"Someone's coming."
Deathblade snapped his head up, ghost-green eyes cutting into the darkness toward the tunnel entrance like twin searchlights. His extraordinary senses picked up not just the sound of footsteps, but clear fragments of conversation.
"...Captain! Signal confirmed! The high-energy reaction point is in the depths of the tunnel ahead! Distance... three hundred meters! Radiation readings are spiking—hitting peak values! And it's... drawing some 'things' toward it!"
Clint "067"'s voice came through the comm inside his Hawkeye visor, ragged and heavy. On the detector in his hand, a huge blue energy point was flashing wildly across the screen.
"Copy. Stay sharp."
Steve's voice was as steady as ever, though his breathing had grown a little rushed. He gripped his shield tight and strode down the uneven floor of the abandoned tunnel.
Bucky followed on his flank with an assault rifle in hand, silent, his metal arm catching stray reflections from the tactical flashlight in the dark. Natasha came right behind them, moving like a ghost, without a sound.
They had followed the trail of energy fluctuations from the scepter that JARVIS had locked onto, and it had finally led them into this dangerous underground maze. But they had barely gone in very far when an attack they had not anticipated slammed into them.
"Raaah!"
"Gaaah!!"
A dozen twisted figures suddenly lunged out from the dark corners on both sides of the passage. They were no longer Chitauri soldiers frozen in ice, but people—ragged, eyes glowing an abnormal blue, skin filmed with thin frost or streaked with oozing black slime.
The leaked energy radiation from the Mind Scepter had polluted the tunnels and groundwater here, and at the same time affected—no, rewritten—some of the "residents" lurking in this place: homeless drifters, criminals hiding out, desperate addicts... Their minds and bodies had been warped under the corrosion of the gem's chaotic psychic power, turning them into crazed, feral mutants, driven by aggression and carrying faint ice or energy-corrosion abilities.
"Careful! They're still human! Non-lethal only—take them down, don't kill!" Steve barked.
He swung his shield up to block the snapping jaws of a charging mutant, his other hand clamping around the man's throat before he slammed him over his shoulder and knocked him out in one fluid motion. The chill pouring off the man's body made him shiver.
Bang! Bang!
Bucky's shots hit another mutant cleanly in the knee and shoulder, both non-lethal spots. The man went down screaming, blue eyes still burning with madness...
"They're being controlled!"
Natasha twisted aside from a mutant spewing black slime from his mouth, flipped, and dropped him with a backward kick as she spoke quickly. "The scepter's energy is messing with their minds!"
Screeeak—!
A shrill scrape of metal rang out behind them.
"Captain, behind us!" Clint shouted from the high perch at the rear.
Zzzrak—BOOM!
Shards of blue ice sprayed through the air as Natasha's crisp spinning kick connected, catching another mutant—eyes glowing deep blue, breath spraying freezing mist—under the jaw. He crumpled without even a grunt.
But more figures were already pouring out from the gaps between the piles of construction rubble and twisted, broken steel beams lining both sides of the tunnel. Some charged in with hoarse roars, vomiting disgusting black fluid; others came on in silence, their whole bodies wrapped in a strange, biting cold as they hurled themselves at the team.
(End of Chapter)
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