Chapter 85
"We need to get rid of the Monolith," I said, concluding the brief but deeply unsettling interrogation of Malick about his god.
"I agree." Barton nodded, glancing at the screen showing Fury's tired, serious face.
"What are the options?" Fury said flatly. Both of Fury's eyes were narrowed with equal skepticism. I still couldn't get used to that sight. "Judging by what we just learned, Malick's scientists studied this thing inside and out. It's indestructible by conventional means."
"We have Hyperion." I shrugged. "He can throw it into the Sun, and that will be that. No Monolith, no potential problem. By the way, how did he do with Strucker?"
"Everything went according to plan," Fury answered. "The world already knows that the dangerous terrorist Baron Strucker was neutralized by Hyperion. The captured Strucker and Doctor List are already flying to the Triskelion."
"List?"
"His chief scientist. Meanwhile, my teams have detained Sitwell, Rumlow, and Garrett."
The last three were high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Pierce had given up. Jasper Sitwell and John Garrett were Level 8 agents. Brock Rumlow was the commander of STRIKE, the combat subdivision used for dirty work. Each member of this trio could have become the next Hydra head if they'd learned about Pierce's situation. Naturally, we didn't give them that opportunity.
The arrival at the Triskelion marked the beginning of a new, even more chaotic phase. There was the captured Zola, copied onto a flash drive. There was Malick, now under our control. There were Strucker and List. For them, I materialized another Mental Worm without hesitation. Too much information was coming in real time from different sources. Fury had to urgently bring in his deputy, Maria Hill, as well as Natasha Romanoff.
The following two days were perhaps the longest of my life.
We studied Zola's data. We interrogated the surviving heads relentlessly, cross-referencing their testimony to paint the monstrous picture of Hydra's structure, its factions, and its true scope.
Finally, we learned the name of the head. In Hydra's case, that merely meant the smartest of the monsters.
"A leader?" Malick laughed. He sat in the interrogation room, secured and under my control. "Hydra doesn't subscribe to such primitive concepts. Still, there's one who comes closest to that definition. Daniel Whitehall."
"Kraken?" Fury leaned forward sharply. Both eyes widened in disbelief. "He died! He died in our prison in eighty-nine!"
"He died in our prison, Nick," Malick said, smiling. "And you thought the same about Zola, didn't you? But Whitehall is even more dangerous. He's smarter than Strucker and more fanatical than I am. His Hydra ideals are unshakeable. And his abilities, which he obtained from an Inhuman," Malick spat the word, "place him on par with Omega-level mutants."
"Is he stronger than Hyperion?" Barton asked. He was present for the interrogation.
"No..." Malick shook his head, and some of the tension eased. "But he is definitely more dangerous. Even Zola doesn't know the full extent of his capabilities, his resources, or his true influence."
"Then how do you know about him?" Fury asked.
"Oh." Malick smiled, his expression dripping with arrogance. "The thing is, I created the modern Whitehall. In 'eighty-nine, I found him a source. An Inhuman. A woman with the gift of eternal youth. I delivered her to him. I let him dissect her to rejuvenate himself. I did all of this so Hydra would grow more powerful! I did all of this for the glory of my god!" he finished with a fanatical cry.
"Where is he located?"
Malick told us everything. And then some.
More dirty politicians. More details about Hydra's financial empire. We now had leads on European, specifically Swiss, banks and corporations.
And there were even more heads.
Beyond Kraken, the immortal telepath with incredible regeneration, we learned of Viper, Doctor Faustus, and Gorgon.
The avalanche was only beginning its descent, and this trio widened its scope.
First, Ophelia Sarkissian, known as Viper. She controlled a Hydra cell in Eastern Europe while simultaneously holding sway over virtually the entire criminal underworld of the region. Intelligent. Dangerous. Cunning. Paranoid. But like Malick and Pierce, she was not a metahuman. That made her a solvable problem. The plan was simple. A Mental Worm. A summons from Pierce to the U.S. under a plausible pretext, since Malick was officially detained. Then capture.
