Chapter 3: Hunk
A black sedan with the Umbrella logo on the door pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic.
In the back seat, Matthew looked himself over. Eleanor had brought the suit. The stitching was the kind you noticed even without knowing anything about tailoring, which told him everything he needed to know about what it had cost.
"Ross," he said, "does the assistant's job include ordering custom suits in advance?"
Eleanor glanced up from the driver's seat. "More accurately, your wardrobe, meals, accommodation, and daily logistics all fall under my responsibilities going forward. It's part of the role."
"You're going to be very busy," Matthew said, and went back to the laptop.
He skipped the first half of the document — the part detailing how his father had gotten involved with the Umbrella Corporation to begin with. He already knew enough of that story and had no particular interest in the rest.
The second half was more relevant.
[Security Division: Primary responsibilities include internal corporate security, destruction of evidence adverse to company interests, containment of biohazard incidents, protection of key personnel, deployment of B.O.W.s...]
In plain terms: the department that handled everything Umbrella needed done and preferred not to put in writing.
He wouldn't be doing any of it personally. But he needed to understand how it worked, what it involved, and how the pieces fit together. By the time Eleanor pulled the car to a stop outside the Umbrella building, he had a reasonable picture.
Personnel management. Mission authorization. Requisitioning operational funding from the parent company.
The last one, he noted, was critical. Money was the mechanism that made everything else function. Without it, no one worked.
He stepped out of the car and looked up.
The building was exactly what he had seen from the hotel window the night before — a hundred-meter skyscraper rising out of the middle of Manhattan, the red-and-white umbrella insignia visible against the facade. Stark Tower stood directly across from it. Matthew took a breath and walked in.
Across the street, Tony Stark stepped out of a sports car with a cheeseburger in hand — freshly made, still warm, the kind of thing a man ate when he had decided calories were someone else's problem. He caught a glimpse of Matthew's back as he disappeared through the Umbrella building's entrance and glanced sideways at Happy.
"Happy," he said, "I'm starting to think I need a better-looking bodyguard. Some random person's driver just walked past and made you look bad."
Happy followed his gaze, then turned back with the mild, unbothered expression of a man who had heard a great many things from Tony Stark and had long since developed appropriate filters.
"That's not some random person. That's the new head of Umbrella's security division. Just took over." He paused. "The woman with him is Eleanor Ross — she was the previous director's assistant. Theodore Lawrence."
"And," Happy added, flexing an arm and patting it with some satisfaction, "I'd like to point out that a physique like that isn't going to protect anyone."
Tony looked at him. A full two seconds of silence.
He bit into the cheeseburger, said nothing, and walked into the building.
Happy followed immediately after, continuing to make his case to Tony Stark's retreating back.
Inside the Umbrella building, the lobby moved with the quiet efficiency of a place that took itself seriously. Matthew and Eleanor pushed through the flow of staff and stepped into an elevator that required level-three clearance to operate.
Matthew studied the access bracelet on Eleanor's wrist. It had the particular look of something designed by someone who took security architecture very seriously and had perhaps played too many video games.
"Ross, who designed those?"
"The bracelet system? That was Spencer's initiative, one of the board directors." She held her wrist up. "My clearance is level four. Yours is level five, the highest within the division."
"So I have one of those too?"
"No. I had your access processed through headquarters before you arrived. Facial recognition. You won't need a physical credential."
The elevator descended.
When the doors opened, Matthew stepped out into a room that was not what he had expected.
The space was vast and lit with flat, cold white light that left no shadows anywhere. Along the walls, a weapons display stretched from combat knives at one end to grenade launchers at the other. The floor was open and unobstructed.
He looked at Eleanor.
"Your father left instructions," she said. "This is your first priority."
She reached into her bag and produced a folder.
"You need to learn how to handle yourself. Personnel can be bought. Bodyguards get killed. And I think you'll agree — the head of a security division probably shouldn't be someone who couldn't fight their way out of a difficult conversation." She held the folder out. "This is a list of available instructors. You can select as many as you like."
She added: "The facility is twenty-five floors underground and has been built to appropriate specifications. Everything you see here operates within safe containment parameters. You don't need to worry about the training causing any structural issues."
Matthew took the folder.
He flipped through it. Photographs, credentials, specializations — a procession of qualified and extremely capable-looking people.
Then he stopped.
"Him," he said. No hesitation.
Eleanor leaned over to look.
The photograph showed a figure in full black tactical gear — gas mask over the face, military helmet, protective clothing head to toe, a tactical vest layered over it. A submachine gun on one hip, tactical grenades and flashbangs arranged across the rig with the methodical precision of someone who thought of kit placement the way other people thought of breakfast.
Eleanor read the name on the file.
"...Hunk?"
"That's the one." Matthew tapped the salary figure listed below the profile — one-point-two million dollars annually — and said, "Give him a twenty-percent raise while you're at it."
"Twenty percent? That's—"
"And yours too. Twenty percent."
A brief pause.
"Understood," Eleanor said.
[System: "Eleanor Ross" feels deeply grateful. System points +20.]
[Accumulated System points: 30. Milestone reward — Basic Zombie Dogs x5 (deposited into System storage).]
[Next milestone: 100 accumulated System points. Please continue making full use of your System rewards to benefit the people.]
Matthew looked at the notification.
He had nothing left to say about it.
The cold white light filled every corner of the training floor with the kind of brightness that made the room feel slightly unreal. A minute passed in silence.
Then the elevator doors opened again.
A figure stepped out — unhurried, upright, radiating the particular quality of stillness that belonged to people who were very rarely the most nervous person in any given situation.
"Sir." The voice was level. Flat. "Hunk, reporting in."