Marvel's Shendu: Dominating the Multiverse

Chapter 174 I Need You

Octavius ​​stumbled as the sudden weight behind him pulled him to one knee. A metallic scraping sound came from his spinal joint. His four petrified mechanical arms hung limply behind him, lifeless.

"You—" Octavius ​​looked up.

The man walked over. Each step was the same distance, neither fast nor slow. He stopped in front of Octavius ​​and looked down at him.

"From which day on what date did the voice in your chip start to become your own?"

Octavius ​​didn't answer. He was trying to restart the robotic arm. The neural signals from the spinal interface were being sent, but the receiver was no longer a conductor. Calcium carbonate is non-conductive.

"The ninth day," the other person answered for him. "You weren't sure which thoughts were from the chip and which were yours. By the fourteenth day, you stopped distinguishing. Because the distinction made you uncomfortable."

Parker stood ten meters away, listening.

Octavius ​​braced himself against the bridge. The petrified mechanical arm was too heavy for him to stand. He looked up at the person in front of him, the calculations in his eyes ceasing.

"Who are you?"

"It's not important." The person squatted down and looked him in the eye. "What's important is that I can turn this thing off when you wear it."

I can clear that signal from the chip. Those extra thoughts in your head will disappear on their own within forty-eight hours.

retreat."

pause.

"But you have to tell me if you want it or not."

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Octavius ​​did not answer that question.

He braced himself against the bridge surface, the petrified robotic arms dragging behind him like four broken telephone poles. The metal insert at the spinal interface was still sending signals, but the fact that calcium carbonate was non-conductive wouldn't change no matter how many times he tried.

"You can turn off the chip." Octavius's speech slowed slightly. "And then? You decide the direction for 0sCorp? You manage Norman Osborn's experiments? You take my work—"

"Your achievement is four arms," ​​the man interrupted. "You welded them to your spine. That's your achievement."

Octavius ​​shut his mouth.

Three seconds of silence. On the bridge, the driver of the car that had been forced to stop earlier finally climbed out of the driver's seat, saw the situation, and turned to run. His escape was perfectly justified.

"I don't need your help," Octavius ​​said.

He pulled a second remote control from his pocket with his right hand; it was meant for emergencies, and it fit perfectly now.

The sound of machinery operating came from beneath the bridge deck. On the bridge piers. He had also installed things on the piers.

Parker ran two steps toward the bridge and peered down. On the concrete outer wall of the bridge pier, steel clamps were unfolding, revealing another set of electromagnet components that drew power directly from the municipal power supply line on the bridge deck.

This is a backup plan. Octavius ​​had a backup plan from the very beginning.

But the clamps on the bridge piers stopped halfway through unfolding.

At the hinge joint of the steel clamp, the metal's color changed. The silver-gray steel turned dark red, then brown. Rust. Accelerated oxidation. Thirty years of corrosion were completed in two seconds, and the clamp shattered under its own weight, falling into the river along with the electromagnet.

The splash of water flashed briefly under the sodium lamp and then disappeared.

Octavius ​​looked at the remote control in his hand. The plastic casing was unchanged, but the circuit board inside was no longer working.

It's over. The copper traces have all turned into copper oxide, and green powder is leaking out from the gaps in the buttons.

"Is there anything else?" the man asked.

Octavius ​​threw the broken remote control on the ground.

He began to dismantle the spinal connector. Barehand. His fingernails dug into the gaps between the metal inserts and his flesh, trying to detach the petrified robotic arm from his body. Blood flowed from his fingertips and back simultaneously, staining a patch of his shirt red.

It can't be removed. The electromagnetic locking mechanism has turned into minerals, but its shape hasn't changed, and the latches are still engaged. Those stones faithfully retain the geometry they had when locked.

"You're hurting yourself," the man said.

"That's my business."

Octavius ​​stood up. On his own two legs. Dragging behind him were four petrified mechanical arms, each weighing at least sixty kilograms. He stood with great difficulty, but he managed to stay upright.

Parker watched this scene from ten meters away. His teacher, carrying over two hundred kilograms of dead weight, was bleeding from his spine, yet he was still standing.

"I built those arms. I modified those arms. I know the limiting parameters of electromagnetic drive systems better than anyone else. You turn them into stone, I'll build another set. You change the next set, I'll build another one."

The man looked at Octavis.

"Until you have no more spine left to fix?"

Octavius ​​didn't answer. His knees were trembling, but he didn't kneel down.

Parker's spider-sense delivered a signal of unprecedented strength. It wasn't a warning. It was his entire sensory system telling him: the person in front of him was doing something beyond his cognitive framework; running away or not made no difference.

The four petrified mechanical arms behind Octavius ​​shattered.

It wasn't shattered. There was no shockwave, no flying debris. The dolomite disintegrated into powder from the base to the tip, like four pieces of chalk being crushed. The powder landed on the bridge surface, a white expanse.

Octavius ​​lost the weight on his back, leaned forward, and almost fell.

Then the spinal interface.

The four metal inserts detached from his back, turned into liquid, and flowed out from the gaps in his skin and muscles, dripping onto the ground and solidifying into four small, silvery-gray puddles.

Octavius ​​had four circular wounds exposed on his back, each about two centimeters in diameter and reaching the periosteum of his spine, from which blood gushed.

"You will die from blood loss. In about twelve minutes."

The man looked at Octavius ​​kneeling on the ground. His tone was one of stating a fact.

"Or you can answer my question. Would you like to?"

Octavius ​​lay sprawled on the ground. Blood flowed from his back onto the bridge surface, trickling down the cracks in the pavement. His fingers gripped the asphalt spasmodically.

He didn't speak. But he didn't try to resist again.

The person took a step forward.

Parker moved.

He didn't know when he started running. His spider-sense told him not to get close to the man; every hair on his body was pulling him in the opposite direction, but his legs wouldn't listen.

Parker stood in front of Octavis.

That's enough.

The man stopped. He looked at Parker.

Parker's mask was still on, but his breathing was so loud that it could be heard outside the mask.

"A chip. You yourself said those thoughts in his head were implanted into his brain by a chip. He couldn't tell the difference starting on the ninth day. What...?"

"Everyone knows that." Parker's voice trailed off. "Then it's not entirely his fault."

The person didn't say anything.

“He was my teacher,” Parker said. “It wasn’t like this two years ago when he was teaching me Fourier analysis in the lab. You turn off his chip, send him for treatment, and he’ll come back. You don’t have to kill him.”

"I didn't say I was going to kill him."

"He's bleeding. Twelve minutes. You said it."

The man glanced at Octavis behind Parker.

"I can stop it."

Parker waited for the second half of the sentence; he knew there was a second half.

"But I want one thing."

Parker clenched his fist. "What?"

"you."

The wind blew across the bridge, lifting the corners of Parker's cape, but he didn't move.