Creating a Spiritual Echolocator was not a trivial task.
The base around me sank into the silence of the pre-dawn hours. I settled onto the bed, closed my eyes, and immersed myself inward, beginning to conceptualize the process. Right now, I was an architect. I was rationalizing the task ahead and sketching blueprints on mental paper.
First, I needed to define the problem clearly.
My standard Spiritual Vision was semi-passive. If I concentrated, I could see the spiritual landscape within a normal line of sight. But I wanted more. I wanted range. I wanted to see through walls and obstacles. I needed an active system. I needed a sonar that emitted pulses and read the reflections from souls and objects.
A simple, crude release of my Reiatsu, my spiritual pressure, wouldn't work. That would be like yelling in a quiet library. People with strong spirits, and therefore high, even if unconscious, sensitivity, like Clint Barton, would feel it immediately. It would be too noisy. It would be too obvious. It would give me away at once.
I needed something subtler. Something more elegant.
The idea came almost immediately. I would use the external Reishi particles that were scattered through space for the pulse, instead of using my own energy. I could mark them with my Reiatsu, giving them a unique resonant signature that was linked to me. The concept started to take shape.
The next element was the receiver.
My spiritual perception needed to be reconfigured and calibrated so that it would respond only to the reflected Reishi that were carrying my signature. During active echolocation, my internal scanner would have to work on a narrow, hidden frequency.
I mentally mapped out an algorithm for processing the incoming data.
A clear, dense echo would mean a soul, a high spiritual power concentration, Reiryoku.
A weak, blurred echo would mean an inanimate object with a low background Reishi density.
A complete absence of an echo would mean a shadow zone, an object that had fully absorbed the pulse.
An echo frequency shift, which is the Doppler effect for Reishi, would mean a moving object, which would allow me to estimate its speed and vector.
Once I had a detailed concept of this spiritual construct in my head, I moved to the next stage.
I didn't want to build the echolocator from scratch every time. It would be far more efficient to create a permanent, semi-autonomous device directly inside my soul, or at least one that was inseparably linked to it. That would solve two problems at once. It would remain completely unnoticed by S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, and it would give me priceless, early experience in working with souls.
I strengthened my intent and took a deep breath. For a moment, a cold wave of primal fear washed over me. This wasn't gadget modding. This was metaphysical neurosurgery on my own soul, and I would be performing it with spiritual scalpels and no anesthesia. But it was too late to back out. I ran through the entire procedure one more time in my head, and then I began the practical implementation.
It was time to create the sonar core.
I entered a deep meditation and focused on the all-encompassing sensation of my inner ocean of energy, my Reiryoku. Carefully, I scooped out a tiny fraction of it and began the unthinkable. I began compressing and stabilizing the Reishi, layer by layer, forging a microscopic, super-dense sphere of hardened spiritual energy inside my spiritual body, in the area of my solar plexus.
That was the hardware. It was my personal emitter and receiver in one.
Now, I needed to install the software onto that spiritual hardware.
Fortunately, I had already planned this part. Using the basic principles of soul modification from the Strange Science knowledge package as a programming language, I literally impressed my prepared mental blueprint into the structure of the core. At that instant, the sonar was programmed with one function. On a mental command, it would generate a spherical pulse of marked Reishi, receive the reflected signal, and transmit the raw data directly to my consciousness for processing.
[Construct "Spiritual Sonar" created. Complexity: Normal. Received +400 OP!]
A Spiritual Sonar. It was a spiritual construct inseparably connected to my body and soul. It was created using the art of spiritual energy manipulation and soul modification. It was capable of interacting with its surroundings in a radius of approximately one hundred meters.
The core compression process drained me dry. I felt my Reiryoku reserve evaporate, leaving behind a dull emptiness and a faint, pulsing pain in the area where the construct now sat. And as much as I wanted to test my new sonar immediately, I understood that it still needed a long, tedious calibration. I had no strength left for that. I had no energy. I had no desire.
So, I slept.
The spirit and the body are inseparably linked, and in some ways, the spirit matters even more. So, despite being physically combat-ready, the spiritual exhaustion dropped me into sleep almost instantly.
When I woke up at three p.m., I felt refreshed and full of strength. The drained soul battery had fully recharged. After a quick hygiene routine and a solid lunch in the S.H.I.E.L.D. cafeteria, I returned to my room.
It was time for calibration.
But first, there was the first activation.
It was a catastrophe.
It was predictable, yes. Still, it was a catastrophe.
The moment I mentally switched it on, my consciousness was hit, not by an avalanche, but by a tsunami of unprocessed, raw information. It was the deafening white noise of the universe. It was a chaotic hum from every speck of dust in the air, from every molecule in the walls, and from every tiny soul. And as it turned out, even insects had souls, and there were myriads of them in a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, just like anywhere else.
The worst part was that the hundred-meter radius was spherical. I heard everything above me, where the parking structures were, and even traces of New York street noise leaked in. I heard everything below me, too, where unknown, echoing, empty S.H.I.E.L.D. spaces stretched underground.
