Fang Vampire

"S.H.I.E.L.D. had discovered signs of vampire activity—or rather, they had been monitoring them all along." When Nick Fury heard that Wei Xiuming still had the Knight System to offer, he immediately gave him some news in return. "The term you used back then was very apt. Human history is intertwined with vampires, and the complexity of it is beyond words. If we rashly moved against vampires, the upheaval it caused would be no less than an economic crisis."

"I don't know if you studied this part of history in your time, or if you've read about it in this era, but World War II was ignited by an economic crisis—a crisis caused by capitalist magnates hoarding resources and stripping the world bare. It ultimately became the fuse for a war that affected two billion people and left ninety million dead or wounded. In this age of nuclear deterrence, a third world war wouldn't break out lightly, but humanity can't live under the shadow of war!"

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mandate made it an organization dedicated to preventing major threats. Besides extraterrestrial lifeforms like the Zerg, its remit included anyone or anything that might disrupt the normal order of human society. In folklore, vampires were predators who stood above humanity, but their thousand-year entanglement with humans had made them part of human society. Even a certain scripture that recounted humanity's origins mentioned that vampires were the first man and woman's eldest child.

Besides, after the advent of firearms—and especially after the technological explosion of World War II—the threat vampires posed had diminished.

No matter how powerful their healing abilities were, if they couldn't regenerate from a single drop of blood or reverse the flow of time, they were nothing against a blanket of firepower. What's more, vampires were creatures of the night. No matter how strong an individual was, sunlight could still hurt them.

With atomic energy advancing rapidly, humanity had already created temperatures hotter than the sun's core. Reproducing the part of sunlight that vampires were vulnerable to was hardly impossible.

When it came to vampires, leaving them alone meant minor troubles; taking action meant shaking society to its foundations.

Wei Xiuming only wanted to throw things into chaos, so he didn't worry about any of that. Instead, he launched into an impassioned speech, like one of those masters who visited middle schools to give lectures and sell books on the side. "Garlic, silver, crosses, holy water... Whether real or false, proven or merely rumored, vampires fear these things, and they can be used to hold them back. But what if one day they suddenly stopped working?"

"Humans learned to use vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, even eradicating many of them. Smallpox was completely wiped out last century. So vampires, who have advanced alongside humanity, couldn't have adopted similar technologies to free themselves from these weaknesses? Vampires are an ageless race. Some of them have even witnessed humanity's journey from the age of steam all the way into space. Their long lives have allowed them to accumulate enough wealth to pursue even greater ambitions."

"Besides, vampires and humans are different species. What's a vaccine to us might be an evolutionary serum to them. Celebrate! A stronger, faster species with almost no weaknesses has been born! They're called Fang Vampires. This is the dawn of their reign over Earth—and the beginning of humanity's enslavement as livestock!"

Nick Fury's brow twitched throughout the speech, though his face was always black, making it impossible to tell whether his expression had changed.

"Ah, sorry. I've hurt your feelings." Wei Xiuming said sarcastically, "Black people have a history of being enslaved, but in the age of Fang Vampire rule, humanity won't be divided by skin color anymore. Whether you're white or black, we'll all be slave species."

Having the final say over what things meant was great. Wei Xiuming could make up whatever he wanted, and people had no choice but to take him seriously and give the matter their full attention.

Nick Fury swallowed the "motherfucker" he'd been about to spit out and said, "What materials do you need this time?"

Ever since the Zerg had been discovered, only a handful of adult Zerg had been successfully killed. Whenever a Zerg corpse became available, various factions came waving wads of cash to buy it. S.H.I.E.L.D. was no exception. Using technical means, they had obtained a Zerg corpse for free from a certain biolab, and a large portion of it was now stored in Osborn's biolab.

Wei Xiuming had asked for it. At the time, he'd claimed it was necessary material for developing the Knight System, but he'd really only wanted to analyze how far the first test subject had evolved. Judging by the results, even as a prototype, the Zerg had been a fairly advanced modification.

Of course, not long after Wei Xiuming received the materials, he actually produced the Knight System, a weapon capable of countering the Zerg, along with a whole series of devices for detecting them. That was why Nick Fury had brought it up.

"A hybrid," Wei Xiuming said. "He's the child of a vampire and a human. His manner of conception isn't on record, but he has the superhuman strength, speed, senses, and stamina of a vampire, as well as their terrifying healing ability. But his human side means he isn't afraid of silver or sunlight—and he's also a proud vampire hunter."

"He's the material you need?" From that description, Nick Fury immediately thought of a file on a certain person: a Black man named Eric Brooks, codenamed Blade. Because of his unusual physiology, vampires had given him the title of Daywalker.

If it came to it, Nick Fury wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice this individual to eliminate a threat to humanity.

"He's the one who wears it. I'm the one providing the armor material." Wei Xiuming spread his hands. "Time travel can't carry too much matter. Once you reach a certain limit, the energy required to transport each additional gram increases exponentially, and the chance of failure rises even more. To save costs and improve the odds of success, certain technologies that can't be developed in this era were encoded into my genes through bioengineering. After specific sequences are decoded and combined with samples from their targeted enemies, that's where the power comes from."

The Knight System's acceleration was merely a mechanical version of the Skrulls' higher-dimensional modification. But if he didn't make the process sound more cruel and tragic, it wouldn't highlight his own importance. Nick Fury stared at Wei Xiuming with his one eye for a long while, but he couldn't read anything on the face of this Gene-Modded Human, created to be a tool—especially since half of it was hidden behind a futuristic-looking gas mask.

In truth, he was debating whether to tell this man, Clark Kent, about artificial intelligence. The most advanced AI at present was J.A.R.V.I.S., created by Tony Stark, the young heir to Stark Industries. If an out-of-control AI that threatened humanity's future was destined to emerge, there was a good chance it would come from the hands of that young master.

But one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s founders was Tony Stark's father, Howard Stark. Their family ties, along with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s stake in Stark Industries, meant they couldn't allow anything to happen to the young master.

Tony Stark's personal circumstances were a barometer for Stark Industries' stock. As long as the genius weapons inventor remained active, the stock would keep soaring. If the newspapers went two days without a piece of gossip about the young master, Stark's stock would drop by several percentage points.

Billions of dollars were at stake. That money funded Nick Fury's various secret bases under construction, as well as the upkeep of those already built. Most of the money that didn't show up on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s books came from sources like this.