For 30+ Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
The quiet, studious atmosphere of the library felt like a fragile shell around the dangerous secret that had just unfurled on Peter's laptop screen. The chatter of other students, the rustle of turning pages, the low hum of the servers—it all faded into a distant, irrelevant hum. Their world had contracted to the glowing screen and the chilling implications of the three stolen components.
"Okay," Peter said, his voice a low, focused whisper. He was no longer the anxious student or the lovestruck partner. A different persona had taken over, the one that surfaced in the heat of a crisis: the focused, analytical mind of a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough. His fingers became a blur across the keyboard, his eyes darting between multiple windows he had opened. "Let's break it down. Let's see what kind of meal they're trying to cook."
Diana leaned in, her presence a calm, steadying anchor beside his frantic energy. She didn't look at the raw code or the complex schematics he was pulling up. She looked at the bigger picture, her mind a loom, weaving disparate threads of information into a coherent tapestry.
"Hammer Industries Power Core, model X-7," Peter muttered, reading from a leaked spec sheet he'd pulled from a secure engineering forum. "It's experimental. Not stable for mass production. Puts out an insane amount of energy, but it runs incredibly hot and has a tendency to... you know, explode."
"An unstable engine," Diana noted, her gaze distant and thoughtful. "Powerful, but volatile. A weapon of last resort."
"Next, the Oscorp bio-agent," Peter continued, his eyes scanning a heavily redacted toxicology report. "Project 'Prometheus'. It's a cellular restorative. Designed for rapid tissue regeneration, but the test trials were a disaster. The cellular growth was uncontrollable, leading to… aggressive mutations."
"A volatile fuel," Diana added, her voice grim. "It heals, but it also corrupts. It creates monsters."
"And finally, the AccuTech cryo-condenser," Peter said, pulling up the stolen device's blueprint. "This is the missing piece. It's not just a cooling system; it's a state-of-the-art thermal regulator. It's designed to maintain a precise, super-low temperature, down to a few degrees above absolute zero, even when containing a massive energy output."
He stopped typing and leaned back, the three components hanging in the air between them like a trinity of doom. He looked at Diana, his expression grim.
"It's a cage," he said, the realization dawning on him. "They're not building a weapon. They're building a prison. A life-support system for something incredibly powerful, incredibly unstable, and biological in nature."
Diana's gaze was fixed on the campus map he had minimized on his screen, where the three theft locations were marked. "Look at the logistics," she said, her finger tracing a triangle on the screen. "Hammer in Midtown, Oscorp in the Financial District, AccuTech in Long Island City. The thefts were geographically separate, but the timing is precise, exactly one week apart. This was not opportunistic. This was a planned, deliberate acquisition."
"They're following a blueprint," Peter breathed. "They knew exactly what they needed and where to get it." He started typing again, his fingers a frantic dance. He bypassed the public news servers, using his knowledge of network architecture to delve into the city's encrypted infrastructure feeds—traffic camera logs, power grid usage reports. "There's got to be a pattern, a home base..."
"A.I.M. is a decentralized organization," Diana countered, her voice a low, analytical murmur. "They operate in cells. Finding a central 'base' will be difficult. We should be looking for a new, anomalous logistical footprint. A location that has recently shown a massive spike in power consumption, something sufficient to house and assemble these components."
Her logic was flawless. He wasn't just looking for a hidden lab; he was looking for a digital ghost, a shadow in the city's power grid. He refocused his search, cross-referencing power usage reports with known A.I.M. front companies and abandoned industrial sites. For twenty minutes, the only sound from their carrel was the furious, rhythmic clicking of his keyboard.
"Got it," he finally whispered, his voice tight with a mixture of triumph and dread. He pointed to a section of the screen. "Here. An abandoned shipping warehouse in the Red Hook container yards. Belongs to a shell corporation that traces back to three other companies, all linked to known A.I.M. financiers." He highlighted a graph. "And look at this. A massive, sustained spike in power usage starting three days ago, all off-the-books, bypassing the main city grid. They're pulling power directly from the subterranean lines."
He zoomed in on a satellite image of the location. It was a large, windowless, corrugated steel building, anonymous and forgotten, surrounded by stacks of shipping containers. It was the perfect place to build something terrible in secret.
They had found the nest.
They stared at the screen, the quiet hum of the library a stark contrast to the dangerous reality of their discovery. Their intellectual investigation had reached its end. Research and data could take them no further.
"Someone should check that place out," Peter said, his voice carefully neutral. "You know, the authorities."
"The authorities would be outmatched," Diana replied, her tone equally measured, but her eyes were a hard, clear blue, the color of a winter sky. "This is not a matter for the police. It requires a more… specialized approach."
The unspoken understanding was a powerful, tangible thing between them. This was their responsibility now.
Peter was the first to move, beginning to pack his bag with a deliberate, controlled haste. "I, uh, I need to go," he said, the familiar, flimsy excuse already forming. "I have to get some data from a different server bank at the Applied Sciences annex. It's... it's a cross-campus thing."
"And I have an urgent consultation," Diana said, mirroring his actions, her own movements fluid and efficient. "The museum just received a new collection of Hellenistic artifacts. They require my immediate analysis."
They stood, their bags slung over their shoulders. They looked at each other, and in that shared gaze, a universe of unspoken words was exchanged. There was fear, yes, but it was overshadowed by a fierce, shared determination. There was a profound, aching desire to tell the other to be safe, a plea that could not be voiced.
"Good luck with the… data," she said, her voice soft.
"You too," he replied, his own voice a little hoarse. "Hope the… artifacts are interesting."
He turned and walked away without looking back, the weight of their shared purpose a heavy cloak on his shoulders. He didn't have to look back. He knew she was doing the same, moving in the opposite direction. They were two separate people, heading to two different, fictional appointments. But they were also two heroes, two shield-mates, two halves of a single, powerful signal, heading to the exact same storm.
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