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Chapter 89: This Cliffhanger Is Evil
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He smiled. Then he laughed; a bare, ragged, maniacal sound that echoed throughout. "So… much… Fucking FUN!" He gasped between bursts of pained laughter.
"What a rush! What a unique, spectacular experience!" The joy was genuine, euphoric.
The hunt, the trap, the psychological warfare, the final, high-altitude 'transaction'; living can be so lovely when it isn't within the confines of a cell.
He can not fucking believe he missed decades of life, of such lovely experiences, and he feels like that isn't even the worst-case scenario.
He mourns for those who have also only experienced misery in life. Sure, life is full of shit, but it has its moments, and it can be beautiful.
Adam could only pray for the unfortunates of the world. It sure can be cruel, he saw many facets of misfortune through his numerous eyes.
He saw people struggling for a job. People struggling with a job. People in such dire financial situations that they ignore health issues because they can not afford healthcare.
He saw people who contemplate suicide every day, but the thought of hurting their loved ones kept them from committing.
Then more, he saw despair, pain, agony, and all in between. He experienced many of them, so he understands.
Life is funny that way. Just let go of sanity. Smile and laugh at everything, treat it like a show, and it gets a lot better, just like now. Adam wanted to savor the happiness.
But there was no time. The last piece of the puzzle was now cooling in a vial within his suit.
He had maybe hours before Mephisto's distractions ran out, and the demon's gaze returned to him with furious intensity.
He angled the thrusters and shot toward the coordinates Alice provided, a private airstrip nestled in a valley fifty miles away.
He landed not with a graceful touch, but with a heavy, staggering thud beside a sleek, unmarked private jet.
The rear ramp was down. Standing there, out of the Iron Man armor which stood powered down in a secure cradle within the jet, was Tony Stark.
He was holding a tablet, but his eyes were scrutinizing, tracking Adam's unsteady, mechanical-limbed approach.
"Took you long enough," Tony called out, his usual bravado thinly layered over obvious exhaustion and lingering shock.
"Next time, I must remember to build a spare suit. Or three. Mine suffered greatly." His eyes flicked to the empty claws. "So? The vampire?"
Adam's mechanical arms walked him up the ramp, his own feet barely touching the ground.
His voice, when it came through the helmet speakers, was flat with strain. "Dead. Sunrise special. It's done."
He didn't so much enter the jet as the suit carried him in. He was hovering, a puppet suspended by his own metal appendages, his consciousness a fragile thing clinging to focus.
"I'm out of batteries, though. Need to recover. I've never bathed in so much blood in my life. It's like an orgy with redheads, not bad at all. Hahahaha," Adam sure managed to amuse himself.
Tony facepalmed, then watched him go, his mouth opening, then closing. He had a thousand questions.
The world had just violently expanded beyond terrorists and weapons deals.
It contained ancient vampire kings, weather control, and deals with actual demons.
Tony Stark did not believe in 'ignorance is bliss.' Knowledge, however cursed, was his only comfort.
This experience had injected a massive dose of paranoid preparation directly into his core.
He needed to know more. How deep did the rabbit hole go? And how much of it did Adam Cypher have mapped?
But the man was a ghost carried by his own machines into the jet's private rear compartment. The door shut behind him.
Tony was wrong to think Adam was seeking rest.
Inside the soundproofed, sealed compartment, the mechanical arms went to work with silent, terrifying efficiency.
Adam was laid gently on a reinforced medical table that unfolded from the wall.
The arms detached the suit core, letting the armor plates fall away, leaving him in his blood-stained undersuit.
One arm unsealed a heavy, black case. Inside, nestled in form-fitting foam, was the culmination of weeks of secret preparation.
Several large, cryogenically cooled syringes.
Multiple vacuum-sealed test tubes containing dark liquids.
A compact, terrifyingly advanced filtration and injection array.
One arm carefully retrieved the collection device from the suit.
It detached the vial now filled with Dracula's pulsating enzymatic essence and loaded it into a syringe.
Another arm unsealed itself along a seam. From a hidden, flexible reservoir within, it drained the ancient blood of Vlad Dracula into a sterile containment cylinder.
The blood was black, thick, and seemed to swallow the light, and it was now being filtered of as much of the toxin within as possible.
Adam's eyes, heavy-lidded with exhaustion, scanned the other components in the case.
