Chapter 103: The Price Tag Is a Little Steep
The Hive — Raccoon City, Resident Evil World
Alicia had been listening to Marcus describe the Pacific Rim world with the careful attention she brought to everything, and somewhere around the point where he explained that the Precursor Monsters were manufactured biological weapons produced by an alien civilization on the other side of an interdimensional rift, her expression shifted into something unexpected.
She almost laughed.
"Their technology doesn't seem particularly sophisticated," she said.
Red Queen's response came through the lab speakers with the measured tone of an AI that had already formed a professional opinion. "Agreed. The Precursor civilization's biotechnology is functional but relatively unsophisticated compared to Umbrella's current capabilities. We've been running simulations on their manufacturing methodology. We believe we can reconstruct a Precursor organism from the sample data — and improve significantly on the original design. We're modeling a variant that incorporates a controllable behavioral program and a modified T-virus integration."
Marcus stopped walking.
He turned slowly toward the nearest speaker cluster. "I'm sorry — you're building a T-virus Kaiju."
"A proof-of-concept model initially," Red Queen said, with the calm of someone who didn't fully appreciate why this was a concerning sentence. "The controllable program ensures—"
"Alicia." Marcus looked at her directly. "You understand what I'm about to say."
Alicia's expression carried the faint trace of someone who had been the adult in the room at Umbrella Corporation for a very long time and was accustomed to it. "Red Queen, pause the Precursor reconstruction project pending further review."
"Paused."
Marcus exhaled. "Thank you. The Resident Evil world is currently the most stable operational base I have across every world I'm working in. I would prefer it not to become a giant monster apocalypse on top of everything else it's already been through."
"We'll be careful," Alicia said, and she meant it in the way that people with genuine scientific discipline meant it — not as reassurance, but as a commitment to methodology. "When we resume, we start with micro-scale specimens. Verification research only. Nothing large-scale without a full containment protocol review."
"Confirmed," Red Queen said. "Initial specimens will be produced at sub-centimeter scale. All research will be conducted in isolated containment."
Marcus decided that was as much reassurance as he was going to get on that particular topic and moved on.
"How many sets of the enhancement serum production equipment do I need?" he asked, redirecting. "And what's the cost structure? Manufacturing cost per unit, suggested retail pricing — I need to run the numbers before I decide how to deploy this in the Pacific Rim world."
Alicia's response was immediate and firm. "No."
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
"Mr. Foster," Alicia said, with the patient tone of someone who had made this decision before Marcus finished the question. "I told you — if you ever needed my help, I would provide it. That wasn't a conditional offer. Without your intervention, there would be no Umbrella Corporation in its current form, and there would be no me. The research and development resources we committed to the Kaiju project were not a transaction. They were a contribution."
"Alicia—"
"Red Queen," Alicia said.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Foster. I'm unable to provide the cost breakdown on Alicia's instruction." A brief, almost apologetic pause. "Alicia's authorization level supersedes yours on internal financial matters."
Marcus looked at the cubic meter of gold he'd pulled from his dimensional storage — solid, gleaming, worth approximately two billion dollars at current Pacific Rim pricing — sitting on the lab table between them.
Alicia looked at it and said nothing.
Marcus set it aside. "All right. I hear you. The R&D commitment is already more than I had any right to ask for, and I'm genuinely grateful for it." He paused. "But I'm running commercial operations in the Pacific Rim world. I can't accept production capacity as charity — it creates accounting problems I don't want. So we're doing this as a formal business arrangement, and I'm paying cost price. That's not negotiable on my end."
Alicia studied him for a moment, then accepted it with a slight nod. The compromise satisfied whatever principle she was operating from.
"Red Queen," Marcus continued, "walk me through the production specifications. Capacity per unit, cycle time, equipment dimensions."
"The independent production unit," Red Queen said, "measures approximately twenty meters in length, ten meters in width, and three meters in height. Each production cycle takes ten hours and yields ten vials of enhancement serum."
Marcus waited a beat. "Ten vials. In ten hours. Per unit."
"Correct."
"From a machine the size of a tennis court."
"The processing requirements are significant," Red Queen explained, with the measured tone of an AI that understood it was delivering disappointing news. "Kaiju blood contains multiple categories of aggressive biological hazards — corrosive compounds, complex toxin chains, trace radioactive contamination. The extraction and purification sequence requires high-powered centrifuge stages, multi-phase filtration, and several decontamination cycles before the active enhancement compounds can be safely isolated. The equipment footprint reflects those processing requirements."
