Due to the material supply demands of the Immortal City, Stephanie established a trade company in Rome as a front, using the underwater train tunnel and the expanded vertical elevator to transport goods. Large quantities of daily necessities were brought into the company, then shipped out again in identical packaging—this time filled with crushed stone—to be dumped into the sea as part of a fake land reclamation project for a supposed future amusement park. This charade served as a distraction for the Italian government. At this pace, it would take approximately two hundred years for the so-called "Immortal City" amusement park to officially open.
But Stephanie wasn't worried. In about ten years, the Italian bureaucrats—most of whom were graduates from classical grammar schools—would likely forget why they had approved the project in the first place. The archives might even be lost. By then, all it would take was a few more bribes and another promise that the park would open in the next decade—and of course, that it wouldn't serve Hawaiian pizza—and everything would be fine.
Another cycle, another ten years.
This time, Natasha Romanoff left the Immortal City not by the fixed teleportation gate, but via the newly expanded elevator, as her mission destination was in Rome. The vertical elevator was under tight surveillance: automated heavy explosive machine guns were mounted every few meters along the carved rock wall. If a rider failed identity verification, they would be exposed to a crossfire from hundreds of those guns with no chance of survival. Natasha possessed a genetically coded access pass that allowed her to use the elevator without triggering the deadly barrage.
According to her, the Avengers had a mission in Europe, and she needed to arrive in Rome ahead of the team for reconnaissance. For that, she borrowed the Immortal City's tunnel—adding to the mystery that surrounded Agent Romanoff. Aside from a select few, no one knew how she had managed to slip from upstate New York to Europe without a trace.
Lying is second nature to a spy. She claimed she just wanted to check if the Immortal City's database, which had absorbed large amounts of Hydra intelligence, contained anything useful for the mission. She insisted that the visit to the academy had been purely coincidental. The mage didn't comment either way, but he did grant her access to the sections of the database she was authorized to see and provided whatever information she requested.
He knew exactly what the Avengers' mission was—and he had no interest in it.
After Dr. Whitehall's assets were taken over by Stephanie, the Winter Soldier files were fully archived. However, the Winter Soldier program, being an inferior super-soldier project, had not contributed much to the city's biological research and thus wasn't heavily encrypted. In fact, some of Whitehall's other experiments proved far more valuable. If Natasha had come a few years later, the Winter Soldier files might have been buried under logistics data, lost to the archives like a bowl of overcooked spaghetti—forever forgotten.
"We have to stop this from happening!" Natasha declared firmly. Yet neither Solomon nor Lorna showed the slightest reaction. "Imagine what would happen if Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were to split."
"What, I'd never get to eat apple-flavored Iron Man ice cream again?" Lorna suddenly looked very serious. Clearly, her spoiled palate was unimpressed with the desserts served at the academy. Compared to the rich, sugary traditional treats, her tongue preferred light and refreshing ice cream—that was what young people her age actually enjoyed.
"That's just one part of it, kid," said the agent. "The UN is trying to weaponize the Avengers. If a rift forms, the team could lose sight of its founding purpose. Can you imagine Iron Man armor on a Middle Eastern battlefield? From what I've learned, Tony Stark has already been in contact with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and is planning to launch a new energy initiative with ExxonMobil…"
Suddenly, she seemed to make a connection—about the reassignment of Gideon Malick, former UN Security Council member and now presidential advisor, about Germany's unusual stance on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, about ExxonMobil suddenly selling shares in Kazakhstan to an unknown energy firm. The pieces came together, and Romanoff gave the mage a look filled with suspicion and realization.
"Oh, Solomon—you're involved too?"
"Don't quote Caesar's line when he was stabbed in the Senate, Natasha. I've seen that play. I even played Caesar once," the mage replied without a trace of guilt. "I've done everything I can to slow down this project, but capital always seeks profit. I can't stop capitalists from wanting to make money."
"But that doesn't stop you from grabbing a slice of the pie."
"As you've seen, I have an entire organization to support. The Battle of Finbowent cost thousands of tons of ammunition. Even if we didn't buy weapons directly, acquiring raw materials still requires money." The mage spoke like a weary breadwinner. "Unless my refinery starts production, I'll always need resources from Earth. And Earth's resources require Earth's currency. I can't tap into Kamar-Taj's secular assets, so I have no objections to any of Stephanie's money-making schemes. It's all part of the righteous path."
"Fuck! Stop quoting Star Wars! I'm asking you—how long can you delay this?"
Once Natasha left with the documents, frowning deeply, Solomon immediately dropped the mask he'd been wearing. Ignoring Lorna's scornful look, he turned and made a call, urging Tony Stark to begin work as per their agreement. The suspension system for the War Machine needed optimization, energy conduits needed reconfiguration, the joints of Solomon's power armor required maintenance and upgrades, and the list of research projects at the Mars Forge facility was so long it could fill an entire data server cabinet.
As director of the Mars Forge, Malbas' remotely controlled mechanical body would serve as Solomon's proxy in working with Tony Stark—provided Stark upheld the agreement to completely exclude his AI Friday and even Vision from the project. Under no circumstances was an AI developed by others to be allowed into the Immortal City's weapons R&D program. That was Solomon's hardline condition, repeatedly emphasized to Malbas.
In truth, Solomon had long known about Malbas' secret experiments in AI development. But the cost of deploying the two special war machines in the Battle of Finbowent had been too great—so great that even now, the Immortal City could barely recover. As long as Malbas didn't make his actions too obvious and strong countermeasures were in place to monitor and restrain the lower-tier AIs to prevent rebellion, Solomon could tolerate it.
It was a tacit understanding between him and the Fifth Demon Pillar.
He had no intention of using the ring to issue a direct order and alienate this partner with his own agenda.
After all, not every demon pillar was as loyal and charming as the Thirty-Seventh Pillar, Phoenix. Of the seventy-two demon pillars, only a few were truly trustworthy. The Fifth was one of those who hovered in the gray area. Since Solomon had already decided to eliminate the First Demon Pillar, it was better to win over the Fifth beforehand than to let Malbas be recruited by his future enemy.
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