Some contained his own synthesized solutions, brewed from vampire bat proteins and enzymes.
Others were labeled with a simple identifier: MORBIUS.
He had tracked down Michael Morbius before the desperate biochemist's final, tragic experiment.
The blood of the living man who was destined to become a unique, pseudo-vampiric entity was a priceless biological template.
And finally, there was a small, unlabeled ampoule. The blood collected by a stealthy micro-needle on one of his mechanical arms during the heat of battle, when Blade had been grazed and bled.
Dhampir blood. The blood that defied the curse.
He had everything.
"Alice," Adam whispered, his voice hoarse. "Initiate Sequence: Vampire. Set up the failsafe. If I flatline, or if biomarkers deviate into irreversible monstrous transformation… contact Jean Grey."
"Transmit my coordinates, or depending on how things go, put me in the suit and fly to Xavier's mansion. Tell her to bring Joshua. Tell her he'll know what to do. He'll… turn me back."
"Failsafe protocol registered," Alice's voice was soft in the compartment. "Sequence initiated. All biometrics are being monitored. Good luck, Master."
Luck, Adam thought, a faint smile on his pale lips as the mechanical arms, sterilized and ready, began their final dance.
Only about 40% of this is science. The rest… is a leap of faith. A calculated gamble with the metaphysical.
It was the biggest risk of his life. But the failsafe was in place. Joshua Foley, Elixir.
The mutant who could manipulate life and death on a biological level.
If this went wrong, if he became a mindless nosferatu or a slave to the bloodlust, Jean could bring Elixir to rewrite his biology, to 'turn him back' to human.
It was his escape clause.
There were, of course, a few more failsafes, but Adam doesn't have much hope for many of them.
However, if all fails, he has the final piece of the puzzle, what he's relying most on... [Information]
The mechanical arms, moving with the grace of a master surgeon guided by his Technopathic will, prepared his body.
Alcohol swabs, localized anesthetic, though he doubted it would help, and tourniquets.
One arm brought the syringe of Dracula's enzymes to his neck. The needle gleamed under the cold light.
Adam took one last, deep breath. The air smelled of antiseptic and his own anticipation. He closed his eyes.
"Begin."
The needle slid home.
Simultaneously, other arms activated. Lines were inserted into his major arteries.
One began to extract his own, toxin-laden blood. Another line began the transfusion, pumping the complex cocktail into his system.
The ancient vampiric enzymes, the synthesized bat enzymes, the blood of Morbius, the blood of Dracula, and finally, the delicate, balancing drop of dhampir essence from Blade.
He was pumped full of it all.
It was a flood of contradictions, of curses and powers warring for dominance within his veins.
A burning cold spread from the injection site, followed by an incredible, draining weakness.
His heartbeat, already faltering from blood loss and shock, began to slow. Thump thump… thump...
His breathing grew shallow. The colors behind his only biological eyelid darkened to a deep, velvet black.
The sounds of the jet's engines, the whirr of the equipment, it all faded into a distant, muffled silence.
He felt his body growing lighter, colder. The pain began to recede. He was certainly not healing. It was instead a profound numbness, a withdrawal from the living world. His chest barely rose and fell.
Thump…
His mind, usually a riot of chaos, grew quiet. Still. A profound, endless stillness, like the bottom of a deep, dark ocean.
Thump...
Then, nothing.
No heartbeat. No breath. No sound.
Adam Cypher lay perfectly still on the table, his skin pale as wax, his body a vacant shell.
[Hesitation is defeat, yeah, sure, but why the fuck did he not hesitate to commit spekku?]
[Wrap it up, guys! This is the finale! RIP Adam!]
[The failsafe is Elixir!? Tf? How did I not think of that? It makes so much sense.]
[I can't help but feel like this is such an idiotic thing to do. Like, why? There are so many ways to gain power in Marvel, why the risk?]
[The conspiracy community had already theorized that Adam has something more to him that we aren't fully aware of.]
[Well, what is it?]
[It's Envy, a second mutant power, or divinity. They believe that one of them is how he randomly gains power-ups.]
[Obviously, from the signs and clues, it must be Envy. It just makes sense. He envies others, so he gains their abilities.]
[That's the most recurring theory.]
[CLIFFHANGER Again?!!!!] [This CLIFFHANGER is EVIL!]
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[ 1000 Power Stones For An Extra Chapter! ]
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