Faced with Ian's explanation,
the girl named Gwen did not respond.
"Gwen Stacy?"
Ian asked cautiously.
"Hm?"
She looked a little surprised, which clearly meant he had guessed right. So this really was Gwen, the girl Spider-Man Peter Parker had failed to get with across multiple generations.
"You know me? Have we met?" Gwen looked Ian up and down, her expression confused, as if trying to remember whether she had ever seen him before.
"No. I've just heard of you... and Spider-Man's story. You said the superheroes from before all went insane. Can you tell me what happened?"
Ian wanted to use the chance to pry out some information.
"I fell asleep, and when I woke up, the world was like this."
He told another small lie. Compared to explaining that he came from another world, making up a story about being cursed by an evil witch and put to sleep for ages was obviously much easier. Never underestimate a writer. No, soon-to-be bestselling author. Ian felt that title suited him just fine.
"Spider-Man..."
Gwen did not seem interested in Ian's "story," which disappointed him a little. Her expression turned sorrowful, like she was remembering something painful.
"There hasn't been a Spider-Man in this world for a very long time."
The girl let out a heavy sigh, her eyes full of melancholy as she lowered her gaze to the pale right hand gripping her weapon.
She flexed her wrist slightly,
staring at the wrinkled skin over her pulse point, and her expression grew even sadder.
"Here, a tissue. I'll hold that heavy thing for you, and you can wipe the sleep out of your eyes."
Suddenly, while Gwen was still lost in memory, a voice sounded right beside her.
And then someone tried to take the gun from her hand.
"What are you doing?!"
Gwen was startled badly. She had not sensed Ian getting close at all. Once she reacted, she immediately shoved him hard and leaped back five or six steps.
Out of instinct, Gwen raised the gun and aimed it at Ian again. But when she saw the eager look on his face, she was hit by another wave of helpless frustration and lowered it again.
"No, seriously, what is wrong with you?" Maybe she still had not realized how dangerous Ian could be, because after lowering the weapon, she just stared at him like he was impossible to understand.
"You're really strong."
Ian rubbed his chest in surprise.
His eyes flickered.
"Don't try to grab my gun again!" Gwen did not answer his confusion at all. She only issued a stern warning, though it was not especially intimidating.
"Come on, give me a chance. Seriously, trust me. I didn't have a choice before, but now I want to be a bad guy who gets shot."
Ian was dying to get at that battery full of laser shots. Honestly, if he had any gold bars on him, which were probably hard currency even in the apocalypse, he would have tried to "rent" her weapon on the spot.
"..."
Gwen really wanted to unload a full burst into him.
Still,
she had pretty solid emotional control.
"Honestly, you remind me of a comic I read when I was little."
Gwen let out a speechless sigh. Her increasingly blurred memories of childhood made her mood even gloomier.
"What comic?"
Ian was curious.
Gwen did not answer.
She turned her head and spotted several shifting dark figures emerging faintly through the snowy curtain.
Then, in the very next moment,
"So you like playing with guns that much? Fine, here."
Her attitude did a complete one-eighty. She directly threw the gun toward Ian.
Ian caught it steadily.
The moment it touched his hand, a soft mechanical whir sounded from inside the weapon.
[Identity Verification Passed]
The electronic voice sounded especially clear in the silent snowfield.
Ian blinked in surprise.
Gwen's pupils shrank sharply.
Her expression changed instantly.
"How is that possible?!"
Her voice was full of disbelief.
"Uh... honestly, I'm pretty surprised too."
Ian could naturally guess this was some kind of identity-based user authorization. He just did not understand, same as Gwen, why he also had clearance to unlock the weapon.
Unless...
Gwen was secretly obsessed with him too,
and had quietly authorized him just now?
Ian thought that made perfect sense.
Though probably not legal sense.
He was only a fourteen-year-old boy, and Gwen clearly looked like an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old grown woman. While thinking that, Ian was just about to empty the battery and practice his bullet-catching skills.
Crunch, crunch.
The sudden sound made him pause.
Four fully armed soldiers,
along with a woman in a white coat,
were riding in on bicycles.
Betty Ross.
Bruce Banner's ex-girlfriend.
Ian was pretty sure he had guessed right.
"What's going on?"
The scientist Betty stopped with one foot on the ground. The legs of her pants under the white lab coat were covered in snow and mud. It was obvious she had fallen more than once on the way here. Ian understood that all too well. He knew exactly how slippery the roads were.
He could barely manage it himself.
"He's the teleporter. He appeared near the bodies before we removed Hulk and Homelander, then vanished mysteriously. The system just identified him as an authorized user of the weapon."
As she spoke,
Gwen stepped forward and snatched the gun out of Ian's hands before he could even warm it up.
"No way, that's cheating."
Ian thought something was very off about her. She was somehow even stronger than he was. Once the weapon was out of his hands, the four soldiers lowered the firearms they had aimed at him.
