Chapter 79
Motivated by the upcoming "big purge" and the need to deal with Hydra, I decided to first wrap up my current obligations. This meant it was time to create the Potions of Ash and Dawn, and the reactors.
A hundred potions... That was a lot. Like the pills, this wasn't crafting. It was serial production. I needed an assembly line. Fortunately, my experience with the aforementioned pills and Proteus suggested this was entirely feasible.
I moved to the fourth floor, to my realm of chemistry and biology, and began to optimize production.
The "Moon Jellyfish" samples, like the lichen from Titan, were stored in a separate laboratory container in my inventory. They were transferred to the vivarium using robotic systems. I had to thank the System for the convenience and perfectly suspended animation. I configured the robots for automatic biomass collection and connected the vivarium not to one, but to an entire battery of industrial bioreactors. They would operate in a continuous cycle.
Then came a closed production line. From the bioreactor, the finished mass would automatically feed into an industrial ultrasonic homogenizer. Then it would pass into a cascade centrifuge for separation. Instead of manual checks, the purified broth would flow through a fully automated sample analysis system connected to a high-performance liquid chromatograph. For the final purity check of the enzymes, I would, of course, use an NMR spectrometer. Only it could provide a one hundred percent quality guarantee for each batch.
Naturally, this entire process, from vivarium to purification, was isolated in a hermetically sealed BSL-4 zone. Safety was above all else.
With the jellyfish catalyst scaled up, I was finished. I moved on to the marker, the lichen from Titan. I didn't devise anything elaborate here. I simply relied on a tested, almost old-school method. It took the form of a heavy agate mortar. High technology wasn't about complexity. It was about effectiveness. For this task, the mortar was effective.
Next, I configured the final synthesis line. Though "configuring" was too strong a word for it. I simply used the automated chemical synthesis station. It prepared the base on its own, maintained the perfect temperature, and automatically added the marker and catalyst with microliter precision at the specified intervals.
I activated the entire production chain and nodded with satisfaction. The robotic arm was already pouring the finished potion into the first light-proof ampoules, sealing them immediately.
I left the production line running and proceeded to the serial assembly of the palladium reactors. This time, there would be no garage junk. There would be only high-tech components. There would be only quality.
The ore, the acids, and artisanal electrolysis? That was dirty, inefficient, and barbaric. Instead, I obtained pure palladium by conducting a cascade of chemical reactions such as dissolutions and precipitations in a full-fledged industrial reactor.
Instead of smelting it in a furnace, I used a metal 3D printer to immediately produce fifteen palladium rods. I was stockpiling reserves and setting some aside for myself. This was an important detail. The print program immediately created an ideal, porous nanostructure. This was necessary for subsequent saturation with deuterium.
To enrich the palladium and obtain the purest Pd-107, I decided, after some consideration, to employ the compact linear particle accelerator on the fifth floor. It was overkill, of course. But I would return to it in the future, so the practice would not hurt. I configured it as an industrial mass separator, setting it up to separate palladium isotopes in a continuous stream and filter out the essential Pd-107.
The next stage was shielding. Figuratively speaking, I threw out the CDs and tape. There would be no handicraft and no manual pasting. I simply grew ideal multilayer graphene sheets using a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) installation. Then I placed all fifteen palladium rods in a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) chamber and waited as the machine applied graphene layer by layer at the atomic level. This replaced both manual application and compaction of a speaker. It was only science, creating an ideal, impermeable nanofilm.
The assembly stage went smoothly. I designed all the components in CAD. There were the titanium vacuum chambers, each about the size of an AA battery. The casings. The focusing coils. The high-capacity capacitors. And the p-n layers. For the casings, chambers, and coils, I used the five-axis CNC machine. For the semiconductors, I grew ideal p-n structures using the same MBE equipment. They were orders of magnitude more efficient than soldering together diodes from scrap.
Using assembly fixtures and manipulators from the robotics lab, I ensured the reactors were assembled with precision. I also ensured micro-welding and hermetic sealing of the highest grade.
Next, I connected the assembled cores to the equipment of the experimental thermonuclear reactor, the tokamak. I used its standard RF generators for precise gas ionization and stable plasma creation. Its vacuum systems maintained an ideal vacuum.
Finally, I connected all fifteen reactors to an automated analysis system and sensors from the physics laboratory. Saturation with deuterium, delivered through micro-valves, and power tuning were conducted simultaneously across the entire batch. It was all under full computer control.
