Chapter 77: Are You Going to Agree or Not (Patreon)

Ivan spoke up then. "Can we talk now, Chief Irons?"

Irons kept his mouth shut.

That didn't bother Ivan in the least. He clapped his hands once.

Rebecca stepped up behind him and drew a file out of his backpack.

When she was done she zipped the pack closed and placed the file in his hand.

Ivan took it, gripped it by the top edge in his right hand, and held it up for Irons to see.

The chief kept his face stony, but his eyes had already been dragged to the contents of the page.

The further he read, the harder his fury pushed at him. He began silently, viciously insulting Umbrella's mothers, and every one of Wesker's ancestors going back eight generations.

Because what he was looking at was, unmistakably, documented evidence of the human experimentation carried out inside the Arklay Laboratory.

Where the subjects had come from, how the procedures were run, which project each belonged to — every last entry laid out in plain, orderly rows.

These were goddamn human beings! Umbrella drew up the plan, Wesker was the one who carried it out, and fine, so they couldn't even clean up their own mess — but now the whole weight of it lands on me!

Once he'd vented, a heavy, bone-deep weariness washed through Irons.

He badly wanted to snatch that report out of Ivan's hand and destroy it.

But judging by how sure of himself Ivan looked, he clearly had a great deal more where that came from.

Ivan set the evidence down on the desk, and the gesture only confirmed what Irons was already thinking.

"Chief Irons, you're a smart man."

"I think the two of us can talk straight with each other. No games. Don't you agree?"

This time Irons didn't choose silence. He gave a small nod.

"All right. But I talk to you alone. Everyone else, out."

Ivan smiled at that, and his answer was perfectly serious. "I'm sorry, Chief Irons. I can't make decisions on my companions' behalf. They have a right to know everything we say to each other."

Irons' mustache gave a twitch. "Oh? Is that so? Then I don't see any point in continuing this conversation."

"Very well, Chief Irons. In that case, we'll take the evidence we're holding and show it to every citizen in Raccoon City. Let them see for themselves how well you've been doing your job."

With that, Ivan made to stand and signal the others — leave a few behind to seal Irons inside his own office while the rest carried the evidence to everyone in the station, and after that to the rest of Raccoon City.

"Wait!" Irons stopped him mid-motion and gave Ivan a long, searching look.

This young man was far harder to handle than Chris and the others.

There was something in the way his mind worked that Chris and the rest simply didn't have.

Put simply, if the matter had been left to Chris and his people, they'd have taken one of two roads. Either they'd have looked for some way to make him understand everything they had lived through,

or they'd have gone back, written up a report, and hoped its contents would impress on him how serious the problem was.

After all, he was the chief of the Raccoon City Police Department. As his subordinates, Chris and the rest thought the way men inside an organization think — following workplace rules, working through proper channels, without ever noticing they were doing it.

Ivan was different. He held no reverence whatsoever for the authority and rank Irons possessed, and no particular attachment to "due process." He knew precisely how much the evidence in his hands weighed, and he knew the initiative had been his from the start.

That kind of man was the hardest to handle — and precisely the kind Irons least wanted sitting across his desk.

"Easy, son. Nothing rash. Let's talk this out properly."

He swept a glance across the line of people standing behind Ivan. "You want them to stay, is that it? Fine. They stay."

Ivan smiled at the chief of the Raccoon City Police Department, who a moment ago had been perfectly happy to toy with him, and settled back into his chair. "I knew it. Chief Irons is a smart man. It's such a relief, talking to you."

Irons had the nagging sense that this "smart man" business was a jab at him.

He had no energy left to spend on it.

His brows knotted tight. "What is it you people actually want?"

Ivan told him straight. "To expose Umbrella's crimes. And to give the dead the justice they're owed."

Irons locked onto him, tracking every movement, trying to see whether the young man truly meant it or was angling for something else.

But under a stare fit for a suspect in an interrogation room, Ivan stayed entirely at ease, without a flicker of nerves.

Getting nothing, Irons pulled his eyes away — warier of Ivan than ever.

After thinking it over, he turned the demand down flat. "Impossible. That would finish every one of us. You have no idea what Umbrella means to this city."

Ivan had known he wouldn't agree. Ripping the roof off had been the whole point.

Say you tell people a room is too dark and a window has to be cut into the wall — nobody will allow it.

But insist on tearing the roof off, and they'll come rushing in to negotiate, suddenly perfectly willing to discuss a window.

Even so, on the surface Ivan gave no ground at all. "Chief Irons, your fear of Umbrella is genuinely moving. So it doesn't worry you if we make this evidence public? There will always be places in this world Umbrella's arm doesn't reach. And when it gets there, that chair won't hold you any better."

That stripped away the last of Irons' pretense. His face turned ugly as he delivered his threat. "Drive is a fine thing in a young man. But push too hard, take one bad step, and you might trip and fall. That would be a shame. Wouldn't it?"

Ivan held his smile, looking straight at Irons, his voice brimming with "sincerity." "Thank you for the warning, Chief, sir. But I'm quite steady on my feet. I doubt tripping is in the cards for me."

After that, silence fell over both of them — one side privately cursing the sly little fox, the other silently sneering at the slippery old veteran.

Jill watched it play out and shook her head. Thank God Ivan was the one doing the talking. With her temper, she'd have been slamming her palms on Irons' desk long ago.

In the end it was Irons who broke the silence first.

This time he dropped the sniping and laid out terms.

"Every member of S.T.A.R.S. keeps their salary and benefits, and each of you receives the commendation you've earned."

"On top of that, the department absorbs all losses from this operation."

"But in exchange, you drop the Arklay Mountains. That's better for you and better for me."

Ivan considered it for a moment, then went on. "Those are decent terms, Chief Irons. But I think you're still underestimating what the Arklay Mountains mean for Raccoon City."

"I won't keep it from you, Chief, sir. Right now there's something up in the Arklay Mountains called the t-Virus, and it's tearing through every plant and animal around it. Leave it alone, and when it spreads into Raccoon City, that chair of yours still won't be safe."

Irons didn't answer the question. "Don't change the subject, son."

"Let's stick to business. I'll see that S.T.A.R.S.— no— that everyone, you included, is treated like the heroes you are. But I expect you to keep your hands off anything connected to the Arklay Mountains. So — do you accept those terms, or don't you?"