Of course, after Zod became the Dark Knight, he wasn't going to run around saving the world all the time.
He wasn't that free. At most, he would go out once in a while for show, or only step in when the police truly couldn't handle it.
With the Daily Planet helping to promote him, plus Black Queen's powerful control over public opinion, negative reviews were deleted in seconds. Malicious smears on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram were wiped out just as fast. She even faked hacker attacks on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram's servers, creating room for Zod's "Spiderweb" to grow.
Spiderweb combined all the functions of Weibo, WeChat, QQ, TikTok, and Bilibili. It was the ultimate all-in-one platform. And since it was a Blade Technology Industries product, plenty of people who used it said it was great.
So now, you could basically find no dirt on Dark Knight Zod. The only exception was the Daily Bugle, which kept smearing Zod Heath nonstop.
Zod knew what kind of person the Bugle's boss was, so he didn't really care.
The key issue was DC Comics. Zod Heath personally paid them a visit, only to find they had just released the Batman series. Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and the others hadn't come out yet.
No idea whether that was good news or bad.
But Black Queen made a new discovery.
"The Life Foundation's manned spacecraft suffered an accident. Only one astronaut named John Jameson survived."
"The Life Foundation's next rocket is already prepared. Soon, they will begin another deep-space exploration mission."
This was the key information Black Queen dug up.
"The Life Foundation?" Zod's expression changed instantly.
This was the Venom movie storyline. The ship carried alien symbiotes.
What made it even more interesting was that the astronaut named John Jameson was the son of the Daily Bugle's owner.
In other words, this lucky survivor was the guy who once stole Peter Parker's girlfriend.
"But isn't the timeline off?" Zod felt it was strange.
Still, with symbiotes appearing, he couldn't just pretend he didn't see it. This was premium research material.
…
San Francisco was a famous hub for high-tech industries. The Life Foundation, a titan in cutting-edge fields, had its headquarters in this city.
With huge power and countless employees, it naturally had massive public visibility. And with that came weaker secrecy.
In Venom: Lethal Protector, four symbiotes arrived on Earth. Besides Venom and Riot, the other two were named Agony and Lasher.
Smoothly, Zod Heath, in Dark Knight form, walked straight in through the front door.
He couldn't help it. The security guards were insanely enthusiastic. Zod didn't even want to go in, but they refused to take no for an answer. They opened the gate and practically invited him inside.
Even the guards in the surveillance room came out to shake his hand, telling him to look around as he pleased, welcoming Dark Knight Zod to "guide their work."
Faced with their enthusiasm, Zod kept saying, "Of course, of course," while striding into a top-secret laboratory with "extremely strict" security.
Inside the sealed lab were two test subjects, both homeless men the Life Foundation had snatched off the street. They were hosts to Venom and Lasher.
The symbiote named Agony was already dead.
Sensing a powerful host approaching, Venom and Lasher both became excited. Zod was excited too. He felt symbiotes were basically biologically perfect lifeforms, like Xenomorphs. If he captured them for research, then maybe Super Beast Soldiers would finally be within reach.
Black Queen remotely opened the containment holding the two alien lifeforms. Venom and Lasher immediately abandoned their homeless hosts and lunged at Zod.
Zod had no desire to get covered in that sticky mess. He converted the energy in his body into ultra-low temperature. The ambient temperature dropped sharply, and with an ice-blue cold current visible to the naked eye, Venom and Lasher were frozen solid in mid-leap.
Then Zod grabbed one in each hand and took them away.
One of the three symbiotes was dead, and the remaining two were taken by an intruder. You didn't need to think hard to know the Life Foundation would explode tomorrow.
But that had nothing to do with Zod. He was just a passerby. The guards knew nothing. They'd only dozed off for a nap. As for the surveillance footage, well, last night a rat chewed through the power cable. The guilty rat had already been electrocuted into charcoal.
Zod first placed the two symbiotes into reinforced glass containers. This reinforced glass was mixed with vibranium. Even the Hulk couldn't break out.
"Black Queen, run a scan and inspection," Zod ordered.
He hadn't forgotten there was still a symbiote named Riot. In a few days, the Life Foundation would launch a rocket. If Venom wasn't there to stop Riot, Riot would return to his homeworld and bring a swarm of symbiotes to invade Earth.
Perfect. Zod wanted him to do exactly that. Anyway, the Ancient One wasn't dead yet. If the sky fell, the Ancient One would hold it up.
As for the Ancient One only caring about dimensional demon invasions and not alien invasions, Zod figured that since she cared about the possibility of him building a Hulk army, she should also care about the possibility of Earth becoming a symbiote planet.
Then Zod turned his head and saw the Ancient One standing right behind him.
Zod: …
The Ancient One smiled and nodded, then vanished. Venom vanished too. Only Lasher remained.
"Sir, would you like me to provide a vibranium target for you to vent your anger on?" Black Queen asked, unusually humanlike.
"Do I look like someone that irrational?" Zod shook his head.
No need to guess. The Ancient One took Venom, probably to give it to Eddie. Seriously, Ancient One, are you that free?
Doing everything personally like this, you're going to work yourself to death.
Lasher became Zod's research subject. Zod knew symbiotes were weak to high heat and sonic vibrations, but those weaknesses weren't impossible to overcome. Symbiotes had enormous potential. Through continuous evolution, they could counter their weaknesses, as long as they didn't get killed by those weaknesses too quickly.
And symbiotes had extremely high resistance to magic. They were practically a perfect match for Kryptonians, except Zod didn't want the feeling of being covered in slime.
As Zod expected, the Ancient One followed the future she had seen and gave Venom to Eddie.
Things went badly. The intruder Zod who visited last night had cleaned up perfectly, but Eddie and Dr. Danlen, who arrived later, were caught on camera by passersby and surveillance. They became targets of the Life Foundation.
After a tense, thrilling chain of high-speed chases that burned through budgets, Eddie, possessed by Venom, finally shook off the Life Foundation's pursuers.
"Damn it, what the hell happened today…"
Venom was like a wearable superhero or supervillain suit. Soaked through, Eddie crawled onto shore and collapsed beneath a utility pole, panting hard.
In a single day, there had been too much danger and adrenaline. His heart was still pounding. He'd never forget it for the rest of his life.
/-\
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