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Chapter 73
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MSU. It stunned me the first time I came here to pick up the list of entrance requirements. This university — it's enormous. Its main building is a skyscraper. Nearly forty thousand students, dozens of majors and programs. When they showed me the full catalogue and told me to choose, I was genuinely lost — and I looked every bit the part of my cover story: a country bumpkin from the Siberian backwoods. But what could I do? In the thirties, at the Munich Institute of Technology, there hadn't been anything close to this kind of variety.
So. MSU. It's colossal.
With time, of course, you get used to it. You stop noticing, stop paying attention. But that doesn't make it any less staggering. And still, every now and then, you catch yourself stopping mid-stride, lifting your gaze from the ground and its ordinariness, up — and that feeling washes over you again, that sensation, knocking the breath out of you with sheer scale.
Studying was hard. And I mean that without a trace of irony — it was genuinely hard for me. If steam had occasionally poured from my ears during exam prep, by first year it was pouring constantly.
Yes, in Vasya-Sensei's world I'd had physics and higher mathematics at university. But the level and depth of the material here? Not even in the same league. And it's beginning to dawn on me that this isn't some "decline of Russian education compared to the Soviet era" — it's a property of the world itself. This is Marvel. They had flying cars in 1941. That says it all.
So I studied. I hunched over books through the night, wrestling with complex formulas and theories, while the young people around me — the students, my classmates — cracked those same problems with an infuriating ease, and still found time to go out, join student life, have little romances, listen to music.
My pride, however, was avenged at the very first exam period, when those overachievers began crumbling, panicking, scurrying around pale and strung-out like shadows. I wasn't afraid of exams in the slightest. I simply didn't have the energy to be afraid. And besides — I came here for knowledge, not a diploma. So what was there to fear? Expulsion? Pfff. They'd expel me, I'd re-enroll. Not under my current identity, so under some other one. The army wasn't exactly looming over me — I already had a colonel's epaulettes on my shoulders.
So I still don't quite understand how it happened, but by the end of that first exam period I was on the honor roll. They even gave me an enhanced stipend. Though — what on earth did I need it for? A man in the top ten of the world's wealthiest? Stark Industries had, over the past years, expanded considerably in the directions Howard and I had mapped out back in sixty-nine. It had reached the point where the Soviets were buying computer equipment from Stark. And in no small quantities.
The Soviets. The Americans. Europe — to say nothing of China, where the bulk of the manufacturing capacity had been relocated a decade ago. Labor was cheaper there. Howard, Xavier, and I had genuinely managed to build a transnational corporation.
Though, to be fair, we never quite achieved monopoly status. In America, Hammer competed with us; in Europe, IEM; in Japan, their Toshiba. And the Soviets had their own developments, very serious ones. True, the concept of personal computers was underdeveloped in the USSR — and hadn't found much demand there. Their "computing centers," on the other hand, were something to marvel at.
What pleased me most of all: in seventy-six, the Internet officially emerged as a working concept, first connecting all the universities in the States, then the divisions of Stark Industries. And it continues to grow at an active pace, branching out and bringing in new users. Regrettably, for now, only outside the USSR. The Soviets won't let this network in — while simultaneously developing their own analogue at full speed. With some lag, naturally, but then again, the distances involved are something else entirely. They connected Sverdlovsk University in seventy-nine. Last year — Khabarovsk.
We're a couple of steps away from a Global Network. Just a matter of setting up the gateways between the two systems.
In short, studying was a Zen kind of hard. But — God — how interesting.
Coming out of my last exam, I walked up to Natasha, who was still attending classes with our group. Or rather, still enrolled in them — the sciences didn't come naturally to her, and she had no particular passion for them either. Then again, who was going to risk giving a KGB major anything less than a passing grade? And anyone who might risk it would have the relevant comrades promptly explain the Party's position.
I walked up to her, pressed a finger to my lips, and jumped with her to China. To one of Stark's factories, where Howard had assembled a Vita-Ray device for me. Well — why should I have to build it in secret, with my own hands, when Howard was available? After all, the original design was his, not mine. And he knew its secret without me.
Why China? Energy is cheaper there. And farther from SHIELD's eyes. Yes, the local intelligence services aren't exactly a gift either, but they can be told to go to hell — unlike Fury, with whom we share a relationship of considerable mutual complication.
