att(pirated)

Unfortunately, it wasn't even a month before I found myself back in Paris.

This time, it was by the specific request of Alexia, the youngest Doctor of Umbrella Corporation's payroll. It had been maybe a week or so since I'd last seen the young doctor, and apparently that was long enough for her to complete a battery of tests, and get a new lab assistant. As it turned out, Doctor McGee had recommended running the previous tests at room temperature, on the grounds that they were working with cell cultures that were vulnerable to damage when exposed to cold temperatures. And as he'd been a specialist in cellular biology, Alexia had deferred to him. I didn't know why he'd decided to suggest something like that, and given the fact that I hadn't seen him I couldn't exactly question him. But at the end of the day, it didn't matter. McGee had been replaced, and from the sounds of it, doctor Ashford didn't think too highly of the new help.

"It's exhausting." Alexia sighed, the young girl was perched on a lab chair that had apparently been set for an adult, which meant that it was set so high that her feet dangled well above the floor. Though if she cared, she made no visible note of it. Instead, she'd focused her rant on her new subordinates. "These incompetents are supposed to be the best on Umbrella's payroll. And yet, they struggle to grasp even basic concepts. If I ask them to run a test, the only thing I ask for is for them to do it correctly. And yet, they're somehow incapable of doing even that."

"That sounds pretty frustrating, especially when helping you would probably do their careers a whole lot of good. The least they could do would be to meet the standards you expect of them." I tried to sympathize with the young doctor. I had at least a bit of an understanding of what she was going through, from my second life, but I couldn't exactly bring that up. Both from the fact that it would sound insane, but also for the fact that bringing up the bunker incident would probably send the wrong message.

"Frustrating? It's a constant struggle against mediocrity. They lack the vision, the intelligence, and even the basic understanding required for my work. I often wonder if they even comprehend the significance of what we're doing here." The aristocratic Ashford replied, not even bothering to look at me. Instead, she simply sighed as she stared at some machine, waiting as the timer ticked down until some data or results were compiled.

"And to think, they'd send you sub-standard personnel when you work in a lab like this. When the stakes are this high, you need people who can keep up and contribute. Not people who have essentially switched off." I continued to sympathize with the girl, if only to get into her good graces. While Ludmila had told me that the request to see me again had come from Alexia, her stand-off-ish attitude made me doubt that.

"Precisely. But instead, I'm forced to work with individuals who can barely grasp the basic fundamentals of virology. It's as if they are stumbling in the dark, completely unaware of the light of true scientific discovery." The young doctor nodded as she continued her rant, not even bothering to look at me. Personally, I doubted that what she classified as 'the basics' was anywhere close to simple to understand, but I nodded and accepted her position.

"Perhaps it's a training issue? Maybe they've been reassigned from other labs, and could use a bit of a refresher course on what's expected of them?" I idly suggested. Personally, I doubted that there was anything wrong with her assistants. After all, it wouldn't make sense for umbrella to hamstring a prodigy like Alexia by assigning her completely incompetent workers. And given her elitist attitude, I reasoned that it was more likely that the young Ashford was simply expecting too much of her assistants right off the bat.

Unfortunately, Alexia merely scoffed at the suggestion. And to make things worse, her voice took on a hard edge. "Training can only do so much. It cannot instill intelligence or vision where there is none. The Ashford legacy demands excellence, not mediocrity. I require individuals who can think, not just follow orders."

"You're very protective of your legacy." I idly pointed out, trying to get the doctor to talk about something other than her work. And if my time in the empire had taught me anything, it was that aristocratic types like her loved to talk about their family's history.

"I am the inheritor of the legacy of the Ashford family, from my ancestor Veronica, to my grandfather Edward. Hundreds of years of prestige rest upon my shoulders." Alexia said almost automatically, before a frown crossed her face. "If my father won't live up to that legacy then it is my duty to do so."

I simply nodded, before shuffling the conversation along. I'd already endured enough ranting about lineage and breed in my last life to last all through this one and probably into the next. The sooner I could get Alexia to move on, the better. "I guess so, but living up to it all that must be incredibly stressful. How do you deal with it?"

The girl simply shrugged, before continuing with a slight barb. "I suppose for a lesser being, I suppose stress would be an issue. But I find my work relaxing in and of itself. Setting up experiments, and seeing them through to completion gives me a sense of fulfillment that you can never find in some drab book, or some vapid television show."

