NOVEL NEXT Chapter 52: Part 48
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***
Quickly rising from the partially collapsed wall, coughing from the dust in my lungs, I nodded thoughtfully as I leisurely cleaned my suit of debris and brick chips. Why can't our doctor sit in his lab? Was he really so pissed off by the conversation with his former sponsors from the Hardy Foundation? Octavius is a peaceful man, he wouldn't hurt a fly of his own free will, but here he had already annihilated a dozen people without blinking an eye. You'd think you knew people well, however you know them. However, enough airing out we have to go after our Snow Queen.
Having activated an interesting application on my watch, I immediately checked the map. Having prudently left a tracker on the doctor's limb, I could now safely track down his lair. But first I need to summon the suit, so I'll try out the technology, and the camouflage won't be superfluous, because I'll have to work with Octavius, and I don't want him to sit down, because it will finally kill him. When I got up to the roof, I pulled out my smartphone, activating the 'delivery' app again.
A couple of seconds later, the heavy behemoth, which I laconically nicknamed 'lats' and just a suit, landed on the Met's roof, immediately attracting everyone's attention with its not-so-smooth landing. Perhaps it was still worth working on, but certainly not right now. I smiled thoughtfully as I looked at the majestically powerful machine I'd built with my own hands for a few seconds, because without the usual views of my basement, the lats looked pretty damn spectacular, and the Spider on my chest only added to the stylish image with little details that were pleasing to my eye. Again carefully pressing one button in the application, I achieved that the armour creaked open, giving the opportunity to settle comfortably inside the lats. With this too, perhaps, still need to work, or it will jam at the most inopportune moment, and that's it, you're left without armour. And who needs it? Smiling sparingly, I put the application in the background and stepped confidently into the gut of the heavy armour.
The armour slammed shut surprisingly smoothly and almost without a creak, which was a good thing, but it was still worth the grease, because you can never have too much of it. The second stay in darkness was abruptly interrupted by the start-up of all systems, followed by the eye-saving backlighting, immediately displaying the entire technical interface with information about the operation of reactors and all other systems. Adding a little power to the suit and smoothly bringing the main reactor to a stable level of energy production, I launched an instant scan of the area and noted with slight surprise that the police were already here. Noting the car of a certain Officer Stacy on the map, I hummed thoughtfully. Good work. After marking where the doctor had stopped on the map, I jumped half a block away, so as not to bother the police.
It was time to show the teacher that his pupil had surpassed him long ago, and Octavius' brains needed to be corrected, because he was a normal man, so why get so hot for the sake of some trifle? Everything in this life is a trifle as long as you live. Everything can be fixed. Everything can be changed! Well, or almost everything. While you're alive, everything else is secondary, so I won't let this undoubtedly brilliant scientist perish in the abyss of madness. It would be a loss to the entire scientific world, so don't throw such personnel away. His life has just started to get better, and in Ozcorp he is on good account, so it is only necessary to put the old man's brains in the right place and sit on the heart-to-heart, maybe drink a bit, and if anything to help him.
According to the memories of this body, he's not a bad man and a great mentor, so I'll try to save him, and what's he going to do to me in that 'suit'? So we'll just consider it a light walk after a beautiful lady. Smiling mentally, I gave a little more power and jumped to a new point. There were no sirens and it was quiet, but it was one city, but it was a big damn city. One solid organism. I could go on and on about him being sick and blah-blah, but I don't give a damn about this city and these people, because I do what I want to do. Sometimes, of course, I'm driven by emotions and other motives, but who doesn't?
Another powerful leap and I find myself in an industrial district, where there was desolation and a slight devastation. Now industrial districts are of little use to anyone, production facilities are idle, people are looking for themselves in other spheres like webcam, IT or drug dealing, someone is more successful than others. All this industry is now of no use to anyone. Entire cities are closing down, and maybe soon Detroit will be another deserted ghost and shadow of its former self. We produce nothing but consume more and more, breeding various ghettos and ethnic neighbourhoods where the mafia, drug trade and slavery thrive. The digital age of information, but then why are we rolling backwards? Sometimes it feels as if an entire civilisation has been left behind, on the wreckage of which we are parasitic. This is particularly well felt in the now dead neighbourhoods and old industrial zones. A perfect place for various scientists, mired in their own madness and other petty villains who have nowhere else to go. The abode of the outcasts and nothing else. A pitiful sight.
