The room was sterile. Not in the sense of cleanliness, but in the sense of individuality. There was a bed, a nightstand, a closet, a desk, a chair, and a separate bathroom. Everything was gray, functional, and faceless. It was the perfect room for not feeling at home. I hadn't come here for luxury, but my mind still swept the walls, searching for anomalies. I found nothing. Still, I was sure that dozens of invisible eyes and ears, built into the walls, were tracking my every move. Fine. Let them watch. Right now, I was on their territory and playing by their rules.
A simple service phone lay on the nightstand. I picked it up and studied the short contact list: Natasha Romanoff, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, with a note next to his name that read, "Only in case of Omega-level threat." I set it back down, lay back on the bed, and closed my eyes.
Meditation was useful, especially when I needed to restore spiritual energy. I focused completely on my internal sensations, on the way tiny Reishi particles from the surrounding world flowed into my reserve, and time slipped by unnoticed. When my spiritual power had recovered to roughly eighty percent, I flinched. In my head, as sharp as a switch click, a conversation surfaced. It was a report from the dragonfly that had flown inside unseen and then self-destructed after transmitting its data.
It was Fury's office. The Director himself was studying something on a monitor, occasionally checking a tablet. The door opened, and Natasha entered.
"Well? How is he?" Fury asked shortly, without taking his eyes off the screen.
"He knows too much," Natasha said, shaking her head as she sat down opposite him. "Too much. It's abnormal."
"Everything about him is abnormal," Fury shot back. "The psychological profile we built on him can be thrown out. The real John Thompson was a typical scrawny student, an insecure teenager. This one," Fury said, tapping a finger on the desk, "is not."
"Foreign personality implantation? Advanced telepathic control?"
Or a spontaneous activation of a multifunctional X-gene that rewired his brain. I'll allow for the possibility, but we haven't run tests yet. For now, the only thing I'm sure of is that the original John Thompson, with all his weaknesses and understandable motives, is effectively dead. We're dealing with a black box.
"He knows Russian," Natasha said suddenly.
At that moment, lying on the bed hundreds of meters away, I mentally slapped myself. Idiot. The language barrier. Even though I'd held back from answering Natasha in Russian, some of my expressions weren't normal for the US, and I'd slipped up badly.
"Another Soviet sleeper?" Fury shook his head. "No. That's too complicated, too many unpredictable variables. It's not the style of our former opponents."
"I think so, too." Natasha nodded. "For all my skepticism, he's a Genius with a capital G. And our former employer doesn't let people like that live unless they belong to him."
"Exactly. Right now, he's working for us. And it's better if it stays that way. The benefit we get from Thompson is immeasurably higher than the potential risks. S.H.I.E.L.D. benefits from this kind of symbiosis."
"I'd still put him in the Fridge and take him apart piece by piece. Carefully," Natasha grumbled, mostly out of stubbornness.
"And then we'd get a repeat of the Banner story!" Fury raised his voice for the first time in the conversation. "We still don't know what this guy is capable of. His suit is just the tip of the iceberg. It's nowhere near enough to have taken down Kraven."
"Yeah, Banner turned out to be trouble," Natasha said with a crooked smirk. "It's a good thing Hyperion ended up on our side, or Ross would still be chasing him across the continent."
"Exactly. And Thompson will be much more complicated. He's smart, calculating, has spatial manipulation, and his knowledge is ahead of ours by God knows how much. I'm afraid even Hyperion wouldn't be able to hold him if he seriously decided to leave."
"Understood. I'll always be on guard."
"Always be on guard," Fury agreed. "And, Romanoff." His tone turned businesslike again. "Don't get in his pants. In his case, it might not work the way you're used to. And the consequences would be... unpredictable."
"Pfft. I didn't really want to, anyway. He's not my type."
"I know." A slight smirk slipped into Fury's voice. "After Banner, no one is your type. You're dismissed."
After Natasha left, my spy dragonfly kept watching. For the next two hours, Fury did what a director at his level should do: wage war on paperwork. He signed stacks of documents, held a video conference that he unfortunately conducted via a headset, answering mostly in monosyllables, and studied data on his tablet and monitor without pause. He was a typical workaholic boss, and it was hard not to respect that. When the dragonfly's lifespan expired, it flew back to me in a straight line through dozens of meters of concrete and steel, then dissolved, transmitting everything it had recorded.
