The next day, Maria Mason arrived at the Spider-Bots Processing Plant with a dark expression, carrying forged documents. She slapped them down in front of the factory manager and declared that she would thoroughly investigate the electricity theft, directly accusing someone inside the plant of abusing their authority for personal gain.
The factory manager had actually noticed the problem as well, but he had not abused his authority, so naturally he was unwilling to take the blame for no reason.
After the two argued for a while, Maria proposed conducting the investigation personally. Since the factory manager had done nothing wrong, he had nothing to fear and agreed.
Maria then began wandering around the factory. Angry at her accusations, the factory manager did not assign anyone to assist her, intending to make her give up in frustration. What he did not know was that this was exactly the outcome Maria wanted.
After shaking off the factory workers, Maria took out a highly sophisticated device that could remotely detect the electricity consumption of different areas.
The greater the power consumption, the more obvious the reading on the device. Relying on it, Maria headed straight toward an empty processing workshop.
When she reached a metal wall, Maria reached out and patted it. The echo sounded perfectly normal. She then took out a small listening device, pressed one end against the metal wall, and placed the other in her ear.
In an instant, faint sounds of machinery operating entered her ears, and a smug smile appeared on Maria's face.
"Finally, I found it. It's hidden this deeply, so this must be Umbrella Corporation's core area. The Spider-Sense System has to be inside!"
Maria looked around, then removed her wristwatch and pressed something on its back. A small suction cup popped out. She pressed the watch against the metal wall to secure it, opened the watch face, gently moved the hands to exactly twelve o'clock, and then pushed down hard.
A blinding arc of electricity flashed. Then, centered on the wristwatch, every electrical device within a radius of more than ten meters was destroyed! It was actually a miniature electromagnetic pulse weapon!
The electronic lock behind the metal wall was destroyed as well, even leaving a narrow gap exposed. Maria tried pushing it, and it actually opened.
"YES! I finally got it! Two hundred million dollars—more than enough for the rest of my life!"
Filled with excitement and exhilaration, Maria stepped inside.
At the same time Maria activated the electromagnetic pulse, Sharon Carter, who had been monitoring her all along, entered the processing plant with her people.
She found the factory manager and directly asked where Maria had gone.
The factory manager could be cold and sarcastic toward Maria, but he could not do the same to Carter.
Although a president's secretary might not sound like a high-ranking position, the authority that came with it was considerable. Hadn't Tony Stark's secretary later become the new president outright?
In other words, people around the president were absolutely not to be offended.
The factory manager hurriedly led Carter and the others to look for Maria. After searching for quite some time without finding her, he began to wonder whether Maria had left. But Carter's professionalism as an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. led her to notice the metal wall and the strange circuit damage nearby.
"Why are the lights here off? Is there a circuit failure?"
"That shouldn't be possible. There were no reports of circuit failures this morning."
The group walked over and indeed found that the nearby circuitry had malfunctioned. Not only were the lights out, but several dust collectors could not be started either.
Carter's expression suddenly changed drastically.
"It was an electromagnetic pulse attack! Sound the alarm immediately! The plant has been infiltrated! Get the security guards over here!"
Carter shouted loudly, instantly making the atmosphere tense. Although the factory manager felt that Carter was overreacting, he still hurried off to call for help.
At the same time, Carter took the opportunity to locate the door disguised as a metal wall and pushed it open a crack.
To avoid suspicion, Carter did not push the door any farther and instead stood guard at the entrance.
Soon, more than a dozen armed security guards rushed over. Carter directed them to force open the metal door, then they charged inside with shouts.
In the dim space, several red laser beams flickered in and out of view. At the same time, a pungent smell of blood rushed into every guard's nostrils.
"Careful! Don't go over there! Look over there!"
The head guard stopped everyone, then pointed fearfully toward the floor in the distance. Several guards shone their flashlights in that direction, and what they saw nearly made them vomit up their breakfast.
More than ten meters from the entrance, several pieces of a woman lay on the floor, surrounded by a large pool of blood that reeked of iron.
The reason she was described as several pieces was because she had truly been cut into several pieces. She looked like a Barbie doll in the hands of a cruel child, an utterly horrifying sight.
"What happened? Ahhh~~"
Carter immediately let out the shrill scream distinctive to a female lead in an American horror movie, startling the two guards beside her so badly that they dropped their guns.
"None of you go over there. There are laser weapons here. The moment anyone enters their attack range, they'll probably be sliced into pieces like that woman. Factory manager, who is that woman? Do you know her?"
"It's Maria Mason. My God! How did she die here?"
The factory manager's face looked as though his father had died. Do not misunderstand—he was not grieving for Maria. He was worried about his own future.
He was responsible for the factory, and someone had died during his shift. No matter how he looked at it, he could not escape responsibility.
Besides, Maria was also a president's secretary. Although her status was lower than Carter's, what if she had some relationship with the president that went beyond friendship? Wouldn't that leave them in an even worse position?
Thinking of that, the factory manager felt his future was utterly dark and even wanted to die.
"Everyone, don't panic. Maria was most likely a corporate spy. She brought this upon herself. Notify President Wang immediately and tell him what happened here. Also, call the director of the local police precinct and ask him to come over. Above all, the media must not learn about this, or the entire company will be in serious trouble."
Carter seemed to have recovered from her fright and immediately displayed the competence of a senior executive, directing everyone on the scene and sending them all out.
Only after everyone had left did Carter begin examining the entire workshop. She discovered that aside from some precision instruments, the place was mostly filled with equipment resembling Powered Armor.
She recognized it at a glance because Iron Man was now wildly popular around the world, and many companies were secretly developing Iron Man suits of their own.
In the original story, Hammer Industries, the king of knockoffs, had also developed many inferior Iron Man suits, and they had been manufactured in this very factory.
"Could I have been overthinking this?"
With Carter's trained eye as a professional agent, she could naturally tell that the Powered Armor here was highly advanced, not some shoddy display pieces. Even a genius would need to devote their full attention to research to create finished products like these. No one could possibly make them after casually tinkering around for a while.
"Unless Wang Khan had begun developing Iron Man suits long ago, there's no way he could have simultaneously researched the academy's technology and developed such advanced Powered Armor. I judged this wrong."
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