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Chapter 34: Umbrella's Personal Demon King Protection Service
Nemesis didn't answer Tony's question.
His operational intelligence did not extend to responding to that category of inquiry. His eyes moved past Tony.
They found Yinsen.
The standing orders reasserted themselves.
[Kill all living targets except Tony Stark.]
The crimson tendril began to emerge from his palm.
"Mission complete."
Matthew walked out from behind Nemesis before the tendril had fully extended. His voice carried no particular weight, just the flat tone of someone updating a task status.
"Go outside and wait."
Nemesis stopped. He looked at Matthew for a moment, then turned and went.
Matthew himself was in notably good condition. No bullet holes in him. His magazine hadn't lost many rounds. The operational plan had never required direct engagement with the Ten Rings. Drop the B.O.W.s at designated coordinates, issue remote commands through the System, let them work, enter with the cleanup team once the heavy lifting was done. It was considerably more efficient than walking into a firefight.
He turned to Tony with a mild, professional expression.
"Mr. Stark. How are you feeling? Satisfied with the service?"
Seeing a familiar face from New York had a visible effect on Tony's tension level.
He put a thumb up. "Right now? Outstanding. Genuinely the best I've felt in months."
"Especially after seeing you specifically."
"As for the service." He considered. "If it weren't for the large individual frightening me half to death at the end, I'd call it a hundred out of a hundred."
"That is a shame." Matthew gestured toward the cave entrance. "I'm going to guess you don't want to spend another minute in here. Shall we take this conversation outside?"
Tony was already moving.
The cave entrance opened onto a landscape that had seen better hours. Every Ten Rings member on the site was accounted for. The ones who had made it away from the initial B.O.W. engagement had been handled by the snipers overhead and Matthew's ground team. No survivors. The bodies had been collected inside the cave by the cleanup crew, which had then put the whole thing to a fire and brought the entrance down on top of it.
What remained was a pile of dark ash and a collapsed rock face.
Tony came through the entrance in the Mark I and stopped.
He looked at the wreckage. He looked at the weapons still visible in the debris. Rifles, a rocket launcher, mortars. All of them bearing the Stark Industries mark.
"Funny," he said. The word came out with something behind it that wasn't funny at all. "Weapons built by my company almost used on me, the founder."
He was thinking about the shell that had landed two meters from him. About three months of a particular kind of pressure that had no equivalent in his previous life. He had thought he was going to die here. He had thought it several times.
Standing outside the cave now, he felt what it meant to still be alive. What it meant, specifically, to be a different version of himself than the one who had arrived.
The playboy had been left somewhere in that cave.
Matthew walked up beside him, looked at a rocket launcher, and said something mildly.
"Rather than that, I think the more pressing question is how your weapons ended up here in the first place."
"Stark Industries has always sold to governments. Not to organizations like this."
Tony considered it. "Couldn't they have captured them from a military source?"
"In this quantity?"
Matthew's gaze moved across the site. Small arms, heavy weapons, everything bearing the same logo.
Tony looked at it and went quiet in a way that meant he was thinking.
"This isn't the best place for that." Matthew touched his shoulder briefly. "Come on. I'm fairly sure the people waiting for you have been going out of their minds."
"Fair point. One question first."
"Go ahead."
"Does Umbrella's majority shareholder personally show up for all rescue operations?" Tony asked it with the lightness of someone keeping score. "Or is this a select service?"
Matthew thought about it for approximately two seconds. "At the moment, you're the only one who's received this particular treatment."
"I'm honored."
"You can honor us by settling the fee. Two billion. Cash or card."
Tony Stark looked at him.
"Any chance you could just throw me off the plane instead?"
The airport.
Nemesis and the other B.O.W.s had been recalled into System storage before landing. The official account of the rescue operation would reference a human team. There were two reasons for this. The obvious one was that fielding biological weapons in a public operation was not the kind of thing that went undiscussed. The less obvious one was that the Nemesis model was rare. Umbrella had only produced four of them, and one had been terminated after developing autonomous emotional responses. Matthew's copy surfacing would generate exactly the kind of questions from Spencer's people that he had no interest in answering.
Better to keep it simple.
Tony had found a suit somewhere en route and gotten rid of the beard. He looked human again, if significantly more tired than usual.
The airport was packed. The moment news had circulated that Tony Stark was alive and incoming, every journalist in range had converged. The flashbulbs were continuous, relentless, the kind of sustained photographic attention that made the air feel bright.
Matthew and his team were wearing goggles and face coverings. The cameras were someone else's problem.
Tony, navigating the crowd toward Happy's car, showed no interest in the questions being thrown at him from every direction.
Until one of them caught his attention.
"Mr. Stark! Are you satisfied with the quality of this rescue operation?"
Tony stopped. He turned toward the reporter who had asked it.
"Which outlet are you with?"
"Daily Bugle, sir! Peter Parker!"
Tony looked at him for a moment. Then he turned to face the cameras with the specific, purposeful expression of a man delivering a line.
"Satisfied? This rescue was flawless."
"For security and rescue services, my choice is Umbrella Corporation."
He got in the car. Matthew and Yinsen followed.
"Matthew." Tony leaned back in the seat with the satisfaction of a man who had just done something clever. "I think that covers the fee. A live endorsement from Tony Stark, on camera, to every journalist in that crowd. You want to talk about what that's worth?"
"In fact, you might owe me money."
Matthew shrugged. He hadn't genuinely expected to collect $2 billion. The endorsement was, honestly, worth more than the number he had named. If Tony wanted to keep going with the math, Matthew was content to let him.
A few more like that and Umbrella's public profile would take care of itself.
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