"Mr. Matthew Lawrence, have you made up your mind?"
The blonde attorney adjusted his cufflinks and studied the man sitting across from him on the sofa. "If you don't sign the inheritance agreement, everything your father left you will be donated in full to a children's relief fund in Africa. No exceptions."
His voice carried the kind of quiet authority that snapped people back to attention, and Matthew was no exception. He straightened instinctively, then caught himself and leaned back against the cushions.
"Arthur," he said, his voice even, "give me five more minutes. Five minutes, and I'll have your answer. You've already been here all day. What's another five minutes?"
His tone was perfectly calm. His knuckles, white from the grip he had on the armrest, told a different story.
The attorney glanced at his watch. The hour hand was creeping toward midnight. After a moment, he gave a small, professional nod. "Of course, sir."
Cool moonlight slipped through the gap in the curtains and fell across Matthew's face. Mixed heritage, sharp features, the kind of face people tended to look at twice. His dark eyes settled on the two documents laid neatly on the coffee table in front of him.
One was the estate inheritance certificate. The other was a thick packet titled Equity Transfer Agreement.
If it had been any ordinary equity transfer, he wouldn't have lost a wink of sleep over it. But the company whose shares were sitting in that packet was the Umbrella Corporation.
Pharmaceutical giant. Medical hardware manufacturer. Defense contractor. Clandestine bioweapons developer. The shadow player behind some of the worst catastrophes in the Resident Evil universe, and now, somehow, a fully operational company right here in New York City.
He couldn't explain it. He'd stopped trying.
His gaze drifted past the curtain to the city outside. Stark Tower blazed with light in the middle of Manhattan, the way it always did this time of night. And directly across from it, another skyscraper rose into the dark. The red and white umbrella logo on its exterior was impossible to miss.
Don't ask how the Umbrella Corporation ended up in the Marvel Universe. Matthew didn't know. What he did know was that he didn't have the mental energy right now to figure out exactly how far off-script this world had gone. He had a more immediate problem.
Sign or don't sign.
If he didn't, the body he'd inherited was still sitting on twenty thousand dollars of debt to a local gang. His deadbeat father had never lifted a finger for him growing up, and now that he was finally gone, the one thing he'd left behind was apparently a fortune with strings attached. Walk away empty-handed, and by this time tomorrow Matthew might be in the back of a van headed somewhere unpleasant.
But if he signed, he'd be a shareholder in Umbrella. And Umbrella shareholders had a way of dying in convenient accidents, the kind that usually involved an unfortunate containment breach.
Wolves ahead, tigers behind.
The city lights outside were dizzying. Inside, his thoughts weren't much quieter.
He'd been sitting there long enough that the pen in his hand had gone warm. The five minutes were almost up.
Then something shifted. He took a slow breath, sat up straight, and without another second of hesitation, pressed the pen to paper.
Matthew Lawrence.
The ink had barely dried when a translucent panel flickered into existence directly in front of his eyes.
Ding! "Public Welfare Panel" fully loaded!For detailed instructions, please consult the User Manual.
"A system?!"
His eyes went wide. For a moment he felt like a man who had failed his english final twenty times running and just, impossibly, passed. His brain emptied out completely except for one thought, looping on repeat.
I made it. I actually made it.
"Mr. Lawrence?" Arthur was watching him with a carefully neutral expression. "Did you say something?"
Matthew caught himself. He cleared his throat and shook his head. "I don't think so, Arthur. Must have been your imagination."
"Perhaps," Arthur said, unbothered.
"In any case, now that the agreement is signed, shall we go over the full estate inventory?"
"Your father left you thirty-five properties, a twelve percent stake in the Umbrella Corporation, four point five billion dollars after tax, and controlling interests in fifteen mid-sized companies..."
The recitation went on. Arthur was thorough, and the list was long, and by the time he finished his mouth was visibly dry.
"In short," he said, extending his hand with a practiced smile, "congratulations, Mr. Lawrence. You're rich."
"Thank you." Matthew shook his hand, then reached into his pocket and pulled out several bills, pressing them into Arthur's palm. "Five hundred dollars. Consider it a fee for keeping me company tonight."
While Arthur had been running through the inventory, Matthew had been quietly skimming the system's User Manual.
The core mechanic was straightforward enough. Increase the "Happiness Index" of employees and the people around him, or prevent major disasters, and the system would reward him accordingly. All in the name of the public good.
Raise happiness or stop disasters, he thought. Right.
There was an old saying about power and responsibility. He'd been on the receiving end of neither for long enough that the upgrade felt slightly unreal.
Stopping disasters was beyond him for now. He didn't have the reach, and besides, they didn't exactly happen every day. The more practical angle was simpler: make the people around him happy enough that the system registered it as a public benefit.
Which led to an obvious experiment. Could he just throw money at people?
Arthur caught the scent of fresh ink and paper the moment the bills landed in his hand. His expression didn't change, but he pocketed them with the quiet efficiency of a man who absolutely needed that money and wasn't going to make a show of it.
"Arthur Bell" feels a small boost of happiness. System Points +1. Keep spreading the goodwill!
So it actually works, Matthew noted, one eyebrow going up.
He looked at the remaining four thousand five hundred dollars still in his pocket. That money had originally been set aside for the debt, but given the circumstances, the debt was no longer a concern worth losing sleep over.
"Arthur," he said, as the attorney was gathering the documents from the table. "On reflection, five hundred wasn't nearly enough. You've been sitting here with me all night, and you've been completely professional through all of it." He set the remaining bills on the table. "Take the rest. Call it what today was actually worth."
Arthur looked at the stack of cash. For just a moment, the professional composure slipped, and something genuinely warm crossed his face. He accepted it without ceremony.
Three kids at home. Enough for formula for a while.
System Points +10. "Arthur Bell" feels deeply satisfied.
Cumulative total: 10 points. Milestone reward unlocked: T-Virus Sample x1 (stored in system inventory.)
Next milestone: 30 points. Keep finding ways to benefit the public.
Matthew had been perfectly happy about earning ten system points.
Then he read the reward.
The smile on his face stopped moving.
...T-Virus.
He stared at the notification for a long moment.
System. I need you to think very carefully about what you just said to me.
You want me to use the T-Virus to benefit the public? Not dropping it by accident would already be a public service.
He kept his expression neutral as he showed Arthur out. When the door clicked shut and the suite was finally quiet, he let out a breath and reached into the system inventory with a thought.
A small glass vial appeared in his palm. Double helix structure, sealed, the liquid inside a deep, luminous blue that caught the light in a way that was almost beautiful.
Matthew did not find it beautiful.
In his eyes, it looked exactly like what it was. The last trumpet before the end of the world. One vial, introduced to a city's water supply, and that city was finished. Maybe the planet.
His grip on the vial tightened.
"Okay," he murmured to himself. "Let's get this locked away before anything goes wrong. Because if I somehow manage to break this thing, no one's forgiving me for that."