At this point, in private, AIM had already become the hottest jewel in the hands of every American executive and political elite.
And aside from that, Killian himself had also been just as busy.
As Baymax sales kept increasing, the company's staff numbers also began to rise sharply.
The whole company had practically turned into a production line running at maximum speed, with new products constantly entering assembly and then being sold off.
Top-tier research teams and genius scientists, Killian kept poaching them with sky-high salaries and benefits. As long as talent came to him, he was never afraid to spend money.
Money was just paper. Talent was what truly mattered.
In fact, because of Killian's actions, the salaries and benefits of researchers across the entire high-tech industry had collectively doubled.
Those industries even joined together to issue public statements condemning Killian for disrupting the market, criticizing him for not giving employees excessively high salaries, claiming that it would make them lazy and harm the development of the whole industry.
But Killian ignored all of that completely. In fact, before he even had a chance to say anything, every one of those companies was visited by labor unions for a "friendly talk."
After all, in America, labor unions really did stand on the workers' side and had actual power. If your company so much as dared to exploit workers too openly, the unions would sell everything they owned just to drag you into court, and unless you paid millions in compensation, you would not be getting out of it.
As for all this, Killian only spared it a glance and did not care.
What a joke. He was the one spending money to hire employees. He liked spending his money. If they had a problem with it, then they could offer high benefits too.
On the other side, under Killian's relentless money offensive, construction on the AIM Industrial Park had also begun at full speed.
What one construction team could have finished alone, Killian forcibly turned into five teams working in shifts. If the site had physically been able to hold more workers, he would have wanted to drag over all the laborers in America.
With that kind of pace, the AIM Industrial Park changed dramatically every five days.
At this rate, Killian even estimated that it would not be long before he obtained a high-quality industrial park.
At the same time, the laboratory on the Miami island was also being expanded.
Every day, countless machines entered through the dedicated access route opened at the laboratory entrance.
The area beneath the lab was being dug deeper and deeper.
Killian's plan for this island laboratory was that it had to become, at the very least, a giant underground facility like the Hive.
Not only with a complete artificial intelligence oversight system, but also with fully equipped security, and an integrated underground production and supply structure.
In simple terms, what Killian wanted was an underground research city.
And every future base would have to be built the same way.
Because the technologies he unlocked from the system guaranteed that he would possess far too many secrets that could never be made public. So as long as something went wrong in an underground base, a super-alloy gate dozens of meters thick would slam shut and seal everything completely, and on top of that, every underground laboratory would also have mandatory emergency self-destruct devices.
With that entire procedure in place, he could ensure that his secrets would remain absolutely secure.
And that was not all.
As time passed, Killian had also acquired another small-to-medium experimental company.
As the future production line for the armed security force of the company, he needed a cloning facility that could mass-produce Blackwatch soldiers. So after some investigation, a remote experimental company in Miami caught Killian's attention.
For that, he sent Lisa to sign the deal, purchasing it for eighty million dollars.
And now, what Killian was waiting for was the firearms production license Lisa was in the middle of arranging, along with the prestige points needed to unlock the Blackwatch force.
...
Three months later.
On a small island isolated from the city and completely cut off from the outside world,
deep underground, one hundred meters below the surface, on the thirty-fourth underground level, which was currently the newest completed laboratory floor,
behind a super-alloy door several dozen centimeters thick,
a group of researchers led by Samuel Sterns stood there with complete focus, staring at a black gorilla in the isolation chamber not far away, its eyes shut and its entire body convulsing violently.
Beside it lay an emptied syringe.
If, at this moment, there had been a device capable of observing the cellular world inside the gorilla's body,
it would have revealed an invasive foreign cell, crimson in overall color and filled with aggression, continuously invading its internal cells, swallowing them, copying itself endlessly, and in the end replacing the original cells completely with its own body, taking over the places where the original cells had once operated.
Until eventually, the replaced cells began dividing into two identical cells, and the DNA of those newly divided cells also bore the characteristics of having been altered by the T-Virus.
It was as if everything had returned to normal.
Aside from the outward appearance of the cells having changed, nothing else seemed different.
But as the T-Virus cells continued to swallow and replicate within the gorilla's body, a fundamentally different transformation began to unfold.
At that moment, as if sensing the host's crisis,
large numbers of immune cells began rushing toward the invading new cells, intending to kill these foreign intruders.
After all, immune cells, commonly referred to as white blood cells, could be divided into many types, each playing a vital role in the body.
But their greatest function was to eliminate all external enemies and prevent internal disorder.
They could even kill cancer cells, which was enough to demonstrate how powerful they were.
And yet even these powerful cells were beaten back step by step when facing the T-Virus.
Many of them were even swallowed in reverse by the T-Virus, copied, and transformed into entirely new immune cells belonging to the T-Virus itself.
These newly born immune cells possessed even more terrifying power than before, capable of easily devouring any virus and any original immune cell they encountered for their own use.
In fact, after swallowing the viruses the researchers had previously injected into the gorilla's body, not only were the T-Virus-modified devouring cells able to kill and consume them with ease, but after doing so, the cells themselves became even stronger.
Then, as time gradually passed, all of the cells modified by the T-Virus launched a total offensive across the entire body at once.
And in the outside world, the researchers saw only that, as time passed, the black gorilla that had been trembling violently suddenly stopped.
Then, it opened its eyes.
Through those black pupils, it looked at its surroundings with a confused expression.
(End of Chapter)
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