Chapter 396: The Essence of the ElementalsThe howling gale didn't just obliterate the Elementals' localized weather system; it whipped Silvija Sablinova's silver hair into a chaotic frenzy. She shoved the strands out of her eyes, staring blankly at Spider-Man.
"Are you Gandalf?"
Peter lowered his hands, shaking out the magical cramps in his fingers. "Uh, no. I do actually know a guy with a cape, though. Just to be clear, that took a lot out of me. I can't spam spells like that. And I'm about to... step out for a second."
The Winds of Watoomb was exactly what it sounded like: a spell borrowing power from the mystical entity Watoomb. Since Peter didn't have a direct cosmic hotline to the mystical realms, he was basically taking out a magical loan with terrible interest rates. A wave of deep, soul-aching exhaustion washed over him. Fortunately, he only needed the spell to clear the board.
Silvija's eyes darted between him and the dissipating storm. "If you're stepping out, does that mean you're not going to fight them?"
"I never said that," Peter said, rolling his shoulders. "I just need to tackle these four from a different angle. Don't worry, my suit is gonna cover for me."
Silvija blinked, completely lost. "What do you mean, your suit—"
Across the ruined courtyard, the four Elementals hovered, looking equally bewildered. Hydra's intelligence briefings hadn't mentioned a single word about Spider-Man wielding the mystic arts. The wind had stripped away their dramatic entrance, leaving them entirely exposed.
Peter clapped his hands together. "Okay, look. I know who you guys are, but I'm terrible with names. Sandman and Hydro-Man are just easier to remember. So, here's the deal: surrender now. It saves us all a lot of property damage, and it saves me the headache of hunting you down later."
Hydro-Man scoffed. He surged forward on a geyser of pressurized water. "You think you caught us? You've never stopped us before, bug. You die here!"
Peter sighed. "If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I could fund the Avengers myself."
He pressed two fingers against his chest. He pushed.
A translucent, glowing blue projection of Spider-Man violently shoved its way out of Peter's physical body. He had spent hours practicing this specific trick with Doctor Strange just to ensure his astral form maintained the mask. Operational security mattered, even in the astral plane.
Silvija and the Wild Pack mercenaries froze. The Elementals stalled in mid-air.
Before Peter's physical body could hit the asphalt, black liquid erupted from the suit's pores. The symbiote surged over the fabric, expanding into a hulking, muscular silhouette with jagged white eyes and a slavering jaw.
Venom stretched his massive arms. [Hello, lady,] he hissed at Silvija.
Silvija's hand twitched toward her sidearm. She forced her fingers to unclench.
Venom didn't wait for permission. He launched his massive frame directly at the Elementals.
"Symbiotes hate fire!" Molten Man roared. He stepped in front of the others, his body glowing like a blast furnace. "I'll burn this freak to ash!"
Molten Man lunged.
He never reached Venom.
Peter's astral form blurred across the courtyard, moving at the speed of thought. He drove a glowing, transparent fist squarely into Molten Man's jaw. The fiery giant staggered backward, the impact jarring him to his core. He hadn't felt physical pain in months.
While Molten Man reeled, Venom aimed his wrists and fired two compressed liquid nitrogen capsules directly into the villain's chest.
Peter floated backward, completely immune to the ambient heat. Astral forms didn't burn. When he caught Molten Man's punch, he hadn't touched molten slag. He had intercepted the man's soul.
If Molten Man had been a baseline human, an astral punch would have passed right through him with a slight shiver. But he wasn't.
Peter's lenses widened in realization. "I knew it. You guys aren't physically transforming into elements. You're psionic entities puppeteering ambient matter!"
It made perfect sense. If the Elementals' physical bodies were actually transforming into sand or water, the severed limbs the Wild Pack had recovered would have reverted to human flesh. They never did.
They hadn't mutated. They had shed their physical bodies entirely to become incorporeal spirits. They gathered surrounding elements to build temporary shells. That was why Peter's astral fist had connected—he was punching spirit to spirit.
Down on the pavement, Venom took advantage of the liquid nitrogen. Molten Man's magma shell rapidly cooled into dark, brittle slag. Venom drove a massive black fist into the solidified metal, shattering a huge chunk of the villain's torso.
Molten Man shrieked in genuine terror. "Watch out! The floating Spider-Man can touch us!"
