It’s Useful (Part 2)

New York’s nights were always brightly lit. In Manhattan’s most prosperous districts, the lights never went out, traffic flowed endlessly, and the dazzling colors of neon signs blurred together. A long black luxury car passed through the curtain of countless colors and stopped before a lavish mansion.

A valet opened the door, and Schiller stepped out. He followed his guide into an elevator, which slowly rose until the doors opened again and brilliant corridor lights poured inside. As Schiller stepped out, he narrowed his eyes.

After turning a corner in the hallway, Schiller entered a room and saw a tremendously burly figure standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at Manhattan’s nightscape.

"Warden Arkham, you’ve arrived." The man turned around. He was fat, built like a sumo wrestler, with fleshy folds covering his face. His booming voice carried considerable authority.

"Hello, Mr. Kingpin."

Kingpin stood where he was, hands behind his back, sizing Schiller up before saying, "The famous Warden of Arkham Asylum—you don’t actually have the surname Arkham, do you?"

"That’s right, Mr. Kingpin. It seems you know quite a lot about me." Schiller walked over to stand opposite him and said, "So why did you invite me here tonight?"

Kingpin turned and paced a few steps to the side, lowering his head as he said, "If you really were only the warden of an asylum, there would have been no need for me to invite you here."

Without waiting for Schiller to speak, Kingpin continued, "A great many strange things have happened recently. And among those strange things, there seems to be an invisible rope linking them together."

"People always focus on Stark, or S.H.I.E.L.D., even Spider-Man and Daredevil. But I’m different. I’m very interested in that invisible rope. What do you think, Warden Arkham?"

"Just say what you mean." Schiller spoke bluntly. "Since you invited me here, that means you must have already found that rope. Not many people can do that. You’ve earned your ticket."

Kingpin suddenly turned around and stared at Schiller with gleaming eyes. "Giving me a ticket? Giving one to the King of Gotham’s Underworld? What gives you the nerve to speak so boldly?"

"If you didn’t want one, there would have been no need to invite me here. I don’t believe that after investigating so much, the King of Gotham’s Underworld learned nothing but my real name."

"All right. It seems I found the right person." Kingpin turned back and walked over. "You were the one behind the Immortality Factor?"

"Of course not. It exists in vampires’ blood."

"Don’t feed me that nonsense. We both know it was nothing more than a publicity stunt."

"Is that so? Then why do you think vampires can live so long?"

Kingpin stared straight at Schiller, seemingly trying to read something from his face. But Schiller remained expressionless. Finally, Kingpin asked, "You really possess technology related to immortality?"

Schiller smiled. "Do you still think I’m talking nonsense now?"

"…I admit it’s tempting. No one would refuse immortality. When you asked me that question just now, for one moment, I really believed you."

"I’m not joking, nor am I testing you." Schiller told Kingpin, "I can provide a batch of roughly fifteen hundred doses. I guarantee they will have extremely obvious effects."

Kingpin sat behind the solid wood desk in the room, while Schiller took a seat across from him. Schiller said, "I’m not here as a salesman. We aren’t in a buyer-seller relationship. We can be sellers together."

"What do you mean?"

"The Hand. Dragon Bones."

Kingpin frowned. "You know more than I imagined."

"After all, I didn’t come to this meeting just because I knew the name Kingpin."

"As far as I know, the greatest effect of Dragon Bones is prolonging life. The Hand seeks it so their higher-ups can use it to extend their lifespans."

"For that, they have even dispatched hundreds, even thousands, of assassins to search for the material all over the world at any cost."

"Prolonging life… I don’t know what kind of effects Dragon Bones can achieve, but at least in the beginning, they definitely won’t work better than the doses I have."

Kingpin narrowed his eyes. He caught a trace of something strange in Schiller’s words. As the true King of Gotham’s Underworld, he was all too familiar with that tone.

He straightened up, placed both arms on the desk, and said, "What benefits do I get from cooperating with you?"

"Give up that hopeless plan to push drugs into schools. It won’t change anything. It’s the worst possible way to expand a market."

"Looks like you have quite the relationship with those two annoying flies."

"As long as you can successfully sell those fifteen hundred doses to The Hand, naturally, we take half the profits. Then, before long, certain precious bat materials will begin circulating through the underground market under your control."

"So the bat materials the media claimed were down to only two were a gimmick you created to drive up the hype."

Once business negotiations began, Kingpin fought over every inch. He said, "Besides that, you must provide me personally with one complete bat, the same kind of bat you use to extract that medicine."

"Frankly, even if I gave you one, you wouldn’t have the technical capability to uncover its secrets."

"That isn’t something you need to worry about."

"At most, I have the authority to give you some research samples from Stark Laboratories, including blood, organs, and epidermal tissue."

"All complete bats are in the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hands. You know what he’s like—a greedy vampire. Without enough to offer, you won’t be able to move him."

"I only want one complete bat. That is already my absolute bottom line. Otherwise, there’s nothing to discuss," Kingpin said.