When the cascade of system notifications appeared, I was momentarily dumbfounded.
[Energy source "Palladium Reactor" created. Complexity: Advanced. Received +400 OP!]
A compact betavoltaic generator that utilizes deuterium-catalyzed decay of the enriched Pd-107 isotope. It generates a stable energy field with plasma particle acceleration for ultra-high-power impulse energy bursts. It is a fundamental technology for next-generation energy systems.
...
Energy source "Palladium Reactor" created. Complexity: Advanced. Received +10 OP!
I had received a total of 1930 OP from a bush. More precisely, from fifteen reactors.
Honestly, I had thought the System would cut the reward. I had, after all, openly cheated, using laboratory equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars for maximum optimization. But, on the other hand, I had personally controlled every process from beginning to end. It had been done with my own hands and attention. These weren't like the pills where you just threw reagents into a reactor and left.
Thinking about the automation, I looked at the digital laboratory journal. The entire batch of a hundred potions was already ready. It had worked perfectly.
The morning of October 11th, a Sunday.
After I finished the last batch of fatigue pills, I exhaled with relief. The S.H.I.E.L.D. order had been successfully completed. Now, Dobby was a free elf.
Why had I even focused on this order instead of immediately seeing to my own security or dealing with Hydra? The answer was simple. I had done this precisely for Hydra.
If I wanted to solve the problem with these bastards, if not once and for all, then at least for the long haul, I simply had to obtain full support from Fury. I needed his people, his resources, and his influence. Acting alone against such a machine, I wouldn't be able to withstand it.
And now, while I had a short respite, because their next attempt to eliminate me would require someone much more serious than the last group of meta-mercenaries, and they still needed to find such a person, I had to act.
My thoughts were interrupted by a call to the laboratory phone. It was Peter. He had finally woken up.
"Are you all right?" His voice was alarmed. "I'm already on my way!"
"Everything is under control, Peter. Come over."
It was good. The meta-agent Fury had assigned should already be in position with eyes on the building. For now, it was safer than his place anyway. There was a chance that over the next three days, he would actually complete a full spiritual attunement.
Half an hour later, he burst into the break room where I was waiting.
"Who was it? Who broke into the lab? Did they steal anything valuable? Did you stop them in time?" he bombarded me with questions.
"Just another group of meta-mercenaries. Another agency sent them. Nothing new," I said with a shrug, trying to keep my voice calm. "I handled them and recovered everything they stole. Most importantly, I've completely wrapped up my S.H.I.E.L.D. assignment. Now I can finally focus on my own security."
"Your own... security?!" Peter's eyes widened as he looked me over again, taking in my changed appearance. "What do you need more strength for?!"
"You can never have too much strength, Peter. Especially not in this world," I exhaled tiredly. "You of all people should understand that. So I'm putting you here to meditate. I'll see you in three days."
"I'm afraid to imagine what'll happen in the next three days," he muttered.
I understood him perfectly.
"Me too," I answered, heading for the exit. "That's why I need to push things forward while our enemies are still recovering."
I left Peter in the break room and returned to the engineering lab. Along the way, I called Gwen and asked her to come over. She was surprised, but agreed.
While she was on her way, I began preparations. I started working on the design for her new, special suit.
The base was a neuro-synthetic substrate. In the biochemical laboratory, I started the process of creating a custom polymer. Its foundation was a synthetic protein that imitated the structure of spider silk, providing unrivaled strength and flexibility. I wove it together with conductive carbon nanotubes for perfect conductivity.
I controlled the synthesis process, using the knowledge of an engineer from the future to manually adjust the temperature and pressure in the reactor with precision down to a thousandth of a degree. The result was a one hundred percent ideal polymer. It was as elastic as rubber. It was as strong as Kevlar. And it conducted current better than copper.
For the next stage, I loaded this polymer, already in thread form, into those very same robotic assembly machines with weaving heads that had remained after the "Proteus" production. I manually programmed a 3D-weaving pattern. It was denser in the torso area for protection. It was mesh-like in the armpits and bends for ventilation. And it had embedded, hollow micro-channels for future systems.
The base suit was soon ready. It was black and matte. And I knew it would fit her perfectly. I had my perfect recall and the Master Watchmaker to thank for that.
Just as the manipulator carefully removed the finished product from the machine, the laboratory doors opened and Gwen entered.