Peter crossed his glowing arms. "I really should be thanking you guys. If you were still physical, my magic wouldn't be able to lay a finger on you. But you turned yourselves into spirits. You're playing by ghost rules now." He pointed at the remaining Elementals. "Last chance. Surrender."
"Kill the host!" Whirlwind roared, a localized hurricane spinning up around his torso. "That thing he did leaves his real body vulnerable! Tear the black monster apart, and the spirit dies!"
The screech of burning rubber interrupted the villain's battle cry.
A heavily armored military jeep drifted around the corner, its tires smoking. It vaulted the curb and slammed dead-center into the gathering Elementals, scattering them like bowling pins.
Black Cat flipped out of the driver's seat. She landed gracefully beside Silvija, adjusting her domino mask. "Looks like I made it just in time for the main event."
Silvija stared at the smoking wreckage. "That jeep cost twenty thousand dollars."
Felicia offered a shamelessly unapologetic grin.
Cindy dropped down from a nearby streetlight. She closed her eyes, tapping into her unique spider-sense. A smile tugged at her lips. She could track Peter perfectly. His bio-rhythm was radiating from the hulking black monster on the ground, and echoing directly from the glowing blue spirit hovering in the sky.
PS: Marvel Fun Fact!
Let's talk about Weapon Plus! In this fanfic's universe, the Weapon Plus program is a massive, multi-tiered Hydra operation, and it differs a bit from official Marvel canon. Here is the complete breakdown of the 10 Projects:
Project I: Rebirth (Developing the super soldier serum)
Project II: Savage Force (Splicing animal genes with human DNA—hello, Spidey!)
Project III: Shapeshifters (Creating perfect infiltration spies)
Project IV: Red Room (Stripping free will to forge weaponized assassins)
Project V: Symbiotes (Developing methods to control extraterrestrial biomass)
Project VI: Elements (Transferring human consciousness into a psionic state to control matter—our current bad guys!)
Project VII: The Castle (Transforming humans into magical creatures like vampires)
Project VIII: Radiation (Modifying the human body using gamma and cosmic rays)
Project IX: Mr. Hyde (Altering physiological structure and powers via personality switching)
Project X: Weapon X (Creating artificial and weaponized mutants—looking at you, Logan!)
The scariest part? Hydra can combine these projects! Stay tuned to see what horrors they mix up next!
Chapter 397 Battle Against the ElementalsPeter's astral projection strategy had successfully exposed the Elementals' fatal flaw, but the villains still held the tactical high ground.
First, they had the numbers. Even as naked, tethered spirits, they outnumbered Peter. And worse, engaging Peter in the astral plane didn't stop their physical avatars from wreaking havoc on the Wild Pack in the real world.
Second, the astral plane leveled the playing field. Without the physical enhancements of the spider-bite, human souls were theoretically identical in strength.
Mark Raxton—the Molten Man—realized this. His spirit form lunged at Peter, expecting an even brawl.
Instead, a glowing blue webline shot from Peter's translucent wrist. It plastered over Raxton's ethereal face. Peter yanked the line, effortlessly hurling the scientist's soul across the astral void. In the physical world, Molten Man's liquid-metal shell violently mimicked the movement, crashing heavily into the Spanish asphalt.
Raxton ripped the glowing webbing off his face, staring at Peter's floating spirit in utter bewilderment. "How... how are you maintaining your abilities as a ghost?"
Peter dropped into a crouch in mid-air. "Magic, buddy. Didn't you know spiders have their own gods?"
Peter launched himself forward. His translucent fist cracked across Raxton's jaw. Brilliant, blinding light flared from Peter's knuckles on impact. It was raw energy channeled directly from the Web of Fate. The Patriarch connection allowed Peter to funnel the cosmic web's power directly into his spirit, effectively granting his soul all the proportionate strength and agility of a spider.
Down in the physical courtyard, Hydro-Man watched his fiery teammate hit the pavement.
"Ignore the ghost!" Morris Bench roared. "Help Molten Man! Kill the physical host!"
Hydro-Man dissolved into a torrential wave. He surged across the asphalt toward Venom. Silvija Sablinova barked an order. The Wild Pack opened fire. Hundreds of high-velocity, vibrating rounds tore through the air.
Bench didn't bother dodging. He fluidly separated his water mass, opening perfectly timed, localized holes across his body. The bullets zipped harmlessly through empty air.