"You don't go out? You just work, and then go home and think about more work?" I asked, fighting hard to force myself not to frown. While I couldn't exactly blame Alexia for such a habit, I knew that it wasn't a healthy lifestyle to keep. Especially when your work wasn't nearly as fun as flying.

"No. I've never been able to go out and enjoy myself in the rest of the city. Every time I go to a restaurant, for example, the staff always insist on treating me like some idiot child, and insisting that I order off the children's menu. It's incredibly demeaning to eat some cheap burger or pasta while adults are enjoying the best of Parisian cuisine. These days, I simply ask for something to be delivered to my room. And unfortunately, I receive similar treatment everywhere I go." Alexia sighed, and I couldn't help but emphasize with her. Sure, our situations were different, but I knew the feeling of being talked down to due to my age all too well. It was an odd thing to relate to, but given our differences, I'd take what I could get.

Alexia went silent for a couple of seconds, intently focusing on… something. I followed her gaze to her machine, and for a second I thought she was trying to see if glaring at the device would make it work faster. But I realized probably a minute too late, that the young doctor wasn't idly staring at the display at all. Instead, she'd been starting at the almost mirror-polished metal, and carefully watching my reaction in it. And as soon as I noticed it, she turned in her seat and looked right at me, smugly smiling at having gotten the drop on me. "And from your reaction, you must feel the same way, correct?"

I reacted quickly, smiling and relaxing back into my chair. Sure, having someone get the drop on me was something I wasn't used to, but it was nice that Alexia suffered the same issues that I did. "Indeed. It's incredibly frustrating to be treated like some screaming idiot when we're so much more than that."

"Imagine that frustration, but in your daily life as well. All of these 'doctors' who think that I'm not their equal simply because they're older than me..." Alexia trailed off as she shook her head, giving me a point of reference for her experiences so far at the workplace. A feeling that I totally understood. After a few seconds, she sighed and lent back in her chair. "If only my brother was here, he'd whip these ingrates into shape."

"You have a brother?" I asked, focusing on this new family member who I'd never heard of before, and Alexia's rare positive attitude towards him.

Alexia paused for a second, before noticeably relaxing, and leaning back in her chair as she recalled something that she was actually fond of. "Yes, my beloved brother Alfred, my knight in shining armor. We speak on the phone every day, and we try to meet face-to-face whenever we can, but I must admit that being away from him for so long is… uncomfortable to say the least."

I'd certainly hoped that she was close to her brother, hell I was adopted and I found myself close to a few of my fellow Weskers. I briefly considered bringing them up, but this was a golden opportunity to find out more about the ice queen. So I kept quiet and allowed her to reminisce about her brother. And thankfully, I didn't have to wait long before she continued. "He's my closest confidant, the one person to truly understand our destiny in the world. Growing up we were inseparable, given how we lived alone. We played together all the time, whenever he played knight I'd be the princess, and in return he helped me conduct my first rudimentary experiments. And even if he was never quite as intelligent as I, he was always more than willing to help whenever he could."

"He sounds like a nice man. It must be tough to be separated from him, right?" I asked, keeping the conversation going. I didn't know how I'd react to being separated from my new family, and a small part of me didn't want to find out. For a sheltered girl like Alexia, being separated from her family was probably the worst fate imaginable. And I imagined that it was probably part of the reason behind why she was so stuck-up, assuming it was a front to cover her loneliness.

"Oh, absolutely. He's currently living in our mansion in England, but even so I don't see him often enough." Alexia shook her head, before pausing and recalling some fond memories. "There was this one time where he helped me get back at one of the guards that my father kept for private security. Some slobbering oaf called Celaux. That man was a fawning sycophant, a perfect bootlicker whenever father was around. But only to father, and behind his back he was a cruel man. He bullied and harassed everyone, and even I wasn't safe from him. He usually kept to snide remarks, or refusing to do things that 'weren't part of his job' when we asked him. But it came to a head when he tripped me, and laughed when I fell in a puddle and ruined my favorite dress."

"And your father did nothing?" I asked, slightly shocked at the fact that an aristocrat like her father would allow something like his family to be insulted by some lowborn guard.

