"You don't look like a vampire. You look more like an ordinary guy in a costume."
Doctor Strange had never witnessed any of Batman's inhuman feats. At that moment, the operating room contained only the two of them, and Doctor Strange curiously sized up the man about to undergo a bone marrow extraction.
Batman said nothing. He simply removed the armor from the back of his Arkham suit, exposing his back to the air, then lay face-down on the operating table.
Doctor Strange stared at the spine beneath the suit, which looked no different from an ordinary person's, and grew even more convinced of his theory that "Batman is just a regular guy."
He had come here expecting to operate on a legendary vampire, but now that he saw Batman was merely human, Doctor Strange's enthusiasm plummeted.
He prepared the puncture needle, sterilized the site, located the spot, and inserted the needle…
"There's only me here. Before we begin, I need to warn you: without an assistant, this procedure carries some risk. If you tell me why you need the marrow extracted, I might be able to minimize that risk."
Doctor Strange spoke to Batman.
Even lying on the table, Batman remained in his Arkham suit. After two seconds of silence, he said:
"There's a trace of black alien matter hidden in my bone marrow. That's my primary target."
The moment Batman finished speaking, Doctor Strange felt the scene before him scream the word "absurd."
He could just about wrap his head around a method actor insisting on surgery while in costume, but he couldn't fathom how supposed alien matter had ended up in this guy's bone marrow.
"Are you sure you don't want anesthesia?" Doctor Strange confirmed one last time. When Batman showed no sign of changing his mind, he picked up the puncture needle.
As the rigid needle slowly pierced Batman's spine, Doctor Strange watched his patient's reactions with utmost caution.
The instant Batman showed any response, Doctor Strange would halt the procedure.
But Batman's body did not move an inch, not even when the needle entered his spine.
Wearing a mask, Doctor Strange focused entirely on the operation, carefully drawing out the marrow bit by bit.
Gradually, a thread of black matter appeared inside the syringe attached to the needle, writhing like a parasite.
The procedure went unusually smoothly. Twenty minutes later, Doctor Strange removed his mask and frowned at the blob of living blackness.
With the surgery complete, Doctor Strange's opinion of Batman had shifted. At the very least, even in costume, the man beneath was no ordinary person.
Bone marrow aspiration without anesthesia produced pain no normal human could endure, yet Batman hadn't made a sound from start to finish, as if he felt nothing.
But the faint cold sweat on his back proved he wasn't immune to pain—he was simply enduring it with astonishing willpower.
"What is that thing?"
As Batman reattached the Arkham suit's armor and took the syringe containing the black matter from Doctor Strange's hand, the doctor couldn't help asking.
"That's the alien substance I mentioned," Batman said. "Thank you for your help tonight. I'll remember it."
"Even though you're clearly not the vampire the outside world rumors say you are, I have a feeling being remembered by you isn't a good thing." Doctor Strange removed his gloves and white coat as he spoke.
The moment the words left his mouth, he heard a whoosh of wind. Batman had vanished with the tube of black matter.
The three scientists on South Brother Island hadn't slept all night. Doctor Octavius kept glancing at the clock, waiting for Batman to return after the procedure.
Creak—
As the lab door opened again, Batman stepped inside with his usual steady gait.
"Batman, what do you plan to do with this thing?" Doctor Octavius asked.
"I need to culture and study it," Batman said. Before Doctor Banner could object, he added, "There's another, far more powerful alien organism in the Adirondacks. I've found a way to deal with it, but first I need to understand this one completely."
"The three of us should be able to help with that," Doctor Banner said.
"It looks like our primary goal is to analyze its composition… Is this thing even a living organism?" Professor Connors asked.
"It is," Batman said in a low voice. "Your work starts tomorrow. For the rest of tonight, I'll handle the research."
The three scientists didn't argue. In their current ordinary human bodies, staying up until three or four in the morning had left them barely able to keep their eyes open.
