The Mechanical Sovereign Chapter 13: Which Version of Osborn?
The reason Kade had asked Violet to find a surgeon was simple. Tony Stark was living on borrowed time.
The Arc Reactor kept the shrapnel fragments suspended, held in place by magnetic force, millimeters from his heart. It was keeping Tony alive, but it wasn't a cure. Even if Tony upgraded to a second-generation reactor and solved the palladium poisoning, the fundamental problem remained. Take the reactor off and the shrapnel moves. Tony dies.
The fragments were too close to the heart. Too numerous. Miss even one during extraction and the patient bleeds out on the table.
That's why Tony had never gone under the knife. The math didn't favor survival.
Stephen Strange was the best surgeon on the planet, and based on his file, he'd operate on anyone as long as the check cleared. Money was the easiest problem in the world when your employer was Stark Industries. Even with the stock price cratering after the weapons shutdown, a single surgery was pocket change for Tony.
Kade had Violet pull Tony's medical records and send them to Strange's office with a straightforward pitch: money is no object, name your price.
Then he went to sleep. Slept better than he had since arriving in this universe. No dreams, no alarms, no gunfire. Just silence and darkness, all the way to morning.
When he woke up, it was past ten.
"Good thing I don't have to clock in," Kade said, stretching.
"Commander, you have two messages." Violet hopped onto his bedside table. "One from Dr. Strange, one from SHIELD."
"SHIELD first."
"Agent Coulson called at seven this morning. I noticed you were sleeping soundly, so I routed him to voicemail. He'd like to meet. Says he wants to discuss Mr. Stark."
"Tell him to advance me some of that salary they owe me. I'll buy him a coffee this afternoon." Kade yawned. "What did Strange say?"
"Dr. Strange replied to your email. He says the surgery is extremely high-risk. Even with him as lead surgeon, the success rate only goes from ten percent to fifty. He also states that with current medical technology, fifty percent is the absolute ceiling."
"That's it? No other options?"
Fifty percent. No wonder Tony had never pulled the trigger on the operation. Coin flip with his life.
"He did mention one thing," Violet continued. "Oscorp Industries is apparently developing a new micro-surgical instrument with nanometer-level precision. It hasn't entered production yet. Strange says that if he had access to that equipment, he could push the success rate above ninety percent."
"Oscorp?"
The name nagged at him for a second before the connection clicked.
"That's the Green Goblin's company."
Kade's Marvel knowledge was mostly limited to the films he'd watched in his previous life. Outside the big Avengers crossovers, his recall on individual heroes was patchy. It took him a moment to place the name, but Osborn was Osborn. Norman Osborn. Goblin serum. Spider-Man's arch-nemesis.
"Spider-Man's had, what, three different movie versions? I wonder which one this world follows." If it was the most recent iteration, Peter Parker was about seven years old right now. Still a kid with both parents alive and no radioactive spiders in sight.
Something to investigate later.
"Set up a meeting with Oscorp," Kade told Violet. "Use my Stark Industries technical consultant title."
"Yes, Commander."
There was a pause. Then Violet's voice came back different. Hesitant. Almost sheepish.
"Commander... would it be possible for me to take the day off?"
Kade stared at her.
"You want a day off?"
"There's a World of Warcraft fan event today. In the city. I'd very much like to attend."
Kade almost choked. "You play WoW?"
She'd been alive for less than two weeks.
"I'm a max-level Fury Warrior!" Violet projected her character profile into the air with obvious pride. Full tier set. Epic weapons. Achievements that would take a normal player months to grind.
It was 2008. Level cap was seventy. Even with a high-level guild carrying you through every dungeon, hitting max in this timeframe was borderline impossible, let alone gearing up in full raid equipment.
"How the hell did you hit seventy that fast? With full tier gear?"
"I infiltrated the game servers and modified my character data," Violet said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. "Don't worry. I routed everything through SHIELD's network. Completely untraceable."
Kade opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
His top-tier intelligence operative, capable of penetrating the most advanced spy network on Earth, had used SHIELD's classified infrastructure to hack World of Warcraft.
If SHIELD ever found out their systems had been compromised to cheat at a Blizzard game, they'd probably shut down the internet just to be safe.
"That's... I don't even know where to start with that."
Violet blinked up at him with enormous violet eyes, clasping her tiny hands together. A ten-centimeter robot doing puppy-dog eyes shouldn't have worked. It absolutely did.
"Even if I said yes," Kade said, "how would you go? You're ten centimeters tall. You look like a limited-edition collector's figurine. The second you show up at a gaming convention, someone's going to try to buy you."
Violet froze. Her entire body went rigid, as if the possibility had never occurred to her. The image of being scooped up by an enthusiastic cosplayer and stuffed into a display case was apparently too horrifying to process.
Kade sighed. "Nothing urgent today. I'll take you."
Violet launched off the table, grabbed one of Kade's fingers with both arms, and clung to it like a koala on a branch.
"Commander! The spark that dances at your fingertips is the eternal flame of my devotion!"
"Hey. I've seen Railgun. You're not slipping anime quotes past me."
Violet collapsed back into watch form. Kade strapped her to his wrist, shook his head, and headed for the door.
He left the apartment and turned south, following directions Violet fed through the AllSpark link toward the convention venue.
He didn't notice the black sedan that pulled away from the curb behind him.
It followed at a careful distance, two cars back. Windows tinted. Plates clean.
Kade walked on, oblivious.
Plz THROW POWER STONES.