And the device itself — without the serum, it's useless anyway. I make the serum in Kamar-Taj. I had brought exactly the number of doses needed. Exactly five: Howard, Maria, Natasha, Mariko, and… Barton. I owed him an apology for the car.
The procedures went smoothly. So as not to hear the agonized screams of our subjects — and not be distracted by them — Howard and I wore good headphones with good music. Very loud, good music. As a result, we looked like emotionless robots while our subjects, unable to break free or resist, went pale, turned green (Maria), lost consciousness (Mariko), attempted escape (Barton), dug their nails into their own palm until it bled and bit through their lip (Natasha).
We put Barton in the machine first, explaining that the device needed a test run, and he wasn't all that irreplaceable. It was precisely after those words that Clint attempted his escape. But… no one had ever managed to run from me.
He'd arrived here straight from his bed, from a room on a secret SHIELD base. I'd kidnapped him without a single word of explanation — no where, no why. The "not that irreplaceable" line was Howard's — he's quite the comedian.
Clint tumbled out of the machine noticeably taller, having shredded his voice, and considerably more built.
I immediately sent him back to his own bed. Again, without a word of explanation.
Then it was Maria's turn. Howard didn't make any jokes about his wife. With her, he was tender, careful, almost gentle — he held her hand until the lid of the "coffin" closed over her.
After the procedure, Maria shed about thirty years. She looked younger, prettier. She'd grown taller too.
Then came Mariko, whom I likewise sent home immediately after her procedure, explaining that this had all been my wedding gift to Logan. As for what exactly it entailed, she could ask her husband — he'd be able to explain it better.
Then… Howard himself climbed into the "coffin." And Maria held his hand and smiled at him, encouraging.
After the procedure, I sent the rejuvenated, more powerfully built Howard home to LA along with his wife.
Natasha…
"Viktor Ivanovich," she said, waiting until I returned. "I don't understand — I'm already a super-soldier. Why…?"
"There is a non-zero probability," I said, "that this will… restore what was taken from you."
Romanova's pupils dilated. And it was precisely at that moment that she bit through her lip and drove her nails into her palm.
"A probability?" she asked quietly. "Meaning you're not certain?"
"And there is a non-zero probability that you will die inside that coffin," I said, ignoring her question. "The choice is yours. The machine will be dismantled today. You have one minute to think."
"I don't need a minute." She shook her head. "I'm ready."
"Then undress and lie down," I said, shrugging, and turned to begin checking the condition of every instrument and component. By my preliminary calculations, Romanova's case would require ten times the output power of the emitter and a double dose of the serum. So while the machine had been built with precisely that operating mode in mind, an extra check wouldn't hurt.
When Romanova had undressed and lay down in the "coffin," I approached and secured her body with reinforced steel restraints — the kind that hadn't been necessary in the previous procedures, where ordinary straps had been sufficient.
I closed the lid, loaded the serum vials into the injectors, and went to the control panel.
And so it began: ten percent of rated capacity, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty… seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. And still the process wasn't initiating.
Inside the coffin, Romanova was howling in pain. But there was still no sudden spike in the readings.
*Well. It seems my calculations were off,* I thought, nodding to myself.
I tore the metal cover off the restricting housing on the control panel and hauled the lever further upward, no longer watching any of the instruments or the warnings flashing across the screens. Only one small display still mattered to me — the one showing the condition of Natasha's body. As for the machine itself — it was going to be destroyed regardless. If it burned out, so be it.
And Romanova — well, I'd promised her that today she would either get what she so desperately wanted, or she would die. So: lever higher, power up. It didn't matter that the equipment was already humming, heating up, filling the air with the smell of burning. More.
*Zen, this is a Comics World after all. Nothing here can just go smoothly. There must always be a supreme effort. There must always be a theatrical pause. There must always be sparking, crackling equipment. Everything must collapse and explode. There must always be a moment of despair. Everything must work at the very last second. There must always be—*
These were the thoughts cycling through my head as I dug the "coffin" out from under the collapsed ceiling — brought down when the overloaded power unit blew. They cycled as I tore the metal of the coffin apart with my claws. They cycled as I performed CPR on Romanova with chest compressions. They cycled as I ripped the power cable from the wrecked unit, split it apart, tied the severed end to a grounding bus, and pressed the resulting improvised defibrillator to Natasha's chest, over her heart.
The crack of a high-voltage discharge — and Romanova arched up off the slab, her eyes flying open, and finally, finally, she began to breathe.
***
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