The five-story office building, which had been hastily refitted for John Thompson's laboratory complex, greeted me with its sterile cleanliness and calibrated minimalism. And with its deafening silence. It was an absolute emptiness, where the echoes of my steps resounded hollowly. The first floor had a spacious lobby and a lonely security post, without a guard. It looked like the lobby of a respectable IT company. Behind this deceptive simplicity, my gaze picked out the camouflaged biometric scanners and the barely noticeable nozzles of a fire suppression system. The walls were made of a matte, bulletproof polymer. It was a simple, but fully automated, security system. For a start, this would do. In the future, it would need a total modernization.
A quick inspection revealed an underground level and a logistics hub. It was essentially a reinforced dock for trucks, from where any cargo could reach a giant freight elevator. It was a colossus that was capable of lifting dozens of tons directly to any floor. It was practical. The first floor also contained workshops for equipment maintenance, warehouses with consumables and reagents, and the complex's heart, a central power node with backup generators. Everything was subordinated to one idea. It was complete autonomy. This gladdened me.
The second floor was an administrative hub, with offices, conference rooms with interactive holographic displays, and a director's office that was already displaying my name on it. It was amusing. The real thing started on the higher floors.
The laboratory floors, the third through the fifth, were a revelation. I had expected a lot, but this exceeded it.
The third floor was the kingdom of materials science and engineering. The mechanical engineering laboratory, which was familiar to me from S.H.I.E.L.D., had been increased and improved by an order of magnitude. Several 3D printers were united into a single production line. The five-axis CNC machine had an electrical discharge machining module for creating unthinkable geometries. The floor's pearl, however, was the nanotechnology laboratory. It had atomic force and tunneling microscopes. It had molecular beam epitaxy installations for layer-by-layer crystal growing. It had ISO Class 1 clean rooms. I only cast a cursory glance at it, but I already understood that engineering marvels could be created here.
The fourth floor was dedicated to biology and chemistry, to the study of life itself, in both its scientific and its anomalous manifestations. The biochemical laboratory included a hermetic BSL-4 zone for dangerous biological threats and a vivarium with robotic care. The analytical lab had a powerful NMR spectrometer and a fully automated sample analysis system that could operate around the clock.
Finally, there was the fifth floor. This was for energy and fundamental physics. It was the heart and the most protected sector. I stumbled upon the energy research laboratory. A compact, heavily shielded, linear particle accelerator hummed quietly. Its official purpose was for experiments with exotic matter. Its specifications, however, seemed to be tailored for the creation of a new element. They were tailored for Stark's Element. I did not believe in coincidences like this. Nearby, a measured, experimental thermonuclear reactor, a tokamak, hummed. It was an ideal platform for plasma work and a foundation for a reactor that would run on the new element. No doubts remained. This entire laboratory was a veiled, carefully calculated investment, and it was personally in me. They could have not built this. This gesture required an answer.
Nearby was the robotics and artificial intelligence section. It was an open space hangar with drone proving grounds. It had assembly jigs for large prototypes, like the Rhino suit analogs. And it had a separate server cluster for an advanced AI assistant.
I completed the tour, and I sank into the chair in my new office, stunned by the scale. This was not simply an office with laboratories. This was a fully autonomous, fortified, and integrated research complex. It had been designed by S.H.I.E.L.D. from the ground up. From its foundation to its roof, the engineering had been reworked for maximum security. I estimated its approximate cost mentally. It was under four hundred million dollars. It would have been impossible to retrofit something similar in just a week. This complex had been ready in advance, and now it was being passed on to a more worthy owner.
The first thing that I did was to send messages to Gwen Stacy and to Peter Parker, with the address. After I received their confirmations, I thought about the security. What existed was enough to start with, but all of the systems were basic. The external perimeter was guarded by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who were on duty twenty-four seven. Trusting them was possible, but there was Hydra, which was metastasized throughout the organization. I needed someone of my own. I needed someone who was proven.
I dialed the number.
"Yo, kid! You finally showed up!" Blade's cheerful voice sounded on the receiver. "Otherwise, I've already heard about your exploits." He chuckled.
"What exploits?" I exhaled, tiredly. "I would gladly sit for another year or two in the shadows, but circumstances are stronger than I am. I'm sorry about the base. I know how much it meant to you."
"Ah, come on. I don't care about the base. I have stashes all around the city, like a squirrel has nuts." He dismissed it. "The main thing is that you sent that bastard Kraven to the next world. It turns out that you're not only good at moving your brains."
"Life forces me." I smirked, crookedly. "It's forcing me to look for Frank. Do you have his updated contacts?"
The cheerfulness in Blade's voice evaporated.
