Chapter 189: The Whereabouts of Apocalypse, the First Mutant
The cleanup was smooth from start to finish. Five minutes, beginning to end.
The abilities Matthew harvested from the enhanced patients were, by his estimation, mostly underwhelming. That said, he operated on a firm principle of never wasting a resource, and so he ran the Evolution Field across all of them without exception, absorbing everything they had. The abilities that had no practical application were broken down and fed as raw fuel into the ones that did.
And through this round of absorption, the Gravity Manipulation that had been sitting at LV6 finally moved.
It broke through to LV8.
The effective range expanded to ten thousand meters. The maximum force output climbed from two hundred tons per square meter to five hundred tons per square meter.
This was, by any honest measure, the first genuine qualitative leap the ability had made.
From here on, it was no longer just a crowd-control tool.
The Blacklight Virus itself, after consuming this many enhanced individuals in rapid succession, had also begun evolving at a pace that was difficult to ignore.
Strength. Speed. Mental acuity.
With enough fuel finally flowing through it, the Blacklight Virus was beginning to demonstrate what the word "evolution" actually meant.
Matthew could already feel it.
One catalyst. That was all it would take for the Blacklight Virus to cross into the next tier of existence entirely.
He had a general idea of what that catalyst needed to be.
Apocalypse.
As the first mutant in recorded history, Apocalypse was a walking archive of mutant genetics, carrying within him the capacity to amplify and accelerate evolution itself. As a next course for the Blacklight Virus, he was nearly perfect.
That said, if something stronger happened to present itself first, Matthew was entirely open to it.
The Phoenix, for instance, would do nicely.
Unfortunately, the Phoenix Force was in a category of dangerous that made the word "dangerous" feel inadequate, and there was currently neither a good opening nor a viable approach. So for now, Apocalypse remained the primary target.
To track Apocalypse's trail in this world, Matthew had pulled every connection he had access to, including, at no small expense, purchasing a batch of intelligence on Apocalypse directly from Nick Fury.
He had already narrowed the search to a rough area. One more round of detailed investigation and he would have the exact location of the oldest mutant's hiding place.
Outside the Institute for the Study of the Abnormally Empowered.
The soldiers and agents who had watched the entire operation through drone feeds and remote observation equipment were wearing expressions that didn't have a clean description.
They had pulled back to the required two-kilometer perimeter for safety. Even at that distance, the muffled detonations from deep inside the facility had reached them clearly, and the drone footage had given them a real-time education in what a strategic-level threat actually looked like.
One young agent stared at the screen.
On the feed, the building's walls were being pushed outward and twisted back in by some invisible force, the structure rotating and warping like a Rubik's cube being worked by invisible hands. Between floors, heavy impacts produced muffled concussive sounds. Cracks in the outer walls had begun weeping red.
His throat moved.
"God..." he murmured, barely above a whisper.
"Is that still a human being?"
"One person. He's more frightening than an entire army."
"I think that's what they mean by 'an army of one,'" said an older soldier standing nearby, exhaling slowly. "As for whether he still qualifies as human..."
He clicked his tongue.
"At that level, to people like us, he's a god. A god walking among men."
Inside SHIELD.
Nick Fury had his one eye fixed on the screen for a long time, the footage of what could only be described as a hell dimension reflected back at him. He said nothing for a while.
Then he pressed something out through clenched teeth.
"...Mother... that money was... worth every damn cent."
He was not the kind of employer who resented a contractor for finishing too fast. The opposite, in fact. The faster it was done, the more capable the person. And the more capable Matthew was, the better Fury felt about the arrangement.
A powerful asset who could be engaged with money was, by any reasonable measure, good for him and good for the world.
He was in the middle of quietly congratulating himself that Matthew hadn't decided to go rogue and become the kind of problem that ended civilizations, when the familiar voice came through his earpiece.
"Nick Fury. You can send your people in to handle the scene now."
"Appreciated," Fury said, his tone gruff.
A brief silence on the other end. Then, delivered with complete flatness: "...That said. Saying you appreciate it doesn't reduce what you owe me by a single cent."
Fury: ...
Damn this mercenary. Absolutely transactional.
He swallowed the internal commentary and kept his voice professional. "Don't worry. Everything I promised, you'll get in full."
"Actually. About that investigation you asked me to run on the ancient mutant, Apocalypse. We have a new lead."
"Oh?" Matthew's tone shifted with mild interest. "And what exactly does this new lead of yours cost me?"
Fury's mouth curved slightly. "Come on. Talking about money ruins the mood."
"How about this one's on the house."
Free?
...The free ones are always the most expensive.
Matthew answered without hesitation. "No thank you."
"I've understood since I was a child that chasing small savings leads to large losses."
"Let's keep this on a business footing. That way the money doesn't get tangled up in goodwill when I'm pricing the next job."
"What do you say, Director Fury?"
Fury, listening to a man whose every sentence involved money, rubbed his forehead.
How does someone end up more mercenary than him? Has this man literally fallen into a pile of cash and never found his way out?
He grumbled about it internally and agreed out loud. "Fine."
"Same rate as usual. Twenty million."
"Deduct it from this job's payment. Saves us both the back-and-forth."
With the payment method settled, Fury laid out what SHIELD had found on Apocalypse.
"Based on field surveys and resident interviews our agents conducted, we've narrowed the location down to something credible. He appears to be somewhere deep inside a pyramid ruin in Cairo, Egypt. The specific ruin hasn't been identified yet, which is where we'd need your people to pick up the search."
"There are a lot of pyramids and a lot of ruins scattered around the Cairo area. Running physical site checks on all of them would take our people an unreasonable amount of time and manpower. So..."
