Chapter 99: Tyrant: Astartes Prototype
The elevator continued its low, steady hum in the sealed space.
After some time, Miranda finally broke.
"It was Spencer." Her voice carried the particular resignation of someone who had no remaining options. "Spencer sent me to kill you. As for whether there's someone directing Spencer from behind, I don't know."
Matthew nodded, satisfied with the answer. Then, with the same manner one might use while absently patting a small dog, he raised his hand and stroked her cheek.
"Thank you for that. As a reward, let me offer you something true in return."
Something true?
What truth?
Miranda bit down on whatever she was feeling and kept her face still.
"The fact is, I never had any intention of destroying the Megamycete. Something that valuable would never have been destroyed. Even if you hadn't said a single word, I would have kept it carefully protected."
Miranda stared at him.
Matthew's words landed like something heavy dropped from height directly onto her skull.
The resentment in the look she fixed on him intensified considerably.
Carrying that resentment with her, she was dragged through the corridors and into the research lab.
The lab was lively.
Heisenberg's body had arrived ahead of Matthew, courtesy of Hunk's team. Thomas's group was gathered around the corpse, working through the question of how precisely a human body had managed to operate like a mobile magnetic field generator.
Matthew bypassed them.
He went directly to William Birkin.
William was currently managing three separate research groups at once, running T-Virus, G-Virus, and V-Virus projects in parallel without letting any of them fall behind. The man who had been difficult and imperious and resistant when he first joined, the researcher who had made a point of not making things easy for management, was essentially unrecognizable now. What he resembled more closely these days was a researcher who had learned to work every resource angle available and could talk a funding committee into anything given enough face time.
The moment he saw Matthew come through the door, he crossed the floor at a quick walk.
"Boss!" He reached Matthew and smoothly received the human briefcase from his hand, passing her off to a researcher behind him without breaking stride.
"Boss, I was actually hoping to talk to you. The T-Virus research results you handed to us a while back. The team has done exceptional work with them. The results are significant."
"Based on the samples you provided, we haven't just resolved every existing weakness in the T-Virus. We've grown an entirely new generation of Tyrant from them."
He guided Matthew to an incubation tank with the barely-contained energy of someone who had been waiting to show this to the right person.
The tank held a powerfully built male figure floating in nutrient fluid, approximately two point three meters tall.
From the outside, the figure had nothing in common with any Tyrant Matthew had seen. No exposed external heart. No claws. No ashen skin. It looked, entirely, like a very large human being.
"This is the latest model."
"It was developed using a combination of the improved T-Virus, the Green Goblin formula, and a superior-strain Las Plagas parasite."
"In terms of raw performance, it matches a T-103 Tyrant at minimum, and in several categories exceeds it."
"More importantly: unlike the T-103, this model can understand every command its controller gives it. Adult human-level intelligence, fully intact."
"With proper military training, it would function as a next-generation super-soldier on any battlefield." Birkin's delivery carried a carefully restrained pride.
A super-soldier. A genuinely mass-producible super-soldier. At a unit cost of only twenty million.
Matthew studied the figure in the tank carefully.
"Have you named it?"
Birkin blinked. "Not yet." The prototype hadn't even been complete for twenty-four hours. Every available hour had gone into stress-testing performance metrics.
But the moment the words were out of his mouth, Birkin caught what the question implied.
"Since there's no name yet, perhaps you'd like to give it one, Boss?"
William, you've grown.
"A new Tyrant line does need a designation." Matthew took the step that had been offered to him.
"Call it 'Astartes.' Going forward, all Tyrants in this series will carry that designation."
"Astartes?" Birkin didn't know the word. He nodded with conviction anyway. "Good name."
After Matthew finished inspecting the Tyrant: Astartes Prototype, he and Birkin walked together to the sealed containment vessel where Miranda had been placed.
She was floating in an acidic solution, which served primarily to suppress her regeneration. She was considerably weakened at this point, so the acid concentration was set conservatively: enough to keep her from recovering, not enough to destroy what was left.
Birkin's attention had been entirely on his boss when they first met in the lab doorway. He hadn't gotten a proper look at the face of the briefcase Matthew had been carrying. Only now, standing in front of the containment vessel, did he look at her clearly.
He went still.
Miranda. One of Umbrella's shareholders. Spencer's teacher.
Floating in a sealed acid container in his lab.
Captured by Matthew.
"You recognized her." Matthew said it without turning, reading the small acceleration in Birkin's heartbeat.
After a pause, Birkin tried carefully: "Boss. Is that... Miranda?"
"Yes." Matthew's voice was entirely level, giving away nothing. "She came to assassinate me. Not a problem. It's been handled."
"She also carries a particular mold in her system. Try to extract it and study it. Funding won't be an issue, just keep your focus on the science and let me handle everything else."
He glanced toward the Astartes prototype.
"I'm satisfied with what your teams produced this time." A note of genuine approval in his voice. "I'll double your group's budget from this point on. Anything else you need, bring it to me and I'll do what I can."
He paused.
"As for the mold... if there are aspects you don't fully understand, you could always try asking Miranda. She has considerable expertise in that particular area."
He said it with a tone that suggested he found the idea mildly entertaining.
Birkin looked through the transparent wall of the container at Miranda, who was staring back at this side of the room with an expression of concentrated and unambiguous hatred.
Ask Miranda for guidance. She would never assist him willingly. The more accurate prediction, if she ever recovered enough to act, was that she would kill everyone in this facility to get back at Matthew for what had been done to her.
"I'll have a new research team ready for you in a while," Matthew added. "The materials for the next project are already prepared. When the time comes, give me results worth seeing."
"Bye."