Chapter 16: Another Upgrade
Another week passed.
The destruction of the underground research facility on the outskirts of Raccoon City had given the city's mayor a significant administrative headache and attracted almost no attention from any other party. On the surface, at least.
Matthew's intervention had permanently altered what should have happened next. In the original sequence of events, William Birkin, shot by Umbrella's retrieval team, would have injected himself with the G-Virus in a last act of desperate self-preservation. The resulting transformation would have triggered the mass T-Virus outbreak that consumed Raccoon City. That chain of events had a very specific body count attached to it.
None of it had happened. The sequence had been interrupted at the source, and the disaster had dissolved before it could begin.
One more day saving the world. Routine, at this point.
The System agreed with this assessment, apparently. For the intervention and the catastrophe it had prevented, Matthew received two thousand System points.
New York. His apartment.
Matthew stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in a brown wool overcoat, hands clasped behind his back, looking at the city. The night skyline of Manhattan was doing what it always did, brilliant, dense and indifferent. He had the G-Virus sample in one hand.
By any normal measure, acquiring the G-Virus was a significant accomplishment. He was not particularly happy about it.
[G-Virus: Upon injection, the virus interferes with and restructures the host organism's DNA, transforming the host's physical form in a "stage-by-stage progressive" sequence of uncontrolled mutation and evolution.
Advantages: The host gains extreme physical strength and extraordinary regenerative capability.
Disadvantages: The evolutionary process is entirely uncontrolled. The host's consciousness is gradually consumed by the virus until the organism's reproductive instincts entirely replace autonomous thought.]
[Optimizable defects: Uncontrolled evolution, consciousness dissolution, lethal to carrier.]
[Upgradeable performance: Evolution, cellular activity, strength, neural reflexes.]
The G-Virus was exceptional in both directions. Its unique evolutionary property was unlike anything else in the entire Resident Evil catalogue, nothing else did what it did. The problem set was equally unique: uncontrolled, progressive transformation that ended with the host as an unrecognizable mass of biological material, with no cognition remaining.
Matthew could remove all of that through the System Lab. The obstacle was cost.
Compared to the T-Virus optimization, the G-Virus was significantly more expensive to fix. Each of the three defects required a minimum of two thousand System points. Three defects. Six thousand points, at minimum, before he touched any of the performance upgrades.
"The more broken something is, the more it costs to fix," Matthew said. "Makes sense."
He put the G-Virus away. Generating points was the priority over holding onto a sample he couldn't use yet.
He had two thousand points in the account. He thought for a moment, then opened the System interface.
The blue panel expanded in front of him. In the upper right corner, something new caught his attention: a small chibi-style avatar that was clearly supposed to be him, sitting in the interface corner.
"What's that?"
He clicked it.
[Would you like to place "Matthew Lawrence" into the Lab interface for optimization?]
Matthew blinked. He rubbed his eyes. Looked again.
The System had mentioned this, that after using a System item, the host could place themselves in the Lab for further optimization. He had filed that away as a theoretical capability. Apparently it was exactly as literal as it sounded.
"...Yes."
The chibi avatar dropped into the Lab slot. An upgrade panel opened.
[Matthew Lawrence (Optimizable)]
[Stamina LV1... Cell Regeneration LV1...]
The same upgrade options that had appeared on the T-Virus sample were now displayed against his own profile. His injected enhancements had become part of him, and the System treated them accordingly.
One entry had changed since the last time he'd looked at these options.
[Strength LV2
Upgrade to LV3 Effect: Instantaneous burst force sufficient to shatter concrete structures and tear through one-centimeter steel plate. Full movement speed reaches 60 meters per second. Cost: 1,500 System points.]
He read through everything. Then he started issuing upgrade commands.
The G-Virus defects could wait. He had two thousand points and a more efficient way to spend them.
"Optimize Cell Regeneration and Neural Reflexes."
[Optimizing Cell Regeneration and Neural Reflexes. Total cost: 500 System points.]
"Use one Low-Grade Optimization on Stamina."
[Low-Grade Optimization Use -1. Stamina has been upgraded to LV2.]
"Upgrade Strength to LV3."
[Upgrading Strength to LV3. Cost: 1,500 System points.]
Three commands. The upgrades processed simultaneously.
When they completed, the sensation was immediate, not dramatic, but unmistakable. A deeper current of something running through him. More settled, somehow. More definite. His eyes, dark by default, showed a faint red tint where the pupils met the iris.
He looked out at the city.
The sky was the kind of heavy, oil-slick grey that Manhattan got before a serious rain. The air had that particular wet quality that residents learned to read without thinking about it.
The first drops came down. Scattered. People on the sidewalk below looked up.
Then the rain came in properly, covering the city like something had been tipped over.
The pedestrians who had been looking up were immediately drenched.
Matthew stayed at the window. With the Neural Reflexes upgrade processed, looking at the rain was different now. The individual drops resolved into something he could follow individually. They fell in what looked like a slowed film. He had seen this effect in movies before, in specific circumstances.
"Bullet time?" he said to himself. Then he considered the comparison and shook his head.
Too strong a term. What he had was something closer to a budget version of bullet time. He could track things moving at the speed of rain. He could not track things moving at the speed of a sniper round. Anything supersonic was still beyond what his nervous system could meaningfully process. On that end of the scale, he was still in the same category as everyone else.
A long road ahead. More work to do.
"Back to benefiting the people, then."
He put the G-Virus sample away, went downstairs, and stepped out into the rain.
Cigarettes in one hand, bottle in the other. The neighborhood was about to get a little strange again.
He distributed umbrellas to anyone caught without one. Cigarettes to the homeless smokers he'd established a working relationship with over the past weeks. A drink for the ones who preferred that. And to a selection of the others, people who had no reliable income and spent their nights on the street, he handed out kitchen cleavers.
To be clear: the cleavers were for getting a job. Specifically, at a fish market. Fish markets required people who could handle a knife efficiently, and Matthew considered this a practical path toward self-sufficiency. He was not handing knives to street people and expecting them to rob anyone. He found that interpretation uncharitable.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Or, and this was Matthew's contribution to the philosophical tradition, send him to the fish market with a cleaver and let him earn an honest living.
He was quite satisfied with this logic.
A patrol officer named Walrus, whose uniform had a complicated relationship with the buttons holding it together and who was halfway through a donut when Matthew crossed his field of vision, did not share this satisfaction. He tracked Matthew until he disappeared around a corner, then pressed his shoulder radio.
"This is Walrus. I've got a situation on my street. Individual handing out kitchen cleavers to homeless people." A pause. "He's moving toward the next block. I'm following him."