"From now on, unless the President wants to see me, turn him down. Got it?" Duncan shot Susan a sidelong glance, then leisurely lifted his coffee and took a small sip.
Susan hurriedly nodded and made a note of it.
After spending the morning handling official business, Duncan's head felt ready to explode, which only strengthened his resolve to hire more people.
As soon as he finished work, he summoned the Red Queen. A little girl dressed entirely in red appeared on his office desk.
"Red Queen, post a recruitment notice on the official website for the positions we need to fill in each department. You'll screen the résumés. No racists or people with special affiliations. For ordinary positions, judge candidates by their abilities. The secretarial team must be young and pretty, under thirty. Once you find suitable candidates, send their files to me for review."
The Red Queen obediently replied, "Understood. I'm drafting the recruitment notice now."
Having dealt with the hiring matter in passing, Duncan took out his phone and called Alice, who was training at the Umbrella Security Company campus. He invited her to dinner at a restaurant.
Alice readily agreed. Most of her memories had returned by now, and she remembered that she really was an Umbrella employee. Naturally, she had no reason to refuse her boss's invitation.
Not long afterward, Duncan and Alice met at a quiet Western restaurant. There was no pretentious champagne or red wine on the table. Instead, several plates of steak were set out on the small table, one after another.
Duncan wolfed down his food, looking as if he had truly come only to eat. This left Alice, dressed up in a star-blue dress, looking rather out of place.
"Go ahead, eat up. You'll need your strength for training!" Seeing that Alice seemed a little ill at ease, Duncan warmly urged her on. "Don't mind me. I hate all those complicated dining rituals. Only people with nothing better to do care about that sort of thing."
Just then, a waiter came over and placed two cans of cola on the table.
"Pfft!"
Alice couldn't help laughing. All her earlier nervousness vanished, and she said, "You're a pretty interesting boss."
"Hmph!" Duncan made no comment. He opened his cola and gulped it down.
He would've felt especially awkward pretending to be some American gentleman. This was much better: relaxed and unconstrained. Besides, no one would look at him with disdain, because he now represented authority.
An ordinary person eating steak with his hands in an upscale restaurant would be considered a crude, poor bumpkin. A billionaire doing the same would be seen as unconventional and unconcerned with small formalities.
That was just how the world worked...
If you had money and status, people would read meaning into everything you did. Even a dish name you jotted down on a whim would be overanalyzed for hidden implications.
Alice relaxed too and kept eating her steak. She wasn't as uninhibited as Duncan, but she looked much more at ease.
Lunch ended in a relaxed atmosphere...
Only after they finished dessert did Duncan bring up the serious matter. "Alice, I'm going to tell you something. You mustn't get upset!"
Seeing Duncan suddenly turn serious, Alice sat up straight and nodded. "Okay..."
"You've probably noticed that your physical abilities are stronger than an ordinary person's..." Duncan gathered his thoughts and stared straight into Alice's eyes. "The truth is, you're a clone. Umbrella Corporation implanted you with false memories."
"..."
Alice was first confused, then utterly disbelieving. After that, her expression shifted to deep bewilderment and disbelief.
Before she could say anything, Duncan quickly explained everything else.
He told her that she was Alicia's perfect clone, created after Alicia's illness had been cured, and that most of her memories had been implanted by Umbrella Corporation.
She already knew her marriage was fake, and she no longer wore the company wedding ring on her left ring finger.
The truth hit Alice like a bolt from the blue, leaving her mind completely blank. She didn't even know how she had followed Duncan out of the restaurant.
By the time she came to her senses, she was in the morgue at Raccoon City Central Hospital, looking at Alicia's corpse.
"She was your original. Before she died, she said, 'In the future, your many memories will weave together into a complete life. You are you!'" Duncan patted Alice's bare shoulder where it showed above her dress. Then, not satisfied with that, he put an arm around her.
Smack!
Alice shoved Duncan away. Anger and confusion showed in her eyes. If she hadn't developed a little fondness for Duncan, she wouldn't have just pushed him away—she would have punched him.
"Is there... anything else you need to explain?"
"Yes!" Duncan raised both hands to show he meant no harm. He wasn't Steve, and he figured he wouldn't last more than a few punches from Alice, so he wasn't about to provoke her while she was upset. "Umbrella Corporation is Umbrella Corporation, and I'm me. I was the one who killed Isaac, too. You've probably heard about the company's recent changes. I'm not one of those power-hungry schemers!"
Alice's gaze softened a little, but she kept her eyes fixed on Duncan and asked, "You knew I was a... clone when you found me that day. Why are you telling me all this now?"
Duncan lowered his hands and replied, "Because I'm just like you!"
Just like her?
Alice looked at Alicia's aged face beside her, then at Duncan, her expression filled with disbelief.
"What are you thinking? I mean I'm a clone too, not a clone of the same person!" Duncan rolled his eyes, went over, and pushed Alicia's body back into the drawer.
Overwhelmed by the flood of information, Alice's mind couldn't process it all. She crouched down and held her head, murmuring in distress, "Why... did things turn out this way?"
Duncan kindly crouched beside her and gently rubbed her back to comfort her, but her complicated gaze made him feel a little uncomfortable.
"Don't look at me like that. I haven't done anything wrong!"
Alice had calmed down somewhat by now. There was still one thing she was curious about, so she asked, "How did you find out who you were, and break free of Isaac's control?"
Here it comes!
Duncan had been waiting for Alice to ask him that. He was delighted, but put on a thoughtful expression. After a long pause, he said, "I think it was fate. It happened during the first shareholders' meeting I ever attended. Isaac announced his insane plan to destroy all of humanity... Right after the meeting ended, my head felt like it was about to explode. My mind was filled with destruction, rebirth, the world.
"I don't know whether the world chose me, but I awakened a special ability that let me open a portal between worlds. Then I met Steve and Natasha.
"You've met them. They're actually from another world! I invited them to help stop Isaac's plan to destroy the world and take back control of Umbrella, so it could become a company that advanced humanity instead of destroying it!"
After finishing, he looked Alice in the eyes. Alice looked back at him as if he were joking.
They stared at each other in silence. Neither spoke first.
No normal person would believe that story, but Duncan wasn't normal. So the negatives canceled out, making it true!
Before you continue