I've changed Hank ---> HUNK following a readers comment. Thanks Trafford.
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The whole thing wrapped up fast. Umbrella's people moved with the kind of quiet efficiency that left no room for a scene, and by the time any bystanders had properly registered what was happening, Pete and his crew were in the back of a vehicle heading downtown.
With that settled, Matthew finally took a proper look at the man standing across from him.
Tony Stark. Future Iron Man. In person, somehow even more self-assured than he came across on screen. It was genuinely hard to picture this guy throwing himself on a nuclear warhead to save the world, and yet.
"Matthew Lawrence."
"Tony Stark."
They shook hands.
Tony glanced toward the end of the street, where the last of the Umbrella vehicles was disappearing around the corner. "Lawrence," he said, with the easy tone of someone who could afford to be amused by anything, "when you said you were sending those guys to be drug trial volunteers, was that a joke or were you serious?"
"A joke, obviously." Matthew smiled. "Did you see his face? It was worth it just for that." He paused. "Besides, this is a society governed by law. Umbrella is a publicly listed company. We don't do things like that."
He glanced sideways. "Right, Eleanor?"
"Correct," Eleanor said, without missing a beat.
Tony looked between the two of them and gave a small, noncommittal shrug. He didn't believe a word of it, but he wasn't going to say so. If the world actually ran the way the law said it should, today's little street encounter wouldn't have happened in the first place.
"Well." He turned toward the car. "Good to meet you. We should get going."
"Mr. Stark."
Tony stopped.
"I appreciate what you did," Matthew said. "But I don't like leaving debts open." He reached into his jacket and held out a slim black metal card. No text on it, no numbers, just a clean matte surface. "Private card. There's an encrypted chip inside. If you bend it, it pings a satellite and gets a location to my people within seconds. Wherever you are."
"Think of it as insurance. In case you ever need the kind of help that's faster than a phone call."
Tony looked at the card for a moment. "Happy," he said, "hold onto that for me."
Happy stepped forward and took it. "He's not great with things handed directly to him," he said to Matthew, by way of explanation.
"No problem."
Tony and Happy got in the car and drove off. Matthew watched them go.
"What do you make of him?" Eleanor asked, after a moment.
"The same thing anyone who's heard his name would say."
"Ego the size of a building? Commitment issues?"
"Sure," Matthew said. "But he's also a genuine genius. The kind that doesn't come along very often." He paused. "The kind that changes things."
That night, while Tony Stark sat in his living room in a silk robe playing with the black card, Matthew was at his desk staring at a system panel that was giving him a headache.
Tony turned the card over in his hands. Plain. No markings. Just metal.
"JARVIS."
"Sir."
"Run a scan on the chip in this."
A pause.
"The chip is unremarkable, sir. A standard encrypted locator. It transmits a satellite signal when physically damaged, broadcasting the position at time of breakage. That's the full function."
Tony looked at it a moment longer. "Huh. Just a locator." He set it down. "Maybe I was overthinking it."
He went to bed.
Matthew, meanwhile, was very much still awake.
The system panel in front of him listed out the T-Virus optimization costs in full, and the numbers were not encouraging.
T-Virus Sample: When injected, restructures and enhances host DNA, granting exceptional stamina and resilience. Capable of sustaining function even with severe organ damage. Drawbacks include intelligence loss and a range of additional deficiencies.
Note: Drawbacks can be optimized using system points.
Zombification: 80 pointsLethargy: 40 pointsHigh lethality: 80 pointsLow intelligence retention: 100 pointsHigh transmissibility: 80 points
He'd spent an entire afternoon handing out cigarettes to strangers and scraped together two hundred points. That wasn't even enough to clear half the list.
He needed a better pipeline.
He leaned back, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then looked over at Eleanor, who was standing near the wall with the patient stillness of someone who had been on call for sixteen hours and wasn't complaining about it.
"Ross."
"Sir."
"Where did they put the Margia crew?"
Eleanor's expression shifted slightly, the kind of subtle distaste that only showed up around topics she found genuinely unpleasant. "Underground level fifteen. That's where we hold transfers and persons of interest."
"Take me down."
Level fifteen of the Umbrella building had been purpose-built for exactly this kind of situation, though it didn't get used often. Tonight it was earning its keep.
Pete was in a cell at the far end, sitting against the wall. His face had been rearranged somewhat during the transfer, both cheeks swollen, one eye nearly shut. The rest of the crew were in similar shape, scattered across adjacent cells, stripped down, heads shaved, looking considerably smaller than they had on the street that afternoon. The bravado was gone. They were sitting with their knees pulled up, staring at the floor, doing the math on how badly things had gone wrong.
Pete couldn't stop running it back. A few months ago, Matthew Lawrence had been someone he could push around without a second thought. Now the man was running Umbrella's entire security operation. Of all the departments to end up in. If he'd inherited anything else, they might have had a way out of this. But security meant the people who'd put them here answered to Matthew directly, which meant there was no angle to work.
The elevator at the end of the corridor chimed.
Pete looked up.
The figure that stepped out was immediately familiar, though something about him was different now, harder to read.
"Matthew?" The word came out smaller than Pete intended, and he hated that. His joints still ached from the takedown, and that didn't help.
"Surprised to see me?"
Matthew stopped outside the cell door. The smile on his face was pleasant in the way that certain things are pleasant right up until they aren't.
Pete pressed his back against the wall and discovered he had nowhere left to go.