After laying Nightwing flat on the experiment table, Ryan Choi, who had been out of it earlier, seemed to instantly become a different person.
He became serious and focused, as if he had instantly cleared all distracting thoughts from his mind.
The female assistant named Rhonda pushed over a machine that looked like an oversized desk lamp.
Ryan pulled off the "lampshade," making the flat device at the top of the instrument align with Nightwing's head.
"Oracle already briefly described the problem to me earlier."
Ryan seemed to be talking to himself.
"We need to quickly identify the locations of all the aerosol particles stuck to his blood vessels and remove them one by one."
Ryan suddenly looked up at Viktor.
"However, this lab doesn't have the right antidote, and removing the aerosol particles will be a long process..."
Right at that moment, Oracle sent Viktor a new prompt.
He reached into the tactical pocket on the right side of his waist and took out an injection.
He inserted the needle into the side of Nightwing's neck and pushed all the medicine into Nightwing's vein.
Ryan lowered his head and used his fingers to pull open Nightwing's eyelids to check him.
After confirming that the temporary antidote Viktor used was working, Ryan nodded to Rhonda beside him.
Rhonda activated the screen connected to the scanner, and only then did Ryan pull up his coat, revealing a strangely designed belt around his waist.
At that moment, Viktor finally remembered where he had seen it before.
That day, among the superheroes visiting the Flash in the Batcave, there was indeed a man wearing a red and blue costume with such a belt at his waist.
After recalling Oracle saying earlier that Ray Palmer was the Atom, Viktor found it somewhat strange.
"So this is your teacher's equipment?"
Ryan seemed a bit nervous. After taking a long, deep breath, he slowly nodded.
"Dr. Palmer often goes on missions. Every time before he leaves, he entrusts his equipment and laboratory to me—the Justice League occasionally needs the Atom's shrinking technology, and that's when I temporarily take his place for a while."
This was really the first time Viktor had heard of something like this. This man, Ray Palmer, seemed trusted his student.
After taking the helmet from Rhonda, Ryan put it on and reached for the switch on his belt.
"Next, I'll shrink to a size of 5 micrometers. I'll enter Nightwing's facial and brain blood vessels through his nasal membrane. Rhonda, after you scan out all the aerosol positions, transmit the signals to me."
The female assistant with brownish-gold curly hair finally spoke her first sentence.
"Okay, Dr. Choi."
Ryan nodded and activated the shrinking device, and his entire body shrank, leaving behind layers of fading afterimages.
In the blink of an eye, Ryan became microscopic in size. He jumped into the air and flew toward Nightwing's face.
After watching Ryan disappear into Nightwing's face, Viktor finally had time to look around the famous S.T.A.R Labs from the comics of his previous life.
In the DC world, among the advanced technologies created on Earth that were far beyond normal human standards, aside from the ones owned by some superheroes, the remaining seventy percent all came from this famous place.
Before today, Viktor didn't know that S.T.A.R Labs actually had so many branches across almost every major city in the United States.
There was a New York branch, a Metropolis branch, a Central City branch, and others.
Previously, Viktor thought there was only one.
In his memory, the S.T.A.R Labs branch in Metropolis could even, in some early DC animation, casually open a two-way portal for parallel universe travel without relying on the Speed Force.
Even the technology in the Batcave couldn't accomplish that so easily.
But just as Viktor's force field swept over the female assistant named Rhonda, his heightened senses suddenly noticed something strange.
The cold gaze behind Batman instantly locked onto Rhonda.
Rhonda visibly shivered.
"You're very nervous."
The voice modulator was still on.
The voice Viktor emitted was almost identical to Batman's, bringing tremendous psychological pressure to Rhonda.
Rhonda laughed awkwardly twice and unconsciously played with a curl hanging over her shoulder with her fingers.
"It's normal to be nervous when Batman is standing this close to me for the first time, right?"
He didn't answer.
After several seconds of silence, Viktor looked away.
What she felt was not nervousness about whether the Atom's surgery after shrinking would succeed.
It was more like fear. She was instinctively uncomfortable being so close to Batman.
What kind of person would be afraid of Batman?
That first one is for someone who at least understands the basics about Batman.
After all, residents of other cities outside Gotham understood Batman at most as a superhero with a slightly strange personality.
The second kind is someone who understands Batman's true nature and has something to hide.
A woman staying close to Dr. Ray Palmer has something to hide. She was probably some villain from the Atom's original comic stories.
Viktor was not the kind of person who studied every little detail, and besides, many memories from his previous life were already fading away.
This Rhonda was perhaps some second or third-tier minor villain or nemesis of a second or third-tier hero.
Viktor had just minutes ago beaten the famous Gotham villain Bane to his knees. He was even less interested in interfering with such a minor character.
Just a few minutes earlier, Viktor had beaten the famous Gotham villain Bane to his knees.
He was even less interested in dealing with a small person like her as long as she didn't dare to interfere with Nightwing's surgery right in front of him.
Speaking of which, if Ryan and Rhonda both believe Viktor was Batman, that meant the Bat-family's had done a very good job keeping Batman's coma a secret.
Most likely, aside from the seven main members of the Justice League and Viktor, the other members of the Justice League still didn't know that Batman was in a coma.
After watching Rhonda begin reporting the locations of the toxic aerosol particles scanned to the Atom, Viktor simply stepped back a few paces.
This gave the woman, who might be hiding something, at least a little sense of safety for now, so she could focus better on helping complete Nightwing's surgery.
He then turned his attention to the display screen connected to the scanner and marked every capillary node in Nightwing's head.
A blue light spot representing Ryan continuously moved along the bloodstream.
He would pause briefly until the mark for the abnormal point on the display disappeared.
The result was actually very fast.
In less than ten minutes, eighty percent of the abnormal points in Nightwing's head had already been cleared.
Combined with the temporary antidote injected earlier, Nightwing grunted and slightly opened his eyes.
...
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