The world's favorite way of passing the buck was something Duncan knew inside out. When the Raccoon City rescue operation began, he was already on the Umbrella Security Company campus, holding a conference call with the directors of the other eight Umbrella underground bases.
Umbrella, which dared to devise an apocalypse plan, certainly had the resources to back it up. Its eight underground bases were located beneath major cities around the world.
The Paris branch, the London branch, the Tokyo branch, the Siberia branch, the São Paulo branch in Brazil, the Nairobi branch in Africa, the Toronto branch, and the Mumbai branch.
Releasing the virus from all these branches at once would have allowed the T-virus to spread across the world in a short time. Fortunately, they had stopped it in time, and only a small amount of virus had leaked from the Tokyo branch.
"Mr. Adanom, I'll leave the materials to you. They must be delivered to headquarters within three days. Is that a problem?"
The meeting was drawing to a close. Duncan had finished warning these ambitious schemers hiding underground, but wasn't planning to settle accounts with them just yet.
Right now, he only wanted the materials needed to make the Airborne Serum. While the Raccoon City pharmaceutical plant could still operate normally, he needed to speed up production of the Airborne Serum and the T-virus serum.
Sensing the veiled threat in Duncan's words, a dark-skinned man with gleaming skin swallowed discreetly before answering, "All right. I'll arrange for a plane as soon as possible."
"Good. Any other questions?" Duncan folded his hands and smiled at everyone around the table. Their prolonged silence was answer enough. "All right, meeting adjourned!"
At his words, the people around the conference table warped and vanished like corrupted video footage.
The people who had seemed so lifelike in the conference room were actually holograms!
They said military technology was twenty years ahead of civilian technology, and Umbrella's technology was twenty years ahead of the military's. That was no exaggeration!
After Umbrella gained control of cloning and genetic editing technology, it had continually tried to create smarter humans by influencing fetal development.
It had achieved quite a bit, and over the more than twenty years that Umbrella had grown ever more powerful, those results had gradually been turned into research breakthroughs for the company.
After the meeting, Duncan left the conference room with James Squad close behind him, heading to the indoor training hall where the campus's refugees were being housed.
As he walked, Duncan took off the suit jacket he was wearing and changed back into his special combat uniform.
He had to make the act convincing. He was now Umbrella's CEO and owner, so in public he needed to cultivate the image of a down-to-earth good man leading the fight against the epidemic on the front lines. That was how he would win people's hearts—and whoever won their hearts would win the world!
When Duncan entered the indoor training hall, the volunteers had just finished handing out dinner, and everyone was enjoying a brief, peaceful meal break.
The arrival of Duncan and his group didn't attract much attention from the hungry crowd. People simply went on eating and chatting with those they knew—or didn't know.
A female publicity department employee in charge of outreach at the shelter spotted Duncan and hurried over to brief him on the situation.
The shelter's outreach work had gone well. After seeing the photos and documents, most people already believed their explanation. Only a small number of particularly suspicious people still had their doubts.
However, they were no longer as agitated as they had been at first. With the majority believing Umbrella, the holdouts would soon be unable to withstand the pressure and would come around.
That meant their outreach efforts would be a success.
Once everyone had finished eating, Duncan could announce the compensation plan, and that would probably resolve the crisis.
There would certainly be repercussions. The rough casualty figures were already in: nearly two thousand people had been infected by the virus and turned into zombies, and close to a thousand more had been injured in the chaos. Many patients had also died in hospitals after the medical staff fled.
All told, nearly five thousand people had been directly affected, while the entire city had been affected indirectly.
"Hey! Mr. Duncan!"
A familiar voice rang out from the crowd, calling Duncan's name.
Duncan turned toward the voice and saw a somewhat stout old man in a baseball cap waving his hand high in the air. That familiar face belonged to none other than Kendo, the owner of Kendo Gun Shop, whom he had met twice before!
He waved back.
At the sight of Duncan's response, Kendo jumped to his feet, overcome with excitement. Pushing through the people around him, he shouted, "Mr. Duncan! Mr. Duncan! You're just in time! My friends have a lot of questions. You're a shareholder in Umbrella, so you can definitely make the decisions. You have to hear them out! I've still got your work ID, too, Mr. Duncan!"
Kendo had a booming voice, loud enough to drown out most of the people in the training hall. It also drew the attention of many people to him as he hurried toward Duncan.
The hall fell quiet in an instant. Everyone strained to hear what Kendo was saying.
Duncan stood at the edge of the training hall, the corner of his mouth twitching. He watched Kendo wave and shout the same thing over and over, and wished he could tell him there was no need to go that far.
It was less than fifty meters. Even with the crowd in the way, the indoor area was divided into sections, with a wide aisle people could run down.
Instead, Kendo insisted on squeezing past everyone, taking three steps before stopping to look down at something. He might as well have told the crowd outright, "The person in charge of Umbrella is here! Everyone, go surround him!"
After hearing Kendo's thunderous announcement, every citizen in the hall knew the real person in charge had arrived.
He wasn't some temp who would dodge questions and feed them a load of nonsense. Excited, they surged toward Duncan, eager to get a clear answer from him.
It took Kendo nearly five minutes to reach Duncan. When he stopped, he was panting like someone who had just finished a marathon.
A crowd had gathered around Duncan, including plenty of burly people. They packed him in so tightly that even a breath would fill his lungs with the heady scent of masculinity.
"Everyone, take it easy! One at a time!"
Duncan tried to calm them down, but to no avail. In the end, he had the female publicity department employee bring over a microphone and held a question-and-answer session.
Once order had been restored, Duncan stood steadily on the platform, answering questions from people who raised their hands below as if he were at a press conference.
"The gentleman over there, please ask your question!"
"Are there really corporate spies? Why did nothing happen before, but now all of a sudden there's an incident?"
"Good question!" Duncan gave the bearded genius a thumbs-up. "We don't know when spies will make their move. We're just a publicly listed company, and our background checks aren't that strict. As long as someone is capable, we'll take them on, no matter where they come from. That gave people with bad intentions a chance to slip through the cracks. Next question... the lady over there!"
"What are we supposed to do? I mean... my boss is dead, so I must be out of a job now. I have two children to raise. I can't be left without an income."
Duncan put on a serious expression and nodded. "Please don't worry, ma'am. We've already come up with a solution. Although this disaster was caused by certain schemers with ulterior motives, Umbrella is willing to fulfill its corporate social responsibility. Once the situation is under control, we'll provide one thousand dollars in humanitarian aid to everyone affected. If a family member died in the incident, we'll provide one hundred thousand dollars in humanitarian aid. Those who have lost their jobs can also find basic employment at one of Umbrella's subsidiaries. This humanitarian support will cover every resident of Raccoon City."
"Can my children get the money, too?" the mother of two asked hopefully.
"Yes!"
With money leading the way, the citizens' opinion of Umbrella improved.
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