The romantic warmth that had filled the interior of the luxury sedan evaporated in a moment, replaced instantly by a jagged tension. Aryan's phone pulsing against the leather armrest like the quickened moment of a panicked animal.
He glanced down, his sapphire eyes narrowing as they swept over the scrolling red text from the Red Queen.
CRITICAL ANOMALY DETECTED.
SEISMIC VIBRATIONS EXCEEDING 4.2 MAGNITUDE.
BIO ORGANIC CONTACTS ENGAGED ON HARLEM CORRIDOR.
Aryan's expression shifted imperceptibly. The playful executive who had been trading witticisms over wine vanished. He looked up, his voice cutting through the ambient jazz filling the cabin.
"Take the next exit," he ordered the driver. "Now. Do not draw attention."
Sharon, whose hand had been resting inches from his on the center console, pulled back as if stung. Her brow furrowed, the haze of wine and romance instantly burning off to reveal the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent beneath. "Problem?"
"A structural collapse ahead, or something far worse," Aryan replied smoothly. He didn't look at her; his gaze was fixed on the windshield as the first distant, concussive boom echoed through the chassis of the car, vibrating in the soles of their feet. "I'd rather not have our evening interrupted by a falling skyscraper."
A violent tremor rolled through the asphalt, tilting the heavy car on its suspension. Wanda gripped the door handle, her knuckles turning white, her eyes wide with a familiar panic.
"That didn't sound like construction, Aryan," she whispered, the memory of shelling in Sokovia echoing in her voice.
As the driver expertly diverted the vehicle into the labyrinth of side streets, the tremors faded from a physical shake into a distant roaring that rattled the glass of the storefronts they passed. Only when they reached a quiet block did Aryan finally exhale.
"Alright," Sharon whispered, her hand moving instinctively toward the small of her back where her weapon would usually be holstered, finding only the silk of her dress. "Now I'm curious. That wasn't an earthquake."
Aryan unlocked his phone, his thumb hovering over a hidden interface app. "Red Queen. Patch through the visual uplink."
Across the high resolution screen, a chaotic mosaic of satellite imagery and shaky drone footage bloomed into existence. It was a nightmare in high definition. Two titans were tearing the heart out of Harlem. One was a mountain of emerald rage. The other was an abomination of exposed vertebrae and twisted muscle.
Wanda inhaled sharply, leaning over his shoulder to stare at the small screen, the heat of her body radiating fear. "What… what are they?"
Aryan stared at the screen, his face a mask of calm, while his mind raced at the speed of thought into the System Shop. In the silent theater of his consciousness, he made his move.
PURCHASE CONFIRMED: Clone Authority ($1,000,000,000)
PURCHASE CONFIRMED: Absolute Stealth ($100,000,000)
Far away, on a fractured rooftop overlooking the carnage of Harlem, the air shimmered. A clone stood amidst the falling ash and shattered glass, invisible to every sensor on the planet, from thermal to optical to mystic. It watched the Hulk and the Abomination clash with the dispassionate gaze of a god.
"Identify them," Aryan murmured into the phone, maintaining the charade for the women beside him.
"Subject One: Dr. Bruce Banner," the Red Queen's voice came through the speaker. "Codename: Hulk. Result of a catastrophic gamma mutagenic accident. Subject Two: Emil Blonsky. Codename: Abomination. An unstable fusion of Super Soldier serum military variants and extreme gamma exposure."
Sharon's jaw tightened, a vein pulsing in her neck. "Military experiments? Again? They never learn."
"No," the Red Queen replied. "Both subjects originated from classified human enhancement programs. Banner's exposure was accidental. Blonsky's was deliberate."
Wanda hugged her arms around herself, shrinking slightly into the leather seat. "So they did this… on purpose?"
"Confirmed," the Red Queen said. "Current data suggests multiple unauthorized or semi authorized enhancement attempts during this period. However, large scale replication remains unstable."
Through the eyes of his invisible clone, Aryan watched the Hulk charge. He saw the way the green giant's muscle density spiked, the neural firing patterns in his primitive brain glowing with a white hot intensity. The Hulk was a creature of momentum. He relied on a perfect synchronization of mind and body to deliver his devastating power.
Let's introduce some friction, Aryan thought.
Working through the clone, Aryan reached out with his Omega Level Magnetism. He didn't try to stop the Hulk, that would be like trying to stop a tsunami with a wall. Instead, he subtly twisted the local magnetic flux in a precise radius around the Hulk's head.
