Though he trusted Dr. Otto, Zod still needed someone keeping constant watch—otherwise the good doctor might accidentally burn through his entire budget. Zod was wealthy, but that didn't mean he enjoyed watching money evaporate.
As his chief executive assistant, this fell squarely under Urd's responsibilities.
"Dr. Otto's laboratory still isn't finished," Urd reported.
She was sharp—she had to be. Competition in her field was brutal. One mediocre day could mean being replaced without warning, so she needed more than competence; she needed a razor-sharp memory and spotless performance to justify her six-figure salary.
"Speed it up. And what about the equipment and materials he requested?" Zod asked.
With his enhanced intellect, he naturally remembered every detail.
"All ordered and arranged."
Urd flipped through several invoices. She had even driven out to the construction site personally—and, knowing she lacked the technical expertise, had consulted a college friend to make sure everything was correct.
"But… we already have a palladium reactor. Why do we need a tritium-based one?"
It was something she'd been wondering for days.
"For laypeople, we just say multiple energy sources ensure limitless output. But among professionals?" Zod replied solemnly. "Science can't advance on a single track. We need multiple foundations. If you follow only one route and hit a bottleneck, you could stay stuck for life. Science grows like a branching tree…"
Palladium reactors were too far beyond ordinary technology. Yes, Marvel was full of absurd breakthroughs, but Zod still preferred a grounded approach—both to reduce risk and to see whether a tritium reactor could meet his long-term needs.
In truth, he was also studying tritium-based fusion himself. After dissecting Otto's research, he found the logic flawless. If failures occurred, they had to be due to instability, not theory.
And then there was the matter of secondary Kryptonium.
After creating the Black Queen, he'd assigned her to run constant simulations.
His original Kryptonian armor—the one he'd brought from his universe—had already been fused with vibranium, creating a new Super-Kryptonium suit vastly superior to the original. And while Zod knew the formula for pure Kryptonium, Earth lacked the materials to reproduce it.
"Sir, we've calculated a new alloy formula. Simulations indicate its strength is eighty percent higher than secondary Kryptonium."
The Black Queen projected data and the simulation results. Zod took a sip of iced cola as he looked over the figures.
"Excellent. We'll call this alloy A-Rank Kryptonium."
A-Rank Kryptonium's strength was already approaching vibranium levels, which wasn't surprising—the Black Queen held both vibranium data and physical samples.
"Sir, besides the alloy, we've found something else."
The projection shifted. A blurry video appeared—grainy, discolored, and distorted, as though someone had smeared excrement across the lens and then dragged it across concrete. Even with the Black Queen's restoration, it was difficult to make out.
A man in a black trench coat was cutting down vampires with a gleaming blade.
Then the projection changed again—this time displaying the man's complete personal history: birth records, medical files, known addresses. Everything available online.
"Blade…"
Zod recognized him instantly. The Black Queen pulled up even more—ancient symbols, glyphs, and diagrams preserved on cracked, yellowing parchment.
"Underworld script?" Zod muttered.
More memories were returning to him lately, and with them, fragments of Blade's storyline.
"If that's Underworld script, then this must be the start of Blade's first movie arc."
The plot of Blade I was simple—classic comic-book adaptation. The director had been smart: highlight the comic's strongest traits, keep it stylish, keep it visceral. It was only after the later recasting that the series lost some charm.
The villain, Deacon Frost, was a non-pureblood vampire—the leader of North America's non-pureblood clans—and constantly at odds with the pureblood elders.
His reasoning was straightforward:
Humans would never allow vampires to grow unchecked. They'd inevitably retaliate. But the pureblood elders still clung to a naïve truce with humanity. Meanwhile, human technology was advancing at breakneck speed. If vampires didn't turn humanity first, then vampires would eventually become lab specimens.
Using computers, Frost managed to decode the "Underworld Tome," deciphering its impossible script—something no vampire scholar had managed in centuries.
The tome revealed a ritual requiring twelve purebloods and one Daywalker to summon the Blood God—a storm-like entity that would sweep across the world and turn every human into a vampire.
Honestly? Zod didn't care whether such a "Blood God" existed. In Marvel, cosmic heavyweights were everywhere. The Ancient One alone would shut that down. The only version with real bite would be comic-book Dracula.
And even if they succeeded in turning the whole world…
Where would the food come from?
If every sheep becomes a tiger, who do the tigers eat?
Zod wasn't interested in the plot.
But he was interested in Blade—because Blade had no medical records.
Aside from his birth certificate, he had never been hospitalized. Not once. Officially, he was even listed as deceased.
Utterly impossible under normal circumstances.
Even if someone had access to miracle drugs, the average person would eventually contract something severe enough to require medical care. Private doctors were outrageously expensive. Blade, someone who grew up with nothing, would never have afforded it.
But remembering what Dr. Connors had discovered—
Zod suddenly had his answer.
Blade had become an immune body.
He was immune to every known human virus and disease. Had the vampire mutation inside him created a new evolutionary path?
After all, Blade was canonically half-human, half-vampire. Not fully turned. And instead of becoming a monster, he'd gained super strength, vampiric speed, regeneration… and only a mild bloodlust that didn't threaten his life.
"Black Queen, create a full dossier on Blade. Pull every surveillance feed we can access. I want to know exactly where he is."
Zod felt certain:
The universal cure Connors once theorized…
It might very well lie within Blade.
For the sake of humanity, Blade would have to cooperate with a bit of research. Nothing invasive—just a few samples.
/-\
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