After receiving Obadiah's full support, Tony quickly finished developing a miniature Arc reactor, a cold-fusion core small enough to fit inside armor.
The Iron Suit also powered up successfully. But given Drex Valen's War Machine, the Iron Monger, and Tony's own Dark Knight armor, Tony did not rush out in the Iron Suit to play the hero and dispense justice.
The problem was simple. His armor was already far behind the curve.
Tony Stark could not bring himself to go out wearing sothing so outdated. If he was going to suit up, it had to be in sothing better than Drex Valen's tech. Sothing sharper. Faster. aner.
What he did not know was that after Tony returned, Drex Valen had already ordered the Black Queen to send a video and a packet of files straight to Nick Fury's computer.
The evidence showed Obadiah's illegal arms smuggling to terrorists.
After receiving it, Fury's first reaction was not to drag Obadiah off to prison. His first move was to call in his IT people and find out how the hell his computer had been breached.
Joke or not, he was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. How had soone gotten into his machine?
That was the kind of question that made a man dangerously uncomfortable. If people could breach his computer whenever they pleased, what else could they do?
As for Tony Stark, Drex Valen had the Black Queen send him Hydra's old files.
Among them was the dossier proving that Obadiah had hired assassins to kill Howard Stark and his wife. Of course, Obadiah himself never knew they were Hydra. He had only contacted killers.
At first, Tony refused to believe any of it. He needed proof, sothing real, sothing undeniable.
Then the grainy footage arrived.
The recording was old, warped, and blurry enough to look like it had been sared through a sewer drain, but even after Tony ran it through all his black-market miracles and tech wizardry, the best he could salvage was a miserable 360p image.
Still, he recognized Obadiah.
The realization hit Tony like a hamr to the chest.
He had handed Stark Industries over to the man who had murdered his parents.
He did not need to worry about what ca next, though. Drex Valen had already made preparations. The mont Obadiah's fall beca public, the Black Queen would help drive Stark Industries into bankruptcy, just to make sure Tony would not get dragged down with it.
After that, Drex believed Tony would be able to rebuild.
Because he was Tony Stark.
After taking that shot at Obadiah, Drex lost interest in him. Obadiah was nobody worth tracking.
…
Deli was Hungarian, but he was also a ga strear.
Recently, Blade Tech Industries had released a new ga called Bloodbath to the Last, and it had exploded in popularity. Naturally, Deli had beco one of its players.
The rules were simple. A hundred players were randomly dropped into a zone. It could be a city, a forest, a snowfield, or so other terrain. Once they landed, they had to scavenge random weapons, dicine, and supplies to fight their way to the top.
Every minute, the poison gas circle tightened.
In the end, only one person survived.
The ga was perfectly tailored to the Western obsession with lone-hero spectacle, and that alone made it wildly popular.
But that was not even the main reason it took off.
The real reason was that Bloodbath to the Last was a virtual imrsion ga. It made players feel as if they were actually inside the world.
At a ti when virtual imrsion was still a fresh concept, this ga was nothing short of a thunderclap. It had the kind of shock value and monopoly potential that could shake the entire market.
Other gas were losing users by the thousands.
Bloodbath to the Last had already pulled in more than five million players.
The only thing limiting its growth was the headset. To play, you had to buy one, and it was not cheap. Five thousand dollars was enough to make plenty of middle- and lower-inco Arican players swallow hard and start saving up.
Still, the headsets had already brought Blade Tech Industries two hundred and fifty billion dollars in revenue, before taxes.
Outside, people were furious. They accused Drex Valen of neglecting his real work and wasting ti making gas.
Even Stav had called him, complaining that the cancer cure had not been released yet.
But back to Deli.
He did not care whether Drex Valen was wasting ti or not. All he knew was that Drex Valen was a genius, soone who could do what other people could not. If they had a problem with it, they were welco to make a ga like this themselves.
Anyone who had experienced true virtual imrsion found it very hard to go back to older gas. The sensation was just too different.
Deli was one of those people. He had fallen hard for the ga. And because he was young, with fast reflexes and quick neural response, he had also beco a well-known strear.
He even made back the money he spent on the headset, and then so.
His parents had originally complained about him spending five thousand dollars on sothing just to play gas. Sure, that amount could have bought a decent used car. But Deli had already earned the money back, and then doubled it.
"Hey, everyone watching the stream," Deli said, grinning at the cara. "Today I'm showing you a fifty-kill run in Bloodbath to the Last. Last ti, I nearly wiped the entire lobby. Too bad I ran into so coward lying in the grass. Zero warrior spirit. Didn't even dare to peek and trade shots with !"
He was still bragging about his gun skill when he climbed over a hill.
A faint tap hit his head.
It felt exactly like soone poking him with a finger.
Deli knew that sensation. In this ga, it was the damage indicator, the system's way of telling players where they had been hit.
Then the notification appeared.
You have been eliminated. Kill range: 950 ters.
Deli stared.
Nine hundred and fifty ters?
And it was a headshot?
"Holy crap, the strear got one-tapped!" soone shouted in the chat.
"From almost a kiloter away!"
"I thought Bloodbath to the Last was supposed to be all about realism. Wind speed and everything affects sniper rounds, right?"
"This is insane. Did soone already figure out how to cheat in this ga?"
The comnts flooded in instantly. After all, Deli had been talking big one second, and the next he had been knocked flat on his face.
He refused to accept it and demanded a replay of his death.
He wanted the killer's perspective.
That was no problem. Bloodbath to the Last supported that feature, since it could help find bugs or cheats, though no one really believed the ga had any.
Then he saw the killer's point of view.
"Jesus, he's fighting three people at once?"
From the enemy's perspective, Deli watched the killer sprint forward in a straight line. At the edge of the screen, nearly impossible to notice, another player's head had just barely risen from cover.
Drex Valen spotted it instantly.
The rifle swung around with inhuman speed.
Less than 0.1 seconds later, the scope snapped into place, the shot landed, and the hidden player's head burst open.
Then two more enemies appeared straight ahead.
The killer raised the scope again and took them both down with the sa terrifying speed, each headshot coming so fast it looked less like reflex and more like predation.
It was a reaction speed that did not feel human at all.
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