novelhk Page 80
Page 80
Or, let the fire burn along the path he drew.
An idea became clear in his mind.
He stood up, went into the break room attached to the office, and locked the door.
He closed his eyes in front of the mirror.
Justin Hammer's slick, somewhat neurotic face flashed through his mind.
Morphological mimicry
A faint, teeth-grinding sound came from inside the body.
Bones are shrinking, muscles are reorganizing. He's lost a few centimeters in height, his once upright back is now slightly hunched, revealing a lack of confidence stemming from years of pressure. The contours of his face seem to be kneaded and rapidly changing by an invisible hand.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes.
The person in the mirror is no longer Chu Hang.
A middle-aged man dressed in an expensive suit, yet appearing somewhat comical. His receding hairline, meticulously trimmed goatee, and eyes that mingled arrogance, anxiety, and a hint of barely concealed sleazy.
Justin Hammer.
Chu Hang looked in the mirror, twitched the corners of his mouth, and revealed Hammer's signature smile, which he thought was charming but was actually greasy.
He spoke, and his voice became exactly like Hammer's, with a sharp nasal tone.
He took a spare Armani suit from the closet and changed into it, then took a pair of gold-rimmed glasses from the drawer and put them on. The lenses of these glasses could display the information he needed in real time.
If you're doing a play, you have to do it fully.
He walked out of his office, tossed a message to his secretary at the door saying, "All meetings this afternoon are canceled," and went straight into the private elevator.
An abandoned cannery in Queens.
The walls were covered in graffiti, and several stray cats rummaged through the trash cans. A sour, rotten smell mixed with the stench of rust filled the air.
A black Cadillac stopped at the factory gate.
The car door opened, and Justin Hammer stepped out. He irritably loosened his tie and waved at the security captain at the door.
"Boss?" The security captain was taken aback, clearly surprised by his sudden visit. "What brings you here today...?"
"Cut the nonsense!"
Hammer interrupted him impatiently, "Where's my guest? Has he made any more damn demands? More money? Or does he want some Russian caviar again?"
This domineering, capricious demeanor is exactly what Justin Hammer himself is like.
The security captain dared not ask any more questions and quickly led the way.
After passing through several heavy blast doors, a completely different world unfolds inside.
The enormous factory was transformed into a modern laboratory, or rather, an extremely chaotic junkyard.
Electrical wires were tangled on the ground and in the air, and various intricate mechanical parts and tools were carelessly tossed about in corners.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of ozone and metal welding, giving people headaches.
Dozens of humanoid drones, like rows of soulless soldiers, stood silently in the center of the factory.
Their paint scheme is Hammer Industries’ signature gray, and they have the U.S. military flag on their chests.
Deep inside the factory, in a secluded workroom, a shirtless man covered in tattoos was typing away at a computer screen, a toothpick dangling from his mouth.
Ivan Vanko.
Beside him stood the Mark 2 armor he had stolen from Roddy. Now, it had been dismantled into eight pieces, countless wires and connectors extending from its body, connecting to the surrounding instruments.
What Ivan is doing is cracking and rewriting its operating system, turning it into his own war machine.
Hammer waved for the security guards to leave and walked over alone.
"My genius, how's the progress?" he asked in an exaggerated, insincere tone, opening his arms as if to embrace his masterpiece.
Ivan didn't even turn his head, just snorted through his nose and continued staring at the screen.
He reached out and touched Mark2's cold thigh armor as if caressing a lover.
"Don't touch my things!" "Hammer" shrieked, perfectly replicating Hammer's controlling nature and insecurity. "I brought you here to write software, not to take apart my toys!"
“Your toys?” Ivan finally turned his head and gave him a disdainful look. “Without me, these are just a pile of scrap metal.”
"Then all you have to do is press a button on stage, and they'll take off, dance, and show the world your 'greatness.'"
Hammer rubbed his hands together, excitedly spun around twice, and then turned his gaze to the disassembled Mark 2.
"And what about this? What are you going to do with this huge thing? Colonel Rhodes is looking forward to wearing it and being the star of the show!"
“Of course.” Ivan grinned, revealing a set of teeth stained yellow by tobacco. “I’ll make it the real star.”
Hammer walked over to Ivan and pretended to look curiously at the computer screen in front of him. The screen displayed a complex internal structure diagram of the Mark2 and operating system code, mixed with Russian comments, which looked like a jumble of gibberish to him.
He reached out and patted Ivan heavily on the shoulder.
"Well done, Ivan! You're a genius! I knew I hadn't misjudged you!"
The instant my palm touched Ivan's skin.
Deep within Chu Hang's consciousness, it was as if a switch had been silently turned on.
*Target: Ivan Vanko.*
*Detection Ability: S-Rank, Mechanical Engineering and Weapon Design (Whiplash Style).*
Without the torrent of knowledge, there is no enlightenment.
