Chapter 84: Ada: "Well well well. Haven't Seen You in Days, Wesker. You've Really Come Down in the World."
The upgraded Pursuer was covered head to toe in dark grey living armor.
No streamlined design anywhere on it. What it had instead was mass and menace. Standing in front of it felt like standing in front of a small mountain.
And though the armor was alive, its exterior looked mechanical. Sharp-edged, angular, as though a biological exoskeleton had grown across the surface of the body from outside. That exoskeleton had added considerably to the Pursuer's frame. What had previously stood at roughly two point six meters now stood at two point eight.
Its arms were thicker than Ada's waist.
The sharp reverse barbs at every joint made the whole thing look significantly more dangerous than before.
Matthew looked it over and nodded.
If the old Pursuer had been somewhere in the range of ugly-impressive, the current one fell into a different category: ferocious and brutal, with its own distinct kind of presence.
The Pursuer tried closing its fist.
A dense network of tendons rose visibly through the dark grey armor as it did. The air cracked with a sharp report from the sudden compression alone.
"Good." Matthew said it simply.
The previous version could never have generated force at this level.
In his longer-term thinking, the Pursuer was eventually going to sit in the same tier as the Abomination and base Hulk. Given the right conditions, it might go beyond both. Matching Thanos in raw physical capability at that point was not outside the range of possibility.
For now, of course, that was still just thinking. The current Pursuer was still some distance short of the Abomination, let alone Thanos. The road ahead was long.
He was still turning over whether to put a G-Virus injection into the Pursuer's development plan when the phone on the desk went off.
Beep beep beep.
He looked at the screen.
Eleanor.
Matthew's eyebrow lifted slightly.
Eleanor hadn't sent so much as a message since her last assignment, beyond the occasional mission update. A phone call had not happened once. A sudden call meant something worth calling about.
He answered immediately.
Eleanor's voice on the other end was exactly as it always was. Steady. Unhurried.
"Sir. Former Umbrella senior executive Albert Wesker has just made contact with me. He's requesting a meeting with you and says he'd like to propose a deal."
"If you're willing, I can pass the message along. If you'd prefer no contact with him at all, I can also turn him down."
Albert Wesker.
Something settled into Matthew's expression that wasn't quite amusement.
This man had the nerve to reach out?
Or more to the point, how had he come to think of reaching out to him at all. Was he uncomfortable wherever he'd ended up and looking to come back?
Matthew let a faint smile surface.
"Don't turn him down."
"He actually interests me. Let him come."
He was curious to see what exactly Wesker was bringing to the table.
On the other end, Eleanor, seated in a car, gave a single nod. "Understood, sir."
"I won't disturb your rest any further." She ended the call.
She turned and looked at the man in the passenger seat. Her expression was cool.
"Sir has agreed to see you."
"Of course, that's because of the assistance you provided." She let her gaze drift briefly to the back seat.
On the back seat sat a glass jar filled with a pale blue solution. Inside the solution was a head.
The head belonged to Alexia Ashford. One of the mission's targets. Umbrella's most exceptional scientific mind.
Wesker, in his leather jacket, gave a satisfied nod and looked at the jar in the same moment.
"My thanks, Miss Eleanor." His tone was entirely composed.
Eleanor corrected him without hesitation. "Albert Wesker. Your thanks belong to Mr. Lawrence, not to me."
"Without his consent, I would not have let you within a step of him."
Her hands stayed on the wheel. The warning in her voice was not dressed up as anything else.
Wesker did not appear particularly moved by this.
He stepped out of the car, produced a cigarette from inside his jacket, lit it, and walked off into the distance without a word.
The following day.
Wesker, black leather jacket, signature dark glasses, stood on the New York sidewalk and looked up at the Umbrella Corporation building catching the morning light. He stood there for a moment. Then he walked toward the entrance.
He did not get far.
"I'm sorry, sir. Company policy. Improper attire is not permitted inside."
Walrus blocked the entrance with the complete seriousness of a man who had done this more than once this week.
Wesker looked at him. "I was a senior member of this company. How would I not know this policy existed?"
"There are a lot of policies you don't know about."
"In any case, if you want to enter, please change first." Walrus delivered this with no room left for further discussion.
Wesker took a measured breath, chose not to argue, and walked to a suit shop he could see down the street.
Shortly after, he came back in a black suit. He walked through the entrance under Walrus's careful observation. On his way in, he gave Walrus one brief, deliberate glance.
He crossed the lobby to the front desk.
"I'm here to see Mr. Matthew Lawrence. I have an appointment from yesterday."
"One moment, please." The receptionist produced a professional smile.
About thirty seconds passed. She reached below the counter for a wristband.
"Mr. Albert Wesker, this will take you to the top floor via elevator one."
Wesker took the wristband and went directly to the elevator. No lingering.
The elevator chimed. The doors opened.
Wesker was still working through how he intended to negotiate his position when something moved at the edge of his vision.
A figure in red. Unhurried and striking.
"A... da... Wong."
The words came out separately. His fist closed at his side. The knuckles went pale under the force of it.
Ada had seen him at the same moment. Unlike the heat building in Wesker, her expression carried nothing but a certain pointed calm.
And something that looked a great deal like the beginning of a good time.
"Well well well. Look who decided to show up." Her mouth curved. "Isn't this my former boss, Albert Wesker himself."
"What's the matter? Couldn't get the FBI to move on me with the file you sent them? So you've decided to come play federal agent and bring me in personally?"
The implication in her voice could have been picked up by someone across the building.
Wesker stared at her. Every nerve in him was pushing toward the same outcome.
The fury of betrayal was not a quiet thing. He wanted to deal with her here, in this corridor, immediately.
Reason held the line.
Umbrella was hunting him. The FBI had stopped trusting him. Every other organization he had approached, having heard enough of his history to form an opinion, had declined to bring him on. Not a single one. If he acted now, even assuming he could take Ada Wong down, there would be no path out of this building afterward.
That was not an outcome he was willing to accept.
Wesker let Ada's presence pass through him without registering, and continued walking toward Matthew's office.