Chapter Text
"You have your lunch, right?"
Emily slung her backpack onto her lap and unzipped the largest pocket. Her pale hair glinting in the sunlight, Grace noted absently that her bangs were getting long and would need a trim soon. Emily held the bag open to show Grace the purple patterned lunch bag nestled in amongst the books and pencil case.
Grace smiled and Emily smiled back. It had been a month since Emily had started attending a real school and Grace was still nervous every time she dropped her off. Sherry had helped her get into a school near the military base where kids came and went all the time, so Emily wouldn't be the only new kid in the class. She had already made her first friend, a girl who was also new to the school as her parents had recently been stationed at the base. Her name was Serena and Emily talked about her like she was the sun.
Grace wrapped Emily in her scarf and helped her put her mittens on. When Emily saw snow for the first time, she had been completely enchanted by it, until she realized how cold it was.
"I think I like the white cheese in my sandwich better than the orange." Emily informed Grace while unbuckling her seatbelt. Grace nodded.
"I'll remember that for tomorrow." She replied. "Be careful today and have fun! Remember to wear your hat at recess even if it isn't windy, and make sure you hand in that paperwork I signed last night." Emily hopped out of the car and dragged her backpack out.
"Okay, I will," she called as she carefully closed the car door behind her. "Have a good day, Grace."
"You too!" Grace called after her, watching her climb up the steps of the school. Grace never left the parking lot until she saw Emily cross through the front door. Sometimes she still waited a few minutes after to try and see her through the window of the classroom. Today was one of those days. Through the window, she saw little Serena bolt across the room and smiled knowing that Emily had a friend in school that was so excited to see her.
Grace chewed her lip and turned her gaze to the manila folder on the seat beside her. She had been gathering research about the Connections, specifically any of their facilities that could be linked to more human experimentation, and more kids like Emily. Grace reached over and let the contents of the folder slip out into her hands. Shipping logs, data entries, emails and reports all indicating there had been a ship where the Connections held and transported human test subjects, seemingly a different strain of the virus that Emily had.
She had gotten some insight from a friend of Leon's who works for the BSAA about another child experiment who had been made up of a type of mold, an E-type bioweapon. Apparently, this ship was one of many that had been used to contain other experiments that had been developed from that virus, though it wasn't clear. Grace couldn't access the Connections' files directly, she only had fragments of what really went on. But if there were more girls like Emily out there, Grace wanted to help them.
Grace shuffled the papers back into the folder, put the car in drive and peeled away from the school parking lot, not noticing her fingers nervously tapping the steering wheel.
"Hi, my name is Grace, I'm with the FBI... No... Hello, I'm Grace Ashcroft, FBI, I need to ask you a few questions about a report you filed..." She mumbled, rehearsing her speech. Grace had narrowed her search in on a series of communications between two deceased members of the Connections that Leon's friend Chris had been able to provide the computer files of. They talked about a group of 'failed mutations' that had been sent to be 'disposed of' but had escaped together. Most of the children had been located and 'terminated' but one young girl called 409 was unaccounted for. The documents that Chris found on the computer didn't go into detail about what made them 'failed' experiments, but did say that 409 possessed regenerative abilities, was one of the 'less violent reanimated children’ and was last seen on a cargo ship that had been overrun by infection heading east.
It hadn't been much to go on at the time. Emily had just started school, and Grace had needed to keep as busy as possible to stop herself from worrying. As a result, she scoured news articles, police records and social media looking for any evidence that this girl was still alive. She was asking everyone she knew, exhausting every connection she had about the girl. It was the biggest lead she had about any other living children that The Connections had experimented on, and eventually a deleted reddit thread led her to go through CPS records from early November. A report from a town off the coast of where that cargo ship took its last journey noted that a family who lived near the beach reported a young girl living in the woods alone nearby, and the remains of a broken rowboat were crashed on the shore.
"My name is Grace Ashcroft, I work at the FBI and I have some questions... I'd like to ask you a few questions... If you have a moment, I'd like to ask you some questions...."
