Marvel Reborn: Gems Of Infinite Potential

I was leaning back in my chair, feet resting on my desk, and watching Ward Meachum go about his daily routine on the screen courtesy of one of the fly spies. As he sat down for breakfast I positioned two of the drones and activated the audio systems. The precision, targeted, subsonic waves interacted with the human ear in such a way that only the target could hear anything and so there was no chance of any Hand microphones that may have been in the house picking up anything.

My voice, disguised, of course, sounded in his head as I spoke "Don't react Mr. Meachum, the Hand will kill you if they know about this conversation. Just sit there and keep eating while I speak."

He jumped in shock and whipped his head around but obeyed my instruction not to speak and turned back to his food.

"Good, I'm using directional audio from a microdrone to speak with you. So long as you act like nothing is wrong, none of the people spying on you will know about this conversation. Scrap your right ear now if you understand." I explained.

His hand hesitantly rose and scratched his right ear.

"Good, we will talk more later but for now the basics. I am the Kingpin and last night my agents extracted your father from his Penthouse, I'm sure you will hear about it once you turn on the news. Even the Hand would have a hard time covering up seventy corpses and an imploded building in the middle of the city." I said.

His eyes went wide, his face paled, and he opened his mouth to speak but I interrupted sharply, "Remember, no talking."

Once he closed his mouth I continued, "Your father is nice and safe and you will have the opportunity to speak with him soon but first we need to deal with more immediate matters. Madame Gao, the Hand leader your father cut a deal with, is not going to take this lying down and is going to try and keep her hooks in you so that she can keep using Rand Enterprises for her own interests. Given that your father is out of her reach, she is very likely to threaten your sister and attempt to blackmail you with the threat of making Rand's previous dealings with the Hand public."

He paled even further if that was possible and I let him squirm for a second before offering a life line "Fortunately for you, I dislike the Hand immensely and have my own uses for Rand Enterprises. I've already arranged for certain terrorist threats to be made against Rand Enterprises as a whole and against you and your sister personally, Homeland security will be waiting in your office to meet with you when you arrive at work. They will recommend that you retain the services of a private security firm and indicate a willingness to handle the needed permissions and permits involved. Specifically, they will recommend Envoy Corporation and you will contact them to retain their services. If you understand so far, take a sip of your water."

His hand trembled as he lifted his glass and sipped.

"Good. For now, I already have my own people watching over your sister to ensure that nothing happens until more formal arrangements are made, but its best to get things squared away rapidly. When you give Envoy access to Rand's security systems we will ensure that they detect the various taps the Hand and your father have implanted in there and you will, naturally, hire them to do a top to bottom purge and rebuild of your security systems and policies along with asking them to sweep yours and your sisters homes and vehicles.

"You will provide me with a list of the various Hand agents you have been forced to employ over the years and my people will arrange for them to suffer accidents." I instructed.

Seeing that Ward looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown I decided to hold off on dumping anything else on him for now.

"In your master bathroom, in the cabinet under the sink, is a cellphone. You are going to go and get it, leaving your own phone in its place. Don't worry, all of your contacts and data have already been mirrored onto the new phone. Now you are going to keep that phone on your person at all times, I will contact you on it when you are on your way home from work tonight and we will talk. You will even get to speak with your father. For now, I suggest that you get to it, you have a busy day ahead of you Mr. Meachum." I finished, watching as he shakily stood before heading up to his bathroom and switching the phones. I would have one of the spy drones take it quantum once he was gone.

It was about ten minutes later, I was double checking everything to make sure all of the arrangements were ready for the Ward theatrical performance, when Bruce knocked on my door.

"Hey Bruce, sup?" I said as I closed the file I was reading, stood, and stretched.

"Not much, just finished a new piece of tech I thought you might be interested in. How are things going with the Hand?" he asked as he leaned against the door frame.

"We grabbed Harold Meachum last night and I just got done making first contact with Ward Meachum, so far so good but now we wait and see how he performs and what the Hand response ends up being." I answered as I walked towards him, "Now you said something about new toys?"

"Yeah," he said as he tossed me what looked like a small metal box.

As I caught it I raised an eyebrow in question and he said: "Open it."

When I did I found two compartments filled with what looked like water, but after a moment I noticed what looked like contacts floating on the surface.

Bruce started to explain "I got tired of dealing with screens and so I started working on those, it's taken most of a month but I finally got all the kinks worked out."

I smiled, nodded, and said with a slightly exasperated tone of voice "That's great Bruce, but what are they?"

"Oh, right. I took advantage of the Pym tech to create extremely precise carbon/sapphire crystal lenses with an outer rim made out of the same Vibranium nanites that make up the suits. The outer coating on the lenses uses a variant on our NIF meta-material, NIF-29 I call it, to direct the visible light that hits the lens onto sensors in the ring where the data is then processed and lasers within the ring are fired through the lens to draw the picture onto the eye." he lectured.

I gave another nod and said "Ah, I suppose that hidden eyeball cameras are nice but I doubt you went to all that effort just for those. So what is the point?"

He winced sheepishly and said "Right, I forgot. I was trying to make a neural interface so that I could dump information directly into the visual and audio centers of the brain but that kept running into dead ends, so this is a stop gap. Since we are projecting what the wearer sees we can add or remove data to that projection, it's essentially just a computer display. If you are wearing those you will have a full heads up display and will be able to see a "screen" that only exists to your perception."

My eyes went wide and I turned to look back down at the contacts with a broad grim on my lips "Amazing Bruce. I assume that the controls are voice-activated and these are tied into our computer systems?"

"Yeah, encrypted radio. At least unless you want to take the time to enchant some more communications relays, I do wish we could produce those at scale." he said.

I nodded and held up the case, "These are mine I'm guessing?"

"Just the beta version, I really would like you to enchant a dozen more relays so I can complete them. I also need a high fidelity retinal scan so that I can ensure the outer surface displays correctly." Bruce explained.

I smiled, popped in the contacts one after the other, and said "Well then lets head to the lab." even as the display came fully to life and the world snapped into a level of focus far beyond what I have ever seen before.