Several days had passed since that night, but the grief hanging over New York hadn't faded in the slightest. Just as Rex Viper had expected, the crematoriums had been running day and night, their smokestacks belching thick black clouds into the sky. The whole city felt like it was mourning under a permanent shadow, and even the air itself carried the weight of death.
Rex, meanwhile, was busier than ever.
For days straight, Emma Church had been packed to the brim. The pews were filled, the aisles were crowded, and people lined up outside just to get inside and pray. They came for absolution, for comfort, for answers, and when those answers didn't seem to come from heaven fast enough, Rex had no choice but to start issuing indulgences in God's name behind closed doors.
He told himself it wasn't about the money.
It really wasn't.
What those people needed most wasn't doctrine—it was reassurance. The hellish scene they had witnessed that night had shattered too many minds. Countless believers came trembling through the church doors, asking the same question in a hundred different ways.
Had God abandoned this land?
Rex would stand before them with a Bible in hand, his voice calm and steady, and answer in the clearest way possible.
"Don't worry. God will never abandon His faithful."
Then he would lift the Bible high and declare, "The Bible is here, so God is here!"
And the crowd, desperate and emotional, would shout it back in unison.
"The Bible is here, so God is here!"
That single line spread like wildfire.
Almost overnight, Emma Church's reputation exploded. More people came every day, and the church's influence multiplied several times over in just a few days. Rex barely had time to breathe, but no matter how packed his schedule became, he still made time for one important task.
He had to send Wade off.
Although Wade had been badly injured that night, the external damage had mostly healed after soaking in the Brotherhood's healing pool. David had tracked down the contact information for Smith, the middleman tied to the mutation lab, and now the time had finally come.
Rex, David, and Vanessa all came to see Wade off together.
He was really going in.
Wade stood there with wide eyes and an expression so dramatic it would've fit a daytime soap. He turned to Vanessa and said in an overly emotional voice, "Vanessa, you have to wait for me. I'll come back, okay? And don't you dare run off with another guy. I'm not about to walk out of there and end up on some trashy talk show holding my kid while finding out you cheated."
Vanessa's eyes were already red with tears. She punched him in the chest hard enough to make him wince.
"You bastard," she snapped. "Don't die in there."
Wade immediately clutched his chest like he'd been mortally wounded all over again. "Oh, come on, that actually hurt. Are you trying to murder your future husband before the experiment even starts?"
Behind them, Rex and David exchanged a look and rolled their eyes at the same time.
Rex stepped forward and coughed twice. "Alright, enough with the nonsense. You can save the tragic romance routine for later. Get out in a few months, and then you can talk each other to death for three days straight."
Wade snorted. "Three days? When I come out, I'm talking for at least a week."
Rex ignored him and glanced toward Smith's car parked nearby. "Go on. Don't keep him waiting."
Wade hesitated for a moment, then dragged Rex a few steps to the side, lowering his voice.
"You're absolutely sure the healing pool can't fix me?" he asked.
"Of course I'm sure," Rex replied. "It heals injuries. That's all. It's not going to solve your underlying problem." He looked him straight in the eye. "And relax. I've told you this a dozen times already—you're not going to die."
Wade gritted his teeth. "Easy for you to say."
"Vanessa already told you she'd love you no matter what you end up looking like," Rex said. "So what are you scared of?"
Wade opened his mouth, then closed it again, thoroughly annoyed by how hard that was to argue with. Finally, he pointed a finger at Rex and hissed, "If I come out of there with a third eye growing out of my forehead, I swear I'm going to stare you to death with all three of them."
Rex waved him off lazily. "Yeah, yeah. You can complain later. Just remember to keep the signal device hidden. The second it activates after the mutation, I'll bust in and get you out."
At that, Wade's face twisted.
"You knew they'd strip-search me," he said through clenched teeth. "And you still told me to bring a signal device? Where exactly was I supposed to hide it?"
Rex's eyes drifted downward with deliberate meaning.
"I think you found a pretty safe spot."
"Fake squid!"
Wade stormed off cursing, but he still got into Smith's car.
The moment the door closed, Rex's phone buzzed. He pulled it out and saw a message confirming that a three-thousand-dollar brokerage fee had just been deposited into his account.
He blinked once, then smiled.
Smith really did have integrity.
Rex slipped his phone away and turned to Vanessa. "Come on. I promised Wade I'd look after you. Stay with me tonight."
By the time the three of them returned to Emma Church, they found two people already waiting quietly outside the entrance.
One man. One woman.
One fat. One thin.