Human neural activity is fundamentally an electrochemical process. By inducing a high frequency oscillation in the ambient magnetic field, Aryan triggered a severe vestibular mismatch.
To the Hulk, the world just fractured. Up became down. Left became a spinning vortex.
The Hulk surged forward for a killing blow, a strike that would have leveled a city block, but his foot slipped a fraction of an inch. His equilibrium faltered. His motor lag spiked by a mere half second.
Abomination capitalizing on the opening, the bony titan landed a bone shattering uppercut that sent the Hulk flying backward through a brick facade, burying him in a cloud of dust and rubble.
The pattern repeated. Every time the Hulk roared and tried to lock into his rage, Aryan's invisible hand nudged his inner ear, scrambling his orientation. The green giant staggered, his roars turning from pure fury to a confused frustration. He couldn't find his footing.
For the first time in his existence, the Hulk felt a sensation he hadn't known since the desert, vulnerability. Confused, disoriented, and unable to focus his rage on a target he couldn't hit, the Hulk took a step back. Then another. He let out one final growl before leaping away, vanishing into the dark treeline of the northern parks, seeking solitude to quell the spinning in his head.
Abomination stood alone in the wreckage, his chest heaving, letting out a victorious howl that echoed off the broken glass of Harlem. He had won. Satisfied, and sensing the approach of military gunships on the horizon, the Abomination leaped away toward the industrial outskirts, disappearing into the night like a bad dream.
Aryan exhaled, releasing the magnetic grip. The world's field snapped back to baseline, leaving no trace of his interference.
Back in the car, Sharon and Wanda were staring at the screen in stunned silence. The "Gods" had fought, and the battle had ended as abruptly as it began.
"They're gone," Wanda whispered, her voice barely audible. "Just like that."
Aryan tucked the phone away, his expression settling back into that of the calm executive. "The city is safe for now."
Sharon looked at him, her eyes narrowing, searching his face for a truth she couldn't quite grasp. "You seem… remarkably unsurprised, Aryan."
The car glided forward once more, the engine purring as they left the distant echoes of Harlem's destruction behind. The interior hummed with the quiet luxury of the leather and the lingering scent of wine, but the atmosphere had irrevocably shifted.
Aryan leaned back, the cool glow of the passing streetlights dancing across his features as they moved toward the residential quiet of the Upper East Side. He noticed the way Sharon was still tense, her hand hovering near her lap, and how Wanda's breath was still coming in shallow hitches.
"I've always told you, Sharon," he said, his voice dropping into that smooth register that seemed to anchor the air around them. "I prefer efficiency. Even in a riot, there is a rhythm, a pulse you can predict if you're watching closely enough."
Sharon turned her head, her blue eyes searching his sapphire ones. The adrenaline was still buzzing in her veins, demanding action, but the unbothered calm in Aryan's gaze acted like a sedative. "You talk about monsters like they're just another line in a quarterly report, Aryan. That wasn't a rhythm, that was a massacre."
"And yet, it ended," Aryan replied softly. He reached out, his hand resting briefly over hers on the armrest, a touch that was both a reassurance and a subtle redirection. "The chaos has passed. I believe I promised you both an evening where the world didn't intrude, and while the city tried its best to break that promise, I intend to see you both safely home in peace."
Wanda leaned her head back against the headrest, her eyes fluttering shut as she let out a long exhale. The images of the green giant and the bony nightmare were still burned into her mind, but sitting here, inches away from Aryan, the fear felt distant, muffled by the walls of his confidence.
She opened her eyes and looked at his profile. It was a terrifying thought, in a way, that a man could watch the world tear itself apart and not blink, but it provided a sense of security so absolute it made her heart ache.
"You're a very strange man, Aryan Spencer," Wanda whispered, a small smile tugging at her lips.
"I've been called worse," he murmured, the car turning onto the tree lined street of their destination. "But for tonight, let's just stick with 'good company.'"
Sharon let out a breathy laugh, finally relaxing her white knuckled grip on the door handle. "Fine. Good company it is. But tomorrow? Tomorrow you're explaining how you stayed so calm while Harlem was being leveled."
"Tomorrow," Aryan agreed, his voice a low promise in the dark.
PS: The night was beautiful. But if you want to know what happened inside the Spencer mansion that night... well, premium moments require a premium payment! Haha.