Chapter 777

"How is she? Has her condition stabilized?"

By the time Evenson went to check on Stephanie, it was already the following day.

The Biological Cradle had needed only an hour to repair her injuries, but that didn’t mean she could immediately jump out of bed and get back to business. She still needed time to recover her strength and, more importantly, learn how to control the power she’d acquired.

Evenson didn’t go to see Stephanie directly, however.

His first stop was the person responsible for the Biological Cradle project—and Stephanie’s physician during her recovery.

Dr. Helen Hailun.

The young scientist certainly lived up to the description of beautiful and brilliant.

Her long black hair was tied into a ponytail behind her head, framing delicate features that gave her an elegant appearance. The black women’s suit bearing Umbrella’s logo added a sharp professionalism to her otherwise graceful presence.

Moira had once claimed that Helen’s intelligence and beauty were both comparable to her own.

After meeting Helen in person, Evenson knew Moira had been underselling her.

Her scientific credentials were difficult for him to judge.

But her looks?

Definitely better than Moira’s.

"I’d say the subject’s condition is stable," Helen said.

She had been studying a bank of monitoring equipment when Evenson arrived. She immediately turned toward him and gave him a concise report before picking up a tablet containing the detailed readings.

Halfway through the motion, she seemed to reconsider.

A faint smile appeared on her lips.

"I have a feeling you’re not particularly interested in staring at a bunch of data tables. You should probably see the results for yourself."

She put the tablet down and gestured toward an observation window.

Evenson nodded.

At least Helen had the good sense not to tell him outright that he probably wouldn’t understand the data.

Moira would have had no such restraint.

Through the observation window, he could see a vast circular chamber below them.

The room was completely white, with an enormous Umbrella logo painted across the floor. It had originally been designed as a multipurpose laboratory. Interrogation was merely one of the functions the room could serve.

Stephanie was inside.

She was barefoot, dressed in green athletic pants and a tight tank top. Her blonde hair was loosely tied behind her head.

It was a far cry from her usual polished, aristocratic appearance.

She looked more like someone preparing for a yoga class.

Then again, Evenson had always admitted that Stephanie had an impressive physique.

Maybe she actually did practice yoga.

That wasn’t what caught his attention, though.

Stephanie was floating.

Five meters above the floor, she hovered motionless in midair with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes closed. Her bare feet were slightly pointed, her body perfectly upright.

Below and in front of her stood a humanoid steel target.

It had been constructed at roughly the proportions of an adult man, except that it was far heavier than any human could possibly be.

It was solid iron.

Stephanie suddenly opened her eyes.

The target rose from the floor.

The entire thing lifted effortlessly into the air and stopped directly in front of her.

Stephanie slowly raised her left hand.

Her fingers curled inward.

The steel target groaned.

The sound was enough to make Evenson’s teeth hurt.

The solid iron limbs twisted inward as though an invisible hand were bending them.

If that had been an actual human being, Evenson estimated that at least eighty percent of their bones would already have been shattered.

Stephanie gave a quiet, disdainful snort.

Apparently dissatisfied, she clenched her left hand into a fist.

The target shrieked.

The steel seemed to be crushed simultaneously from every direction.

In an instant, the humanoid shape collapsed into a misshapen ball of metal.

Not quite a sphere.

A few jagged edges still protruded from its surface.

Stephanie apparently wasn’t satisfied with that either.

She brought both hands together in front of herself and began making slow circular motions.

The ball of iron responded.

It rolled and twisted through the air as the remaining protrusions gradually flattened.

Little by little, the rough edges disappeared.

By the time Stephanie stopped, the object had become a nearly perfect sphere.

Its surface was so smooth that it looked as though the entire thing had been melted down and forged again from scratch.

"Looks like she’s got the hang of it," Evenson said.

A smile tugged at his lips.

He turned toward Helen.

"You did excellent work. I’m impressed."

"I should be the one saying that."

Helen looked down at Stephanie with a faint smile.

"I didn’t expect the material to integrate so cleanly with organic tissue. The success of this experiment has opened up an entirely new direction for my research."

Her eyes sharpened.

Evenson recognized that look.

It was similar to the one Moira sometimes wore.

Curiosity.

Hunger.

Danger.

The combination was surprisingly attractive.

When Helen had first considered moving to America, she’d been conflicted.

Her former classmate and senior, Maya Hansen, had spoken highly of the opportunity and made Umbrella sound almost too good to be true.

Even so, nearly everyone around Helen had advised against it.

Her mentor, Professor Park, had been particularly opposed.

His argument had been simple.

Better to be the leader of a small pond than an anonymous fish in the ocean.