The second was Doctor Faustus: Johann Fennhoff, an Austrian psychiatrist and longtime Hydra operative. He was a weak metahuman, capable of influencing minds, controlling them, and rewriting memories, but his abilities required prolonged contact: hours of therapy to take effect. In actual combat, he was useless. Besides, the old man was already past seventy. His detention had been quiet; they'd picked him up for bribery right in the middle of a psychoanalysis lecture at a university. One less head to worry about.
The third target was the problem. Gorgon. Tomi Shishido. A mutant born in Japan. He possessed an incredible intellect that had allowed him to rise to the very top of two organizations simultaneously. Hydra and the Hand clan. An international terrorist. The founder of the Dawn of the White Light cult. Responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks across Japan and Korea.
And if it were only his intellect, that would be one thing. But Gorgon was a nightmare as a metahuman too. He could turn people to stone with a single glance. His regeneration rivaled Wolverine's. He had superhuman strength, speed, and agility. And on top of all that, there was the Chi. He was a master of this energy. Unsurprising, given his status as the Hand's head jonin.
The cherry on top was that no one had any information on his location. Unlike the other heads, Gorgon had no permanent base. He didn't even operate from a specific country.
"We will have to leave him for now," Fury muttered grimly, staring at the dossier. His entire expression conveyed displeasure. He was such a dangerous bastard, remaining at large.
I agreed with him on that. From what I'd gathered during the interrogations, Gorgon was loyal to the Hand first and Hydra second. Everyone in Hydra understood this, but they found it advantageous to keep such an asset close. That gave him control of nearly all of East Asia.
Asia. Europe. America. Even Africa, which Pierce's cell controlled through Rumlow. But what about the Soviets? Of course, Hydra had put down roots there too. Deep ones.
"Leviathan is Hydra," Viper reported, almost happily, almost proudly. She was the one most closely connected to the Soviet cell.
I'd already grown tired of noting this, but Fury's face went whiter than chalk. It was pale. And I understood why.
Leviathan was the Soviet version of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not a branch. A full counterpart. It had been created as a counterweight and potential ally against global threats. The Soviets controlled it completely.
At Leviathan's head stood its own Fury. His name was Vasily Karpov. Colonel-General of the Soviet Army. A war hero. And one of Hydra's chief heads.
And he personally oversaw the Winter Soldier program. The threads leading to Bucky Barnes ran directly to him.
This was without a doubt the most dangerous head of all. Attacking Karpov was attacking the Soviet state. And in this reality, the Soviets, as I had noted earlier, were a fully capable superpower. Not far behind the U.S. Using Hyperion or S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to storm Karpov's base could instantly escalate into a full-scale military confrontation.
Pierce, Malick, and Strucker were internal problems. Or they involved countries like Sokovia that did not dare to make a sound. Here, everything rose to an entirely different, global level.
"It's a true Leviathan indeed," I muttered, realizing what depths we had just peered into.
Leviathan was the KGB. The GRU. The entire Soviet intelligence machine. Fighting this monster head-on was pointless. Suicidal. But we had been trying to avoid making waves all along. We could make Leviathan devour itself from within.
First, the capture of Whitehall. Hyperion handled it effortlessly. Kraken, one of Hydra's oldest heads, an immortal Nazi scientist, was sitting in his castle in Germany, sipping martinis, and watching with interest as what he believed to be ordinary internal strife unfolded: the fall of Pierce and Malick. Before he could even understand what was happening, Hyperion pulled him out of his chair and delivered him to the Triskelion. His conversation was a short one. Another Mental Worm. Kraken's Spirit was nowhere near as powerful as Hyperion's. So we hadn't been able to establish a direct correlation between power level and resistance yet.
After capturing Whitehall, we wasted no time and began implementing the Moscow Gambit plan.
No Worms against the Soviets. No direct attacks. Maximum caution. Surgical precision.
