Chapter 137: The Vampire Extermination Plan!
Matthew's voice was flat and cold. No inflection. No movement in it at all.
The vampire leader, who had been alive for centuries, looked at the choice being presented to him and found that his face had completely given up pretending. He held his breath and waited.
"First question. This attack on Umbrella Corporation. Who planned it?"
"Deacon Frost! Every part of it, the entire operation, was his idea!" No hesitation whatsoever. He handed the man over in full.
Every man for himself. Vampires didn't operate on the basis of deep loyalty to one another, and certainly not on any principle of dying before betraying their own. Which was, incidentally, exactly why the leader had assumed the same tactics would work on the Nursery director.
Deacon Frost.
Matthew's brow pulled together.
He knew the name.
A major antagonist from the Blade franchise. Frost's project: summon La Magra, the Blood God, become its host, convert every human on Earth into a vampire, and rule what was left. Grand ambitions.
What he was doing making trouble for a security company on the side was less clear.
"Tell me why he targeted our company. And how he sold it to the rest of you." Matthew looked at the leader, whose limbs had fully regenerated, and waited.
"We'd already noticed our population was dropping. Fast." The leader stopped choosing his words carefully. "Investigation found it was happening from two directions: Blade's continued hunting was one part. The other was an unidentified organization capturing vampires in volume."
"To identify which force was going after us, we put trackers on a handful of the most marginal members of the clan."
"After some time, those trackers moved out of their designated zones. All the signals converged on Umbrella Corporation."
"When Frost found this out, he was furious. He called everyone together that same night at a tavern, gave the speech, and we organized the attack. The goal was to teach Umbrella a lesson. Make you think twice."
"I see." Matthew's tone was unchanged. "And after attacking the company, why did you also attack the Nursery?"
The leader's voice dropped. "We found out the welfare center falls under Umbrella's holdings."
"Revenge doesn't limit itself to clean targets. So we decided to include it."
"Mass casualties among children would also damage Umbrella's public standing. A reputational strike. That was Frost's term for it. Kill the body, crush the heart."
"Kill the body and crush the heart." Matthew gave a cold, brief sound. "How truly terrifying."
He turned.
"Now. Final question. Where is Deacon Frost?"
"And where are the rest of your people?"
"Tell me the truth and you walk away."
Hearing that walking away was still possible, the leader was talking before Matthew finished the sentence.
"Frost. Last confirmed location was the Nighthawk Club in Los Angeles. That's the last place I saw him personally."
"Beyond that: bases in New York, Florida, and Cambodia. A silver-smelting operation at a port in Madrid. A silver mine in Sumatra."
"Things have been dangerous lately, so he rotates between them constantly. I don't know which one he's in right now."
He took a breath and kept going, listing location names and coordinates quickly: scattered across America, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, and with some presence reaching India and Egypt.
Matthew let him finish, then nodded.
"Anything else?"
"No. Nothing." The leader shook his head several times.
"In that case. You can go." Matthew tilted his head toward the open ground.
The sudden clemency was unexpected enough to produce visible confusion.
The leader looked at Matthew carefully, then began to get up. "You're... really letting me go?"
Matthew raised a hand and patted his shoulder. Easy, unhurried. "Don't be foolish. I always keep my word."
"Go."
The leader didn't waste another second. He ran.
Vampire speed is exceptional. In a blink he had covered twenty meters. Thirty. Fifty.
Then:
A dull impact, and the sound of something under sudden enormous pressure.
A gravity field landed on him from directly above. The effect was approximately that of a full can being stamped flat.
The contents spread in all directions.
Matthew brushed aside the spray moving toward him and spoke to no one in particular.
"Just kidding. I never keep my word."
He took out his phone and called Eleanor. Brief summary: the situation here was fully resolved, send a cleanup team.
He was back in the office within the hour.
The entire company was working through the aftermath.
Final accounting: direct losses from the attack just under one million. When medical costs, compensation, and lost wages were added in, total losses would reach approximately ten million.
Matthew looked at the report on his desk, then at Eleanor standing across the room.
"Once everything settles, go on behalf of the company to visit the families of the employees who died tonight." He said it without particular emotion. "On my personal behalf as well."
"As for the injured: all medical costs covered by the company. Double wages through the recovery period. I want them to be able to rest without worrying about money."
Eleanor made a note. "Regarding the vampire capture operation. Should it be suspended for the time being?"
"No." Matthew got to his feet and turned to the window, dark with the weight of the night outside.
"The operation continues."
"Not just continues. We're launching a formal global extermination campaign."
"This ends when vampires are reduced to animals in a zoo. A curiosity. Something people go to observe through glass on a Sunday afternoon."
He turned back, something cold moving through his expression. "One more thing. For the next phase to run smoothly, we'll need to shape some public opinion first."
"Public opinion?"
"Get in touch with Tony, Osborn, and SHIELD. The major newspapers and networks as well." He paused. "Disclose the existence of vampires publicly. Frame what happened to us tonight with appropriate gravity. Then tell the world that vampires represent a significant and active threat to public safety."
"Once that narrative is established, our operations will proceed without resistance."
A cold smile.
If a group of laboratory specimens couldn't understand their own position in the world, the obvious solution was to stop the experiment and clear the lab.