"What is that?" Marigold and Alfred stood at the far end of the corridor leading to the lift. The dust had settled just enough that they deemed it safe to get a look, from the safety of the few hundred feet of straight hallway.

The fluorescent lights had shattered when the lift had hit the bottom of the shaft, and those closer flickered like a bad horror movie set. Marigold wrinkled her nose. What light there was already dim, thankfully, but the flickering made it harder for her eyes to adjust. The wall had been blown out, chucks of concrete and twisted steel piled high around where the entrance had been. Beyond, partially buried under rubble, was the lift car itself.

The heavy sound of agonized breathing, almost a growling sound, cam from beneath it. The rubble itself seemed to pulse with the sound.

"That…is a problem." Alfred unslung his own rifle, holding it loose but at the ready.

"Good thing there's another way out," Marigold said, philosophically. "The bastard over yonder made an awful mess where the other lift comes out. It should still be structurally sound, at least." Bits of concrete were sliding off of the pile, and the pile made another agonized groan. "That is the reason we didn't have an extra day to get out of here. Also the reason the BOW level was open in the first place."

"….that's McNally?" Alfred shot the rubble a disgusted look. "Bloody jock."

"He was normal-sized when I saw him last, but he must have just taken it then." Marigold winced as a small avalanche of rubble came from one spot near the bottle of the car. "Good god, he's under it." A hand was beginning to work its way out, feeling for purchase to pull the body beneath it a little further. The musculature in that hand seemed to shiver and pulse before her eyes, growing slowly ever larger. The car lurched, and a massive pair of shoulders became visible. The skin was pulled so tight it was shiny. Eyes blinked in the dark, and he bellowed in pain yet again.

"This isn't normal, no? My frame of reference is limited." Marigold could see his face clearly now. His jaw was smashed on one side, but it was still the same bastard who'd attempted to goad her into a fight upstairs.

"No, that's an unstable mutation." Alfred said. Even he could see some of the shape emerging. He seemed better, Marigold thought. Exhausted, but more focused.

"Fun." Marigold said, sardonic. She called down the corridor, shifting her voice to the one the man was familiar with. "Antivenin hit a snag, did it? Done running off to punt new friends into walls?" McNally snarled at the sound of her voice, but he didn't seem able to see them yet in the gloom.

"What?!"

"I broke several of his bones in return," Marigold responded with a thin smile.

Alfred snorted, "Have I mentioned that I love it when you visit?"

Her smile grew a touch more genuine. "It was always fairly easy to tell, dear." She then made a face. "It's not the virus - not exactly, anyhow. I had kind of assumed he'd just keel over. This is horrific."

Alfred didn't reply right away. Then, he asked, "Does he know-"

"He thinks I'm a cousin, or a spare…something. I look too young to be anything else, thankfully. I thickened the accent up a bit, and he assumed I was too rough to pass for Alexia…I'd rather no one correct him."

I'm not sure it matters," Alfred said, doubtful.

Marigold shook her head. "He's still functioning….somehow. There's still a working mind in there." After a moment's thought, she said, "He regenerated almost as fast as…oh." She snickered a little. "Genetics really do matter. Remind me never to donate blood."

Marigold looked toward the ceiling. Did this idiot inject himself with your blood?

A long pause, and Wesker responded, almost sullen. It's more complicated than -

Five-word limit.

…yes

…wow. **Marigold looked down at the shifting pile of rubble. The stupidity has layers.

The idiot was keeping Spencer placated. Wesker responded.

The idiot fed half your men and a dozen maintenance workers to my little brother.

Did you catch its nickname? A taunt.

Marigold made an irritated noise in her throat. Don't make me come up there.

Perish the thought, dearheart. What was it you said earlier? Have fun*.*

Alfred peered at her. She'd gone quiet for too long, she realized. "Are you alright?"

There was no value in hiding it from him. "They were both headed down here, but this one pushed his luck too far."

Alfred shifted his grip on the rifle. "That's unsettling when you do that. Talk to him, in your head. You did that in the airfield as well, yes?"

Marigold grimaced. "He's being an arsehole. I think he was keeping quiet earlier when they arrived." She grinned. "I don't think he knows how else to get in though."

Alfred looked vaguely nauseated at her thickening accent. "You're really letting your West Country through there."

"Ah, It's like an old favorite jumper. My American accent takes much longer to put on right, and it's a bit rubbish." McNally had finally begun to find real purchase, pulling himself out a bit more from the lift's weight. His head came up like a wolf's. "ASHFORD! I ken hear ye bastards!"

