered inside. He grinned at the sight of them. It was clearly intended to be a friendly grin, but there was something feral in the way he was sizing the pair of them up.

"Ah, good! The band's all here," Don McNally said, in a strong Scottish brogue. "I was beginnin' to think I'd never run inta ye."