The sub-basement chamber of Adlerhorst became a maelstrom of desperate combat. Logan, a feral whirlwind of adamantium fury, was locked in a vicious, close-quarters battle with the Hydra-enhanced bodyguard. This wasn't like fighting SS troopers or even the augmented creatures in the French labs. This Hydra agent was a true super-soldier, his movements preternaturally fast, his strength immense, his pain tolerance seemingly limitless. Crackling energy batons seared Logan's flesh, the wounds smoking and healing almost instantly, but the impacts were bone-jarring even for him. His claws raked across the agent's advanced armor, seeking purchase, tearing at joints and visor slits. Each blow Logan landed was met with a retaliatory strike of equal or greater force. It was a brutal, grinding ballet of destruction.
Meanwhile, Gabe Jones, under the cover of this chaotic duel, reached the humming machinery powering the Tesseract. His fingers, though numb with cold and fear, worked with practiced desperation, planting his explosive charges, his mind racing against the clock as the sounds of battle intensified around him. Other Hydra elite guards were now engaging the remaining Commandos who had breached the outer perimeter and were fighting their way down. Dum Dum Dugan's distinctive shouts and the chatter of his Thompson submachine gun echoed from the corridors.
Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, watched all of this with an unnerving, almost ecstatic calm, his gaze still fixed on the pulsating Tesseract. It was as if the chaos, the violence, was merely a prelude to some grand, terrible apotheosis he was about to unleash. He raised a hand, and the sickly green light from the cube intensified, bathing the chamber in an ethereal, nauseating glow. The air crackled with an unknown energy.
Elias, monitoring the comms from his distant command post (a temporary setup in a Swiss chalet, "Mr. Blanchard" now a conduit for extremely high-risk, high-reward Allied operations), felt a surge of pure dread. The energy readings from the Tesseract, even filtered through the primitive sensors of the era that Anya had managed to have SOE deploy near similar suspected sites, were spiking off the charts.
"Sawyer! Status!" Elias barked into his microphone.
"Pinned down, Blanchard!" Sawyer's voice was strained, punctuated by gunfire. "They got something… energy weapons! We can't advance! Jones is at the objective! Logan is… he's fighting something godawful!"
Logan, grunting with effort, finally found an opening. He feinted high with one set of claws, then drove the other deep into the Hydra agent's unarmored knee joint. The super-soldier screamed, a sound quickly cut off as Logan's other claws tore through his throat. The body collapsed, sparking and twitching.
But there was no respite. The second enhanced bodyguard was already moving to intercept him, this one wielding what looked like a miniaturized flamethrower.
No time for this, Logan thought, his berserker rage rising, fueled by the pain, the unnatural energy in the room, and the sight of Schmidt calmly preparing to do… something with the cube.
He saw Gabe Jones frantically working on the final detonator connections, his face pale with concentration. He had to buy him seconds.
"GABE! NOW!" Logan roared, launching himself not at the flamethrower-wielding agent, but directly towards the Tesseract on its altar, a desperate, almost suicidal gamble. If he could disrupt Schmidt, even for a moment…
The flamethrower agent fired, a jet of incandescent blue fire engulfing Logan's path. Logan roared, engulfed in the searing heat, his clothes igniting, his flesh charring instantly. But his adamantium skeleton protected his core, and his healing factor, already working at an impossible rate, fought against the inferno. He burst through the flames, a smoking, snarling demon, claws aimed at Schmidt's skull.
Schmidt, for the first time, showed a flicker of surprise, even annoyance, as this seemingly unkillable berserker broke through his defenses. He didn't flinch, however. He merely raised a hand, and a shimmering blue shield of pure energy erupted from the Tesseract, deflecting Logan's claws with a jarring impact that sent shudders up Elias's mirrored skeleton miles away.
"Primitive," Schmidt sneered, as Logan staggered back, smoking and healing. "But resilient."
At that exact moment, Gabe Jones screamed, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" and slammed the detonator.
The explosives attached to the Tesseract's containment machinery detonated with a shattering roar. The obsidian altar cracked. The conduits leading to the cube sparked and overloaded, showering the chamber in a hail of molten metal and shattered components. The Tesseract itself, freed from its restraints, pulsed erratically, its green-blue light now an angry, unstable glare. The entire sub-basement shuddered.
