DC: A New Beginning-Chapter 87: Premature Extraction
"Boss, you just received an email on your account."
In the conference room of LexCorp, Luthor’s secretary suddenly knocked and came in.
She walked up beside the main seat and quietly whispered something to Lex Luthor.
Luthor’s brow furrowed tightly. He didn’t like being interrupted during meetings.
However, Eve Teschmacher was someone Luthor had personally chosen.
This woman was extremely intelligent and rarely did foolish things. If she had come in like this, the matter had to be important.
After standing up and offering a brief apology to the other shareholders, Lex stood up and left the conference room with Eve.
"What is it?"
"It’s from the government, Boss. I think you need to read it yourself."
He took the tablet from Eve and tapped it open.
After reading only the first line of the email, he looked up and observed his surroundings.
Then Lex instructed her to notify the shareholders in the conference room.
"Cancel today’s meeting. Tell them I have more important urgent matters to attend to. Also, arrange a plane for me. I’m going to New York."
Ignoring Eve’s troubled expression, Luthor grabbed the tablet and quickly left.
...
He returned to his private office, moved to the bookshelf, and activated the hidden elevator behind it.
The elevator took him all the way down to the fifteenth underground level of LexCorp.
He is the only one who knew the proper way to access the other hidden underground floors.
On this floor, there were only five researchers whom he had recruited through high salaries or other means.
The projects they worked on were all about the genes of various superhuman or non-human beings that had once been defeated by Superman in Metropolis.
Originally, even Lex Luthor himself didn’t care much about this project.
Since these beings had been defeated by Superman, even if they discovered the secrets in their genes, it would still be difficult to get the results Luthor wanted.
If it weren’t for the fifteenth underground level still storing a sample of Parasite’s genes and a small portion of General Zod’s DNA from years ago, Lex would probably have canceled the whole project long ago.
However, something happened a few days ago that gave the genetic research here new hope.
Even though Luthor hadn’t obtained surveillance footage from near the incident area showing what exactly happened, LexCorp collected biological samples from more than a hundred alien races from several nearby streets.
After all, Metropolis was Lex Luthor’s territory.
Even if Batman had hacked into the nearby surveillance cameras and erased all the footage in advance, it doesn’t matter.
The blood of many different aliens had been splashed across more than ten streets like paint thrown everywhere.
Even without finding a trace of surveillance evidence, Lex could still figure out that a superhuman similar to Superman had definitely been there.
He knew Superman normally would not leave behind such a scene.
Superman could kill when necessary, but not like this, not with such brutality.
After recovering these samples, almost every half hour, they would send a research report with new discoveries to Luthor’s private email.
Of course, Lex barely read them.
Those corrosive body fluids, radiation-resistant skin, and invisible light vision were not very interesting to him.
What he truly wanted was a sample from the one who defeated more than a hundred unknown alien lifeforms.
Luthor had a premonition that this hidden, unknown existence would be the key to helping him defeat Superman.
Of course, the reason Lex came down now was for something else.
"How is your research progressing?"
Seeing their boss personally come down to ask about the progress, four of the five researchers looked up and reported to Luthor at the same time.
Even though they had already sent a detailed progress report to his private email twenty minutes earlier, they didn’t care whether Luthor looked down on them.
"We’ve already successfully integrated over twenty newly extracted genes into the original embryo that was created using Parasite and Kryptonian genes."
One of the youngest researchers with messy curly hair and freckles on his nose was particularly excited.
"Even though not every biological sample contains gene traits that can be accepted by Parasite, we estimate that from the remaining samples, we can still extract at least thirty more."
The researcher gestured with his hands excitedly.
"It will definitely be stronger than anything ever seen before. It could have more than a hundred superpowers. It’s simply a collection of human fantasy—a perfect organism!"
Lex quietly watched the young researcher who didn’t know how to suppress his emotions.
"Speed up the embryo’s growth, then extract it."
"What?"
The young researcher was startled. Then his face showed disbelief, and he actually argued back against the man funding the project.
"Why?! It’s not finished yet! It’s not mature enough! It hasn’t reached perfection!"
The other slightly older researchers tried to grab the young man who didn’t know his place.
However, he seemed to have gone mad, breaking away from his colleagues he’d worked with day and night.
"Why would you do something so stupid, Luthor?! You shouldn’t be the kind of person who kills the goose that lays the golden eggs!"
Lex ignored his shouting and only frowned as he raised his arm to look at his watch.
He quickly walked up to the young researcher and leaned forward until their faces were almost touching.
The researcher, who had looked ready to keep yelling, was intimidated by Luthor’s presence. He leaned back without thinking and then stumbled a few steps away.
Luthor looked at him coldly.
"You don’t seem to understand at all. There is no such thing as perfection in this world, and you have already wasted my time—"
Before Luthor could finish speaking, one of the five researchers came back.
He held a clear glass container with metal devices installed around its exterior that continuously emitted special magnetic fields.
In the center of the glass container was the embryo that could have originally acquired more superpowers.
He handed the container to Lex.
Lex gave him an approving look, took the container, turned around, and without hesitation left the underground laboratory.
After Luthor left, the young man who had been intimidated by him finally collapsed to the floor in pain.
He sat there and grabbed wildly at his already messy curly hair with both hands.
"Why take it out early? We don’t have any more of Zod’s samples."
The calm middle-aged researcher glanced at him.
"As long as Superman exists, Kryptonian gene samples are available anytime. Besides, we still have one Parasite sample left—before we acquire a third sample of equivalent value, our experiment can stop anytime."
The young man didn’t quite understand.
"What could possibly be as valuable as those first two?"
The middle-aged researcher looked at him with mockery and pointed to his own temple.
"That creature who turned over a hundred invading alien lifeforms into mush with just fists and feet. Did you really think all those alien samples LexCorp collected just fell from the sky for free?"
...
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