Chapter 19: Genius
'Is he unhinged?' He thought about Flash's attitude. He had Jeremy's memories, but he had never registered on Flash radar. He hadn't even sold to the boy or his friends; he mostly sold to upper-level students.
Cole smiled disarmingly at the two. In an attempt to put an end to the incident between the two of them, he returned to his work.
His back was met with snickers and hands clasping. He could hear their remarks because his newfound senses provided him with enhanced hearing.
He raised his brows in recognition of this newfound understanding. Is it jealousy? Jeremy was getting much attention from girls, and Flash hated it.
There was no doubt that Flash & Co., the steroid Neanderthals, and members of his state-ranked football team had perceived his reluctance to respond as a weakness, as fear. There was a sense of unease in me when I thought that I might fear someone.
It is safe to say that Flash had a very overindulgent ego, emphasizing the word over. In general, people who had similar characteristics were self-indulgent. They didn't have sycophants and enablers urging them onwards.
Flash didn't know the person he looked down upon as someone he shouldn't cross in any fashion or a person to contend with; even if he had the venom symbiote and became Agent Venom, Cole still could take him down or at least make him regret fighting him.
That wasn't a boastful observation. There was rapid growth in both his abilities and parameters as time progressed; the more time that passed, the further he would grow.
A mental push brought up his upgraded mutant abilities.
Fear Inducement: Your presence has shown itself as a fragment of fear. Unraveling your presence is now a physical thing. The target's perception may be altered, causing them to see their environment as ominous and the Host as dark and foreboding or even as a monster. This is considered a mutant ability.
The fragment of fear, a piece of a whole, his mutant ability pertaining to fear, was conceptual, but it had a physical aspect. Under its mantle, fear has many ancillaries; anxiety, loneliness, abandonment, trauma, nightmares, and dreams are some of them.
After closing the interface, he side-eyed Liz, assessing her icy exterior. That told me everything I needed to know. She was fine. She was the least concerned and worried about Flash of all his ex-girlfriends.
Cole broke the awkward silence between the two by saying, "I can't believe you dated him.".
Despite my shot, Liz shrugged and stared into her microscope, working on her project unfazed.
I didn't want to waste my limited time in the lab, so I made the most of it. Soon, I'll have to look into getting my own.
Injecting the silicone into the mold was crucial, especially if I wanted the bond to hold when I added the microfiber film.
Our relationship was based on a lot of playing, so I didn't expect her to be offended. Based on her quietness, he concluded that she was contemplating something.
He turned the burner on under the beaker. Blue liquid filled the beaker, a unique combination of enzymes and microscopic machines that required a certain amount of heat to activate. Inactive devices were protected from burning up or absorbing too much heat by the liquid mixture, which was a solvent mixture.
I slid my stool around to key in the data points. The classroom was oval-shaped. She was the sister of the tech giant and competitor of Stark Enterprises, Justin Hammer of Hammer Industries, who, in my opinion, was egotistical and warmongering.
In my weary list of technological inventors, Justin Hammer is another genius, though not at Tony Stark's level. When my company started making waves, he would undoubtedly be a nuisance.
Looking back at Liz, I smiled. It was only she who interacted with me. We partnered up when we could, and she even invited me to hang out with her friends. I turned her down every time, but she still asked. I might take her up on that one day. I need to build a circle of people that grounded the mask I made for myself.
Her part of the station was neat compared to mine; in my defense, I was working on something groundbreaking
Without looking up, she said. "Would you believe me when I say I was trying my luck of dating down?"
No," I retorted. "You dated him for a reason." She had ignored me for almost an hour.
My eyes are back on my project. I had pseudo-created bionic contact lenses. The ones that The Bat utilized in the Dark Knight Saga. The public version would allow seamless integration with existing tech; an example would be manipulating the cellular device or computer.
She pouted. "Shouldn't you be working on the group project? I feel like I'm doing everything.
Liz Allen and Jeremy York had grown up together, her father being in tech and big industry, and both attended the same schools along with most Midtown elite students.
