Chapter 20: Skye: This Lynn Guy Is Pretty Interesting
Watching Lynn hurry back to the car, grab most of the money she'd given him that morning, and walk off.
When he returned, he was carrying a ton of bags, big and small.
Natasha asked curiously, "Is this the stuff you use to make those magic potions?"
As she spoke, she looked over curiously.
"What is all this? Is the stuff you apothecaries brew always this weird?"
Ignoring Natasha's curiosity, Lynn hit the gas and drove straight for the Hudson River.
Natasha made small talk the whole way, but it was clear she was trying to figure him out.
He drove the car to an abandoned house by the Hudson River.
Natasha tried to follow him in, but Lynn stopped her.
"This next part is the potion-making. It's not suitable for you to come in."
Leaning against the hood, Natasha removed her electronic mask and watched Lynn with a lazy, flirtatious smile. "What, is the mysterious apothecary afraid I'll steal your secrets?"
"Not really."
Ignoring Natasha's pose, Lynn, still holding his bags, said, "It's just... the next part is a little too 'magical.' I'd rather not be recorded and studied frame by frame."
"It draws too much attention."
He pointed to his own eyes, then went into the house.
Seeing that Lynn somehow knew her contact lenses had a recording function...
Natasha immediately took them out.
She thought for a moment, deleted all the footage from the lenses, and then put in her earpiece. "You heard that, Steve? I told you Lynn wasn't simple."
Steve had been monitoring their conversation ever since she met up with Lynn.
So, hearing her, Steve Rogers said flatly, "I already told you. Detective Lynn might have secrets, but that's his private business."
"Besides, he saved us. And he hasn't done anything wrong, he hasn't hurt any innocent people."
"Natasha, I don't know if you've been at SHIELD too long, but this is absolutely not how you treat a friend."
Hearing Steve's serious tone, Natasha was silent for a moment. "Okay... maybe you're right. I'll apologize to him when he comes out."
"But this is also why I didn't report him to SHIELD."
She cut the comm link, got back in the car, reclined the seat, and lay back lazily to rest.
But her mind kept replaying those future visions from the resonator.
***
Inside the abandoned house.
Lynn went into the lab he had modified and took some fluorescent powder from his pocket, sprinkling it on the floor.
Soon, a circle with a hexagram in the center was formed on the ground.
After doing this, Lynn took out the potion ingredients one by one and placed them in a cauldron.
Once all the preparations were complete, Lynn sat in front of the hexagram.
Death energy coiled around his fingertips. His hands, covered in death energy, tore open the empty air in front of him.
An ancient-looking book fell out of the death-space.
The torn space sealed itself.
This grimoire, stolen from Mephisto by the dark sorcerer, floated in the air.
As death energy flowed into it, the book emitted a colorful light that enveloped the cauldron.
And then, the physical form of the materials inside the cauldron began to change.
That's right. Lynn never had to brew potions bit by bit like a wizard, sorcerer, or alchemist.
Instead, after the prep work, Mephisto's grimoire would automatically brew the corresponding potions based on his [Mystic Potion Crafting] level.
Watching the fully automated process that only required him to do the finishing touches...
Lynn lay down on a rug and started scrolling through videos on his phone.
***
Meanwhile, at the burnt-out villa in the suburbs of New York.
"This is it!"
Looking at the faint, fluctuating readings on her detector.
The future Quake—Skye, who had not yet changed her name to Daisy Johnson—looked thrilled.
[Image: Daisy Johnson (Skye/Quake)]
This was the first time she had ever found real evidence of something... extraordinary.
As a member of the Rising Tide, Skye believed the public had a right to know.
This was the Rising Tide's core belief.
She believed that the truth about most things was being covered up by official organizations like SHIELD, the FBI, and so on.
This was a violation of the public's right to know.
If it hadn't been for the Battle of New York—an alien invasion that was impossible to hide...
...ordinary people probably still wouldn't know that alien life existed.
Watching the readings on her device get weaker, Skye and her long legs moved carefully toward the ruins of the destroyed villa.
When she got to the rubble, she could see it had clearly been picked through. Anything of value was gone.
Skye searched carefully and finally found a small, finger-sized metal tube near the edge of the ruins.
She pocketed it, took it back to her van, and immediately sent a photo to her partner, asking her to run a check on it.
Her partner investigated and found it was a connector used in some kind of precision instrument.
Skye was ecstatic.
'I knew it. Some kind of supernatural experiment happened here, and it went wrong and blew up.'
At this thought, Skye immediately hacked into the CIA's satellites.
Using their surveillance, she restored the footage taken at the time.
Looking at the people in the footage, Skye frowned.
"Fully-armed SHIELD agents, and... the Avengers' Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers? Huh? Who's this guy?"
Looking at the picture of Lynn, Skye started digging on her computer.
She found Lynn's identity and kept watching.
Unfortunately, the rest of the footage was gone. It wasn't deleted; the satellite feed just seemed to have been affected by some kind of magnetic field, and it hadn't recorded anything else.
Undeterred, Skye hacked into the Pentagon's satellites, but the result was the same.
She closed her laptop and leaned back in her seat, thinking.
'The Avengers are obviously hard to approach. And the SHIELD agents... they'd love nothing more than to arrest everyone in the Rising Tide.'
'Maybe... maybe I can find out the truth from this detective... Lynn.'
At this thought, Skye started her van and drove away.
***
By the Hudson River.
Seeing Lynn walk out holding glass vials, Natasha lazily sat up. "You're done? I thought it would take all night."
She checked her watch. Only two hours had passed.
Natasha said with a smile.
"Here. This is the stuff you and Captain Rogers wanted."
Lynn handed the wrapped potions to Natasha. "Don't forget the rest of the money."
----
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