Over at Saint Martin's Wellness Center, Arthur was inside of a secretive underground facility below the legal façade of the overall mental hospital. The rooms were very brutalist in their design structure, made of a reinforced concrete all across the facility, as if it were designed to withstand an atomic bomb. It was really a human experimentation wing. Along the hallway there were three large rooms. The one at the very back end was called the control group, the one in the middle was labeled admixed stock, and the last one at the far-end was labeled undesirables. Each of the large cells had a series of computer systems, linked to vitals monitoring chips implanted into their brains. These rooms were full of ten people, each.

Of course, to keep the people unaware of the horrific conditions they were enduring, they were lobotomized. All of them had a small, raised scar between their eyes where the connections between the frontal lobes of their brains were severed. They were all happy, eyes glassy and vacant. They were in such a state that they could be led to the slaughterhouse to be killed and they still wouldn't even protest. That was how far gone they were. Once the drill entered their brains, it was too late.

Arthur was dressed in a pinstripe business suit, overseeing the whole operation in the hallway behind the thick plexiglass windows. His blond hair was buzzed at the sides and combed over at the top, a hair style popular with militaries all across the world. An unusual getup, as most people undertaking this kind of work would be wearing a lab coat; however, the environment he was observing and taking notes on was sterile. All of the test subjects were in a lab environment.

"Felicia, release the pathogen into each of the cells!"

A synthesized, almost robotic AI voice filled the room.

"Affirmative," acquiesced the AI.

Soon a colorless, odorless gas filled the rooms; however, it was not a gas in the traditional sense. It was an infectious biological weapon, something only dreamt up in science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlen in the 1960s. It was an ethnic bioweapon, one targeted towards non-Europeans while leaving the rest of the European population intact. That was where Pax Europa was going to come into play: without a shot even being fired. Of course, he was going to be selling the cure for this pathogen once it was in the Jetstream. The AI practically ironed out the pesky whistleblower problem for his depopulation solution.

The control group suffered no ill effects to the virus according to biometric readouts on his computers. The admixed group had suffered some minor flu-like symptoms, ranging from a sore throat to a high fever. Mild was the wrong term. It was actually closer to moderate symptoms. They were lethal but not certainly lethal. The undesirables, mainly Asians, Jews, blacks, were suffering a form of myocarditis, where the immune system attacked their hearts. In addition, other systems included, Optic neuritis, encephalopathy, neuropathy, ending with renal failure, heart failure, dementia and blindness before the victim died. That was what the AI was able to model based of the current trajectory of the undesirables' group of this experiment.

"How many people should this virus kill if it were, say, released into the Jetstream?" Inquired Pierce.

"Seven billion, three hundred million within the next seven years if it were to be released currently. Millions more will perish from lack of services with the infection. Hundreds of millions more will starve to death. All nations in Europe, with the exception of Great Britain, will be knocked back to the age of horse and buggy. Asia, North America, Oceania, and Africa will be quite devoid of life. European colonists will be left alone, with some exceptions," answered Felicia.

"Excellent!" responded Arthur, smiling.

"Everything's going according to plan!" proclaimed Arthur to himself.

Arthur walked over to the elevator at the south end of the facility and pressed the button that led to the ground floor. The interior of the elevator was done in this sort of Victorian era style a lot of insane asylums from the 1800s were done in. It was like something out of a superhero comic book. The only thing missing were the gargoyles on the outside of the facility to complete the cliché of its overall design.

He tapped his feet as he awaited the elevator's arrival to the top. By the time the elevator had reached a floor upwards, Arthur could very well fly to Europe with his flight alone. His immense powers alone made him a rather impatient fellow in spite of his seemingly limitless lifespan. When one could travel across countries in seconds at top speed, it really lowered their overall attention span, especially when they had the power to do just that for almost a whole century. It was not just moving about. Movies, while entertaining, were an achingly slow affair for him, when he could use his penetra vision—in addition to his enhanced eyesight—to read a full-blown novel in a little under a second simply by touching it. Because of the enhanced cognition in addition to these powers, Nolan Pierce was practically at university level understanding of the world at age five, one of the reasons his mother deemed him to be a freak.