Fury, Natasha Romanoff, and I (for whom Leviathan and the Red Room were a painful past) immersed ourselves in analyzing the data obtained from Pierce, Malick, Strucker, and now Whitehall. Our objective was to find irrefutable, ironclad evidence that Vasily Karpov was a Hydra agent. It couldn't just be the prisoners' words. We needed concrete facts: records of secret meetings, financial transactions, and scientific data that Strucker had shared with Karpov through unofficial channels.
For several hours, we reviewed terabytes of information, studying Leviathan's structure. Karpov, the Hydra agent, sat at the very top. But ninety-nine percent of the organization's officers were Soviet patriots through and through. They despised the Nazis.
Finally, we found the ideal target. Major General Sokolov. Karpov's deputy. A hero of the Afghan War. A fanatical patriot who despised the Americans but loathed the Nazis even more. Forty-five years old. Ambitious. And judging by several leaked reports, he had long considered Karpov a senile old man holding Leviathan's development back. A perfect candidate for an internal coup.
After that, it was a matter of technique. More precisely, a matter of Gwen.
A covert insertion of the invisible girl into the Moscow Oblast. And then, on Sokolov's desk at his guarded dacha, a folder appeared. It contained a dossier and a short anonymous note. It read, "There is a rat in your house. We have removed our Nazis. Deal with yours. S.H.I.E.L.D."
What happened next was not hard to predict. Sokolov opened the dossier and saw direct evidence that his superior was a traitor to the Motherland and a Nazi collaborator. In the Soviet Union, this was the gravest accusation possible. He flew into a rage. He immediately gathered his loyal officers, patriots like himself. Karpov was arrested that very same day in his own office. No escalation. This was not the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R. This was the U.S.S.R.'s patriots versus the Nazi Hydra. Perfect. And even if something had gone off-plan, it would not have been a serious problem for us. It would merely have meant the Reds failed to resolve an internal issue. But fortunately, they succeeded.
While Sokolov stormed Karpov's office and began purging Leviathan from within, Hyperion paid one last visit. This time, it was to a secret Siberian Hydra base with no ties to any Soviet military installation. He retrieved Bucky Barnes and five other Winter Soldiers from cryostasis, quickly and cleanly. Afterward, all traces were erased and the base destroyed with a high-yield thermoplastic explosive. It was a technology that bore my name.
In less than twenty-four hours, Sokolov had become the new legitimate head of Leviathan. The entire Soviet Hydra cell, its upper echelon, was arrested and awaiting trial. From the world's perspective, the U.S.S.R. had undergone another anti-corruption purge. To those in the know, Hydra's most vicious and untouchable head had just been cut off and cauterized by its own hand.
Three days had passed. We had not slept for three days.
That was fine for Hyperion. With his non-human physiology, it was nothing. It was fine for me. A couple of hours of sleep a week were sufficient for me. But the others, Fury, Barton, Hill, Coulson, and Natasha, held on through sheer willpower and my fatigue suppressants, whose effectiveness they'd experienced firsthand.
The final results of Operation Night of Severed Heads were staggering.
Hydra had been practically decapitated: Pierce, Malick, Strucker, Kraken (who was Whitehall), Viper, Karpov, and Faustus. Seven of the eight heads known to us had been neutralized. Only Gorgon remained free. He was now cut off from all his resources and connections. For the coming months, possibly years, he would be forced to keep a low profile. But I would find a way to catch that bastard too. The work had to be completed.
Especially since Gorgon now had far fewer resources, with Zola's Algorithm gone, the remaining Hydra was blind and disorganized.
Meanwhile, their bank accounts were zeroed out, thanks to Zola's and Pierce's data. Their arsenals were seized or destroyed. Even their faith (Malick's cult) was undermined by the Monolith's destruction. Hyperion had indeed thrown it into the Sun.
The remaining thousands of nameless Hydra agents scattered across the world were simply people. Without money, leaders, communication, or purpose, they were no longer Hydra. They had become nothing more than unemployed terrorists. The renewed S.H.I.E.L.D., now under Fury's absolute leadership, would quietly round them up over the next few years.
