Chapter 2093

Stark put down his phone and walked toward the dining table. Aisha was cutting the steak on her plate. He sat down opposite her, pressed the base of his wrists against the tabletop, waved his hand, and said, "Seriously, little girl, doesn't having a dad like that put a lot of pressure on you?"

"He makes you do this, makes you do that; everything is within his expectations." Stark sighed lightly.

He didn't actually intend to brainwash Aisha; he was just complaining casually. But for someone skilled in manipulation, it had already become an instinct. Every move he made, every word he spoke, and any language or temperament revealed inadvertently were all preparations for manipulation.

Therefore, Stark was instinctively observing Aisha's reaction, but Aisha just stared straight at the steak on her plate.

Stark frowned, slightly surprised. He leaned forward, looking at Aisha from above his eyes, and could tell that this little girl had some behavioral disorders.

Stark very cautiously rolled his eyes up and down to observe Aisha, imbuing his body language and gaze with scrutiny; he was attempting to put pressure on Aisha.

Usually, children with autism would feel very uncomfortable with this kind of pressure, but Aisha had no reaction, which made Stark feel uncertain again.

"What are you thinking about?" Stark asked.

"Eat it? Not eat it?" Aisha muttered.

"Eat what? Your meal? Of course you can eat it. Or do you not like it?"

"Can I eat it?" Aisha finally looked up at Stark, her eyes filled with a kind of anticipation Stark couldn't understand.

Stark was stunned for a moment before nodding. He didn't understand why Aisha would have such a question. Wait, could it be that Batman abused her before...

Stark had just thought of this when he heard *click-click-click-click-click*. By the time Stark came back to his senses, the only thing left in the dining room was the chair he was sitting on.

He first looked slightly to the right, then turned his head to look to the left, and finally looked down at Aisha standing by his legs, reading something from her shining eyes.

"No, you can't gnaw on my..."

*Click-click-click-click! *

"... chair."

Stark, sitting on the fragments of the chair, looked blank. Aisha, full and satisfied, let out a satisfied burp, stretched, and ran over to sit on the sofa.

The entire open-plan dining room looked like a tornado had passed through; except for Stark himself, there was nothing left intact.

At this moment, the sound of high heels approached.

Stark jumped up reflexively. Before he could even run out of the kitchen, Pepper's two highly arched eyebrows appeared before his eyes.

"Tony, what dangerous experiment are you doing in your lab again?!!! How many times have I told you..."

Pepper in a fit of rage was truly capable of scaring someone to death. Stark was just about to use his coaxing skills when he heard Aisha shout from over there, which successfully attracted Pepper's attention.

"This is Aisha, my friend's child..." Stark followed behind to explain: "He had an emergency, so he left his daughter with me to take care of for a few days. Yeah, that's it."

Pepper turned back and glared at him with slight suspicion as she walked. Stark smiled at her.

Pepper's expression had just softened a little when, the next second, she let out a scream and rushed over to hug Aisha.

Stark's heart tightened, thinking Pepper had noticed something wrong with Aisha. Instead, Pepper turned back and glared at him, saying, "What did you feed her?"

"Um, steak made in the kitchen."

"How well-done?"

"I don't know, the kind I usually eat."

"You fed a child this small medium-rare steak?! Tony Stark! And you didn't even give her a napkin, nor did you wipe her mouth!"

"Uh... I've never raised a child..."

Pepper picked up Aisha and turned to leave. Stark reached out a hand somewhat powerlessly. He prayed internally that Aisha would quickly show her extraordinary nature, such as creating a tornado like before to destroy the dining room, so that Pepper might be scared away.

But Aisha lay obediently in Pepper's arms, blinking her eyes with some sleepiness, without saying a word, while Stark watched them both leave.

Of course, he had ways to persuade Pepper to stay, and he could also find ways to make Aisha stay. But if Aisha could help him stall Pepper, then in a sense, his plan was accomplished.

If Pepper's attention was diverted by Aisha, then the pressure from within the company would be much less, and Stark wouldn't have to worry about being discovered every moment.

So next was to handle the external problems. Stark didn't bother with the messy kitchen but walked back to the computer. His next target was the meddlesome Osborn Group.

Of course, all the conspiracy theories he told Bruce were used to frame the Osborn Group; in reality, the one truly conducting biochemical experiments was Stark himself.

Or perhaps it couldn't even be called a biochemical experiment. The Superior Iron Man didn't need any large-scale human experiments to create a virus. His genius brain allowed him to create out of thin air, which led to the source of all disasters—the Extremis Virus.

The story of Superior Iron Man is simple to tell. As mentioned before, he had his sense of good and evil reversed during the AXIS event, becoming an evil Iron Man.

And after he became the evil Iron Man, he did a very unscrupulous business thing: he modified the Extremis Virus and then released it into San Francisco's water supply.

This virus wouldn't cause much harm to the human body. On the contrary, it would make people's appearance very perfect. Regardless of whether you were born ugly or short, as long as you accepted the modification of the Extremis Virus, you would become a handsome man or a beautiful woman.

Unfortunately, Iron Man wasn't doing charity. This virus only had a free trial period at the very beginning, and once it expired, one had to pay for a renewal through a special app created by Stark, and it wasn't cheap.