"Holy shit..." was the first thing she said when I opened the laboratory door for her. She literally had to crane her neck to look me in the eyes. "This is... how?!"
"They're my strengthening methods," I shrugged, letting her inside. "But right now, we're talking about you. More precisely, your new suit."
"Hey, you didn't tell me to bring the old one! I'll have to go back!" Gwen exclaimed.
"You won't have to. There's no need to upgrade the previous one yet. Right now, I'm creating something completely new. It's for one highly specialized task. The next several days are going to be... eventful."
"Has something happened?" she asked, concerned. "And what is this task?"
"Something has happened." I nodded, turning serious. "They won't leave me alone, so it's time to strike first. As for the suit, it will turn you into a 'Ghost Spider.'" I pronounced this pretentious name with a slight smirk. "It will turn you into an absolutely invisible and elusive version of yourself. You'll have to sacrifice almost all protection and most of the technical modifications. I'm creating it for stealth operations, not direct attacks, for one specific mission. I'll tell you about it... later." I was still mulling over the options myself.
"That sounds... scary," Gwen admitted. "But the suit itself... Invisibility? That's too good to be true. Like some kind of invisibility cloak."
"In comparison, an invisibility cloak is defective technology." We had just reached the engineering laboratory, where a black, matte jumpsuit hung on a fixture. "And soon, you'll be convinced of that."
I gestured for her to sit down. Then I popped an NZT tablet, detached myself from the outside world, and entered what could be called a "flow state." Processing hundreds of parallel engineering tasks simultaneously was my current reality.
The goal was to create a suit with maximum stealth in the shortest possible time. I'd start with visual invisibility.
The principle was simple in theory and devilishly complex in execution. I needed to make light bend around the suit. For this to work, the suit had to do two things in real time. First, it had to understand what light was hitting it and at what angle. Second, it had to actively refract that light to bend around the body and exit on the other side.
I would have to create a 'sandwich' of two active layers on top of the base fabric.
I placed the already-woven base suit in a vacuum deposition chamber and began manually growing an ideal single-layer graphene lattice across its surface. My fingers carried out hundreds of micro-corrections per second, fine-tuning the methane supply and temperature. The graphene deposited onto the fabric as a single flawless hexagonal canvas. Now the entire suit was covered by a transparent, conductive 'nervous system.' Each cell of this lattice functioned simultaneously as both a micro-sensor capable of detecting photons and a micro-electrode capable of delivering voltage.
For the next step, I moved on to creating the 'active lens,' the refraction layer. In the chemical laboratory, I synthesized liquid-crystalline polymer nanoparticles. Essentially, these were microscopic crystals suspended in a transparent gel. With no current applied, they arranged themselves randomly and the gel remained transparent. When current flowed, they instantly aligned into an ordered lattice that altered the refractive index. It functioned like a prism.
I placed the suit, now bearing its graphene mesh, into a high-precision laminator. I applied a perfectly even half-millimeter layer of this gel. Not a single air bubble formed; nowhere did the particle density vary.
All that remained was to seal this gel beneath the thinnest layer of transparent protective elastomer. The result was a full-fledged 'sandwich': Fabric at the bottom, then the Graphene Mesh serving as the sensor, then the Refracting Gel acting as the lens, and finally the protective elastomer layer.
Now I needed the 'nervous system,' the graphene, to control the 'muscles,' the gel. A specialized FPGA chip handled this task. Within half an hour, I had written a simple, ultra-fast algorithm.
I turned off the main lighting, leaving the laboratory in near-darkness. I aimed a powerful flashlight at the suit hanging on a mannequin. With my enhanced vision, I watched the fabric vanish from the visible spectrum instantly.
On the computer screen, the algorithm's operation was displayed in real time. The moment I aimed the flashlight beam at the fabric, the graphene sensors registered it, transmitting data to the module on the suit's back: "White light, angle of incidence 30 degrees." The algorithm computed the response in a nanosecond and issued a command: "Supply 5.12 volts to the area of incident light."
The gel at that location reacted instantly. The nanoparticles aligned to refract the flashlight's beam, bending it around the shoulder to exit the other side at the same 30-degree angle.
As a result, the suit became invisible. It had literally transformed into one continuous, flexible, active lens that bent light around itself.
"The first stage is complete," I muttered, satisfied with the result.
"First?!" Gwen gasped. Until now, she had been watching the process in silent fascination.
"Visual invisibility is just the beginning," I shrugged. "Next come thermal imagers. And microphones. And there's one more surprise after that."