The snowball had run its course.
We (me, Fury, Barton, Gwen, Hill, Coulson, and Natasha) gathered in the Director's office at the Triskelion. For the first time in three days, we felt safe. We felt free.
A wave of tired, nearly synchronized sighs of relief rolled through the office.
"Until the very end, I thought this was impossible." Barton rubbed his temples, staring at nothing. He spoke quietly, almost to himself.
"Truly," Maria Hill said. Her voice was full of exhaustion but also steely resolve. "Who would have thought that an organization thousands of years old would break its teeth on..." She looked at me.
"Absolute control, which is why I'll have a hell of a time sleeping peacefully from now on." Fury finished for her. But his voice no longer carried its former fury. Over the past three days, we had been through hell. Faced with the abyss that had been uncovered, that topic seemed to have receded into the background.
"You weren't sleeping peacefully before this either, Nick," Hyperion spoke up unexpectedly in my defense. He stood at the window, gazing at the dawn over Washington. Over the past few days, he had seen enough filth to understand that Hydra was not simply about spy games.
"I just want to believe..." Fury began, but I interrupted him.
"You can believe, Nick. Hydra was our first shared victory. I hope it won't be the last. And trust me, against some of the threats coming our way, my tool definitely won't be enough. Against something like the Hulk, my Worm would be like a pebble against an elephant." I shrugged.
"Just promise me." Fury looked me straight in the eye. I saw desperation there, a man grasping for solid ground. "Promise me you'll only use this to protect humanity."
"I promise." I nodded gravely. "If it were up to me, I'd build in safeguards. But we both know every lock can be picked."
"John..." Natasha Romanoff's measured voice silenced the room. Over the last few days, she'd kept to herself, lost in thought, avoiding contact. The only exception had been Operation Moscow Gambit, where she'd operated with cold efficiency. Now she looked at me, her eyes holding desperate hope. "Can you... bring her back? Can you bring Elena back?"
"Agent Romanoff!" Fury barked. "Don't overstep your bounds."
"If there's even the slightest chance..." Natasha didn't even turn toward him. Her voice was quiet but firm. "...and if I have to lose my position for it, I don't care. Thompson has already proven he can do the impossible. Why couldn't he have this in his arsenal too?"
Elena Belova. I ran through the options instantly. Her brain had been nearly destroyed. Her soul had left her body almost immediately. A Vivisector from the Arcanum? No, the injuries were too severe. A healing potion? It would require a spark of life. A resurrection? There were no such potions on my list. Strange Science? It worked with existing souls.
"Not yet," I answered quietly, shaking my head.
That was enough for her.
"Not yet..." she echoed, and all of her hope was in those words. She nodded. "I will wait. For as long as it takes. You will... save her?"
"Of course," I answered easily. "As soon as an opportunity presents itself."
And for some reason, I did not doubt that an opportunity would present itself. The System was too imbalanced. Resurrection methods from some conditional D&D setting could drop at any moment.
We discussed further plans for another ten minutes or so. We deepened the cooperation between my company and the renewed S.H.I.E.L.D., which I could now trust. We mopped up Hydra's remnants. We arranged technology transfers. Finally, we dispersed.
Barton, Fury, Gwen, and I flew back to New York on a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet. The others, Hill, Coulson, Natasha, and Hyperion, remained at the Triskelion, dealing with the consequences. We purged the minor agents. We suppressed the information that the Hydra remnants were still trying to release it.
Morning sunlight filled Thompson Corp. I could finally breathe freely here. Another problem had been solved.
I sent Gwen off to sleep. She had been dead on her feet. Then I entered the main lobby and saw Peter. He was sitting in a chair, watching the sunrise through the panoramic windows. He looked tired but renewed. Calm. Content.
He had completed his meditation. His face said it better than words ever could.
That meant there was no point in delaying further. It was the perfect time for him to obtain the powers destined for him by the universe. Or it was the perfect time to slightly cheat the universe. More precisely, it was the perfect time to exploit a loophole.
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