Hydro-Man reformed in front of Venom. He crashed over the towering black symbiote like a tsunami, completely engulfing him. Bench attempted to force water down Peter's throat to drown the physical body from the inside.
He failed. Venom's molecular density was completely impenetrable. The black sludge sealed airtight, repelling every single drop of moisture.
Frustrated, Hydro-Man shifted tactics. He gathered his mass around Venom's waist, shaping his upper body into a massive, muscular torso of solid, pressurized water. He began pummeling Venom's face with piston-like hydro-punches.
Venom took the hits without flinching. A deep, guttural laugh vibrated in his chest.
"You think this hurts?" Venom hissed. He swung a massive black arm, slapping the water construct with the force of a wrecking ball. Hydro-Man exploded into a fine mist, splattering across the concrete.
"You're overestimating yourselves!" Venom roared.
Hydro-Man didn't reform. Instead, the water droplets hung in the air.
David Cannon—Whirlwind—hovered above the battlefield. The mutant spun up a localized, freezing cyclone. The massive drop in air pressure instantly flash-froze the suspended water droplets. Flint Marko seized the opportunity. The Sandman funneled thousands of jagged silica grains directly into the freezing vortex.
Water, freezing wind, and grinding sand fused together. Countless razor-sharp, jagged ice-blades materialized in the sky.
Whirlwind snapped his fingers.
The storm of deadly shrapnel rained down directly toward Silvija and her exposed mercenaries.
Venom moved in a blur. He vaulted across the courtyard, landing squarely in front of the Wild Pack. Black sludge erupted from his forearms. He extruded a massive, overarching symbiote shield. The ice-blades hammered against the impenetrable dome in a deafening staccato.
"Piece of cake!" Venom laughed.
"Molten Man! Create an opening!" Hydro-Man shrieked from the puddles on the ground.
If they couldn't bypass the symbiote, they couldn't kill Spider-Man's body. Hydro-Man realized their elemental attacks were useless against Venom's physical mass. They needed to hit a specific weakness.
Whirlwind and Sandman merged their attacks again. This time, they didn't aim for projectiles. They created a localized, high-speed sand vortex entirely around Venom.
The friction of a million sand grains grinding against each other in the hurricane-force winds created a horrific, high-frequency sonic screech.
Venom shrieked.
The intense sonic vibrations violently disrupted the symbiote. The black sludge boiled and peeled back from Peter's face, exposing his physical skin to the elements. Up in the astral plane, Peter cursed loudly. He ignored the pain echoing from his physical body and rained blows down on Molten Man's spirit, desperately trying to take the heavy hitter off the board.
Near the parked convoy, Cindy Moon watched the chaos unfold. She hadn't engaged yet. She was waiting for the opening.
"Is it ready?" Cindy asked.
Felicia Hardy slammed the hood of a heavily armored Wild Pack jeep. She wiped a smudge of grease from her cheek and flashed a sharp, brilliant smile.
"It's perfect," Felicia purred. She picked up a heavy canvas bag. "I hope we don't actually need these. They're Peter's secret weapons. If we use them now, it just proves European tech is completely useless."
She had taken one of the Wild Pack's specialized anti-elemental artillery shells and hotwired it directly to the jeep's heavy-duty battery block, following Peter's rapid-fire teenage engineering specs.
Cindy nodded. She locked her fingers underneath the jeep's reinforced front bumper. She engaged her spider-strength, hoisted the military vehicle over her head, and hurled it directly into the sky at the swirling Elementals.
Whirlwind reacted on instinct. He generated a massive, compressed wind-blade and sliced the flying jeep perfectly in half.
The blade ruptured the rigged shell.
A colossal, silent shockwave detonated in mid-air. The specialized vibratory disruption field wiped out the artificial weather system in a microsecond. The deafening sandstorm died instantly. Both Sandman and Hydro-Man lost all molecular cohesion, collapsing into a useless, disorganized pile of wet mud on the asphalt.
Silvija lowered her rifle. She stared at the smoking wreckage of her jeep in absolute shock. "What did you do?"
Felicia rested a hand on her hip. "I borrowed a shell from your armory. Then I hooked it to a car battery based on the instructions of a high school boy."
Silvija gritted her teeth, staring at Black Cat with a potent mix of disbelief and hostility.
Cindy ignored the banter. Her eyes were locked on Peter's physical body.
The shockwave had rattled Venom. The symbiote was sluggish, still battered from the recent pumpkin bomb blast in New York, and heavily destabilized by the sonic sandstorm.
