Marvel's Kryptonian Scientist Chapter 54 54

Drex Valen had not sponsored the KOF tournant just to recruit talent.

He wanted the technique.

The refined body chanics.

The brutal efficiency of combat honed to the edge of human possibility.

With the Black Queen organizing the data and his own superhuman brain processing it all, he only needed one glance to absorb every muscle activation pattern, every footwork transition, every strike sequence.

In other words, he learned the fighting system in a single pass.

Drex studied the material for a while, then shook his head.

"No good. These are all killing arts for humans. Is there anything built to kill monsters?"

In the Marvel world, his enemies were not limited to humans or humanoids.

There were monsters.

A Kryptonian did not need martial arts to flatten ordinary people. Superman could end a fight with one punch and be done with it. But against opponents like Hyperion, Sentinel, Blue Marvel, Captain Marvel, Gladiator, or other similar powerhouses, technique mattered.

And against actual monsters, it mattered even more.

After finishing his study, Drex returned to the Blade Tech Industries tower.

The Los Angeles branch was already under construction. Urd had reported that it would probably take about a year to complete, largely because the site was massive, roughly the size of two football fields, including the seating area.

When Drex sat down in his office, a woman with fiery red hair stepped in wearing a sharply tailored office outfit that left almost nothing to the imagination.

"Boss, here are the docunts you need to review today."

Drex looked up.

"And you are?"

He already knew exactly who she was, of course.

But there was no reason to say it.

"I'm Natalie. Senior assistant to Secretary Urd."

Natasha Romanoff set the stack of files on the desk.

When she bent over, the buttons she had left deliberately undone drew the eye without apology. Nothing explicit, just enough to make a point.

She was testing him.

Drex's expression did not change.

He gave her a casual glance, then focused on the paperwork as though nothing else in the room existed.

That response made Natasha pause.

Most n reacted. Most pretended not to. Drex did neither.

Was this an act? A calculated retreat? So kind of ga?

No.

Natasha had been in the field long enough to read microexpressions the way other people read headlines. She could tell Drex genuinely was not interested.

He lifted one of the files and used it as a shield between them, giving himself a convenient excuse not to et her eyes directly while still taking the full asure of the view she was offering.

She stayed where she was, waiting for orders, though part of her was clearly looking for another opening.

The file she had brought over was not especially important.

It did, however, contain several developnts worth noting.

One of them was the new AIDS cure developed by Blade Tech Industries.

That single breakthrough had detonated half the biotech world.

Years of research and hundreds of billions of dollars had vanished into smoke.

Private labs and governnt-backed institutes alike had poured money into the problem, only for Drex Valen to solve it outright.

Investors were furious.

So were terrified.

A few were already trying to figure out whom to bla for the disaster.

How had all that funding produced nothing?

How had Blade Tech Industries succeeded so cleanly, so quickly?

The people who had dedicated their lives to AIDS research were hit even harder.

They had spent years, money, and youth chasing a result they could now watch soone else deliver in a fraction of the ti.

So tried to hold out hope.

Then the investors pulled out.

And without funding, hope beca a luxury.

A few of the researchers considered saring the cure, claiming the tests were flawed or the drug had dangerous side effects.

It did not matter.

The cure worked.

It had already reached the market and healed hundreds, maybe thousands of AIDS patients.

People infected through childbirth, transfusions, inherited transmission, cases that had felt like a death sentence, were now looking at Blade Tech Industries as if it had dragged them back from the grave.

In the process, Drex himself had beco a target.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had received word that a bounty had been posted in the underworld.

Two hundred billion dollars.

A number so absurd that it made every assassin and rcenary in the world start salivating.

They did not care about human progress.

They cared about money.

What happened if they killed the genius of the century?

What did that matter to them?

For now, large numbers of unidentified people had entered the United States.

Their target was obvious.

Drex Valen.

Drex only laughed when he heard it.

The Black Queen did a deeper search and found the truth.

Most of the bounty money had been raised by researchers whose own funding had been cut off by Drex's success.

The rest ca from people in the sa industry who had also lost their path forward.

They were not really hunting him out of hatred.

Mostly, they were bitter that they had been born into the wrong era and reduced to background noise in soone else's spotlight.

Drex had the Black Queen contact them anyway.

Those were the kind of people he wanted.

Serious researchers.

People with actual scientific discipline.

Blade Tech Industries was growing fast, and it had more than enough money to support them.

Their previous work would not go to waste either.

There was still more to study.

Drex had no intention of letting the world beco dependent on vampire viruses, biotechnology accidents, or one-off miracles for every cure.

Science had to be broad.

Systemic.

A field could not call itself science if it could not be reproduced.

The next matter was the attempt to acquire YouTube and Twitter.

As expected, both offers had been rejected.

Drex considered that for a mont, then decided to build his own platform instead.

He also turned his attention to the Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker worked.

A news organization had real value in Arica.

The problem was that the owner refused to sell.

That surprised Drex a little.

Given the man's reputation for being miserly, Drex had assud he would leap at the chance to unload it for a good price.

Strange.

He would deal with that later.

For the mont, there was another problem.

Outside the Blade Tech Industries tower, a convoy had just rolled to a stop.

The n inside looked at the sign on the building, the clean tallic letters spelling out B.T.I., and smiled like wolves that had found a fence worth biting through.

At the front entrance, the security guard was still staring down at an adult magazine and enjoying the view of so young model when one of the vehicle doors suddenly swung open.

A man in a black bulletproof vest and a balaclava stepped out, carrying an RPG.

The guard's eyes bulged.

"Holy shit!"