The thought that I wasn't Natasha's type sent a brief stab of annoyance through me, which I crushed immediately. It was nonsense. Apparently, she had some complicated thing going with Banner here, and I had no desire to get tangled up in that mess. Their conversation left an unpleasant aftertaste, but nothing more. Overall, this should probably please me. The main thing was that they had decided to play with me, not against me. My psych profile didn't match, I knew Russian, and they suspected I was a mutant, but they were still supplying me with resources and giving me freedom of action. My simple plan of "do what needs to be done and let whatever happens happen" had worked. I had made the right bet by tying my near future to S.H.I.E.L.D.
The information from the dragonfly didn't arrive as a file or text report. It was an imprint, an instantaneous impression of audiovisual and Reiatsu data covering two hours. Thanks to Master Clockmaker, my brain unpacked, memorized, and absorbed it perfectly in seconds. It was primitive, of course. The dragonfly was just a flying static recorder with a camera. It couldn't read documents on Fury's desk or even peek at his tablet. But what it gave me was already valuable. Soon, the rest began arriving.
Over the next ten minutes, my consciousness was flooded with new imprints. One after another, short, fragmentary snapshots from across the base flowed in, and I finally began to grasp just how big it was. Here were humming server racks and hundreds of analysts hunched over monitors. Here was the sterile silence of a medical wing with the most advanced equipment. Here was the smell of sweat and gun oil in a huge training complex. There were legal departments, administration, several cafeterias, and armories. This was not just an underground complex. It was an anthill. It was an underground city carved out beneath an entire New York block. It was impressive.
At the same time, I sifted through dozens of overheard conversations. They were mostly routine, but two names kept surfacing with enviable frequency: Banner and Hyperion. I was now one hundred percent sure. S.H.I.E.L.D. had managed to acquire a local Superman. And now, apparently, they also had a Lex Luthor in me. The main thing was that I didn't go bald from all these fake genius plans.
But the most valuable intel came from the dragonfly that had flown into the training hall and attached itself to two operatives resting after sparring. Their conversation made me sit bolt upright on the bed.
"I still can't believe it. Stark. In Afghanistan. Seriously?" the first one asked, wiping sweat from his face. "I thought that playboy never left his Malibu mansion."
"Yeah, the analysts were surprised, too," the second one shrugged. "They say he snapped over something and decided to push the presentation. His Jericho wasn't supposed to be shown until next year."
"And the Director let him go? He's basically a walking strategic asset."
"You try stopping Tony Stark. The Pentagon will knock out all your teeth, break your bones for good measure, and then make you apologize."
That short exchange made me go cold. The cold had nothing to do with the room temperature. This was the cold of realization.
The clock was ticking. The story I knew better than almost anything else in Marvel had begun.
The agents' conversation drifted into a discussion about upcoming training, but the news about Stark stuck in my mind like a splinter. The key events of the canon were starting. I had been grinding levels this whole time for moments exactly like this. The problem was that it was still catastrophically insufficient.
And Hydra... nothing. There wasn't a single hint. The information imprints from the dragonflies painted a picture of an ideal, advanced, thoroughly professional intelligence service. There were no suspicious whispers in dark corners, no "Hail Hydra" in the bathrooms. And that perfect normality scared me the most. The tumor didn't announce itself. It perfectly mimicked healthy tissue. Finding it would be much harder than I had thought.
What were my options? A polygraph? Even the most high-tech one, even a hypothetical spiritual lie detector, would prove useless against the conditioning of these fanatics. They weren't lying when they said they served S.H.I.E.L.D. They sincerely believed it. Their S.H.I.E.L.D. just pursued slightly different goals.
And what if I dug deeper? What if I went into the soul itself? What if I found a scar from Hydra brainwashing in it? What if I identified an anomaly, a signature of their psychological conditioning, and then used it as a template to identify the rest? It sounded like science fiction. At my current level of Strange Science, I could barely distinguish one soul from another. To me, they were all just bright clusters of spiritual energy. A method like that would require weeks, maybe months, of narrow, focused study.
But on the other hand, what exactly was I rushing for? Alexander Pierce didn't know he was on the hook. Let him sit in his high seat and think he controlled the situation. Let him even get crumbs of my technology through his spies. That was an acceptable price to pay for time. While I was on a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, under their cover, and with increased personal power, a direct attack was unlikely. Most likely, they would send another mercenary, but, after Kraven, it would have to be someone truly serious. So, yes, I had some time.
Realizing that brought no relief. If anything, it only highlighted the mountain of tasks that lay ahead of me. I needed to substantially strengthen myself. I needed to master Strange Science to a level that allowed me to handle complex concepts. I needed to make a suit for Gwen. I needed to solve the Peter problem. I needed to devise countermeasures against telepathy and magic. I needed to push the spin cost to one thousand craft points so I could finally learn what leap the System had prepared at that threshold. And there was endless routine work tied to the company, the lab, and S.H.I.E.L.D.