But in the next fraction of a second, when he looked at the screen again, the previously chaotic code suddenly became well-organized.
He understood Ivan's design philosophy, which was full of violent aesthetics and pragmatism.
If Tony's designs are exquisite and elegant works of art, then Ivan's designs are brutal and direct killing tools. There are no superfluous decorations, no fancy functions; every component, every line of code, serves only one purpose—destruction.
He instantly understood the principle of plasma energy confinement, the alternative construction method of the Arc Reactor, and how Ivan forcibly implanted his unique operating system into Stark's armor.
He even saw the design drawings for the final form of the Whiplash Armor that Ivan had prepared for him.
Everything became clear and visible.
“However…” Chu Hang, or rather “Hammer,” withdrew his hand, a cunning and distrust typical of businessmen on his face. “Ivan, how can I be sure that these things will listen to me instead of you?”
“You don’t need to confirm,” Ivan said coldly. “You just need to pay.”
“No, no, no, I need insurance.” Hammer shook his finger as he walked to the console and pointed to a piece of code on the screen about a remote control protocol. “Add a backdoor here. A backdoor with the highest privileges, one that only I can activate.”
He began pacing anxiously around the office, perfectly embodying the role of a suspicious boss.
“I need an emergency stop switch, in case… I mean in case those idiots in the military try to fly my drones somewhere they shouldn’t, like bombing some Middle Eastern oil field and affecting my stocks, I can stop them all with one click. This is my property, and I must have ultimate control!”
His words perfectly captured Justin Hammer's suspicious, selfish, and controlling nature.
Ivan frowned, clearly annoyed by the layman's interference. But then he thought that it didn't seem to affect his revenge plans.
Giving this idiot a false placebo to shut him up doesn't seem like a bad idea.
“Sure,” Ivan agreed impatiently. “A simple logic bomb will do. What kind of trigger password do you want?”
“Let’s use…” Hammer pretended to think for a moment, tapping his chin with his finger, then his eyes lit up, “Let’s use ‘Ex-Wife’.”
This is the key code that Natasha uses to regain control of the war machine in the movie.
What Chu Hang needs to do now is to put the key in the lock beforehand.
Ivan chuckled, clearly finding the word to suit Hammer's taste perfectly. He quickly typed a few lines on the keyboard, inserting the backdoor program.
He didn't even bother with encryption; he simply embedded it in an inconspicuous corner of the main control program.
In his opinion, Hammer was such an idiot that even if he were given the source code, he wouldn't understand it.
"Okay, your 'insurance' is here."
"Great! Fantastic!" Hammer clapped his hands excitedly. "Keep it up, my genius! After the expo, I'll buy you an island to raise birds!"
He hummed a little tune and walked briskly out of the chaotic laboratory.
The moment he got into the car and closed the door, the smile on his face vanished, and his eyes returned to their deep and calm state.
The purpose has been achieved.
He not only acquired Ivan Vanko's core technology and capabilities, but also planted a crucial time bomb in his revenge drama.
Now, all that's left is for Tony Stark to step onto the stage that has been prepared for him.
All he had to do was sit at the highest point of the audience and enjoy the show.
Chapter 94 The Mark 6 is released
Chu Hang returned to his office in Stark Tower, his mind already filled with Ivan Vanko's design drawings, which were full of violent aesthetics.
It was a technology born purely for destruction, crude and direct, but undeniably, it was extremely creative in some respects.
In particular, his methods of confining and shaping plasma energy gave Chu Hang some new inspiration.
Chu Hang entered the break room and activated the highest level of security for the office. The heavy alloy door slid down silently, isolating everything inside and outside.
He stretched out his hand, palm up.
A miniature, nebula-like mass of cosmic energy slowly emerged, emitting a soft blue light.
Immediately afterwards, he raised his other hand, his fingertips crackling with tiny, almost invisible arcs of silver electricity. That was the [Plasma Energy Confinement and Shaping] ability he had just copied from Ivan, which, after being transformed by his own energy, had become a more advanced form.
He doesn't need a keyboard or a console.
His brain is the most powerful processor, and his hands are the most sophisticated tools.
“The Mark 5’s energy system is too fragile,” he muttered to himself.
Tony's design concept was perfect, but his excessive pursuit of compactness and aesthetics in the energy transmission path caused the energy circuit to become unstable due to overload when operating at its maximum output.
He closed his eyes, and the complete three-dimensional structure of the Mark 5 appeared in his mind.
Then, he began to wave his hands in the air.
Under his control, that mass of cosmic energy was stretched, twisted, and woven into countless energy threads finer than a human hair.
Those silver electric arcs, like the most precise welding torches, re-weld and reassemble these energy threads at incredible angles and in unbelievable structures.