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Dozens of green points of light, scattered across the darkness like fireflies. In a place like this, they weren't beautiful — they were deeply, profoundly wrong.
Kade zoomed in with the Tactical Optics.
Not fireflies. Rats.
Enormous rats, each one the size of a house cat, hairless and covered in overlapping scales that looked more reptilian than mammalian. Their eyes glowed a dim, sickly green — the same green as the Lizard's blood.
Kade didn't need anyone to explain the connection. These things were related to the creature he'd just fought. Offspring, test subjects, byproducts — it didn't matter. Same family tree.
The mutant rats weren't smart enough to be afraid. The moment they registered Kade's presence, they shrieked and charged.
They were fast. Terrifyingly fast. Each leap covered several meters, and they could jump chest-high on a grown man. Dozens of them, coming from every direction at once, a wave of scaled bodies and green eyes.
By any reasonable assessment, Kade — a man with baseline human reflexes — shouldn't have been able to handle this. AllSpark equipment or not, no one could aim and fire at twenty targets converging from all angles simultaneously.
But Kade had something no human marksman had ever possessed.
The Tactical Optics and Sensory Gauntlets flared blue in unison — twin pulses of light in the pitch-black sewer. Gaze-lock activated.
Kade's hands began to shake.
Not from fear. The Sensory Gauntlets were vibrating at a frequency no human wrist could produce — the magnetic field adjusting the Pulse Pistol's aim dozens of times per second, pulling the barrel fractionally left, right, up, down, synchronized perfectly with the targeting data flooding from the Optics into the gauntlets.
All Kade had to do was keep his eyes open. The Optics tracked every rat in his field of vision — calculating velocity, trajectory, distance, and kinetic energy in real time — and the gauntlets did the rest. Aim. Fire. Adjust. Fire. Adjust. Fire.
The first seven rats that leaped were blown backward by a wall of pulse energy — each round finding its mark despite the insane rate of correction. Before they hit the ground, the pistol was already sweeping downward, tracing a jagged line of explosions across the floor that turned the ground-level charge into a carpet of shredded meat.
Two seconds. Over ten adjustments per second. Every shot a hit.
No human being alive could do that. Not the best sniper in the world, not even SHIELD's Hawkeye with his bow. But three pieces of AllSpark technology working in concert — Optics calculating, gauntlets aiming, pistol firing — turned an ordinary man into something that looked very much like a superhuman.
The cost: two seconds of not blinking, and two points of AllSpark energy.
The Pulse Pistol kept firing. The remaining rats died in waves — each burst precise, each target tagged and eliminated before it could close the distance.
Ten seconds. Thirty-two mutant rats. Zero survivors.
"Huh." Kade lowered the pistol. "I guess I'm basically a metahuman now."
On closer inspection, the rats' regeneration was almost as aggressive as the Lizard's. Several that had been blown clean in half were still twitching — their severed bodies trying to reconnect. Kade stamped one flat under his boot. That stopped the regeneration.
"That level of healing factor..."
He filed it away and moved on, stepping through the carnage toward the far end of the passage.
Dead end.
But not a sewer dead end. This was something else entirely.
A laboratory. Three hundred square meters of renovated underground space — walls reinforced, ceiling sealed, the filth of the sewer replaced by clean tile and fluorescent lighting. Banks of computers lined one wall, decades more advanced than Skye's scavenged junk upstairs. A refrigerated cabinet held rows of labeled vials, each filled with a vivid green liquid. In the far corner: a sealed, sterile clean room with observation glass.
Someone had spent serious money building this.
And lying on the floor of the lab, unconscious, was a tall, thin man in a shredded white coat. One of his arms was missing — the sleeve empty, the stump raw and fresh. In his remaining hand, he still clutched a syringe filled with green fluid.
The Lizard. Back in human form. The serum's effects had worn off, and the transformation had reversed — leaving behind a one-armed scientist passed out on his own lab floor.
"Somebody spent a fortune on this place," Kade said, walking in.
He pried the syringe from the man's hand first. Safety before curiosity.
Checked the pulse — alive, just unconscious. Kade found some electrical cable, cut it free, and bound the man's remaining arm and both legs to a support beam. Tight. Professional.
"Violet. Copy everything. I want to know who this guy is."
Violet transformed from watch to miniature robot, dropped to the desk, and drove her fingers directly into the computer's data port. Every screen in the lab lit up — cascading data, cell diagrams, molecular structures, experiment logs flooding across the monitors in a torrent.
Several minutes passed before she withdrew.
"Download complete, Commander. The research appears to be focused on extracting and replicating biological self-healing genes. Some of the specialized data is beyond my analytical capability — I'd need a research-focused unit to fully decode it. But based on the experiment logs, the serum produces a severe side effect. Anyone who uses it will —"
"Turn into a monster," said a voice from behind them.
Kade turned. The man on the floor was awake, watching them with exhausted eyes.
"Morning." Kade glanced at one of the monitors, which was still displaying the researcher's profile. "Dr. Connors, is it? Or do you prefer I call you Godzilla?"
"It was an accident," Connors said.
"An accident you've apparently got no plans to stop." Kade nodded toward the refrigerated cabinet — dozens of vials of green serum, neatly arranged, clearly not a one-time mistake.
Kade studied the man's face. Faint traces of green still lingered beneath the skin — the last remnants of the transformation fading like a bruise.
This trip into the sewers had started as a search for a stolen crystal. It was turning into something much bigger.
"Who are you?" Connors asked, staring at Violet's miniature armored form perched on his computer.
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