"Father was susceptible to the man's attitude, and even if he had crossed a line then, it wouldn't have mattered as father was away at the time. Of course, I was inconsolable, but Alfred was filled with a righteous fury. Of course, he wanted to march down there and give that big oaf what was coming to him, and I had to stop him from wasting his vengeance on a fight that he'd lose." Alexia smiled, something that I'd never seen her do before, as she recalled the memory. She even giggled at the climax of the story. "So we got revenge by spiking his morning coffee. If I recall correctly… we used some laxatives which I'd coated in a chemical that would prevent them from dissolving in his stomach for a few hours so that he couldn't easily trace it back to us. He lost control of his bowels during some morning meeting with the other guards. It ruined his reputation, and he didn't come back from that."

I chuckled at the story, even if I slightly doubted some parts of it. A lot of it had come across as genuine, but Alexia tensed up a bit during the last part of the story, which made me doubt the laxatives part. Maybe they'd used normal ones, and he'd figured out that they were responsible? I would have asked about that, but Alexia reversed the conversation on me. "But enough about me. I've told you enough about my family, Tanya Wesker. What about yours?"

"It's probably nothing as grand as yours. There's a lot of us, twenty to be exact, so we're never lonely. But at the same time, I'm probably not as close to all of them as you are with Alfred." I started, before leaning back as I tried to figure out how best to describe my adopted family.

"There are twenty of you?" Alexia asked, raising a shocked eyebrow at the high number.

"Yes. We're adopted, so-" I began, only to be interrupted.

"Then you're not a family." Alexia stated. Her voice firm and unyielding as she denied the validity of my family. "Blood and lineage define true family connections. A shared heritage and the legacy that comes with it—that's what binds us. Orphans can't claim that."

If Alexia intended to hurt me with her statement, she would have been disappointed. In the end, while I was close to some members of my family, I had already accepted that it was an artificial unit, intended just to act out some old man's eugenics fantasy. So I simply shrugged and brushed off the statement. "If you say so. I guess everyone defines family differently. But for me, it's about having people who are there for me, I didn't have that back at the orphanage."

"Family is more than just support; it's a shared destiny, a continuation of a lineage that stretches back through history. The Ashfords have been at the forefront of science and industry for hundreds of years, a pillar of genetic and intellectual superiority. The very idea of a family diluted by non-blood relations is... incomprehensible. It diminishes the purity and strength of true familial bonds." Alexia continued to rant, and it took me more effort than I expected to not react to the young doctor's words. Not from the fact that she was insulting people I considered to be my friends, but from the simple fact that she could sit there, and have the gaul to argue that being the human equivalent of a specifically bread dog was something to be proud of.

"If that's your perspective, then so be it. I see where you're coming from, and I don't see a point in arguing over it." I replied, avoiding the argument by simply not engaging. I doubted that I could convince her that her position was wrong over the course of one conversation, and she didn't seem as if she wanted to even consider a different opinion. Nothing good could come from pushing the conversation any further, so I backed out.

My answer didn't satisfy Alexia, not even in the slightest. But I was saved from having to continue the conversation by a colorful chime from the machine, and a mechanical whir from the computer sat beside it. Almost instantly, Doctor Ashford returned to her business-like demeanor, and turned to inspect the results. A few seconds later, she shook her head and tutted at the results. "Yet another failure. How unfortunate."

"What's the problem?" I asked, standing up from my seat and walking over to Alexia's computer. She didn't react to my presence as she skimmed through the data, but soon enough she figured out what had gone wrong.

"The cell cultures are experiencing extremely rapid cell growth, followed by a significant cell die-off event that destroys the samples. As you can see here, all samples aside from the baseline show an exponential increase in cell count over the first four hours of the experiment, but during the fifth hour the cells suddenly start dying off, and by the sixth the cultures have a lower cell count than the baseline." The young doctor explained, pointing to various readings and graphs on the screen. I couldn't understand a lot of the data, not at a glance, but the fact that the machine was able to compile a complicated data set meant that it was incredibly advanced.

"What factors do you think could be affecting the samples?" I asked, gently trying to push things along, and away from the previous contentious conversation.

Unfortunately, my gentle push didn't go unnoticed, as Alexia wheeled around on her seat, and shot me a displeased look. "Why are you asking? I fail to see how going over the minutiae of my tests is either relevant or helpful."

"Sounding out a problem to someone helps me solve it. Maybe by going over the problem with me, you'll be able to figure out the problem." I quickly and confidently replied. The tactic I was suggesting was proven, and it had worked multiple times across my previous lives. Even so, I didn't dare tell her it's name, if only because identifying it as 'The Rubber Duck method' would probably make her more likely to dismiss it outright.