I got out of bed, paced the room for a while, then sat in the chair and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
"Difficult," I exhaled into the empty room.
One damned flower. One step out of the garage's shadow, and here I was, neck-deep in spy games, politics, and planetary-scale problems. I should have kept things simpler. Simpler.
Okay, enough reflection. It was eight p.m. The fatigue pills were still working. Time to get to work. I called Natasha on the issued phone and asked her to escort me to the laboratory. While waiting for her in the corridor, I could call Gwen on this same phone. It was a risk. This phone was completely tapped. But it was also a gesture. A small demonstration of trust toward Fury. A way to show that I had nothing to hide in my personal conversations. It was a small thing, but working relationships are built on small things. And if S.H.I.E.L.D. was tapping it, that should guarantee that no one else was. At least, I hoped so.
My finger pressed the call button. My heart beat a little faster. I wondered how she was doing. I wondered if she was okay. After the second ring, Gwen's agitated voice came through.
"Hello? John?"
"Hi. No details," I said immediately, setting the tone of the conversation.
"Thank God. Where are you? I was at... our place. There's nothing there. Everything is destroyed." Panic and genuine relief filled her voice. A warm feeling spread through me. In this insane world, at least one person genuinely worried about me.
"Quiet. I'm fine. It's a long story. I'll tell you in person. Report on the mission."
"Everything... everything's going pretty well," she said, pulling herself together.
"And you? Any problems?" I meant her costumed appearances and any surveillance on her while she wore the mask.
"All clear," she reassured me. "What about Peter? He wasn't answering, either."
"He's fine, too. Don't worry. And please, don't disturb him yet. Continue the mission."
"Okay. I... I'm glad you're okay."
"Me too." I smiled without meaning to, then ended the call just as Natasha came around the corner.
"Handling personal matters on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bill?" Her voice came from behind me, steady with a hint of feigned indifference.
"Same to you." I greeted her again in Russian. I saw a muscle in her jaw tighten for a split second. She really didn't like it when I did that. It was amusing. "I hope internal rules don't prohibit that."
"They're not prohibited," she admitted. "But you didn't call me here to discuss a done deal, did you?"
"Right. Lead me to my temporary domain, to the lab."
She nodded, turned, and led me deeper into the complex. We entered a sector that was dramatically different from the residential one. The walls became steel again, and the air grew colder. We stopped before a massive hermetic door that looked like a spaceship airlock. Natasha touched her card to the scanner.
"There's a protocol ahead," she explained, her voice emotionless. "You'll need to strip naked. There's a sterile kit in the locker. Change, then go to the next section. There's a decontamination chamber there. Hang your clothes on the hook, stand for a minute under the sprayers. After that, the door to the labs will open."
"Whoa. Biosafety level three, BSL-3." I whistled. "What are you studying here? Mutant samples? A modified coronavirus? Alien chameleons? And why did you say labs, plural?"
"Go. You'll see for yourself," she said flatly, clearly unwilling to share.
"And you? Will you be keeping me company?"
Her seriousness instantly turned into a coquettish smirk.
"Want to see me naked?" she asked, and then the smirk disappeared just as quickly. "You'll have to manage without me."
Pfft. What was there to see? Well, only in my dreams, really. I started undressing. Natasha didn't linger and left the room. I took the clothing kit and moved to the next door. It opened with a hiss, and I stepped into a small room tiled in white.
The door behind me sealed shut, and jets immediately blasted from all sides. Chemical fog filled the space, stinging my eyes. The air smelled sharply of ozone, chlorine, and something sickly sweet, like what I hadn't seen before. Standing there completely naked and defenseless under that chemical shower, one simple thought came to me. It would be the perfect moment for murder. If I took a deeper breath of this crap, no Iron Blood would save me. Fortunately, the Hydra trash apparently didn't work in this wing, or they simply didn't dare to do something so obvious. After a minute, the sprayers shut off, and the third door opened with a hiss.
I quickly pulled on the decontaminated white suit, feeling like personnel in a secret facility from a movie, and I stepped forward, full of anticipation, into another sterile corridor.
But this one was different. It was short. It ended in three doors. There was one on the left, one on the right, and one straight ahead. Above each door was a short, glowing sign.
"Biochemical Laboratory."
"Mechanical Engineering Laboratory."
"Analytical Chemistry Laboratory."
This was for me? All of this was for me?
Something like a small scientific fireworks show went off inside me. The delight was almost childish. Now I understood the draconian security. There were three high-class labs, and hopefully fully equipped ones, at my disposal. My hands were already itching. I wanted to burst through all three doors and start creating immediately.
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