Chapter 94

The pocket watch’s hands spun backward, and the lens began to rewind through time.

As the lizard-man tumbled from the top of Stark Tower, Dr. Connors remembered only the howling wind at his ears, and gradually, he recalled the same sound—shrapnel whistling past his ears.

With the crushing pain of impact and the crimson blur before his eyes, Connors felt as if he had dreamed it all.

Many years ago, he was merely a newly enlisted military medic, like all the youths of his era, firmly believing in the ideals of defending homeland and nation; thus, he and his comrades joined the war with unwavering confidence.

Connors could no longer recall the fervor they once held; the brutality of battle shattered every dream—wounds, death, and bloodshed showed no mercy, regardless of ideals or ambition.

When he returned home, Connors had become a scarred, broken dog, given a lump sum compensation, then tossed like a leaky sack of trash into the darkest sewer corner.

This cruel society offered him no reprieve for his past honors and achievements; he clumsily learned to live with one hand, like a twisted clown on stage performing for cheap laughs.

The clatter of bottles and jars falling to the floor echoed endlessly in Connors’s ears; his dream sank deeper, and the few remaining vivid memories faded, leaving only endless darkness.

He remembered a young soldier in his unit who had always been the joker; when Connors saw him again, the man was ancient beyond recognition, yet still beaming as he told Connors he would soon be saved—that the nation had not abandoned him, that he would soon be better.

Most of these once-passionate youths lacked Connors’s level of education; few had attended college, so whenever someone tossed out seemingly profound terms, they believed they had been granted a divine chance to transform their ruined lives.

From that old comrade’s lips, Connors learned of a secret military project.

The darkness in his dream deepened; Connors remembered only the cold glow of a computer screen flashing across his vision—when he saw the data recorded in a certain text, he knew from that moment on, he must seal his lips, forever silent.

In this terrible deception, not a single clear-minded individual was allowed to play a supporting role.

After losing one arm, Connors lost his ability to speak—he became mute.

Vast streams of data and figures grew clearer in his dream, swirling around him, drowning him in overwhelming guilt and crushing pressure that nearly drove him mad.

From that moment, Connors resolved: if life was destined to be a downward fall, then as he now did, even if he died here, he must leave behind a mark so heavy this land would never forget.

The last word lingering in his consciousness was the name he could never forget through all those silent nights—“Extremis Project.”

The cold glow of the computer screen lit Peter’s face as he searched for files in Dr. Connors’s former lab in Stark Tower.

After Dr. Connors was rushed to the hospital, guilt overwhelmed Peter; he knew the problem must lie in the serum Connors had been studying. Since he could not help with the rescue, he turned to the serum’s research data, hoping to find a way to reverse its effects.

Although Dr. Connors had removed his files from Stark Tower, the collaborative research findings belonged to Stark Industries and the military, and portions remained stored in Stark Tower’s terminal data systems.

Peter knew Dr. Connors had clearance to alter data on these devices; he hoped to find traces of something hidden.

But what puzzled Peter was how impossibly clean Connors’s terminal was—no one would delete even the calculator history; apart from a sequence of final numbers, nothing remained.

Peter found it strange; Dr. Connors was not that kind of man—he was rigorously meticulous in research, never deleting all steps of a solution and leaving only a vague, ambiguous result.

Peter scoured the computer relentlessly until he found something odd: certain number combinations seemed patterned. He began typing rapidly; blue light reflected on his face and eyes. After a moment, the screen shifted. Peter said: “What is this? A URL?”

Since the terminal did not allow internet access, Peter turned to JARVIS. JARVIS analyzed the URL and discovered it led to an encrypted website—layer upon layer of encryption, but JARVIS was not stopped; soon, he retrieved an image from the site.

Peter stared at the holographic screen. “What is this? It looks like a child’s scribbled abstract doodle. Are you sure this is what the encrypted site was protecting?”

“That is all there is, Mr. Parker.”

In the dim lab, Peter crossed his arms and stared intently at the chaotic lines on the image—a blank sheet covered in black strokes, utterly random, as if drawn carelessly with crayons.

Peter frowned, studying it for a long while. “No, this image isn’t meant to be viewed this way. JARVIS, flatten the image and convert the lines into 3D.”

“Like this, sir?”

JARVIS followed Peter’s instruction, but the result remained a tangled mess. Peter said: “Yes, correct… can you turn them into straight lines? Following the current turning patterns…”

In less than a second, the original tangle of black curves transformed into a pattern of angular lines.

Peter’s eyes widened. “It’s a map of the New York sewer system!”

He quickly opened his backpack, pulled out his own recorded map, and compared it. “Yes! Exactly! This is a 3D sewer map. Look here—this path is the one I always take… I’m certain—I wandered these tunnels for days…”

“But what’s the point? Why did Dr. Connors hide this map? Anyone who wandered the sewers for a few days could figure out this route.”

Peter scratched his head, stared at the map, rotated it, then compared it again with his own route.

“...No, some paths here are wrong. Like here—this should be a right turn after descending the next stair, but why does it show a left turn? And there’s no manhole here… where these routes cross… that reservoir!”

“Dr. Connors is pointing to that reservoir! But what’s there? The lab? But…”

Peter thought, swiftly tucked the map away, grabbed his backpack, and said: “JARVIS, stay in contact—I may need your technical support soon…”

“No problem. Mr. Stark has granted you nearly all technical access permissions.”

Peter sprinted out of Stark Tower, found the nearest manhole, and climbed down. He moved swiftly through the sewers, soon reaching the reservoir where he had burned the lab.

He opened the maintenance hatch; charred traces remained. Peter now realized something was off—though the hatch looked like an evil lab, it was only an illusion; he found no useful data here.

Instead, it held various specimens—even unidentified organs. As a professional, Peter knew biological experiments rarely involved corpses as the public imagined; these long-preserved specimens were useless.

My Healing Game

Now he knew this lab was Dr. Connors’s work—and it became even stranger. Connors was a professional; why would he meticulously arrange useless equipment and specimens here, as if deliberately making it look like a biological lab?

Everything here seemed designed for outsiders, satisfying their fantasies of evil scientists.

Peter had not known the owner was Connors before, so he hadn’t noticed the oddness. But now, recalling the lab’s interior, he realized it resembled a carefully staged theater more than a real biological lab.

Peter grew more confused—if this wasn’t where Connors truly conducted experiments, why hide a clue here? What did it point to?

Peter searched desperately, feeling walls and floors for hidden doors—but found nothing.

Disappointed, Peter left the hatch and noticed the moss at the entrance had been cleared; white powder remained in the corner. He thought rapidly—he remembered some moss along his path had been cleared, others untouched.

He ran ahead and saw the same marks at a corner. Following these artificial traces, he found them on a downward staircase, but not on the path continuing forward.

Peter followed the vanished moss until it led him to the very end of the sewer system.

There was another maintenance hatch.

The hatch was unlocked, and inside, it was clearly abandoned for years—this was the deepest, darkest part of New York’s sewers, truly beneath the light of day.

Peter opened the door. Inside was an ordinary maintenance hatch, cluttered with random boxes and cleaning tools unused for decades, as if relics from the last century.

Peter waved his hand in front of his face to clear the dust, opened every box, and at the bottom found a container holding an unknown object.

Inside was a device Peter had never seen—a square black unit with an antenna. He took a photo with his phone and called JARVIS. Soon, JARVIS told him it was an old data terminal combined with a signal transmitter; though outdated, its power output was still strong.

“So what’s here?” Peter asked.

“You can bring it to Stark Tower. I can perform a physical decryption.”

Peter placed the data terminal in his backpack and left with it.