Chapter 98: Domain Expansion
Doudou was an AI Matthew had specifically asked Tony Stark to develop. Not the commercial chatbot of the same name from another life. This version answered only to Matthew. Its intelligence ran at roughly two-thirds of JARVIS, not as sharp, but more than sufficient for instructions in the mid-difficulty range.
The so-called Trial Mode was, plainly stated, a self-harm mode specifically designed to stimulate G-Virus evolution. Matthew had run it so many times during his earlier development period that it no longer posed any real threat to him. Entering it these days felt like coming home.
What was harmless to him was not harmless to others.
Miranda had never experienced Trial Mode. She did not have the G-Virus's capacity to evolve through damage. The facility advantage, under these conditions, was absolute.
"Sealing the space."
"Seal complete. First trial: liquid nitrogen."
The announcement had not finished.
A hiss from the ceiling.
Industrial sprinklers opened and began pouring liquid nitrogen straight down. The cracks in the floor beneath them vented freezing air simultaneously. The temperature across the entire level dropped dozens of degrees in a single instant.
"This is... liquid nitrogen?!" Miranda, pinned face-down beneath Matthew, forced the words through clenched teeth.
"You madman!! Madman!!"
She screamed without restraint. Part of her body was already being forced into the liquid nitrogen pooling across the floor.
Matthew paid no attention to the screaming. His hands reformed, taking the shape of a massive spike-hammer nearly a foot in diameter, and he brought it down on Miranda's face. Again. Again. Again. Shattering her skull and waiting for it to start coming back and shattering it again.
Still talking. Must not be hurting enough yet. Once it actually hurts, the talking stops and only the screaming is left.
The extreme cold dragged Miranda's regeneration to nearly nothing. Mycelium would begin to form from her body and be frozen rigid by the liquid nitrogen before it could take shape, then shattered by the next strike.
But her vitality refused to yield entirely.
Every time the temperature shifted even fractionally upward, the fragments of mycelium that had survived the cold erupted back to life, throwing everything they had into repairing her body.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
"F—" CRACK.
"—k—" CRACK.
"—you." CRACK.
Miranda's eyes, each time the skull came back together enough for them to work, stayed locked on the man sitting on top of her. The fury in her chest had been compressed past the point where it had anywhere to go.
She had tried to pull free. The weight and force holding her down was like bedrock. There was no angle that moved him.
She stopped trying to escape.
Fine.
So he liked sitting in a territory built to his advantage?
Then she would give him a Domain Expansion of her own.
She tilted her head back and screamed.
Pus-yellow fire ignited inside her body. A wave of concentrated rot and decay rolled outward as vast quantities of mold tore free from inside her, erupting upward like an entire spring's worth of bamboo shoots breaking ground at once. A mold forest rose from her body, spreading across the floor, swallowing the liquid nitrogen under it.
This was her true form.
When she stopped forcing herself into a human shape, the mold came out without limit until she hit the ceiling of what her body could sustain. Every inch of mycelium in the forest was hers to direct as a weapon.
"Now it's my turn." She seized control of a massive mold vine and drove it straight at Matthew.
Matthew didn't move.
He stayed exactly where he was and continued driving the hammer down into the burning body beneath him.
Right arm, high damage. Left arm, also high damage.
CRACK.
The vine hit him like foam hitting concrete and broke into two sections.
"Sorry. I activated Contentment. Your turn has been skipped."
He paused.
"Now it's my turn again." Two more strikes.
The liquid nitrogen above them ran dry.
"First trial complete. Beginning second trial: high-temperature smelting."
The mechanical voice announced it without sentiment.
One by one, flamethrowers rose from the floor at meter intervals.
After the extreme cold came extreme heat.
The kind of heat that could dissolve structural steel filled the space in an instant. The mycelium wilted and scorched under it. Matthew, completely unbothered, wrapped his fists in the flames and continued applying what the fighting terminology would call fire-damage attacks to the body beneath him.
The trials kept changing after that.
Strong acid and alkali. Radiation. High-voltage electrical discharge. Concentrated toxins.
Each trial completed, Miranda's regeneration slowed another degree.
By the time the announcement sounded for the end of the Trial sequence, He dragged what remained of Miranda onto the elevator. She was the upper half of her body now, nothing below the waist.
Before leaving, he had Doudou spray a measure of blood across him to compensate for whatever wear the trials had introduced to his own system.
"How are you feeling?"
He held Miranda by the hair with one hand, carrying her into the elevator the way someone might carry a briefcase, and used the other to straighten his suit jacket without any particular urgency.
Miranda said nothing.
She had never imagined Matthew could reach this level of strength. She had never imagined he had a facility built for this purpose beneath the company. She had certainly never imagined that facility would one day be turned on her.
"No answer. I'll take that as comfortable."
Miranda did not respond.
Matthew looked at her and continued.
"Miranda. Who sent you to kill me? The Ten Rings? HYDRA? Or the company?"
The elevator hummed in the silence. Just the low vibration of the cab climbing.
"Not cooperating, then."
He raised the upper half of her to eye level, holding her by the hair so that her face was directly across from his. Her golden pupils stared back at him. Limbs gone. What expression remained was pure fury and a refusal to yield.
Matthew observed that despite her current state, which was essentially nothing below the ribcage, he felt absolutely nothing in the way of interest. He moved past this observation efficiently.
"That's fine. Not cooperating has its own process."
He smiled, and the temperature in his voice dropped. "For instance, I go to Eastern Europe, find the Megamycete, and destroy it completely. Your daughter's consciousness disappears from this world. Permanently."
For the first time, Miranda's expression shifted.
"You..." Her voice came out with something in it that hadn't been there before. "You despicable bastard."
She didn't know how he had found out about her weakness. The fact remained that he had, and that he had placed his hand directly on it.
"So. Are you going to talk?" The curl at the corner of Matthew's mouth carried nothing but a naked threat.
If the force of someone's gaze could end a life, Matthew would have been dead many times over in the last few seconds.
Miranda looked at his face, a face she wanted nothing more than to tear apart, and made her calculation.
For Eva, she could yield. For herself, there was nothing to ask for. She already knew what this man's answer would be to any request for her own survival. A man like this did not release dangerous enemies. She wasn't going to waste the plea.
"I can talk." Her voice came out with the residue of something that was close to a plea, but aimed past him. "But how do I know you'll spare my daughter after I do?"
Matthew looked at what remained of her without any change in expression.
"I'm sorry. You don't have a right to negotiate in here."
"Two choices. One: answer my questions. If I'm in a good mood, there's a chance I'll agree to something. Two: refuse, and I'll personally bring you along to watch the Megamycete get blown into pieces."