MARVEL/DC: DOCTOR IN THE MULTIVERSE

Black Widow drove an electrified Widow's Bite into the neck of a smaller mutant on the left flank.

The creature convulsed instantly and collapsed.

But the larger mutants barely reacted.

Their altered nervous systems dispersed the current too efficiently.

Above the street—

Hawkeye stood on the rooftop of a damaged apartment building.

A cable-arrow launched downward, wrapping around a mutant's leg.

For half a second—

The creature lost balance.

Then the steel cable snapped under raw force.

The Avengers were holding back.

These monsters had once been civilians.

Killing them remained the absolute last option.

The helicopter landed roughly three hundred meters behind the containment line.

As Lynn stepped out carrying the medical case, a S.H.I.E.L.D. officer approached immediately.

White male.

Forties.

Colonel insignia visible on the uniform.

His expression reflected exactly what Lynn expected.

"This is the expert Director Fury called in?"

His eyes moved over the white coat.

"You?"

"I'm the doctor," Lynn replied calmly.

"I need a working area within fifty meters of the front line."

"I require fresh samples."

"Fifty meters?"

The colonel looked at him as though he had lost his mind.

"That's within engagement range."

"Then sixty."

The colonel opened his mouth again—

But another vehicle pulled up beside them.

A tactical assault transport.

Door sliding open.

Hawkeye jumped out.

There was a triangular laceration across his left shoulder.

Claw wound.

Tissue torn open.

Bleeding ongoing.

Barton looked once at Lynn.

Then at the medical case.

"Fury said you're the doctor."

"What do you need?"

"A blood sample from a recently mutated subject."

"Less than one hour post-transformation if possible."

"And any discarded biological material—scales, tissue fragments, anything available."

Lynn's gaze shifted briefly toward Barton's shoulder.

The system analysis activated automatically.

Laceration depth:

1.2 centimeters.

No tendon involvement.

Moderate blood loss.

Not life-threatening.

But prolonged combat would reduce draw stability and shooting precision.

"Your shoulder should be treated—"

"Later."

Barton cut him off immediately.

"Work first."

Then he sprinted back toward the front line.

Lynn watched him disappear into the smoke and emergency lights.

Five minutes later—

Barton returned.

Fast.

In one hand—

A tactical syringe containing dark-purple blood.

In the other—

A thumb-sized gray scale fragment.

"Blood came from a guy who transformed less than forty minutes ago."

"The scale came off another one."

He handed both over.

"Enough?"

"Yes."

The colonel provided an armored communications vehicle as a temporary laboratory.

Inside:

Fold-out worktable.

Dedicated power supply.

Minimal interference shielding.

Lynn unpacked the Stark-modified biochemical analyzer.

Warm-up and calibration completed in under two minutes.

The scale sample entered first.

Analysis initiated immediately.

Through Analysis of All Things, the structure unfolded in Lynn's mind faster than the machine itself could display.

Keratin base structure—

But radically rewritten.

Normal human keratin relied primarily on alpha-helix organization.

This mutant keratin had been reconstructed into beta-sheet architecture.

Density increase:

Approximately twelvefold.

Not natural evolution.

Designed.

The blood sample followed.

Parallel analysis activated simultaneously.

Retroviral structure identified.

Modified delivery vector.

Target:

A dormant non-coding region within the human genome.

Hydra's researchers had labeled it internally as a latent-potential activation sequence—

Essentially a pseudo "X-gene" trigger analogue.

Not a true mutant gene like naturally occurring Homo superior mutations—

But an artificial attempt to force unstable metahuman expression through CRISPR-Cas9 modification.

The activation pattern was random.

That explained the inconsistent mutations.

Scales.

Muscle hypertrophy.

Insectoid structures.

Thermal alteration.

But the system also revealed the core flaw immediately.

There was no shutdown pathway.

Once activation began—

It continued indefinitely.

The host genome destabilized continuously until collapse.

And during activation—

The retrovirus severely damaged limbic neural pathways.

Which explained the loss of reason and violent behavior.

"Hydra," Lynn said quietly.

Crude.

Violent.

Unstable.

A weapon with no safety mechanism.

The communication channel activated suddenly.

Captain America's voice came through first.

"How's the analysis going back there?"

"We've got two large mutants pushing toward the barricade. Standard weapons aren't stopping them."

Lynn put on the spare headset.

"Twenty minutes."

Another voice entered immediately.

Faster.

Sharper.

"Those barricades may not exist in twenty minutes."

Black Widow.

"Then make them last twenty minutes," Lynn replied.

Then muted the channel.

He needed uninterrupted focus.

Analysis of All Things accelerated further.

The retroviral structure unfolded layer by layer.

Cas9 recognition domains.

Guide RNA targeting sequences.

Promoter activation architecture.

Regulatory cascades.

Every molecular layer appeared as clearly as an engineering schematic.

He searched for one thing only—

The lock.

Every biological activation pathway possessed suppression mechanisms.

Hydra had removed the obvious shutoff system—

But nature always retained redundancies.

The countdown continued.

…

Twelve minutes.

The combat channel became increasingly unstable.

A massive scale-covered mutant breached the left barricade line.

Height exceeded two meters.

It overturned an armored vehicle with raw force.

Three wounded tactical officers were dragged backward toward evacuation.

Captain America's shield slammed into the mutant's chest.

The impact dented the scales—

But seconds later, the tissue regenerated visibly.

"Fall back!" Steve shouted through the channel.

"Eight minutes remaining," Lynn replied.

His voice remained completely level.

Black Widow answered immediately from another frequency.

"He said eight minutes."

"So it's eight minutes."

No one pressured him again.

Inside the armored vehicle—

Lynn's mind operated at a level beyond ordinary biological computation.

Analysis of All Things was not merely calculation.

It behaved closer to instinctive comprehension.

A normal bioinformatics team would require supercomputers to model protein folding structures.

Lynn perceived the folded conformations directly.

Fourteen minutes.

He found it.

Upstream from the activated promoter region—

A silencer sequence remained partially intact.

Under normal biological conditions, that silencer suppressed expression completely.

Hydra's retrovirus had damaged it during forced activation—

But not destroyed the core binding site.

Which meant—

The system could still be shut down.

If a synthetic molecular binder could reconnect to the silencer region, the activated pathway could be suppressed again.

Mutation progression would halt.

Existing transformations could gradually regress as normal genomic regulation reasserted control.

Lynn immediately began constructing the molecular design in his mind.

Visit /ShiroTL for more chapters.