Marvel Reborn: Gems Of Infinite Potential

Maya Hansen examined the fruits of Natasha's actions under a microscope. "Amazing. Dr. Erskine really was a genius. He created his formula more than sixty years ago, and it is still the gold standard for human enhancement."

"I know it's just blood from Captain America, but will you be able to make use of it?" I asked, briefly thinking about the pain that was headed Thaddeus Ross's way when someone realized that one of the two known vials of Captain America's blood, still in the hands of the US government, had gone missing from his vault.

"Oh yes. In fact, I could probably inject the blood straight into the body of anyone who shares the same blood type, O Positive if you are curious, and they would gain significant enhancements." She was mildly stunned by the whole idea.

"Really? How in the world was that managed? Regardless, no wasting the valuable and unique sample on enhancing one individual. I have a general rule: no enhancing people until we understand how the process functions. Otherwise things tend to go really badly."

She looked up and smiled briefly. "No complaints from me. While I am looking forward to the fruits of my labor, I have to be honest: I find the actual work almost more interesting. What I really need to get the best use out of this sample, though, is some of Captain America's blood before he underwent the enhancement process. The Serum was so thorough that it seems to have rewritten and altered literally every cell, so I can't tell what it actually did, just what the end result was. And without the baseline, that is of somewhat limited use."

"Hmm," I said while turning to one of the lab computers and bringing up the stolen SHIELD database. With Pierce's access, it was very complete with the vast majority of files un-encrypted, and I saw no reason to try and keep its contents secret from my team here on Mars. Searching for Project: Rebirth ran into encrypted files that I couldn't break, but searching for Steve Rogers produced several less secure files. Almost ten minutes later, I said, "Found it. SHIELD has some of his pre-Serum blood iced."

"Oh, how hard will it be to get?" Maya said, sounding a bit worried. She had been browsing the SHIELD files and had been left with a healthy appreciation for that organization's security, and her lingering questions about my honesty that had persisted before had also gone away.

I shrugged slightly. "Natasha will have no problem with it. I doubt SHIELD even realizes that they have it. They probably just kept it because they never throw anything out. It's just a collection of numbered vials locked in a freezer in a SHIELD cold storage warehouse. Security is tight, but it's not their best. I'll send Natasha out today or tomorrow, so you should have your sample within a few days."

She smiled. "That's good. Any progress on opening the Project: Rebirth files? I would like as much data as I can get before I start trying to understand the Serum."

"I have Pym working on it, but I doubt the encryption will be cracked any time soon. Those files are some of SHIELD's most closely guarded. I do know the basics of the process though."

"Oh? Do tell. And where did you find out pretty much anything on the mechanics of Rebirth? Or is that another one of your 'Wizard's Secrets'?" she asked, using the term she had coined a year back to refer to what everyone working for me thought was information pulled straight out of my a.s.s, but was really my meta-knowledge.

"Yup, another one of my Wizard's Secrets," I joked, before continuing in a more serious tone as I ran another search of the SHIELD files. "Erskine's process had two parts. The first is the Serum that everyone knows about, and the second is a type of radiation that he called Vita Rays. Rogers was injected with the Serum and placed in a chamber that bombarded him with that radiation, and within a matter of minutes, his body was rebuilt from that of a sickly little teen into the Adonis made flesh everyone knows."

"That makes some sense, I suppose, but I don't see how a chemical formula could produce rapid physical changes. The energy has to come from somewhere, and I seriously doubt that Erskine managed to tap into whatever I hit on with Extremis. But what are Vita Rays? I've never even heard that term before," she said.

"No real clue, but I know Howard Stark managed to produce them. And here is the file I was looking for, something called Nitramene." I put the file on the screen. "It was an explosive chemical Howard Stark invented that gave off Vita Radiation, no direct records of the formula in the files though. What's this though...?"

I opened up the file that had caught my attention, a much more recent one that referenced the original Nitramene file. It was a memo written less than a year ago by a SHIELD agent named Felix Blake, advocating that Nitramene be studied. One line, in particular, made me smile broadly:

"Given the notes, I came across when examining the recovered Stark files, I believe that Nitramene's recreation is viable within six to eighteen months, given sufficient resources are dedicated to the project."

I turned back to Maya. "It looks like Natasha has someone else to add to her shopping list. No clue on the timeline for this one though. Kidnapping a SHIELD agent could be easy or it could be tricky." Clearing my throat, I continued, "Now to change the subject, how is Extremis coming along?"

Maya sighed. "It's coming. The new computers have cut years off my projections, and the energy issue is one that I'm still not sure, even theoretically, how I am going to manage to solve. On the plus side though, I've managed to isolate the genetic factors. I don't think I could manage any kind of enhanced abilities beyond the healing, but assuming that the energy problem was solved, then I could implement Extremis today."

"That far along? And I have a potential solution for the energy issue that I am pretty confident will work, but it won't become available for some time yet, potentially years," I said, thinking about the pyro known as Scorch. If I remembered Agents of Shield right, then he would be in China sometime around 2013; got his powers after some reactor meltdown and was added to SHIELD's Index. Pity that no reactors had melted down recently, and that he wasn't currently on the Index. Ah, well, patience solves many problems.

"You know that Extremis is just using the body's cells to rebuild it how its DNA says it should be. Customizing it for the individual user isn't hard, but if we want enhancement, then I will need to know the genetic blueprint to program in. That's where something like Erskine's formula comes in. My real work is on trying to handle the energy issue; there is just too much of it, and I can't come up with any way to regulate the flow."

I c.o.c.ked my head slightly in thought, pulling up my memories of Iron Man 3 and my knowledge of magic. "It's just a theory, but I think you might need to look beyond the purely normal world. I think that you have managed to tap into the dimension of raw life force, for lack of a better term. If that is the case, then you aren't ever going to get stability out of non-sentient subjects, because they lack the mind needed to control magic, for lack of a better term. The human mind, however, can control these forces." I made a fireball appear over my hand in a demonstration. "The difference is that a Sorcerer like me has to actively draw power, while Extremis naturally draws on whatever its power source is as its default behavior. All it would take is one slip up in your self-control, and the individual would blow though. It's not a real solution, but I think you might want to look at some method of bringing more of the brain's functions under conscious control. Or perhaps less of its functions. Even if it doesn't help with the energy problem, it would still probably be a very useful enhancement."

"I'm a scientist, Octavian, not a Sorcerer. I'm willing to test your ideas, but I'll need your help. I mean, I don't even know where to begin when it comes to tracing the energy flows beyond the physical. If you could manage that, then it would at least give us a better understanding of how Extremis works. If your idea looks like it might pan out, then we are going to have to move onto human trials before we planned to." She winced at the concept. "We simply won't be able to test the impact of conscious, deliberate, control without a test subject who is working with us."

"We can shelve the trials for now. I'm pretty confident in my solution to the overheating, so focus on the enhancement part of the project. The Kilgrave team has started hitting pretty hard walls on that project. Albert sent a memo around yesterday that he thinks he has a vaccine figured out, along with the genetic coding needed to produce the ability. Once he has at least a temporary vaccine worked out, I think I'm going to roll Kilgrave into Extremis and have them start working with you both to write the ability into the subject's DNA and, more importantly, to figure out how to write in genetic immunity to that mind control," I explained before saying my goodbyes, giving Natasha her new missions, and heading off to continue with my own projects.