Drex trusted Dr. Octavius.
That did not an he trusted the money.
Even geniuses could get carried away if no one kept an eye on them, and Drex had no interest in watching a perfectly good investnt evaporate because soone got enthusiastic with a budget. He was rich, not stupid. Waste was waste.
Urd, as his chief assistant secretary, had that responsibility too.
"Dr. Octavius's lab still isn't finished," she said at once.
Urd was quick on the uptake. In this industry, that had to be. If she did not perform well, she could be replaced any day. That ant more than intelligence. It ant a mory like a steel trap. With the kind of salary Drex paid, she had to earn every cent.
"Then speed it up. What about the equipnt and materials he needs?"
"I already ordered everything and handled the rest."
Drex had a superhuman brain, so naturally he rembered the details too.
Urd had personally checked the invoices and even gone to the site to inspect progress. And because this was not her field, she had also asked a college friend to help her verify the technical parts.
"We already have a palladium reactor," Urd said, voicing the question she still could not quite shake. "Why are we researching a tritium reactor too?"
Drex glanced at her.
"To people outside the field, the answer is simple. More energy sources ans more options. More options ans the supply never runs dry. But for the people who actually understand science, the answer is different. Scientific progress cannot travel down a single road forever. We need more foundations. If one path hits a wall, you can be trapped there for the rest of your life. Science grows like a tree, not a straight line."
He spoke with complete seriousness.
The palladium reactor was a monster of technology. Even by Marvel standards, it was absurdly advanced. But Drex preferred to stay grounded. Besides, he wanted to see whether a tritium reactor could et his needs.
In truth, he had already begun studying tritium-based nuclear fusion himself.
He had read Dr. Octavius's papers. The logic was sound. There was no flaw in the theory. If anything went wrong, it was probably because the system was unstable.
Then there was the matter of secondary kryptonite.
After Black Queen had been built, Drex had her run simulation tests.
His original kryptonite, the armor he had brought with him from before, had already been fused with vibranium into a super-kryptonite suit. It was far stronger than the original material.
Drex knew the formula for the original kryptonite, but in this world, that was no longer enough. He could not simply reproduce it the old way.
"Sir," Black Queen said, projecting a set of charts into the air, "we have calculated a new alloy formula. Testing shows its strength is eighty percent higher than secondary kryptonite."
Drex held a cup of iced cola in one hand while he studied the floating data.
"Good," he said. "Call it A-grade kryptonite."
A-grade kryptonite was already very close to vibranium in strength.
That made sense. Black Queen had vibranium data on hand, and there were real samples of the tal in storage too.
"Sir," Black Queen continued, "there is sothing else."
She pulled up a blurry video.
It showed a man in a black trench coat swinging a blade through a swarm of vampires.
The footage was so poor it looked as if soone had sared it with filth, then dragged it across a concrete floor for good asure. Even after Black Queen cleaned it up, the image was still ugly and hard to read.
But then she projected his complete file.
Birth records from the hospital where he had been born.
His current status.
Everything.
"Blade…"
Drex recognized him imdiately.
Black Queen pulled up even more data. Anything that had ever been uploaded to the internet was already hers.
And beneath that, on what looked like old parchnt, was text he could not read at first glance. Strange symbols. Ancient-looking marks.
"Necroglyphs?"
Drex's mories had been returning more and more lately, so he knew enough about Blade's story to place it.
"If those are necroglyphs, then this is the first Blade movie arc."
The plot of Blade I was simple enough.
It was a comic adaptation, and the director had been smart enough to leave the core flavor intact. That was why it had worked so well. It was stylish, violent, and morable. The later casting changes had dragged it down, but the first one had real bite.
The main villain was Deacon Frost.
A non-pureblood vampire.
The leader of the North Arican branch of non-pureblood vampires.
And, naturally, he had never gotten along with the purebloods.
The reason was simple.
Frost had once been human, and he understood human nature better than the old vampire elders did. He did not believe humans would just sit quietly and watch vampires grow stronger. He knew they would strike back eventually.
anwhile, the pureblood elders still believed they could negotiate a lasting truce with humanity.
That was fantasy.
Human technology was advancing too quickly.
If vampires did not convert humanity before the balance tipped, then humans would eventually turn vampires into lab specins.
Frost had also learned how to use computers to decipher the necroglyphs in the so-called Book of the Dead, which no one had been able to decode before him.
Those glyphs described a ritual for summoning the blood god.
Once decoded, the ritual required twelve pureblood vampires and one daywalker.
The blood god would then sweep across the world like a storm and turn everyone into vampires.
To be blunt, Drex did not care much about the blood god itself.
The Marvel world had too many monsters sitting at the top of the food chain. Even if the blood god did show up, he would not get very far. Not when people like Ancient One existed.
Unless, of course, the summon was the comic version of Dracula.
That would at least be interesting.
But even if the ritual sohow succeeded and turned every human on Earth into a vampire, there was still one problem.
Where was the prey?
If everyone beca a tiger, and there were no sheep left, what then?
They would tear each other apart.
Drex had no real interest in the ritual, but Blade himself? Blade was interesting.
Because Blade had no illness records.
None.
After the birth record from his childhood, there was nothing.
Not a single hospital visit.
He had even been listed as dead at one point.
That was bizarre.
Even with modern dicine, most illnesses could still beco serious enough to require dical care. Private doctors were expensive as hell, and Blade was not exactly the kind of man who could afford constant treatnt.
But then Drex thought of Connors's recent discovery.
And the answer snapped into place.
Blade had beco an immune subject.
He was immune to all human viruses and even disease itself.
Could the vampire virus have mutated inside him into sothing new?
Blade, after all, was half human and half vampire by design. He had not fully transford into a vampire. Instead, he had co out of it with sothing far more useful.
As a human, he still had vampire strength, speed, and regeneration.
The downside was the hunger.
He had the thirst for blood too.
It was just not strong enough to force him to drink constantly in order to survive.
"Black Queen," Drex said at once, "build a full file on Blade. Pull every cara feed you can find. I want to know exactly where he is right now."
If Connors's idea of a universal cure had any real future, it was probably sitting inside Blade's blood.
For the sake of humanity, Blade could tolerate a little research.
No surgery required.
Just a sample.
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