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Alexander returned to his seat and closed his eyes, his right hand instinctively pressing against his temple.
After a moment—
He opened his eyes again, his face still dark as thunder. He grabbed the phone on the desk and called Anna again—the same Anna who had been promoted, transferred to Japan, and was supposedly running a secret facility there.
As Alexander spoke in that same low, serious tone, the voice that came through the other end this time wasn't Anna's.
It was a sharp, male voice—heavily distorted by electronic modulation.
"Did he figure out something happened to Anna?"
"I don't know."
Alexander's voice was grim. "But I do know that if he doesn't see Anna next month, we won't be able to hide it anymore."
He took a deep breath.
"How is Anna now?"
"Bad. She's on life support. But the machines won't keep her alive much longer."
"Goddamn Strucker!"
Alexander couldn't hold back his fury. "That bastard's going to destroy us all."
The electronic voice on the other end defended Strucker. "This isn't really Strucker's fault. No one expected that two-year-old girl to have that much potential."
"Motherfucker!"
Alexander completely lost it. "Zola, you and Strucker can keep doing whatever the hell you want. Strucker took the Demon King's blood and used it for artificial gamete synthesis, then actually let a test subject carry the pregnancy to term and give birth naturally. And you, Zola—you're even worse. You just had to keep pushing your goddamn cloning experiments. Go ahead. Keep going. When the Demon King finds out about all this, I'll just die right alongside you two morons."
In this moment, Alexander finally understood why Hydra's first uprising had failed.
You don't fear an enemy like a god.
You fear allies like pigs.
He'd thought that after experiencing their first catastrophic failure, these two Hydra leaders—one who'd survived since World War II through genetic engineering, the other who'd turned himself into a digital consciousness—would have learned their lesson.
He'd been wrong.
So wrong.
The lesson humanity learns from history is that it learns nothing from history.
Strucker and Zola were no exception.
The key reason Hydra had failed last time was because they'd taunted too many enemies at once. If they'd taken them on one at a time, they never would have lost.
And now? Same damn thing.
One of them had taken Hawk's blood, extracted the DNA, synthesized gametes in a lab under circumstances that should have been impossible, then somehow managed to get a test subject pregnant—and she'd actually given birth to a healthy baby girl.
Zola had gone even further.
Behind Alexander's back, he'd transferred Dr. Merrick—the cloning expert—out of the Black Site and secretly started working on a clone of Hawk himself.
Both of these things were explicitly forbidden by Hawk before the transaction.
Only God knew how much Alexander's soul had shattered when he'd accidentally discovered what these two idiotic teammates had been doing behind his back.
He'd been the one to acquire Hawk's blood. And his plan from the very beginning had been to stay on good terms with Hawk.
Even if they couldn't become friends, they absolutely could not become enemies.
Hydra couldn't survive a second failure.
And the facts had proven his strategy was sound. Anna—the operative he'd sent to make contact with Hawk—had successfully been accepted as Hawk's friend.
He'd had it all planned out.
Even if their operation failed this time, Hawk's promise to Anna meant that at the very least, their lives would be safe.
But then—
The backyard caught fire.
Alexander had accidentally discovered that Strucker had used Hawk's blood to synthesize gametes under nearly impossible conditions, resulting in the natural birth of a baby girl. His first reaction had been to immediately pull Anna out and send her to Sokovia to defuse this ticking time bomb.
After all, if this bomb went off unexpectedly, God only knew what would happen.
But when Anna went to Sokovia to put out that fire—
An accident happened.
Anna was critically injured and now lay in the facility's medical center, hooked up to machines keeping her alive.
And after seeing the baby girl's potential, Strucker had doubled down, protecting the child and declaring she would be Hydra's future.
Alexander had been so furious his nose had gone crooked. He'd planned to talk to Zola, get him on his side.
But then—
Zola had hit him with an even bigger bombshell.
Sure, Zola hadn't used Hawk's blood to create some baby boy.
No, he'd gone straight to the source and created Hawk himself.
Un-fucking-believable.
When he'd transferred the blood samples to Strucker and Dr. Zola, he'd specifically emphasized not to use Hawk's blood for any weird experiments. After all, Hawk had explicitly said that as long as they didn't mess around with strange experiments, anything else was fair game.
And Alexander had listened.
But these two geniuses—Hydra's dynamic duo of catastrophic stupidity—had apparently heard "don't do anything weird" as "only do weird things."