Quietly, Marigold said, "I'm glad I got to meet him before this. That one under the lift. I understand the situation a little better now." She hefted the 1918 Tank Gewehr, the anti-tank bolt-action rifle Alfred had retrieved from the gun room, into a more comfortable position. "I'd hate to think this was happening to someone who didn't deserve this." She looked at Alfred, whose uneasiness was melting away in the light of a good, imminent fight. "In here, do you reckon, or in the courtyard?"

Alfred nodded to the beast of a rifle she carried. "You might want some room to maneuver. You only have a few shots before it's no more that a glorified club. Put in your earplugs before you fire that."

"We'll move in a moment, but you might want to get some distance." She put the earplugs in and called out, "Oi! Shitbird!" Alfred gave her a vaguely scandalized look as he backed away, but there was nothing the be done about it. If she were going to lean into the accent, she'd do it properly.

The first experimental round hit the side of the former shaft, showering the mutating man in even more rubble as he screamed. The recoil sent her flying back a few feet, barely finding her feet in time to stumble back and slam her back into the wall at the bend leading into the corridor. Recoil is fun, she thought, incoherently. The silhouette of McNally disappeared for a few long moments before he began to dig himself out again with gusto. He finally emerged again, bleeding, cursing, and regenerating, a lumbering creature that grew ever larger as he healed. The grotesque shadow of him finally reared up, and he starts to lumber forward. "I'll make you eat that fucking gun, ye wee bitch," McNally rumbled.

I will have fun, thanks ever so, Marigold responded back to Wesker, tone sardonic. If this one was incapacitated, They might just have the sliver of time needed to let the others recover and regroup to get to safety. The edges of a plan began to form, and she began to back out of the corridor to the open courtyard.

A sound like an artillery shell making impact came up through the destroyed shaft with a resounding boom. Wesker stepped carefully back from the edge. Between the flames and the rubble clogging it, this pathway was no longer an option.

Despite having been violently tossed into the elevator to the point of snapping it entirely and sending it plummeting down the shaft, Don had made it through to chase down his quarry, still believing that he was one injection away from salvation. What had met him down there had no such designs.

Recoil is fun, Marigold's voice came through in his head, somehow breathless. Did she have an anti-tank rifle? Knowing what little he did of Alfred, it was very possible. The screams that followed sounded like a furious, injured bear rather than from a human man.

Then, more prim and with a sardonic edge, I will have fun, thanks ever so.

Wesker prowled above at the lip of the elevator, having avoided the same fate. No plan survived contact with the enemy; Marigold was the definition of that epithet. He strode over to the main elevator. McNally had had the data on his person, but he'd also had the toughbook. Wesker would need to find another way in there, and McNally's computer was as good a place to start looking as any.

You can't hide in there forever, he finally responded back. She likely had no idea what he'd found in that old lab, or on the research level. Let her think this to be an empty threat, then.

A long pause, then: busy now. Bluster later. Another shot was fired, somewhat farther away this time, and McNally screamed.

He was getting stronger. In his rage, Don had managed to heave the lift car off of himself for the second time.

That cheeky little bitch was down here, somewhere. When he got his hands on her, he'd tear her fucking arms off.

But first, he had to locate Dr. Ashford. She was the only one who could possibly fix this, now. His skin was stretched so tightly over his growing musculature that it would start to tear any minute now. He'd fucked up the antivenin, and if they wanted someone to keep resetting the deadman's switch, they'd fucking fix this.

Out in the courtyard, he'd followed the sound of Alfred frantically calling for someone called Callie. There had been a nanny, or something over on Rockfort when the twins had been young (they'd been practically raised by the staff, after all), but she hadn't made the move here - either 'Callie' had been sensible, or was very, very dead. He'd heard Delta's dulcet tones when climbing out earlier, just before the blast. Had Delta adopted the name?

He finally caught sight of a lone figure by the front door. Alfred Ashford was standing there, not screaming as usual, but methodically taking potshots at him. Don bellowed again, moving forward like a massive wave. The lad left the door open behind him - useless, trying to keep him out now - and disappeared inside.

His vision wasn't so good in here, but slowly he could make out the posh interior, filled with family photos and portraits. He began to trundle his way inside, glancing a the photos. One with a young Alexander featured a young red-headed woman bearing a striking resemblance to Delta. Alexia - what he had seen on the monitors - looked much like this woman as well. Maybe. His vision was getting worse and worse with his condition. The young woman in the portrait would be around fifty now, had she not been in the ground for nearly twenty years. Wesker had bet on Alfred's mental decline just a little too much.