The second Rex saw them, he knew what this was. What surprised him wasn't the purpose, though. It was the fact that Pepper Potts and Happy had come in person.
He led Pepper into the backyard and had her sit down. The moment she settled into the chair, her fingers started twisting nervously together.
"Father, I… you…"
Rex raised a hand and cut through the awkwardness immediately. "Did something happen to Tony Stark?"
Pepper froze. "How did you know?"
Rex shrugged. "Why else would you come looking for me?"
Pepper swallowed hard and forced herself to continue. "You… are Iron Man?"
Rex didn't answer the question directly. Instead, he looked at her evenly and asked, "Who else did Stark tell?"
"No one," Pepper said at once. "He didn't tell anyone. Not even me."
She took a breath and steadied herself. "Before he left, he suddenly came to me with an envelope. He said if anything happened to him this time, I should open it. I only found out after…"
Rex nodded slowly.
So Stark had still kept his mouth shut to the end.
Then again, handing a letter to Pepper like that really did sound like he was treating her like some kind of emergency backup plan.
Rex leaned back slightly. "Then why are you here? What exactly did Stark ask you to do?"
Pepper's eyes filled with tears. She looked like she was holding herself together by sheer will.
"Please," she said. "Save him."
Rex's gaze sharpened. "Tell me what happened first."
Pepper did.
The story matched what he already knew for the most part. It was still classified information for now, but it wouldn't stay hidden for long. Once the truth surfaced, the whole world would know.
When she finished, Rex frowned. "I don't even know where he is. How am I supposed to save him?"
Pepper slapped a bank card down onto the table.
"Fifty million dollars," she said. "Consider it the reward."
Rex's eyelids twitched. "This isn't about money. I'm telling you, I really don't know where—"
Smack.
A second card landed beside the first.
"One hundred million total," Pepper said, her voice shaking but firm. "All I'm asking is that you do everything you can. The outcome is in God's hands."
Rex fell silent.
For a moment, he just stared at the two cards.
Then he clicked his tongue inwardly.
This really wasn't fair. Making him feel bad and offering a hundred million at the same time was a brutal combination.
After Pepper left, Rex immediately started making preparations.
In truth, even without the issue of rescuing Tony Stark, he had already been planning a long trip. There were too many ideas in his head that needed testing, too many guesses that needed proof.
Before he could leave, though, everything at home had to be arranged properly.
Emma Church would remain under David's management. David wasn't suited for field operations, but he was reliable, and with Vanessa helping oversee indulgences and routine church affairs, things should stay stable enough. At the same time, David would continue handling intelligence support from behind the scenes.
Fox and the others would keep running the Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, the Hand had gone quiet.
Elektra, Erica, and Alexandra hadn't made any major moves recently. The blow they had suffered was enormous, and the whole organization was under strain. Alexandra had started transferring assets overnight, but so far she had only moved tens of millions of dollars.
That money, combined with part of the Brotherhood's liquid capital, had been invested by Rex into Stark Industries stock.
At the same time, he established a pharmaceutical company of his own.
Future.
The name was simple, clean, and exactly the kind of thing investors loved. Once the funds were fully in place, he planned to officially bring in Dr. Karen—the scientist studying vampire blood. Once she joined, they could begin analyzing the Brotherhood healing pool's formula and develop a new medical product from it.
And if that product worked the way Rex expected, it would explode onto the market overnight.
A medicine that could heal near-fatal injuries by the next morning?
That wouldn't just sell.
It would rewrite modern medicine from the ground up.
A medical empire would rise from it. Rex could already see it.
Before leaving, he finally got his hands on something he had wanted for a long time.
Vibranium soft armor.
It had come from Kingpin.
The material had been processed into ultra-thin filaments and woven together with advanced synthetic threads. It couldn't match the raw defensive strength of a solid plate of vibranium, but as flexible armor, it was already absurd. In practical terms, it was far beyond the best heavy bulletproof vests on the market.
And thanks to Kingpin's ridiculous body size, there had been more than enough material to work with.
After alterations, Rex ended up with not just a vibranium vest, but a pair of vibranium shorts too.
The combination was almost hilarious.
Also unbelievably practical.
With that armor layered over his own physical defense, Rex no longer had any reason to fear charging straight into a battlefield full of artillery fire. Between rescuing Stark, making money, and hunting targets, this trip was shaping up to be worthwhile in every possible way.
And terrorists, naturally, were already on his list.
He stood there for a moment, running through everything one last time, and another thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.
Afghanistan.
The war zone. The chaos. The military presence.
Then his eyes narrowed slightly.
One question rose to the top of all the others.
Were the American troops in Afghanistan… guilty?
....
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