"Molten Man! Now!" Whirlwind screamed.
Mark Raxton's physical avatar ignited.
Despite Peter relentlessly pummeling his astral soul, Molten Man forced his magma shell to go supernova. Blinding, incandescent white light erupted from his core. He was going to endure the spiritual agony just long enough to burn Spider-Man's physical body to ash.
Chapter 398: The Molten Man Gets Dazed!Peter's astral fist connected with the Molten Man's jaw, and for the first time since his transformation, Mark Raxton felt real, sharp pain. As a scientist, he'd spent his life behind a terminal, not in the trenches. He didn't know how to handle being the one getting punched.
But as the blows rained down, he realized something. He understood why Spider-Man was ignoring the others. Raxton wasn't flesh and blood anymore. His body was high-temperature, liquid metal. It was a hell of a weapon, sure, but it was also his biggest design flaw. Metal solidified when exposed to rapid cooling.
If he can drop my temperature, he can lock me up, Raxton realized, his metallic form sluggish under Peter's relentless assault.
The Wild Pack had captured a Molten Man construct once before, but the spirit—the actual consciousness—had simply fled, leading to a resurrection. This time? Peter wasn't playing that game.
He's targeting my physical state to box in my soul, Raxton thought, his eyes glowing with molten fury. He thinks I'm his greatest enemy because I can burn him to a crisp!
"I'm not someone to be trifled with, Spider-Man!"
Raxton roared, his body temperature spiking. The surface of his black, metallic skin began to warp, cracking open to reveal an incandescent, white-hot core. The heat output was astronomical.
Silvija immediately shrieked for an evacuation. "Emergency retreat! Clear the area!"
Venom and Cindy didn't wait to be told twice. They scattered, dragging the rest of the Wild Pack team toward the perimeter.
The Molten Man lunged for the retreating symbiote, but the Spectral Spider-Man intercepted him, driving a fist into his chest to pin him in place. It was a stalemate. The Molten Man's heat was absolute, his form liquefying, but Peter's astral form held firm, anchored by the Web of Fate.
Peter realized the danger immediately. [Venom, get clear!] he sent, his spirit form surging to drag the astral projection of the Molten Man higher, soaring thousands of feet into the night sky.
Raxton had achieved his goal.
As the heat refracted the light against the cold night air, a second, miniature sun bloomed over Madrid.
The temperature spike was instantaneous. Moisture in the air evaporated into steam. Particles of sand melted into glass. The swirling winds of the Cyclone Elemental were extinguished by the sheer thermal expansion. Crimson light bathed the entire capital.
The Molten Man wanted to howl in triumph, but his body had reached its limit. The explosion of raw, high-intensity heat shredded his own metallic shell.
The fire cleared, leaving only a cloudless, star-drenched sky.
But the heat lingered, radiating down onto the pavement below. At the Royal Institute of Madrid, Spider-Man's physical body lay limp on the ground, the symbiote having long since retreated into his pores. Within a hundred-meter radius, every blade of grass and every stray insect had been flash-dried into dust.
The liquid metal molecules, scattered and superheated, slowly began to drip and coalesce back into a viscous, tar-like shape. The Molten Man landed on the ground, his form black and sluggish, still glowing with a dull, residual heat. He was certain he'd won. He had seen Spider-Man's body collapse. The symbiote couldn't handle that level of thermal radiation; Peter had been forced to eject to survive.
He marched toward the prone form of Spider-Man, a smug, heat-warped grin spreading across his face.
"In the end, I won," Raxton rasped, his metallic voice bubbling. "Neither you nor that parasite could handle the heat of a new sun."
He raised a glowing red palm, ready to crush Spider-Man's skull.
"Crimson Bands of Cyttorak."
The voice didn't come from the body on the ground. It came from the air itself.
A web of jagged, blood-red magical chains erupted from Peter's chest, lashing out and binding Raxton's spirit in an unbreakable iron grip. Simultaneously, black symbiote tentacles whipped out from behind Peter's back. They weren't attacking—they were holding pressurized liquid nitrogen canisters.
HISS.
A freezing, sub-zero mist engulfed the Molten Man. His viscous body solidified instantly, locking him into a statue of frozen, brittle slag.
Peter stood up. He dusted off his suit, looking perfectly fine.
