Chapter 88: Wesker: For the Sake of Mr. Lawrence, Allow Me to Take Out My Other Selves!
With the last trace of Wesker's resistance gone, Matthew had acquired another fanatical asset.
He looked at one of Resident Evil's most celebrated villains and gave a satisfied nod.
A partnership.
Matthew laughed inwardly.
Did Wesker genuinely believe a working relationship built on nothing but words and mutual interest could earn his trust? That kind of arrangement was fragile by design. Any outside pressure could break it. Especially when the other party was a villain of Wesker's particular caliber.
Only complete reprogramming and total control could actually put a person at ease.
"How are you feeling?" Matthew looked at Wesker, who had gone very quiet. He waved at Nemesis.
Nemesis took the cue and dropped Wesker back onto the floor, with somewhat more force than strictly necessary, nearly putting a dent in the hardwood.
Wesker hit the ground and was still for a moment, with the particular stillness of someone returning from somewhere far away. Then he picked himself up slowly and straightened his suit, which the earlier struggle had done no favors.
When he spoke again, his tone was even, but there was an undisguised intensity running beneath it.
"Right now?"
"I have never felt better than this in my entire life."
"I am genuinely grateful to you, sir, for giving me this opportunity to cooperate." Every word of it completely sincere.
In Wesker's reshaped understanding, Matthew had done him an enormous service. He had been a man without direction, and Matthew had shown him exactly where he was actually supposed to be going. On top of that, Matthew had set aside everything that had passed between them and given him an enhancement that put his previous physical condition to shame.
He would never be able to repay that debt.
Loyal. Completely.
Watching Wesker compose himself with the energy of someone one moment away from doing anything asked of him, Matthew's satisfaction deepened.
"Actually, sir. I've just remembered something I forgot to mention." Wesker spoke up as though something had occurred to him.
"What is it?"
"It's nothing of great consequence. But before I came here today, I sent word to the clones I have stationed in various locations around the world."
"If I'm unable to contact them for an extended period, they are to inform Spencer that I came to meet with you. That would give Spencer a justification to move against you inside the company, on grounds of suspected collusion with a corporate spy." Wesker laid out his own failsafe without a moment of hesitation.
Matthew was quiet for a beat.
Still Wesker.
Calling it a partnership with his mouth, not dropping his guard for a single second underneath it.
The pity was that whatever Wesker had calculated for, he hadn't calculated on a method that could override him outright.
The corner of Matthew's mouth moved.
"You've done excellent work."
"Not many people can bring themselves to turn in their own family for the greater good. Fewer still can bring themselves to turn in their own schemes." He reached into his desk drawer and produced a vial of Green Goblin formula.
A small toss. The vial traced an arc through the air and landed cleanly in Wesker's hand.
Wesker looked at it.
Without a moment's hesitation, he pressed it to his neck and injected it.
As the formula hit, the muscles across his body began expanding steadily outward.
About a minute passed.
The expansion receded. When it settled, the strength and speed behind it had increased by a considerable and very real margin.
Feeling the new force moving through him, the loyalty in Wesker's expression intensified noticeably.
To demonstrate his usefulness without waiting to be asked, he volunteered immediately: "Sir. To ensure there is absolutely no possibility of this information leaking, allow me to personally handle the elimination of the clones."
Matthew didn't consider the clones any real threat to himself. But since Wesker was offering, there was no particular reason not to hand it to him.
"Very good. That's your first assignment since joining us."
"One condition. I don't want any trace of it left behind. Understood?"
"Understood." A cold clarity moved through Wesker's eyes. "I will personally eliminate every other version of myself. Today's events will not reach a seventh person."
No hesitation in it. The Las Plagas modification had placed Matthew above everything else in his hierarchy. Even faced with another version of himself, he would not hold back.
As for why a seventh person specifically—
Matthew counted as one. Eleanor as two. Ada as three. The front desk receptionist as four. Walrus as five. Wesker himself as six. Which meant exactly one more before the count reached seven.
Killing Umbrella's own staff was not on the table, of course. That would undermine Matthew's standing inside the company.
Which narrowed it down considerably.
Elsewhere.
In the Oscorp offices, the Green Goblin was finding the afternoon increasingly difficult to get through.
How had he ever managed to sit through any of this before?
Given a choice, he would take any available reason to suit up and go three rounds with Spider-Man rather than sit here listening to his secretary read him line items one by one.
"Mr. Osborn, according to the financial summary, our sanitation and cleaning expenditure this month increased by two percent..." The secretary beside him, Nora, continued working through the report.
That was enough.
"Nora. Do I actually need to hear about sanitation costs personally?"
"I am the chairman of this company. Not the head of facilities management. And certainly not the director of restrooms."
He pushed to his feet, trying internally to establish some kind of communication with the Norman Osborn personality and work out a division of responsibilities.
It wasn't going anywhere. Since the Las Plagas implant, Norman seemed to have fallen into a prolonged dormancy. The Green Goblin was left holding the entire operation alone, and he did not have the patience for any of it.
Nora, having absorbed the outburst, looked at her visibly irritated employer with a degree of her own weary frustration. "I apologize, sir. I don't enjoy reporting this to you either."
"But on one side, the directors who oversaw this area were killed at the festival. On the other, this falls under the standing policy you put in place yourself, that all financial matters be reported to you directly."
"So..."
The Green Goblin had no response to that.
So somehow it's my fault.
"The policy has changed." He produced a smile that required some effort.
"Meals, sanitation, working hours, afternoon refreshments. None of that comes to me."
"If you can handle it, handle it. If you genuinely can't, then bring it to me. Not before."
"Understood?"
The way he saw it, Nora bringing him every minor detail was like those officials in old imperial courts who had nothing useful to do and spent their careers writing lengthy reports asking whether the emperor had eaten today, whether he was sleeping well, whether the weather was agreeable.
Day after day. Year after year.
Was there truly nothing more productive to do with that time?
Nora absorbed this, gave a nod, and quietly excused herself from the room.
The Green Goblin was settling in to enjoy a rare stretch of silence when something moved through the quiet like a sound that had no origin point in the room, carrying the quality of something he had no capacity to ignore.
"Osborn. I have a task that needs handling. You're the one I need for it."
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