For thermal camouflage, I created a flexible thermoelectric thread. When current passed through it, the thread could heat up or cool down instantly. I wove it into the suit's lining, forming a dense mesh. Then came the algorithm refinement. The graphene "nervous system" would detect not just light but ambient temperature as well. The chip would command the thermo-mesh to adjust accordingly. The result was perfect, dynamic thermal camouflage.
Then came the acoustics. I had to eliminate every sound. Footsteps. Breathing. Heartbeat. To do this, I placed the suit back in the vacuum chamber and impregnated the inner lining with synthetic aerogel. It had a perfectly calibrated porous structure. Light as air, its nanopores formed a perfect trap for sound waves. From the inside, it would absorb ninety-nine percent of Gwen's bodily vibrations, including breathing and heartbeat. In the soles, I embedded a simple but effective active noise cancellation system. A microphone would pick up each footstep, and a speaker would emit the same sound in counter-phase.
The engineering stage was complete. Even unfinished, the technology could give that same dead Ghost a run for her money. May she rest in peace. This suit was every bit the equal of the Hood's artifact cloak. So why hadn't the System awarded me any OP for it?
Because the suit wasn't finished yet. I'd saved the final, conceptual stage for last. First, I needed to choose a concept.
I sorted through the options. "Invisibility"? Too narrow. It only affected vision. "Stealth"? Better, but it implied a need to hide. Too weak.
I needed something absolute. Something that would strike at the perception of reality itself. Something like... "Imperceptible."
Yes. It was ideal.
The concept meant the wearer fundamentally could not be perceived as an object of attention. They would be part of the background. A void. An informational zero.
Without wasting any time, I took the light suit in my hands, sat in a chair, and settled into the ritual. I focused on the image I'd created.
Gwen walked through Times Square, and thousands of eyes slid past her, unable to focus. They saw her, but they didn't perceive her.
The Ancient One looked at the astral plane and saw a hole in the shape of a human. Gwen was a blind spot for metaphysics.
Another spider's spider-sense screamed about danger coming from everywhere and nowhere, but it couldn't point at her. Because, for that sense, she was neither an "enemy" nor a "friend." She was a statistical error.
I gathered all my will and the power of this concept into one point and applied the metaphysical master's stamp to the suit. I felt the effect instantly. The suit in my hands seemed to "go out," to "fade." Now, even though it lay in my lap, it had become a black hole for perception!
[Light artifact armor "Ghost Suit" created. Complexity: Advanced. Received +600 OP!]
An artifact stealth suit that combines multi-spectral camouflage (visual, thermal, acoustic) with a conceptual enchantment, "Imperceptible." The wearer is struck from the awareness of surrounding beings and systems, rendered into a statistical anomaly on both the physical and metaphysical planes. They are not invisible. They are absent.
Excellent! The System had confirmed its compatibility. Which meant...
"Here, this is yours." I offered the 'nothing' to Gwen. She took it with a strange expression, reaching out and closing her fingers around something her eyes couldn't quite follow. Fortunately, she managed to hold onto it. After all, the suit had been created for her, and my creator's will had evidently granted her "permission" to perceive it. I had no particular trouble with it either, though it had stopped "pulling" at my attention.
"This is... just... Wow!" The girl finally responded, examining the shadow-black material in the lab's dimness. "Apparently, something really serious is being planned!"
"You can't even imagine how much. The suit is only the first step of the preparatory stage. Now I need to create something that can bring one bastard's mind under my complete mental control."
"This is... immoral!" Gwen protested instinctively. But she immediately looked slightly abashed. "But you most likely have every reason..."
"Yep," I chuckled. "This 'bastard' is the very one who's already sent mercenaries after me three times, including the recent attack on the laboratory. Oh, I didn't tell you about that... But let's not talk about sad things. For now, test the suit. Get used to it. And I'll get started on creating a 'Mental Worm.'"
Ideas were already crowding my thoughts, and I was afraid that here, too, I'd need a conceptual enchantment to pull it off.
----------------------------------------
"Chapters on Patreon progress: Currently at;
1. Harry Potter: Satan? Nah, Just My Family Crest = CHAPTER 193
2.Marvel: Cosmic Forger of Infinity = CHAPTER 123
3.Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World = CHAPTER 183
4.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = CHAPTER 50
support me on Patreon for instant access to the 60+ advance chapters: patreon.com/redofic"