The three spies rushed down the hatch as the vibrations grew stronger, and already they could hear the heavy booms and explosions that told of the escalating fight already going on.
"Call for standby." Clint called out as they lasered their way out of the vent into the facility.
"Already did." Yelena said, her face twisting into a frown as the explosions grew heavier as they got closer. An arc of lightning tore through the floor carrying a lump of metal with it. "Fuck."
They slowed down, having an idea of who exactly was doing the fighting, but that did not mean they relaxed.
Clint looked at Natasha and gave her a nod which the Widow returned before making her exit. With Natasha off to do whatever, Clint and Yelena moved with trained precision until they came across the remnants of the fight.
"Well lookie here. Quite far from ya ends, eh?" Logan, the Wolverine, only looked amused when two sights trained in on his head.
"We could say the same about you. You don't do weather like this."
"I like the cold." Logan remarked.
"Not this cold," Yelena tittered with an amused snort before dropping her guns as Clint lowered his bow. "Why the excursion?" she asked.
Logan's ears twitched as he caught some movements and briefly ignored the question as he tracked it down.
Their short search led them to some type of storage floor where an elevator just dinged and two armed guards stepped out, looking shocked to find them there.
Before Logan could lift himself at them and before they could raise their gun, their bodies slumped to the ground with blood splatters as two pinpoint holes were added to the natural mold of their head.
Logan grunted irritably and moved to the elevator, pushing the two bodies out with his leg, frowning as he stepped into the box.
"This goes down, except there are no buttons."
"Excuse me, ladies." Clint said and gave an extra sway as he moved to the intercom, took out a drive from his pockets and held it over a port on the intercom, watched it transform into a suitable internal, before jabbing it in.
"Well get on." The elevator carried them exactly two floors down, one floor below the last.
"This was definitely not on the floor plan." Yelena whistled as they walked through the huge underground-underground basement. "He did not stop."
It was an idle observation given the fact that robots parts and other pieces of unidentified machinery littered the place.
"There's nothing here." Logan hissed and walked away. The sight kindled a certain type of forgotten hatred within him that all but pushed him to drive his claws into something, preferably someone.
The two of them said nothing as they watched Logan leave. Clint nocked an arrow and shot it at the head of a broken bot while Yelena paced around, marking and tagging things.
"Let's leave."
.
....
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Norman Osborn stared at the man behind the counter, his mind racing through thought processes he never thought his brain could compute. With this, what was the Arc Reactor that he couldn't reinvent? What were Unstable Molecules that he couldn't revise? Forget Tony Stark and that upstart Reed Richards. He would be the face of the future. His mind would architect humanity's rise, with him at the helm.
A joyful cackle that was filled with malice filled his head with a soulful cacophony. He had arrived at the door and behind that door is everything he ever wanted.
He looked at the shop keeper. The pitiful guard poster by the door. An instrument to his rise.
The NZT was working, he knew without a shadow of a doubt. Then that meant that the others too could work. Would work.
The grin on his face now felt natural. It could be because he could now control his facial muscles with pinpoint precision.
He looked at the man and his mind easily supplied how the man's facial expressions, even though they changed, could not be read any deeper than the surface level.
He wanted to wave it off, a salesman who could keep a good poker face, but his mind had expanded to the point that it didn't leave things up to idle ignorance. The more it met a wall in trying to read something other than surface expressions in Isaac, the more it became frantic, and from frantic it became desperate. And in desperation, it slowly engaged caution.
Because of how stonewalled his mind was when it came to Isaac, his brain tried reading anything that would help it get a read into Isaac; his perfume, the crease on his shirt, the way he breathed, his heart rate, even the air he was breathing in — it all came back as an error.
Before Norman could do anything as plebian as panicking, his mind neatly supplied a working theory that maybe a peddler of goods such as these was not as normal as he looked. It was a pregnant theory, one Norman accepted on a basis, but that did not stay his action.
Whoever the real manufacturer of these things were, they will be glad to know that should they prove reliable, they will have Norman Osborn as a customer.
"I'll take all of them." He said with confidence. It was a few dozen million and while pragmatism would say not to spend such an exorbitant amount of money on a pawnshop, Norman had something else in mind.
The mad cackle inside his skull increased.
"Sure thing, Mr. Osborn." The man moved about with an easy pace, almost as if gliding through it with unnatural grace, and slowly placed everything on the counter before Norman.
The first thing Norman picked up was the glowing blue vial – the Compound V. He tried uncocking it but quickly found that he could not, despite his inhuman strength. It puzzled him softly before he looked at the owner who gave him an apologetic smile.
"Sorry about that, but you'll have to make a transaction to use something as expensive as that." The man said, causing Norman to snort.
He allowed the drug to be taken and said nothing but refrained from giving Norman the Compound V. It was common sense but still it grated in his nerves.
