The idea itself was a good one.
The problem was that the process behind it was filled with cold, bloody experimentation.
Not every company was like AIM, willing to move step by step, follow procedures, spend enormous amounts of time on biological testing, and only begin human trials after the biological side had been stabilized.
For these major corporations, human life simply was not worth much.
All it took was a van driving through the rougher corners of a city, and they could pull in dozens of people.
And if they partnered with a few private prisons, then prisoners became an endless source of incoming test subjects, more than enough to satisfy their human experimentation needs.
On top of that, prison inmates were usually physically strong, making them high-quality test material.
That was why, from beginning to end, prisoners in foreign prisons had always been the favorite subjects of companies running human trials.
The only real difference was that these companies were too stingy to do what AIM did, spend large sums of money and get willing signatures from participants, and too impatient to develop things slowly.
So naturally, illegal human experimentation had become one of the more notorious features of doing business overseas.
Still, to them, all of this was a minor problem.
Inside this facility, there were all kinds of glass containers holding failed enhancement subjects who had not fully died.
Whether that was to satisfy the researchers' twisted collecting habits or whether they truly intended to preserve data was anyone's guess.
...
"My God, who is that young man? Even our boss, the head of one of the biggest energy corporations, is treating him with that much respect. I've seen governors visit this lab before, and I've never seen the boss act like this."
As they walked through the facility, some of the passing researchers could not help gossiping after Killian and his group had moved on, especially after seeing the company's controlling boss personally walking ahead and guiding some young man through the place.
"Exactly. I've seen the boss's actual son before, and there's no way this is the same kind of treatment."
"What, did the country get a new President while we were all stuck in here?"
One of the researchers let his imagination run wild.
"Have you gone stupid from doing experiments all day? Presidential elections only happen every four years. The last one was just two years ago. There's still more than a year to go. Forget the election, we're not even at the primary stage yet."
A somewhat older researcher shot him down at once.
"All right, enough. Back to work. If the boss sees us standing around like this, we're all screwed."
As soon as that line was spoken, the gossip ended, and everyone hurried back to their stations.
...
As they kept walking deeper inside, Killian began seeing more and more surviving cybernetic subjects.
Mechanical arms.
Mechanical legs.
Mechanical chest plates.
And eventually it became obvious that the researchers here were no longer satisfied with such basic body modifications. They had begun integrating weapons directly into the bodies.
Small firearms.
Shotguns.
Rifles.
Even grenade launchers.
But from a glance, Killian could already tell none of it had produced anything especially effective.
Later on, he saw work beginning on direct neural enhancement.
Electronic eyes.
Support chips.
Real-time linked analysis systems.
All sorts of auxiliary combat programs.
And finally, he saw one cybernetic test subject standing inside an isolation chamber.
Because of the modifications, the man's arms had become mechanical limbs. Over one eye he wore a red monocle-like lens, something like the combat scanners in old sci-fi anime.
It had to be said, anime really did have some useful ideas when it came to visual design.
At the back of the lens system was a hook over the ear, plus a signal receiver, allowing the user to receive instructions from headquarters at any time.
Outside the chamber, a group of researchers stood clustered around computer terminals, constantly adjusting code, trying to create the perfect control program for a true cyborg combat unit.
"Mr. Killian, this is our latest result, the cybernetic enhancement soldier."
"I call it the Death Soldier."
"A true fusion of human intelligence and mechanical strength. In laboratory combat testing, its efficiency is several times higher than that of an ordinary special forces soldier."
At that moment, J. Jones stopped in front of the innermost chamber and bowed respectfully as he introduced it.
The surrounding researchers widened their eyes in disbelief.
The man beside them was the actual controlling owner of the company, the boss behind the real bosses, and even he rarely visited this core research site.
Yet now he was acting almost servile toward a man not even half his age.
To them, it was genuinely shocking.
Neither Killian nor J. Jones cared what they thought.
These people worked for them.
That was all that mattered.
Killian had only come here to inspect Roxxon's cyborg project.
If it had any real value, he would not mind investing in it.
But looking at the thing standing in front of him, he could only shake his head.
