Chapter 124: What Even Is Corporate Mutual Flattery... *Leans Back*
Time had moved at its usual pace.
More than a month had passed since the day they recovered the Megamycete.
And this morning, Eleanor, finally back from her extended business trip, had sent word.
Aldrich Killian's company had been acquired last night. Successfully. The man himself had agreed to work for Umbrella.
Matthew received the news with considerable satisfaction.
At least all that time in the field hadn't been wasted.
The founder of Extremis, finally secured.
That said, based on where the timeline currently stood, Killian almost certainly hadn't actually developed Extremis yet. Getting the technology properly realized would require Umbrella's own research teams to step in and contribute.
"Mr. Killian. I've heard a great deal about you." Matthew stepped toward Aldrich Killian, who had been waiting outside the entrance to the lab level, and extended his hand with a warm smile.
"Mr. Lawrence. The feeling is entirely mutual. Your name has preceded you as well." Killian smiled and returned the handshake.
The two of them settled naturally into the standard ritual of corporate mutual flattery.
Eleanor, walking just behind Matthew, watched this with a small involuntary twitch at the corner of her mouth.
She remembered exactly what Killian had looked like when he was still refusing.
The posture of someone who would rather be a big fish in a small pond, and the attitude that had come with it — Matthew Lawrence? Where did this upstart come from? — bore absolutely no resemblance to the version currently standing in front of her.
Matthew's behavior, for that matter, was equally interesting in retrospect.
In the beginning, when days had stretched on with Eleanor making no real progress on Killian, Matthew had quietly floated the idea of just sending Bullseye over to administer an injection. When he'd said this to Eleanor, his tone had carried none of the pleasantries currently on display, more the energy of someone who considered the man ungrateful and entirely deserving of a lesson in how things worked.
And yet here they both were.
Every trace of those earlier positions had vanished without evidence. What replaced them was something closer to: you are exactly the talent I've been looking for, and: I've spent half my life without finding someone worth working with, and it's a genuine shame we didn't meet sooner.
All of it delivered with total sincerity by both parties.
The three of them walked together through the interior of the lab level.
Killian looked around at the equipment and technology in the surrounding space, state-of-the-art in every visible direction, and either continued the flattery or had genuinely shifted into something he actually meant.
"It makes sense, I suppose. A global organization like Umbrella: even a facility like this is the kind of thing a company at my scale can only look at from a distance." He was watching the researchers at work with something that had caught in his expression. "The resources alone put it in a completely different category."
His own organization, AIM, wasn't actually small. But placed beside Umbrella, it looked constrained. Some of the equipment in this room Killian hadn't encountered outside of theoretical literature.
"Mr. Lawrence, what is that?" Killian pointed toward a glass container nearby.
Inside it, a brain sat in solution. The surface was still moving.
"Ah, that." Matthew didn't pause. "That's our company's biological computer. Code designation: Veronica. It's the primary research tool for our teams, handling experimental modeling, calculations, and analysis."
"The talent it brings to research work is genuinely singular. There isn't a second one like it anywhere in the organization."
"For any research problem you run into going forward, you can have it assist you."
Killian absorbed this with visible impact.
It was the first time he had actually seen a biological computer in person. That it was dedicated specifically to research made it stranger and more impressive at the same time.
So this was what a major organization looked like from the inside.
He had underestimated Umbrella.
"I've familiarized myself with your research." Matthew guided Killian into a senior researcher's lounge and settled into a seat.
"Extremis. A revolutionary gene-repair technology, designed for medical regeneration and human enhancement." He said this without preamble. "In practical terms: creating enhanced soldiers and treating severe disabilities."
"The mechanism works by inducing the brain to misidentify the entire body as a massive wound requiring continuous repair. Once that misidentification is established, the brain issues continuous correction commands according to the body's existing design. The effect is regeneration on demand, including limb regrowth."
Matthew laid this out in full, and beside him, Killian's eyelid had started doing something involuntary.
It wasn't the content that produced this reaction. It was the fact that someone from entirely outside his company, someone he was meeting for the first time today, had walked in and laid out AIM's core internal research framework without a moment's hesitation. Including aspects Killian had documented nowhere public.
What kind of intelligence capability did this man have?
In this moment, whatever casual dismissiveness Killian had brought into the room finished its quiet retreat. When he looked at Matthew now, there was something more careful in it.
"Since Mr. Lawrence already knows all of this." Killian leaned forward slightly. "What do you actually think of the project?"
Matthew's expression settled into something that was genuinely pleased. "Honestly, Mr. Killian? I think it has real potential. That's one of the reasons I wanted you here."
"Part of it is Extremis itself. The other part is what you can do. So you don't need to spend any time worrying that you'll come on board and find the project shelved." A brief pause. "The opposite, actually. You'll have full technical support."
He was mid-sentence when there were two knocks at the research room door, and it opened.
Thomas.
He caught Matthew's eye immediately. "Hello, Boss." Then turned to Killian. "And this must be Mr. Killian."
"Before you arrived, Boss had already let me know you'd be joining our team."
"This is Thomas Chips, one of our deputy heads of research," Matthew said with a small smile. "Assuming there are no issues, you'll be working within his team going forward."
"That said, the two of you are at the same level. Not a reporting relationship."
The words same level visibly cleared something in Killian's expression.
Selling his company and taking a position elsewhere wasn't something that troubled him philosophically. Starting from the bottom, however, was something else entirely.
Hearing he would come in as a senior member put things in considerably more acceptable territory.
He turned to Thomas. "Mr. Thomas. Colleagues from now on, then. I'll be counting on your support."
"Not at all." Thomas returned the handshake with a warm smile, his eyes narrowed slightly in the way they were when he was evaluating something. "Anyone Boss personally brings in, our team takes seriously."
What Thomas was actually thinking: he wanted to see whether this talent personally recommended by the Boss was the genuine article, or whether it was the kind of thing that only held up on paper.
Matthew watched the two of them arrive at something like an initial working arrangement and rose from his seat.
"Now that introductions are done, I'll leave you both to it."
"One thing before I go." He looked at Thomas. "You extracted three serums from Heisenberg's body. Take one out for Eleanor."
"Understood." Thomas nodded. "Miss Eleanor, if you'd follow me."
"..."
With that arranged, Matthew left the lab level at an unhurried pace and reached into his jacket for his phone.
The screen showed a message from Ada, sitting in the center of the display.
[Ada: Boss. Jane Foster, the one you asked me to track, has arrived in New Mexico. What's your next move?]
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