Chapter 1777: Farewell Ceremony and Newbies
Instead, Haley felt like the Joker had been… testing her, when he touched her cheek.
In fact, Luke was indeed testing the feel of her skin.
This was the first change which the symbiote caused to the physique.
Selina had formed a symbiotic relations.h.i.+p too early. She was someone he knew, so he couldn’t do anything to her, much less treat her as a test subject.
So, Luke simply took advantage of the fact that he wasn’t familiar with this female doctor to get all the data he needed.
In any case, she had already been given the symbiote, and it came with a high-paying “job.” There was no need to let it go to waste.
Luke got straight to the point. “Pack up, we’re heading out.”
Haley perked up. “Where to?”
Luke said, “New York.”
Haley was baffled.
The female doctor was soon ready, and the two of them took a plane to New York in the light of the setting sun.
Luke had brought Haley back to say goodbye to her sister, Margaret.
After that, Haley would start working, and wouldn’t have much time to miss her family.
Although he hadn’t received any money from the previous commission, he was used to seeing things through to the end, and Haley had to say her farewells in person.
Returning to her hometown, Haley’s thoughts whirled. New York was the Bat Squad’s “territory.” Was he saying that he wasn’t afraid of the Bat Squad?
That was indeed Luke’s plan.
After being sent running once, Simon didn’t dare show his face. His mind control over Haley had weakened significantly.
That was because the woman only admired the strong.
Winning and losing was one thing, but Simon didn’t even have the courage to face the enemy. This went against Haley’s instinct to wors.h.i.+p the strong.
The biggest taboo in mind control was to go against instinct.
The most effective was indirect control or to bypa.s.s a person’s instinct.
But this wasn’t an oversight on Simon’s part. It was just that he didn’t think much of Haley at all.
She was just a tool that could be used, and she was always with Simon. He could strengthen his mind control over her at any time, so there was no need to go to so much trouble.
In any case, after Haley’s symbiosis with Agony, whatever method Simon used would be useless.
From this point of view, he had done something right.
To bypa.s.s Simon’s control, Luke used indirect control.
Coupled with the impact of all the news on Haley during this period of time, Luke had successfully turned “the Joker is strong, so he’s worth idolizing” into Haley’s true worldview.
What Agony could affect was just the fake thoughts generated by mind control.
The immunity to mental abilities naturally had no effect on the host’s own worldview.
It was like how a glutton had the thought that “good food must live up to expectations,” and would still enjoy eating after the symbiosis.
A person who wasn’t partial to eating, on the other hand, would return to a normal diet even if they had been turned into a glutton after the symbiosis.
What Luke did was bypa.s.s the “like to eat” threshold and install a “eat more of the food you like to eat” setting.
It wasn’t a matter of “like to eat,” but of “like or not.”
Haley clearly liked thrills and adventure, and liked the unknown and mystery even more.
In this regard, Simon was far from being as cla.s.sy as the Joker.
Simon didn’t care about a tool that was completely under his control; Haley knew a lot about him.
Luke, on the other hand, had kept his real ident.i.ty hidden from the beginning. He wouldn’t tell Haley his secret; making her guess was also more interesting.
It was obvious who was more mysterious between the two.
This feeling was even more obvious when the Joker waltzed openly into Margaret’s luxury apartment.
After the sisters had a heart-to-heart for one night, the Joker grandly took Haley away the next morning, once again proving his strength.
Being able to spend a night in the Bat Squad’s nest without being found was strength.
On the way here, the Joker had warned her never to come to New York alone, or she would be caught and would need to be rescued.
Haley had been surprised when Luke pointed out more than 20 surveillance cameras nearby and told her who they belonged to.
She never knew that New York, where she had lived for more than ten years, had such a side to it.
The overwhelming majority of people in this city lived under so many pairs of eyes, and had no idea that their lives were under someone else’s complete control and scrutiny at any time.
If Luke knew what she was thinking, he would just laugh.
The female doctor still didn’t understand that Luke’s real eyes were the smartphones that would be indispensable for everyone in the future.
No matter how mysterious a big boss was, and even if he didn’t use a phone, his subordinates would.
Even if the mid-level cadres were cautious when handling matters, the bottom-level personnel couldn’t leave their phones alone.
Unless they were existences like the Chitauri and Asgardians, who weren’t part of the society on Earth, everyone else would ultimately live in an online world created through smartphones, and would have nowhere to run.
Luke’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t have enough information, but that it wasn’t very reliable.
There was too much information online, and even more trolls who had nothing to do but talk nonsense online.
On average, Alfred could filter out more than 100 “suspicious leads” related to extraordinary events every day.
There were tens of thousands of such reports every day, and most of them were deliberately fake.
As for the remaining highly suspicious leads, n.o.body would know if they were real or fake until they investigated for themselves.
In New York, the Bat Squad itself was the source of three to five of these “highly suspicious leads” on average every day.
After all, according to the safety rules Luke himself had put in place, the most basic one was to operate under cover.
Many pa.s.sers-by and hoodlums liked to post on social media about running into ghosts or strange monsters.
So, Luke needed both the PDD and Haley.
Putting Eddie and Haley aside, the rate of growth of over 20 PDD interns on the same level still wouldn’t be as fast as the rate at which they investigated things.
This was how s.h.i.+ELD had expanded step by step to hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide.
Thankfully, Luke wasn’t the government, nor did he plan to oversee all matters to do with the extraordinary.
Slow and steady, and eating only as much as their mouths could hold – that had always been the goal of the Justice League.
Eddie and Haley were just two more mouths that could only take two bites.
Luke couldn’t be greedy, or the Justice League would go the way of s.h.i.+ELD.
…
After taking Haley to New York for the farewell ceremony, Luke set off with her.
The female doctor was a novice, and was relying on a slightly recalcitrant symbiote, so Luke had to take care of the newbies.
Speaking of which, he hadn’t groomed many newbies.
Strictly speaking, the only “newbie” he had groomed was Selina.
But in terms of their “foundations,” Haley couldn’t compare.
There was no way he would spend a few years grooming a semi-villainous accomplice – Luke’s approach this time was simple and straightforward.
They flew back to Los Angeles in the morning and went to 1120 Westchester Road in the evening.
Looking at the dark mansion, Haley felt a little strange. “Are there superhumans here?”
Luke turned around and gave her a big smile. “Trust me, the problems in there definitely aren’t problems for you.”