"We install the diffusion device, then spread the degeneration agent Dr. Connors developed throughout the city," Karen explained, her voice steady despite the insanity of the plan. "Once airborne, it'll weaken every enhanced beastman in New Wundagore."
"It won't completely reverse the genetic modifications," Otto added, adjusting his sunglasses. "The beastman who've been uplifted for decades are too integrated with their new DNA. But while the agent is active, their strength and speed will be significantly compromised."
"Especially the soldiers with alien abilities," Karen continued. "They've only had those powers for a short time—weeks at most. The foreign genetics haven't fully bonded. There's a strong possibility those abilities will be temporarily suppressed or even completely nullified."
"You're planning to infiltrate Wundagore Castle?" Naoko's voice rose with alarm. "That's suicide!"
She looked at the infiltration team—Karen, Otto, Brumley at the wheel, and now potentially Mantis. Four people. Four people against an entire fortress filled with enhanced soldiers, the Four Knights of Wundagore, and the High Evolutionary himself.
"It's impossible," Naoko said flatly. "You'll all die."
"If we had any other choice, we wouldn't take this risk," Karen said. Her calm was almost frightening—this wasn't bravado, but the resignation of someone who'd already accepted the consequences. "But Sir Ram captured John, implanted a tracking device, and used him to locate our base. He knows where we are. Where everyone is."
"We're out of time," Brumley added from the driver's seat, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "It's infiltrate now or watch the resistance get massacred piecemeal."
Shayne poked his head out from behind his mother, eyes wide with worry. "Are John and Spider-Man okay?"
"They're still fighting those stinking beastman!" Brumley said. His voice cracked with emotion—something rare for the engineer who usually expressed everything through anger. "They're outsiders, strangers to this planet. But they're fighting for humanity's freedom anyway. How can we do less just because it's dangerous?"
"Once that device is installed and broadcasting," Karen said softly, "it will cripple the beastman military's combat effectiveness. Spider-Man and his team will have a chance. The resistance will have a chance. Humanity will have a chance."
Naoko could see the absolute determination in their eyes. No argument would dissuade them. They'd made peace with this suicide mission.
But that didn't mean she couldn't help.
She suddenly remembered something. "Wait. I might know someone who can help you infiltrate the castle safely."
Karen blinked. "You know someone with that kind of access?"
"We just met, actually." Naoko didn't elaborate. Instead, she turned toward the clinic's back room. "Mantis! Could you come here?"
A young woman emerged from the interior. She was striking—pale skin, short dark hair, and completely black eyes that seemed to absorb light. Two delicate antennae protruded from her forehead, twitching occasionally as if sensing invisible currents.
"A beastman?" Brumley's hand instinctively moved toward his weapon.
"Wait," Otto said sharply. "She's not an beastman. She's an alien—a genuine off-worlder, not genetically modified. I recognize her species."
Mantis tilted her head curiously. "You know me?"
"I know of you," Otto corrected. "I'm also with the Plumbers. Your companions—Star-Lord, Rocket, Drax, Groot—are still fighting in the sewers."
Understanding dawned in Mantis's dark eyes. "You're with Spider-Man's rescue team. And also with The kind man with the metal arms."
"That's one way to describe me," Otto said dryly. "Can you really get us into Wundagore Castle?"
Mantis nodded. "A kind fellow told me about a secret passage. He even gave me an access pass." She pulled out a rectangular card from her pocket, showing ornate markings that resembled Lord Tyger's personal seal.
"Who gave you this?" Karen demanded.
"I think his name was Lord Tyger?" Mantis said, her antennae twitching as she recalled the emotional texture of the memory. "I could feel his integrity. His kindness. He's trapped between loyalty and conscience."
"Lord Tyger?" Brumley had already started the hovercart's engine, but now he slammed on the brakes. "This is another trap! It has to be!"
"No," Karen said quietly. "Lord Tyger can be trusted."
Brumley stared at her. "How can you possibly—"
"Because most of our intelligence came from him," Karen interrupted. "For the past year, someone inside the castle has been feeding us information. Supply routes. Patrol schedules. Weak points in the beastman military structure. I finally made contact six months ago. It was Lord Tyger."
She met Brumley's eyes. "Without him, the resistance would have been crushed months ago. He's been protecting us from the shadows, sabotaging the worst of the High Evolutionary's plans. This pass is genuine."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Otto's mechanical arms shot forward, one wrapping around the steering wheel. "Let's move!"
Before Brumley could protest, Otto's third mechanical appendage slammed down on the accelerator. The hovercart lurched forward with a whine of anti-gravity engines.
Naoko watched them disappear into the night, her heart heavy with dread. She pulled Shayne close, trying to project confidence she didn't feel.
She had a terrible premonition that the next few hours would decide everything. The resistance and the High Evolutionary. Freedom and slavery. Life and extinction.
The pieces were all moving toward a final confrontation.
But could humanity really win? The beastman' power had been absolute for so long. Their genetic superiority was ingrained in every human's psyche, beaten into them through decades of oppression.
Could everything change just because a few Plumbers from another world had arrived?
Or was this all just a futile gesture? A last desperate act before the inevitable end?
Naoko didn't know. But she knew one thing with absolute certainty: if the resistance failed tonight, humanity on Counter-Earth was finished.
