Black Queen finished her analysis quickly and built a full personal profile on Jessica Campbell.
If they had been on Krypton, or back inside a ship, Drex would probably already have been simulating her genetic structure by now. In the present world, though, he could only take a manual sample and see whether it could be cultured.
He did not disturb Jessica's sleeping body, which was still undergoing its own silent transformation. After switching her over to the monitoring systems in the general laboratory, he left her alone.
Then Drex turned his attention to the company's business.
He trusted Uld and Black Queen, but he still liked checking the numbers himself. It gave him the simple satisfaction of seeing his empire move exactly the way he wanted.
Vitamin Infinity was selling extrely well and had already beco one of Blade Technology Industries' flagship products, even if the company now had quite a few of those.
Recently, Uld had been contacting several pharmaceutical production bases about acquisitions. Vitamin Infinity was already being used by more than half the population in the United States. It had swept through everyone who could afford it. The rest either could not pay five hundred dollars a bottle, or had never even heard of it.
In other words, the Arican market was already saturated. It had also crushed a lot of health supplent companies in the process. Uld showing up to buy them out at that point was basically kicking a corpse, but bankruptcy would have left them drowning in debt anyway. Selling was the better option. At least Uld's offer was fair, even if it was nowhere near as generous as it would have been before their businesses got wrecked.
Blade Technology Industries was now aiming higher.
Vitamin Infinity was ready to go global.
Smugglers were already moving it into other countries, and because they were smuggling vitamins instead of narcotics or weapons, most countries would not even treat it as a cri if they caught them.
Then there was the extermination drug aid at cockroaches, mosquitoes, rats, and flies.
That product sold far more than Vitamin Infinity. The profit margin was even higher. First, because it genuinely worked. Second, because the United States was, frankly, a country with so deeply questionable hygiene standards. That made sales explode far beyond what Uld had expected. Even he had to start taking this seemingly unremarkable line of business seriously.
Once the numbers were laid out, Uld realized it was absurdly profitable. It made more money than weapons and so other very respectable forms of business combined. That was the reason he had reached out to those pharmaceutical production bases in the first place. They needed scale. He had already printed the expansion proposal and handed it to Drex.
Drex had not had ti to look at it.
"I forgot to add the libido boost, beauty, and breast-enhancent labels to Vitamin Infinity," he muttered after noticing that its sales were slightly below the extermination drug's.
He wrote the note down and planned to have Black Queen send it directly to Uld's phone later.
And he was not lying. Vitamin Infinity was extracted from a range of beneficial nutrients in the human body. For humans, it was basically a tonic with ridiculous efficiency. Once it was cloned and cultured, there would be no need for raw material extraction anymore.
Secondary Kryptonite did not need his attention at the mont. The Arican order book for "Poseidon" was already stacked to the ceiling.
Then ca War Machine.
By modern scientific standards, War Machine was extrely valuable. On the battlefield especially, it had trendous tactical and strategic significance. Used for decapitation strikes against enemy leadership, it was practically unbeatable.
Its greatest advantage was not speed, firepower, or defense.
It was mass production.
That was the biggest difference between it and products of Super Soldier Serum, like Captain Arica or the Hulk. Those were one-of-a-kind miracles for one reason or another. War Machine could be manufactured by the dozen.
Uld then told Drex that Stark Industries had also developed War Machine, except they called it the Iron Suit.
By then, the lawyers from Blade Technology Industries and Stark Industries were already tearing into each other.
Rich people, once they decided to get ugly, could be astonishingly shaless.
After losing in a Los Angeles court, Stark Industries simply moved the fight to New York and appealed there instead. Then the war started all over again.
Anyone with eyes could see what Stark Industries was doing. They were willing to drag this out forever. After all, they could afford the legal bills. One Iron Suit alone would pay for the whole ss and leave them change to spare.
The United States governnt quietly backed Stark Industries, using the dispute as an excuse to suppress Blade Technology Industries.
Still, they did not dare push too hard. Their real complaint was that Blade Technology Industries had not gone public yet, and that Drex was selling War Machine to the rest of the world. If they shoved too hard and drove him away, who would take responsibility for that?
Stark Industries, on the other hand, had military shareholders. That ant they could never sell the Iron Suit the way Blade Technology Industries sold War Machine. Every MK1 unit went straight to the United States.
Drex did not bother making any kind of public statent about Stark Industries acting up.
He just called Bucky.
By this point, Bucky was already in control of a Hydra branch. Everyone in that branch had been converted into mbers of the World Serpent. They just had not beco beast soldiers yet.
"Bucky," Drex said, "kidnap Tony Stark for and dump him in the Middle East. Let the Ten Rings take him."
Drex felt that Tony Stark was becoming too profit-driven. That was not a healthy direction. The original tiline had not reached the point where Stark beca Iron Man yet, but Drex could help him along. In his own way, he was just speeding up the process and turning him into a proper Iron Man a little early.
Kidnapping Tony Stark was absurdly easy.
At the ti, Stark was in bed with two cover-model sisters.
After Bucky got the location, he brought his n straight in.
Tony's bodyguards were dropped almost instantly. Stark, who had been busy "working" at the ti, was so shocked by the sound of the door crashing open that he nearly folded in place. The two models scread and clung to each other.
"Tony Stark?" Bucky asked.
"No, no, that's not ," Tony tried.
Bucky did not waste ti arguing. He grabbed Stark with one hand and tossed him into a black SUV without even bothering to let him put his pants on.
After the incident, the scene was sealed off by police, the military, and federal agents.
The SHIELD agents all looked grim.
Every hotel cara had lost footage during that exact ti window. Every guest who might have seen sothing had been knocked unconscious. There were no witnesses.
Whoever did this had clearly been ticulous.
"And there's probably a top-tier hacker covering the trail," Coulson reported to Nick Fury. "The street caras also lost footage during that sa period."
Fury rubbed at his head. "What do you think it was?"
"I can't say for sure," Coulson answered. "Maybe retaliation from Blade Technology Industries. Or maybe it was just kidnappers targeting the Stark family fortune."
There was too little evidence at the scene to work with.
Nick Fury was naturally suspicious and cautious, and the recent lawsuit between Blade Technology Industries and Stark Industries was already common knowledge. It was entirely possible that Blade Technology Industries had gotten tired of the legal ga and decided to hit back in a less polite way.
User Comments
0 comments from readers