There was a stairway to the upstairs, where the bedrooms would be. Little Alexia wouldn't be hiding, laying low, like the little shit in the facility. Nay, if she were going to come out, she'd do it polite-like and in the open, before trying to slit his damned throat. Trying, being the operative word. Alfred, now, he'd try to snipe at him, like just now. When -

Something tugged at his mind, and a heavy iron gate swung noisily to his left. He rounded on it, but saw no movement. Creeping closer, the gate opened up on the basement level.

A woman's voice in a posh received pronunciation accent was singing.

Umbrella and secret basement labs were fucking synonymous, he thought with a savage grin. Alexia was down there. The movement split the skin on his face, and he began to painfully move his bulk down the stairs.

The first room was promising, even if Alexia wasn't inside. A massive mutated corpse lay inside, limp in a cluster of ropey black growths. She had been working down here, had started again almost immediately.

The voice came from further down the hall, beckoning like a siren. He still needed to find her. He lumbered after the sound, corridor after corridor. After a bit, he realized the sound had stopped.

"Ashford," He growled. "I'm not in the mood for games."

The voice came again, speaking from behind him. Fuck, she'd gotten around him. "Funny," the woman said, that posh accent coming through crisp and clear. "I'm losing patience for them as well, and yet he still sent a clown." The sound of a bolt-action worked behind him as he struggled to turn in that narrow corridor. When had he gotten so fucking big?

"T-Veronica not all it's cracked up to be?" he sneered. "Still gotta use yer brother's toys? Can't imagine you're that pleased to see that little spare runnin' about the place, helpin' the ones stealing yer work from under yer nose." Don looked up to lock eyes with his opponent - and froze.

Fucking Delta had cleaned herself up here in the mansion and looked every inch like she belonged here. The fury in her face made the reflective sheen of her eyes seem demonic. Not just her face, either. The woman positively radiated that cold fury that he'd learned, through the decades, to so strongly associate with the Ashford clan.

This woman had heard every word he'd spat out at her in the facility, and was taking it very personally. The kid who had let him spin out his own length of noose before punching him in the throat was gone, replaced by this woman who carried herself with a cool, completely self-assured hauteur. Don was suddenly very sure that she meant for him to die at her hands, one way or another. Whatever mercy she had carried had run dry.

But not before she made him suffer. "The kids aren't available to come out and play with you today," the woman said in a clear, carrying voice. "But I'll let them know you stopped by, so Alexia can tear you to shreds in person. Do mind the beastie by the door. It'll wake soon enough. You remember how hungry they get, I'm sure." The last part was spat out with no small amount of venom. "I told you you'd die down here."

The sound of the massive rifle went off like a bomb, punching a hole in his shoulder. Temporarily deafened, and blinded by the pain, he didn't see then the stock of the massive piece of metal come down on his face until it was too late.

Albert Wesker cocked his head, far above in the facility, like he was listening to some far-off music. As far as he was concerned, he might as well have been. Whatever was happening to Marigold was degrading whatever filters she had to block him out in moments of high emotion.

She hadn't killed McNally…but she hadn't stopped herself either. It was really a shame there were no camera feeds to view the festivities. And no one seemed to be in any hurry to rush for the exits.

He found Don's toughbook to be still intact, although he didn't have the encryption key necessary to meddle in his proceedings with Oswell Spencer. During McNally's initial mutation and subsequent struggle, the man hadn't noticed that he'd lost his greatest bargaining chip. The T-Veronica data drive sat snug inside his vest, quiet and dormant.

From here, Wesker could access the security mainframe. Not even Don had the kind of access needed to override any deferrals of detonation…but the heads of research facilities did. The lead administrators. And what he'd found beneath that one remaining tile in the older lab…

Marigold would hardly have known she'd been granted that level of clearance prior to her expected arrival in 1982. If anyone was to blame for not removing the access, it was Alexander. An oversight, surely, overshadowed by grief and sentiment, not to mention his subsequent incarceration.

Sentiment always seemed the their greatest weakness, after all. For the naturally-born generation in particular.

For now, he needed intel on where the family would emerge from their hideout. Valentine, of all people, had rushed from the private elevator just before he had thrown McNally into it and destroyed the fucking thing. The Ashfords and the group PABS had come in to rescue clearly mixed like oil and water. If they wouldn't come out on their own, Redfield and Valentine's overblown sense of justice would flush them out.

After all, he had the data now, and he'd trained those two himself. Why not let all of his problems take care of eachother?