Chapter 8: A Better Way to Farm Points
The whole business on the street came and went fast. Umbrella's people moved Pete and his crew from the sidewalk to the vehicles without generating any meaningful disturbance. Bystanders barely had time to form an opinion before it was already over.
With that settled, Matthew took a proper look at the future Iron Man for the first time.
Hm. If anything, he came across as even more self-assured in person than on screen. It was genuinely difficult to picture someone like this eventually deciding to sacrifice himself to save the world. People were strange.
"Matthew Lawrence."
"Tony Stark."
They shook hands. A brief, mutual smile.
Tony glanced toward the end of the street, where the vehicles were rounding the corner.
"Lawrence," he said, with the casual curiosity of someone asking a question they half expected not to get a straight answer to, "when you said you were sending those people to be drug trial volunteers — were you serious or were you making a point?"
"Just making a point." Matthew's expression was easy. "Did you see the look on his face when I said it? That kind of reaction is hard to get without a good line." He allowed a small smile. "Besides, we operate in a society governed by law. Umbrella is a publicly listed company. We don't do things that fall outside legal parameters."
He glanced to the side. "Isn't that right, Eleanor?"
"That's correct," Eleanor said.
Tony watched the two of them work through that exchange and lifted one shoulder in a shrug that said he had his own opinions and was choosing not to share them. He did not believe a word of the legal-parameters line. If the world ran as cleanly as people claimed it did, none of what had just happened would have been possible.
"We've got things to get back to," he said. "Good that it worked out." He turned to go.
"Mr. Stark."
Tony stopped.
"I appreciate the intervention," Matthew said. "I don't like sitting on unpaid debts." He reached into his jacket and produced a card, matte black, metal, no text, no number, nothing printed on it at all, and held it out.
"This has an encrypted chip built into it. If you snap it, it sends a satellite positioning signal. My people will have your location and be moving toward you within minutes."
He held Tony's gaze. "If something comes up that you need help with, this might be useful."
Tony looked at the card for a moment. Then he turned to Happy.
"Keep it for me."
"He doesn't generally like taking things handed directly to him," Happy said to Matthew, by way of explanation. "No offense."
"None taken," Matthew said.
Happy pocketed the card, and the two of them got in the car and were gone.
Matthew watched them leave. Eleanor appeared at his shoulder.
"What do you think of him?" she asked. "Tony Stark."
"Ask anyone on that street and they'd give you an answer."
"Then you think he's a self-centered playboy too."
"No." Matthew shook his head. "He is a playboy. That part's accurate. But more than that, he's a genius." A beat. "The kind that can change the world."
That night.
Tony Stark, having spent some time in the company he had been after before the afternoon's interruption made it necessary to recalibrate, was now in his living room in pajamas, turning the black card over in his fingers.
No text. No number. Nothing on either face. Just metal.
"JARVIS."
"Sir."
"Scan the chip in this card."
"Of course..."
Silence for half a minute.
"Sir, the chip is unremarkable. It functions precisely as described — an encrypted positioning device that transmits a satellite signal when physically disrupted. No secondary functions, no embedded software, no hidden components."
Tony looked at it a little longer. "Really is just a locator chip."
He set the card down. He had been looking for something that wasn't there, which meant he had been overthinking it. He filed the card away and went back to bed.
Not everyone had Tony Stark's evening.
Matthew was at his desk, looking at the System interface, and the expression on his face was doing things it had not been designed to do.
[T-Virus Sample: Upon injection, significantly reinforces and restructures the host's DNA, producing exceptional stamina and vitality. Host can continue functioning even under severe damage to major organs. Side effects include complete loss of higher intelligence and a range of associated deficiencies.]
[Note: System points can be spent to optimize the T-Virus Sample via the Lab.]
[Zombification — Optimization cost: 80 points.]
[Lethargy — Optimization cost: 40 points.]
[High Lethality — Optimization cost: 80 points.]
[Low Intelligence — Optimization cost: 100 points.]
[High Infectivity — Optimization cost: 80 points.]
He sat back.
He had spent an entire afternoon handing out cigarettes to homeless people and had accumulated a hundred and seventy points. Total on hand: two hundred. And just stripping out the defects on the T-Virus, before touching any of the actual performance upgrades, would cost him three hundred and eighty points.
He didn't have enough to optimize away half the negatives.
He needed a different approach. A more efficient one.
He looked over at Eleanor, who was standing quietly at the edge of the room.
Something occurred to him.
"Ross."
"Sir."
"Where are the people from this afternoon?"
"The Magia Gang crew?" A faint crease appeared between Eleanor's brows, the involuntary kind that came from genuine distaste. "Underground floor fifteen."
"Take me down."
Umbrella Building. Underground Floor Fifteen.
The floor had been purpose-built for detaining and transferring persons of interest. It did not see heavy use as a rule. Tonight it was earning its place.
Pete, in his cell, looked considerably different from how he had looked on the street. Both eyes were ringed with bruising. His face had swollen to a degree that made his original features somewhat theoretical. He had not been treated gently on the way in. Neither had anyone who came in with him.
The Magia crew occupied their separate cells in a state of significant transformation from the street version of themselves. They had been stripped and their heads had been shaved. Whatever swagger they had been running on that afternoon had been thoroughly retired. They were crouched against their walls in the dim yellow light, very quiet, very still.
Pete had been thinking. He had been trying to understand the sequence of events that had taken someone he used to collect from without any pushback whatsoever and turned that person into a senior executive at the Umbrella Corporation's security division.
Of all the divisions in a company like that — the security division. If it had been anything else, today would not have gone this badly.
He was trying to work out whether there was any way out of this floor when the elevator at the end of the corridor chimed.
Footsteps. A silhouette he recognized.
"Matthew—" The bruising around Pete's joints reminded him how to be careful. He swallowed. "Matthew?"
"Surprised to see me?"
Matthew stood outside the cell door. The smile on his face was the particular kind that made the temperature in the room feel like it had dropped a few degrees. Pete, already backed up against the wall, felt strongly that he would have taken another step back if there had been any wall left to retreat into.