57
As I descended toward the city, I removed the suit and put it into my inventory while still in midair. The cold night wind immediately clutched at my ordinary clothes, but I didn't care. In my hand lay the miraculously surviving phone from Coulson, my only fading hope for a connection with reality. While my body carried me toward the Parker house, I bored my gaze into the dark screen. Come on, Fury. Come on, Coulson. Someone. One call, and I could force a meeting and regain at least some control over this madness.
There was silence. Ten minutes of flight brought a deafening, mocking emptiness on the airwaves. Inside me, a cold feeling grew. The premonition, which had been merely anxious before, had transformed into a sticky, nauseating certainty. Something had happened.
I froze on the roof of a neighboring building, staring at the dark windows of the Parker apartment. This was my last attempt. I dialed Peter. There were long, hopeless rings. That was enough.
A short vibration pulse, and the living room window glass showered inward in ringing fragments. I would pay for the damage later. Right now, it didn't matter. One second later, I was already inside.
The apartment greeted me with coziness of all things. It was a perfect, wrong kind of cleanliness. In the air, there still lingered a faint smell of apple pie, which May probably loved to bake. On the coffee table lay a stack of comics mixed in with university textbooks. There were no signs of a struggle, not a single chair that had been moved. It was as if all three of them had simply stood up and gone for a walk, leaving their phones at home. A perfect picture of a peaceful life.
That was precisely why it screamed danger. All of this was a lie. A neat, calculated set piece left for me. And at the center of this scene, on the perfectly wiped kitchen table, lay the final touch. A scrap of paper.
"Jamaica Bay, Hangar B. Don't arrive by 1:00 PM, they die. Arrive with anyone, they die. Try to cheat, they die. Accept battle in the open, as befits predators!"
And at that moment, as I read these lines, I exhaled. The tension twisting my insides released. It wasn't because the threat had vanished. It was because it had acquired a face, an address, and a time. Uncertainty frightens people far more than a direct challenge does.
I shot back into the night like a bullet, setting my course for the abandoned airport. My fingers dialed Gwen's number on their own. Again, there were rings echoing in my ears like a funeral knell. What the hell was this?!
But my anger gave way to cold analysis. This was Kraven's trap. He had kidnapped the Parkers before the first covert clash, before the poisoned dart. This was his backup plan. A fallback in case I slipped from his hands at the Base. He had expected the cornered animal to run to its den, where he had planned to take me. And if that didn't work, then the bait with Peter's family would.
Go to hell, you freak. The trap had snapped shut, yes. Only, it hadn't snapped shut on my neck. It had snapped shut on yours, which was already severed from your body.
But even with the Hunter dead, the situation remained wild. What a bastard, not even disdaining to go after defenseless people. And how conveniently everything had aligned for him. There was my complete isolation and the deathly silence from S.H.I.E.L.D., which theoretically should have had a dozen bugs hanging on me.
And then, in the icy wind illuminated by the night city's lights, the puzzle assembled itself. It assembled so sharply and so obviously that I mentally smirked at my own blindness. My brain, enhanced by the buff, instantly sifted through the facts.
Who could have hired the Hunter and provided him with resources and information of this level? Who has moles in S.H.I.E.L.D. capable of completely shutting down all communication channels leading to me? For whom am I valuable alive, but who wouldn't risk sending their own staff agents, who might be compromised?
Several disparate facts wove themselves into a single, ugly pattern. And that pattern had one name.
Hydra.
All of these thoughts were a hurricane that swept through my head during the few minutes I flew to Jamaica Bay. The hurricane subsided as soon as I saw it. An imposing, rust-eaten skeleton of an abandoned hangar.
The inside smelled of damp earth, rusty metal, abandonment, and gasoline. Aviation grade, naturally. And amid this decay, on the dusty concrete floor, they lay. Peter, May, and Ben. I froze for a second before descending to be beside them. They were unconscious, not dead. Their breathing was even, almost serene, as if they were sleeping and didn't even suspect that their lives had been hanging by the thinnest of threads for several hours.
Bringing them to consciousness would be stupid. Who knows what kind of crap Kraven had pumped into three ordinary people. So, I did the only thing I could. I pulled out the S.H.I.E.L.D. phone. It was ironic. I had been waiting for their call, and instead, I was now pinging their system myself, calling a city ambulance through their secure channel. Let them try to ignore a signal like that.
Carefully, trying not to cause any harm, I picked up first May and Ben, then Peter, and carried them to the hangar's massive gates, out into the fresh air. After that, I shot up to the roof of a neighboring building. I watched from above like a nameless guardian as, within fifteen minutes, an ambulance rolled up to the hangar and uniformed people efficiently loaded the Parkers onto stretchers.
There was also relief in confirming that Gwen wasn't among them. That meant either she had managed to escape from Kraven thanks to her instincts and was somewhere licking her wounds right now, or more likely, the Hunter simply hadn't reached her. Perhaps she was currently watching Bench, fulfilling my request.
A sharp vibration signal in my pocket distracted me from my thoughts about her. It was the phone. That one. Finally!