Schmidt screamed, not in pain, but in pure, unadulterated fury as his precious machinery was wrecked. "FOOLS! You know not what you have done!"
The Tesseract, now unchecked, began to resonate with incredible power. The air warped around it. A vortex of pure energy started to form, tearing at the very fabric of reality within the chamber. Loose debris, pieces of armor, even the bodies of fallen Hydra guards, were sucked towards it.
Logan, his senses screaming, his healing factor struggling to cope with the burns and the strange energies, knew he had to get out. He saw Gabe Jones, dazed but alive, being dragged towards the unstable portal.
With a final, desperate surge of strength, Logan lunged, grabbing Gabe by the collar, his claws finding purchase in the stone floor to anchor himself against the impossible suction.
The flamethrower agent, caught off guard by the explosion and the Tesseract's rampage, was less fortunate. He shrieked as he was torn from his feet and sucked into the shimmering vortex, vanishing without a trace.
Schmidt, meanwhile, was laughing, a high, manic sound. "YES! MORE POWER! THE GATEWAY OPENS!" He seemed to be drawing strength from the chaotic energies, his form glowing faintly. He reached out a hand towards the Tesseract, seemingly oblivious to the destruction around him.
Then, the ceiling of the sub-basement, weakened by the explosions and the dimensional stresses, began to collapse. Massive stone blocks crashed down.
"We gotta GO!" Logan yelled, hauling Gabe towards the sewer tunnel they'd used for entry, even as chunks of Adlerhorst rained down around them.
He spared one last glance back. The Red Skull was silhouetted against the blinding, unstable light of the Tesseract, his arms raised in triumph or madness, as the ancient castle began to tear itself apart around him.
Then Logan and Gabe plunged back into the relative safety of the frozen sewer, scrambling for their lives as the Eagle's Nest burned and collapsed into a metaphysical abyss.
Miles away, Elias Thorne felt the psychic backlash through his connection to Logan – a wave of immense, chaotic energy, then a sudden, jarring severance as the Tesseract presumably… went somewhere else. The comms link with Sawyer had gone dead amidst screams and the sound of collapsing rock.
The System flared with notifications:
[HYDRA PRIMARY RESEARCH NEXUS (ADLERHORST) CRITICAL DAMAGE/SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED DUE TO TESSERACT INSTABILITY. OBJECTIVE PARTIALLY ACHIEVED.]
[PRIME ARTIFACT (TESSERACT/SPACE STONE) DISPLACED. CURRENT LOCATION: UNKNOWN (EXTRADIMENSIONAL/OTHERWORLDLY). THREAT TEMPORARILY NEUTRALIZED BUT NOT CONTAINED.]
[HYDRA PRIME CONDUIT (JOHANN SCHMIDT/RED SKULL) STATUS: UNKNOWN (POTENTIALLY DISPLACED WITH TESSERACT OR DESTROYED IN FACILITY COLLAPSE). FURTHER INTEL REQUIRED.]
[Combat Data Acquired (Wolverine vs. Hydra Elite Super-Soldiers/Tesseract Energy). Conduit Integration +3.0%. Loyalty (Wolverine): +5% (Total: 44.5% – Shared Cataclysmic Survival; Mutual Reliance Under Extreme Duress). Analysis for "Feral Striker" (Tier 2) Template: CRITICAL DATA POINT – Prime Essence Shards Acquired: +2.0 (from defeated Hydra Super-Soldiers possessing advanced bio-enhancements & Tesseract energy echoes). Total Shards: 4.8/5.0. PROTOTYPING NOW VIABLE (HIGH ENERGY COST).]
Elias slumped back in his chair, the feedback leaving him drained but strangely exhilarated. Adlerhorst was crippled or destroyed. The Tesseract was gone, for now. Schmidt's fate was unknown. Logan and at least one Commando were alive. He had enough Shards to finally attempt to prototype his Feral Strikers.
He had thrown his most dangerous piece into the heart of the enemy, against a power he barely understood, and had somehow managed to not only survive but also significantly disrupt Hydra's grand design. The cost had been high, the risks astronomical, but the Eagle's Nest was burning, and an Infinity Stone had been loosed upon the cosmos, its whereabouts unknown.
The war in the shadows had just entered an entirely new, terrifyingly unpredictable phase. And Elias Thorne, with the power of the Wolverine resonating within him, was right at its epicenter.