"Then it seems we can only discuss that condition later. Or you can call Nick."

Seeing Schiller refuse to budge, Kingpin guessed that Nick might not have many bat materials either. Although Schiller had connected the cooperation between S.H.I.E.L.D., Stark, and the Osborn Group, the two sides surely had to exchange bargaining chips. It now appeared that the material chip had all fallen into Nick’s hands, and Schiller, as The Intermediary, probably had no authority to make the decision.

"All right, I can forgo a complete bat. But the research samples you provide must be brand-new, and the amount must be no less than two-thirds of a bat."

"Deal."

Then Kingpin asked Schiller, "What did you tamper with in those fifteen hundred doses you intend to sell The Hand?"

Schiller shook his head. "I wouldn’t be that stupid. I didn’t poison them or pull any other little tricks. I know you’re worried The Hand’s fierce retaliation would cost you dearly."

"But among the fifteen hundred doses I provide, you can test any of them at random. I guarantee there won’t be any harmful substances in them."

"I’m having trouble seeing what exactly you’re trying to do. Is this a trap laid by the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Has he finally decided to go after The Hand?"

"Why can’t you take your eyes off fighting and killing for once?" Schiller said helplessly. "Can’t I genuinely want to do business with The Hand?"

Kingpin snorted. "Nick Fury must be sick to death of those fleas. If their Ninjas weren’t so hard to kill, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would have come knocking long ago."

"That was before. Trash is merely a resource in the wrong place."

Finally, Schiller said to Kingpin, "If you still want to expand your underground empire, I do have some good advice. But that comes at an extra charge, and only after this cooperation is complete. If you’re interested, come find me at Arkham Asylum."

After leaving, Schiller was picked up by a S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle. He arrived at Nick Fury’s office, and without saying anything, the two headed down into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s underground levels together.

After being transported through several sealed elevators, they arrived at a massive underground factory.

The conveyor belts there were covered with freezing pods, and every pod contained a large bat frozen in ice.

The storage area of the underground factory alone covered thousands of square meters, packed full of countless frozen bats.

Schiller took a report from an agent and looked it over before saying, "Kingpin’s vision is a little more far-reaching than I expected. He agreed to this cooperation very readily."

"What conditions did he raise?"

"He wants samples equivalent to two-thirds of a bat."

Nick looked at the bat freezing pods piled up like mountains in the storage area of the underground factory and nearly laughed aloud.

He could imagine that Kingpin and Schiller had surely gone through several rounds of confrontation and all sorts of bargaining before reaching this result.

Perhaps the King of Gotham’s Underworld was still quite pleased with himself. Of the bat materials that had driven countless elites into a frenzy, supposedly with only two left in existence, he alone had obtained two-thirds of one.

Nick even felt a little sorry for Kingpin.

Schiller, however, was not surprised. He merely looked at the report and said, "Not everything circulating on the black market can be genuine. We need to mix in some counterfeits, then establish a set of standards for identifying the real ones."

"Counterfeits? You mean…"

"That’s right. We’ll divide the bats we release into circulation into two categories. Though there is no essential difference between them, one batch will have anti-counterfeiting marks while the other will not."

"Among those with anti-counterfeiting marks, we’ll add some so-called exclusive markings or origin labels, then mix them together and release them through the black market."

"You really are ruthless." Nick could not help sighing. "So the ineffective Immortality Factors they buy will all be counterfeits?"

"That’s right. Who told them not to come to our asylum for treatment? If they buy fakes, it serves them right."

"The asylum has no beds available. What can I do? The asylum is short on funds, and we desperately need donations. If you don’t donate and I don’t donate, then you can only go out and buy those Immortality Factors whose authenticity is impossible to tell."

"I think there’s more to choosing the black market under Kingpin’s control than just that, isn’t there? I keep feeling that you want to set him up."

Nick crossed his arms, looked at the freezing pods on the conveyor belts, and said, "I don’t believe you’d be kind enough to invite a crocodile with an insatiable appetite to share the cake, especially when you know exactly what he is."

"We currently lack certain means to protect this newly born industry. We need not only legal methods in the open, but also some methods in the shadows. I’m merely tying this crocodile beside the cake and letting him drive away everyone else who wants to snatch it."

Schiller paused, then continued, "I don’t have a favorable impression of Kingpin, but it isn’t because he is the king of a criminal empire."

"Whether he is a gang boss or a criminal king is not important to me."

"The reason I think he isn’t a good partner is that he places too much faith in violence. He thinks assassination can solve every problem. He and I are not the same kind of people."

"Indeed." Nick looked at Schiller. "You didn’t assassinate a single person, yet it seems you solved every problem."

"But as I said." Schiller put down the report and looked toward the underground factory. "Trash is merely a resource in the wrong place. Kingpin is the same."

"At least at this stage, he’s useful."

"That’s enough."

Ten thousand words delivered today! Please vote and tip!

I’ve been getting nucleic acid tests every day lately, and there are lines, so updates may come a little later.