As mentioned before, this kind of paid access to superior conditions would widen the class gap at an extremely fast speed. The rich would remain forever young and beautiful, while the poor would remain ugly and weak, with no possibility of ever turning their lives around.

This was indeed the case. Superior Iron Man had thought of this while pushing his conspiracy, but he didn't expect that the subsequent development of the situation would exceed his control.

This led to a series of tragedies that no one wanted to see, and Superior Iron Man understood that since he had a chance to start over, he had to reverse all of this.

The current time point was just when Superior Iron Man had released the Extremis Virus. The change in appearance only happened in a small part of San Francisco. Most of the public thought it was a gimmick created by the media or felt it was another lie by some influencers, so it hadn't caused large-scale discussion yet.

But as the saying goes, laymen watch the spectacle, while experts watch the technique. In terms of biotechnology, Osborn was indeed an expert.

Osborn keenly captured the changes caused by the Extremis Virus and immediately realized that this was a man-made event, starting an investigation at the fastest speed.

In the normal timeline, the Osborn Group didn't cause Stark any trouble. The main reason was that by this time, Stark had already decided to release the virus on a large scale, so it would be useless even if Osborn discovered something.

But for some reason, Stark hadn't announced the third round of virus release yet. Because of this delay, the Osborn Group became a problem he had to face.

Cracking the Extremis Virus was unlikely, but the Osborn Group indeed had the possibility of developing an antidote or simply reporting him to Congress, and most fatally, announcing the side effects of the Extremis Virus to the public.

You don't need to use your brain to know that this thing couldn't be so perfect; otherwise, how could Superior Iron Man sell it so cheaply? If there were really no side effects, there would be no need to sell this thing to civilians at all; the high-end route would be more profitable.

The biggest side effect of the Extremis Virus was that it would make people irritable, and Stark hadn't found a way to eliminate this side effect yet, which was why he started promoting it among the civilian class. Because if he had used it on the President at the beginning, World War III might already be happening.

The Osborn Group undoubtedly noticed this as well, which was why they arranged so many cameras. They wanted to film the side effects brought by this mysterious virus to use public opinion to compete with the virus distributor.

"How is it on your end?" A little later, Stark sent a message to Bruce.

But Bruce, who was preparing to go out, didn't see the phone light up at all. He had grasped a perfect opportunity and was planning to take action now.

The thing was, he had also been injured in the brawl during the day, so it wasn't long before he was taken to the infirmary by the staff to have it bandaged.

He knew his phone wasn't being monitored, so he brought it with him. Taking advantage of the staff not paying attention, he placed the phone with the recording function turned on behind a flower pot.

He hadn't expected to record anything; he was just following the principle of "taking a shot at it," doing his best.

But although this special Batman was a bit of a novice, his luck was actually quite good, and he really did record something.

When Bruce entered the infirmary to get bandaged, two movers came into the hallway. These were obviously not the well-trained staff of the Osborn Medical Research Center, but people from outside who were very careless with their speech, and they were just happened to be recorded.

According to the two of them, the San Francisco research center originally mainly conducted human experiments, while the one in New York conducted animal experiments. But because the San Francisco center had achieved some results, and these results happened to be beneficial to animal experiments, Old Osborn decided to merge the two projects and move them all to San Francisco.

And these two movers were moving some equipment for animal experiments. They were complaining that Old Osborn paid them little and there was a lot to do, and everything had to be handled with care and was absolutely not allowed to be thrown.

However, judging by the tone of these two people, they definitely threw things around a lot. And precisely because of this, Bruce planned to go check the isolation warehouse now.

After all, this wasn't a prison. This Batman's skills were indeed a bit poor for the big stage of Gotham, but they were still enough for a remote research center.

Before the staff came over to lock the door, he used a thin little twig to jam the lock cylinder. The other party indeed didn't feel it and just left like that.

Walking through the deserted hallway without hearing any alarms from the surveillance, Bruce couldn't help but think that the people here had too poor a sense of vigilance. Conducting illegal experiments without filling every corner with tons of cameras—wasn't this just waiting for something to go wrong?

Arriving at the temporary isolation warehouse without any obstruction, Bruce hadn't even entered when he smelled a peculiar stench of animal excrement.

He opened the door a crack, looked inside, and sure enough, there were several boxes tilted over in the corner.

Bruce walked in on tiptoe, not even looking at the animals, but headed straight for the office supplies on the other side.

According to the conversation between the two movers, there should be some secure computers storing data that hadn't been moved yet, and Bruce's target was exactly those.

Without much effort, he found the computers that hadn't been turned on in the boxes behind the shelves. Bruce moved them next to the power supply of the emergency indicator light, planning to turn them on and take a look first.

But he had never used this kind of advanced equipment, and for a while, he couldn't figure out how to turn on the secure computers. He didn't dare to turn on the lights, so he could only grope around bit by bit.

Just as he reached his hand behind the computer to feel for the plug, he saw a small black shadow seem to pass by his feet, but it disappeared in a flash.

Bruce didn't pay attention. He wanted to continue reaching down, but the next second, a sharp pain came from the back of his hand, and he let out a scream.

"Uh!!!!"

Bruce gasped for air, clutching the back of his hand as he knelt on the ground. A small black shadow jumped off his arm.

Borrowing the faint light from the crack in the door, Bruce saw clearly that it was a spider.