"Understood," Matthew said, cutting him off cleanly. "That's just SHIELD being short-staffed as usual."
"I'll send someone. Don't worry about it." He ended the call without further conversation.
He glanced at the crowd still standing outside with phones raised, decided there was nothing left to deal with here, and opened a portal.
One step, and he was back at the office.
Word of Vought's collapse had spread everywhere by now.
With HYDRA confirmed behind the company's operations, SHIELD had launched a full-scale investigation. The streets outside were a steady procession of agency and police vehicles, every one of them packed with Vought's mid- and senior-level staff being taken in. Even members of the Seven were being picked up one after another for questioning, on the basis that their HYDRA ties were considered highly probable.
Matthew stood at the window and watched the company that had been his direct competitor until yesterday now being processed like stray dogs picked up off the street. He let out a quiet, satisfied sound, then shifted his gaze to the flock of crows circling outside the glass.
His attention locked onto one in particular.
In its talons: a blue vial. In its beak: a USB drive.
"Faster than I expected," he murmured, and reached over to open the window.
The crows continued circling outside for a moment after the window opened, as if checking that no one was watching.
Then, one by one, they slipped inside.
The black flock gathered and churned in the center of the room, and from that mass, a figure solidified and stepped forward.
Miranda.
She was dressed in ordinary civilian clothes this time. The wariness in her eyes hadn't gone away.
"Matthew Lawrence." Her voice was even.
"I've done what you asked. I have the Compound V samples and all the research files."
"Now. You'll give Eva back to me."
Eva. Her daughter's name.
Matthew heard the careful, guarded edge in her voice and kept his tone measured. "Relax. I keep my word."
He picked up the radio on his desk. "Hunk. Bring Eva up, please."
About two seconds passed. The reply came back short. "Yes, sir."
Miranda stood and watched him across the room, a weight sitting in her chest that hadn't lifted.
Then the door opened.
A small figure stepped carefully into the office.
The weight dropped.
"Eva!" Miranda called out, her voice sharp with relief.
"Eva, come here." Matthew crouched down and spoke quietly.
Eva, standing in the doorway, glanced at Miranda once with uncertain eyes, then ran to Matthew's side.
He lifted her onto the sofa and smiled down at her. "Eva. Happy to see your mom?"
"Yes!" Eva nodded emphatically, then reached out and took a square of chocolate from Matthew's hand, unwrapped it with practiced efficiency, and pushed it into her mouth.
Matthew watched her chew with obvious contentment, gave her head a light pat, then turned to face Miranda.
"Miss Miranda. I imagine you may have had some doubts about me before now."
"But during her time here, I genuinely did look after her as though she were my own."
"I arranged for her to attend a good school. She made friends. In her free time she visited an aquarium, a zoo, and an amusement park."
"With that in mind... can I have what you brought?"
Miranda pulled her gaze away from Eva's happy face slowly.
Eva's expression confirmed everything Matthew had said. Miranda was quiet for a moment, then tossed the USB drive and the Compound V sample across to him.
Snap. He caught both cleanly and pocketed them.
"Lawrence. I can take her now?" Miranda asked, her voice steady.
"Of course."
Matthew spread his hands, then reached into his desk drawer and set a bank card on the surface.
"Don't read into it. This is for Eva's sake."
"The kid's genuinely likable. And she has been calling me her brother." He glanced over at Eva, still working on the chocolate.
"Fifty million dollars is on that card. Six sixes for the PIN. Enough for the two of you to live comfortably for a very long time."
"You're also welcome to stay and keep working here, if you'd prefer."
"No." Miranda's answer was immediate.
She spoke next through a psychic transmission directed at Matthew alone.
"I won't have her growing up in that kind of environment. The politics. The constant risk."
"And... you can stop worrying. I won't come after you. Not openly, not from the shadows."
"The only thing I want now is to be with Eva. To give back every moment I wasn't there for her, one by one."
She crossed the room to Eva and placed both hands gently on her daughter's cheeks.
"Eva. Let's go."
"Go?" Eva looked up, confused. "Aren't we staying? Brother Lawrence is so nice to me."
"No." Miranda glanced at Matthew once.
"Brother Lawrence has other things to take care of."
"If you want to come visit him sometime, we can do that."
Eva turned to Matthew with wide, questioning eyes. "Really?"
Matthew gave her head a gentle pat. "Of course. Come by whenever you miss me."
Eva broke into a wide smile and threw her arms around Miranda.
"Bye!" she called, waving her small hand.
"Goodbye," Miranda said quietly.
Matthew watched the two of them leave, hand in hand, until their figures disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall.
Hunk, who had been standing at the door, spoke once they were gone. "Sir. You're just letting her go like that?"
"Of course. What was I supposed to do, keep her here by force like some kind of villain?"
"There's an old saying. Part well, and part on good terms." Matthew picked up the Compound V sample and the USB drive and handed both to Hunk.
"Give these to William. Have him use Veronica to run accelerated improvements and move them into production."
"The Astartes line still needs continued upgrades." He was about to leave it there, then thought of something. "One more thing."
"Has Aldrich Killian been behaving himself lately? I seem to recall he was showing signs of wanting to lift company files a while back."
Hunk, who had been about to leave, stopped. "Sir. Since your last warning, the Red Queen has been monitoring Killian's activity closely. There have been no irregular actions recently."
"Good." Matthew nodded.
"I gave him a chance. If he makes a move, don't bother telling me. Deal with it directly."
A cold look passed through Matthew's eyes.
The larger the company grew, the more tightly its internal data and proprietary information needed to be controlled. Leaks were the kind of thing that ended companies.
Vought was right there as the cautionary example, and the wreckage was still warm.
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