"If we'd known your specific research parameters, we could've calculated the exact explosion yield for a heavy metal of your mass," Peter said calmly. "The reason I flew you to that altitude wasn't because I'm a bad pilot. It was because I needed you to think you'd actually hit your kill-switch."
Peter watched the liquid nitrogen continue to hiss against the metal. He took a deep, steadying breath, then yanked on the crimson chains, pulling the spirit—a balding man in his forties—right out of the cooling metal shell.
Peter shrugged. "Besides, I don't need to be in spirit form to scrap with you. I'm just a novice sorcerer, but I've learned a few tricks. I needed you to think I was tethered to that astral form so you'd lower your guard."
"Also," Peter added, "you're right. You are a massive headache. The heat and the sonics are hell on the symbiote. But hey, at least we caught one."
Peter gestured toward the horizon. "By the way? Your teammates? They've all ditched you."
Inside the Royal Institute, Silvija Sablinova stood by the reinforced windows, watching Spider-Silk and Black Cat weld a mobile containment unit shut. She turned to them, her expression a cocktail of confusion and professional hostility.
"Are you absolutely certain that cage will hold a Molten Man?" she asked.
"I have no idea," Felicia said, wiping her hands on a rag and flashing a grin. "But you have to trust Spider-Man. He's a bona fide magician, after all."
Cindy Moon just nodded, sensing Peter's location with pinpoint accuracy. She didn't say a word.
Silvija stared at the makeshift prison, feeling a strange mix of powerlessness and grudging respect. She had spent five months fighting these things, and she still didn't have a clear answer. What kind of organization turned human beings into living, magical entities?
Maybe, Silvija thought, only magic really can fight magic.
Chapter 399: Relaxation TimeThe second leg of the Midtown High European tour was, miraculously, completely devoid of homicidal sandstorms. Madrid offered a rare moment to actually breathe. The Elementals had been thoroughly routed the night prior, and Silvija Sablinova's Wild Pack had the city's perimeter locked down tight. It didn't look like the giant monsters would be making a comeback anytime soon.
Peter, Gwen, and Cindy sat in the corner booth of a quiet, sunlit café. The time difference was brutal. Spain sat geographically in the Greenwich Mean Time zone, but stubbornly adhered to Central European Time. That meant when the Midtown students' alarms blared at seven in the morning, the sky was pitch black, and their biological clocks screamed that it was barely five. The shops were mostly filled with confused, jet-lagged tourists.
Gwen stabbed a piece of scrambled egg with her fork. "So. The sky turned bright red last night because you fought a giant lava monster."
"Molten Man," Peter corrected around a mouthful of toast. "Technically, he's a mass of superheated liquid metal. In extreme situations, he goes supernova and self-destructs. Mark Raxton. Nasty temper."
Gwen chewed slowly, staring out the café window. She ran the tactical math in her head. For stealth-oriented operators, wide-area elemental attacks were a death sentence. You couldn't sneak up on an exploding sun. Unlimited regeneration, immunity to physical trauma, and raw matter manipulation. If the Elementals had spotted Gwen, they wouldn't have just fought her; they would have cooked her alive.
She traced the rim of her ceramic mug, her expression tight.
"What are you thinking about?" Peter asked. He swiped through an interactive map of Madrid on his phone. "I'm trying to figure out where we should go. I've got the Prado Museum, the Royal Palace—"
"Put the phone away, Peter," Gwen interrupted, reaching across the table to press his device flat against the wood. "No itineraries today. Let's just walk and see where we end up."
Peter blinked. He looked at Cindy. Cindy took a slow sip of her black coffee and gave a single, firm nod.
Peter smiled. "Aimless wandering it is."
Rome, Italy.
Beneath the ancient streets of Rome, the catacombs hid more than just the dead. The sprawling subterranean aqueducts and burial chambers were the perfect staging ground for things that should have died decades ago.
Gunfire echoed through the damp, claustrophobic stone tunnels. Steve Rogers—currently operating under the highly imaginative S.H.I.E.L.D. alias "Agent Captain"—dove behind a crumbling stone sarcophagus. Stone chips showered over his shoulders as high-caliber rounds chewed the masonry.
Steve didn't flinch. He leaned out, leveled his salvaged assault rifle, and fired two controlled, precise bursts into the dark. The hostile gunfire at the far end of the corridor ceased instantly. Two bodies hit the dirt.
Steve dropped the empty magazine and slammed a fresh one home. He crouched low, waiting in the shadows as Logan moved up beside him.
