Jordan took a moment to properly assess what Dr. Genus had done with the Mosquito Girl.
The blood-sac organ on her back—the biological fuel tank that had made her original form look like a parasite attached to a person—was gone. The insect limbs had been replaced entirely with human anatomy. What remained was a young woman of striking proportions who moved with the particular fluency of something that had been very thoughtfully redesigned, wearing a maid uniform with the quiet professionalism of someone who had taken her assignment seriously and drilled on it.
She had the compound eyes. The horns. Neither of these were small details.
But she'd also just brushed confetti off his collar without being asked, was standing in the correct escort position without being instructed, and radiated the specific calm of a professional who had processed all irrelevant variables and was focused entirely on her function.
Dr. Genus, Jordan thought, has not been idle.
"Where is the doctor himself?" he asked, directing the question at Clone 42, who was standing at attention with his glasses slightly fogged from recent exertion.
"The original body relocated to a newly built specialized laboratory a few weeks ago—bit further from the old complex. He was notified the moment you arrived, Boss. He's already moving."
At that moment, a base vehicle rounded the corner from a side passage—eight seats, military chassis, driven with the competent hurry of someone who'd been told to get there fast. The clones loaded in quickly and without ceremony.
The Armored Gorilla looked at the vehicle. The vehicle, mathematically, looked back.
There was a moment of genuine uncertainty on both sides.
"You're holding down the base," Clone 42 said, with the specific diplomatic tone of someone who wanted everyone to understand this was a strategic assignment.
The Armored Gorilla straightened. The banner was still in its hands. It nodded once with the dignity of a soldier assigned to guard the headquarters, which was either what it was or the most charitable possible framing.
Mosquito Girl folded her wings flat against her back, gathered her apron, and slid into the vehicle with the neat economy of someone who knew exactly how much space she occupied. She settled in beside Jordan without comment.
The vehicle accelerated.
The corridors of the original base slid past—and Jordan found himself doing the same thing he always did in a space he knew: running a quick comparison against memory. The ceiling was three meters higher. Side passages had been cut through walls that used to be solid rock. The lighting was warmer, the floor plating newer. He counted two branching corridors that hadn't existed during his last visit.
"Boss," Clone 42 said, pushing his glasses up, "when the new project parameters were finalized, the original body ran forward projections. The conclusion was that the experimental subjects from the first batch would eventually exceed—or surpass—the performance ceiling of the previous generation's ultimate specimen."
"Carnage Kabuto," Jordan said.
"Correct. At which point, the original facilities, equipment, and containment infrastructure become bottlenecks rather than assets." He gestured at a passing junction. "The decision was made to expand the base to ten times its original footprint. Estimated completion: next month."
Jordan nodded slowly. He'd seen Metal Knight reconstruct the entire Hero Association headquarters and road network in seven days from wreckage. By comparison, a tenfold underground expansion over several months was practically artisanal. But then, Metal Knight had dedicated robots for exactly this purpose. Dr. Genus was working with a clone workforce whose primary expertise was genetics, not civil engineering. The fact that this was happening at all said more about the doctor's systematic efficiency than it did about the pace.
Everyone had their specialty.
Ten minutes later, the vehicle stopped.
The passage opened.
Jordan stepped out and immediately stopped.
The ceiling arched thirty meters overhead. The floor was polished metal plate, smooth and wide. And in every direction—ahead, left, right—the space extended beyond immediate visibility, filled with the steady blue-white glow of work lights and the distant movement of hundreds of engineering drones tracing arcs against the stone above, boring, reinforcing, hollowing.
The sound was like standing inside a machine that had decided to become a city.
A figure approached from down the main path. Suit. Tie. White lab coat. That particular walk—unhurried, precise, carrying the faint air of someone accustomed to being the smartest person in the room and having long since made peace with it.
Dr. Genus extended his hand, and the handsome face that would have looked at home on a man forty years younger showed genuine pleasure at the visit.
"Boss. It's good to see you. My apologies for not being at the entrance—"
"Don't be." Jordan shook his hand. "You didn't know I was coming. Work takes priority."
Something in the doctor's posture relaxed, fractionally. "I'm glad it's not a problem."
The wicked edge in his smile—the habitual curl that had been there from their first meeting, the ghost of a man who had once considered himself evolution's appointed executor—had faded considerably. What replaced it was something more difficult to categorize. Refinement, maybe. The quality of someone who had been carrying a particular ideology for eighty years, set it down, and discovered that he could stand up straighter without it.
"Results first," Jordan said. "Show me what you've built."
Dr. Genus gestured. "Please follow me."
The main road through the new base was wide enough for three vehicles abreast, and paved. On either side, set back behind low walls with their own gated approaches, stood a row of villas.
Jordan looked at the villas.
Then at the dome overhead, where a projected blue sky moved through mid-morning light at a pace calibrated to match the surface hour.
Then at what appeared to be a park.
He looked at Dr. Genus.
"It began as emergency shelter infrastructure," the doctor said, reading the question without needing to hear it. "Town-scale. A hundred thousand occupants, fully self-sufficient. Residential here." He gestured ahead. "Commercial and medical zones further along. Training facilities, warehousing, production. The capacity is there. Occupancy is low at present—most units are empty. But the structure is complete."
Jordan walked beside him and thought about this.
He started with 'biological mass production,' he remembered. Exterminate old humanity, replace with new humanity, et cetera. "And now you're building underground cities."
"You mentioned establishing a foundation." Dr. Genus pushed his glasses up. "Disaster reconstruction. Emergency medical services. It seemed efficient to develop the related infrastructure simultaneously, using this space as the model facility. The construction contracts alone, once the base is complete and operational, would fund several research programs annually."
He paused, seemingly allowing Jordan to follow the logic chain.
Jordan followed it.
"The illegal trading channels you shut down last month created a funding gap," the doctor continued. "A funding gap means delayed research. I don't tolerate delayed research." He said this with the matter-of-fact clarity of a man stating a physical constant. "So the answer was to build a revenue stream that also advances the mission objectives. Efficiency is the point."
He pivoted to becoming a legitimate urban development contractor because it was the most logical response to a budget problem, Jordan thought. In the original timeline he pivoted to selling takoyaki and apparently also did extremely well. There was something deeply consistent about this.
"The foundation parameters stay the same," Jordan said. "Atonement first. Profitable later."
"Understood." No hesitation. "The research takes precedence over the revenue."
Jordan nodded. He was about to ask about the Human Superpower Factor Project when the air changed.
A sharp whistling screamed from somewhere above and behind them—the specific frequency of an object moving at significant speed through enclosed space, catching air pressure at exactly the wrong angle.
Jordan's head came up.
He was very familiar with that sound.
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