Chapter 329: What's in the Utility Belt
Plans cost money. That was the constant, and it never got simpler.
The New Mexico operation to rescue the Green Goblin had run to approximately a hundred and twenty million dollars. At the time, that had felt like a significant expenditure.
Compared to what Batman was currently building toward, it was a rounding error.
The single vial of Pym Particles now secured in the insulated case on his workbench would fetch tens of billions on the international black market — possibly hundreds of billions, depending on the buyer. Any government with the capability to evaluate what it was would pay without negotiating. Batman had no intention of selling it. It was going into the plan he had been developing for the Hulk, and it would be consumed in the process. One use, one target, irreplaceable.
Beyond the Pym Particles, the list extended in every direction. Dozens of laboratories at various scales. Manufacturing facilities. Processing plants. All of it aimed at attempting to replicate the particle synthesis — something that might take years and might never succeed, but had to be attempted.
Rocket launch infrastructure. Orbital satellites. A submarine. And the Alfred AI, which still existed only in software because the hardware requirements were beyond what he could purchase in a single transaction. He was acquiring the components in batches, funded by the portions of Parker Industries' revenue that Otto's fusion energy work and the memory fiber patents were generating. Slowly. Too slowly.
He worked through the night as he always did, and when the sky outside the ventilation grates above the City Hall station began to lighten, he stood up.
"Robin. North Brother Island."
Venom Robin was slumped in the adjacent chair with his head drooping sideways at an angle that would have been medically concerning on a human. The moment Batman spoke, he was upright.
"Old Bat, did you figure out the Pym Particles? Can I try them?"
"Not here. The facility doesn't support that kind of testing."
"North Brother Island, then?" Venom Robin was already moving toward the exit.
"North Brother Island doesn't support it either."
Venom Robin stopped. His face fell with the specific disappointment of someone who had spent the previous night watching a man expand to twenty meters and had been quietly imagining himself at thirty or forty meters ever since.
"Then what was the point of breaking into Pym's building and stealing the thing if we can't even use it?"
Batman looked at him.
This was the second behavioral tell in twelve hours. Yesterday he had read guilt; now he was reading deflection — the particular conversational restlessness of someone trying to move past a topic before it becomes a topic. The Pym Particles were not what Venom Robin was actually thinking about.
Batman filed the observation and answered the question directly.
"Do you remember the night I brought you along to announce I was looking for Black Widow? When we were working our way through the criminal networks?"
"Yes."
"If you were Black Widow — a Hydra operative with a simultaneous S.H.I.E.L.D. cover identity, arriving in New York for the first time — where would you go? Who would you approach?"
Venom Robin looked like he was being asked to do mathematics before breakfast.
"Stark? The Hulk? You?"
Batman pulled out a chair and sat down, gesturing for Robin to do the same.
"That's the right category of answer. After Hawkeye gave me Natasha Romanoff's real name and confirmed her appearance, I ran a full cross-reference search across Stark Industries, Oscorp, and Parker Industries employee records. Permanent staff, contractors, temporary workers — everyone."
"She wasn't there."
"No match. Which told me something: either she wasn't using employment as her entry method, or her target was someone outside those organizations, or she had already left the city." Batman handed Venom Robin a piece of chocolate. "My assessment put the employment probability above ninety percent. If she wasn't at any of those three companies, that left two remaining options."
Venom Robin chewed slowly, his processing speed visibly improving.
"Baxter Building. Pym Technologies."
"Correct. After I returned from the primitive world, while Lunella was closing the full-wave projector, I used that window to conduct a complete remote intrusion of the Baxter Building's systems. No trace of Black Widow in any database."
"Which left Pym."
"Which left Pym." Batman nodded. "So last night was not an accident. Even if we had arrived to find Pym and Black Widow not speaking, I would have been searching for her specifically."
Venom Robin chewed the last of the chocolate and stared at Batman with a look of mild grievance.
"I thought it was a coincidence. You planned the whole thing."
"One additional question," Batman said. "We moved through most of a thirty-two-floor building for an extended period. The patrol ants passed within centimeters of us multiple times. Why didn't any of them react?"
Venom Robin opened his mouth. Then closed it. He had been wondering the same thing since they left.
Batman reached to his utility belt and removed a flat carrying case assembled from multiple narrow metal cylinders arranged side by side in a strip. He held it out.
Venom Robin read the labels on each cylinder in turn.
"Insect repellent. Ant pheromone compound. Shark repellent. Female lizard pheromone. Snake deterrent. Jellyfish attractant."
He looked up.
"Old Bat. Next time we encounter an enemy, we don't need to fight. We just throw your belt at them and they'll surrender on their own."
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