----
"So you saw through me after all."
Matt's voice was calm as ever, even restrained. "When we were escaping, your heart rate never once spiked not even under stress. Which means… you were prepared for what happened."
"And when you told Jessica you didn't want her to get hurt… not a single physiological response. No tension. No sincerity."
He turned his head toward Nolan. "You don't care about her. Only she bought your act."
Nolan raised an eyebrow, impressed. "Then why didn't you warn her?"
Matt exhaled. "Didn't have time."
His tone carried a tinge of regret. "But that's not what bothers me most. What I can't figure out… is how you understood my weaknesses so well. We'd never met before."
That was the heart of it. Nolan had prepared a sonic disruptor tailored precisely to Matt's vulnerabilities. It had hit him hard too hard to even issue a warning before he was overwhelmed.
By the time Matt came to, he was already surrounded. The lab equipment was humming, and the air was laced with so much pepper extract that his sense of smell was completely disoriented. He was helpless.
And now he was strapped down, utterly exposed.
"You don't need to know how I knew," Nolan replied coolly.
He gestured to an assistant. "Start with an otoscopic scan. I want a full image of the ear canal."
Before Matt could respond, something cold and metallic slid into his ear. The scratch of steel against the inner walls made him wince.
"Who are you working for? Fisk? The Hand? Why capture me?" he demanded, teeth clenched.
He wasn't naive. There had to be a purpose. Nolan wasn't torturing him out of malice. This was methodical and scientific. But Matt had no memory of ever encountering him before.
"I'm not with Fisk," Nolan said, studying the monitor with interest. "And I don't work for the Hand. I'm doing this for research. Because you… are worth it."
He zoomed in on the live imaging. "Your middle ear has undergone extreme mutations."
The middle ear, comprising the eardrum, ossicles, and Eustachian tube, amplifies and transmits sound to the brain. But this?
Nolan's eyes lit up.
"Your tympanic membrane is thinner… but stronger. The middle ear cavity has developed nodules fleshy growths acting like secondary amplifiers. And these ossicles…" He leaned in. "Complex, dense, far beyond standard human structure."
"They're like micro-resonators. You've developed an entirely new acoustic architecture."
Matt gritted his teeth. "You're insane…"
But the procedure continued.
Nolan began surgical dissection on Matt's ear, comparing the real tissue to the scans. Then, without hesitation, he cut away the outer ear and began carefully removing layers to access the inner ear and mastoid structure.
Each nerve. Each bone. Each mutation is carefully extracted and cataloged.
Pain wracked Matt's body. Cold sweat soaked his face. At one point, he felt the scalpel graze the edge of his skull.
He thought he might die right there on the table.
But then… something strange happened.
His ear started regenerating.
And his eyes, long blind, itched fiercely. The void behind his eyelids wasn't empty anymore.
A faint light shimmered in the darkness.
Nolan studied the regrown ear structure, fascinated.
"Your tympanic membrane has a tensile strength and reverberation index far beyond baseline. And your mastoid cavity, look at this. Its shape is almost identical to ultrasonic mapping nodes found in bats."
"No wonder you can map your environment. And you're picking up infrasound, too…"
The deeper he went, the more Nolan realized just how extraordinary Matt's mutation was.
"These ossicles… they're not just conducting sound. They're filtering frequencies sorting data in real-time."
By the time Matt's full ear had grown back, his vision had begun returning.
Through blurry, fragile new eyes, Matt saw the face of the man who'd dissected him a calm, smiling Asian man in a white lab coat, holding a bloodstained scalpel.
"Congratulations," Nolan said softly. "You can see again. Fascinating, really. But what interests me more is your auditory nerve…"
He reached out, gently brushing Matt's scalp before pulling out a razor and shaving his head clean.
"Prepare the formalin. I want a long-term tissue preservation protocol. This is going to be a living study."
"Inject the stimulant. I need him semi-conscious. I want to test his neural response to fluctuating sound frequencies."
"Yes, sir."
---
Later, Nolan sat hunched over a microscope, examining the nerve samples he'd extracted.
Matt had finally passed out from the trauma.
Nolan had relented and ordered anesthesia to prevent total psychological collapse. He wasn't trying to kill the man, after all. Not yet.
"These nerves… triple the size of a normal human's. Layered axons, dense myelin sheathing. That's how you transmit so much data without delay."
He waved for an assistant. "Prepare slides. I want everything cataloged."
Matt's structure was undeniably unique. But it wasn't just mutation it was potential. Like a rare instrument waiting for someone to master it.
Once the data was backed up, Nolan dismissed the remaining assistants. They'd worked through the night, and not everyone had his stamina.
Besides, tonight, he had a date.
Jessica.
He skimmed through the lab reports once more, then paused as a name crossed his mind.
Stick.
Matt's blind mentor.
A man who also possessed extreme sensory enhancement. He practiced a discipline centered on perception and "spiritual sense" what some called proximity awareness.
Matt hadn't reached that level yet.
But Stick had seen Matt's potential from the start.
"I still need to study his olfactory and tactile systems. Tomorrow. And I have to identify what chemical cocktail triggered his mutation…"
Nolan made a mental checklist: track down Stick, research the company responsible for Matt's accident, and dig deeper into the Hand's involvement.
He removed his lab coat and cleaned himself up meticulously.
"Have someone watch both labs around the clock," he told Klaue before heading out.
With roses in hand, he climbed into his car and drove toward Jessica's private investigations office.
Tonight was their dinner.
And the fish was almost in the net.
No sense throwing it back now.
----
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