A Rotten Story (Part 2)

Inside Stark Tower, a data cable was plugged into the device terminal. Peter was working at a computer as Jarvis said, "Data transfer complete in 3%, 2%, 1%…"

Peter’s screen lit up. "Got it! Let me see… Oh my God, what is all this?????"

Countless files and data entries appeared before him. He said incredulously, "What is this? These look like military personnel records… Lawrence, 35 years old, lost both arms, test subject number 3022…"

"Someone is experimenting on disabled veterans… Oh my God… Wait, what’s this?"

"Project: Desperate Measures?"

Peter began hammering away at the keyboard. The screen’s glow flickered across his face as he kept scrolling, and his expression grew worse and worse until it turned pale.

"Mr. Parker, an irregularity has been detected in your heart rate. Please cease your activities immediately and take deep breaths…"

Peter lowered his hands and staggered back several steps. He swallowed, then said hoarsely, "We may have uncovered a huge secret…"

He shook his head and looked around. "Jarvis, make absolutely sure this device cannot connect to the internet. Protect the data here. I’ll be back soon…"

His voice trembled, and he sounded extremely nervous, but he still forced himself to calmly arrange everything before grabbing his backpack and leaving the tower.

When Schiller saw Peter, he had never seen Spider-Man look so terrible. Peter sometimes appeared haggard after staying up late, but now his lips were nearly bloodless, his body was trembling, and he looked utterly lost.

Before Schiller could speak, Peter blurted out in one breath as if reciting lines, "Listen, Doctor, let me finish first! I’m afraid I’ll forget later…"

"Just now, I got the complete files on a secret project from Dr. Connors, but I can’t copy them or write them down, because they’re too horrifying. If they got out, the consequences would be unimaginable."

"So I can only tell you about the plan from memory. It’s called Project: Desperate Measures. It was organized and prepared by a faction of military officers from Tartarus, led by Admiral Robert and a number of other high-ranking officers."

Peter was clearly reciting from the documents, but with his extraordinary memory, he did so smoothly. He continued, "It’s a project intended to stimulate the body’s accelerated recovery capabilities and create super-soldiers. Their goals are: rapid wound healing, limb regeneration, removing muscular limitations, turning every soldier into a super-soldier without pain or emotion."

"Right now, the project is still in its preliminary stages, but sixteen soldiers have already undergone the experiments. All of them are retired soldiers who lost limbs or suffered severe injuries on the battlefield."

"Three of them were Dr. Connors’s comrades."

"Because of Dr. Connors’s achievements in biology and bionics, he had always maintained connections with the military. But he concealed his past training in computer science from them. That was why he was able to steal most of the project’s files during his cooperation with the military…"

"Dr. Connors kept researching the lizard serum because he wanted to save those soldiers. He had no ability to stop the military from continuing the project. He only wanted to use his own research to restore those soldiers to healthy, whole bodies before they were forced to participate in the experiment."

"According to the project’s research progress reports, Dr. Connors was one step too late. This group of disabled soldiers had already received the first injection. That was also why Dr. Connors had been so desperate to complete the serum. But because he rushed it and skipped the final safety tests, he turned into a lizard monster…"

After Peter finished saying all that in one breath, Schiller saw that he could barely remain standing. He helped Peter onto the sofa first and poured him a glass of water. Peter gulped down several mouthfuls before finally easing up a little. Schiller then took out a heart-rate monitoring wristband and put it on him.

Schiller found that Peter’s heart rate truly was abnormal. If something could make a superhero with Spider Mutation so nervous that he developed an arrhythmia, Schiller could already imagine what Peter had seen in those files.

Peter seemed deeply shaken. Those files were not all dry experimental data. Many of the images documented human experiments—simply put, content that was profoundly inhumane.

After drinking the water, Peter still could not stop himself from dry-heaving. Those images were far more horrifying than any blood or injuries he had ever seen. He had never encountered anything so terrifying in his life.

Watching Peter run to the bathroom to vomit, Schiller asked Gray Mist in his mind, "Are you sure a Symbiote also attached itself to Stark? When did that happen?"

"I don’t know, but it had to be one of my kind. I can recognize them."

Schiller thought for a moment. He felt that the Symbiote that could have attached itself to Stark during this period was most likely Venom.

A while later, Peter returned. His hands were still trembling slightly as he said, "Doctor, we need to find a way to stop this experiment. If this continues, they’ll destroy the whole world…"

"And those soldiers are heroes who gave everything for their country. They can’t…"

Peter seemed to recall those images again, and his face grew even worse. Schiller said, "Don’t think about it anymore. I’ll give you a simple hypnosis session later, then you can go upstairs and sleep."

