Chapter 404: A Spider Totem With Bat Wings?!
Both arguments had merit from an objective standpoint. Batman was not omniscient, and this world contained more unknowns than he had yet mapped. The question of the shield figure's identity was genuine -- it could be resolved either way, and forcing a conclusion without sufficient evidence would only produce a wrong answer acted on with false confidence.
With no new ground to cover on that specific thread, Batman moved on. He gave a condensed account of everything he had put together on the Enchantress, the Norse mythological tradition, and the runic script on Skurge's axe -- laying it out for the assembled scientists on North Brother Island in the hope that one of them might surface something he had missed.
None of them did. For this group, even encountering Khonshu in person had not moved them far from their instinct to find a scientific framework for what they were observing. Something as abstract as an Asgardian sorceress conducting totem-hunting operations in Wakanda, or ancient runic script on a weapon from a confirmed supernatural origin, gave them very little to work with analytically. The conversation stalled.
Dr. Banner was the exception. He was not interested in the runic script as a subject, but hearing it mentioned had brought someone to mind.
"I don't know how familiar any of you are with Reed Richards's academic history. Most of his life is a matter of public record -- except for the space mission. What I'm thinking about is earlier."
He had their attention.
"When I was at Caltech, I made an attempt to contact Reed -- at that point still the most prominent mind in theoretical physics -- to help me work on the Banner problem. The Hulk." He said it flatly, without drama. "It didn't come together, for a number of reasons. But in the process of looking into his background, I came across a name. A fellow student from his undergraduate years."
He said the name.
"Victor von Doom."
Dr. Otto turned immediately to his keyboard and ran a search. He shook his head without looking up.
"Nothing. No records of any kind."
"If he were easy to find, I would have tracked him down before this conversation," Dr. Banner said, with the mild amusement of someone making an obvious point. "He's not American. He's Latverian."
"Eastern European nation," Dr. Connors said.
"Correct. From what I was able to determine, Doom's academic interests weren't confined to physics. He worked across the natural sciences and the humanities with equal facility. If there's anyone who might be capable of reading runic script and situating it within the broader Norse mythological framework at a serious scholarly level--" Dr. Banner paused. "He may be the only viable candidate."
Batman and Venom Robin exchanged a glance. Neither of them mentioned the Ancient One.
"Going to Eastern Europe to locate someone with no paper trail is going to be harder than finding a needle in the ocean," Dr. Otto said, with mild frustration. "And Reed Richards, who is the one person who might actually know how to reach this man, is currently locked inside a government security cordon as one of the so-called Fantastic Four. Completely inaccessible."
The scientists on North Brother Island had their own information networks -- occupying the top tier of their respective fields gave them channels that had nothing to do with hacking or surveillance. The name "Fantastic Four" was not unknown to them, even if it hadn't gone public.
Venom Robin had been quiet for most of the discussion, which was somewhat unusual. He had been listening with the focused attention of someone who found mythological entities and supernatural conspiracies considerably more engaging than laboratory procedures.
North Brother Island had been operating at a reduced social temperature for a while. Conversations of this kind -- the whole group gathered, trading information across disciplines -- had been rare. Batman had also changed since the early months. The deliberate coldness that had characterized his first interactions with the island's scientists had given way to something more collaborative; he still drove the agenda, but he now asked questions when he genuinely didn't know the answer rather than working everything out privately first.
"For now, the priority is the Adamantium synthesis," Dr. Connors said, drawing the conversation toward a conclusion. "We work on that, and pursue the Norse mythology threads in parallel as information becomes available. The Enchantress is a name none of us had encountered before this morning."
The group began to break apart back toward their respective work. Batman was about to follow when Professor Morbius spoke up.
"Batman. Something has been happening to me recently that I haven't been able to explain."
Every head in the room turned.
Professor Morbius stood in his habitual black-over-red coat, shirt collar buttoned to the throat underneath it, his gaunt gray-black face doing what it always did -- lending him an involuntary resemblance to the vampire of folklore that was, in his case, closer to accurate than most people would have been comfortable knowing.
"The Fantastic Four are under military protection," he said, opening with a statement everyone present already knew. "And the reason, according to what's circulating in certain circles, is that powerful people believe the genetic material of those four could be used to grant themselves or their descendants superhuman abilities."
Batman relayed the detail Tony had provided -- that the belief appeared to originate from dream-based suggestion, planted with notable consistency across multiple individuals.
"Yes. That's exactly what I wanted to raise." Morbius's expression was completely serious. In his case, serious shaded naturally toward grim. "I had the same dream."
Dr. Banner's posture changed entirely. He went from relaxed against the workbench to upright and tense in a single involuntary movement.
"Tell me the specific content," Batman said immediately. "As precisely as you can remember it."
"The memory is very clear. I could reconstruct it in detail if necessary." Morbius gathered himself. "In the dream, there was a figure standing behind me. Green. I couldn't determine whether it was male or female -- the form was indistinct. It was describing the advantages of obtaining the Fantastic Four's genetic material."
"That's why I didn't raise it earlier when you were discussing the Enchantress. I couldn't confirm a match."
"But there are two points I think are significant enough to tell you directly."
Batman gave a slight nod. Morbius continued.
"First: the language it used was not English. Not French, not Russian, not Mandarin. Not any language I have knowledge of, in any form I could place."
"Second: the reason I remember the dream this clearly is that I was essentially lucid throughout it. I was aware I was dreaming while it was happening. And the figure never finished what it was saying -- it was interrupted mid-sentence and pulled away."
"Pulled away how?"
"Black mist," Morbius said, then immediately reconsidered his own description. "No -- that's not quite accurate. More like black threads. Enormous quantities of them, concentrated so densely they resembled something fibrous. Moving together."
The scientists' eyes moved, almost without consultation, toward Batman.
Each of them had some personal experience with the black webbing Batman fired from his hands. The association was immediate and involuntary.
Batman's expression did not shift. He looked through the reaction rather than at it.
Morbius pressed on.
"In the black threads -- I saw something. A creature." He paused for a fraction of a second. "It appeared to be walking on legs. Like a bat, but using its limbs to move across a surface rather than flying. Something strange about its configuration."
Venom Robin turned to look at Batman.
"No." Morbius caught himself and stopped. "Let me try that again. A different description would be more accurate."
He looked directly at Batman.
"A giant spider," he said. "With bat wings."
***
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