As Doctor Banner and the others said goodnight to Batman and returned from the lab area to the residential zone, Batman remained in the lab, using every piece of equipment to study the symbiote matter left behind by Venom.
After subjecting it to various chemical stimuli, physical contact, light sources, sounds, and other tests, Batman reached the following conclusions:
"It can't speak. It shows no reaction to external stimuli. It seems to have retained none of Venom's consciousness—only the instincts of a symbiote."
Batman watched the Venom symbiote he had transferred into a glass container and recorded his findings one by one.
He was simultaneously working on two tasks: analyzing the symbiote's exact composition and finding a way to make it grow.
Time flew by, and a new day arrived. When Doctor Octavius and the others woke up, they found Batman still hard at work in the lab.
The three scientists exchanged glances, said nothing more, and immediately joined Batman in researching the symbiote.
With their help, Batman's progress accelerated. He had already discovered how to make the symbiote matter grow.
Batman built a new ecological chamber to prevent Anti-Venom from detecting the symbiote's presence again.
After triple-checking that the current symbiote couldn't bond with Doctor Banner or the others, Batman headed to City Hall subway station, changed clothes, and canceled the apartment Peter Parker had previously rented.
Facing the landlord's daughter Ursula's reluctant farewell, Batman offered a Peter Parker–style smile in parting, then bought an entire case of chocolate from a street-side shop and brought it back to South Brother Island.
"An alien organism that likes Earth chocolate—this has completely upended my understanding of the universe."
Watching Batman tear open the chocolate wrappers and feed the symbiote in the glass container piece by piece, Doctor Octavius shook his head and couldn't help commenting.
"Choc-olate." Inside the ecological chamber, Venom was faintly taking shape and mimicked Doctor Octavius's words.
"Chocolate contains a substance called phenethylamine. That's primarily what's attracting it," Batman explained.
The symbiote quickly wriggled its way through half the case of chocolate, its volume growing rapidly.
For the entire following week, Batman spent his days on South Brother Island researching the symbiote with the three scientists. Venom gradually learned to speak and could now manage simple communication.
At the very least, it would now actively demand chocolate from Batman instead of passively waiting to be fed like at the beginning.
At night, Batman brought the ecological chamber back to City Hall subway station, using the Oracle AI and S.H.I.E.L.D. satellites to search inch by inch for where Tony Stark might be trapped.
At the same time, Batman continuously tracked the video email Obadiah had once received, following the layered network hops to locate the original sending address.
A week later, inside City Hall subway station, Batman saw surveillance footage of Tony Stark on his workstation computer screen.
The Ten Rings had no internet in their cave; their surveillance was built on a local network.
But Tony Stark seemed to have tampered with the Ten Rings' local network via the cameras, using satellites to send a series of irregular signals outward.
The signals themselves carried no meaning; even if Ten Rings members noticed them, they would dismiss them as some kind of glitch.
The receiver was none other than Parker Industries, under the name of Batman's other identity, Peter Parker.
"Tony Stark didn't contact his own Stark Industries or the military. He chose to reach out to me…"
Batman thought it through in an instant and understood the key:
"Tony probably already knows there's a problem with his company. He needs to contact someone he trusts—someone who will look for him after he goes missing and who has solid networking skills to transmit the signal."
"Peter Parker undoubtedly fits all those criteria, even though Tony and I have clashed before."
Using the email address tracking, Tony Stark's transmitted signals, and the Oracle AI's analysis, Batman finally gained a one-way view of Tony Stark's situation.
At that moment, Tony Stark sat on a rock, repeatedly flexing his leg joints and occasionally glancing at the camera, as if waiting for someone to discover his location.
His legs were covered in chunks of metal armor—this was clearly not a Jericho missile but part of some massive shell.
Almost the instant Batman saw the surveillance feed, Ten Rings members also noticed Tony Stark's abnormality on the monitors.
Crash!
A group of Ten Rings members rushed in with guns raised, pointing at Tony and Yinsen.