Chapter 413: Dr. Helen Cho Joins, and an Explosion
"His physical injuries were fully healed about two weeks ago. The coma persisted after that -- no obvious cause, just the body and mind deciding on their own schedule." Dr. Helen Cho walked beside Batman through the hospital corridor, keeping her voice professional and her curiosity contained. "The nursing staff you arranged have been excellent. The daily care and physical therapy made a significant difference."
Batman pushed open the ward door.
Professor Miles Warren was sitting up in bed when they came in. His color was good. His eyes, when they landed on Peter Parker's face, brightened immediately.
"Peter."
"Professor." Batman settled into the chair beside the bed and looked him over with the unhurried attentiveness of someone checking a variable. "How are you feeling?"
"Feeling?" Warren laughed. It was the laugh of a man who had woken up from what he had apparently experienced as an uninterrupted deep sleep and found himself physically intact. "I feel like I could walk into a boxing gym right now and last a few rounds."
"I can arrange that," Batman said, and made a show of reaching for the communicator disguised as his phone.
Warren waved his hands in laughing protest and redirected.
"Peter -- the doctor tells me I've been out for two and a half months." He settled back against the pillow, the humor fading into genuine curiosity. "Will you tell me what I missed?"
Dr. Cho found a position near the door and stayed there, listening. She had been trying to construct a theory about how Miles Warren had come to sustain the injuries that had put him in this room, ever since she had first assessed him. The tissue damage had been unlike anything conventional medicine had prepared her for. The pattern of it was not consistent with any mechanical injury she could explain.
Her working hypothesis, which she had never committed to paper, was that whatever had attacked Warren was something she did not have a scientific framework for yet.
She waited to see if Peter Parker would fill in any of the gaps.
He did not. He gave Warren the version that was available in the news cycle -- the Manhattan dinosaur invasion, the Fantastic Four's emergence, Nathan Garrett's bomb plot. Real events, comprehensively described, with the personal details removed. A briefing, not a confession.
Warren received it with the wide-eyed absorption of a man hearing about things that would have seemed impossible before his coma and were apparently just factual now.
"The world kept moving," he said, when Batman finished.
"It tends to."
Warren's expression shifted -- something remembered. "There were other people in the laboratory with me. When it happened. Are they--"
"We'll talk about that when you're properly out of here," Batman said calmly, redirecting without visible effort. "Right now the priority is your recovery. How long is the observation period?"
Dr. Cho answered from the door.
"Three days."
Warren exhaled with visible relief.
"Three days. Absolutely fine." He had clearly been bracing for something measured in weeks.
Batman stayed through most of the morning, watching Warren's responses, testing his cognition through conversation without making it obvious that's what he was doing. Memory intact. No cognitive drift. No anomalous physical signs. The body had healed cleanly.
Satisfied, he took his leave.
The walk back through the hospital to the parking lot was uneventful until he was almost at the car. He had one foot on the door sill and one on the asphalt when he heard his name.
"Peter! Wait."
Dr. Cho was crossing the parking lot at a fast walk, her white coat open, one hand holding the lapel closed against the November air. She had the expression of someone who had made a decision and was now committed to executing it before she could talk herself out of it.
Batman waited.
She reached him and stopped. Took a breath.
The expression on her face was an unusual combination -- a thread of embarrassment, genuine anticipation, and something that looked like she was hoping to be taken seriously. In his experience, that particular combination usually indicated a personal conversation of a romantic nature. He recalibrated quickly when she spoke.
"I want to join Parker Industries."
He looked at her.
"Why?"
"Medicine was never my endgame. It was a tool." She was steadier now that the words were out. "My primary field is materials science. I went through medical school to develop an advanced understanding of human biology because the two fields intersect in ways that matter for what I want to do. I've been using this hospital as a research environment. Now that Professor Warren is stable and his case is closed, I think I've taken everything from this role that I needed."
"Why not Baxter Building?" Batman asked. "Reed Richards is your colleague. He has considerably more resources."
"Reed's research axis is cosmological. Space, dimensional physics, interstellar theory. My work is materials-based. Our interests don't significantly overlap." She paused. "And Parker Industries has a documented history with advanced materials. Memory fiber. That's where I'd be most useful."
Batman held this for a moment. The reasoning was coherent. The logic of why she would come to him rather than a more obvious option was present and internally consistent.
But he asked anyway.
"Is there anything else?"
Dr. Cho smiled slightly -- the smile of someone who had prepared for the question.
"The Baxter Building is currently under full military lockdown. Navy SEALs, twenty-four-hour security. Every person on that campus is under active observation by people with very significant institutional authority." She paused. "I'm trying to get pregnant. I don't want to spend that period of my life as a person of interest to the Department of Defense."
Batman looked at her for a moment without expression, then stepped out of the car door properly, straightened, and extended his hand.
"Congratulations in advance. And welcome to Parker Industries."
Dr. Cho shook his hand. The relief on her face was genuine.
"You didn't ask me what my materials focus is," she said, with mild amusement. "Most employers lead with that question."
"Perhaps I should."
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Nano-biotechnology."
Batman allowed a single note of genuine interest into his voice.
"An ambitious direction."
"It's the right one."
He gestured toward the passenger side.
"Get in. I'm going to Parker Tower this morning anyway. I'll introduce you to Alice and get your access set up."
"Thank you, boss," she said, and walked around to the other door.
At Parker Tower, Batman handed Dr. Cho off to CEO Alice with appropriate instructions and then spent an hour reviewing the semiconductor acquisition status. The chip fabrication infrastructure was assembled and active. Development was proceeding at the pace that bespoke engineering timelines required, which was not fast enough for his preferences but faster than it had any reason to be, given the specifications he had given them.
He left Alice to manage the timeline and drove to the acquired chip company's facility -- a converted industrial building in an outer borough, unremarkable from the outside, which was precisely the point. He had arranged for the specific section he needed to be cleared and off-limits to the regular staff.
He worked through the afternoon and into the evening in silence, building the custom chip architecture that no commercial supplier could have produced. This was not programming or assembly-line production. It was precision engineering at a scale that required full concentration and no interruptions.
By the time the light outside had gone completely dark, he had made substantial progress. He paused and checked for incoming communications.
Nothing from Robin. No update on the Adamantium analysis.
Nothing from Dr. Otto. The Wolverine hair sample would take more time.
Nothing from Tony. The Helicarrier search was still in progress.
Batman returned to work.
He was still at it past midnight when the explosion went off.
He heard it before the data registered -- felt it, almost, through some combination of the distance and the scale. Not a single detonation. The sustained, layered sound of a building-scale event with secondary collapses following the initial blast.
The direction was west. The borough markers on his internal geography said Hell's Kitchen.
He was already moving.