If every face around you was smiling while secretly sharpening knives behind your back, and you still managed to realize sothing was wrong…
Then you were probably a qualified spy.
Nick Fury certainly was.
The fact that he noticed S.H.I.E.L.D. had been rotten from the inside long before its collapse already proved his instincts were exceptional. And after the organization disbanded, he still managed to gather the remnants, rebuild hidden networks, and continue protecting Earth through his own independent systems.
That made him a qualified director too.
And now, Fury moved.
He intercepted the political pressure targeting S.W.O.R.D. and Tony Stark before it could escalate further.
More importantly, he identified the people pushing things from the shadows.
The vampire clans.
The internal contradictions within vampire society had been festering for decades, maybe centuries.
For generations, the imnse power gap between ordinary vampires and the thirteen pureblood elders suppressed all opposition.
But the modern world had changed everything.
Technology evolved too quickly.
The old order was beginning to crack.
The alien swarm alone already represented a threat humanity had never faced before. anwhile, advancing human technology steadily eroded the vampires' natural advantages.
People seeking immortality no longer worshipped vampires.
They invested in science instead.
dical breakthroughs.
Cybernetics.
Genetic engineering.
Energy technologies.
All of it made vampires increasingly obsolete.
Periods of chaos always created ambitious people.
And during the greatest upheaval in centuries, the rigid hierarchy inside vampire society began shaking violently.
Everyone wanted power.
Everyone wanted to challenge the old rulers.
The problem was strength.
And Tony Stark's Mimic Armor represented exactly the kind of strength they desired.
Back when Drex Valen still served as S.W.O.R.D.'s Director, every faction on Earth lived beneath his shadow.
Even the vampire clans behaved themselves.
Nobody dared provoke a man who looked capable of inventing anti-vampire extinction weapons overnight if sufficiently annoyed.
Now that Drex had stepped back from direct involvent, certain groups imdiately started testing boundaries again.
"The vampires are making moves?"
Nick Fury's expression darkened.
Which, considering Fury already looked permanently irritated, was saying sothing.
The vampires had always been troubleso.
The romanticized versions of vampires shown in films and television? Those stories weren't accidental.
They were propaganda.
A carefully cultivated image designed to lower humanity's instinctive fear and resistance.
Without wealthy backers and hidden influence networks, countless obscure writers never would have received the support necessary to popularize those stories globally.
Fury understood sothing most people didn't.
Modern civilization wasn't truly controlled by governnts.
It was controlled by capital.
Oil.
Resources.
Energy monopolies.
Entire economies depended on petroleum, coal, and the industrial chains connected to them. Whoever controlled those resources controlled the arteries of civilization itself.
That was why the richest cities on Earth could rise directly from deserts.
And in order to maintain that power, the corporations behind those systems fought viciously against anything threatening their position.
New energy technologies.
High-density batteries.
Alternative fuels.
All of it faced endless suppression.
When automobiles first appeared, carriage companies flooded newspapers with articles claiming cars were unsafe and impractical.
History repeated itself constantly.
Even Tony Stark suffered massive financial attacks after abandoning weapons manufacturing and pushing arc reactor energy technology into the comrcial market.
Without Stark Industries' military relationships, corporate foundations, Tony's absurd genius, and his public identity as a superhero, those attacks might have destroyed him financially.
The truly dangerous part about the vampires?
They had learned to control the people controlling the money.
And that made them terrifying.
Outside of the few years Drex Valen personally oversaw S.W.O.R.D., the vampire clans had always been arrogant and untouchable.
"Do they want the Mimic Armor technology?"
Fury asked coldly.
Maria Hill nodded from the intelligence station.
"They're offering to buy it."
"How much?"
"One hundred billion dollars per suit."
She paused briefly.
"Or one oil field in exchange for one hundred suits."
Fury laughed harshly.
"They're dreaming."
Even one oil field per armor would not interest Tony Stark.
The Mimic Armor's combat performance was absurd.
In practical terms, mass-producing the suits ant mass-producing Hulk-level combat units.
And unlike the Hulk, the armor ca with adaptability and specialized combat configurations.
A complete all-purpose super soldier platform.
Tony Stark would never hand that over willingly.
And nobody on Earth could force him to.
At least not before the next technological revolution appeared.
With the Mimic Armor alone, Tony could potentially beco a top-tier powerhouse even on the cosmic stage.
As for the old Symbiote Armor?
Tony had already retired it to storage like an outdated collector's item.
"The alien swarm truly is an extraordinary biological weapon…"
The Queen observed the recent battles with obvious fascination.
The humanoid swarm organisms interested her imnsely.
"Accelerated movent is only their baseline capability," Drex Valen explained calmly.
"They also possess variants capable of energy projection, temporal manipulation, life-force absorption, energy reflection, self-duplication, even creating subspace environnts."
The Queen went silent for several seconds.
Then she spoke with unusual seriousness.
"I'll need to redesign the swarm entirely from the ground up. I may not be able to continue serving you directly for so ti, Your Majesty."
Drex nodded casually.
He didn't mind.
Instead, he shifted topics.
"How well is the Extremis Virus integrating?"
"Extrely well," the Queen replied imdiately. "The swarm adapts to it perfectly."
Then she hesitated.
"Your Majesty… I believe the swarm could evolve specialized psychic or superpowered elite organisms if we captured enhanced humans from Earth."
"No need."
Drex dismissed the idea imdiately.
"I'll provide mutant and Inhuman genetic templates later. Most Earth superhumans originate from those two sources anyway."
He was about to continue when space suddenly twisted in front of him.
Reality distorted violently.
A small translucent figure struggled into existence like soone forcing themselves through wet cent.
A child.
Franklin Richards.
"Uncle Drex… hurry…"
The boy's voice trembled desperately.
"Please save my mother…"
Then the warped space snapped backward.
Franklin was dragged away instantly as though reality itself had seized him.
The Queen still looked confused.
Drex Valen was already gone.
Using his overwhelming gravitational force as leverage against the universe's four fundantal interactions, Drex crossed thousands of light-years almost instantaneously.
Less than a femtosecond passed.
He arrived directly outside the newly constructed Fantastic Four headquarters in Los Angeles.
And the mont he saw the building, he understood why Franklin had called for help.
A portal to another universe had opened inside the tower.
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