When the terrorist attack first happened, Zod put on a show of pure fury. But once he was alone, he leaned back against the wall with a calm expression that completely betrayed his earlier outburst.
It was an act. All of it. Designed to fool anyone watching.
Why? Simple. The bomb was too weak.
Zod wasn't overthinking things. Given what he'd already demonstrated to the world, that explosive should never have been enough to kill him. Hell, it probably wouldn't have even left a scratch.
And the fact that it detonated in the sewer yet only blew a big crater in the street instead of leveling the entire block... if this wasn't a deliberate setup, Zod would start questioning his own instincts.
"Too bad my atomic observation is still limited. Otherwise I could trace this straight back to the source."
Zod's brow furrowed.
Now he had to rely on Black Queen.
But before Black Queen could dig anything up, S.H.I.E.L.D. suddenly announced they'd found the culprit behind the attack. Conveniently, the trail led straight to the CIA and FBI, and S.H.I.E.L.D. claimed they lacked jurisdiction to pursue it further.
The moment S.H.I.E.L.D. inserted themselves into the picture, Zod knew exactly who was responsible. He reached out to his "contacts" inside the organization and confirmed it. HYDRA was behind it.
As for why Zod never received any warning? Simple. The HYDRA operatives carrying out the job had no idea they were being used to bait their own master. They figured the operation wasn't important enough to bother Zod over, so they never reported it.
Zod sighed. This was a blind spot in his intelligence protocols. A flaw in how he managed information flow.
The situation was clear now. S.H.I.E.L.D. was trying to play the CIA and FBI against each other.
Zod didn't have any elegant solution for this kind of political knife fight. Fortunately, he had people inside S.H.I.E.L.D. Unlike Obadiah Stane, Alexander Pierce hadn't been stupid enough to leave incriminating evidence lying around on a hard drive.
But if there was no evidence, Zod could simply manufacture some.
That was the beauty of advanced technology.
Using Black Queen's synthesis capabilities, a very damning audio recording was delivered to both the CIA and FBI. The two agencies, already drowning in pressure, latched onto it like a life raft.
They bit down hard and refused to let go. Meanwhile, Alexander Pierce listened to his own voice on that recording and felt his brain short-circuit.
"Director, are you sure about this? Blowing up Zod Heath could blow back on us hard."
"It won't be traced. Every piece of evidence will point to the CIA and FBI. This is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s moment."
In an era before voice synthesis and deepfakes existed, this was ironclad proof. The recording might not carry full legal weight, but it was enough to put Pierce under the harshest scrutiny from the United States government. Congressional oversight committees were already murmuring about replacing the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Pierce was forced to burn political capital and call in HYDRA assets just to keep his position. That, of course, only exposed more of HYDRA's network to Black Queen's watchful eyes.
As for the CIA and FBI, they'd been nearly destroyed by the scandal. Their attitude toward Alexander Pierce could generously be described as "openly hostile."
The sprawling CIA was already considering digging up every piece of dirt on Pierce and dumping it into the public domain. They'd done it before.
And if that avalanche of scandals forced Pierce out of office, the CIA would make sure he ended up in a "suicide-proof" detention facility. Where he would then "commit suicide."
Zod had exacted his revenge for Pierce's little scheme. After that, he stopped paying attention to the fallout.
...
China.
A brand-new cone-shaped aircraft descended vertically onto the camp's landing zone.
"Flight speed reached ten thousand kilometers per hour. And that's with a passenger onboard, not even at full throttle."
A crowd of researchers from the National Academy of Sciences stared at the telemetry data with barely contained excitement.
"The fuel cost is the real killer though. Look at the report. Three hundred thousand yuan per hundred kilometers."
"That's thirty million gone for a round trip. Literally burning money."
One researcher shook his head in awe.
"Just seeing a real prototype in my lifetime is enough. I honestly thought we were at least a hundred years away from something like this."
Another researcher, a man with the surname Yang, spoke quietly.
And Researcher Yang was considered the most brilliant scientific mind in all of China.
The origins of this aircraft were anything but simple.
Back when the Soviets imploded in a spectacular act of self-destruction, both China and the United States scrambled to pick through the wreckage.
They hadn't managed to secure the top-tier scientists, but they'd hauled back crates of blueprints and technical documents.
Among those papers were designs for aircraft that were nothing short of genius.
At the time, those designs remained purely theoretical. Material science and manufacturing techniques simply couldn't meet the requirements.
It was the same limitation that plagued the theoretical work of the great scientists from World War II.
But now, with Zod Heath's secondary Kryptonian alloy completely eclipsing every existing metal on the planet, fabrication technologies had surged forward at an unprecedented pace.
It wasn't just manufacturing breakthroughs. The higher-ups in China had dusted off those old blueprints and begun turning some of the most breathtaking designs into physical prototypes for testing.
This aircraft was the first. The first design pulled from paper and given life.
"We're closing the gap with the giants of the World War II era. Material science is the bedrock of all progress. With Zod Heath's secondary Kryptonian alloy, maybe in our lifetimes we can finally move beyond Einstein's relativity and the framework of quantum mechanics."
The researchers buzzed with fervor.
Researcher Yang watched his enthusiastic colleagues and shook his head. Beyond relativity and quantum mechanics in their lifetimes? Theories that hadn't been surpassed in decades?
Maybe if Einstein himself was reborn.
"Zod Heath... secondary Kryptonian alloy. He calls it 'secondary.' Does that mean there's a superior version? Or is he still unsatisfied with this new metal?"
Yang suspected that even with physical samples of the secondary alloy, replicating it would take decades. Preliminary estimates put them at least seventy years away from matching the technology.
In other words, Zod Heath had just paved the road for seventy years of human material science. For seven decades, no one would need to worry about material limitations.
If there ever was a Fourth Industrial Revolution, Zod Heath would be its undisputed father. His name would be etched into history.
Why couldn't a genius like that have been born in the great land of China? If he were, China would have surely surpassed the United States by now.
/-\
Enjoying the story? Want to read ahead?
Support the novel and unlock early access to unreleased chapters!
~ +20 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon! (+1 Chapter daily)
https://p-atreon.com/Its_Zack
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access Patreon normally)