Marvel's Shendu: Dominating the Multiverse

Chapter 175 Octavis Imprisoned

"Working for me doesn't require you to kill anyone or abandon your principles. I'll treat your teacher's spine and remove the microchip. He won't remember what happened tonight when he wakes up. The price is that you'll be under my command from now on."

"no."

Parker refused quickly, stating his position almost as soon as the other party finished speaking.

"You didn't even think about it."

"No need to think about it. I don't work for anyone," Parker said. "What you just did—bungling bolts, liquefying metal, turning titanium into stone—you possess power surpassing any individual I've ever seen. Me, handing myself over to someone I know absolutely nothing, and then believing you say I don't need to kill anyone?"

The man looked at Parker without showing any displeasure.

"That makes sense," he said. "Then let's change the stakes."

Parker's muscles tensed.

"Benjamin Parker. This May, on the street corner in front of your house, he was shot in the left chest by a 9mm pistol bullet. The bullet passed through the pericardium and entered the left ventricle. He arrived at Queens Hospital Emergency Room but had no vital signs."

Parker didn't say anything.

No one could see the expression on his face beneath the mask. But his hands fell to his sides, and his clenched fists relaxed.

The.

"If you feel that power makes you distrust me, I understand. But this matter has nothing to do with power," the man said. "Your Uncle Ji has been dead for seven months. Xu Meitian went out patrolling every night, from Queens to Manhattan, from Manhattan to Hillary, searching every street. You thought you were catching a criminal. Actually, you were looking for a way to make the fact that 'I wasn't home that night' less painful."

Parker's breathing was rapid. The breathing holes in his mask emitted a hissing sound.

"You won't find it," the man said. "But I can give you another option."

"—You can't do it." Parker's voice was low. "The dead cannot be brought back to life."

How many "impossibilities" did you encounter tonight?

Parker did not answer.

Behind him, Octavius ​​lay prone on the bridge. Blood was still flowing. The air smelled of rust.

"I'll give you time to think it over," the man said. "I'll take care of your teacher's injuries first. It's not part of the deal. It's a freebie."

He walked past Parker. Parker didn't block him.

The man crouched down beside Octavius. His right hand pressed against the four wounds on Octavius's back. Parker turned to look at the edges of the wounds, which were contracting. It wasn't healing, it was tissue regeneration. Muscle fibers were rearranging, and skin was growing from the edges towards the center.

Eight seconds. All four wounds closed. The newly grown skin was a shade lighter than the surrounding skin, but its structure remained intact.

Octavius ​​lay on the ground, his breathing stabilizing. He was dazed; the blood loss and the physical trauma of spinal surgery meant he was lucky not to go into shock on the spot.

The person stood up.

"I've cut off the chip's signal. The residual effects should subside within two days. Have someone take him to the hospital. Spinal surgery. Tell them it's an industrial accident, nothing more."

Parker crouched down next to Octavius, placing two fingers on his neck to check for a pulse. There was one. Steady.

"What's your name?" Parker asked without looking up.

"unimportant."

"You want me to consider a deal? I don't even know your name."

There was a two-second silence.

"Just call me Holy Lord."

Parker looked up, the lenses of his mask reflecting the light from the sodium lamp.

"—The Holy Lord?"

"It's just a name."

Parker looked down at Octavius. His breathing had become much more even. The blood on his back was beginning to dry in the night wind, turning a darker color.

How can I contact you?

"No need to contact me," the Holy Lord said. "Think it through, stand on the rooftop of any building, and say it once. I can hear you."

He took a step back.

"Don't think too long. The longer your uncle stays over there, the harder it becomes to bring him back. I'm not making this up to scare you. It's the rule."

Parker didn't say anything.

When he looked up again, there were only him and Octavius ​​on the bridge.

The sodium lamps were still on. The car that had been forced to stop was leaning against the guardrail; its engine had restarted sometime during the day, and the sound of it idling carried far across the empty bridge. There were police sirens in the distance.

Parker took off his mask and sat in the night breeze for a long time.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he took it out to look at it.

A message, number unknown.

"Seven days."

Octavis woke up in the ICU at a Queens hospital.

Parker made an anonymous call for emergency services, left the man on the sidewalk at the bridgehead, and then left. When the paramedics arrived, they found a middle-aged man lying on the ground with four strange metal structures on his back that had been completely petrified and shattered. There were four open wounds on his spine, but the wounds were closed, as if he had undergone surgery.

The attending physician in spinal surgery looked at the CT scan for twenty minutes and then called two colleagues to look at it together.

"Spinal cord injury, T4 to T7, complete paraplegia."

When Parker heard those words in the hallway, his coffee had gone cold. He wasn't wearing his battle uniform; he was wearing a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers—a seventeen-year-old high school student. A nurse glanced at him as she passed by but didn't ask any questions. There are always young people waiting outside the ICU in hospitals.

Octavis's spine had been welded to the four robotic arms for far too long. The Holy Lord severed the chip signal and healed the wound, but the structures within the spine that had been stretched, worn, and altered by the metal interfaces could not be reversed.

Paraplegia.

Parker sat on a plastic chair in the hallway for the entire afternoon. Aunt May called twice; he answered the first one, saying he was at the school library, but he didn't answer the second.

On the third day, Octavius ​​was fully conscious.

Four police officers arrived. Two in plainclothes, two in uniform. Parker stood at the corner of the corridor watching them enter the ward. Octavius ​​lay on the bed, numb from the waist down. His eyes were different from when he was on the bridge; the continuous processing was gone, and his pupils were the normal size.

Parker didn't go in.

He peeked at a few lines of notes in Octavius's nursing records: the patient repeatedly stated that his memory of the bridge incident was hazy, he could not explain the source of the mechanical device, his emotions were stable, and he did not show any aggression.

The residual effects of the chip were fading. The Lord said forty-eight hours, and on the third day, Octavius ​​was no longer the person on the bridge.

But he can never go back to the person he was before the bridge.

It was getting dark when Parker left the hospital. He walked across the intersection of Queens Road and Sixth Street. He walked this road every day, to go to and from school, and to run errands. Before May of this year, Uncle Ben would stand on the steps of his house on Wednesday evenings to wait for him, holding a broom, not to sweep, but because he was used to holding onto something for support.

That intersection.

Parker stopped at the street corner. There was a small patch of cement on the sidewalk, a darker color than the surrounding concrete. It had seeped in and couldn't be washed away. Parker stared at that small patch of discolored ground for five minutes. A neighbor walking his dog greeted him; he nodded and turned to go home.

Aunt May was in the kitchen. Pasta was cooking in a pot with canned red sauce from the supermarket. She glanced back at Parker as he entered.

Have you eaten?

"without."

"handwashing."

Parker washed his hands and sat down at the table. Aunt May brought out two dishes. The pasta was overcooked and a bit mushy, and the red sauce was too sour; the two of them ate for a while.