American comics: Starting with Luke the Maker

Gwen Stacy felt like today had been incredibly surreal. First, she met the original form of the alien being within her, and then, as its host, she represented the symbiote Quiet in signing a meticulously worded auxiliary research agreement with Hebron. This might be the first contract ever signed between an extraterrestrial intelligent being and a company on this planet.

Perhaps someone named Nick Fury would find out and fly into a rage, calling to question her with bluster, citing sections one, two, and three of some security regulations to make trouble, but who cared about him? He was currently busy dealing with the turbulent underworld and haggling with high-ranking officials who needed longevity elixirs over distribution issues.

Clearly, Nick was firmly in the driver's seat with those high-ranking officials, ingeniously leveraging a longevity elixir to extract considerable funding and subsidies. Although he didn't make much profit on the elixir itself, the money he secured through it was enough for him to secretly build two or three more safe houses.

Similarly, as soon as Nick received the approved funds, he immediately placed a massive order for self-healing elixirs with Hebron. In his words: Every SHIELD agent was hard-earned; they were constantly carrying out high-risk missions, and the casualty rate had always been high, with SHIELD paying out astronomical sums in compensation each year. In Nick's view, these fine young men were SHIELD's precious assets! They deserved the best logistical support.

Self-healing elixirs were the perfect medicine to significantly reduce this casualty rate! If you don't approve special funding, you're disregarding the lives of all SHIELD agents.

Nick's impassioned words made many of the high-ranking officials present feel disgusted. They were all seasoned foxes; who didn't know each other's little tricks? Did Nick Fury really think people couldn't see through the suspicious nature of the list of fallen agents he submitted in the past? It was just that SHIELD was a self-contained entity, with internal personnel and external circulation being almost entirely closed off, making it difficult for others to intervene. Nick Fury had the final say in everything; otherwise, he would have been reported long ago.

What? Now you're not eyeing the agents' compensation anymore and starting to play new games?

Of course, Nick could guess what those high-ranking officials were thinking. He also felt that he should keep up with the times and change his methods. He couldn't keep falsely reporting the number of fallen agents to scam compensation. Even though SHIELD's agent compensation was generous, playing that trick too often over the years had made some of the old foxes suspicious.

When the list of fallen agents was submitted, the compensation would be directly cut in half. Although Nick could still make a profit, the scrutiny was tightening. The good old days when everyone was naive, and he could get whatever he asked for, were long gone. Now, if he wanted to make money that way, he had to engage in fierce debates with those in charge of the money for half the day.

Nick had long wanted to develop new avenues.

Luke's self-healing elixir was like timely rain to Nick! And the longevity elixir was an unexpected bonus!

After listening to Luke's introduction of these two elixirs at Hebron that day, Nick immediately had a complete plan in mind. This was why he was willing to stand at the forefront and engage with those politicians and businessmen, to pave a stable path for Hebron.

After all, falsely reporting the compensation for some fallen agents, the training costs for new agents, and so on, yielded a lot of money, but the avenues were clearly becoming narrower. The amount of money he could squeeze out of it each year was decreasing. But self-healing elixirs were different! They were life-saving injections that could be used when injured! Weren't you all complaining to me every year about the high number of SHIELD agent fatalities?

I've now come up with a way to reduce it. All it takes is one injection of the self-healing elixir!

Painless, injury-free, and even saves the money and time of going to the hospital for emergency treatment!

And what's the best part? The best part is that self-healing injections are disposable, meaning that an agent with a high mission rate might face near-death experiences three to five times a year.

Isn't that faster money than any compensation?

Compared to making money off of fictional agent compensation, this route was obviously safer and without future troubles.

In any case, Nick, who held the distribution rights to the longevity elixir, was having painful but happy days. The pressure was immense, of course, but the final gains were also extremely substantial. He also knew that this opportunity would only come once. Next time, those old foxes with more time wouldn't play games of give-and-take compromises with him.

After everything was settled, Hebron quickly received an order for self-healing elixirs worth 20 billion US dollars, as well as orders for longevity elixirs worth several billion.

……

California.

Life Foundation.

This was a large enterprise spanning space exploration and biological fields. Although it couldn't be said to rival Stark Industries and other companies, it was still considered a behemoth in the local California area. In the words of a major media owner, the Life Foundation could easily take out some money to buy their newspaper building and then acquire their newspaper, making them work for him.

Carlton Drake was the current manager of this large enterprise. He looked young and always appeared gentle and refined when facing outsiders, speaking with a persuasive power. At this moment, he was standing in his laboratory with a gloomy face, looking at the experimental subjects in the laboratory, each on the verge of death.

"Symbiote A02, current status: weak, fusion days: 9, temperature: 103."

Looking at the vital signs displayed on the screen, Carlton Drake coldly sentenced the experimental subject in the laboratory to death.

"Find a few more experimental subjects," Carlton Drake instructed his trusted security guard. Then he said to Dora Skirth, who was standing beside him with an uneasy expression, "Doctor, let's conduct the next experiment."

"But we have no more candidates," Dr. Skirth said uneasily. In recent days, she had seen several experimental subjects die. They were often vagrants, unemployed people, and down-and-outs from the streets, lured by Carlton's extremely seductive rhetoric to sign an experimental contract they didn't even understand, and then they were tricked into the laboratory, becoming parasitic hosts for the symbiotes inside.

Unfortunately, none of the experimental subjects were perfectly matched with the symbiote, able to coexist symbiotically with it.

Dora felt tormented every moment of these days. She couldn't laugh off the deaths of several experimental subjects with the same nonchalance as Carlton. The only thing that upset and saddened him was not the loss of life, but the failure of the experiment. This filled her with a great sense of fear. The conscience in her heart was telling her not to be an accomplice, but facing Carlton's forceful demands, she had no way to refuse.

She had a family! And Carlton was very good at exploiting people's weaknesses.