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Chapter 55: The Final Boss
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"I… see," She managed, the words strained. "Okay. I will… extend the offer to Ms. Natalie immediately."
[My man!! Redheads for the win!]
[But he cheated on redheads with fucking blondes.]
[Actual Blasphemy!!]
[Tf!? Speaking of Scarlett Johansson. She's here.]
[I have a feeling he isn't hiring her because of his taste. He's hiring her because she's the Black Widow!]
[Nooo! Natasha, my Queen! Don't fall too!]
[Don't worry, dude. It isn't like this is a polygamy show. That shit doesn't work.]
[Don't be fast to be happy. He isn't in a relationship, so he has room to maneuver the line.]
[Harem in modern times doesn't work; hell, even in places where polygamy is allowed, it most often doesn't work.]
[True, our fantasy will never come true. They'll end up hating each other and hating you too.]
[Aghh, stop man, you're ruining my childhood fantasies.]
[Well, unless you're a god, then maybe.]
[Adam is our God, so it is possible.] [*Your god, not mine.]
[Blasphemy!!!] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1]
[I... Which one are u saying blasphemy to? I'm scared. What's happening.]
Once the flustered HR director had left, Domino fixed him with a look. "Alright. What's really special about the redhead? Because I don't buy the 'type' thing for a second. Not for this."
Adam's smile turned razor-sharp. "She's a redhead of the highest order," He repeated, the phrase laden with meaning only he and the audience understood.
Domino got the hint; there were layers here she wasn't privy to, so she let it go, shifting to a topic that clearly annoyed her.
"So, Emma Frost. Of all people. Jean's gonna skin you alive if she finds out. I honestly thought your first would be Jean or maybe even Anna. But I stand corrected."
Adam raised a brow. "You heard?"
Domino rolled her eyes so hard it looked painful. "Adam, Satan, currently residing in the deepest, most soundproofed circle of Hell, heard it. Is she a screamer, or are you just a monster?"
He laughed, a bright, unguarded sound. "How could someone as handsome as me be a monster?"
He smoothly changed the subject, his tone turning earnest. "I'm leaving for LA. I'm leaving this place in your hands."
"I have a feeling that if you, my lucky star, weren't here, this building would have been nuked from orbit at least twice by now."
Domino's annoyed expression melted into a smug, proud smile. She puffed out her chest slightly. "Leave it to me. I've got what it takes to stop a nuke or two."
[Domino's smug face is everything. She loves being acknowledged as his lucky charm.]
[If Domino's jealous, she didn't show it.]
[I think she is, but she understands she should not get too emotionally involved.]
["Nuked from orbit" – he's probably not wrong.]
Adam smiled, pulled her into a brief, tight hug, and whispered a genuine "Thank you," before heading down to his underground workshop to pack. He sure loves his hugs.
To be fair, she loves them. She wasn't too successful at not getting too emotionally involved.
The trip to Los Angeles was swift. Adam sat in the back of a hired limousine, legs crossed, watching the California sun beat down on the manicured lawns of the city center.
In his hand was a thick, creamy envelope containing an invitation to a party at the Stark Mansion.
Tony Stark, back from the dead and already making waves, had sent it personally.
It was less than a month since his return, and Adam knew the timeline. Tony should be secretly perfecting the Mark II armor in his basement, with the confrontation with Obadiah Stane still a while away.
But his warning to Fury had obviously changed things. Adam never cared for the sanctity of a 'plot' or feared 'butterfly effects.'
He was the butterfly, and he enjoyed causing hurricanes if it suited him. Just like now.
However, a deeper, more clinical part of his mind had long held a quiet hypothesis.
The Tony Stark of this world might not be the one he remembered most vividly from the curated narratives of his past life.
In the vast Marvel multiverse, there were countless Tonys. Some were weaker, some were darker, some were goddamn technopaths, some were sorcerers.
Some universes were far more dangerous, populated by intellects of staggering, reality-bending scale.
He had received his first clue about the caliber of this world the moment he'd used his Envy to steal a portion of Victor Von Doom's genius.
That 50% fragment had transformed him far beyond; it had been an intellect, a way of almost perceiving and manipulating reality that felt godlike.
The Doom of this world was special, perhaps rivaled only by the Doom of the sacred Prime Marvel timeline.
It stood to reason, then, that this, Tony Stark, might also operate on a higher intellectual plane.
My intelligence is still inadequate, Adam thought, not with despair, but with a greedy, yearning excitement. I need more.
This world is stressing me out. The sheer density of power and genius was exhilarating and terrifying.