They were laser guns too.
Ian stared at them with envy burning in his eyes.
"He might be a remnant S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Or a survivor from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy."
Betty pushed up her glasses in surprise as well, Ian's reflection flashing across the lenses.
"Are you?"
Gwen looked at Ian.
"Uh, I don't know. I'm just a guy who got captured by an evil witch, then taken back to her place where she was planning to..."
Ian had barely seized the chance to tell his story when the scientist Betty clearly decided he would not be allowed to show off his talent.
"Let's head back first. Once we're there, we can check the database and find out who he is."
Betty gave Ian a deep look, and the four soldiers around her immediately closed in around him.
"You have a base?"
Ian did not resist.
His curiosity was instantly hooked. He had wandered around this world for quite a while already, but before now, he really had not found a single other living thing in this city.
And now all at once, this many people had appeared.
It did not matter whether they were actually living beings or just echoes from the universe's past. Ian was genuinely curious where they had all been hiding.
"Come with us, and you'll find out."
Betty exchanged a look with Gwen, then suddenly pulled out a device and scanned Ian. Right after that, her expression relaxed significantly.
"Superhumans with goodness still left in them are important to us."
Her tone loosened up too. Not just hers, but Gwen's and the four soldiers' as well. None of them looked nearly as wary of Ian anymore.
Probably because the mysterious device had lit up green.
"Of course I'm good. I come from solid red stock."
Ian was not surprised by the test result at all. Just look at the kind of family he had grown up in and the values he had been raised around.
Marx in his last life.
Red trunks in this one.
Who could possibly be redder than him?
"Let's go."
Gwen clearly did not want to keep talking to Ian. She took the lead toward the direction Betty had come from, and Ian followed right behind her. The others pushed their bikes instead of riding them.
Apparently they had all developed a bit of trauma from falling.
Very soon,
Ian followed Gwen, Betty, and the others into a hidden alley. Gwen skillfully pried open a manhole cover, glanced back once, then jumped down without hesitation.
"A leap of faith?"
Ian did not want to land on his butt, so he seized the chance and jumped hard after her.
"..."
Gwen looked up at the object dropping from above.
Then, speechless, she caught Ian in her arms.
"Thank you, Gwen. You're the real superhero."
Ian remained polite.
Then,
the others used ropes to climb down more smoothly. Gwen set Ian down and took the lead deeper into the sewer. The damp tunnel was left with nothing but footsteps and the sound of dripping water.
Soon,
they reached the end of the tunnel.
There stood a large metal door gleaming with a cold sheen, and on it was the faded emblem of the Avengers.
"Wait."
Betty suddenly stopped Gwen, who had been about to step forward for verification.
"Let him do it."
She looked at Ian.
Ian raised an eyebrow,
then walked over to the door with growing curiosity.
[Identity Verification Passed]
The same result again.
The heavy door rumbled open.
Ian became thoughtful.
He remembered the "setting" that made him immune to any harm in this world. Could the strange situation he was now encountering also be related to that special trait?
"How is this possible?"
Both Gwen and Betty looked deeply unsettled.
"He passed that too?"
Gwen's eyes widened in disbelief. "Could our system have been hacked? Is he a hacker who entered his own identity into our system in advance?"
That seemed like the most likely explanation to her. Because if she had to believe Ian had once been a high-clearance agent, she absolutely did not want to accept that possibility.
"Impossible. No one can hack our system."
Betty frowned tightly.
She could not understand it.
But she still rejected Gwen's theory.
"That confident?"
Ian did not know much about hacking techniques, but he felt that in any world, there should be no information system that could never be broken. The strongest shield always existed only to highlight the strongest spear.
That had to be even more true in the Marvel Universe.
"You really don't know anything..."
Betty carefully studied Ian's reaction, and her brow furrowed even more deeply. "The system here is absolutely the safest system in the world."
As she spoke,
she led Ian inside.
"Why?"
Ian asked as he walked.
Inside the door was an underground space as large as a football field. Dozens of people in white coats moved back and forth among all kinds of precision instruments. In the center of the hall stood an enormous hemispherical computer.
Streams of data rolled down its surface like waterfalls.
"Because we have the last superhero left in this world."
Betty's voice was filled with confidence, but the weight in her tone was even more obvious.
She pointed toward the giant computer in the center of the hall.
"Ultron?"
Ian voiced his guess without hesitation. His "background story" had already become even more complete on the way here, and he knew very well that in this world, he had even less reason to hide his "omniscience."
However,
the next second,
Ian discovered he might not be quite as all-knowing as he thought.
"No. Not Ultron."
A low, magnetic male voice suddenly rang out.
"But me... Iron Man. Tony Stark."
The voice
had come from the computer.
A strikingly handsome face took shape from countless characters and symbols.
(End of Chapter)
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