"Then have the Blackwatch soldiers already on site sketch it. They're all there anyway, so that solves the problem."
After hearing Baymax's report, Killian replied immediately. But right after saying that, he suddenly remembered something and quickly added, "Oh, right. One at a time. Anyone going in has to surrender their weapons and wear protective gear. Be careful. There may be parasite-like organisms inside."
Killian had just remembered that there really were creatures down there similar to parasites. Any carbon-based lifeform that entered could be controlled and turned into a guardian of that underground awakening city. Aside from the chosen awakeners, anyone else who entered would be attacked on sight.
He did not want his elite squad suffering any unnecessary losses.
"Understood."
Baymax responded at once and relayed the order to Adam, who had already arrived on site with the transport robots.
Adam did not disappoint him. After receiving the order, he took protective gear from his combat pack and put it on one of the men beside him. Then that man pulled out paper and pen and began sketching the details of the structure bit by bit.
It had to be said that Killian had invested heavily in the clones. He had stuffed every kind of useful and seemingly useless knowledge into their heads.
The results proved one thing. The amount of information the human brain could store was enormous, far beyond what most people ever used.
A normal person only used a tiny fraction of their brain capacity in a lifetime, so Killian had simply jammed all kinds of things into theirs.
And now, at a critical moment like this, the effect was obvious.
With the memories of a top-tier artist loaded into them, the clones reproduced the site with near-perfect accuracy. Page after page of draft paper piled up into a small mountain.
They even had to stop midway for another supply run. The original stack of blank paper was nowhere near enough.
A robot had to haul over an entire box before they barely had enough to continue.
By the time all that was done, Daniel, who had been knocked unconscious earlier, had already woken up inside the intelligent fighter.
"Who... who are you?"
The moment he woke, Daniel looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. Remembering what had happened before he blacked out, he immediately turned to Killian, who was standing not far away, watching the 3D projected map.
Instinctively, Daniel knew his situation was bad. But as a senior HYDRA figure who had lived for over a century, he recovered quickly, all while subtly observing the environment and searching for any possible opening.
"Daniel Whitehall. One of HYDRA's leaders. A top-tier scientist with cutting-edge knowledge. A specialist in monolith research. And a man obsessively devoted to the study of enhanced beings."
Hearing Daniel wake up behind him, Killian calmly rotated the pilot's chair around and looked at the man lying on the floor.
It had to be said that while HYDRA had no shortage of lunatics, most of them were also elite talents.
Too bad Daniel had other uses. Otherwise, Killian really would have wanted to recruit him.
"You're... AIM's CEO, Aldrich Killian!!"
After staring at him for a while, Daniel finally recognized the familiar face in front of him and blurted it out in shock.
"Bingo. Congratulations, you got it right. Unfortunately, there's no prize for this round."
Killian answered with an amused smile.
To him, it was hardly surprising Daniel recognized him. The man was one of HYDRA's major regional leaders. Even if he had recited every detail of Killian's background, Killian would not have found that odd.
"What is this supposed to mean?!"
"I don't remember us having any conflict!"
"And I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D.! Do you even understand what you're doing?"
"You're provoking the anger of an organization you can't possibly afford to offend."
Daniel frowned and kept talking. He knew very well that his words were probably useless, but he still wanted a chance, or at the very least to know why he was going to die.
"S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
"Pfft... hah! Hahahaha!!"
"Sorry. Usually my standards for jokes are pretty high, but that one really was funny."
"I wonder if that bald, one-eyed guy would die of a heart attack on the spot if he ever found out his eagle's nest had turned into a snake pit, and the snakes were still swaggering around under his flag."
Hearing Daniel invoke a righteous organization with such complete seriousness made Killian burst out laughing.
Marvel really did have an absurd sense of irony sometimes.
A world-famous intelligence agency, supposedly the ultimate spy network, had been parasitized by HYDRA to the point that most of it had already been assimilated.
That was a joke of the highest order.
"The bald one-eyed guy?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm sorry, but I have no idea what HYDRA is. That has nothing to do with me."
"I'm the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s San Juan regional base. Level 6 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I suggest you release me immediately."
The first part of Killian's words made sense to Daniel, but the "bald one-eyed guy" bit genuinely threw him for a second. Then he quickly figured it out. Killian meant Nick Fury.
And once he realized that, Daniel's heart sank even further.
Even so, he kept playing dumb.
"Fine. If you insist."
"It doesn't matter. Whether you're S.H.I.E.L.D. or HYDRA makes no difference to me. All I want is you."
Watching Daniel continue acting stupid, Killian lost interest in humoring him, especially after he saw Adam being brought back up from the villa below by the robots.
With a casual wave of his hand, one of the combat robots behind him stepped forward, grabbed Daniel by the head in its steel grip, and tossed him into the prepared holding cage nearby.
"Let's head back."
Seeing that everything on site was nearly wrapped up, Killian calmly gave the order.
At once, the king-class intelligent fighter cut through the air and vanished.
The Phantom Unit soldiers left behind swept through the villa one last time, making sure nothing remained that could expose them, then boarded the stealth transport helicopter and returned to base.
...
"Boss!"
Back at the biological research facility on Miami Island, Samuel came forward to greet him. The moment he saw another person being dragged into the lab behind Killian, his expression turned even more respectful.
He knew his boss's habits well enough by now. If Killian came personally, it almost always meant something special.
And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it meant a surprise.
As for bad news, Samuel had not experienced any yet.
"Mm. That man behind me is the best research material I could have brought you."
"The organs inside him were transplanted from an enhanced individual. That person had super-regeneration and could also absorb the life force of others to restore themselves."