"Not having a shield is a real headache," Steve muttered.
Logan grunted, keeping his Adamantium claws retracted to maintain their cover. "And calling yourself 'Captain' while we're undercover is real subtle, Rogers. What's next? You gonna paint a star on your chest?"
"Clear the path, Eyepatch."
Logan flared his nostrils. He inhaled sharply, then froze. "Someone's coming."
Steve raised his rifle. "Hostile?"
"I smell..." Logan bared his teeth. "Heat. Burning."
A figure stepped out of the gloom at the far end of the tunnel. He didn't carry a flashlight. He didn't need one. Blinding orange fire wreathed his entire body, casting dancing, erratic shadows against the ancient brickwork.
Steve's grip tightened on the rifle. "Jim Hammond. It really is him."
The original Human Torch. A living, synthetic weapon from World War II.
"Intel was right," Steve said, his voice dropping to a grim whisper. "He went AWOL in Madripoor after Essex lost control of him. The syndicate behind the Super Soldier expansion projects must have recovered his chassis and wiped his brain."
"Yeah, great history lesson," Logan growled, backing up a step. "We're in a stone pipe. Nowhere to dodge."
Hammond didn't speak. He simply raised both hands.
A torrential, concentrated wave of white-hot fire erupted from his palms, filling the entire diameter of the tunnel. It surged toward them like a physical wall of plasma.
Steve didn't hesitate. He tackled Logan.
He slammed the mutant into the dirt, putting Logan's dense, Adamantium-laced body directly between himself and the incoming inferno. The firestorm washed over them. Logan's flesh blistered and blackened instantly, his healing factor overwhelmed by the sheer, sustained thermal output. Logan went completely limp, knocked unconscious by the agonizing shock.
Steve squeezed his eyes shut, held his breath, and grabbed Logan by the collar of his burning jacket. Ignoring the blistering heat tearing at his own skin, Steve dragged the unconscious mutant backward, sliding out of the direct line of fire and dragging them both into a narrow, branching side-tunnel.
The roaring flames abruptly ceased.
Steve pressed his back against the cool stone, gasping for oxygen. His clothes smoked. He strained his ears, listening.
At the end of the tunnel, a synthesized voice crackled through Hammond's comms link. It was loud enough to echo in the dead silence of the catacombs.
"Stand down, Torch. Do not pursue."
"The enemy operatives have a high probability of survival," Hammond replied, his voice devoid of all humanity.
"They are ordinary agents. Even elite assets have limits," the voice scoffed dismissively. "Leave them to the Winter Soldier. He will sanitize the site. I have a new priority for you. Spider-Man has stolen one of our key assets in Madrid. Retrieve Molten Man, and eliminate the spider."
"Understood, Dr. Zola."
Footsteps faded as Hammond flew back up the tunnel shaft.
In the dark, Steve Rogers wiped a smear of soot from his face. His blue eyes hardened into ice.
Arnim Zola.
The architect of Hydra's science division was still alive.
Chapter 400: Arnim ZolaThe Mediterranean Sea was pitch black. A sleek, unmarked cruise ship cut through the choppy waters between Spain and Sardinia. Officially, the vessel didn't exist. Even within S.H.I.E.L.D.'s highly classified mainframes, a registry search for this hull returned nothing but a ghost file.
David Cannon, Whirlwind, touched down on the reinforced steel deck of the cargo bay. He dropped two heavy, pressurized containment capsules onto the grating. The vacuum seals hissed and popped. Silt and water spilled onto the floor, violently bubbling and shifting until Flint Marko and Morris Bench pulled their physical forms back together, coughing and solidifying in the dim light.
Heavy servos whined from the shadows. A 1.2-meter-tall mechanical chassis rolled into the bay. It lacked a human head; instead, a massive, swiveling camera lens tracked their movements. Below it, a broad monitor built into the machine's chest flickered, displaying the green, 3D-rendered face of Arnim Zola.
The chief scientist of Hydra was supposed to have died seventy years ago, but his mind lived on as a purely digital consciousness.
"Welcome back," Zola's synthesized voice buzzed from the room's speakers. "I perceive your excursion yielded suboptimal results. Satellite telemetry confirms Spider-Man has successfully captured Mark Raxton. A highly unexpected variable."
"Your intel was absolute garbage, Zola," Cannon spat, pacing the deck. "You neglected to mention the kid throws actual magic."