Arthur used his penetra vision to gauge where he was on the elevator. He was only halfway up the whole elevator. While he was completely human in terms of physiology, his nerve impulses fired at almost the speed of light, at the same speed as the electrical signals on a standard digital computer. While he made the brains of the smartest human beings look little more than abacuses, it made a wait seem like an utter hell, especially when he needed to put out another fire altogether.

That was right. He needed to make a phone call to his personal fixer in order to deal with a certain Cameron Coleman, who had gotten a little close with one of Arthur's personal enemies when he made a pedophilic torturer look like the victim a several months ago. Frankly, Arthur wanted him killed. He could simply fly over there in a costume, slice him in half with his optical beam attack, but that drew suspicion. No, he needed a professional on the case before Abram Diamond handed over evidence of the millions of people Arthur had slaughtered in 1985 over his son being kidnapped by Mossad. If that got out, he would be facing the Seven, the entire superhero community, and the US Government, all at once. Not good. His plans relied on Guerilla Warfare, a small animal killing an elephant with a thousand scratches.

To that end, Arthur made a phone call the very nanosecond he was high enough to get any cell reception. With the burner phone he grabbed from out of his suit pant pocket, he made a call to a fixer operating out in New York, where Cameron Coleman had lived.

The phone rang with the ring tone of the Russian National Anthem.

"Hello there, I would like to put out a contract," requested Arthur.

"Anonymous," replied the man on the voice modulator.

"Abso-fucking-lutely," answered Arthur.

"What's the offer?"

"One hundred and twenty-five million dollars in cash!"

"What's the problem?"

"Cameron Coleman, VNN's News Anchor. I need him dead, ideally in a way that would make it look like the filthy race traitor had topped himself. Translated to Yank speak: I want you to make it look like he offed himself because he couldn't live with the bloody shame of being the worthless hack he is. That the only reason the bastard even has a career is from defaming people worth more to society than him," answered Arthur.

"Consider it done," said the cold modulated, New York accented voice on the phone.

Arthur crushed the phone so that neither the FBI, Vought Crime Analytics, or even the local police could ping his location on the exact cell tower should they catch wind of it. He dropped the silicate dust that was once the phone onto the soft, polished floor of the elevator for an automated drone to clean up while he was driving off in his limo to his private jet, the Jamestown Express.

The cover operation of the facility was quite a gnarly place to be in. Everywhere Arthur went the hallways were covered in fecal matter and seminal fluid from crazy people relieving themselves in their hands and throwing it everywhere. It was the place in Pennsylvania that only the craziest of the craziest went, the types of people who cannot even function on the streets as homeless people, never mind ordinary citizens. Many of them were intellectually disabled as well, so much so that they were practically born as vegetables, stuck in wheelchairs only able to grunt.

If Arthur had his say on the treatment of these types of people, he would recommend euthanasia, as he sees as it a humane solution for both parties, the insane and the sane people who have to deal with their incessant fuckery.

One of the nurses in the facility was horrifically wounded, walking around with something sticking out of her face. Someone had shoved a pencil into her eye socket when he was having a meltdown in there. Of course, he knew he would face almost zero consequences outside of temporarily reduced privileges for the next few months while that woman had to go without twenty five percent of her overall visual acuity for the rest of her life. It was not fair. Justice was not being done. If society had left these people out in the woods to die of exposure as infants, none of this would be happening. Times like these were when Pierce would look to the ancients for solutions in dealing with these problems, as forcing people to exist with a broken body or a brain was just extremely cruel to everyone involved.

However, Arthur did not want to dwell on that. He wanted to get the fuck out of there. The smell of a sewer was just a cross he could not bear for much longer. If he wanted to deal with that noxious smell for much longer, he would take a plane ticket to the British Raj. Since he obviously did not want to endure that smell, he practically clambered for the exit and to his limo.