There was too much information. There was an insane amount of it.
If my brain had been even a little less prepared, I could have had a stroke. But I had already survived the Technological Modernization and a dozen System information packages, each one of which had been like a sledgehammer to the brain. On top of that, the amulet around my neck was constantly boosting my cognition. So, the echolocation chaos didn't even make me flinch. At worst, I felt a mild sensory overload, like stepping into a loud train station after a total silence.
At least the sonar worked.
If anything, it worked too well.
I didn't need this much useless noise.
Focusing on the construct that was humming in my solar plexus, I started fine-tuning it. First, I applied filters. I calibrated the perception so that it would ignore reflections from low-density objects completely, keeping only the meaningful targets in focus. Those targets were living beings and large inanimate objects. At the same time, I adjusted the pulse's own intensity, making it more diffuse, almost indistinguishable from the natural background. That should lower the detection risk to an absolute minimum.
The last and most difficult stage was training my brain.
I popped an NZT pill and started reprogramming my own perception. I was essentially teaching my brain to instantly convert a stream of raw returns into an intuitive, three-dimensional mental map, instead of a chaotic set of sensations. I started small, with my room, forcing myself to "see" the desk, the bed, and the walls. Gradually, step by step, I expanded the focus until I could effortlessly cover the full hundred-meter radius.
It took about an hour of intense mental work.
After that, I could say with complete confidence that the skill was ready.
It was my first real, from-scratch active skill.
The potential of Strange Science really did seem limitless, and I felt like I had barely touched the edge of it. The sonar core wasn't exactly integrated into my soul. That was too crude a word for it. It was more like it was fused to it. It was joined. I still wasn't ready to climb fully inside the soul itself. This was more like installing an additional module, a peripheral device, or a construct, as the System had called it. Yes. That was more accurate.
Now, the activation was almost reflexive and required a minimal concentration. With a single mental command, a clean, detailed 3D map of everything within a hundred-meter radius unfolded in my mind. The living beings were clearly highlighted, and their approximate spiritual strength was estimated intuitively.
Once I had calmed down, I contacted Fury about the contract. He confirmed that everything was ready and ordered me to wait for Natasha, who would escort me to him. I didn't wait long. This time, we went in a different direction from the one she had taken yesterday. Did Fury have multiple offices in the base? Was it paranoia, or just convenience? It didn't matter.
The important thing was that we arrived.
Inside, this new office looked exactly like the previous one. It was just as sterile. It was just as faceless.
"Here's the contract, and here's the ore information. Your box will be delivered to your room today." Fury began, without any greeting, as he extended a folder with papers. "Destroy or return the ore data after you've studied it."
I nodded and started reading immediately.
The contract was a true bureaucratic labyrinth. It was soaked in legal jargon and tricky definitions. But under the NZT, my brain functioned like a precision scanner, filtering out the verbal clutter and extracting the core instantly. At its heart, it did contain everything that we had discussed yesterday. Naturally, there were several interesting and fairly controversial points. For example, there was a clause stating that in the event of my death, all of my technological developments and assets would pass under the full control of S.H.I.E.L.D. Another clause stated that I could not specify how the technologies I created would be used.
In short, S.H.I.E.L.D. predictably wanted control over everything that it could reach.
That was the expected price for access to their resources and for my personal convenience. In every other respect, the contract suited me. I signed it with a sweeping flourish, returned the document to Fury, and immediately took up the next folder, which was the information on Vibranium and Adamantium.
This was a revelation.
It was thirty pages of dense technical text that would be gibberish to most people. But for me, it became a gateway to a new era. Thanks to Master Clockmaker's absolute memory, which was further enhanced by the NZT, I didn't simply read it. I absorbed it. I visualized the crystal lattices, the molecular bond schemes, and the thermal processing regimes. I didn't just know how to work with Adamantium now. I could see the process. And more importantly, I finally sensed that thin, impossible path toward Vibranium processing.
"Excellent. I've studied everything." I said, returning the pages to Fury. For the last half hour, he had been completely immersed in his own work and had barely looked at me.
"And you've memorized it?" He asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow as he looked up from his monitor.
"Possibly." I didn't give him a direct answer, but it was enough. His expression told me that he had drawn the right conclusion. "I need to leave the base. I hope that won't be a problem."
Yes. It was time to see Gwen and hear about how her mission was going. Maybe I could even catch Peter if there was time.
"No problem. But you will have supervision."
"Even better." I nodded. "Will it be Natasha?"
"No, it will be rank-and-file agents. But trust me, they're professionals."
I see.
Why wasn't it Natasha? Had something happened that made Fury prefer to keep her on the base? Or did he simply not want to waste one of his best agents on a routine surveillance? Either way, regular agents would do. This was S.H.I.E.L.D. The best of the best served here.
I left the office and, under a temporary escort from that same Natasha, I headed to the parking area, where a government car was waiting. On the way, I pulled my smartphone from my inventory and called Gwen.