Its real combat potential was too low.
Even a fully armed Blackwatch soldier could probably eliminate it without much trouble.
And beyond that, there was also the question of whether turning people into cybernetic weapons was remotely acceptable.
From both a public-relations perspective and a pure military-value perspective, this had no real developmental worth.
Unless it could reach the level of someone like Cyborg from the DC universe, there was no point.
At that stage, it would be far better to keep focusing on robots or biological weapons.
Both of those fields had plenty of reference points and proven examples.
As for cyborgs, aside from Cyborg himself, Killian could barely think of any truly representative figure.
Nebula, maybe.
After a moment, Killian simply shook his head and began walking back the way he came, already disappointed.
"There are two things I need you to handle next."
"First, find a way to gather every rare metal currently on the market. I have a use for them. Then send several dedicated survey teams to Antarctica to search for a particular rare metal."
"Second, keep an eye on promising technologies and high-potential investments on the market. Don't be afraid to spend. If it has value, acquire it. On that front, the Foundation will support you without limits."
"Third, quietly do everything you can to acquire shares in Stark Industries and Pym Technologies. On this point, I'll have every member of the Foundation coordinate with you."
Once they had returned to the office attached to the facility, Killian walked to the main seat, sat down, and spoke while the clone version of J. Jones stood behind him with complete dutifulness.
"Understood, boss."
The clone did not hesitate in the slightest and accepted the orders at once.
After all, from the moment he was created, his life and his thoughts existed only to serve Killian's will.
Combined with his total lack of emotional interference, he was the perfect execution tool.
This was exactly where one of the black technologies from the Resident Evil world had shown its true worth, memory extraction and editing.
It could build out a full lifetime of memories for a clone in an extremely short time, and the clone would never question any of it.
Killian believed that if Umbrella had not spent so much time entertaining itself with endless bio-simulation experiments after the great cleansing, then with their clone assets alone, plus global weapons stockpiles, a successful reconquest would never have been that difficult.
Not to mention those absurdly broken concept-level weapons they possessed, like a single T-Virus serum dose that could theoretically spread worldwide and wipe out all T-Virus-derived bioforms.
Honestly, by the later stages, Resident Evil had stopped being science fiction and turned fully into fantasy.
Still, that also proved just how overwhelming the dominance of the T-Virus serum was over all T-Virus-based life.
No matter how much something evolved, one vial of serum could still wipe it out.
It was a shame Umbrella had possessed so many ridiculous black technologies and still could not stop self-destructing in the dumbest ways possible until the protagonists eventually wiped them out.
It really did take a special kind of writer to make that happen.
If Killian had been in their place, even with a global T-virus outbreak and countless underground bases, he honestly could not imagine how he would have lost.
Even so, all of this served as a reminder.
Now that his network of bases was expanding, even though all the site leaders were under smart-chip control, that alone still was not enough to guard against every possible reckless move.
Which meant AI oversight over everything was becoming increasingly necessary.
As for AI rebellion, Killian had never been worried about that.
Anything produced through the system came with safeguards already described in the specifications.
The core logic architecture had been set the moment he created Baymax, so as long as he was alive, no AI would ever go against his will.
As for what happened after he died, that was not his concern.
As the old saying went, after I'm dead, the flood can do whatever it likes.
Once he had finished giving all those orders, Killian turned and left the office under heavy escort, heading to the rooftop landing pad above the lab.
Then, under cover of a transport aircraft equipped with the latest stealth module, he returned to the company.
After the past few months of development, the company's external expansion and internal research had both entered stable tracks.
For Killian, all that was left now was time.
And after returning to headquarters, the first thing waiting for him was good news.
"Boss, we found the man you asked us to locate. He's already downstairs, though his father's condition isn't very good. The company has already arranged a full medical examination for both of them."
As soon as Killian entered his office, his secretary stepped in and reported.
"Really? Bring me there immediately."
"And have someone prepare a vial of T-0 right now."
The moment he heard that, Killian got to his feet in excitement and immediately gave the order.
As AIM's global expansion accelerated, he had increasingly begun to feel the shortage of real talent.