In Korea, Helen was already one of the leading scientists in her field. Funding and institutional support were available to her.

Why throw that away?

And if she wanted to cooperate with an American company, why not work with an established giant like Stark Industries?

But then Moira had shown Helen what Umbrella’s technology could accomplish.

More importantly, she’d shown Helen what Moira herself had become.

That ended the debate.

Helen was a scientist.

Her responsibility was to uncover the truth of the universe for the benefit of humanity.

Nothing else was supposed to stand between her and that pursuit.

Not politics.

Not morality.

Not fear.

Not even common sense.

Once she arrived at Umbrella, she realized she’d made what might have been the best decision of her life.

The funding wasn’t necessarily better than what she’d received in Korea.

The research environment, however, was incomparable.

Umbrella’s greatest advantage was simple.

There were almost no restrictions.

If Helen could conduct an experiment rigorously, objectively, and support her conclusions with data and reproducible results, then matters such as ethics and morality were largely treated as secondary concerns.

Results came first.

At the beginning, Helen had still felt some discomfort toward certain experiments.

Moira and the Eredar Twins had gradually beaten that hesitation out of her.

Eventually, Helen had stopped drawing lines simply because society had told her where those lines belonged.

Science was science.

Cold.

Precise.

Indifferent.

And her Biological Cradle had advanced at a pace that would have been impossible back in Korea.

The experimental materials available to her were another matter entirely.

Cretaceous dinosaur blood.

Alien corpses and living specimens.

Creatures classified as demons.

A woman capable of giving birth to the offspring of a demonic lord’s avatar.

Fel energy.

Even Helen had to admit that the list sounded ridiculous.

But she was a scientist.

If something existed, it existed.

No matter how impossible it sounded beforehand.

If someone wheeled God himself into the laboratory tomorrow and announced that they intended to dissect him, Helen would simply put on her gloves and ask where they wanted to begin.

And yesterday, she’d encountered something that ranked second on her personal list of astonishing discoveries.

One of Umbrella’s hidden owners.

A member of the Avengers.

And, quite possibly, the person most capable of getting her Thor’s autograph.

Evenson had handed her a long, reinforced glass cylinder filled with a strange substance.

At a glance, it resembled mercury.

But the substance was far stranger than that.

When subjected to specific stimuli, it could alter gravitational fields.

Gravitonium.

The name was almost comically straightforward.

More surprising was why Evenson had given it to her.

He wanted her to use the Biological Cradle to incorporate the substance into the body of the severely injured woman she’d been treating.

Apparently, the Gravitonium was supposed to become part of Stephanie’s reconstructed spine.

And Evenson had gone one step further.

Before handing it over, he’d infused the Gravitonium with the strange green energy called fel.

According to his explanation, Gravitonium was the engine.

Fel was the fuel.

He was simply filling the tank ahead of time.

Helen had accepted the assignment.

When she rebuilt Stephanie’s spine, she incorporated the material directly into the structure.

At Evenson’s insistence, part of Stephanie’s spinal cord had actually been replaced with Gravitonium in its raw state.

His attitude toward the potential consequences had been disturbingly casual.

If it failed, he’d simply break the spine again and reconnect it.

And if that didn’t work, he’d apparently "delete the character and start over."

Helen wasn’t sure that was the kind of attitude scientific research needed.

But the results had been extraordinary.

The Gravitonium integrated with organic tissue far better than expected.

Stephanie’s nervous system continued to function normally.

More importantly, once the material became part of her body, she gained the ability to manipulate gravitational fields.

Fortunately, Helen had received advance warning about the possibility of an uncontrolled reaction.

She’d operated from an isolated room using remote equipment.

The moment Stephanie first regained consciousness, her new ability had surged wildly.

The room around her had reacted as though an implosion grenade had detonated inside it.

But because the Gravitonium had been woven directly into her nervous system, Stephanie adapted with astonishing speed.

Her control had improved rapidly.

Her precision had improved even faster.

And now, after countless measurements and repeated tests, her ability had finally stabilized.

There were still minor fluctuations.

Nothing outside acceptable parameters.

Helen stared down at Stephanie.

She had no idea what this experiment ultimately meant for the woman.

She didn’t know what Umbrella intended to do with her.

What Helen did know was that the experiment had opened an entirely new field of research.

Organic and inorganic materials could be fused perfectly through the Biological Cradle.

That changed everything.

What else could she build?

A computer composed of organic neural tissue?

Or perhaps...

An organic biological robot.

The possibilities were almost endless.

And for the first time, Helen found herself wondering just how far she could take them.