"Hi. Are you free at six?" I asked as soon as she answered.
"Hi. Yes. Why?"
"Then I'm inviting you on a date to Lily and Millie's." I remembered Blade's favorite place. Its style used to annoy me, but now I found a certain charm in it. It was also convenient.
"Okay, I'll come." She said, smiling through her voice. I liked that this time she didn't flinch at the word date. There was progress. At this rate, it might actually become a date.
Yeah, right. Where was I supposed to find time for something as luxurious as a relationship? Then again, under S.H.I.E.L.D. supervision, free time might actually become easier. It would be a kind of break from the endless grinding.
At the parking area, I was handed the keys to a familiar, nondescript Ford, just with different plates. I got behind the wheel and headed to the elevator. My new sonar, working together with the mirrors, immediately painted a clear picture. At least three cars were following me. There were two sedans and one van. There was a total of about a dozen agents. Hopefully, they were vetted personnel. Though, in a world with Hydra, you could never be completely sure.
Still, Fury definitely wasn't Hydra. He was Black, and people like him aren't exactly welcome there. It was nice to be certain of at least one thing in this madhouse.
Once the elevator brought me up to street level, I pulled into traffic. The city met me with noise and motion. After I oriented myself, I headed toward the cafe. With the evening traffic, the drive took about twenty minutes, and I arrived exactly at six.
Gwen was already there, waiting inside. She was boredly propping her cheek on one hand and looking out the window from a table in the back.
"This place... is so..." was the first thing she said when I sat down across from her.
"Pink? I know." I smirked. "It's Eric's favorite place in New York."
"You're joking, right?" She squinted at me skeptically.
"What does your intuition say?"
"Mmm... it says we're being watched. And not by just one or two people." Gwen said, unsure, but accurate.
"Don't worry. They're ours. I made an arrangement with S.H.I.E.L.D." I paused, took the menu from the approaching waitress, and then waited until she left before giving Gwen a brief summary of the last few days.
"Holy shit..." Gwen breathed out when I finished. Her eyes were huge. "What a day you had... I mostly just followed Morris."
"And what's the progress?"
Instead of answering, Gwen silently held out her phone with the gallery open.
It was Morris Bench.
There were dozens of photos. There was Bench in a luxury restaurant where the average bill was over a thousand dollars. There was Bench buying expensive jewelry. There was Bench behind the wheel of a brand new Porsche. In almost every shot, he wasn't alone.
I kept scrolling, and a cold premonition tightened in my chest.
Then, I found what I was looking for. It was probably the strongest proof. It was a photo of Mary Jane Watson, after what I saw, my tongue didn't even want to call her MJ, giving Bench a blowjob in that same Porsche.
Silently, I turned the screen toward Gwen again.
"This is Peter's girlfriend." I said, making air quotes.
"This... is fucked up." Gwen exhaled tiredly. Shock and genuine pity were mixed on her face.
"I suspected something like this, but these photos settle it." I said with a shrug. "It's time to pull Peter out of this trash pit. By the way, what about Bench's suspected base?"
"There's a bar that he visits suspiciously often." Gwen pointed at the relevant photo. "And that would be fine, except the place officially works from six p.m. to midnight. But for Bench, it seems to be open around the clock."
"Hmm. It's his lair, or at least a headquarters. But I take it he's not making any moves yet?"
"Yeah. There have been no robberies. There have been no other crimes." Gwen spread her hands.
"Then whoever hired him, and I'd bet on Kingpin, is lying low for now. He probably doesn't want any extra attention because of Bench's temper." I nodded, fitting the pieces together.
"We need to keep watching and find out who's behind him." Gwen said.
"No." I shook my head. "Your mission is actually complete. You found the bar, you brought back enough to wake Peter up, and you learned that his employer is still gathering strength. That's more than enough for now. Thank you." I meant it.
"Oh, so I can finally count on a cool suit?" Gwen asked with a sly squint.
"Women... all you want are outfits and trinkets..." I sighed theatrically. "But seriously, I won't risk creating anything truly advanced right now. I need a personal lab first. Still, send me your measurements. I can at least sew you a Proteus base. What color do you want? White and pink?"
Before Gwen could reply with outrage, the waitress returned to our table holding a tray with desserts.
The problem was that we hadn't ordered any.
At that exact same moment, Gwen's spider sense must have started screaming. Ignoring the crowd around us, she moved with one sharp, animalistic lunge. She vaulted the table and locked her hands around me in a grip of steel. In the next instant, we smashed through the cafe's huge front window, with my back going first, and we flew outside to the sound of shattering glass.
"Sleep!" a loud, amplified male voice rang out from somewhere nearby.
And to my horror, I felt Gwen's grip on my shoulders weakening.
People on the street and inside the cafe started dropping in groups, like wheat that was being cut by a scythe.
And I, I also suddenly wanted to sleep. Desperately. A sticky, leaden heaviness pressed down on my mind, and I had almost no strength left to resist it.
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