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Chapter 123: Cold Iron and Gamma Blood
Harlem—Ground Zero
Smoke drifted in long, oily ribbons. Firelight shimmered off broken glass and twisted steel. The scorched crater where the last Skitarii detonated still hissed—steam rising like breath from a dying engine.
Amid the toxic haze, the Abomination stood unbowed.
Muscle tore, healed, and tore again across his limbs—struggling to regenerate against the radiation clawing at his cells. One eye bled freely. His left shoulder was blackened, veins pulsing erratically beneath the skin.
But he was still alive.
He turned with a growl toward the last figure standing—a single Skitarii Alpha, damaged but not yet down. The tech-priest's emissary had one arm hanging limp, armour shattered at the torso, and half its facial optics blown out.
The two locked eyes.
No words.
Just the stillness before violence.
High above, nestled in the broken rafters of a crumbling tenement, Brock Rumlow watched through the scope of a custom-modified anti-material rifle. His breathing was steady, but his hands trembled.
"Let's see how this thing likes tungsten alloy."
He squeezed the trigger.
The round screamed through the haze—and struck Abomination square in the back. Skin and muscle were torn apart. For half a second, the monster staggered.
Then, slowly… the wound sealed. Skin crawled back into place, muscle reknit, and the roar that followed shook the entire street.
Rumlow's expression soured.
"Damn it."
Below, the Skitarii lunged forward, but it was too late, and he was too weak to change anything.
Abomination's fist crashed down, crushing the machine-soldier's head into the pavement, metal splitting like a fruit under pressure. Sparks hissed. Fluids leaked. The body collapsed—twitching once—then went still.
Abomination exhaled and then looked straight at Rumlow's location. At just a little distance, the rotors thumped in the sky.
From the open side of the tactical helicopter, General Ross stared down at the glowing wound carved into Harlem. Even through layers of shielding and reinforced glass, the scorched epicentre of the explosion radiated an unnatural heat. A flare of blue-white energy licked across the crater edge, then vanished.
A soldier leaned toward him, headset crackling.
"Sir, radiation sensors just redlined. This isn't residual gamma—it's something else. We don't even have the markers for it."
Ross didn't answer immediately. His jaw flexed once. Then: "Those soldiers just came out of nowhere…"
He leaned closer to the edge, voice rough.
"Now they're all gone."
Beside him, Bruce Banner adjusted the strap across his chest. His fingers twitched unconsciously against his thigh, eyes locked on the crater where the Skitarii had detonated. Through the smoke, the monstrous outline of Abomination limped forward—wounded, yes. But alive. Still healing.
"They weren't humans," Bruce muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "It looks like somebody is turning soldiers into cyborgs."
Ross snorted. "That's too stupid. It would have been better if that money had been on the super-soldier project," even after so many setbacks. Ross still believes the super soldiers are much better; as for cyborgs, they would be too expensive.
Betty, sitting opposite Bruce, held her gaze on the burning horizon. "So what are we going to do now? If this continues, the city will be gone."
No one had an answer.
Ross turned toward the crewman again. "Any more contact from ground units? Civilians?"
"Negative, sir. The NYPD perimeter is holding, but they're pulling back. Nobody wants to go near that radiation signature."
Bruce's voice dropped lower, quiet but urgent.
"There is something about the way they exploded; it's like they were engineered to explode if they failed. Whoever sent them didn't care if they made it back."
Betty shot him a look. "Like they were... disposable?"
Ross growled under his breath. "A damn expensive disposable unit—who has that much money?"
Outside, the Abomination roared again—low, guttural, the kind of sound that stuck in the chest and gut more than the ears. His shadow grew longer as he began moving, not in aimless fury, but with direction.
Betty leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
"Where's he going now?"
Ross stepped back and barked to the pilot.
"Get us higher—keep eyes on the target."
But Bruce already knew. He'd seen that moment of connection—when the monster turned its head not at random, but toward something. Or someone.
"He was hit by something else just before that last kill," Bruce said.
Betty's eyes widened. "Someone else is down there."
Ross's voice turned to the communications officer. "How long until SHIELD arrives on station?"
The officer hesitated, earpiece crackling. "Sir… they've declined deployment."
Ross's eyes narrowed. "What the hell do you mean, declined?"
"They've suffered heavy casualties in a previous engagement," the officer continued. "Something about the Hell's Kitchen mass kidnapping incident—they had internal losses."
Ross said with an angry voice, "It's just a loss of some soldiers who are not even from SHIELD or the military who care about the type of loss."
"They're saying that same person might get involved, and they need to get special permission from the council before they can dispatch."
Ross growled under his breath. "Cowards hiding behind protocol. This is exactly why we should've closed down SHIELD. These guys are completely useless and a waste of money."
Bruce Banner, arms crossed beside the window, murmured, "They're not wrong to be cautious. If there is alien involvement, we should be more careful." It's not that he didn't want to transform, but for some reason, he had faith someone else was going to stop the monster.
He was definitely not wrong, as there was a place where someone was preparing.
Back at the lab, Luthar stood in silence before the projection node, holo-screens flickering across his field of vision. The data from the last Skitarii's detonation was still fresh—gamma scatter, cellular destabilisation, and signs of synaptic degeneration in the Abomination's brain stem.
Behind him, the soft whirr of servos approached.
"Should I go instead of you?" Lily's voice was measured but held concern beneath the modulation. She stood in full gear—sleek armour laced with micro-servos and an untested prototype power weapon latched to her back.
Luthar didn't look at her. "No."
"Why?" she pressed. "My current weapon should be good enough."
"They're unproven," he interrupted. "We haven't even finished field testing."
Hearing this, Lily stepped aside as Luthar extended a hand toward the teleportation dais—its ancient circuitry awakening with clicks, groans, and pulses of electric-blue light. Binary liturgies spilled from the machine-spirit's mouth.
> Coordinates Locked: Harlem Strike Zone.
Stabiliser field active.
Noospheric Uplink—Secure.
A lance of white light enveloped him—and then he was gone.
Rumlow lay crumpled against a collapsed wall, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. His rifle, cracked in half, lay beside him. One eye was swollen shut; the other, artificial and blood-red, whirred and clicked as it struggled to focus on the behemoth before him.
The Abomination loomed above—massive, breathing hard, and still steaming from residual radiation. A bone spike jutted from his forearm like a blade, lifted high.
Rumlow tried to rise.
He couldn't.
His enhanced musculature—augmented by what he had bought him time to react. The synthetic heart kept him from passing out. Reinforced ribs had snapped but not shattered. At least for now.
"Pity," Abomination sneered, voice gurgling. "It said to see such a good soldier die."
Then—
CRACK.
A thunderous impact echoed across the rooftop, followed by a hum of artificial gravity collapsing in on itself.
Luthar had arrived.
He stood atop a ruinous metal pipe, his cloak trailing smoke, servo-arms unfurling with eerie grace. An arc pistol shimmered in his other hand.
Abomination turned slowly. "Another one? Come here to die."
Luthar didn't answer immediately. He stepped down onto the rubble-strewn rooftop, one motion at a time, like a judgment rendered in brass and blood.
"No. I am just here to catch you," he said coldly.
The Abomination snarled. "Big words from a trash can."
Luthar completely ignoring his words raised
his pistol, charged with an energy no Earth lab had ever measured. "Let me measure your durability personally."