"That sounds incredibly unreliable, but I'll humor you." The Ashford girl sighed as she lent back in her seat. She stared at the screen for a few more seconds, before gesturing to it and the results that were causing so many problems. "Outside of the interaction between the virus and the cell, there are a number of factors that could affect the results. The makeup of the growth medium in each petri dish, atmospheric conditions, temperature, and other such things."

"Ok, which of those could we observe right now?" I asked, my brain working overtime as I looked through the various graphs and data sets. Sure enough, a few of the graphs showed a significant increase in whatever they were counting, cells if I had to guess, before the numbers crashed.

"Investigating the growth medium is not possible right now. It would require the cultures to be analyzed, which is not something you are capable of doing, and would be a waste of my valuable time. But the unit should automatically log the internal conditions." Alexia shook her head as she navigated her way through a series of menus, before eventually pulling up something similar to an excel document with a series of numerical readings on it.

The girl genius selected a series of columns in turn and generated a series of graphs, condensing thousands of readings down into a handful of basic graphics which she quickly interrogated. Soon enough, she pointed to a pair of graphs in turn, which displayed anomalous results. "The temperature levels are holding at around five degrees, no change there… But the oxygen level within the chamber is noticeably low, and the levels of nitric oxide and carbon monoxide are noticeably higher than before."

"What could cause that?" I asked as I followed Alexia's finger, and sure enough a simple line graph listing the readings of various gasses within the chamber at regular time intervals. And sure enough, a number of oxide gasses showed a significant increase over time, with nitric oxide and carbon monoxide taking the lion's share of the increase.

"Usually that would be caused by cell oxidation. But the amount of oxidation required to reach such a noticeable level would be very significant. But if the cells are undergoing rapid oxidation, the increased cell stress could be a contributing factor to the die-off." Alexia explained, though from the tone of her voice, her mind was elsewhere. If I had to guess, she was probably thinking about how best to handle the issue, which was something I was perfectly content to let her do.

"Relocating the tests to a specialized workstation, and running the test in a low-temperature environment could reduce the rate of oxidation. It might interfere with other projects, but none of them are as important as Veronica, so it is of no concern…" Alexia muttered, reaching into a pocket of her lab coat and scribbling something down. I didn't see what it was, but I figured that it was probably a note to some poor scientist about how she was about to steal their operational time slot on a valuable piece of equipment. Alexia Ashford didn't strike me as the kind of girl who needed to take notes for her own sake.

"Well, if you need another hand around here, feel free to ask." I jokingly offered, if only to mask my interest at what the Ashford girl had said. Veronica was a weird name for either a virus or a project, but I committed it to memory either way.

Unfortunately, my joke went the complete wrong way, and Alexia instantly snapped out of whatever train of thought she was on, and gave me her complete attention. She stared at me for a second, before simply asking. "And why would you do that?"

"Because the work you do here is interesting, and I want to see where it goes. And getting involved in the lab would help me learn new skills, and interact with things that I would never get the chance to see otherwise." I quickly blurted out an answer, before forcing myself not to shudder at how pathetic it sounded. And given the frown that was starting to form on Alexia's face, it probably didn't meet her expectations. I could have left it there. I should have left it there. But some part of my mind didn't want to let any opportunity to advance myself slip away, and before I could think, my mouth acted for me. "Besides. The people who work for you are obviously putting their careers ahead of your program. It might be useful to have a neutral party to bounce ideas off of?"

"If you're going to be of any use to me, then I demand that you remain honest with me. I have to deal with enough dishonesty already." The doctor sighed, before silently contemplating my unintentional offer. Eventually, Alexia sighed, and slipped off her chair. She looked me up and down, before replying. "I'll consider your offer. But until then, how about making yourself useful and helping me set up the next round of tests. Come along, I'll walk you through the process."

Part of me hoped that she'd decide against my unintentional suggestion. Part of me hoped that she'd stick to her cold, ice-queen persona, and would turn down the offer from the weird orphan girl. But I'd blundered my way this far, and I was damn sure that I'd continue to blunder into more meetings with Alexia. No matter what I did. But I could turn this to my advantage. Afterall; it's not what you know, but who you know, which matters the most. And even if Alexia was even half as valuable as her intelligence suggested, then networking with the Ashford family could be very useful in the future.

Either way, if there was one thing this had taught me, it was that I really need to avoid making off-the-cuff jokes like that in the future.