"The intel about the New Mexico Gamma Bomb research facility being reactivated came straight from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Nick Fury."
In a vast, dimly lit room, Batman clung silently to the corner of the wall, two meters above the floor, watching a squad of Hydra soldiers pass beneath him.
He had successfully infiltrated the interior of the Gamma Bomb research facility. Thanks to the spider-bots he'd deployed, nearly every movement of personnel inside the base was under his surveillance.
But now he had a problem: no sign of Norman Osborn.
The suit he currently wore lacked the usual white lenses of his cowl, rendering him virtually invisible in the pitch-black shadows of the corner.
Batman rapidly reviewed the entire structural layout of the facility in his mind, searching for any hidden passages or mechanisms he might have overlooked.
His data on the base's design came from documents dating back three years—before Dr. Banner's transformation into the Hulk—when this Gamma facility had first been constructed.
Norman Osborn was nowhere to be found. That left two possibilities: either the base had undisclosed underground levels, or Nick Fury had lied to him.
The latter seemed highly unlikely.
The very night Fury gave him the intel that Osborn was here, Batman had hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems and combed through nearly a full month of personnel deployments and mission logs.
If Osborn's disappearance was tied to Fury in any way, Batman would have found traces.
Of course, the worst-case scenario was that the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was Hydra himself—that he and General Ross had spirited Osborn away without ever routing it through official S.H.I.E.L.D. channels.
"This entire base is suspiciously… normal," Batman muttered to himself as he replayed everything he'd seen while infiltrating. "It looks like they really are just researching gamma bombs. Like a perfectly staged play."
"But there are far too many soldiers and barely any scientists. That doesn't add up."
"The old blueprints show no hidden structures. I need updated intel."
His gaze settled on the Hydra soldiers in front of him.
With their backs to him, Batman could clearly see the emblem on their uniforms: a skull with six writhing tentacles.
They were one of the base's patrol squads. There were more than sixty such teams cycling endlessly through every room and corridor.
Taking down a Hydra patrol was easy. Doing it silently and then interrogating them for the base's true layout? That was the tricky part.
Under normal circumstances, Batman would have used fear tactics. Tonight, however, he decided on a more direct approach.
The thought flashed through his mind in an instant.
The patrol hadn't even finished sweeping half the room when one of the Hydra soldiers glanced toward Batman's corner, then turned to move on to the next section.
But the moment he turned away, something felt wrong.
"Wait… did I just see something clinging to the wall…?" "No, that's impossible. I've patrolled this room with the captain dozens of times. There's never been anything on these walls!"
A chill ran down his spine. Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned his head back.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a massive black silhouette crouched in the corner.
In that instant, a memory from long before he joined Hydra resurfaced: one night back home in Australia, a giant spider had sat motionless on the wall. The moment he leaned in to look, it lunged straight at his face.
"What the hell am I thinking? This isn't Australia, and there are no spiders in this facility…"
The soldier forced a nervous chuckle, then fully turned to face the corner.
Now he saw it clearly. It wasn't a spider.
It was an enormous bat, wings spread wide.
Whoosh!
He hadn't even managed to scream—the air was still in his lungs, never reaching his vocal cords—when the giant bat lunged. The next second, everything went black.
The noise instantly alerted the other five Hydra soldiers. They whipped around toward the corner, but none of them saw what happened. In almost the same instant, Batman knocked them all unconscious.
"Dad, interrogation time again?" Venom whispered inside Batman's body.
"You're up, Robin."
Batman fired strands of black webbing, binding all five soldiers and sticking them to the ceiling. He pointed at the one who'd noticed him first.
"Huh?" Venom blinked. It had never interrogated anyone before and had no idea how to start.
"Possess him, Robin. Then read his memories," Batman said.
"Huh?" Venom blinked again.
While bonded to Batman, Venom had grown so used to being unable to read its host's memories that it had nearly forgotten it even had that ability.
But it quickly caught on. With a slightly reluctant grumble, the symbiote slithered off Batman's body and wriggled into the unconscious Hydra soldier on the floor.
The soldier's body immediately began twisting and expanding. In seconds, he grew from under 1.7 meters to over three meters tall, muscles bulging grotesquely, a ferocious bat emblem now emblazoned across his chest.
Venom clearly didn't want to stay inside the man any longer than necessary. It took exactly one second to rifle through his memories without resistance, then shot back out with an expression of utter disgust before snapping back onto Batman.
"Blech!" Venom made the cartoonish retching sound it had learned from TV to express how revolting it found the Hydra soldier's body.
The soldier, briefly possessed by Venom, groggily started to come to. He struggled to get up and saw the dark silhouette standing over him.
The memory of what happened just before he passed out flooded back. He opened his mouth to scream—only for a strand of webbing to seal his lips shut. A second later, Batman knocked him out again.
"Robin, tell me what you got from the possession," Batman said, letting the soldier slump back into unconsciousness.
"Let me think…" Venom poked its little head out, resting its chin on one hand in an exaggerated thinking pose. "Got it, Dad!"
It pointed toward the left-center area of the base.
"There's a hidden mechanism there. But this guy doesn't know what kind it is or where it leads."
Batman grabbed the soldier again, casually tossed him up to the ceiling, and secured him with more black webbing.
He stared in the direction Venom indicated, unable to keep from frowning.
That was the largest heat-signature zone on the spider-bots' thermal scans—the area with the highest concentration of personnel.
"............Besides getting a job at Stark Industries, I need you to try contacting Hank Pym. This is his address."
Aboard the Helicarrier, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury handed a slip of paper to Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff.
Natasha took the paper, glanced at it twice, crumpled it into a ball, popped it in her mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed hard before speaking.
"Why? As far as I know, Dr. Pym has refused all contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. since World War II, and we've respected that policy… So why reach out now?"
Fury fixed his single eye on her for a long moment before slowly pronouncing each word:
"Agent 19 just informed me… the Cosmic Cube data you produced was fake. We've been played."
Agent 19, also known as "Mockingbird"—Barbara Morse—was currently assigned to the Cube prison, protecting the security of the real Cosmic Cube data.
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