Glumly studying the now abandoned neighbourhood, I tried to guess where the doctor had chosen his base. The signal was lost somewhere around here, which means that he went deep underground or his place has a good shielding, which is not good either. Why are all the bad guys drawn to these graveyards of the American dream? Once upon a time there was life here, but it's all gone, along with the people who once worked here. It's really just a cemetery. Passing by the completely collapsed building of the once steelworks, I smiled sadly at the huge building, but now there were only 'bones' and corroded hulk left of it, which became a stepfather's home for rats and other little things that spread 'plague' and many other 'delights' around the city. Wandering through the ghostly streets, I was sinking more and more into a dreary melancholy, studying through the built-in thermal imager every metre of the industrial zone I came across only dead earth and long corroded metal and, of course, rats, where without them and their flying 'brethren'.
When I passed another half-destroyed factory, I noticed that there were no rodents or birds in this square and it was somehow warmer? I guess so. Adding power to the thermal imager, I went over every metre of this area again and came across an anomaly. It was quite interesting. The area was pretty well shielded, but even through the shielding, heat was still coming out. Taking a fresh look at the area, I hummed lightly. The swamps nearby allowed for the water cooling of something big and grandiose, and knowing Octavius, it was undoubtedly explosive.
After all, it's the perfect place for any lab and subsequent experiments, and if anything, all evidence can be easily destroyed and simply flood the scene of the crime and illegal experiments. Oh, man... Bloody genius. The nearby abandoned alleyway allows you to quietly infiltrate the area you want while remaining inconspicuous, so that's probably where one of the main secret passages to his lab is. But I don't have time to look, so I'll go in here somewhere, and if I can't find the door, I'll make it myself. It's a piece of cake. But there's a catch. If it's what I think it is, I'd better not go in there by brute force, or it'll blow New York City to dust. Knowing Otto, he's probably working his arse off, so his brainchild is of the same ilk, which means that any unplanned sneeze is going to make everything go down the drain.
Every second I thought about his work with the artificial sun project, I was getting more and more tense, because this thing could really go off, so it wouldn't be good for anyone. Where are the heroes when you need them? I'm more than sure that these idiots don't even know what happened, and if they do, they won't give it any importance. I mean, kidnapping, thousands of people go missing every day, so they'll only act when the Hardy Foundation gets them by the balls, but then it'll be too late. Felicia's mum probably doesn't know what's happened yet either, or she will soon, but delay is the death of us. So, where do we find the entrance? And preferably without breaking anything important. Once again I carefully walked through the territory with the thermal imager and didn't find the entrance, I quietly swore and switched off the visor. Raising my helmet, I looked more closely at the ruins. I had to find a clue or a clue that would help me find the entrance to that damn lab.
Leaving the factory grounds with nothing, I began to explore the surrounding neighbourhood. The swampy terrain only made me feel sad, as if we were not in good old New York, but in Louisiana. However, it is not surprising that a dead industrial zone without human supervision is smoothly returning to the bosom of nature and soon it will take its course. Buildings made of brick and iron will go under water and cypresses and moss will grow on them, traces of man will disappear, leaving only ghosts of the past that will remind with their 'bones' of the now gone era. Who knows, maybe one day the alligators will come back here and we will have our own Louisiana, on the other hand we already have an army of lizards, so what not crocodiles? Why don't we move them here? They don't do much good anyway, but it would bring life to a now-dead neighbourhood.
When I'd finished looking at the marshland, I headed back to the industrial estate. There were a couple more abandoned buildings in the queue, but I decided to focus all my attention on the huge boiler house, whose tower stood like the tower of Sauron on the very edge of the neighbourhood. My imagination immediately pictured the smog from it engulfing the entire sky, an anthracite black blanket of smoke, cinders and smog 'carefully' enveloping the entire neighbourhood. Having chased away the obsession, I immediately wondered why such a huge boiler house was needed here. Or maybe all other wastes were burnt there as well? A boiler house and a good disposal facility at the same time. Might be worth checking out.
As I walked through the abandoned area, past buildings of varying degrees of decay and disrepair, I mentally noted that it was cleaner than all the other corners of this unfortunate industrial zone. But who needs it? After all, there's nothing here but cookers and a chimney. The walls had already almost collapsed, and all the windows had already been broken by vandals of all sorts, and only the rusty frame still held the roof, like a tired colossus on clay legs, which would soon inevitably fall. I caught a glimpse of the huge cooker, which could fit a large lorry, and looked at it suspiciously as I got a little closer. It was obvious that it was still being used, but why? It was also obvious that the furnace was being watched, even if it wasn't as obvious, but it was there. I stood confidently by the huge cooker and opened its massive door without fear, but there was absolutely nothing there. That's a little suspicious, isn't it? Once again, I looked around for the strange protrusions, and turning on the powerful lamp built into the armour, I finally found the touchscreen control panel that would open the secret door to Otto's lab. Making sure that the entrance was right here, I began to carefully break everything down and after a couple of minutes I entered the underground complex, which you wouldn't expect to find under a long abandoned industrial zone.