The digitized face on the screen flickered. "Magic. Fascinating new data."
Zola processed the implications across a dozen simultaneous subroutines. "It appears Project VII is officially obsolete against him. Spider-Man continues to exceed all parameters. He is already the pinnacle of Project II, the Savage Force initiative, and currently hosts Project V, the Symbiote program."
Zola's mechanical arm gestured to the corner of the room. "Do not despair. I have acquired a temporary substitute to fill Raxton's vacancy. One perfectly equipped to dismantle the Spider."
A man stepped out of the gloom. He moved with a stiff, vacant gait. At a sharp snap of Zola's mechanical digits, the man's entire body erupted into blinding, roaring plasma.
Bench stepped back, raising an arm to shield his face from the intense heat. "You're replacing Molten Man with him?"
"Just temporarily," Zola hummed.
Marko frowned, the sand grinding in his jaw. "I know that face. That's Jim Hammond. The original Human Torch. You can brainwash your old enemies?"
The Elementals exchanged uneasy glances. They were career criminals and mercenaries. Bench and Cannon worked for cash. Marko sold his skills to the highest bidder, and Raxton had nearly burned himself alive just to fence stolen tech. Hydra's extremist ideology hadn't bothered them because the checks cleared and the operations felt highly Americanized.
But watching a literal World War II hero paraded around as a blank-slate puppet made the hair on the back of Cannon's neck stand up. Hydra had recovered the original Human Torch, a WWII-era synthetic being recently AWOL from Essex's control.
"Hammond is not human," Zola dismissed, sensing their hesitation. "He is a synthetic android. This yields three immense tactical advantages: First, he lacks a soul, rendering Spider-Man's astral magic entirely useless. Second, his thermal output easily exploits the symbiote's biological weakness to fire. Third, his obedience is absolute. He will not let ego derail the objective to fight one-on-one."
The three Elementals offered reluctant nods.
As they filed out of the room to debrief, Zola accessed an incoming encrypted data stream from Rome. His operatives in the catacombs confirmed the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had survived the inferno. They were battered, but alive, and currently extracting themselves from the tunnels.
Nick Fury was proving to be a catastrophic nuisance. Over the past year, his relentless internal purges within S.H.I.E.L.D. had forced Hydra to sever dozens of its tentacles just to maintain cover. Entire allied syndicates, like the Serpent Society, had been forced entirely off the grid to avoid detection.
"Deploy the Winter Soldier to Rome," Zola transmitted to his tactical network. "Have Taskmaster accompany him to ensure successful termination."
Zola ran the variables through the Zola Algorithm. The probability of success hovered at 70%. He added a secondary safety net to the parameters and accepted the margins.
The heavy bulkhead doors hissed open. A man stepped into the bay.
He wore an immaculate coat and a deep purple mask that clung seamlessly to his bone structure. The fabric expanded and contracted slightly with every breath he took.
Zola's mechanical chassis bowed deeply, looking utterly comical. "Baron Zemo. It appears my elemental toys are encountering friction."
"They are not your toys, Arnim," Zemo said smoothly, adjusting his cuffs. "They are merely an extension of the weapons expansion project. A tiny fraction of Hydra's true Super Soldier blueprint."
Zola's screen flickered with a sycophantic smile. "Of course, Your Excellency. Tell me, how does the new acquisition feel?"
"When I lost my face, the sensation was entirely alien," Zemo murmured. "But now... it feels as though I can become anyone."
Zemo raised a gloved hand, dragging his fingertips across his purple face. The mask was the stolen Soviet-era bionic artificial skin originally used by the Chameleon.
As Zemo touched his jaw, the synthetic flesh rippled. The cellular structure rearranged itself in seconds. The purple vanished, replaced by the gruesome, crimson visage of the Red Skull. A blink later, the skin shifted again, perfectly mirroring the stoic, square-jawed face of Captain America.
Zemo smiled, wearing Steve Rogers' face. "It is perfect, Arnim. The Avengers will never suspect their oldest friend. And the Captain will finally pay for destroying my father, and for what he did to my face with the Adhesive X."
PS:
In the comic Adhesive X is a super-glue created by Nazi scientist Baron Heinrich Zemo. It forms an unbreakable bond with any substance and can withstand almost any solvent, water, or extreme temperatures and Captain America infiltrated Heinrich's lab to destroy the supply.