"And he's used that to survive for more than a decade. He even went from the brink of death and old age back to a much younger state. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Once they reached the biological research area on the fortieth floor, Killian had Daniel's unconscious body thrown onto an operating bed. After his limbs were locked down with metal restraints, Killian turned to Samuel and explained.
"!!!!"
"Boss, having you around really is the greatest blessing of my life."
"These things are practically arriving in batches now."
"Did you raid some kind of superhuman nest or something?"
After hearing the explanation, Samuel stood there in stunned silence for quite a while before finally snapping out of it and speaking with total admiration.
In less than a year since joining AIM, Killian had already brought back one extraordinary ancient organism, then a reinforced female soldier with biological enhancements beyond normal human limits.
Then came two genuine superhumans, one woman with near-Superman physical ability and one man with the power to dominate sentient life.
Just when Samuel had finally started digesting all that, Killian brought him an alien whose DNA could disguise itself as anything it had seen.
And now, after he had only just begun properly studying that one, here came what looked like a borderline immortal enhanced subject.
At this point, even Samuel, a man fully devoted to science, was beginning to wonder if Killian had some kind of protagonist halo over his head, or if he was secretly the son of some ancient god abandoned on Earth.
Maybe the goddess of luck.
Because otherwise, none of this made any sense.
For decades before Killian appeared, the whole world had barely seen even a handful of suspicious enhanced incidents.
But after his boss showed up, in less than a year Samuel had already seen enhanced super-soldiers, man-made monsters, superhumans, psychics, and aliens.
At this point, he could not even imagine what kind of surprise Killian would bring him next.
Maybe a prehistoric crocodile.
"Hahaha, it just happened to work out that way."
"You could say they had bad luck and I happened to run into them."
"How's your progress on the alien?"
Killian laughed at Samuel's words.
If he remembered right, the S.H.I.E.L.D. files on superhumans alone ran into thousands of pages, with roughly a hundred entries per page. Conservatively speaking, there were hundreds of thousands of enhanced individuals in the world.
With numbers like that, Killian felt his own luck did not seem all that unbelievable.
Even on his old Earth, which had no overt superpower system, there had still been all kinds of unusual people. People who could attract metal like mini Magnetos, people who could withstand extreme cold, people struck by lightning who ended up completely unharmed by normal household voltage.
There were even people who could eat and digest almost anything, metal, glass, toxic material.
So moving that probability into the Marvel universe made it seem perfectly normal.
The only real difference here was that people were much better at hiding what they were.
Outside the Inhumans, there were also enhanced humans who were pure-blooded humans but had awakened powers on their own.
Given humanity's sheer population size, a small fraction undergoing genetic variation really was not strange at all.
"Boss, research is progressing, but we've found that the alien's DNA contains a complete and highly complex genetic structure different from anything in humans."
"It'll still take some time to fully crack it."
"But don't worry, Boss. I've already started seeing a path. It won't be long before you see a truly new clone unit."
Samuel answered immediately.
"Mm. By the way, Boss, this is the Ts-1 formula I developed based on the T-2 Tyrant test subject."
"It can comprehensively enhance the user's mental capacity. Based on current experiments, there's a certain probability it can grant the injector psychic abilities."
"And more importantly, it stacks. So far, the experiments show that three injections produce the best result."
Before Killian could say anything further, Samuel had already handed him a prepared item from a cryogenic container and spoke respectfully.
"Ts-1?"
"A Tyrant-series mental enhancement serum?"
"Interesting."
After hearing the explanation, Killian took the pale-blue serum vial from the low-temperature box and examined it.
"You used it yet?"
After watching it for a few moments, he closed the case and looked at Samuel.
"Not yet. This is the first official Ts enhancement serum we developed after repeated successful testing."
"I wanted to present it to you first, Boss."
Feeling Killian's gaze on him, Samuel lowered his head even farther and answered respectfully.
As more and more new people entered the company, he had begun noticing that the number of times Killian personally came to his lab had started decreasing.
That was not a good sign.
The bigger the company became, the more competition there would be. And when the time came for rewards or recognition, the people closest to the boss would always have the advantage.
So before Killian slowly grew more distant as his status kept rising, Samuel wanted to strengthen his own place in the boss's mind.
At the very least, he needed to plant his own flag there.
That was his goal.
Especially because just recently, he had seen another scientific genius enter the company's headquarters. The other one had not shown much yet, but the fact that Killian had personally invited him was already enough to make Samuel feel threatened.
Because his boss's eye for talent had never been wrong.
And that meant Samuel needed to prove his value more urgently than ever.
"You did well."
"But there's too much here. I only need three. The rest are yours."
"Think of it as a reward for all your hard work."
Looking at the six pale-blue serum vials arranged neatly inside, Killian smiled in satisfaction and spoke with clear approval.
"Thank you for the reward, Boss."
Samuel immediately broke into a delighted smile.
Then he picked up one of the vials, attached the injector, and stabbed it straight into his own arm.
As the liquid slowly entered his bloodstream, the entire Ts serum flowed into his body.
Not long after, the veins at Samuel's temples began to bulge, and the enhancement process started.
Unlike the T-virus, however, Ts enhancement was somewhat gentler. At least from Killian's perspective, Samuel did not seem to be in obvious agony. His veins swelled, and his pupils began glowing with an eerie blue light.
Several minutes later, Samuel finally recovered, his face somewhat pale.
But something about him had changed.
His eyes now held a sharper edge, revealing a stronger hunger to understand and dissect the world.
After the enhancement, Samuel found that he now possessed more acute perception and sharper thinking, to the point that he could consciously regulate the speed of his own thoughts.
He had not gained telekinetic power like the T-2 test subject, but for him, enhanced intelligence and mental processing were already the most important prize.
And before Killian even had to say anything, Samuel took the remaining two Ts vials and injected them into himself as well.
(End of Chapter)
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