So, my game with their phone had worked. Calling an ambulance through their channel had made someone stir. Or, even more likely, Kraven's case was officially closed and Hydra's moles had to remove their sticky hands from the surveillance consoles in order to avoid exposure.
"Listening." I said curtly into the receiver.
"Red Hook, grain elevator 17 near the Gowanus Canal. Waiting half an hour." Coulson's voice, slightly distorted by interference, sounded without any preamble or emotion. The call immediately cut off.
"Homegrown spies..." I muttered. My palm clenched, emitting weak vibrations. The phone in it trembled, the plastic and microchips cracked, and a second later, it turned into a handful of useless dust immediately caught by the wind.
The flight took fifteen minutes. The grain elevator turned out to be an even more ancient and rusty monster than the hangar had been. Wasting no time, I entered. I was in full combat regalia, under the influence of the stimulants, and I was ready for anything: an ambush, an illusion, another sophisticated trap.
Fortunately, instead of enemies, I was met by silence and four figures.
On the right stood Agent Coulson, still with that polite, expressionless smile on his face. Beside him was Natasha Romanoff, this time in a black S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical suit, without any hint of civilian clothing. Her gaze was a separate story. A mixture of curiosity, assessment, and something else I couldn't quite read.
But the center of this composition was him. A bald Black man in a long leather coat that reeked of swagger and a hidden threat from a mile away. Nick Fury. Was he copying Blade? Or was this coat more functional than it seemed? I was betting on the second option. The lining probably had more technology sewn into it than an average fighter jet. The main difference from the movie version was that he had both eyes intact. That meant the cosmic escapade with either the goose, or the cat, and Captain Marvel hadn't started yet. Thank God. Maybe there weren't even any Skrulls here. That would be wonderful, one less headache.
And finally, there was the fourth person. A blond man of about thirty, wearing tactical glasses and a lighter version of a combat suit that had exposed arms. In his left hand, he held a compound bow. This was Hawkeye. Clint Barton. One of the future Avengers. On paper, he was the weakest, on par with Natasha. But I wasn't deceived by his apparent simplicity. In this universe, as Kraven's experience had already shown, a street magician like Mysterio could turn out to be a Dormammu-level threat, and an unremarkable guy with a bow could be a Chi master who directed his arrows with the power of his thought. So, for now, he was just a dangerous variable in the equation.
Wait. What "dangerous variable"? I wasn't acting blindly. I had Strange Science, and with it, the basics of spiritual mechanics. I didn't need to guess. I could see.
I closed my eyes for a moment, cutting off the familiar visual noise, and concentrated, opening my spiritual perception. The world appeared in different colors, colors that were invisible but absolutely real. It was like tuning an old radio. Signals of different strengths were breaking through the interference.
Coulson. His spiritual power was an even, calm flame. Warm, but small. He was definitely the most ordinary person here, our reference point.
Natasha was a completely different matter. Her energy felt denser, sharper. A compressed spring, or a thin, honed blade hidden in a sheath. There was nothing superfluous about her. Everything was subordinate to perfect control.
Fury felt like a heavy, monolithic stone. His spiritual pressure wasn't as sharp as Romanoff's, but it was far more massive and deep. Under the layer of his skin and his swaggering coat, there hid a cliff that wouldn't be easy to move.
But the archer. Clint Barton was an anomaly. His spiritual power literally vibrated in the air. Bright, almost blinding, and two or even three times greater than Natasha's energy volume. This wasn't a flame or a stone. This was a bowstring stretched to its limit, ready to release an arrow of colossal power at any moment. Was he a mutant? A super-soldier? I didn't know, but he was definitely the most dangerous person in this room.
And me? My own pressure, compared to the others, felt approximately on Natasha's level. This was sobering. With an Iron Blood-modified body, with the System, with Essence Smith, and especially with Strange Science, I had expected more. I had thought I would be closer to a super-soldier level, but apparently, there was still work to be done.
And then came the thought of Kraven. If Barton felt like this, then what kind of monster had the Hunter been? Scary to imagine. His spiritual pressure must have exceeded the archer's energy by an order of magnitude, if not two. It was a shame I hadn't thought to scan him in the heat of battle.
Or maybe it wasn't a shame. Back then, my priorities were simpler and more important. I had to survive. I had to win.
Well, I had roughly assessed the visitors' power level. This didn't give me much, but I could draw one conclusion. At a minimum, if Fury had brought Natasha and this archer who surpassed her on all fronts, it meant this was his most trusted circle. His personal scalpel for the most delicate operations. And right now, this scalpel was pointed at me.
Well then. It was time to show them that they would be operating on steel beyond their teeth.
To do this, instead of a greeting, I simply waved my hand. The air in the center of the hall thickened, and a moment later, Kraven the Hunter's headless body crashed onto the concrete floor with a dull, wet thud.
The silence became almost tangible. I carefully watched their reactions. They were professionals, without a doubt. Coulson momentarily lost his eternal smile. Barton instinctively tightened his grip on his bow. Even Natasha, a master of impassivity, allowed herself a barely noticeable surprise in her gaze. But the most valuable reaction was Fury's. His eyes widened slightly in shock. Just for a split second, but that was enough. I had breached their defenses.