The scent of the fresh summer air was the perfect pallet cleanser after having to endure the absolute hellscape of Saint Martin's Wellness center.

At the driveway of the facility, there was a limo. Beside that limo was his current butler, James P. Southwick, holding the car for his superior like the perfect gentlemen. Arthur walked inside and sat down on the leather seating, padded nicely with memory foam that conformed to the passenger's body, like sinking into a cloud. It was divine. Much nicer on the spine than even his gaming chair back at Pierce Tower.

"Chauffer, drive me down to the airport. I want to fly back to Portland and leave this trash heap of a state behind me as I fly away on my private jet, flipping everyone of these poorly bred hicks the bird as I do so," requested Arthur.

"Sure thing, boss," acknowledged the chauffer.

Meanwhile, over at Long Island, Little Nina was at her lavish mansion, looking through a ledger of potential assassins that she deemed fit for the undertaking of killing the Vought News Anchor. Why this Arthur Pierce wanted him dead, she would never know, or care for that matter. All that mattered to her was that he was dropping a massive amount of money to her, one-hundred and twenty-five million dollars, enough that she could buy a private island without an extradition treaty. Better yet, Little Nina could buy out all of the local politicians in New York. From there, even the Superheroes of the Seven would have little choice but to dance to her tune, lest they face legal consequences.

While she was relaxing in her parlor, ABBA's "Money Money" was playing in the background. It was fitting because with the amount of money she was getting paid as if it were pittance to her benefactor, she could literally go legit, fool around for the rest of her days, and have a ball. Pierce made that amount of money on a slow Tuesday. Securities Fraud was big business.

Her Parlor was of the fancy royalty variety. Sure, she did not make anywhere near the endless amount of money Pierce did through securities fraud, she did make more money in a week than what the average individual knew what to do with in a lifetime. The very panels that made up the walls were gilded with real gold in ornate patterns typical of Czarist elites in Russia. All the doors were fancy double doors with ornate paneling outlined with golden gilding. Nothing as grand as Arthur Pierce, but still very fancy even for a billionaire.

Posted at those doors were two bodyguards armed with AK74 assault rifles. Inside of their expensive business suits were plate carriers that were more than capable of stopping a .308 armor-piercing round from the standard engagement ranges most firefights broke out. Best of all, the bodyguards were all former KGB operatives, skilled enough to kill a man before he could even react if he so much as posed a threat at all.

Just as the contract had been announced in the criminal underworld, a short, skinny North African man walked into the parlor to answer the call. It was Sergei, Little Nina's top assassin when it came to extremely high-profile contracts such as this. Sergei, or better known by his street name, Frenchie, was neither a physically imposing man or a nimble one. What he lacked in strength and speed, he made up with in sheer IQ. Frenchie could effortlessly cover his tracks so well that the cops would not be able to find him unless they caught him on camera dead to rights. Intelligent criminals were a rare breed, as high IQ people generally tended to make it almost effortlessly in the private or government sectors, amassing great fortunes. Not Frenchie. He loves drugs almost as much as Arthur himself.

"What's the contract, Nina?" asked Frenchie.

"Believe it or not, a relatively simple contract killing," answered Nina slyly.

"How much?" inquired Frenchie coldly.

"Twelve-point-five million dollars is the commission, around ten percent of the contract. It is from a billionaire who wishes to see Cameron Coleman dead," answered Nina

"Great. When do I start?" asked Frenchie.

"Right now, if you so desire. You will get twelve million, five hundred thousand dollars wired immediately to your account upon completion," answered Nina.

When Frenchie was about to walk out of the room, Nina forgot to mention a certain detail about the killing so as not to arouse any suspicion. She quickly got up and poked Frenchie in the back with her finger to get his attention. He turned to face her, slightly annoyed at first with his expression changing immediately out of fear to a smile.

"One more thing, Sergei," requested Nina.

"Yes."

"Our client would like the death to look like a suicide. Compose a suicide note after you put two shells in the back of his head," she concluded.

"Can do," said Frenchie jubilantly,