A classic Bugatti TYPE57SC was parked before the Klaus Technologies building. Its retro, elegant design drew the attention of passersby. Inside sat a white-haired old man wearing sunglasses.
As one of the most beautiful cars in the world, this antique Bugatti had recently set a price record. It had sold for the staggering sum of thirty million dollars in California this May, becoming the highest-priced car ever sold at auction worldwide and breaking the record previously held by a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa auctioned publicly in Italy.
Only four had ever been produced since its creation, and merely two or three were still believed to exist. It was the perfect prize dreamed of by antique car collectors.
The mysterious collector who had acquired it for thirty million dollars was this old man, who must have been quite handsome in his youth.
"Dr. Pym?"
The Black security guard standing in the gatehouse was astonished. Before this company had changed its name, it had been called Pym Industries.
And the old man before him had been its original founder—the one and only.
"That's right. I'm still alive."
Hank Pym made the joke humorously. Ever since his most trusted student had driven him off the Board of Directors, he had rarely returned to the vast empire he had built with his own hands. Especially after it was renamed Klaus Technologies, he had become even more unwilling to set foot through its doors.
Sometimes, when this extraordinary old man looked back on the past, he could not help but laugh at himself, believing that his life had been pieced together from one unfortunate betrayal after another.
Hank Pym had once been a founding figure of S.H.I.E.L.D.—then still called the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate—an intelligence agency led by Iron Man's father, Howard