Chapter 111: Complications

Chapter 111: Complications

Once we had traveled back up to the moon Jane's reaction was even more extreme than Bruce and Betty's had been. The moment she realized where she was, she fell back on her butt, staring up into space before focusing on the Earth, her eyes so wide I was worried they would roll out of her skull. Thor hardly reacted at all, save to confirm the dome was safe.

After a while, when Jane recovered enough to stand and the two pairs were introduced, I started on the basic tour. Tony begged off, claiming there was still plenty left to organize, and since I had no idea how much organizing he actually was doing, I couldn't exactly contest his statement. Still, it wasn't like I couldn't give the tour myself. We started with the public areas, the movie theater, and the bowling alley, as well as the restaurants and other amenities, before traveling down to show off the lab spaces.

It was there that I discovered that Tony had put a lot more work into the building than he had let on. The massive room, which had once been empty space, were instead now full of cabinets and workbenches, lab workspaces, and dozens of other basic things that the labs themselves would be built around, all fit into divided rooms and individual labs, labeled by number and everything. It looked like a proper lab setting, rather than a massively cavernous space.

Trying my best to cover up my surprise, I demonstrated the customizable controls for the makeup of the labs, making new walls appear and disappear, as well as moving around the cabinets and shifting doors around. When that was done we moved on to the living spaces, which had also gone through a large change. Once it had been a massive cavernous area, marked off with control panels that were designated to certain spaces. Now it looked like the interior of a luxury apartment building, including areas for congregating outside people's apartments.

Both Bruce and Thor were fascinated by the controls that allowed people to modify their apartments whenever they wanted, changing out walls and basic furniture with a few taps of s a screen built into the wall, just inside the apartment door. Betty and Jane were more enamored by the view, which for the outside apartments was real, while the interior facing apartments had view screens, similar to what I used on the Void Skipper and the new Defender and Commander class ships.

By the end of the tour I had managed to impress Thor and thoroughly shock all of the scientists with the level of development we had here on the moon. When we made our way back up to the park they, unsurprisingly, had quite a few questions. I answered what I could before giving them Peppers' number, explaining that I was really just the maker. I would make it up to Pepper later.

They spent a little longer in the park, exploring it on their own before I traveled them back down to Earth, paying for a cab for both pairs to get back to their homes. By then it was almost dinner time and Ema had returned from spreading the nurse stones. By then she had managed to spread them to almost forty-seven percent of the world, with all heavily populated and traveled areas, save the oceans, completely covered.Read latest chapters at novelhall.com Only

As we ate dinner we idly talked about how we would cover the oceans. Eventually, we settled on just dropping them into the water, as their effects would still reach the surface in the most frequently sailed locations. It would leave some gaps, and some of them might even fail eventually, but it was the easiest and least complicated idea we had.

Initially had brushed the problem away as being unimportant, before Ema looked it up. Apparently, there were more than a million people sailing around the ocean at any given time. Ema was still saving the ocean for last, but neither of us dismissed it as unimportant anymore.

Over the next handful of days, between talking with the WSC about the ships, their progress with getting the crew for the first battle group put together and how close they were to finishing their part of the satellite, Tony and I were bouncing over the planet, recruiting people for our research center. Jane gave us the address of an isolated cabin in Norway, where Erik Selvig was trying his best to recover from his time under Loki's control. He was looking a little rough but seemed to understand that it wasn't his fault. I could only imagine how much worse he would have been if Loki had managed to call the invasion down on New York. Erik eagerly accepted the invitation when he learned Jane had already agreed.

After the jaunt in Norway, we recruited a dozen or so scientists, snatching up more than a few people from contracts and other research groups. It was hard to argue with the ability to bend reality to what you needed and a research base on the moon. Tony explained that we were personally recruiting the high-priority, high-profile scientists and that the lab assistants and understudies were already taken care of.

One of our last recruitment trips brought us to the University of Berkeley in California, where we were after another name I recognized, William Foster.

"He was on a project called Goliath with Hank Pym," Tony explained as we arrived at the campus. "If he joins the team the likely hood that Hank Pym will even talk to us plummets, but honestly with me attached to this that ship already sailed."

"Why?" I asked, trying desperately to act cool at the casual drop of one of the most controversial characters in comic book history.

"Hank hates me, or rather my name," He explained, not elaborating on his statement as he continued. "He had a problem similar to yours, but he got paranoid, ornery, and angry about it."

"Similar to mine?"

"He was worried his Pym Particle would break the world," He explained, tapping on his watch as we made our way across campus. "It would have revolutionized the entire world, almost every field would have benefited from it, but he was always worried about the consequences."