"Question." My slightly mask-distorted voice rumbled under the grain elevator's vaults. Resonant and merciless. "Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. allow this bastard..." I kicked the lifeless body for emphasis, "...to attack me? Fine, me. With my talents, I can solve problems, albeit radically. But the Parkers? Why did you..." I swept my gaze over them, "...allow him to take people dear to me hostage? Don't even try to convince me they weren't under surveillance!"
And in this, I was barely deceiving them. Well, about them being dear to me, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. It's easier for people to understand someone who has attachments. But about the surveillance on them. Peter was a genius. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s analysts had surely already flagged him as a first-priority recruit in red. And Ben Parker was one of the two living carriers of my healing formula. A walking scientific precedent they should have been studying under a microscope twenty-four seven.
Fury remained silent for some time, his gaze moving from me to the corpse and back again, as if weighing his words on invisible scales. Finally, he spoke, and his voice was as even as steel.
"Sergei Kravinoff, known as Kraven the Hunter. He is an elusive meta-mercenary with a service record longer than all of ours combined. By the most conservative estimates..." Fury hesitated for a moment, deciding whether or not to share such information. He sighed and then revealed his cards. "He has eliminated about twenty-five Alpha-level mutants, thirteen metahumans, and one whose classification is confirmed as an Omega-level mutant."
The last words struck me like a hammer. Omega. A threat level capable of changing the laws of physics, of reshaping reality. And this maniac, whose body was lying at my feet, had killed one of them. Damn. At this moment, my irritation changed into something else. An icy, prickly respect. This bastard hadn't carried his title without reason, and now Fury's shock was more understandable. Kraven had simply had a fatal bit of bad luck, running into an anomaly like me. While reveling in his perverted predator philosophy, he had forgotten the main rule of survival in this world. There is always a bigger fish.
I didn't always follow this rule either, but my strength was different. It was in my preparation. The more answers I had to any possible type of damage, whether physical, mental, or magical, the fewer chances my opponent had. A dead Kraven was the best proof of that.
"All these impressive statistics don't answer my question, Director." I deliberately used the official address. "I didn't ask who he was. I asked where you were."
"Surveillance on someone of Kraven's level is practically impossible." Fury cut me off. "Not one, not even my best operative, could have tailed him long enough to predict his next target."
"The world's leading espionage organization can't handle espionage. That's amusing." I chuckled.
"Espionage organization." Fury allowed himself a crooked smirk. "That's too narrow and flat a definition for what S.H.I.E.L.D. is. And trust me, there is no person in the world who could have approached Kraven unnoticed. It's like trying to attach a bug to a mature lion's back in the middle of the savanna. The lion will notice. And the lion will kill."
Yeah, sure. Images of the Ancient One or Xavier immediately surfaced in my head. They could have tracked this elusive hunter without even getting up from their chairs. Fury was just deflecting. He was trying to talk his way out of failure by presenting the dead man as an invincible titan, so that against his background, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s inaction would look justified. But before I could make an acid comment, Fury himself seized the initiative.
"He was the best." The director stepped forward, bypassing the corpse. "And I would have believed that you could escape from him. But you killed him. The question of how remains open. According to our data, he was practically impossible to wound."
"Invulnerable doesn't exist." I shrugged. "He just made three classic mistakes. Although, in the first case, it was more his employer's condition. He wanted to take me alive, he underestimated his opponent, and he believed too much in his own legend. But that's all just lyrics. Let's return to the main point. You couldn't track him? Fine. But why weren't you tracking me? Or the Parkers? Your non-espionage organization should have been able to handle that!"
I was deliberately pressing on a sore spot, leading them toward the thought of betrayal without speaking the key word. I still wanted to live, and throwing accusations about Hydra at a meeting that was possibly being recorded was a sure way to shorten that life.
"Let's stick to the facts." My voice became cold and methodical. "Point one: Kraven kidnaps civilians connected to me, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is silent. Point two: he attacks me covertly, practically immediately after my meeting with your agent, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is silent. Point three: he openly storms my base, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is still silent. Throughout all of this time, you were blind and deaf."
I paused, letting the words soak into the dank air of the storage facility.
"But." I raised my index finger, emphasizing the point. "As soon as the threat is eliminated by my forces and the hostages are rescued, you immediately make contact. That's a strange coincidence, don't you think?"
A heavy silence hung in the warehouse. Coulson studied his boots. Natasha stared at me unblinkingly, apparently trying to burn through my mask. Barton remained as motionless as a statue. I had expected anything: denial, rage, accusations of lying, the standard reaction of a bureaucrat whose nose had been rubbed in his own failure.
"We have a leak." Fury finally said. His voice was quiet, stripped of all bravado. In it sounded a dull, stale fatigue. "It's large-scale. That's precisely why we're here. These are the only people I trust. And this conversation will never leave these walls."
Well then. That wasn't bad.
Acknowledging the problem was the first step toward solving it.
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