"Doctor, when was this email sent to your inbox?"
Batman asked Dr. Otto after turning off the first-person perspective video that was still playing.
"Two weeks ago. It was sent to my public inbox, the one I originally used to discuss research topics with other scientists," Dr. Otto said.
"You planning to go check out that address in the video?" Professor Connors asked.
Batman waved a hand dismissively; he wasn't that idle.
Though the content of the video was disgusting, Batman wasn't going to take it to heart, let alone make a special trip all the way to Canada just for this matter.
"Alfred, record the voice recognition and the palm burn characteristics together and archive them," Batman instructed Alfred.
"Actually..." Seeing that Batman had zero intention of going to check out that address in person, Dr. Otto hesitated, his expression looking somewhat peculiar.
"Otto, please tell me you didn't team up with someone else to lure Batman into some kind of trap," Professor Connors frowned.
No matter how he looked at Dr. Otto, he felt that this guy's expression had a few strokes of malicious intent to it.
Professor Morbius glanced at Dr. Otto, then looked back at the books inside the two opened cases, wondering what he was thinking.
"Haha," Dr. Otto let out a laugh, reaching out to pick up a book and casually flipping through it.
Both Batman and Professor Connors saw that nearly every page in the book was crammed densely with letters, numbers, and various symbols.
"Team up with someone? I couldn't pull off a stunt like that," Dr. Otto said. "In fact, going back for a trip, the mental relaxation and sudden flash of inspiration gave me a fifty percent certainty of completing a research project."
"Oh?" Professor Morbius played along and chimed in.
Dr. Otto shot Professor Morbius a sidelong glance:
"The Tesseract, Batman. I've already clarified its functions: it possesses near-infinite energy, can be used to build energy weapons, and enables long-distance teleportation."
"The first two functions don't hold much significance for us, but the last one—long-distance teleportation... I think I can try turning it into a controllable function."
The moment Dr. Otto said that, Professor Connors's and Professor Morbius's eyes widened instantly:
"You've got to be kidding?"
Batman also snapped his gaze toward Dr. Otto.
Not only he, but Alfred as well, had researched the Tesseract's functions to a similar extent, yet they were still quite far away from truly turning it into a controllable teleportation tool.
Dr. Otto merely took a trip home to relax, and he had solved this difficult problem?
Even Alfred rendered his projection, standing inside the laboratory on South Brother Island to look at Dr. Otto.
"Please, I only said I can try, not that I'm guaranteed to succeed," Dr. Otto chuckled. "Though if it succeeds, Batman could actually teleport straight to Vancouver and see who that wanking fellow really is."
Professor Connors's entire face wrinkled up. He had assumed Dr. Otto's ill intentions stemmed from some other scheme; he never imagined he was aiming for this kind of idea.
"Dr. Otto," Batman finally felt a trace of helplessness.
Yet Batman didn't get angry over Dr. Otto's prankish notion. He was only serious when facing enemies; he was quite capable of taking a joke among his own people.
The Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman... who hadn't tossed a few witty remarks his way?
Even Batman himself occasionally dropped a deadpan joke or two.
"Alright, jokes aside, I certainly can't finish this project right away; you'll have to give me some time," Dr. Otto smiled. "Let me show you this."
He took out the food kept separately in the other case—various pizzas, burgers, and other items wrapped carefully in plastic wrap.
Though they weren't store-bought, they looked as if they had been handmade privately.
"This is what my wife made right before she left," Dr. Otto said with a fair bit of pride.
A few minutes later, every scientist present—except for Batman, Dr. Banner, and Betty Ross—sat holding a box of pizza, silently nibbling away in the messy laboratory with brows furrowed tighter than the last.
"The taste is truly terrible," Warren the Jackal thought to himself.
At noon the next day.
Inside the Batcave, Batman re-entered S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal network without obstruction, rapidly searching for intelligence related to the "S.W.O.R.D. Program".
Much like the content known to Batman and Alfred, the initiative itself had been established to target extraterrestrial life and out-of-world threats.
However, the files themselves contained no records regarding extraterrestrial organisms; only a single name was mentioned repeatedly: "Carol Danvers".
This individual was no alien, but rather a colonel in the U.S. Air Force currently serving within S.H.I.E.L.D.
The files did not detail her specific job responsibilities, but the fact that this name and the S.W.O.R.D. Program were repeatedly linked together inherently indicated that this person was far from ordinary.
"If she's also Hydra..."
Even before truly meeting this Colonel Danvers, Batman was already factoring in the worst-case scenario:
"And if this Hydra operative is connected to the S.W.O.R.D. Program, doesn't that imply the scope of Hydra's influence extends beyond Earth itself?"
"..." Alfred stood aside, listening to Batman's self-talk in silence for quite a while.
Watching Batman subconsciously begin preparing all kinds of contingencies according to the worst-case scenario, Alfred could no longer hold back:
"Please allow me to interrupt, Master Wayne... We haven't even interacted with this Colonel Danvers yet, and you're already pondering Hydra infiltrating alien civilizations?"
Batman glanced at the old butler's holographic projection floating beside him and said:
"That's right, Alfred. There's a detail you might have missed."
Alfred grew interested:
"What detail could even I overlook?"
"Not overlooked, but rather a detail I retrieved from my memory after rethinking it now," Batman said. "During the Battle of Manhattan, a majority of those ordinary Hydra soldiers matched standard soldier profiles."
Alfred adjusted his lapels—which didn't need adjusting at all—keeping his eyes fixed on Batman.
He knew Master Wayne must have genuinely discovered a problem.
"Alfred, you know which people are truly prone to being brainwashed and joining Hydra," Batman said. "Aside from those high-ranking Hydra officials wielding power, the true bottom-tier Hydra soldiers ought to be thugs, hippies, vagrants, and drug addicts."
Alfred nodded, dimly grasping something before his brows furrowed even deeper.
"Yet in reality, those ordinary Hydra soldiers were each plump with muscle and brimming with energy. Even in their brainwashed state, I could tell they had nothing to do with thugs, hippies, or junkies."
Alfred nodded again, thinking that after becoming a nearly omnipotent artificial intelligence, he would be able to help Batman with far more things.
Yet it now appeared that Batman's trains of thought were sometimes beyond the reach even of an AI leading the era.
"Coupled with the fact that all the Hydra agents are brainwashed and lack normal human emotions—marching to their deaths one after another without changing expression even when their teammates are killed right beside them..."
"I previously suspected this was the handiwork behind the scenes of the Enchantress or even the villainous Loki, but it now appears things might not necessarily be so simple."
Batman's expression turned grave, speaking word by word:
"Alfred, trust me; if a cult were mass-brainwashing ordinary people into joining, I would definitely have discovered them. But so many ordinary people chose to become bottom-tier Hydra soldiers without me finding a single trace of evidence beforehand..."
"Hydra might genuinely be connected to extraterrestrial civilizations."
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