Victor Von Doom was a genius—but to what degree? Little Kitty had managed to speak at four months old under Bella's "patient guidance," but Victor Von Doom could remember everything that had happened around him from the moment he was born. Part of that was thanks to his witch of a mother, but it also spoke volumes about his sheer intellect.
In adulthood, his trajectory had been nothing short of smooth sailing.
Whether it was cutting-edge research or running a company, he excelled at both. Unlike 006, Obadiah, or Norman Osborn—who still relied on advisors to break down the finer details—Victor Von Doom was a walking encyclopedia. There was nothing the man didn't understand. What made him truly terrifying was that he wasn't purely a scientist. Modern sports, competitive disciplines, literature, philosophy, poetry, equestrian arts—name a field, and he'd mastered it.
He was the scientist among businessmen, and the businessman among scientists.
At that moment, the technical staff each CEO had brought along were reporting back to their respective bosses.
006 was listening to his team's briefing as well.
"This technology is extremely difficult to replicate. In principle, it's essentially a hive structure with mechanical components grafted onto a biological base. The real challenge isn't the mechanical side—it's the queen's neural network. Humans would have an incredibly hard time replicating something like this..."
Since they were inside the Pentagon, everyone was wary of surveillance devices and chose their words carefully. The Weyland scientists in particular knew their company's real priorities. The technician kept things deliberately vague—the subtext being this stuff is worthless; let's go home and keep working on our own spaceship.
006 nodded without a flicker of emotion. The other CEOs didn't look too happy either.
It wasn't that the technology was unusable. The catch was that you'd have to transform humans into something resembling those aliens first—and that was a sacrifice nobody was willing to make. No one wanted to end up looking like that.
Next, they moved on to examine the alien corpses and their weapons.
These aliens had come to Earth searching for water resources. Their body structure was remarkably simple: once you sawed through several layers of chest plates resembling diaphragms, you found a cavity similar to a human heart chamber—except theirs was filled with viscous fluid.
The biologists on-site concluded that these aliens relied on this fluid to sustain their bodies. Because there was so little of it—not enough to circulate through an entire system the way human blood did—their limbs were extremely thin and frail. In combat, they had to wear what amounted to low-spec Predator armor just to move, jump, or attack.
Without armor, these aliens were dead weight with zero mobility.
"These are just beggars who crawled here from God knows where! If humanity tries to learn from this garbage, we won't be far from extinction ourselves." Victor Von Doom was young, brash, and famously arrogant as a billionaire—he showed the Pentagon zero courtesy and opened with pure mockery.
The way he told it, the reason America had gotten hammered so badly wasn't because the aliens were strong. It was because the U.S. military was too weak.
"So does Mr. Doom have a better solution?" The President had just finished two grueling meetings full of bureaucratic finger-pointing and rushed to the scene. Von Doom's arrogance could only be ignored—right now, all he wanted to know was what humanity should do if aliens invaded again.
"My solution?" Victor Von Doom let out a cold laugh. He walked over and ripped the chest plate off one of the alien bodies.
"This piece of tech is barely passable," he said. "Manufacture remotely controlled mechanical soldiers. Mechanical soldiers feel no fear. They don't fear death. Most critically, they obey orders absolutely. Hand this project to Von Doom Industries, and I'll build you an unlimited army of them. You'll be able to control these soldiers the same way you control drones. I won't promise miracles, but Congress could slash the defense budget by at least thirty percent."
The President exchanged a few hushed words with his aides, then gently shook his head. This proposal was dead on arrival.
It was politically unworkable.
The military was in the middle of a propaganda blitz around Benjamin Asher's heroism, encouraging young people to enlist. If the President greenlit a mechanical soldier program now, it would be a full-blown declaration of war against the brass—and he'd be branded a coward on top of it.
Even setting politics aside, the economics alone made it a non-starter.
If wars were fought entirely by machines, how was the Department of Defense supposed to justify its five-hundred-billion-dollar annual budget?
The DoD had just been clamoring for increased defense spending. And now someone wanted to replace human soldiers with robots—and cut the budget by thirty percent? Over their dead bodies.
If the President handed that contract to Victor Von Doom, the military-industrial complex would start another war just to spite him.
The President studied Victor Von Doom. The young man had talent and ambition. Unfortunately... he didn't understand politics.
And so, from start to finish, the man who'd never deigned to respect politicians—who lived by the creed that his fate was his own to command—found himself quietly edged out of the arms procurement circle without ever understanding why.
His face was a picture of bewilderment. Mechanical soldiers were more efficient, easier to control, and cheaper once you set up production lines—how could the military not want them? He felt his genius had been ignored, and the more he stewed on it, the angrier he got.
At the tail end of this combined exhibition and weapons procurement fair, the military unveiled the showpiece.
If Bella had been there, she would have recognized it instantly—it was one of Barricade's arms.
Cybertronian technology immediately set the room of businessmen ablaze with interest. This was on an entirely different level of sophistication, far more suited to human research—ten thousand times more valuable than anything those beggar aliens had brought.
Even Victor Von Doom, who'd been about to leave, came back for a closer look.
Where this thing came from, how it was obtained, what exactly it was—the military kept its mouth shut, refusing to give a straight answer.
006 smirked to himself. He'd met Bumblebee, Shatter, and Red Knight personally. One glance was all it took—this was from the robots known as Cybertronians.
Not wanting to arouse suspicion, 006 jumped into the bidding war alongside everyone else. In the end, the mechanical arm went to Stark Industries, which had the deepest pockets.
The U.S. government and Department of Defense subdivided their holdings of alien tech by discipline. Companies with expertise in aerospace materials were assigned to study the spacecraft. Companies specializing in pharmaceuticals or protective gear were directed toward the alien corpses. The remaining pile of defense contractors got the alien weaponry.
All told, over a hundred major projects were parceled out. The DoD made a solemn promise: whichever company produced a viable breakthrough first would get the procurement contracts. There was no shortage of orders—they weren't worried about companies succeeding. They were worried about companies failing.
The Department of Defense didn't need the patents. They were only responsible for spending money and using the results.