"Both of you," Bella said. "I've laid out my offer. Have you had enough time to think it over?"
Neither of the Vankos responded immediately. Ivan sat back with a toothpick between his teeth, feet propped on the table, eyes drifting over the Animus schematics with an expression caught somewhere between disdain and genuine calculation.
Across the table, Anton Vanko was studying the design blueprints for the Russian Brotherhood's Animus prototype, flipping through pages between bouts of coughing.
Both men were nuclear physicists, but their mechanical engineering instincts were sharp. Anton had been handpicked by Howard Stark as a deputy—that didn't happen by accident. Ivan, meanwhile, could reverse-engineer and reconstruct the Arc Reactor from a set of blueprints alone. That was real ability. Father and son both had what it took.
They weren't innovators in the Stark mold—original genius wasn't their strength. But given a diagram and a workshop, they could build a highly accurate reproduction and improve on it. That, they could absolutely do.
"We've never worked on anything like this before," Anton said at last, his voice measured and unhurried. "The mechanical engineering isn't the problem. But neither of us has any real grounding in neural biology or genetics." Ivan gave a slow nod of agreement from across the table.
They weren't wrong. Neurobiology in particular was a blind spot—and that was precisely why Ivan, in his original life, had ended up building nothing more than a single electric whip. He simply hadn't had the knowledge base, or the capital, to attempt anything more sophisticated. Stark's armor had stayed out of reach.
Bella wasn't concerned. She had Dr. Harlow from the Weyland side of the operation—a genuine specialist in human neural biology. Pulling him in to consult would be no problem.
"I can handle that side of things," she said simply. "What else do you need?"
Anton's cloudy eyes flicked toward her.
Ivan leaned forward slightly and asked: "Whether it's calibration or actual operation—every time this device runs, it draws enormous power. Can you guarantee a stable, sufficient supply?"
Bella looked at Galina. Of everyone in the room, she was the one who'd actually used an Animus. Her mother had been one of the original designers of the Russian prototype. She would know the power requirements.
Galina leaned in and murmured a figure. Bella blinked.
The draw was staggering. Theoretically, it could be concealed—but with the Brotherhood still limping along in its current state, if the Templars had any means of tracking anomalous power consumption, they'd have the location pinpointed from a single test run. One activation, and the enemy's forces could be surrounding the Brotherhood's branch before the session ended.
Anton smiled—slow, satisfied, like an old fox who'd been waiting for exactly this moment. "Controlled nuclear fusion can give your Animus all the power it needs. That's our field. Asking us to work on mechanical equipment..." He let the sentence hang. "That's a waste of our talent."
Bella understood him immediately. "I know exactly what you're getting at," she said, her tone dry but amused. "The Stark Industries Arc Reactor. Am I wrong?"
She played innocent as she continued: "I've seen it. Building-sized unit, roughly. High-efficiency, zero emissions. Elegant design..."
"The Stark family are thieves!" Anton's restraint collapsed. His frail body suddenly surged with strength. "They're frauds and thieves! They stole from me—that was mine, MINE! Every concept, every idea—I did those calculations, I did them!"
Bella let him run. She didn't react. When the storm finally passed and his breathing steadied, she said calmly: "How would you prove it's yours?"
"I have—" Anton caught himself. He closed his mouth.
Bella's patience thinned. "You have what? The Arc Reactor blueprints? Where? Tell me the location. I'll retrieve them."
Father and son went silent in unison.
That was their ace—their leverage. They weren't handing it over this easily—the fusion talk had just been an opening gambit, a way to establish value and extract whatever advantages they could. The real card stayed hidden.
Another time, Bella might not have pressed further. But the Arc Reactor was different. Getting those blueprints could give her what she needed to build her own powered armor. And if the Iron Man of 2099 could become Sorcerer Supreme, then science and magic weren't as incompatible as people assumed.
Bella let her voice soften—coaxing, just lightly provocative. "I don't know if you've figured this out yet, but let me be honest with you. We're assassins. We're killers. We're not scientists. A set of blueprints is useless to me without someone who understands them."
The Vankos exchanged a glance.
"Don't you want to see your own designs become reality?" she pressed. "You have the knowledge, the expertise, the engineering vision. We have resources, personnel, and funding. Why shouldn't we work together? Why shouldn't we build the thing? Or are you telling me you don't believe it's possible?"
The argument wasn't particularly subtle. But it landed exactly where it needed to—in the place Anton Vanko cared about most. The psionic undertone in Bella's voice deepened the pull, and his defenses began to soften.
Why hadn't he built it himself? He had the knowledge. He had the vision. But he also had a terminal illness, and however many years remained to him were dwindling. He had always intended to prove himself to the world. Why was he still waiting?
Anton Vanko sat with the question for a long time.
Then, slowly, he spoke.
"After my arrest, they confiscated everything—every notebook, every document. But before that, I asked a trusted friend to conceal the most important blueprints. He hid them in Archive Room Three of the Kremlin. If nothing has disturbed them, you should find a folder in the urban planning section—it starts with a listing for the Chelyabinsk Tank Workshop No. 5 facility floor plan. Inside that folder, there were fifteen separate documents."
Anton had been behind bars for over twenty years. Whether the folder was still there was anyone's guess. And after tonight's prison riot, Moscow would be locked down—intelligence services and police combing the city for anything suspicious.
Bella didn't linger. She sent Galina and the other Brotherhood operatives to escort the Vanko father and son out of Russia to Japan, while she slipped back into the city alone to retrieve what was hidden inside the Kremlin archive.
Most of the Kremlin complex was open to tourists. The leadership offices, however—along with the government and parliamentary buildings, and the archives housing both Soviet-era and modern Russian classified records—were not.
Bella's invisibility magic could fool the human eye, but it was no match for high-tech detection systems. Because of the large mutant population in this world, Russia's security apparatus had invested heavily in countermeasures. The sensor coverage was dense and the scanners were tuned specifically to detect superhuman ability.