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Both of them were full of ambition and clearly intent on not depending on Hermione, but facing Hydra, which had a massive organizational structure and completely controlled S.H.I.E.L.D., they were struggling.
And that wasn't even accounting for the other side's mystery man with the metal arm, who was just as obviously a super-soldier as the mysterious running man beside them. Neither was anything close to a pushover.
Steve frowned and looked at Natasha. She wore the same expression.
A truckload of enemies on the other side. One teammate beside him.
"We need help," Steve said. "The two of us alone can't win this."
"The problem is, we're wanted fugitives," Natasha said. "S.H.I.E.L.D. — no. Hydra's network covers the entire globe. Who can we actually trust?"
Trust. The most luxurious thing in the world right now.
Steve nodded.
"That leaves one option. We go find Tony."
Natasha blinked, then understood.
Tony was close to Hermione, and he'd been holed up doing research for so long she'd half forgotten he wasn't actually from the magical world.
They'd just made up their minds, hadn't even started mapping a route to Tony, when a low rumble rolled in from the distant skyline.
Three massive shapes climbed into the air. Enormous turbines churned through the atmosphere. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarriers, all three of them, rising in slow, ominous formation.
Three steel fortresses suspended in the sky, pressing toward Washington, D.C. with the weight of something inevitable.
Steve and Natasha looked at each other. The same dread settled in both their chests at once.
Hydra. No question.
"They've made their move." Steve's voice came out rough.
Natasha's jaw tightened. She was about to say something when a sharp ringtone cut through the tension.
Her encrypted line.
She answered fast. "Who is this?"
A hoarse, familiar voice came through. "It's me."
Natasha's grip on the phone tightened.
"Fury? Aren't you supposed to be—"
"No time to explain the playing-dead situation." Fury's voice carried an urgency that shut down argument. "Listen. Project Insight has been activated."
Steve leaned closer, face grim.
"The three Helicarriers..." Natasha connected it immediately.
"Exactly." Fury's voice crackled through the line. "Their objective isn't defense. It's elimination."
"Hydra used Dr. Zola's algorithm to build a massive database. The algorithm identifies everyone who poses a future threat to Hydra, present or future."
"The list could have millions of names on it. Maybe more."
Natasha pulled in a sharp breath. Beside her, Steve's face had gone the color of ash.
"Their plan is to use the long-range precision firepower on those Helicarriers to wipe out every name on that list simultaneously. The President. Senators. Scientists. Military officers. Possibly you, possibly me, anyone the algorithm flags as a potential threat."
"Once it's done, Hydra eliminates all opposition within minutes. Total control of the world."
Fury paused. When he spoke again, the weight in his voice was something Steve had never heard from him before.
"We still have time. Project Insight hasn't hit its activation window yet. Listen—"
"There is no time." Steve cut him off. "We already saw them take off. Just now."
A beat of silence on the other end. Then: "Damn it. They couldn't kill you two in time, they must have been afraid something would go wrong, so they moved it up."
Steve clenched his fist. "There's no time to call in reinforcements. We have to stop those carriers right now. Can you get us up there?"
"I anticipated this," Fury said, and something in his tone let both of them breathe again. "I already contacted Stark. He's your extraction. Should be there any second."
The words had barely left his mouth when a familiar red-and-gold streak blazed through the distant sky, closing fast.
Wind screamed past. The Iron Man armor slowed to a hover above them.
Tony's voice crackled through with unmistakable flair: "Pretty sure I just heard someone say the word 'reinforcements.' Does this situation happen to require a billionaire genius philanthropist to come save the day?"
The faceplate flipped up. Insufferably smug grin underneath.
"Looks like somebody's gotten themselves into serious trouble."
Tony's gaze swept over both of them, disheveled, on the run, and settled on Steve.
"Cap. Need a lift?"
Steve didn't waste a word. He stepped forward. "Get me up there."
"Happy to oblige." Tony extended one gauntleted arm and grabbed Steve's forearm.
The next second they shot straight up through the clouds, angling toward the nearest Helicarrier.
Natasha watched them shrink into the sky. She took one slow breath, turned, and threw a leg over the motorcycle parked beside her.
Her target was on the ground. The Triskelion, where Alexander Pierce was waiting, and where whatever remained of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s loyal agents needed someone to organize them.
---
The Helicarrier deck rose up fast beneath Tony.
What greeted him was a wall of machine-gun fire.
"Wow, quite the welcome party." His voice came through the comms, dry as ever, as the armor executed a sharp barrel roll and carved through a gap in the dense stream of cannon fire. "Watch your landing!"
Steve hit the deck hard.
CLANG!
His shield took the worst of it, but the impact still jarred through his whole body. He sucked air through his teeth.
He rolled, found his footing, dropped to one knee. Shield up. Scanning.
Every hatch on the deck was open, and Hydra soldiers were pouring out of all of them, converging on him fast.
Steve felt the back of his neck prickle.
"What's the plan?!" he growled.
"See the central control room?" Tony's voice directed from above. "Get inside and find the mainframe interface."
"Then what?"
Steve asked, and simultaneously drove his shield edge-first into a soldier who'd closed to arm's reach. The man went down hard.
"Then plug this in."
A small USB drive dropped out of the sky and landed squarely in Steve's palm.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. special edition." Tony's voice carried a thread of pride. "I ran the system specs from Fury's old Helicarrier. This virus goes straight to their weapons targeting and kills it."
"You handle this one. The other two are mine."
"Good luck, Cap. And try not to get killed, I'd rather not sit through your funeral."
Before the last word landed, the Iron Man suit punched upward and was gone, trailing a chain of explosions as it pulled the bulk of the firepower up and away from the deck.
---
Triskelion headquarters. Top-floor office.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the silhouettes of the Helicarriers drifted in and out of the haze.
Natasha stood opposite Alexander Pierce.
"You're making an awful lot of noise." She took half a step forward, gaze sharp. "Aren't you worried about drawing her out?"
She let it hang there for a moment.
"Or have you forgotten how you lost your ear?"
The smile on Pierce's face went rigid. A cold, calculating flicker moved through his eyes, and behind it, just for an instant, something that looked very much like fear.
Then he laughed. A full, unhurried laugh.
"Hermione Granger? There was a time I might have been cautious about her, yes."
He drew the next words out slowly, carrying the easy confidence of a man who already knows how the game ends.
"But now... she can't even save herself. Why would I waste a moment's concern on a woman who's about to die?"
Natasha's heart lurched. She brought herself back to stillness a breath later.
"Based on what?" Her eyes moved to the windows, to the Helicarriers beyond. "That scrap metal up there? You actually think any of that can touch her?"
She had seen what Hermione's magic could do. That power was something that bordered on impossible, nothing those weapons could reach, let alone stop.
So what was making Pierce this confident?
She got her answer immediately.
The air in front of her warped.
A figure in black robes stepped out of nothing.
➤ Next: Hydra's True Target
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