Selene worked fast.
The USB drive she'd pulled from her kit was not standard issue—it was a piece of hardware that the Brotherhood's technical division had spent four months building specifically for this kind of operation, carrying its own intrusion suite capable of bypassing most commercial security architectures and copying at maximum bus speed. She'd found the AIM laboratory on the manor's upper level and had it running before the rest of the team finished clearing the floor.
She watched the progress bar and listened to the battle sounds from outside.
"Situation report," she said.
T'Challa's voice came through the team channel. He was already downstairs, using the projection system built into his Wakandan wrist unit to render a tactical overlay of the compound's thermal signatures. "Four active groups besides us. Unknown five-man team. Iron Man. Xu Xialing's people. Killian and his remaining operatives." A pause. "Killian appears to have fire projection capability. Personal. Not a device."
"Extremis," Chen Haoran said from the doorway. He was holding an open case he'd found in the laboratory's secondary storage—a row of sealed amber vials, each one labeled with an AIM batch number. "I found this. They were mid-injection-cycle when we breached. Active subjects on site." He set the case near Selene's position. "And Killian's fire output doesn't match baseline Extremis. He's running a modified protocol, probably personal dosing at higher concentrations. The oral projection route is unusual—most subjects vent through the palms and forearms."
"Because most subjects haven't been experimenting on themselves for as long as he has," Selene said.
The progress bar hit fifty percent.
Footsteps in the corridor—Michael Corvin's distinctive weight, and Alexei's slightly heavier. They came through the door, and Michael was carrying someone over one shoulder. He dropped the man onto the laboratory floor with the indifference of someone who'd been asked to move furniture.
Trevor Slattery landed on his back and kept breathing.
"Found him unconscious in a bedroom," Alexei said. "Two women in the bathroom confirmed it—Iron Man knocked him out. They also confirmed everything he told Iron Man before that happened." He gestured at Trevor. "This is the Mandarin. Which is to say, this is an actor Killian hired to play the Mandarin. The character doesn't exist."
The room went quiet for a moment.
Selene looked at Trevor's face—the beard, the features that matched every broadcast, the prosthetic makeup and styling that had been assembled to project the specific threat image Killian needed. An actor with a drug problem and no particular loyalty to anyone who wasn't supplying him.
"So Killian built it entirely," she said. "The persona, the broadcasts, the terrorist identity. All of it."
"All of it," Alexei confirmed.
Selene looked at the progress bar. Fifty-three percent. She looked at the sounds coming from outside—multiple thermal detonations in sequence, the crack of the Mark 42's weapons systems, the distinctive rhythmic fire pattern of the Ten Rings' elite formation.
"Everyone outside. Capture Killian—first choice is cleanly, second choice is as part of a joint arrest with whoever else gets there first. I'll follow when this finishes copying." She met T'Challa's eyes. "Go."
T'Challa was already moving. Shang-Chi right behind him. Alexei, Wesley, Michael—all of them through the laboratory door and down the corridor.
Chen Haoran picked up the Extremis case, set it in front of Selene, and followed at the back of the column. "What are Dragon Balls?" he asked, because the phrase had come up twice in urgent tones and he'd missed the context.
No one answered him. They were all running.
Rose Manor Grounds — Minutes Earlier
The Ten Rings' electric crossbows were a design that Xu Xialing had commissioned eight months ago from a weapons engineer she'd recruited out of a Singaporean defense contractor. The projectile wasn't a bolt—it was a weighted anchor trailing conductive cable, and when it hit a target the anchor locked and the cable discharged at three thousand volts in a sustained pulse. Against ordinary targets it was decisive. Against Extremis subjects it was, at minimum, disruptive.
Two bolts hit the Extremis operative covering Killian's left flank simultaneously. The operative went down in a rigid arc, the thermal field collapsing as the current interrupted the control pathways. The red light in his skin went out.
Killian looked at his remaining four operatives being systematically dismantled—Ten Rings on three sides, Iron Man circling above with the compromised Mark 42, the Winter Soldiers pressing from the manor exit—and made the calculation he'd been avoiding.
He opened the safe.
The Dragon Ball caught the early morning light as he pulled it free—amber, glowing softly from within, the single star at its center rotating at its patient constant speed. He tucked it inside his jacket rather than holding it, freeing both hands.
"Dragon Ball." Two voices said it at nearly the same moment. Tony, from above. Xu Xialing, from the perimeter line.
Both of them had been told Killian held a ball. Seeing it confirmed was different from knowing it abstractly. The dynamic of the engagement shifted in the way dynamics shifted when the central object everyone was maneuvering around became physically visible.
The Winter Soldiers accelerated.
One of them closed on an Extremis operative who'd been absorbing damage for four minutes and was running past sustainable temperature. The operative felt the body temperature spike past the threshold and did what bodies running Extremis did when the control system gave out—he roared, every surface of his skin going orange-red simultaneously, and ran.
He got six steps before it happened.
The detonation took out a twelve-foot radius with enough force to lift the Winter Soldier who'd been pursuing him completely off the ground and deposit him fifteen feet away against the manor wall. The man hit, slid, and came back up with the expression of someone who'd categorized this experience as unpleasant but survivable.
The remaining Winter Soldiers adjusted their spacing and kept moving.
Bucky reached Killian.
What followed was the specific kind of engagement that happened when two people who'd each had extensive modifications decided to test them against each other directly. Killian's hands ran hot—the surface temperature climbing as he pulled the Extremis to its operational ceiling, each strike against Bucky's prosthetic leaving scorch marks on the outer casing and building heat at the joint housings where the arm interfaced with his shoulder. Bucky blocked and absorbed and waited for openings, using the arm's mass as a weapon in the intervals between Killian's attacks.
The problem was cumulative. Each contact transferred heat. The joint sensors were already registering warning thresholds. Bucky could feel it in the shoulder interface—not pain exactly, but a signal that the system was operating outside its design parameters and the gap was narrowing.
Then the plasma chain hit Killian's left calf.
The discharge that followed wasn't just current but a sustained plasma arc that ran the cable in both directions simultaneously. Against an Extremis subject it wasn't guaranteed to be decisive, but it was enough to interrupt his footing and pull his attention.
Killian staggered.
Bucky stepped back and reset, shaking heat from the prosthetic's fingers.
Above them, the Mark 42 circled. At the manor's east entrance, T'Challa came through at a run with Shang-Chi close behind. And somewhere over the Atlantic, the first of the suits from the underground garage was crossing into Florida airspace.
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