City Exploration

Alex could've spent hours marveling at the absolute beauty that the city but he was interrupted by the appearance of a drone in his spider senses.

'Patrol drones… This is already different from the slums.' They weren't robots but were automated monitoring drones that patrolled the entire city as Alex presumed. He didn't doubt that this drone could easily see through his camouflage. And if he was detected, his location would be swarming with a huge number of hostiles that would probably try to kill him or at the very least contain him on sight.

He tried his best to maneuver away from the drone as he made his way toward what seemed like a coffee shop. He didn't waste any time and disappeared into the female barista that was the easiest for him to access as she served a coffee.

He didn't devour her since this place was completely monitored and he wouldn't be able to hide completely unless he was inside someone. He was looking for an optimal target to escape this facility.

Alex also took this time to go through her memories and see how the inner city's system works.

'Credits…' The currency used in the bastion was a simple credit-based system that was automated by the central AI of the city— Jarvis. People are assigned credits at the end of each month according to the contributions that they have made to the city.

Working odd jobs like this barista would provide a menial number of credits while the most effective way to gain credits was to join the fights against the hordes of abominations that attack the settlement regularly.

It worked on a merit basis. The more abominations you kill, the more credits you get. They also depend on the difficulty of the abomination that is killed.

'This city has some effective way to utilize those abominations,' Alex deduced when he saw in her memories that there was a job to bring back the leftover corpses of monsters for people who were too weak or scared to fight. Those corpses clearly had some sort of use to the city otherwise they would just burn them and get rid of them without any issues.

'How the hell do they expect normal people to fight those monstrous abominations…' Alex was inwardly frowning as he thought about the situation. He'd seen those abominations and even the weakest of those things could contend toe to toe with Captain America in terms of physical stats. And that's without mentioning the stronger ones.

'Is there something that I'm missing…' Alex couldn't understand the situation. Especially since most of the people who enroll to fight the monsters seem to return every time.

'Did he use some version of the super soldier serum that was used on Captain America?' Alex could only think that to be the case since normal people were not a match for those abominations.

He also saw that things are pretty advanced in this city. All kinds of extremely obscure things are available to people as long as they have enough credits.

Things like regeneration serums were actually commonplace in this city. Alex also saw something that he knew was made by Tony. Extremis.

It was completely overpowered as it could halt the aging of a person and ensure they were in their prime state forever. It wasn't true immortality, but it was known to increase the lifespan of people to at least 200 years old.

At that point it wasn't just the body that started getting old, it was the consciousness or soul that became too weak to support the existence of the body. Though it was ridiculously a expensive item, costing millions of credits.

Then again it was easy to earn credits as long as one went to kill the abominations.

'I need that…' Alex was bursting with greed as he saw that Extremis was a thing in this version of earth. That fucker Tony had destroyed all traces of Extremis in the MCU earth so Alex wasn't able to get his hands on it there. Now that he had finally found a path to maybe make himself immune to sonic and heat waves, he really wanted it.

'I just hope that this Tony didn't end up making the Endo-Sym Armor. Then again, if he had that kind of power then he would've easily fended off the Kree single-handedly…' Alex was thinking about the Superior Iron Man storyline where Tony made a suit that combined the Venom symbiote and the Extremis formula to create his strongest armor. And it didn't have any of the weaknesses that Venom was supposed to have, namely Sonic attacks.

He spent the next few hours delving through the barista girl's memory as he tried to find some useful information and devise a plan to get access to the formula that would help him create Extremis.

Soon, her shift was over and she was about to go home, but Alex decided to spend some time exploring. He gently influenced her to walk around the city today. It wasn't difficult since she lived alone in a small apartment that she was able to afford with her barista job so it wasn't like there was much for her to do at home.

Alex had also formed a rudimentary plan for what he would be doing in this place.

Subtle mental suggestions here and there helped Alex lead this girl to the destination that he wanted to go to. It was a restricted area of The Bastion where no citizens were allowed without the correct permit and pass.

Just as she was getting close to the fence of the place, 5 guards surrounded the barista with weapons in their hands aiming at her.

"Stand down!" The leader of the group shouted intimidatingly and instantly Alex's weak mental suggestions were broken. But that was enough for Alex.

She panicked and put her hands behind her head while apologizing with tears gathering in her eyes.

The guards weren't going to pity her and they calmly cuffed her hands behind her back and escorted her away from the facility, though Alex took this opportunity to merge into the leader of the guard squad that had arrested the woman.

He was going to use that person to infiltrate the facility.

Why did he want to go into this facility? He wanted to find someone.

There was an incident a few years ago. It was when the Bastion was still defending itself from the assaults of the Kree and the governments. A massive infiltration from outside forces and there was a squad of superpowered individuals that infiltrated the Bastion.

Though he didn't know how accurate this information was since it was something that the barista learned from the news. It might as well have been some sort of propaganda.

Though one thing was for certain. Someone was captured that day. And right after their capture, a new product had been released, the regeneration serum. One vial of the substance could help someone completely heal up to their peak state.

He was able to connect the dots and understood that they had probably captured either Wolverine or Deadpool or maybe even some other hero with a high regeneration factor and used them to create this serum.

He wanted to find and devour that hero so that he could enhance his capabilities. He also knew that they were probably going to give him quite a bit of EP when he devoured them. That heightened healing factor would be an extremely potent source of biological energy and net him quite a bit of EP.

He tried to plant unnoticeable mental suggestions into this guard's head but he actually failed.

'Do these guys have some sort of psychic defense?' Alex thought as he knew that if he pushed too hard, the person would be alerted, and then Alex would have a whole lot of shit to deal with.

Alex decided to breach the psychic defense slowly to read the guy's memories but he knew that, unlike normally, he would need a few hours to even start going through the memories.

After the innocent woman was arrested and taken away by two members of the squad, the leader went back to his post within the facility.

Alex finally witnessed the inside of the facility.

'Yep, this is definitely a holding facility…' He confirmed his guess when he saw the absurd amount of security in the place and the prison-like design. It was like a maximum security prison in here. The entire facility was rectangular in shape. Within the main outer fence, there was a large empty area that covered the entire plot. At the center was the mechanical building that was widely different from the other residential ones that he'd seen before that. Although it still matched the aesthetic of the city, cementing Alex's theory that the entire city was a huge puzzle and could act as a weapon in times of crisis.

He couldn't get any more information by just looking from the outside, so he focused on going through the mental defenses of the guard and trying to read his memories.

…

A few hours later.

*Thump*

'Fuck…' Alex thought as he saw the dead body of the person whose mind he'd just breached. Apparently, there was a fail-safe in his mind that would automatically kill him if some outside influence invaded his mind.

'I should've expected something like this…' Alex thought as he saw three guards rapidly approaching his position.

'Must be a fail-safe against Charles… I guess this settlement must not be very friendly with the X-men. Not that I expected it to be. The Bastion probably kidnapped one of their people and is using them to make healing medicines.' Alex thought about his conjecture as he rapidly tried to formulate a plan to escape without being detected by the cameras that covered every inch of the place.

***

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