The sentries didn't even have time to process a target acquisition. Their metallic frames warped, glowing molten at the joints before collapsing into pools of slag. The flames receded, obediently coiling around Dave like shadowed serpents waiting for their next command.
His expression never changed.
He stepped over the smoldering wreckage, continuing deeper until the architecture shifted—metal walls giving way to reinforced alloy and adaptive plating meant to withstand energy-based breaches. Someone in Hydra had learned from previous massacres. They reinforced this sector specifically to hold their "assets."
A mistake.
The sealed blast door ahead hissed, locking down with a deep metallic thunk as automated turrets descended from the ceiling. Laser lenses pulsed, targeting grids lining up—ready to fire.
Dave tilted his head slightly, almost disappointed. "You're still trying?"
The vents in the ceiling opened. Gas. Chemical suppression—a mix designed for high-level metahuman containment.
He inhaled slowly.
"Amusing."
His aura flared.
The gas didn't even touch him. It evaporated mid-air, shredded by raw heat distortion. The turrets opened fire in perfect synchronization, but black flames spiraled upward, forming a twisting pillar. Bullets, plasma bolts, shock rounds—all swallowed. A heartbeat later, they spat back out as slag, raining down like molten hail.
He placed his hand on the blast door.
Metal screamed.
The reinforced alloy bubbled and split like wax under a flame. Dave pushed, and the door slid open with a groan, edges glowing molten. On the other side, Hydra personnel scrambled in panic. Research officers slammed consoles, trying to erase data. A captain barked into a comm, ordering full facility containment and asset purge.
Dave stepped into the room, voice low, quiet, but carrying the weight of a sentence.
"You should've stayed hidden."
Someone fired. The shot never reached him. Black fire curved around it like a claw and pierced straight through the gunman's chest, clean and silent.
The captain backed away, shaking. "W-We're just—just doing what we—"
Dave didn't let him finish.
The fire didn't roar this time. It whispered.
A flash—and the room fell silent. Bodies crumbled to ash without a scream.
Only one thing remained intact: a central console, screens flickering with biometric records, experimentation logs… and names.
A list.
Dave stepped closer, scrolling past thousands of designations: asset numbers, failed subjects, living weapons. And then—highlighted in red.
[PROJECT: WRAITH CORE]
[STATUS: ACTIVE | OFF-SITE TRANSFER PENDING]
Coordinates pulsed on the screen—another Hydra site. Larger. Deeper. Heavily shielded.
A slow smile touched his lips, not of joy, but of grim purpose.
"Good," he murmured. "I'm not done yet."
Behind him, a freed prisoner, barely conscious, lifted their head and rasped, "W-What are you… ?"
Dave paused at the threshold, flames flickering at his heels like a living mantle.
"Hydra calls it extermination," he said without turning. "I just call it passing time."
And with that, he vanished—leaving only drifting ash and a burning path toward the next nest.
A shockwave rippled through the air as Dave vanished, the scorched ground fracturing under the sudden compression of force. The freed prisoners blinked, dazed, disoriented—but the flames he left behind lingered like sentinels, forming a barrier of black fire that shielded them from whatever remained alive in the facility.
Far above the smoldering base, the world was still. Quiet. Too quiet.
Then—BOOM.
A distant Hydra compound, miles away, activated.
Hidden sensor towers lit up across the region, detecting the loss of communication from Site 17-B. Cold algorithms kicked online, and deep beneath the earth, in an underground chamber lined with cryo-vaults, a shrouded figure stirred.
[WRAITH CORE: EARLY WAKE SEQUENCE DETECTED]
[Override: ENGAGED]
Subject 01: Status—Unstable
Subject 02: Status—Dormant
Subject 03: Status—Critical
Subject 04:—ERROR
A silent alarm, inaudible to human ears, whispered along Hydra's network like a digital prayer for survival.
Too late.
Above the second Hydra facility
The air split with a thunderclap that wasn't sound, but pressure—a displacement in space itself. Dave stepped out of thin air onto a towering comms relay, the night wind whipping around him as he looked down at the sprawling complex buried into the mountainside.
High-security drones patrolled the air. Turret arrays rotated in mathematical patterns. Shield barriers pulsed with energy, invisible without enhanced sight.
Dave's eyes reflected the facility's pulse grid—a lattice of motion detectors, laser nets, kinetic shields, underground power routes. He saw all of it. Every angle. Every kill zone.
He didn't slow.
He stepped forward off the tower—
—and fell like a meteor.
The ground never had a chance to brace.
CRASH.
The entire western sector of the compound caved inward from a single impact as he hit the ground, a ripple of destruction expanding outward like a shockwave under black fire.
Hydra soldiers burst out of their encampments, alarms blaring.
[BREACH DETECTED — TIER-OMEGA RESPONSE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[ALL UNITS—DEPLOY. DO NOT ALLOW CONTACT WITH WRAITH CORE.]
Dave straightened amid the crater, his silhouette framed by fire.
Hydra's elite units—a mix of cyber-enhanced infantry and stolen Stark drones—encircled him from all directions. Shields locked. Weapons primed.
A Hydra commander shouted, voice amplified through suit speakers, desperate. "Engage last resort! If he reaches the vault, activate CORE WIPE! I repeat, WI—"
Dave lifted his head.
Black fire erupted behind him like wings.
"You're welcome to try."
And then—he moved.
The commander didn't even register it. One second Dave was standing in the crater. The next, the entire front line of Hydra troops exploded outward—not from heat, not even from impact—but from the sheer force of movement alone.
Their armor twisted. Metal screamed. Sparks showered like rain as he cut through them like a silent guillotine made of shadow and flame.
Dave tore through corridors like a scythe through dry grass. Black flames trailed behind him like a living storm, consuming metal, flesh, and data alike. Each time a terminal tried to purge itself, the fire curled into the machine like a serpent, melting drives before they could erase their sins.
Another Hydra outpost lit the night in flames.
He didn't pause.
The moment his work was complete, he was already gone—blinking across the map like a shadow jumping between dying stars.
Facility 23: Fallen.
Facility 09: Neutralized.
Facility 03: Breached.
Every signal Hydra sent for support was intercepted. Every distress code was cut short, severed mid-transmission by something faster than light and infinitely more ruthless.
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