When I saw the familiar, albeit faded, Ozcorp corporate symbols, I frowned a little. Secret laboratories of the corporation right in the city? There's a reason for that, as they say. And what was Octavius doing here? However, such matters do not concern me, my goal is to get Felicia and rule Otto's brains. I lowered my visor and walked deep into the underground complex. There were no lights at all, apparently it had once been powered by a common power source with the industrial zone or by the city grid. Now everything was switched off and was in a slight state of disrepair: darkness, cobwebs and cracks on the walls with overgrown moss, mould and lonely drops of muddy water said that soon the whole complex would go under water.
Seems our doctor didn't give a damn about safety, or did he need that water-cooling system that much? With each new step the lats did indeed register a rapidly rising temperature, it looked like it was going to be hot. As I steadily moved forward, I came across broken tempered glass chambers, from which, apparently, something had escaped and that's why the complex had been shut down? Or maybe the whole industrial zone, because judging by the wreckage of furniture and machinery, it had been around the same time, or one had triggered the closure of the other. Going down to the level below, I found the white bones of people in decayed clothes, scraps of cloth saying that maybe it was once part of a lab coat. I'm starting to like this less and less. What on earth had happened here? Another level greeted me with murky water, it was more damaged than the others, and a good portion of the walls were cracked or even huge gaps, but the water didn't rise above a certain level, and it looked like it had been standing there for decades, slowly evaporating.
When I found the door at the end of the level, I realised how Octavius had got here, it looked like the doc had worked here at some point or just knew about this place, which was curious. After all, such an unremarkable place turned out to be the former Ozcorp laboratory, and if necessary it would be destroyed in five minutes. Blow up the central entrance and the walls nearest to the water and no one will ever get here again, and the neighbouring swamp will destroy all the evidence leaving only a faded memory of the complex. That was the lot of all ghosts, and it didn't matter that this had once been a research complex. Smiling sadly, I continued to move on, stepping over the ruined door that gave this level a complete seal, noting the new hardened glass capsules, but they were intact....
The decayed mummies were still frozen in their unsuccessful attempt to get out, it seems they were less successful than the 'test subjects' of the level above. The rows of capsules were like a legion of death, awe-inspiring to the dusky genius who had arranged all this right in the city under the noses of the authorities and self-appointed heroes. Marvelling at the inhuman flight of thought of these esculapists, I began to delve even more slowly into the bowels of the damn complex. What were they doing here? Behind the next turn there were perfect rows with cages, where small skeletons were left, after a couple of steps there were bones of the staff in white coats. Some had crushed skulls, others had a limb torn off, and behind this mountain of bones was just one open cage. It looked like they had managed to create something after all. That's why they were sealed at this level, condemning them to death and fodder for the fearsome creature. But then why are those pods intact? And where is the creature itself? I soon found the answer to my question at another door Otto had torn apart. It was even more massive than the last one, but it didn't matter. I'd found the last little skeleton with coal-black claws sticking out of its arms, exactly three anthracite blades for each hand.
The only thing visible on the subject's decayed robe was the experiment's worn-out code number, 'X-12'.
Stepping over a small skeleton, I found myself in the largest room of the complex. The sun, blazing pure gold, captured my attention completely. I had never seen the birth of a new star before. The sun was so damn unstable and every second it was shrinking and growing chaotically. It wouldn't take long to get to the big bang. When I saw Otto standing next to me, 'tinkering' with the holographic control panel and occasionally glancing at the sun through the protective glass of his welding goggles, I just grinned. The scientific discoverer always remains himself. In the farthest corner of the hall I saw our Snow Queen, who was sealed in a four-by-four cube, probably one of those in which the test subjects were kept, and the hall itself looked more like a control centre of the complex than a laboratory.
- The concept of armour is familiar...' Otto's voice echoed through the room, and Miss Hardy's ears perked up. - I worked on something similar once before and helped solve a problem with power consumption and a new power supply. - said the doctor thoughtfully. - But I don't remember Spider there...' Octavius smiled, rising sharply upwards on his mechanical limbs.
- Always liked stylish things. - I immediately replied snidely to Octavius, who was thinking about something.
- Young people...' Otto said reproachfully. - I suppose you're after Miss Hardy? Well, until my demands are met, I can't give in. So I'm truly sorry I'm going to have to kill you, young man...' The doctor, naturally upset, immediately pointed two tentacles in my direction, which instantly transformed into plasma cannons.