He slid the complete assignment over to her. Cole had long ago completed my portion; understandably, she had assumed he was slacking and doing his own thing.
"Oh." She deadpanned. "Want to finish the diagnostic portion?"
He didn't reply. He was occupied with the coding. His hands slid across the sleek keyboard before coming to a stop. Cole slid the USB across the small distance between them.
She snatched it from his hand and pushed the microscope away. Her faith in him was unfounded, but she had it. She inserted it into the station computer. Never mind, he thought she would double-check his work if not anyone else.
He had to study and understand the Red Hood suit and its subroutine to enhance its capabilities further. One of his projects was not to be built in school. He wasn't sure of the spyware being utilized and didn't feel too good about hacking the school networks and getting a peek at it. His synthetic muscle project was coming along fine, only in its infancy, but still, he was making progress.
He heard a deep sigh from his lab partner.
"It was 9th grade. He transferred in and wasn't the total knob he had become."
"That's explains a lot," he said. He could vaguely recall 9th grade, even though it was last year.
She paused, contemplating, before whispering the final part.
"His parents' divorce was hard on him. His mother dived into work and left him to his father to raise; besides the monthly deposits she gives him, in the way of support, she's pretty much hands-off. His father, though, he's a former All-American quarterback. His only concern is if his son has what it takes to be a man or at least his equivalent of one."
She continued. "He should man up. It's not like they're dead or something."
Her words slammed into him. Hitting a tender spot that his abilities couldn't assuage. For the flicker of a moment, his mask slipped.
"I'm sorry. I had forgotten-" Liz said in realization, hand over her mouth as if it betrayed her.
"I don't need a pity party, Liz," he replied solemnly.
"It was insensitive. I know how much your parent's death affected you. I'm truly sorry." She said genuinely.
He placed the tools down. "If it will make you drop it, then apology accepted."
Back to the Bionic contacts, each contact would be specific to the individual, like usual, besides improved vision, with reason, he wouldn't be handing out super enhancements to the populace unless they paid.
His overall goal was military application; some events would undoubtedly affect the world, and a more advanced society would contend well against the adversary.
He had taken the contacts out of the mold. The process was completed. He placed in one contact and tested the bionic connections. He needed them to calibrate their visual and depth perception performance. The different wavelengths he could swap through were jarring. Is this what Superman was capable of? That would take some getting used to.
He didn't realize Liz was quiet and didn't notice the diminutive blonde, Ms. Hammers, standing behind him gawking.
"Jeremy York, did you create this?" Ms. Hammers asked, scooting between him reading the date from the monitor and my observing the notes, which were obscured enough to protect his proprietary rights wouldn't be infringed upon by greedy people at the Baxter building.
He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "Yes, mam," he said respectfully. I had the idea, and after some lengthy research and piggybacking off other lesser applications, namely in Android software, I came up with a working prototype."
"Amazing!" Ms. Hammers said.
"Whoa! She whispered. Ms. Hammers had removed her glasses and inserted a lens in her eye.
She began looking around the classroom. "The application of this tech is astounding. My vision is almost a hundred times better. The clarity: can this be increased? Let's say up to a hundred feet?" She stammered, sitting down and scrolling through the data.
Thank god the patent had been submitted, and boatloads of proprietary tech and intellectual property. I was positive my project couldn't be duplicated to the scale of mine, especially the more complex versions Batman utilized.
In The Dark Knight, Batman used advanced sonar lenses to locate things, with the primary purpose being to track down adversaries.
"This is the prototype, but I'm almost positive I got the math right. I need more physical data to determine increased performance.
"Wow! Who knew you were a little Tony Stark." Liz said, snickering.
"Dude. I didn't know you were a genius! Smart, I kinda figured, but this isn't high school level stuff." Stammered Parker, standing beside Liz, getting a look at Ms.Hammers's manipulation of the contact
"Mr. York," she started. "I'm going to have to show this to Principal Moira. This is simply amazing. I can see from the data that you have been working on this for two days!"
She squeezed my shoulder and turned to depart with my prototype. My mask was still on, and my classmates were gawking at me in disbelief.