Chapter 13: Acquire the G-Virus
Matthew's gaze settled on Miranda's projection and stayed there longer than was probably advisable.
What was she doing here?
In the source material, Miranda had been Spencer's teacher, but that relationship had eventually gone in different directions. Their incompatibility was not complicated: Umbrella's ambition was to reshape the world. Miranda's was considerably more local. What she wanted was to protect a small patch of land and bring her daughter back. That was the entire scope of it. Everything she did served those two goals and nothing else.
Which, he supposed, made her a specific kind of person. The kind who committed terrible acts in the name of family and called it love.
The point was that her goals and Spencer's had never aligned well enough for a working relationship. If she was sitting in this meeting, something had changed. He couldn't treat her the same way he'd have treated the version from the source material.
Miranda seemed to notice the attention. She turned her head slightly toward him.
Matthew moved his eyes to the next projection before she could confirm she'd been watched.
Five shareholders in total, including himself.
Spencer he knew. Miranda he knew. The other two he had to read from context.
One was a middle-aged man in American military dress, the background behind him suggesting a base of some kind. The implication was not subtle: the Umbrella Corporation in this universe apparently had backing from the US military, which was an escalation from the source material in a direction that was not particularly reassuring.
The other one gave Matthew pause for a different reason.
He didn't recognize the person. He recognized the symbol behind them.
Ten rings, interlocked in a circular formation, rendered in gold. Characters inside the rings that he couldn't read — an ancient script, nothing he had encountered before.
The Ten Rings.
One shareholder with apparent US military connections. Another affiliated with the Ten Rings. The Corporation's shareholder structure in this universe was considerably more complex than anything in the source material, and not in a direction that made his position simpler.
When everyone was confirmed present, Spencer opened the meeting from his wheelchair.
"Now that we're all here, let's begin." His voice carried the particular unhurried authority of someone who had been the most powerful person in every room he'd entered for a very long time. "The purpose of this meeting is straightforward."
"Company researcher William Birkin has refused to submit his G-Virus research to the Corporation. The board has decided to move on this. We will apprehend Birkin and recover the research."
"This task falls to your division, Matthew Lawrence."
"The priority is recovering the G-Virus. As for Birkin himself—" Spencer paused fractionally "—he is talented. If he remains useful, we continue utilizing him. If not..."
He left the sentence where it was. Everyone at the table understood the completion.
Keep him under lock and key if he cooperated. Remove him if he didn't. A person with that kind of knowledge outside the Corporation's control was a liability.
"Matthew Lawrence," Spencer continued, "your father and I were old colleagues. Seeing you step into his role gives me genuine satisfaction. And precisely because of that connection, this task carries particular weight when it comes from your division. Don't disappoint me."
Matthew received this with a sound that communicated acknowledgment without enthusiasm.
Playing the sentimental angle. On him, of all people, a man who had essentially no relationship with the father Spencer was invoking. Whatever bond Spencer had with Theodore Lawrence had nothing to do with Matthew, and he felt approximately nothing hearing about it.
"The task isn't a problem," Matthew said. "One question, though. What is the operational budget for this assignment?"
Spencer's brow moved slightly. "Two million."
He was clearly not accustomed to this particular conversational sequence at board meetings — people generally focused on the mission, not the funding allocation.
Matthew had noticed the reaction. He didn't adjust course.
"Mr. Spencer, when I took this position I reviewed our division's financial standing against the rest of the Corporation. The gap between security and research funding is significant, we're operating at roughly the minimum needed to keep the division functional. I'd like to raise that issue formally and request an increase to the department's general budget."
He let that sit for a moment.
"Also, reimbursement for the operational costs from the last assignment."
Spencer looked at him. The hands resting on the wheelchair arms had tightened without Spencer appearing to notice.
The father had been like this too. Same quality, the kind of pleasant, relentless directness that made you want to agree just to make it stop.
He was not inclined to increase the security budget. He also needed this new director reasonably cooperative in the short term, and there were more important battles ahead.
"Fine. I'll instruct the finance division to revise the security department's allocation."
"Anything else?"
"That's all."
The remainder of the meeting was less directly relevant to Matthew. Research trajectory adjustments, stock performance, public perception management, the standard operating concerns of a corporation that was technically legitimate and categorically not.
One item was worth paying attention to.
The middle-aged shareholder in military dress raised it.
"I've been monitoring several incident sites: the Arklay Research Facility, the Management Training Center, and the underground disposal facility near Raccoon City. Viral containment failures have occurred across all three locations. Zombie populations have appeared in the surrounding areas. The incidents have been handled quietly, but the volume of remains has overwhelmed the local disposal infrastructure. As a result, various biohazard lifeforms have been spreading through the Arklay Mountain region."
A pause.
"To relieve external pressure on the Corporation and ensure continued research operations, I recommend deploying military assets to establish isolation and containment around the affected mountain zones. If the situation deteriorates past the point of management, we can use military exercises as cover for an artillery operation to eliminate the evidence entirely."
Spencer considered this for two seconds, then agreed.
Military involvement would, he reasoned, resolve the Arklay situation without complications.
The meeting ended. The projections went dark one by one.
Matthew stood up and poured himself a glass of whiskey over ice. The first taste was caramel and smoke, the alcohol edge softened by the cold.
"Acquire the G-Virus."
He looked at the flat map on the screen, the mission location, Birkin's personnel file alongside it. He stood there for a while, then set down the glass.
"Birkin's genuinely talented. Killing him outright would be a waste."
"If he could be brought over to my side instead..." Matthew's voice dropped, half to himself, as he turned and left the conference room.
He moved without hesitation.
The moment he was out of the meeting, he began assembling his USS unit. With Hunk in the hospital and unavailable, Matthew decided he would lead the operation personally.
This was partly practical, Hunk was his best field operator and his absence left a gap, but there were also other considerations.
If Matthew was running this himself, certain aspects of the outcome became considerably easier to arrange.
Both the G-Virus and William Birkin were, officially, the mission's objectives. Matthew's interest in them was not purely institutional.
The G-Virus had been designed around a single ambition: the creation of something divine. The G in its name stood for God. That told you everything about Birkin's expectations for what the compound could do. The current iteration had obvious problems — the same category of problems the T-Virus had started with — but the System had handled the T-Virus, and there was no particular reason to think the G-Virus presented a different challenge.
As for Birkin himself: Spencer was right that he was talented. He was right that killing him was wasteful. Where Spencer's thinking ended was in the assumption that the only options were compliance or elimination.
There was a third option.
Matthew thought it had real potential.