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"Who am I? Sorry, Doc — you don't get to ask questions yet." Kade crouched in front of Connors. "Let's talk about your research. Are you building a bioweapon?"
"No!" Connors' eyes went wide. "It's a healing agent. I'm close to eliminating the side effects entirely. This could be a revolutionary breakthrough — a drug that repairs any external injury."
"Including growing back a missing arm." Kade nodded toward Connors' empty sleeve.
"That's been my life's work," Connors said quietly.
Kade was silent for a moment.
"I had a squadmate," he said. "EOD specialist. Tripwire bomb took both arms above the elbow. Three years later, he still dreamed about his hands every night. And every time his son threw a ball at him, he'd twitch — try to lift arms that ended at the bicep."
"What happened to him?"
"Switched careers. Went into prosthetics research. Built himself a pair of mechanical arms that worked well enough to play catch. Made it just before the kid turned ten." Kade paused. "By then the boy had moved on to video games. Didn't really want to play catch anymore."
"That's a sad story," Connors said.
"Seems like you've been making a few of your own. People have been disappearing down here. Gone without a trace."
Connors flinched. "That was — those were accidents. When the side effects take over, my mind... I lose control. And they attacked me first —"
"In fairness, if I saw a nine-foot lizard in a sewer, I'd probably take a swing too. Looking like that and expecting a warm welcome is on you."
Connors had nothing to say to that.
"But here's the silver lining," Kade said. "The people you killed? Apparently all scum. Dealers, muggers, worse."
"So you're saying I didn't do anything wrong?"
"No. I'm saying you're lucky. Because it means I don't have a reason to put you down."
Kade had no grudge against Connors. And he had no mandate from SHIELD to eliminate the man. What he did have was interest in the research. A healing serum — even one with catastrophic side effects — could be invaluable in an emergency.
Especially for Tony. The shrapnel surgery was coming, and even with Strange's skill and Oscorp's nano-surgical tools, the success rate wasn't guaranteed. Kade needed a backup plan. A drug that could repair tissue damage in real time could be the difference between Tony walking out of the operating room and Tony not walking out at all.
"So," Kade said. "Congratulations. You work for me now."
"Commander, I don't believe this man will offer loyalty willingly." Violet raised one slender arm. Her hand folded inward, reconfigured, and extended outward again as a miniature cannon barrel aimed directly at Connors' kneecap. "Shall I put an arrow in his knee? That tends to inspire cooperation."
Connors stared at the tiny robot pointing a weapon at him. "What are you going to do — turn me into one of those things?"
BANG.
The refrigerator cabinet's glass door exploded. Violet had fired without hesitation — not at Connors, but close enough to make the point.
"Watch your mouth, sewer lizard," Violet said, her voice flat and cold. "I have a hundred ways to make you wish you could swallow your own tongue."
Kade waved her down. "Easy. Let's keep this civil."
Violet's cannon folded back into a hand. Kade turned back to Connors.
"Doctor, I'll be blunt. You work for me now. You finish perfecting your serum — eliminate the side effects, make it safe for human use. In return, I guarantee your safety, I keep your secret, and I supply you with whatever materials you need for your research. If you refuse..." Kade let the pause stretch. "There are five dead people in these tunnels. I'd have to make sure you answer for that."
"So I'm your slave," Connors said flatly.
"Don't flatter yourself. I want the drug. Not the man."
Connors' jaw tightened. He was already calculating — play along, wait for an opening, inject the serum when Kade's guard was down, and tear him apart. It was written all over his face.
Kade slipped one of the metal bracelets off his wrist and clamped it onto the stump of Connors' missing arm.
"A gift. Consider it an advance on your salary."
He snapped his fingers.
The bracelet erupted — silver-gray plates unfolding, extending, branching into segments and joints. In seconds, Connors' stump was encased in a fully articulated mechanical arm, from shoulder to fingertip. The Sensory Gauntlet, repurposed as a prosthetic limb.
Connors stared at it. He tried to move the fingers — stiff at first, jerky, like learning to write with the wrong hand. But the gauntlet adapted. It read the residual muscle signals in his stump, mapped the patterns, and within a minute the movements were smooth. He clenched a fist. Opened it. Clenched again.
At this rate, two or three days of practice would make the arm indistinguishable from a real one.
If he'd had this technology a year ago, he never would have injected himself with lizard DNA.
"Now," Kade said, "about that serum."
Connors looked at his new arm. Then at the rack of green vials.
"If you're thinking about running," Kade continued, "or about jabbing yourself with that serum and coming after me — the arm you're wearing answers to me. Every piece of AllSpark equipment does." He paused to let that sink in. "Violet doesn't sleep. She'll be monitoring you through that bracelet twenty-four hours a day. And you've already seen her temper."
The mechanical arm twitched — just once, involuntarily — as if to confirm the point.
"I'll send research materials in a few days. This lab is too good to waste. Make yourself comfortable."
Kade took several vials of the green serum from the ruined refrigerator, pocketed them carefully, and left.
Behind him, Connors sat alone in his underground laboratory, flexing his new metal fingers. He reached for a vial of serum with his remaining human hand. Held it up to the light. The green liquid caught the fluorescent glow.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then he put it back.
Skye and Daisy were gone.
Their alcove was empty — blanket, fishbowl, and all. The explosions had apparently been the final push they needed to abandon the sewers for good.
But on the desk, stuck to the dead computer monitor, was a handwritten note:
You owe me for the computer and the cameras. I WILL collect.
Kade smiled, pocketed the note, and climbed out of the sewer.
The sunlight hit him like a revelation. He peeled off his reeking jacket and started walking home — desperately in need of a shower and a change of clothes.
"Commander," Violet said. "Norman Osborn has accepted your meeting request."
"Great. When?"
A pause.
"...Now."
Kade looked down at himself. He was covered in sewer water, concrete dust, mutant rat blood, and something green he refused to identify.
He smelled like Hell's Kitchen's plumbing had come to life and died on his shirt.
The meeting with the CEO of Oscorp Industries was right now.
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