Chapter 85: HYDRA Inside Umbrella Too?
At the office door, Wesker paused and straightened his jacket. Making himself look properly formal, or as close to it as he was willing to get.
He pushed the heavy door open and walked in.
He had been in this office before, during the previous security chief's tenure. The British-style interior was exactly as he remembered it.
The only thing that had changed was who was sitting in the chair.
His gaze settled on the young man behind the desk. First time he had seen this particular individual in person.
"You must be Mr. Lawrence."
Matthew didn't bother with any pretense. He nodded.
Then he looked at Wesker with an expression that was somewhere between amused and genuinely curious.
"Mr. Albert Wesker. Should I call you bold, or should I call you overconfident?"
"You had the nerve to plant a spy on me barely after I took this post."
"And now, with a company warrant out for your arrest, you come to find someone whose toes you've stepped on. Are you actually serious?"
Matthew held his gaze with a mild smile.
Before the transmigration, he had been genuinely fond of Wesker as a villain. But appreciating a game character's villainy and sitting across from that same villain in reality were two entirely different experiences. Especially when the villain in question had made a specific effort to undermine him.
Wesker's response to all of this was to pull up a chair without being invited and sit down.
"Mr. Lawrence. On that point, I am entirely serious."
"Oh?" Matthew raised an eyebrow. "Then I'd like to hear why you came to me specifically."
"Given how close you are to the board, if you were looking to return to Umbrella, wouldn't Spencer be the obvious choice?" He gestured to Ada without looking at her. Ada poured Wesker a cup of tea.
Wesker accepted it. He was quiet for a moment.
"You and Spencer are different."
He continued before Matthew could respond. "I'm not, in fact, looking to return to Umbrella. What I'm looking for is a working partner."
"Spencer is too old. His thinking has gone stale with age. He is no longer capable of pointing humanity in a useful direction."
"His vision has been distorted by time and he is no longer a viable partner for anything worth doing."
"As for the rest of the current board, every director besides you belongs to Spencer's faction. Working with any of them means working under Spencer's oversight." He paused.
"So you came to me."
"Correct." Wesker nodded.
"There's a saying: no discord, no concord. I did plant someone near you, that's true. But..." His gaze moved to Ada. The implication needed no elaboration.
If not for placing that operative, you would not have the assistant currently standing in this room.
Ada registered the look and let a thin layer of contempt settle onto her expression.
"My former boss. I'd prefer you didn't look at me like that."
"I work here because Mr. Lawrence knows talent when he sees it, and because my own abilities are exceptional. Neither of those things has anything to do with you."
"The outcome was still positive from your perspective, whatever her feelings about it." Wesker spread his hands. "And for what it's worth, if Mr. Lawrence genuinely had no interest in my existence, he would not have agreed to see me at all. Neither of us would waste time on that."
This, Matthew thought, was why Wesker stood out even among the franchise's roster of antagonists. The thinking was sharper than most.
And he was right. Matthew was interested.
"You've read it correctly. I am interested in you." Matthew said it without any hesitation. "But if you're framing this as a partnership, you'll need to put something on the table. My interest in you alone isn't enough reason to risk the board finding out I'm sheltering a wanted man."
The corner of Wesker's mouth curved in a way that didn't quite constitute a smile.
"Naturally. If we're talking partnership, I come prepared to show sincerity."
He set the teacup down and stood.
"You may have heard that there are things brewing inside Umbrella recently, Mr. Lawrence."
Matthew nodded.
There had been clear movement below the surface for some time. Decisions being made without him. Meetings he had not been informed of.
"I'll come straight to it." Wesker's eyes held a particular weight. "The other directors are preparing to purge your operation and absorb your assets. Months at the near end. A year at the far end. They will find an occasion and a justification to remove you from this position. I'd recommend beginning your preparations now."
The certainty behind it was not the kind people manufactured for effect.
Matthew had already seen this coming. The specific timeline was new.
In his own assessment, the only reason he was still in his position was the resources he controlled. If he had been given research oversight instead of security, an accidental biohazard leak would probably have taken care of him in the first month or two. What protected him was something simpler: command over the company's armed assets.
Mishandle that transition and the company fractures. Senior figures start settling scores. The whole structure degrades. Spencer and the others understood this. Which was why they needed an occasion that wouldn't trigger the exact outcome they were trying to avoid. They were waiting for the clean move.
"Is there anything else of practical use?" Matthew continued.
He had not expected a man with an active Umbrella warrant out against him to have sharper intelligence than his own people.
Wesker smiled faintly. He reached into his pocket and produced a printed photograph.
He flicked it with one finger.
It traced an arc through the air and came to a precise stop in front of Matthew on the desk.
"The person in that photograph. I believe you saw him at the board meeting a few months ago."
Matthew picked it up.
A middle-aged man in military camouflage.
He had seen this person. Aside from the Ten Rings representative, this man had been the other unfamiliar face in the room. He had considered at the time whether the man was a military placement inside Umbrella.
He looked at the face.
"You know him?"
"Yes." Wesker nodded. "Vane Carter. Military rank: General."
"He also has a second identity."
"An inside asset placed within the military by an organization called HYDRA."
"The reason I know he exists is that he has a long-standing relationship with Spencer. He has in fact attempted to use his HYDRA membership to extend Spencer an invitation to join the organization. Spencer declined."
"Or more precisely, Spencer declined to join HYDRA. But he was willing to bring HYDRA into Umbrella's orbit, to provide the organization with a layer of cover and protection."
Matthew's pupils contracted sharply.
HYDRA.
Inside Umbrella.