Chapter 12: Victor Gideon
No more gunfire. Only the sharp sound of a blade moving through air.
The instant Hunk had stripped Matthew's magazine, the knife in his other hand was already moving, direct line to the throat.
Hunk was the kind of fighter who had never been asked to choose between strength and speed. He had both.
Against the Matthew of two days ago, even reacting to this strike would have accomplished nothing. He would have seen it coming and still lost the angle, and the fight would have ended the same way every other fight ended.
That was two days ago.
Matthew had no illusions about his combat experience, which was why he had never tried to beat Hunk at tactics. He went for something more direct.
He leaned back slightly as the knife came in. His gloved hand found the blade.
Hunk's wrist stopped as though it had driven into plate steel.
The feeling was immediately recognizable. Not because he had felt it from a person before, he hadn't, but because USS training included extensive work against the Corporation's biological assets. Against B.O.W.s. Against things that were built differently than humans.
Behind the mask, Hunk's pupils pulled tight.
He knew Matthew was his employer. He knew, intellectually, what he was looking at.
It still took conscious effort not to react to him as something else.
Surprise registered. His attack continued.
With the knife locked, Hunk released it immediately and stepped around Matthew's side, moving behind him in the same motion. Both hands found the landmarks, jaw and forehead.
Secret Technique: Neck Snap, Right.
He was about to apply the force when a hand closed around his face.
The specialized mask, Umbrella military hardware, not off-the-shelf equipment, groaned under the grip. The lenses cracked. The structure held, but only just, and the gap between held and didn't-hold was closing fast.
Matthew wasn't trying to kill him. He kept reminding himself of that and adjusted his force accordingly. He pulled Hunk from behind him to in front of him and put him on the floor.
With what Matthew could currently do, crushing a skull would have required approximately the same effort as a competitive climber crushing an apple. If he committed to it, something considerably worse than that was probably within range. The protective gear helped. It was also not a factor in what he chose to do, which was to put Hunk down and keep him there with a sequence of impacts until the lights went out.
In fifteen-plus days of training, Hunk had knocked Matthew unconscious a number of times that Matthew had stopped tracking.
This was the first time the exchange went the other way.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
Hunk stared at it. His brain was doing the thing brains do when they wake up without a clear reason — slowly assembling a picture of where he was and why.
He had been asleep. Woken up somewhere new. Must be the morning after training.
He had a vague memory of a dream, a strange one, where Matthew, who yesterday could not have won a clean engagement against him under any reasonable conditions, had spent one night doing something unknown and come back able to put him down like he was nothing. Grabbed him with one hand. Knocked him out with the other.
"Hell of a dream," Hunk said to the ceiling. "Weird and not plausible."
A person didn't close that kind of gap overnight. And a normal human being did not have strength that registered on B.O.W. assessment instincts.
He started to sit up.
Everything below his neck sent an opinion about this plan.
"..." Hunk went very still and breathed through his teeth.
A long silence followed.
"...So that wasn't a dream."
Apparently he had genuinely been knocked out by a person, using their hands, in a training session.
He was still working through the implications of this when the hospital room door opened.
"Mr. Hunk. Good to see you awake." The man who entered was composed and professionally unhurried. "I'm Dr. Victor Gideon. I'll be managing your treatment and recovery going forward."
Victor Gideon was, at this point in his life, not yet the version of himself who would one day abduct a young woman named Grace from a public street, spend quality time harassing Leon on a highway, and later trigger an explosion with what could generously be described as theatrical flair. That version of Victor Gideon was still some years away. The present version moved with the careful, measured quality of a man who took his work seriously.
"Attending physician," Hunk repeated. "Where am I? What is this place?"
"Umbrella Corporation's private medical facility in Queens," Victor said without any hesitation. "One of several sites designated for treatment of key company personnel."
He reached into his coat. "There is also a letter for you. From Mr. Matthew Lawrence. Would you like me to read it?"
Hunk considered saying no. A brief review of his current ability to manage paper confirmed that this was not realistic.
"Go ahead."
Victor broke the wax seal on the envelope, unfolded the letter, and read it.
"Mr. Lawrence writes that he apologizes for misjudging his own force during training. As compensation, he has already transferred seven hundred thousand dollars to your account. All treatment costs and living expenses during your recovery are covered by the company. He asks that you rest without worrying."
Hunk stared at the wall for a moment.
Seven hundred thousand dollars.
That was roughly half a year of his salary, transferred as a training injury apology.
So. This was what picking the right employer looked like.
"One question," Hunk said, his mood having improved considerably. "Did he say anything about a nurse? A good-looking one?"
Victor Gideon looked at him.
"He did not. For the time being, you have me."
"No nurses. What about a female doctor?"
Victor left the room without answering.
Umbrella Corporation. Manhattan Division. Top-floor conference room.
Matthew was in a formal suit and sitting with the kind of posture that said this mattered. He was not wrong. This was his first board meeting since taking the position, and the fact that it had been called by the Corporation's major shareholders made treating it casually a poor option.
The holographic projection system overhead had filled the conference room with three-dimensional representations of shareholders located across the world. The room, normally empty, felt populated.
In the original Resident Evil, Umbrella had only three founding shareholders, two of whom died relatively early and left Spencer holding the Corporation alone. Matthew had known this going in.
What he had not known was how significantly the Marvel universe had altered the picture. The number of shareholders displayed around the table exceeded anything from the source material by a considerable margin.
He scanned the projections.
He recognized two faces.
The first was Spencer, Oswell E. Spencer, Umbrella's founder. The second was someone else entirely, and her presence here was the kind of surprise that rewired several assumptions at once. Spencer's teacher. The final antagonist of Resident Evil 8. Mother Miranda.
The remaining shareholders were entirely unknown to him. Every one of them.
The Marvel universe's divergence from the source material, he concluded, ran considerably deeper than a red-and-white logo appearing across from Stark Tower.