"Why do you need him?" His tone became serious.
"I have a company now. I have my own base, and it's covered by American bureaucracy and by S.H.I.E.L.D. I want to offer Frank the position of head of security in my startup."
"A 'little startup'?" Blade chuckled. "If you make it a joint stock company, I'll be the first one to invest a billion in it."
"It's a private company." I had to correct him.
"Still, you've climbed high. I'll send you the contacts. Just consider that Frank might refuse."
"I understand that."
"You have something to offer him. He might bite." Blade drawled. "Okay, I won't risk the line. I'll send you the contacts."
After a couple of seconds, a message arrived with Frank's number. I sat in the empty lobby, immersed in my thoughts. The only thing that remained was the arrival of my first, unofficial employees.
A taxi silently pulled up, and Gwen Stacy stepped out of it. Peter Parker rolled up on his moped.
I met them, and I began the tour. The reaction exceeded my expectations. Gwen Stacy examined the design and the layout, and she assessed the space's potential. Peter Parker was in a state of rapture. His eyes burned when he looked at the 3D printers, and he froze in the nanotechnology lab, muttering about atomic force microscopy. This surpassed what we had had at the exploded Base.
"This is just... wow." Peter Parker exhaled on the fifth floor. "A linear accelerator? A compact tokamak? This is probably cooler than Stark's laboratories."
I smirked at his genuine joy. The tour did not take long. On the second floor, Peter Parker's expression became thoughtful.
"John," he began, carefully. "I've thought a lot these past few days. I've decided. I'm leaving Connors."
He raised his gaze, and I could see an indecision that was mixed with a relief in it.
"I'll finish my university studies externally, or I'll take an academic leave. After what I've seen here, I simply cannot return there. My place is here."
"Excellent." I nodded. "I'm glad that you've stopped doubting. Your place is here. Gwen," I turned to her, "you've been suspiciously silent. What about the surveillance? What does your sense tell you?"
Gwen Stacy closed her eyes for a moment and she concentrated.
"It's surprisingly clean." She exhaled. "There's not a single surge. It's a complete silence."
"That means that Fury didn't lie. At least, inside this perimeter, we are safe."
"Yes." She confirmed. "I don't know how that will change when I leave the building, but right now, we are alone."
"Then it's decided." I rose, and I could feel the researcher's excitement in myself. "Let's go to the fourth floor. It's time to break this baby in. Let's conduct the first field tests."
The preparation took some time, but nobody complained. We put on sterile overalls, double lamination gloves, and hermetic helmets with their own air supply. We passed through hissing air locks and decontamination chambers, and we immersed ourselves into another world, one where there was no place for mistakes.
We found ourselves in the heart of the biochemical laboratory.
"So." My voice sounded in the headset earphones, muffled. "Gwen, we'll start with you. My primary task is to thoroughly study your physiology. I need to find the source of your strength, to understand its nature, and to learn how to control it."
I extracted a hermetic container from my inventory, and I took a small ampoule of Blade's blood out of it. Then, I turned to Peter. "And your task. What about Connors' serum?" I asked as I handed him the ampoule.
"Genome deconstruction and a search for the regulatory genes?" Peter Parker asked.
"Precisely." Peter Parker's eyes lit up. "I can do even better than that. Especially under the NZT. I can create an elegant, programmable gene therapy. I can make the human organism remember its own evolutionary potential for a perfect regeneration. This is nothing like Connors' work. The methodology is completely different. The work would start from scratch."
"Good. You'll deal with this. But what would happen if Connors injected himself with a dose that exceeded the therapeutic one? What if he launched the program at its full power?"
"There are no logical grounds for that." Peter Parker said. "He doesn't have any amputations. He's a scientist, not a desperate cripple. The most probable scenario is that his research would be shut down as being impractical."
"With Eric's blood and the other parts," I said, "we'll create a better path. For now, don't inject yourself with anything."
He nodded, and I put a vial of NZT tablets into his palm. His eyes flashed.
"Don't make any hasty conclusions. Your upgrade is a separate, far more serious and fundamental project. It's still in the planning stage. For all that's holy, don't inject yourself with anything, even if it looks theoretically workable."
"Yes." He quickly agreed, clutching the vial. "I'll go to the neighboring laboratory and deal with this."
He backed toward the hermetic door, and he said, with a smirk, "Have fun, lovebirds."
"Hey!" Gwen exclaimed, theatrically, but there was no real indignation in it.
"Time to begin." She said, seriously. "It's better for you to know about my powers."
We both nodded. I was curious about what I would see next, and about whether or not my new skill would help me. Spider powers were an elegant, impossible nonsense. I planned to dissect them, atom by atom.
//==============//
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