Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 560: The Situation Diverges From the Plan

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The people brought over from Russia were all gathered inside a single bus.

Suppressing the urge to wipe them all out in one strike and risk alerting the enemy, Black Superman used the cover of night to follow the convoy from the air until it arrived at what was apparently either a HYDRA or S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse.

It wasn’t a military base.

Nor was it some heavily fortified building.

Instead, it was an entirely ordinary luxury hotel, with two entire floors rented out for their use.

One floor housed the Russians.

Clearly unwelcome, their treatment no longer seemed as good as before. Quite a few argued with the agents over trivial matters—mostly complaints that earlier promises had not been fulfilled.

Others returned to their rooms to reunite with family members, making it obvious they had brought their families when fleeing their homeland and had no intention of ever going back.

The other floor belonged to John Garrett and the agents under him, serving as both their temporary office and living quarters.

Judging from the room conditions, they were living quite comfortably.

With spending habits like this, it was no wonder Garrett could gather a sizable faction within S.H.I.E.L.D.

Because this was merely a temporary base of operations, their documents weren’t stored inside safes or filing cabinets.

Instead, they were all packed into an inconspicuous briefcase.

If Black Superman hadn’t observed them repeatedly pulling documents from that briefcase during discussions, he wouldn’t have paid it any attention at all.

From their conversations, he also learned why they weren’t using S.H.I.E.L.D.’s command center in New York.

After all, even though the Triskelion headquarters in Washington hadn’t been built yet, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s influence in New York as a major city was still substantial.

However, John Garrett’s official identity at the moment was that of a regional director for Eastern Europe.

That explained why he had been able to retrieve people from Russia, yet still needed to arrange separate accommodations upon returning to New York.

Black Superman guessed this was probably a private operation lacking official authorization, preventing them from using formal agency resources.

Because hotel rooms offered few hiding places, and because the agents remained highly energetic while discussing business, secretly infiltrating the area was essentially impossible.

So Black Superman could only wait.

Wait for them to leave.

Or fall asleep.

Perhaps because they were currently in a meeting, John Garrett spent less time complaining and cursing than earlier, and more time discussing actual business.

The first topic was the fate of the Russians.

Now that those people had failed to earn Henry Brown’s goodwill, did they still possess any value?

How much would it cost to keep them?

How much would it cost to send them back?

Or should they simply be abandoned entirely?

Rather than replying immediately, John Garrett instead asked about the profits from their recent transactions.

Only then did Black Superman finally understand the situation.

After the collapse of the Red Empire, massive amounts of mothballed and forgotten military weapons had flooded into Third World nations.

These agents had taken advantage of their geographic position to work as brokers, earning enormous profits in the process.

The principle that money brings confidence was universal.

So with a wave of his hand, John Garrett decided to keep the Russians.

After all, they had once been scientific researchers and technical personnel.

It was only political chaos that had rendered them useless.

To survive, they had been forced into low-end jobs simply to earn enough to eat.

Although their primary purpose had been to approach target individual Henry Brown—and that now appeared hopeless—the knowledge in their minds could still help fill gaps in research personnel.

As the discussion continued, Black Superman realized John Garrett was secretly running quite a few private projects.

Whether these Russians should be centralized or dispersed among different operations quickly became another topic of debate.

In the end, they decided to distribute them across separate projects to prevent them from forming alliances and colluding within the same program.

However, for ease of supervision, they would still be grouped regionally.

After all, when they were originally located, these people had been scattered across various locations anyway.

There was no real argument that placing them together would improve efficiency.

Besides, they weren’t continuing the old research project that had previously yielded no results.

Since everyone would effectively be starting from scratch regardless, there was no need to gather them all in one place.

This caused Black Superman to suspect that once agents reached a certain level, they all began building private teams they trusted rather than relying entirely on public resources.

Now that the twenty-three identified personnel had been assigned future arrangements, no one continued discussing them.

For those who had escaped Russia, being forced back into a country where they saw no future would be worse than death.

So sending them back would actually require additional effort.

It was easier simply to keep them and let them continue doing what they were familiar with—scientific research.

After deciding the fate of the twenty-three, there wasn’t much discussion regarding whether to continue contacting the remaining personnel.

Everyone merely waited for instructions.

John Garrett’s decision wasn’t particularly surprising.

For former research personnel who had already obtained stable identities and social positions, all contact related to the mission would cease.

In other words, if those individuals still possessed other exploitable value, further investigation could continue.

But if their only relevance was their connection to Henry Brown, then the operation would end there.

This made Black Superman clearly realize something.

There really were people this HYDRA-S.H.I.E.L.D. group had failed to bring in.

And those people were apparently doing quite well for themselves.

At that moment, Black Superman’s desire to obtain their intelligence became even stronger.

The discussion then shifted toward the final words "Henry Brown" had whispered into one Russian’s ear.

Had he truly said "I forgive you," as the lip-reading suggested?

Or had he issued a threat, as the Russian insisted?

The Russians firmly believed the threat had been real, and the story had already spread among their former colleagues.

Meanwhile, the agents trusted only what they themselves had observed.

To them, the Russians’ claims were merely attempts to smear someone who clearly held resentment toward them.

This proved Henry’s earlier little trick had succeeded perfectly.

Whenever a situation contained two conflicting versions of events, people instinctively chose whichever version benefited them more.

Even if someone told them the other version was the truth, they would still rather believe the "wrong" version they preferred.

Because that version offered advantages.

The truth did not.

For John Garrett and his agents, if Henry Brown had truly chosen to let go of the past, then they could save themselves considerable trouble by no longer needing to protect the Russians they had worked so hard to retrieve.

But if Henry Brown sought revenge, they would face a dilemma.

Should they protect the people they invested so much effort into rescuing, thereby offending someone they hoped to recruit—and possibly suffering casualties in the process?

Or should they abandon their investment and simply allow the target individual to kill them?

In any case, the attitudes of these agents aligned perfectly with Black Superman’s intentions, allowing him to suppress the urge to deal with the Russians that very night.

If he wanted to remove himself cleanly from the matter, he would need to plan carefully.

What worried Black Superman more was this:

If John Garrett truly possessed the qualities of an ambitious mastermind, then the moment he realized Henry’s real intentions, he would likely decide to eliminate those twenty-three Russians himself.

That way, he could both sell Henry Brown a favor and gain leverage over him at the same time.

To sacrifice his own innocence for the sake of hatred while also handing someone leverage over him would utterly disgrace the existence of a super brain.

Thinking himself a man whose life had suddenly lost direction after losing a girl, Black Superman stood atop the rooftop, the warm summer night wind blowing around him while his thoughts raced at incredible speed.

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