He was starting to believe his own earlier performative madness might have been closer to the truth than he'd intended.
His spiraling thoughts were cut through by a sudden, profound wrongness.
The air in the limousine grew cold. The sounds of the outside world; the engine, the tires on asphalt; muffled into silence.
Adam's cybernetic eye flickered, its diagnostics reporting no external temperature change, no audio dampening.
Then, he manifested.
On the plush seat opposite Adam, where there had been empty space a nanosecond before, now sat a middle-aged man.
He was dressed in a slightly rumpled tan suit, with a kind face and an eerie, placid smile that didn't touch his warm brown eyes.
He sat with his hands folded in his lap, as if he'd been waiting there the whole time.
Adam didn't startle. He didn't reach for a weapon. He simply went preternaturally still, his entire being focusing on the impossibility before him.
Adam Cypher's mind, a fortress of stolen genius and cold calculation, went into overdrive.
His cybernetic eye recorded every detail of the man opposite him; the cut of the slightly-too-large tan suit, the weary lines around the kind eyes, the perfectly ordinary black hair.
He cross-referenced the image against every facial database he had access to, every known player in this supernatural, marvelous world.
The result was a definitive, chilling null. This man looked like a middle-management accountant who had lost his way.
His gaze flickered internally, seeking direction from the only source he trusted when logic failed: the [Information] panel. It was erupting.
[Who? Anyone know?]
[It's giving major 'friendly neighbor who is actually a serial killer' vibes.]
[Could be a Skrull? A psychic projection? An illusion?]
[Okay, comic veterans assemble! Entities who can just manifest: Mephisto often appears as a salesman, Nightmare, but he's dream-based.]
[ Maybe Dormammu? Too flashy though, maybe a really powerful teleporter like… nope, the vibe is wrong.]
[Don't forget Blackheart, Mephisto's son. He can look human too. Or a lesser demon in disguise.]
[It's the suit. It's always the harmless-looking suit with these guys. Definitely infernal.]
[Conclusion, someone demonic, a sorcerer, or some kind of multiversal entity you have no hope against. o7.]
Adam didn't show anything on his face. Instead, he let out a weary, melancholic sigh.
He gazed at the man with an expression of profound pity; for himself.
"I'm seeing new things," Adam murmured, his voice soft, conversational, as if to himself. "First the voices. Then the imaginary friends. And now… full-blown hallucinations. My sanity is truly slipping these days."
He shook his head with philosophical disappointment and shrugged, settling deeper into the leather seat. He closed his eyes, his breathing deliberately slowing.
"The lure of sleep is getting to me. Ignore the phantoms, Adam. They'll pass."
The middle-aged man's kind smile didn't falter, but the air in the limousine thickened, growing heavy and cold enough that Adam could see his own breath fogging for a second.
It was a physical impossibility that the car's climate control should have prevented. Well, at least he wasn't actually insane.
The man's mouth gave a slight, irritated twitch.
"Fortunately for you," The man said, his voice still pleasant but now layered with an echoing, subterranean resonance, "I am very much real. And I am here to change your life."
He extended a hand, and between them, the air shimmered. Parchment that was not parchment, written in ink that burned with a faint, sulfurous light, materialized.
It was a contract, its clauses shifting and writhing like snakes. "Anything you wish for. Wealth beyond imagining. Power to reshape nations. Immortality. I only require… a few years of service in return. The length is negotiable, depending on the wish."
Adam blinked slowly, as if rousing from a dream. "A demonic ritual?" He mused aloud. "I didn't think there was a demon in me. But then again…"
A low, humorless laugh escaped him. "My imaginary friends do have quite the variety." He laid his head back again, eyes shut. "Just a nap. It'll be gone when I wake up."
The temperature plummeted. The kind face finally dissolved. The man's features didn't change, but the being inhabiting them bled through.
The warm brown eyes now swirled with the infinite despair of a damned cosmos.
The pleasant voice shattered, replaced by a sound that was the grinding of tectonic plates and the screams of a billion lost souls compressed into speech... Low, but menacing.
"You try my patience, Mortal."
The voice was not loud; it was absolute. It vibrated in Adam's bones, in his teeth, in the fillings he didn't have.
The hellish light emanating from the figure bathed the limousine's interior in the color of fresh blood and bruise.
"If you seek to waste my time, I will see to it that everything you have built, everything you have touched, Is reduced to ashes and buried in the dust of Oblivion! Perhaps then, in that Emptiness, You will find the time... And the respect... To pay attention!"
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