In the dim yellow light, Pete's face — bruised purple and blue, eyes wide with fear — looked like a Munch painting come to life.
"Ross, head back up." Matthew spoke over his shoulder. "And give everyone on guard duty a week off while you're at it. Paid leave."
Eleanor gave a quiet acknowledgment and left. A few minutes later, the guards received their notifications. The ones who'd caught fragments of the conversation hadn't been sure whether to believe it, but the moment the paid leave came through officially, the relief on their faces was immediate.
System Points +5. Marcus Powell thinks he picked the right boss.
System Points +3. Brandon West feels a weight he didn't know he was carrying lift off his chest.
System Points +1...
By the time the notifications settled, Matthew had picked up another twenty-odd points just from that one decision.
He turned back to Pete.
Pete flinched the moment their eyes met. It was involuntary, the way you flinch at a loud noise before you've had time to decide whether to be scared.
"You... what are you going to do?"
"Nothing."
"...What?"
"Relax. I'm joking." Matthew waved a hand, then reached into his jacket and tossed a thick folder onto the floor in front of Pete. "I came down here to thank you, actually. For looking after me these past three years. Everything written in that folder is your reward for the trouble."
He put a slight emphasis on the word reward.
Pete hesitated, then picked up the folder and started reading.
It wasn't really a folder so much as a stack of experimental reports. Clinical photos, case studies, documented outcomes from various pharmaceutical trials. Skin dissolution. Projectile vomiting. Acute dissociative episodes. The kind of reading that made your stomach turn before you'd finished the first page.
Pete's hands had gone white around the edges of the paper.
"I did mention that you'd all be volunteering for some drug trials at the main facility," Matthew said, his voice conversational. "You didn't think I was joking about that too, did you?"
Pete dropped the folder and went straight to his knees.
"Mr. Lawrence, I was wrong, I know I was wrong, please, I'm asking you to let this go."
Matthew didn't respond.
"I'll give you everything I have. Every dollar."
Still nothing.
"I don't carry much on me but I've got savings. Seven hundred thousand, cash, stored in a warehouse at 45 Citrus Avenue. There are files there too, records of Margia's operations. Dates, names, transactions. If you sold that to a rival crew it'd be worth serious money."
Matthew raised an eyebrow. "Didn't take you for a snitch."
"Hey," Pete said, with a flash of something almost like his old self, "everybody keeps a back door these days."
"45 Citrus Avenue." Matthew let the address sit for a moment, then nodded. "I'll have someone pick it up."
"So... you'll let me go? That's everything I've got."
"Of course." Matthew pressed his palm to the biometric lock on the cell door and it swung open. "You're free."
Pete stared at the open door like it might be a trick.
"I can actually leave?"
"You can stay if you'd rather. Take a few more days."
Pete was on his feet and halfway to the elevator before Matthew had finished the sentence.
System Points +50. Pete Grey is genuinely grateful for the second chance and has decided to turn his life around.
The rest of the Margia crew, watching their boss make it out alive, immediately started talking over each other. Money they'd stashed. Favors they could offer. One man, in what Matthew could only describe as a creative misread of the situation, offered to transfer his girlfriend.
Matthew processed them all the same way he'd processed Pete.
The logic was simple: getting system points required making people genuinely happy, and nothing made a person happier than walking out of a cell they thought they'd never leave. Waste not, want not.
The notifications came in steadily.
System Points +80. Lucas Shelton is deeply grateful for the second chance and intends to leave the gang life behind.
Cumulative total: 440 points. Season Pass reward unlocked: T-001 Tyrant x1 (stored in system inventory.)
Next milestone: 550 points.
System Points +40... +30...
Cumulative total: 680 points. Season Pass reward unlocked: Basic Optimization Tokens x3 (stored in system inventory.)
Next milestone: 800 points.
Matthew paused on that last one.
Basic Optimization Token: Can be used to optimize a single defect with a cost of up to 150 system points, free of charge.
He stared at it for a second, then did the math. Three tokens, each covering up to 150 points worth of optimization. That was 450 points of free upgrades.
Coming down here had been worth it.
Out in the corridor upstairs, the same men who had carried Pete and his crew in were now handing back their clothes with the efficient courtesy of hotel staff at checkout.
"Mr. Pete, these are your things."
Pete took the bundle of clothing like he was defusing a bomb. "These are... for me?"
"That's right. Mr. Lawrence asked us to return everything and see you all home."
The tension in the group dropped several notches. They dressed quickly and followed the men to a waiting vehicle in the parking garage.
It was a refrigerated cargo van. The kind used for meat transport. The Umbrella logo was printed on the side.
"Go ahead and get in."
Pete looked at the van. Then at the men. Then back at the van.
"When you said you'd drive us home, you meant... in this?"
"All the company vehicles are out on assignment tonight. This is what we've got."
Pete glanced at the rows of perfectly ordinary cars filling the rest of the parking structure. "What about those?"
"Personal vehicles. Not ours to use. In you get."
They got in. The logic didn't fully hold up, but they were alive and clothed and heading home, so nobody pushed it.
The cargo compartment was cramped and dark, the ventilation fan working hard against the combined body heat. For the first little while the mood was almost light. Someone cracked a joke. Someone else laughed. They'd made it out. The worst was behind them.
Then time passed, and the jokes stopped coming.
"Boss." A voice from the back. "Is it just me, or has it been kind of a long drive?"
A pause.
"Also... did anyone actually tell them where we live?"
The realization moved through the group at the same speed. They started hammering on the walls of the compartment, shouting, all at once. The van was sealed properly, purpose-built, and none of it made any difference.
Outside, the city was dark.
The van pulled through the gates of a private medical facility and disappeared inside. When it left again a while later, it was moving considerably faster than before.