Most of the CPS files were sealed, but through a personal favor, Grace was able to get the address of the woman who sent in the initial report of the young girl. She had signed a lease in January for a one-bedroom apartment near the edge of town off Cedar Street. It was an old concrete building that had stood there for as long as Grace could remember, framed with cracked sidewalks and a parking lot that was usually decorated with rusting cars and abandoned shopping carts. Grace tapped the steering wheel with her fingers and turned down Cedar Street.
She parked her car on the street a block away from the apartment building. "Hello, I'm Grace Ashcroft and I work at the FBI. If you have a moment, I'd like to ask you some questions about report you made in November." She repeated it a handful of times as she stared down the building. The pale blue paint was faded, and the windows were mostly dark. A short man stood smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk near the front door. Grace took a deep breath and gripped the folder tightly as she stepped out of her car, locked it, and started towards the building.
Jamie Ronan was a woman with soft brown hair that was often kept in a braid and soft brown eyes that were often shifting around cautiously. When Grace Ashcroft knocked on her door, she almost didn't answer. Reluctantly, she creaked the door open.
Grace was surprised how different she looked in person compared to the photos she'd seen online. Jamie squinted in the morning light that leaked in from the window in the hallway and her cheekbones protruded like she hadn't been eating enough. She had more freckles than Grace had thought. She stared at Grace with an expectant intensity that caused Grace's stutter to make an appearance, despite Grace's best efforts.
"Hi! Uh, I'm... I'm Grace." Grace cleared her throat and held her hand out for the other woman to shake, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. Jamie reached out and shook Grace's hand skeptically.
"Can I help you?" She asked, her voice was steady and but tense. Her eyes scanned the hallway, and she kept the door opened only just enough for her body to be visible, one hand still firmly on the door handle.
"Yes! Uh, sorry, I'm with the FBI," Grace fumbled to show her badge, "I just had a few questions about a report you submitted to the police about a young girl living in the woods."
Jamie's expression was unreadable as she stared at Grace's badge and then back up at Grace.
"Sorry, you have the wrong person." She said before backing out of the doorway into the dark apartment.
"Oh! Are you not Jamie Ronan?"
The woman paused, brows furrowed. "Yes, I am." She replied slowly, "but I didn't make any report. I don't know what you're talking about. Sorry." She tried closing the door, but Grace caught the door before it shut.
"Wait! You're not in any trouble," Grace assured her, "nothing is wrong, I just wanted to ask some questions about the child you found, I uh.."
Grace pulled her phone out of her back pocket to show Jamie the photo of her and Emily she kept as her phone lock screen. "I actually have a daughter, well an adopted daughter, technically, who may have a connection with the girl you found, her name is Emily. I promise I'm only trying to find out if they're related somehow and I want to help."
Jamie stared at the photo and then at Grace for a few seconds, as if deciding whether she believed Grace or not. "Sorry." She repeated, "you've got the wrong person." She started to push the door closed again.
"Well, if you change your mind or, you know, hear anything about it, um," Grace fished her business card out of her coat pocket. Though it was folded and a little crumpled, she handed it to Jamie through the sliver of space still open between the door and the frame.
Jamie breathed deeply and took the card quickly before muttering, "have a nice day," and closing the door between them. Grace heard the clicking of more than one lock on the other side of the door.
Grace stood still the damp hallway. The rattle of the building's failing furnace and the clatter of dishes from a different apartment rang in her ears. She wasn't naive enough to believe that Jamie was being honest, but she knew that pushing her further wouldn't gain her trust. Grace's eyes slid back down to her phone, lingering on Emily in the background photo. A doctor's words echoed unwelcome in her memory as she started to walk away from the apartment. She cast one last look at the apartment before reluctantly pushing through the door to the stairwell. She had no intention of giving up on Jamie Ronan.
From in between the cheap curtains that cloaked her apartment window, Jamie Ronan watched Grace Ashcroft walk down the block back to her car. The stench of mildew and sour milk invaded her senses as she breathed deeply.
"She's gone," she said, "you can come out now."
Jamie kept her eyes on Grace while a small girl with long dark hair and a rabbit mask crawled out from underneath the bed.