Superb Acting

Ian faced the reporters and spoke with easy confidence.

"Second, Umbrella's pharmaceutical program officially launches today. The first batch of medicines includes targeted drugs for seven types of cancer, special-effect medicines for three rare diseases, and one long-acting insulin for diabetes. Every medicine will be sold at one percent of the market price.

"Targeted lung cancer medication, three hundred dollars a bottle. Diabetes insulin, five dollars a month."

The applause grew even louder.

Someone began to cry.

"Is this actually real?"

An old woman standing in the front row covered her mouth with both hands, tears slipping through her fingers. Her husband had died of lung cancer last year. They had spent three years of savings to buy one year's worth of medicine, and they still hadn't saved him. She knew what three hundred dollars meant. It meant that the same kind of family would no longer have to suffer the same tragedy.

"That's right. That's how it will be. I will keep my promise."

Ian waited for the applause to slowly die down. His gaze swept across the crowd, over the people holding signs, the people crying, the people laughing, the people holding children in their arms.

His expression remained calm, but his hand—his right hand hanging at his side—tightened slightly into a fist.

"I know you don't trust me. It isn't that you don't want to. It's that you don't dare to. Because this world has lied to you too many times. Politicians said they would cut taxes, and then raised them. Companies said they would lower prices, and then raised them. Aliens said they would protect you, and then enslaved you. I said I would let humanity evolve, step toward the stars, and become the most powerful species in the universe, and you think I'm talking like