Chapter 42: Umbrella Corporation Has Always Been in the Business of Benefiting the People
Three days had passed since the attack on Ada's villa.
The Nursery, which had been described as nearly complete for some time now, officially became complete today.
It was a significant occasion. Matthew at least felt it as one.
Not only because of the ribbon-cutting ceremony he was there to perform, but because the System was about to start receiving a steady income stream.
Under clear morning sky, Matthew, Eleanor, Ada, and the construction company's representative stood on a temporary raised platform. Flashbulbs were going continuously. Matthew held a professional smile in place with the ease of someone who had learned to treat public expressions as a separate mechanical function.
Below the platform, a substantial portion of New York's established hierarchy had shown up.
Norman Osborn, chairman of Oscorp. Tony Stark of Stark Industries. Wilson Fisk of Fisk Industries. The mayor of New York City. The NYPD commissioner. Several others.
Among the press line, Matthew also spotted Peter Parker.
A reasonable all-star turnout for a children's welfare center.
Without shifting his smile, Matthew tilted his head slightly toward Eleanor and lowered his voice. "The guests down there. Did you invite all of them?"
Eleanor answered at the same volume. "I sent simple invitations. I didn't actually expect all of them to come."
"So you don't know most of them personally."
"Some of them I do know."
"For instance?"
"The mayor. The NYPD commissioner. The FBI liaison. Several departments with oversight on public welfare programs." She kept her expression perfectly managed for the cameras while she answered. "They all have existing relationships with the company."
Matthew nodded once and returned his attention to the room.
The ceremony proceeded through its stages. The ribbon was cut. The flashbulbs intensified briefly and then settled.
Then came the press questions.
"Mr. Lawrence, what was the total construction cost of this facility—"
"Mr. Lawrence, can you tell us the square footage—"
"Mr. Lawrence—"
The questions came in from all directions at once. Matthew fielded them without slowing down.
In the middle of the crowd, a slightly younger face than the rest had been pushing forward for several minutes without success. Every time he got close to saying something, someone with a louder voice and sharper elbows cut in front of him.
Peter Parker.
Not the tech-suit version. This was the Tobey Maguire original, biological rather than mechanical. The one whose raw physical output was genuinely difficult to account for on paper. The one who had walked into a three-way crossover and come out with his reputation fully intact against the other two. He had the reflexes, the strength, the feats, and the operational instincts to back all of it up. Calling him merely Spider-Man felt like understatement.
None of which was helping him get a word in at a press conference.
He opened his mouth for the fourth or fifth time and someone louder stepped across him again.
Matthew watched this with quiet amusement from the platform.
He also noted, for unrelated reasons, that Peter Parker was a useful asset in a crowd. Tony Stark's live Umbrella endorsement had gone out through Peter's question at the airport. A good reason to return the favor.
Matthew took the microphone, pressed down gently on the surrounding noise, and looked directly at Peter.
"I remember you. Peter Parker, Daily Bugle. What did you want to ask?"
The crowd noise dropped a level.
Peter Parker blinked. "You remember me?"
"Is that your question, Mr. Parker?"
A flush crossed Peter's face. He pulled a folded slip of paper from his pocket. "No. Sorry. Of course not, Mr. Lawrence."
He looked at the paper.
"What was your original motivation for building this facility?"
"Motivation." Matthew paused for a moment, as though considering whether the word quite applied.
"Honestly, I don't think something like this requires a motivation."
He let that land for half a second.
"Umbrella Corporation has always been in the business of benefiting the people. That's simply what we do."
"There's a principle I try to keep in mind. With great power comes great responsibility. An institution that can do something like this has a responsibility to do it. Viewed that way, this facility is one very small piece of a much larger picture."
He paused again, in a way that suggested he was about to say something he didn't usually say out loud.
"If I'm being honest about it, the answer is simpler than all of that. The children who don't have anywhere to go. A place for them to be safe, and eventually to grow into something the world needs. To make the world, on balance, a little less bad than it was."
In the press line, Peter Parker had stopped moving.
The person beside him nudged past and he didn't notice.
With great power comes great responsibility.
He had heard that somewhere. He had thought about it a great deal.
He watched Matthew moving smoothly through the next question, and the one after that, and what was in his expression by the end of it was straightforward admiration.
Someone who says something like that, Peter thought, must live by it.
He must be an exceptionally good person.
He was almost completely certain of this.
The ceremony wound down through the morning and concluded around noon.
When the last of the guests and press had cleared the site, Matthew let out a quiet breath and let his shoulders settle.
"Having trouble keeping up?"
The voice came from behind him, unhurried and familiar.
"Tony." Matthew turned. "You announced the shutdown of your weapons division three days ago. Shouldn't you be managing the fallout?"
Tony Stark, looking like a man who had not been sleeping at the hours when sleep was supposed to happen, walked over and dropped himself onto a nearby bench with the composure of someone whose structural integrity was running on reserve power.
"When I said what I said at that press conference, I already knew the stock was going to take a hit." A long exhale. "That doesn't change anything for me."
Something in his eyes settled into a quality that hadn't been there before Afghanistan.
"Some things need to be done regardless."
He looked up at the sky for a moment, then back at the ground.
"I've been thinking about what you said. About the weapons."
"Since we got back, I've had people look into the internal records. And what they came back with was not what I expected." He turned the thought over. "The official accounts at Stark Industries show almost no record of sales to groups like that. Sales to the Middle East at all are minimal on paper. There is no accounting for where that volume of hardware came from."
"So you think there's someone inside the company." Matthew looked at him. "Running an unauthorized channel. Selling to terrorist organizations without your knowledge."
Tony didn't answer immediately.
If the man in front of him wasn't the CEO of Stark Industries, Matthew would have had difficulty placing him. He looked like a graduate student who had been assigned a problem too large for the room he was in and had been working on it in the dark for several days running.
Tony leaned back against the bench, one arm draped along the back, eyes going to the sky.
Since he had started to believe the internal channel was real, the weight of it had not gotten lighter.
Stark Industries carried his name. His father's name. If the company was engaged in something like this, the people who would be held to account were not the board members or the silent shareholders. They were the Starks. His father's reputation. His mother's.
He could not accept that.
And then Matthew had stood at a podium half an hour ago and said, in front of cameras, that great power carried great responsibility.
Tony, who had been carrying one weight, now appeared to be carrying two.