Chapter 10: Matthew: Go Hire Every Resident Evil Protagonist
Back in the office, Matthew settled into his chair with the particular relaxed quality of someone who had just had a productive evening.
The leather was good. It wrapped around him the way a properly made chair was supposed to, and he let himself sink into it for a moment before pulling up the System panel.
Six hundred and eighty points sitting in the account.
"System. Optimize all defects on the T-Virus Sample."
[Optimizing all defects on the T-Virus Sample will cost 380 System points. Confirm?]
"Yes."
A wash of blue light enveloped the vial where it sat in the Lab interface. When it cleared, the liquid inside had changed. The deep, vivid blue that had made it look exotic and faintly threatening was gone. What remained was clear as water, completely still, without a single bubble.
It looked entirely ordinary.
"So at this point," Matthew said, turning the vial in his fingers, "the T-Virus has no side effects left."
He pulled up the updated description.
[Optimized T-Virus Sample: Upon injection, strengthens and restructures the host's DNA, producing exceptional stamina and vitality. Minor improvements to strength and neural reflexes. Host can continue functioning even under severe damage to major organs. All original side effects have been removed.]
Matthew looked at this for a moment.
Then he looked at it again.
The gap between this and what he had been imagining, something along the lines of a Tyrant in a human frame was considerable. What the description was actually offering was closer to a functional human being who was hard to kill. The difference between this and a zombie was admittedly significant, but it was nowhere near what he had been picturing.
"Going to need more upgrades."
He put the T-Virus back into the Lab. With the negatives gone, only the upgradeable positives remained.
[Stamina LV1
LV2 Effect: Physiological limits broken. Can sustain high-intensity operation for 72 hours without external supplies. Cost: 150 System points.]
[Cell Regeneration LV1
LV2 Effect: Can maintain combat capability for 30 seconds even with lethal damage to vital organs. Limb regeneration time improved to 30 minutes. Cost: 200 System points.]
[Strength LV1
LV2 Effect: Instantaneous burst force sufficient to crush a human skull. Full-sprint speed reaches 40 meters per second. Cost: 300 System points.]
[Neural Reflexes LV1
LV2 Effect: Can perceive and respond to subsonic projectile trajectories at medium to long range. Cost: 300 System points.]
Matthew read through them carefully.
Then a question occurred to him.
"System. If I inject the T-Virus now, can I still optimize my own stats afterward?"
[User Manual, Section 109: After using a System item, the host may place themselves in the Lab interface and proceed with further optimization.]
"Good." He nodded. "Strength upgrade. LV2."
[Upgrading Strength to LV2 will cost 300 System points. Confirm?]
"Upgrade."
Another pulse of blue light. When it settled, fine red threads had appeared in the clear liquid, spreading through it like capillaries.
Matthew took the vial out and, without pausing to think too much about it, pushed the needle into his arm.
The sensation that followed was not what he expected. Not pain. Not discomfort. The liquid moved through him like cold water, clean and even, spreading into every part of him simultaneously. It was like stepping into a river that happened to be exactly the right temperature.
He closed his eyes.
Some time passed. He was not entirely sure how much.
When he opened his eyes again, the feeling was still there, not the cold, but what came after it. A completeness he had not had before. No residual soreness from training, no old injuries he had stopped noticing. The cleanness of a body that had been entirely reset.
He went to the elevator and took it to the training floor.
The floor was empty. The spent casings from the earlier session had been swept away, and Hunk had long since gone back to his quarters to sleep. The vast space was entirely his.
This was convenient. He had no interest in putting a hole in something by accident while testing what he could now do, and having an audience for that would have been embarrassing.
He crossed to a section of brick wall that had already been partially destroyed in previous training sessions. He stopped in front of it.
He ran through what Hunk had drilled into him over the past two weeks. Plant the foot. Drive through the hip. Let the force travel.
He threw the punch.
The air split.
One moment his arm was at his side; the next it had driven through the brickwork with the sound of something considerably heavier than a fist making contact. The impact displaced the air in the room. Dust and fragments scattered in a radius around the point of contact, obscuring his view for a moment.
The noise startled him. He had not been expecting that.
The dust settled. Where the already-damaged wall had been, there was now a hole approximately the width of a serving bowl. Clean edges. The bricks hadn't crumbled so much as been pushed aside.
His fist was faintly pink. The skin wasn't broken.
He tested the other variables systematically after that. Jump height: three meters from a standing start, without a run-up. Sprint speed: approximately forty-two meters per second at full effort. Stamina: he ran training drills at intensities that would have disabled a professional athlete and at no point approached anything resembling his limit.
He had no idea where his ceiling actually was.
He filed this information away and went to bed.
Sunlight through the curtains, morning.
Eleanor was asleep on her day off, which she had earned, and the light was landing on her face in a way that would have thoroughly undermined the office reputation she had built for herself over years. The expression she wore in sleep was nothing like the composed, measured one she maintained everywhere else.
Her phone vibrated on the pillow beside her.
She frowned without waking up.
Someone on her day off. She was forming a strong opinion about whoever was responsible.
Then the pattern of the vibrations registered, and she was awake before she had finished processing the thought. That frequency was the dedicated channel. The one that was only assigned to one contact.
She grabbed the phone.
[Matthew Lawrence (Boss): Sorry to interrupt your day off. Something important came up that I need you to handle.]
[-I have several files attached. I collected them overnight through company channels. Please hire everyone on this list and bring them into our department. By whatever means necessary.]
[File - Leon S. Kennedy.]
[File - Chris Redfield.]
[File - Claire Redfield.]
[File - Jill Valentine.]