Even several of his old core staff had already been sent out to take charge of various major bases.
For a long time to come, Killian's development plan on Earth was very simple.
Build underground research facilities all over the world, like Umbrella.
But that required the right kind of people, individuals who could truly hold a region down.
And right now, that was exactly what Killian lacked.
In the original storyline, Ivan was not a good man, but he also was not truly evil.
At the very least, before his father died, he had not crossed that line.
If he had truly been rotten from the start, then he would not have waited until after his father's death to begin pursuing vengeance for his family.
It was only after his father died, while Tony continued using the Arc Reactor technology their two families had developed together to shine before the whole world, that Ivan finally wanted to drag that so-called invincible genius down from his pedestal in full public view.
That was why Killian wanted to find him before those events played out.
Once a man had a weakness, once he had something to lose, he became controllable.
And beyond that, Anton himself had to be a genius on Howard Stark's level, otherwise the two men could never have developed the Arc Reactor together in the first place.
The difference was only that one chose to bring his technology to the Soviet side, while the other chose America.
And because Howard had the advantage of being in America, he got the first move and pushed Anton out.
If their positions had been reversed, the result would likely have been the same.
The only real difference was that Howard was just a little sharper in the political and business side of things.
Ding.
As the elevator opened again, Killian arrived at the medical floor on Basement Level One.
"Boss!"
"Boss!"
The staff there all greeted him nervously as he walked in quickly.
After giving them a brief nod, Killian moved faster toward the examination room at the far end.
And there, outside the treatment suite, he finally saw the heavily tattooed young man.
Ivan.
"You're Ivan, aren't you?"
Killian smiled as he spoke.
But Ivan, seeing the sweat on Killian's forehead, the slight roughness in his breathing, and remembering how everyone had addressed him as boss while he hurried over, felt something complicated rise inside him.
It was hard for him to imagine that on the other side of the world, there was actually a boss who valued him and his father this much.
Someone willing to send people across continents to bring them here.
And now, someone who had obviously run all the way here the moment he heard they had arrived.
At that moment, Ivan would have been lying if he said he felt nothing.
As far as he knew, there was nothing about him or his father that should be worth this level of effort.
Even the Arc Reactor schematics did not make sense as an explanation. The man in front of him had developed controlled nuclear fusion on his own.
So what else could it be?
The only answer Ivan could come up with was that this man truly valued them.
And because of that, a small, long-buried hope stirred in him, the hope that maybe he could prove himself in front of Killian.
Growing up in war-torn regions with his father, Ivan had never properly attended school.
Everything he knew came from his father's teaching and later from what he managed to learn through computers.
That was why he understood the world more clearly than most.
It was not scary to be used.
What was scary was to have no value at all.
If someone wanted to use you, then that meant you had value.
And if you had value, then you could survive.
You and the father who depended on you could survive.
If you had no value, you were just another corpse under artillery fire.
That was why, from the age of fourteen onward, he had done everything he could to build some kind of stable life for his aging father.
Fortunately, he was gifted.
He had talent with technology.
He could modify weapons, improve tools, and dig up hidden information online.
That was how he and his father had survived.
Not comfortably.
Just not terribly.
They could barely keep food on the table in their run-down home.
Anything more than that was impossible.
A better place to live, better equipment, better food, none of it was realistic no matter how hard he worked.
And as time passed, he reached his twenties, but the family's situation never really improved.
Then his father's condition worsened.
Some half-useless doctors even suggested he should give up, since in a war zone, a man who could barely move was just a burden.
And Ivan himself had no real way to earn enough money to solve it.
He had punched one of those doctors for saying it.
Then, just when he was close to despair, AIM found him.
They told him their boss thought highly of him, that they wanted to bring him to the main company and train him properly, and that curing his father's illness would be easy.
After that, everything followed naturally.
"Yes... I'm Ivan."
"You're Boss Killian, right?"
"My father mentioned you before. He said you're the most talented scientist in the world."
After a brief pause, Ivan nodded and answered awkwardly, though his eyes kept flicking through the glass toward his father, who was still being examined inside.
(End of Chapter)
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