Stryker was highly skilled in human genetics but had no powers of his own. He had no idea Daisy had already seen through the secret of this place. Convinced his plan was working, he led the group around the experimental base.
Calling it a tour was generous. In reality, they had been walking in circles the whole time, never covering an area much larger than a football field.
Yet in the agents' eyes, they had been moving nonstop and had already toured a third of the base. The facilities here seemed absurdly good. Compare them with the medical standards of any country and they would look like a model facility. Many of the agents who did not belong to S.H.I.E.L.D. were already ready to stop looking.
After another ten minutes, complaints kept coming. If Daisy had not held such a high position—and if agents did not change organizations so often that any of them might one day end up working under her—the collection of agents who had joined the Joint Anti-Abduction Task Force through one connection or another would have stopped long ago.
Normally, their professional instincts would have told them something was wrong. This place was too perfect, perfect to the point of looking fake. But with their brains under the influence of the illusion, most of them failed to notice the problem.
Daisy kept watching the group. A few people had still picked up on something.
The first was Crossbones, who had once been affected by the Mind Scepter. The hard-bitten man kept muttering under his breath, "Something's wrong. There's definitely a problem."
Spider-Woman, Ms. Drew, signaled Daisy with her eyes several times. Each time, Daisy gently shook her head.
Wolverine, who had joined the anti-abduction operation while posing as their Canadian guide, also sensed something was off. He could smell a faint trace of blood, completely at odds with the idyllic scene before him.
"I smell blood," he murmured to Daisy. Stryker glanced over at them but said nothing.
Daisy could only admire Wolverine's nose. His sense of smell was absurdly sharp. Even with his brain being manipulated and all five senses distorted, the tiny bit of instinct left to him was still enough to notice something wrong.
She stopped and turned to look at the agents. Only one other person seemed even slightly suspicious: the short CIA agent who could have played a hobbit, Everett Ross. And even he was only vaguely uneasy, not sure of anything. Everyone else looked perfectly calm. They saw nothing abnormal at all.
"Drew, come here. Put a jammer at my position, then place one at four o'clock, eight o'clock, and twelve o'clock to my left." Daisy, who had come prepared, handed Drew four metal devices.
"Here? But there's a hospital bed here." Ms. Drew knew something was wrong, but was there actually anything in front of her? Unlike Wanda or Lorna, she did not blindly obey Daisy. She thought hard, then ultimately followed the order. What looked like a hospital bed and patient was actually the wheelchair of Stryker's vegetative son, the illusionist, and she placed one jammer beside it.
"Colonel Johnson, do you realize how dangerous what you're doing is?"
"The Weapon X Program will continue forever. You alone can't stand against the tide." Stryker's voice was grim, as if he were delivering a final ultimatum.
Of course Daisy understood that. As long as humans existed, research on mutants would never stop. Even if mutants took power and drove ordinary humans into some forgotten corner, fear, weakness, envy, jealousy, hatred—whatever the emotion or motive—would keep people studying mutants. It was not something Daisy or Stryker could decide through personal will.
Had Professor X ever considered brainwashing the leaders of humanity to create living space for mutants? Daisy was sure the old bald man had thought about it. More than once.
But brainwashing or controlling a handful of human leaders would be useless. Modern society was built as a chain of institutions. Brainwash the President and there was still the Vice President. Brainwash the Vice President and there was still the Secretary of State, along with countless senior officials. If even one person noticed something wrong, cracks would appear in the whole process. Then what? Expand the control even further?
People were educated now. This was not a feudal society. No one was that stupid.
In the end, would they have to control every human being on Earth? Turn it into a Marvel version of the Eye of the Moon Plan?
Stryker's meaning was obvious. Get rid of him today and tomorrow the government would simply prop up another Stryker, then another, to continue the research. What Daisy was doing was meaningless. He was trying to negotiate.
"I'm telling you, what I'm doing matters! Drew, activate the jammers. Let the agents from every intelligence agency see what Colonel William Stryker's paradise really looks like!"
Daisy did not back down at all. She gestured for Ms. Drew to activate the jammers.
A low hum spread through the room. Daisy had asked Beast, Hank McCoy, to build the devices. He had assumed she wanted them for use against Professor X and had hemmed and hawed for ages. In the end, the old bald man himself had stepped in, and only then had Beast roughly understood their plan.
The devices specifically targeted the brain. The stronger someone's psychic power, the more damage they suffered.
Daisy would be affected too, but she was standing farther away. The illusionist, unable to move on his own and right beside the jammer, took the worst of it. His facial muscles twitched faintly in his vegetative state, while his brain could no longer maintain the illusion around them.
The hospital ward that had seemed like heaven began to split apart. Scarlet walls, blood-spattered floors, and countless mutants tortured into numbness by inhuman experiments appeared before the agents' eyes.
"Ugh—" The stench of blood made a female Homeland Security agent vomit on the spot. The remaining male agents did not look much better. They knew now that they had just been trapped in an illusion.
The moment the illusion broke, Stryker did not wait for anyone to question him. He spun around and ran. Wolverine, who had been watching his every move, immediately gave chase.
Daisy did not act rashly. She still had a role to play. Stryker could not escape anyway; Professor X and the other X-Men were waiting not far from Alkali Lake.
Daisy wanted to expose the crimes here and drag everything into the light. She used no superpowers. She simply waited, waiting for the jammers to completely tear apart the false world created by the illusionist so everyone could step out of the fantasy and see this blood-soaked experimental base for what it was.
The illusionist was Stryker's biological son. During the first outbreak of his mutant gene, he had killed his own mother, an event that completely warped Stryker's mind. To wipe out all mutants, Stryker had turned his own son into a weapon.
The illusionist had long since reached adulthood, but Stryker's torment had stripped him of the ability to think. Emaciated, he sat insensible in a wheelchair, capable only of passively obeying Stryker's orders.
Even after the illusion was broken, his brain continued faithfully carrying out its command. A bizarre scene unfolded before the agents: the illusion would begin to reappear, only for the jammers to crush it; then it would rise again, and be crushed again.
Human strength had its limits. After being suppressed again and again, the illusionist's mental condition rapidly deteriorated. At last his face turned waxy yellow, blood ran from his eyes and nose, and his head lolled to one side as he collapsed motionless in the wheelchair.