Chapter 1489: Smooth-sailing, Ordinary, and Failure

A few days passed as Luke made smooth progress.

After Black Cat No. 1 was fixed, Selina suddenly remembered the “Robocop” skin she had used before, and begged him to make a female version of it.

Of course, it had to be clearly different from the Chitauri robots.

It was black in color, had a curved half-helmet with black lenses, and three large claws on each hand, completely keeping with Black Cat’s style.

An enormous black bat symbol on the clearly feminine breastplate further confirmed its identity.

Selina vetoed Luke’s suggestion to use an abstract head of a black cat.

In her words, the cat head wasn’t oppressive, but the bat definitely was.

Luke couldn’t deny that.

In any case, this remote control robot was just a tool, and didn’t need to protect someone in armor.

The cost of materials for an experimental robot was only about three million, which was much cheaper than armor.

It wasn’t troublesome or wasteful to modify the external appearance.

With this new toy, Selina got busy at night again. The experience and credit points shared by teammates, which had basically stopped recently, started flowing into the system again.

After a few days, while the Level 1 clone was still in the early stages of preparations in Mexico, the Level 2 clone in San Francisco investigated Dr. Pym’s whereabouts during the day and plundered drug dealers at night.

Although Dr. Pym was nowhere to be seen for the time being, Luke had amassed a staggering number of points.

It was only Phil who got back to him with not-so-good news.

Nick Fury agreed to work together, but the director wanted to negotiate the extent of the cooperation.

Phil was clearly embarrassed, and specially sent an apology.

Luke didn’t sneer, and simply replied, “Sure.”

Nick Fury expressed his intention to cooperate, but was stressing the details of the cooperation as a way to buy time.

This was a classic stall tactic, which wasn’t unusual for the bureaucratic system.

With a little wrangling, this excuse would give Nick Fury two to three months.

If the situation was good, Batman wouldn’t be allowed to intervene. If the situation was bad, the director could immediately ask for help, to either attack or retreat.

Thankfully, Luke was busy right now and had never counted on Nick Fury’s integrity.

If the man didn’t have this trick, what was the point of being a bigshot?

This was Nick Fury’s most honest performance. He was probably doing this for Phil’s sake, or he would have given an even more “official” answer.

…

After half a month of hard work, Luke finally found traces of Dr. Hank Pym.

The old man had gone to a supermarket to buy a large amount of supplies, and was accidentally caught on a surveillance camera which Luke had set up.

But after this single appearance, Dr. Pym disappeared again.

There were basically no surveillance cameras around the supermarket, and it was right next to a main road connecting the city and the outskirts. Who knew where Dr. Pym went.

Luke simply used a mid-sized drone to search the supermarket before widening the search from there.

He didn’t really have much hope in this strategy, which was like searching for a needle in a haystack. The real opportunity was actually Dr. Pym’s next shopping trip.

As long as he came back to this supermarket, it would be easy to find the old man.

In the end, Alfred sent him a suspicious message the next day.

On the virtual screen, two pictures were displayed side by side.

On the left was a photo of a small building in the woodland outskirts of San Francisco.

There was no information on the building in various San Francisco databases.

That wasn’t unusual. Some people built their own place after buying the land, so it was possible that it wasn’t registered.

But Alfred didn’t get tired. He started looking for relevant information when he found something suspicious, and then found a satellite image, which was displayed on the right side of the screen.

The satellite photo was taken five days ago, and showed that there was no building in the woods.

After a few glances, Luke asked Alfred, “Did you send the drones?”

Alfred said, “They reached the building five minutes ago.”

Luke said, “Don’t get too close. Just keep an eye on it. There’s no need to use electronic detection; just a visual observation will do.”

Dr. Pym was quite good.

Luke’s clone headed for the building at that moment, and he made sure that he could be clearly seen. He didn’t want to alarm Mr. Pym.

Ten minutes later, a bigshot in a black suit who was holding a walking cane appeared outside the building and walked unhurriedly to the door.

Smiling at the camera, Luke asked, “Is anyone home?”

After a long while, a voice came through the loudspeaker at the door. “Who are you?”

Luke said, “You can call me Pennyworth. I want to talk business with you.”

A reply immediately rang out over the loudspeaker. “I’m not doing business. Please leave.”

Luke’s smile didn’t waver. “You’re not interested in Pym Technologies’ business?”

The loudspeaker was silent for a moment. “Who sent you?”

Luke said, “I represent myself, not anyone else.”

After a long silence, the door suddenly opened. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

Luke walked in.

…

20 minutes later, Luke walked out with a helpless expression. He turned around and bowed slightly to the door. “My apologies, Dr. Pym. I didn’t think it through this time.”

As he spoke, he took out a card and flicked it through the room so that it landed on a cabinet. “This is my contact. If you need help, I can help you once for free. Of course, it has to be within my abilities.”

With that, he turned around and disappeared into the dark woods.

Inside the building, Dr. Pym used his equipment to scan the card, but didn’t find anything wrong.

He didn’t look very happy either. “What’s the point of saying so much? If you can’t do it, you can’t do it.”

That being said, he didn’t throw the card away.

There was something special about this person who claimed to sell everything.

To be able to find this building and appear silently within a range of 20 meters before being discovered, he definitely wasn’t an ordinary person.

As for the other party not being able to reach a deal with him, Dr. Pym wouldn’t underestimate him.

If it was that easy to get back Pym Technologies and destroy the files in Darren Cross’s hands, would Dr. Pym have to live in hiding now?

Darren also had part of the technology for the Pym Particle.

The only thing that Dr. Pym had which Darren didn’t was the suit.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone who was interested in the suit. It was a pure waste of time.

After confirming that this Pennyworth was gone, Dr. Pym quickly packed up and exited the house.

He pressed a remote on the keypad in his hand, and the building disappeared.

He picked up the five-centimeter-tall building and put it in his suitcase. He then took out a three-centimeter-long SUV from the suitcase and placed it on the ground.

Moving back a few meters, he pressed a button on the remote again, and the SUV instantly enlarged into a regular-sized SUV.

After getting into the car, Dr.. Pym hit the gas pedal and the SUV quickly drove down the hill.