When Alexander had learned about this bombshell, his blood pressure had spiked so fast that if there hadn't been medication nearby, he would have dropped dead on the spot and gone straight to meet Mephisto.
But now—
Alexander looked back on the now completely snow-white, thoroughly cleansed Wakanda outside, and he couldn't help thinking he should have just died back then.
At least that would have been a gentler way to go.
Too bad he hadn't died.
And now—
Alexander rubbed his temples, trying to think of any way to salvage this disaster. "Can Dr. Merrick finish Anna's clone in two weeks? We only have two weeks left."
Hawk had already come asking. And while he and Dr. Zola had managed to deflect him with their pre-prepared contingency plan, that wouldn't work twice.
What about two weeks from now?
Have Anna leave Hawk waiting?
That could work. But there was a chance it would fail. And if Hawk sensed something was wrong and started pulling on that thread, only God knew what would happen.
So right now, Alexander desperately hoped to hear the answer he wanted from Dr. Zola.
His hopes were crushed.
"Not enough time."
"FUCK!"
Alexander's temple throbbed. "What? Didn't I tell you to rush Anna's clone? Wasn't this the contingency we planned for from the start?"
Zola explained, "Dr. Merrick successfully synthesized a more powerful super-soldier serum using a combination of Demon Hulk's blood and Hawk's blood. Version 3.0 is at the most critical stage right now."
Alexander felt like he was losing his mind.
"We're going to explode in two weeks."
"Actually..."
Zola's electronic voice paused, then continued, "We don't have two weeks."
Alexander's expression froze.
"What?"
"Hawk already knows about the cloning."
"What??"
Alexander's pupils contracted. He shot to his feet instinctively, then caught himself. "Impossible. If he knew, I'd already be dead."
SHIELD had been researching Hawk's personality.
Hydra had too.
And both had reached the same conclusion.
Neutral.
As long as you didn't provoke Hawk, he generally stayed neutral. His daily routine consisted of going to school and walking his fiancée home after class.
But when someone did provoke Hawk, his retaliation came fast. He didn't give anyone time to react.
So—
If Hawk knew about the cloning, would Alexander still be alive right now?
"Impossible. Absolutely impossible."
"But it's the truth."
Zola's electronic voice was matter-of-fact. "Maria Hill has already authorized Sharon Carter to retrieve Dr. Merrick from the black site. Once Sharon gets there and discovers Merrick is missing, we're exposed."
Alexander immediately responded in a harsh voice, "Then put Merrick back."
Zola flatly refused.
"No."
"What?"
Alexander actually laughed.
Sure enough.
When you're speechless, you really do laugh.
Zola's electronic voice explained, "Once Hawk 3.0 is complete—combined with the Cloth fragments we've collected—even the original Hawk won't be able to stand against us."
Alexander's face went blank.
"Are you sure about that?"
"The data doesn't lie."
"..."
Hearing that, Alexander's face didn't just lose its expression—even his tone lost the fury from moments before.
But there was no excitement or anticipation either.
Just complete resignation.
"So what do you plan to do?"
"The time has come."
"What time?"
"The time to launch our second uprising."
"Heh."
"Why are you laughing?"
"I just thought of something funny."
Alexander removed his glasses with a humorless smile and set them on the desk in front of him. He took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling, and spoke with cold, hollow eyes. "I was wrong. I was so wrong. If I hadn't been blind back then, I never would have joined Hydra. If I hadn't joined Hydra, I wouldn't have ended up like this..."
His expression turned terrifying. He gripped the phone, his voice dropping to a low, seething hiss. "I wouldn't have ended up working alongside two idiots so monumentally stupid they belong in a museum. Launch now? Are you trying to get us killed faster? Do you even realize Hawk is still in New York??"
Zola ignored Alexander's rage. "This is the best opportunity. The Insight Project is already operational. Tony Stark is in Korea. Thor is in New Mexico. SHIELD's top operatives—Natasha and Hawkeye—are still in Africa."
Alexander's face was stone. "Captain America is in Washington. And Hawk just flew back to New York."
Zola's electronic voice remained completely level.
"We have Vibranium weapons. Captain America is no threat."
"As for Hawk..."
"He won't be in New York much longer. This is our window. By the time he returns, Hawk 3.0 will be ready."
"..."
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