No gunshots this time. Just the clean whisper of a blade moving through air.
The moment HUNK stripped the magazine out of Matthew's rifle, the knife in his other hand was already driving toward Matthew's throat. HUNK was the kind of fighter where strength and speed weren't separate qualities. They arrived together.
Against the version of Matthew from two days ago, this would have been the end of it. He might have seen it coming and still not been able to do anything about it.
That version of Matthew no longer existed.
He didn't try to out-technique HUNK. He'd never been going to win that way, and he knew it. What he had now was something simpler and considerably less fair: raw physical superiority. He leaned back just enough to open the distance, reached up with a gloved hand, and caught the blade.
HUNK felt the knife stop like it had hit a steel plate.
Behind the mask, his pupils contracted.
He'd trained against BOWs. Biological Organic Weapons, field-deployed, purpose-built. He knew exactly what it felt like when something on the other end of your weapon wasn't operating on normal human parameters. That feeling was what was coming through the knife right now, from the person he was supposedly here to train.
The surprise didn't slow him down. HUNK abandoned the knife the instant it was locked, slipped around to Matthew's back, and got both hands into position, one on the chin, one on the forehead.
A very specific technique. Quick, clean, permanent.
Before he could apply the torque, a hand closed around his face.
The mask groaned. The lenses cracked under the pressure of that grip, the material bending inward in a way that suggested it was approximately two seconds from giving up entirely. HUNK processed, correctly, that this was being done carefully. That whoever was holding his face could close the hand and wasn't.
Then he was airborne, briefly, and then he wasn't.
The impact with the floor hit like a car accident. HUNK lay there for a moment while the room rearranged itself around him, then registered several more impacts in quick succession, each one carrying the same unreasonable force. His vision went dark at the edges.
For the first time since the training sessions began, it was HUNK who got knocked out.
He came back to an unfamiliar ceiling.
He stared at it for a while.
"Did I just wake up?" He was flat on his back in what was clearly a hospital bed, which confirmed something he had been hoping wasn't true.
He'd had a dream. Or what he'd assumed was a dream. Matthew, who twenty-four hours ago had been a capable-but-limited student, had somehow come back the next morning operating at a level that left HUNK with nothing useful to offer in return. Which wasn't possible. People didn't work that way. Not in one night.
"Hm." He almost smiled. "Strange dream."
Geniuses didn't close physical gaps that quickly. Normal human beings didn't have the kind of strength he'd felt on the other end of that knife. It had to be a dream.
He tried to sit up.
Every part of his body below the neck sent the same message at the same time.
"Ngh."
HUNK went still and stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
So it hadn't been a dream.
He was still working through the implications of that when the door opened.
"Good morning, Mr. HUNK. I'm glad you're awake." The man who stepped in was composed, unhurried, with the professional ease of someone who'd delivered bad news in comfortable rooms for many years. "I'm Dr. Victor Gideon. I'll be overseeing your treatment and recovery."
"Treatment." HUNK looked around the room. "Where am I?"
"A private medical facility in Queens, operated by the company. It handles care for important personnel." Victor paused. "There's also a letter for you, from Mr. Lawrence. Would you like me to read it?"
HUNK wanted very much to say no. He was also currently unable to hold a piece of paper without help.
"Go ahead."
"Of course." Victor broke the wax seal and opened the envelope with the same unhurried precision he seemed to apply to everything.
This was not yet the Victor Gideon who would later kidnap Grace Ashcroft off a public street, trade barbs with Leon Kennedy while causing significant structural damage to a highway overpass, and generally conduct himself like a man who had decided at some point that consequences were for other people. That version was still some years away. The man standing at the bedside right now moved and spoke like a physician who took his work seriously.
"Mr. Lawrence writes that he apologizes for misjudging his own strength, and that as compensation, he has transferred seven hundred thousand dollars to your account. All medical expenses and personal costs during your recovery will be covered by the company. He asks that you rest and not concern yourself with work."
HUNK stared at the ceiling.
Seven hundred thousand dollars.
That was close to six months of his regular salary. Deposited as an apology.
He considered the last several weeks. The raise. The paid leave for the guards that had filtered down as general goodwill through the department. And now this.
"Hm." He was quiet for a moment. "He didn't happen to mention anything about a nurse? A good-looking one?"
Victor looked at him.
"No," he said. "For the time being, you have me."
"No female nurses?"
"No."
"Female doctors?"
Victor closed the letter, set it on the bedside table, and walked out of the room without another word.
Umbrella Corporation, Manhattan. Top floor conference room.
Matthew sat in a dark suit at the circular table and kept his expression composed. This was the first shareholders' meeting since he'd taken his father's seat, which meant it mattered more than usual to get the read right before saying anything at all.
The holographic projector above the table assembled Umbrella's shareholders from wherever they happened to be in the world, filling the otherwise empty room with projected figures who all carried the particular kind of ease that came from having held serious power for a long time.
In the original Resident Evil continuity, Umbrella had three founding shareholders, and by the end of the story there was only one left. This room had more than three. The transmigration to a Marvel universe had apparently introduced complications to the corporate structure that the source material hadn't accounted for.
Matthew scanned the assembled faces.
He recognized two of them.
The first was Spencer, Oswell E. Spencer, sitting at the far end of the table with the stillness of a man who was used to being the most significant person in any given room, and was usually right about that.
The second was Mother Miranda. Spencer's mentor, the final architect of the Village incident, and someone who by any reasonable measure should not have been in a corporate board meeting but was, apparently, a shareholder.
The rest of the faces meant nothing to him. Unknown names, unknown agendas, unknown histories.
People who existed here because this world had diverged from anything he could have mapped in advance.
He kept his face neutral and waited to see who spoke first.