"Do you agree with him?" I asked, studying Tony as we stopped outside Professor Foster's lecture room.

"...It would have definitely been a double-edged sword," He admitted with a frown. "I honestly don't know."

"Yeah I can understand his worry, especially since he wouldn't have a way to keep bad people from using his tech for whatever they wanted to."

We were silent for a moment before I continued.

"I have some small plans. Idea's on how I can help without doing too much," I admitted. "It's a short list, but when the research center is up and running, the planetary shield is finished and the Earth Defence Fleet is patrolling, I'll start working on some of them."

Before Tony could reply, the door into the lecture hall opened, and out poured a few dozen college students. Tony looked down, covering his face as best he could while they rushed past. When the flow of people stopped I peeked in to see Professor Foster cleaning up his stuff. I nodded toward the door, before standing and walking in. The older black gentleman spotted me almost immediately, giving me a curious look.

"Can I help you?"

For a long moment, I thought he was going to do something stupid, but after a long pause he slumped, leaning heavily on the desk.

"An old coworker after being fired by Hank, tried to continue his research on his own," He explained, shaking his head. "Something went wrong, catastrophically wrong. I was still working with Shield at the time, and got sent down to investigate a quantum anomaly. His daughter, Ava, was the only survivor of the event."

"I'm assuming she was who you wanted to call?" I asked, Bill nodding in confirmation.

"She was affected heavily by the energy released by the accident. She is out of sync with this reality on a quantum level, constantly sliding back and forth between, sliding in and out of phase. She is in near-constant pain and struggles to touch anything without a special suit. I'm in the process of rebuilding a chamber that Shield designed to help her stabilize but it's slow going and in the end, it will only help for so long."

"Why isn't Shield helping now?" I asked.

"Because she she is on the run," He said, dropping to a whisper for the last part. "She ran when Shield was cleaning house from"

"Hydra, yeah, we know," I finished for him. "Why did she run?"

"Because Shield turned her into a child soldier," He answered, heat rising in his voice. "I tried to protect her but they just saw an asset that could pass through solid objects. They promised her a cure and then trained her to be their assassin. She was only a kid!"

I stayed silent, but I'm sure Tony was thinking the same thing I was. While Shield had plenty of questionable practices, this sounded more like a Hydra plan masquerading as a Shield project.

"Then let's see if we can help her," I said. "I have something that might work, but even if it doesn't, I can most likely put something together from whatever you have on hand from building the containment vessel."

"I You really think you can fix her, just like that?" He asked incredulously. "After years of me doing research and finding nothing but a temporary solution, just like that?"

"My ability ispotent. It has its limitations but they don't come up very often, at least not anymore," I said, standing up from my chair. "Now come on. I think it's time you called in sick and we visit this poor girl."

Not long after that Tony and I were packed into Bill's small car, with Tony getting the front seat and myself sitting in the back with a rather large pile of paperwork and ungraded tests. Bill was full of nervous energy, but I could tell he was trying hard to keep from being too hopeful.

"So why did you think she could be dangerous to herself and others?" I asked as we turned off the paved road.

"Ava She was clearly affected by the accident," He explained. "And by the forced training Shield put her through. It's not immediately obvious, but she can behave childlike sometimes. She she hasn't fully regressed by any measure but she does backslide sometimes. And because of the Shield training, when she gets scared"

"She gets dangerous, right," I said, rubbing my face. "Does she have any other abilities?"

"Just the ability to phase in and out of our quantum state," Bill answered before quickly adding. "But please, don't hurt her, she is just a victim in all this."

"We won't, don't worry," I assured him. "Tony I know you want your suit but"

"She will just bolt if I come in armored up," he finished for me, nodding in agreement. "Give me an amulet and I'll be good."

"Good idea," I agreed with a nod.

As we talked Bill started to slow down, before pulling into the parking lot of a rather nice, if a little abandoned-looking, house. We exited the car and I pushed out my cabinet of tricks, handing Tony a healing amulet. It wouldn't de-age him too much as long as he only wore it for a few minutes, and if he wore it for longer I would just offer it to Pepper as well.

Bill lead us led us to the front door of the house, Tony putting on the amulet as we walked. Silently, Bill unlocked the large doors with a key, gesturing us to come inside as they opened and he stepped in.

"Ava? Are you here? I have a few friends here, I think they-"

Before he could finish we all froze, as suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a combat knife was pressed cleanly against my neck, just barely indenting my skin from the pressure.