Wind whipped past their faces as the hovercart raced through New Wundagore's empty streets.
The twisted spires of Wundagore Castle loomed larger with every passing second, a gothic nightmare of architecture that seemed to actively reject sanity. The High Evolutionary had designed it himself—a structure that looked more like a mad god's fever dream than anything built by rational minds.
"Head toward that corner," Mantis instructed, pointing to a service entrance partially hidden by decorative stonework. "Without the access pass, we can't penetrate the castle's force field. It's keyed to specific genetic markers."
They approached the checkpoint—a simple machine mounted beside the service door, scanning for authorized personnel.
Mantis held up Lord Tyger's pass. The scanner beeped once, twice, then flashed green.
Access granted. Welcome, honored Knight.
"Incredibly simple," Brumley muttered. Some paranoid part of him had expected alarms, guards, immediate capture.
None of them realized they'd been detected the moment the hovercart entered castle grounds.
The access pass belonged to Lord Tyger. But Lord Tyger was currently imprisoned in the castle's detention wing, scheduled for execution at dawn. Any use of his credentials would trigger silent alarms that routed directly to the High Evolutionary's personal monitoring station.
At the very peak of Wundagore Castle, in a chamber filled with holographic displays and genetic sequencing equipment, the High Evolutionary watched four tiny figures moving through his domain.
His expression was unreadable—not angry, not alarmed. If anything, he looked... amused.
Like a cat watching mice enter a trap.
"Pathetic humans," he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. "Abandoning your partners who are fighting for you, infiltrating my castle with some desperate plan. What do you hope to accomplish?"
He manipulated the holographic interface, zooming in on each infiltrator in turn. The four-armed scientist. The angry engineer. The empathic alien who'd somehow acquired Lord Tyger's pass.
And then Karen.
The High Evolutionary's breath caught. He zoomed in further until Karen's face filled the entire display wall. Orange hair. Determined eyes. The bone structure of someone who'd known hardship but refused to break.
"I'm so glad you came," he whispered, something disturbingly paternal in his tone. "Walking straight into my hands, my dear granddaughter."
He closed the display, leaning back in his chair. His eyes drifted closed as memories surfaced—decades old, but sharp as broken glass.
He'd come to Counter-Earth over fifty years ago, driven from Earth by small-minded fools who couldn't comprehend his genius. Here, he'd found a blank canvas. Animals waiting to be elevated. A world to reshape in his image.
And in those early years, before his obsession consumed everything else, he'd had a family.
A son. Born before the genetic modifications, when the High Evolutionary had still been mostly human.
That son had given him a granddaughter. A beautiful infant girl with bright eyes and clever hands.
The High Evolutionary couldn't resist. He'd wanted her to be perfect. So he'd performed genetic modifications while she was still too young to resist, introducing enhancements that would express themselves over time.
His son had discovered the procedure. The argument had been... explosive.
They'd fled—father and daughter—disappearing into Counter-Earth's wilderness. For decades, the High Evolutionary had searched. Countless resources wasted. Entire beastman divisions deployed. All to no avail.
Until the Atlantis incident.
Sir Ram's combat footage had shown a woman tearing her sleeve to bandage Dr. Connors's wounds. The camera had captured a tattoo-like pattern on her shoulder—a genetic marker the High Evolutionary had personally designed.
His missing granddaughter. Karen. Leading the human resistance against him.
"I'm so glad you've come back," he said, opening his eyes. They gleamed with something that might have been love, if love could be warped through decades of megalomania and genetic obsession. "I can finally complete that experiment."
He stood, pacing around his laboratory. "You'll be my greatest masterpiece. Even better than what I've become."
But first, she needed to understand. Needed to see humanity's true nature—the weakness, the cowardice, the inevitable betrayal.
Only then would she accept her destiny.
Inside the castle, following the secret passage Mantis had been told about, the infiltration team made steady progress.
The passage was clearly old, predating the High Evolutionary's occupation. Probably a service corridor from whatever civilization had existed here before. The walls were rough stone, unadorned and functional. Emergency lighting strips provided minimal illumination.
They descended through several levels, heading toward the castle's power generation system. That was where they needed to install the diffusion device—deep in the infrastructure where beastman security would be lightest.
Karen checked her equipment one more time. The canister containing Dr. Connors's degeneration agent. The broadcasting mechanism. The adhesive mounting system. Everything was ready.
They were going to pull this off. They had to.
Then they reached the power generation floor, and Brumley froze.
A man stood near the primary reactor—disheveled, wearing maintenance coveralls, looking like he'd been working on the equipment. He was human, middle-aged, with the kind of weathered face that came from decades of hard labor.
"Delwald!" Brumley's voice cracked with shock.
The name came out like a punch. Otto and Karen immediately went on guard, but Brumley was already moving forward, tears streaming down his face.
"Delwald!" he repeated. Even after thirty years, he recognized his brother instantly. The brother he'd thought dead, killed during an beastman raid when they were young men.
"Brumley?" Delwald's face split into a genuine smile. "Little brother. I never thought I'd see you again."
He spread his arms. "Come here. We've wasted so much time."
"Something's wrong," Otto said quietly, mechanical arms spreading into a defensive formation.
"His happiness is contaminated," Mantis added, antennae vibrating with distress. "I can feel malice underneath. Like poison hidden in honey."