"No, I can’t. I need to think of something, I need to think of something… I can’t let them get away with this…" Peter kept muttering, his mind already somewhat dazed.

For a sixteen-year-old high school student, suddenly confronting such brutal facts and suffering such a massive shock, Peter was clearly on the verge of breaking down.

"Jarvis, are you there?" Schiller asked Peter’s phone.

"I am, sir."

"Fine. I know I may not have permission to access Stark’s private information, but I still need to ask: has the military invited Stark to participate in negotiations?"

"Sir, you do, in fact, have permission. Mr. Stark has granted you Level 2 access privileges, which include access to all incoming information."

"Indeed, over the past five days, I have received seven messages through different communication frequencies. Most were invitations for Mr. Stark to meet at various military bases."

"And what is Stark’s attitude?"

"I cannot know, nor can I disclose it."

Schiller said, "The military has no Chip in hand right now. These invitations are merely probes, because they know that even if they get Stark there, they still don’t have enough leverage to obtain what they want."

"In that case, we’ll give the military a Chip…"

Peter was a little confused. He had never been particularly interested in this sort of thing, but he still tried to think it through. "What does that have to do with stopping the plan?"

"Wasn’t this plan created by the military’s upper ranks?"

"Yes. Dr. Connors’s files said there was a faction within the military leadership called Tartarus. They seemed to be a political alliance, led by an Admiral named Robert. These people differed from the traditional old-school officers. They believed future wars would be wars between superhumans, so they had always wanted the military to invest more in cultivating super-soldiers…"

"They were the ones who came up with that horrifying Project: Desperate Measures, using already disabled soldiers as test subjects…"

As Peter spoke, he began dry-heaving again. If the project had merely involved ordinary surgery, that would have been one thing. But this was a chemical modification project. The disabled soldiers who received the injections had become all kinds of things. It dealt an incomparable blow to Peter’s worldview.

He could not understand how such demons could exist in this world, people who would turn their own countrymen into that.

And they were soldiers, people who should have been comrades.

For the first time, Peter realized that even within the same group, the exploitation of those below by those above was endless. After squeezing every ounce of value from them, they would not even spare their crippled remains. There truly were demons in this world who cared only for their own interests.

"Let me think. The officers who want the armor technology should also be this Tartarus faction, right? After all, those other old Generals would probably prefer getting more missiles or something."

"I want to steer Stark into meeting these people. Naturally, Stark definitely won’t want to see them, but if the military pushes hard enough and he gets annoyed beyond endurance, he’ll probably go deal with them…" Schiller said, stroking his chin.

"That should be how it works," Peter said. "But what good does putting Mr. Stark together with them do? Mr. Stark probably won’t kill anyone, right? Besides, Mr. Stark is drunk right now. We can’t tell him about this plan, and even if we did, he couldn’t kill so many people inside a military base, could he?"

"Indeed, Stark can’t. Even if he knew about this plan, he would not use violence to directly kill the people behind it. He isn’t that kind of person."

"But we don’t need to care about the process. As long as the result is right, that’s enough."

"What are you planning to do?"

"You don’t need to know yet. Come, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and feel every sensory organ in your body from top to bottom…"

Soon, Peter gradually relaxed and fell asleep.

When he woke up the next day and went downstairs, he found Schiller handling a syringe. Peter curiously tried to move closer, but suddenly his Spider-Sense went off. He took two steps back and said, "What are you doing? That thing seems dangerous…"

"It is dangerous, but I need you to transport it later."

"Transport it where?"

"Dr. Connors is in the laboratory at Stark Tower. Jarvis told me that military personnel will come today to collect the remaining results of that medical collaboration project. This will become one of the results."

"Of course, before that, you need to fabricate a plausible experiment report for it."

"Uh… fabricate one? What happened to its original experiment report?"

"It went into a mental institution along with its inventor."

Peter pressed his lips together. "So this is basically an unlicensed product with no documentation?"

"But it works very well. That’s all that matters."

"So what kind of experiment report?"

"You need to describe it as an agent capable of stimulating the human nervous system and activating brain functions."

"If that isn’t what it does, then what does it actually do?"

"It does do that, but the side effects are rather severe. It’s fine, though. No one will actually use it. It only needs to give a little stimulation to an alien life-form…"

Peter did not quite understand. What did an alien life-form have to do with any of this? He treated Schiller’s words as some metaphor he could not understand and let them pass.

But Schiller had been speaking the truth, because the syringe contained highly concentrated Fear Toxin.