The man didn't flinch when his unnatural smile broadened in his face and all his brain did was catalogue it for future reference.
He brought out his card, a black gold metal card and still the man's smile remained. Not surprise, not greed, not excitement — just a calm smile as he took it and proceeded the payment.
"If this doesn't work…." He left the threat unfinished because the smile on his face said it all.
The man remained smiling and this time when Norman cocked the vial, it seamlessly opened. Just before he drank it, still under the confidence of the NZT-48, his mind presented a query that gave him pause, straight from his area of expertise.
"This serum, is it perfected, is it a prototype?"
"In a way it is perfected." Isaac replied, making Norman frown.
"Explain."
Instead of jumping into the explanation, Isaac opened up the catalog and slid it over to Norman, his fingers pointing at a particular section.
"Compound V is experimental in nature and while the one you hold in your hands is the more baseline strain for adults, plus it's unnoted side effects, it is not the 'perfected' version of it for the fact that there is no 'perfected' version of it."
"However, to magnify the effects of Compound V, as well as the side effects, you can consume the V-1 strain, the original serum."
Norman ears heard every word being said as his eyes and brain painted a complete picture of what he was reading. He already saw it before Isaac spoke it. The side effects. The madness and deteriorating mental instability
"As an added effect, not only does it enormously magnify every effect of Compound V, both good and bad, it also grants biological immortality by halting the aging process."
He looked up at Isaac. This was so far beyond whatever the military could wave around to lobby billionaires into doing their dirty work. This was beyond what the country had in terms of biological ammunition.
The premise of such a serum would turn Erskine's work into an outdated fable. As for the side effects, it never stopped them since 1940, why would it stop them now?
Even as his greed swallowed for both vials to be in his hands, his mind kept it in check and with the new information made available, focused on the single thing it had been unable to solve since injection.
"You're not completely human, are you?" He asked with narrowed eyes.
"Adjacent enough, physically speaking at the very least." It was a non-answer but it was something, Norman supposed.
"How much?" He forgot everything(his mind temporarily setting it aside) and focused on the only thing that mattered – immortality.
He didn't care how much it would cost. The price of immortality would not come cheap but he was determined to pay it.
"$150,000,000."
He blinked. It was cheap. It was dirt cheap. Immortality in a bottle and it cost less than two hundred million.
"The side effects," his mind helpfully provided.
Isaac nodded. "I know my target audience."
"You do, don't you." The composure remained. It was a non-issue. With the NZT-48 he could reverse engineer both the drug and the serum and get rid of the effects. And that was if he deemed it necessary.
He downed the serum with one greedy gulp, his body and mind having been craving for it since he held it in his hands.
He could feel it. Oh he could feel it. It was like the serum was unlocking something deep within him, something he already was, and his mind cataloged everything. Every change. Every feeling.
His vision changed and the way the air pricked his skin felt different. Everything was coming alive and all he could do was laugh. A sick demented laugh.
Side effects? What side effects? He was fine as is. Other than a few tweaks and checking for cellular instability, he couldn't see what was wrong with the serum. He could feel the power flowing through his veins. He could shatter that bug with a flick of a finger.
"I need a batch of NZT-48. And two of both Compound V and V-1," he barely managed to say as it felt as if electricity was brimming in his blood.
As for killing the owner and taking it all for himself, oh he thought of it, but his mind said caution, at least for now. Let him draw out the manufacturers first and then he would do away with him.
He wasn't afraid of explaining the money he had spent because the returns he would get from it would be stupendous. He would streamline the Compound V, but only for himself. As for the Mirakuru, well, the military were fond of their hard drugs.
He did not expect to be spending a sizable amount of his fortune in a pawnshop, nor did he expect it to seamlessly go through(adding another layer of questions).
He finally managed to compose himself and all that was left in his body was an undeniable urge to gulp down the V-1 but he restrained himself, barely.
A few hundred million spent and immortality was in hand.
He was no longer doubting the authenticity of his purchase, not with what he was currently feeling.
"One more thing," he said, not even bothering to hide the ear-splitting grin on his face. "Spider-Man. You know who he is, don't you?"
"Client confidentiality." The man replied, still unbothered despite the fact that Norman had ingested the Compound V right in front of him. Norman still didn't(couldn't) forget the trick with the vial.
His mind was the only thing keeping everything he wanted/planned to do at bay.
He nodded, easily accepting the reply. "Hehehe, I can get behind that." After all, the spider just became low priority. He had more important things to do.
He would still kill the spider.
He took his card, the small box of his purchases, and left the shop feeling like a new creature. Even the air tasted different as he went back to his car.
"Where to, sir?" His driver asked.
"Just take me home, Hector." He said with a soft smile. "I want to spend the day indoors for once."
"Of course, sir." Yes. This could work. His mind was already running simulations as he reclined into his backseat.
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Patreøn*com/1stDepth
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