Chapter 74: Something's Wrong at the Nursery!
In the office.
Matthew was looking over the updated Pass with a satisfaction that had noticeably cut into the pressure left over from half a month of testing. He was still browsing through what the new theme had to offer when the phone on the desk went off.
Beep beep beep.
The ringtone, direct and businesslike, filled the room.
Matthew glanced at the screen.
Ada Wong.
The name was accompanied by a photo Ada had thoughtfully selected and installed herself.
"..."
"Hello?" He picked up.
The voice on the other end came through a beat later, carrying an unusual edge of seriousness. "Boss. Something's happened at the Nursery."
"!!"
The Nursery.
His most important ongoing System point project. He had put considerable money into keeping it running smoothly. He had even arranged for Fisk to quietly provide it cover. How was it possible for something to go wrong there?
"Walk me through it. Actually, no. I'll come myself."
After a moment's thought, Matthew decided to go in person.
In a certain sense, he considered the Nursery project more important to him than William Birkin had been to acquire.
Before long, a black Maybach pulled up in front of the Nursery.
Ada saw Matthew step out of the car and moved to meet him quickly. Whatever had happened had been sudden enough that she hadn't had time to put on makeup. There was still a trace of sleep in her expression.
"Boss. There's something genuinely strange about this one. It needs you to handle it personally."
"Strange?" Matthew's eyebrow lifted slightly. "Ada, things you'd describe as strange are not common."
"Give me the general picture before I go in."
"Right."
They stepped through the entrance together.
Ada hadn't gotten more than a few words in before Matthew raised a hand and stopped her.
"Ada. I think I can see what you mean by strange."
He was looking at a leaf hanging motionless in the air. A bat frozen in mid-flight. Dust particles suspended in place with no sign of settling.
Something surfaced in Matthew's expression that wasn't quite alarm, but was in that vicinity.
Time stop.
The Time Stone?
Or had the Ancient One shown up.
Either way, neither was a situation Matthew particularly wanted to be in.
"Contact the company. I want a perimeter set up. No one comes within a kilometer of the Nursery."
"Understood."
Ada had her phone out and the instructions passed within a few sentences.
They exchanged a look and walked deeper inside.
The Nursery was completely silent except for the sound of their own footsteps. The air itself seemed to have stopped moving.
Matthew walked the length of the corridor, his gaze moving over the pendulum clock frozen mid-swing at the far end, and over the children in the hallway caught mid-run in their pajamas, suspended in place. The strangeness of it settled deeper the further he went. Without deciding to, he felt the outer layer of his skin quietly armor itself.
"Ada. How did you find out about this? Did someone call you, or did the surveillance feed just stop moving?"
Ada, keeping pace beside him, answered calmly. "The Nursery's dedicated security monitoring team spotted it first. Protocol requires a check of every camera on the premises every thirty minutes, looking for anything unusual."
"They noticed that the timestamp in the upper corner was still advancing, but the footage itself wasn't moving. Like everything inside had frozen at a specific moment."
"Their first assumption was a technical fault with the cameras. Then they tried calling the director and the teaching staff. No answer. They tried the front security desk, the one that's supposed to be reachable twenty-four hours a day. Nothing."
"That's when they called me. But by the time I got here, I could see immediately that this was past anything I could handle on my own."
Ada's grip on the pistol in her hand was firm, and every sense she had was running at full capacity.
She had been through biohazard events. This was stranger than those. A biohazard was a containment failure, known parameters, recoverable situation. Whatever had caused this was still unknown, and the unknown was what warranted real caution.
Matthew glanced at the pistol in Ada's hand. Then at Ada's expression, which was entirely serious.
"...Ada. Is that your plan?"
Ada said nothing for a moment.
She looked at the small pistol in her hand, then replied with complete composure: "Better than nothing."
"...Fine. Once this is resolved, I'll have an enhancement injection prepared for you."
"The world ahead is only going to get more complicated. Your current combat capability and a handgun aren't going to be enough for it."
He was referring to the Spider-Man Enhancement Serum and the Green Goblin Serum, both of which the research division had finished developing only the previous day. In all the effort spent managing his mental load from the testing period, he hadn't had the chance to look at them properly yet. But this was as good an opportunity as any to let Ada try out the new product and experience what enhanced capability actually felt like.
"Oh? Is this something only I'm getting, or will Eleanor get one as well?"
Ada gave him a sideways look.
"First come, first served. She'll get one too."
"Hmm. And if I wanted to jump the queue?"
"That can be arranged. Depends on what you bring to the table."
They exchanged the banter and let it do what it was meant to do, which was take the edge off the silence.
Then Matthew went still.
In the dead quiet of the Nursery, he had picked up a third heartbeat. One that wasn't his or Ada's.
"Something on your mind, boss? Getting impatient?"
Ada had noticed him stop and was looking at him.
Matthew didn't respond to the joke this time. He pressed one hand gently downward, signaling her to stay where she was.
Then.
A flash.
Ada caught the afterimage of movement, and then Matthew was simply gone.
"..." Her expression shifted into something she didn't quite have a word for.
That fast?
Was this what those enhancement injections did? One shot and a person becomes something other than human?
On the other side of the grounds.
In an instant, Matthew had crossed the entire Nursery and come out into the wooded park beyond its boundary.
The heartbeat was coming from this direction.
His gaze moved across the undergrowth in the distance.
He found himself sincerely hoping that what was behind those bushes would not turn out to be a bald person.
He had thought, briefly, about approaching in full readiness. He decided against it. If the Ancient One was actually there, showing up combat-ready would read as a provocation. Possibly a threat.
And regardless of how ready he was, Matthew held no particular confidence that it would matter against the Sorcerer Supreme.
The woman was not joking around.
He walked toward the undergrowth.
"Excuse me... is this Master Ancient One?"
No response.
"..."
Matthew parted the bushes.
A small figure appeared in front of him. A child, dressed in pajamas, eyes glowing a flat, opaque white. Clearly conscious of nothing around them.
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