Shareholders' Meeting

"Stop that outsider!"

"Hack him to death!"

"Hyah!"

Duncan's ears rang with a cacophony of quacking, cursing voices. His retinas reflected the gleaming blades of machetes and great splashes of bright red blood.

The stolen pistol spat out its last few bullets. In his final moments, Duncan kept his eyes fixed on the bastards who had fallen, wailing. His gaze was filled with the satisfaction of having killed criminals.

It was as if he'd been roused from a deep sleep, or as if he'd truly crossed through hell and completed a cycle of reincarnation in the blink of an eye.

When Duncan's consciousness returned, the pitch-black world before him regained its color.

He opened his eyes to find himself in a hall. Both sides were made of glass, and beyond them he could just make out the tops of buildings. It seemed he was on an upper floor of some high-rise.

He shook his groggy head. His blurry vision gradually cleared, and his eyes refocused, letting him see his surroundings.

He seemed to be sitting at one end of an absurdly long black table. On either side sat a number of men and women of advanced age, dressed in overly polished suits. At the far end, a middle-aged white man was speaking animatedly.

"We're here today to discuss not only the future of this company, but its mission. We're here to discuss the end of the world."

What the hell?

Duncan had just come back from the dead, and his head was still buzzing. He hadn't even gotten a good look at the people around him before someone started talking about the end of the world. This was bizarre.

The middle-aged man continued speaking, unconcerned with whether Duncan had gathered his wits. The shareholders at the meeting didn't care about him either; he was as good as invisible to them.

Beep!

At the faint electronic chime, everyone at the long table looked toward Duncan—or, more precisely, toward the electronic screen behind him, which nearly covered the entire wall.

Still groggy, Duncan didn't want to seem out of place, so he turned around with the others.

He hadn't sorted out his thoughts yet. He wasn't sure if he'd been transported to another world or was trapped in some kind of fantasy, with his real body lying in a hospital... There were more than enough melodramatic TV plots like that!

A red line flashed across the big screen, followed by a red-and-white umbrella logo.

The moment he saw the umbrella, Duncan's head suddenly spun. Memories that didn't belong to him flooded into his mind, helping him understand what was going on.

He'd crossed into the world of Resident Evil and was now "playing" a twenty-one-year-old white man named Duncan Aremus.

The original Duncan Aremus had a father named Rex Arems, a fabulously wealthy American.

Rex Arems had died unexpectedly a few months earlier. Since he'd left no will, the family had made quite a spectacle of themselves dividing up his estate.

After a dizzying series of maneuvers, the original Duncan Aremus had ended up with the shares in the Umbrella Corporation that Rex Arems had owned.

Umbrella was certainly one of the world's leading megacorporations. But in America, unless a business was entirely family-owned, no company could be ruled by one person alone. That meant that no matter how closely a company guarded its secrets, anyone with the right connections could dig them up.

The cannibalism incidents Umbrella had tried so hard to suppress in recent years had long since become the talk of America's well-informed elite.

Cannibalism cases had recently become more frequent, and the drugs produced by Umbrella had been confirmed to have serious side effects. The multinational giant could no longer keep a lid on things. Its collapse was only a matter of time.

While ordinary stockholders were still scrambling to buy Umbrella shares, those in the know had already begun selling theirs.

Under these circumstances, bound by the rules of the rich man's game, Rex Arems's family had cleverly dumped all their Umbrella stock on Duncan Aremus, who knew nothing about the cutthroat business world.

Now, Duncan, a transmigrator from China, had inherited everything belonging to Duncan Aremus.

He didn't yet know that Umbrella was about to blow up, but his memories from his previous life told him exactly what kind of outfit it was!

Duncan's expression shifted again and again. Fortunately, he was seated at the very end of the table, facing the screen, so no one else could see his face.

Holy shit!

What the hell was this Umbrella Corporation?

He'd killed so many human scum, only to end up reincarnated onto another pirate ship!

The images on the big screen continued to flicker. Dr. Alexander Isaacs, Umbrella's largest shareholder, seated at the other end of the table, had finished discussing war and Plague and was now talking about global warming.

He was eloquent, expressive, and full of passion. If he went to the United Nations, he could probably steal the environmental activist girl's spot at the podium.

"Within eighty years, global warming will melt the polar ice caps and flood ninety percent of the world's habitable land..."

Dr. Isaacs continued his impassioned speech, but Duncan had no interest in listening. He had only one thought.

This guy was a lunatic. How was he supposed to get out of here?

Duncan also wondered what kind of fate had brought him here. He'd spent his whole life doing good deeds, only to end up in such a state after death, somehow becoming one of the villains!

Comparing the two sets of memories in his head, he confirmed that he was now in the world of the Resident Evil movies.

If he remembered correctly, before long this planet would become a paradise for the undead.

The T-virus could infect just about anything—land animals, sea creatures, and even plants!

Yikes...!

[Profanity]

Dr. Isaacs had just finished discussing the old topic of global warming. Now he was wrapping up the argument he'd been building. "In less than fifty years, blind population growth will outpace food production and bring famine. And war. This isn't a guess. It's a fact!"

With a fearmongering air, he leaned forward and surveyed the shareholders. "One way or another, the end of the world is coming. The question is, do we have to go down with it?"

A hoarse, elderly woman's voice rang through the silent meeting room. Everyone, including the stifled Duncan, looked toward the speaker.

"What do you mean?"

It was a gaunt woman sitting in a wheelchair.

Duncan didn't recognize the old woman. After all, who paid close attention to an unattractive old woman in a movie? He'd be lucky if he could even remember the general plot of all six Resident Evil films. Right now, all he could think about was how to jump off this pirate ship headed for the abyss.

In the quiet meeting room, Dr. Isaacs stared at the old woman in the wheelchair for a moment before revealing his intentions. "I plan for us to destroy the world ourselves, in our own way. A carefully orchestrated Apocalypse, one that cleanses the world's population while preserving its infrastructure and resources."

Hearing this deranged idea, Duncan wanted to slam the table and shout, "What kind of bullshit is this?" Destroying the world was one thing; that was fifty or sixty years away. Would this group of people, already halfway into their graves, even live long enough to see it? They were just bored out of their minds... And this was worse than that!

These idiots were actually planning to wipe out humanity in advance and rebuild civilization? Ha!

The shareholders on both sides of the table were also taken aback. They kept glancing at the familiar faces beside them, trying to find some sign of agreement.

Isaacs was definitely insane!

Many saw the same thought on the faces of those around them. But they were all powerful, influential capitalists who'd been hardened by ruthless business battles. Even faced with such an insane idea, they managed to stay calm.

Duncan had died once already, and he managed to keep his composure on the surface too. He thought Isaacs was a hopeless lunatic and began figuring out how to kill everyone here.

A lunatic wasn't frightening. What was frightening was a lunatic with a weapon capable of destroying all of humanity!

Isaacs had anticipated the shareholders' reaction. Still looking relaxed, he gently tapped the Bible on the table. "It worked once before. A chosen few weathered the storm—not aboard an Ark, but in secure underground shelters! When it's over, we'll emerge onto a cleansed Earth and shape it as we see fit."