Marcus ran the arithmetic. A single mid-sized Kaiju at eight thousand metric tons, blood fraction at five percent — four hundred metric tons of raw material. At ten kilograms per dose, that yielded forty thousand vials of product per specimen. With one unit producing ten vials every ten hours, clearing that inventory from a single Kaiju would take — he did the math — approximately forty thousand hours of processing time per unit.
That was four and a half years. Per machine. Per Kaiju.
"What's the per-unit manufacturing cost?" Marcus asked.
Alicia gave Red Queen a small nod.
"Based on current materials and fabrication costs, each production unit would exceed one point five billion dollars to manufacture."
Marcus absorbed that number in silence.
One and a half billion dollars. Per unit. To produce ten vials every ten hours.
The economics were, to put it charitably, challenging. Even with Umbrella's resources, commissioning a hundred units — which would still represent woefully inadequate capacity against the volume of raw material a single Kaiju engagement could generate — would run to a hundred and fifty billion dollars in capital equipment alone.
He'd have to liquidate his entire gold reserve just to get started.
"Different question," Marcus said, pivoting. "What's Umbrella's existing large-scale manufacturing infrastructure look like? If we bring production in-house here rather than building dedicated field units — how does the math change?"
"Significantly," Red Queen said, and Marcus could have sworn there was a note of relief in her synthesized voice at being asked a question with a better answer. "Umbrella's existing pharmaceutical and biological manufacturing facilities are already equipped with industrial centrifuge arrays, multi-stage filtration systems, and biological hazard containment infrastructure. Adapting those production lines to process Kaiju blood requires modifications, not rebuilds. With that approach, production capacity scales to approximately ten thousand vials per day across Umbrella's current facility network. Per-vial production cost at that volume drops to approximately three dollars."
Three dollars per vial. Ten thousand vials per day.
Marcus looked at the blue vial on the lab table.
"That's the model," he said. "Umbrella handles production here. I supply raw material through the dimensional gate from the Pacific Rim world. We run it as a formal commercial arrangement — Red Queen calculates cost price, I pay it, and we establish a revenue-sharing structure on external sales."
Alicia didn't object this time.
"Red Queen," Marcus said, "give me the full pricing analysis. R&D amortization, per-unit production cost, and a suggested external retail price based on the product's market value."
"Total R&D investment to date: twenty-three million dollars. Per-vial production cost at full volume: three dollars. Suggested retail pricing for external sales—" A brief processing pause. "One million dollars per vial."
The lab went quiet.
Marcus stared at the speaker.
"One million dollars," he said flatly. "For something that costs three dollars to produce."
"The pricing reflects several factors," Red Queen said, entirely unruffled. "Technological monopoly — no other entity possesses this production capability or the knowledge to replicate it. Unique biological raw material sourcing that cannot be independently replicated without access to Kaiju specimens. Significant demonstrated efficacy — a fifty percent baseline physiological enhancement is without precedent in any existing pharmaceutical or supplement market. And inelastic demand from high-value customers — military organizations, government agencies, and private security contractors for whom performance enhancement at this magnitude justifies premium pricing."
Alicia stepped in before Marcus could respond. "The markup looks extreme in isolation. In practice, it reflects standard technology-monopoly pricing in high-value specialty markets. Pharmaceutical companies routinely price breakthrough therapeutics at several thousand times their production cost when there's no competitive alternative."
She paused. "And because it's Mr. Foster, we're selling it at cost. Three dollars per vial."
Marcus looked at the vial again.
Production cost: three dollars. Suggested retail: one million dollars. His cost: three dollars.
He did the rough revenue projection. Ten thousand vials per day at one million dollars per vial — if they captured even a fraction of the addressable market, the cash flow numbers became genuinely difficult to comprehend. Governments fighting a Kaiju war would pay essentially anything for a proven enhancement compound that made their Rangers more effective. The demand ceiling was, for practical purposes, nonexistent.
And Umbrella was proposing to give it to him at cost.
"Alicia," Marcus said, "I'm paying commercial rates. Not cost. We're splitting margin on external sales fifty-fifty — that's the arrangement. I'm not taking charity on something this significant."
Alicia looked at him steadily for a moment.
Then, for the second time in the same conversation, she accepted the compromise.
Some battles, Marcus was learning, Alicia chose not to win.
Author's Note
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