Nick Fury sneered, clearly unimpressed. "Your little tricks are way too amateur for me." His eye narrowed as he stared straight at Locke, curiosity flickering behind the contempt. "What I really want to know is this—how did you get an old agent with more than ten years of field experience to suddenly start obeying you?"
Locke understood immediately.
The old bastard had noticed that there was a leak around him, and he'd even realized someone close to him was feeding information out. But Fury still hadn't figured out the real answer. Instead of suspecting Hydra had infiltrated him so deeply that his own house was rotting from the inside, he'd convinced himself Locke was somehow controlling people around him.
All he'd really seen was what he wanted to see.
Locke shook his head and glanced across the enemies standing in front of him, counting them off with lazy calm. "Red Tank. Pulse. Doppelganger. And this one is…"
"Moonstar," Fury said coldly.
Locke clicked his tongue. "Never heard of her."
Fury's smile turned sharp. "You will."
Then his expression hardened, and he barked out a single command.
"Red Tank, kill them."
At once, the giant stepped forward. He looked like a walking mountain of flesh and steel, towering over everyone else in the room. His body was wrapped in red armor, and the strange helmet on his head made him look even more monstrous. He clenched one fist and grinned with ugly confidence.
"You ready to get smashed?"
The moment he finished speaking, the floor beneath his feet cratered from the force of his launch. At the same time, his massive body shot forward like a cannonball, carrying enough momentum to crush anyone unlucky enough to be in his path.
The X-Men scattered in alarm.
Storm and Cyclops both dodged instinctively, while Colossus moved to shield the others. But Professor Xavier couldn't move at all. Stuck in his chair and unable to escape, he could only watch Red Tank come barreling straight toward him.
Then, at the critical instant—
Bang!
A silver-white suit of armor dropped out of the air like a meteor and landed directly in front of the Professor. Two metallic arms shot forward and caught the charging Red Tank head-on. The impact sent a thunderous shockwave through the laboratory, rattling equipment and cracking the floor.
For a brief moment, the silver-white armor and the red giant stood locked in deadlock.
Neither side gave ground.
Locke calmly opened a door to the Absolute Zero Zone and flicked his fingers toward the others. "Come on, burdens. Get inside."
At the same time, the rest of Fury's people moved.
Locke raised his hand and hurled a bolt of lightning across the room. Pulse reacted instantly, firing a concentrated beam that collided with the thunderbolt in midair. Energy exploded between them, spraying sparks and blue-white arcs through the darkness.
Fury had already moved to Moonstar's side. His voice came out tense and urgent.
"Do it!"
In an instant, Moonstar's eyes rolled white. Her whole body stiffened, her expression turning blank as if she were listening to something no one else could hear. A strange, invasive force reached toward Locke's mind.
He felt it immediately.
It was probing him, trying to slip into his thoughts.
Locke turned his head and looked at her, then at Fury. "What exactly are you trying to do?"
Fury's smile was ice-cold. "She can drag out the thing you fear most and make it real." He took a half step back, his expression dark with expectation. "Then it kills you."
Locke almost laughed. "You do know I have soul defenses, right?"
Fury's eye narrowed. "Of course I know."
The moment he said it, he pulled out a syringe and drove it into Moonstar's neck.
The liquid inside was blood-red.
As the drug entered her system, Locke suddenly felt something heavy drop onto his soul, as if an enormous stone slab had been chained to it. Even his awareness of the outside world dulled for a moment. It wasn't like a normal psychic invasion. It didn't need to push deep into his soul at all.
It just pressed down.
The next second, Locke's vision blurred.
A freezing wind swept through the room.
High above them, five vortices appeared in the sky—some bright, some dark, each one spinning with a strange, primal force. The mere aura leaking from them felt vast and incomprehensible, like something that didn't belong anywhere near Earth.
Moonstar's body began trembling violently. Sweat poured down her face in sheets, and her breathing turned ragged.
Fury frowned and barked, "What the hell are you seeing?"
By then, the crushing pressure on Locke's mind had lifted. Moonstar's ability had moved into its next phase. She was no longer searching.
She was trying to materialize.
Locke stared up at the five vortices and slowly smiled. "Interesting. I only found out today that I'm apparently afraid of a lot of things." His smile deepened, though there was a chill behind it. "Looks like she picked the weakest five. Too bad she can't fully bring them out."
Fury had sensed it too.
Even the tiny fragments of power leaking from those five whirlpools made his scalp crawl. It was the kind of pressure that bypassed reason. If those things actually emerged in full… what would happen then?
Locke, meanwhile, was already judging them through the Ultimate Evolution Module.
These vortices represented what Moonstar was trying to manifest—the Five Cosmic Entities of creation from the Marvel Universe itself. Because they had been called up against him, the Module immediately classified them as hostile targets. Their threat level had climbed from Silver to Platinum in real time.
But this was obviously Moonstar's ceiling.
The pressure was real. The power wasn't.
In the distance, Red Tank and the thunder armor were still trading blows, nearly tearing half the laboratory apart. Meanwhile, Doppelganger had already multiplied into a crowd of identical gunmen, and together with Pulse, they positioned themselves in front of Moonstar as if trying to buy her enough time to finish.
Locke raised a hand and launched another savage bolt of lightning.
The clones didn't even have time to scream before the thunder reduced them to smoking corpses. Pulse barely managed to survive by using his own ability to neutralize part of the attack, though even he staggered back with blood at the corner of his mouth.
Seeing the situation collapse, Fury shouted at Moonstar, "Forget the five! Drop four of them and bring out just one!"
Locke blurred forward.
Before Doppelganger or Pulse could react, his palm smashed against the backs of their heads with casual precision. Both men collapsed instantly. Their powers were useful, and their threat levels weren't particularly high. Killing them would've been a waste.
So Locke simply tossed both unconscious men into the Absolute Zero Zone.
Then he felt it.
A far more concentrated presence burst free.
Boom!
The wind howled. The sky warped. In the largest of the vortices, a foot clad in purple armor stepped through.
The moment Locke saw that design, his heart jolted.
That style—
That looked exactly like Galactus.
The instant the armored foot descended, Moonstar let out a scream and collapsed unconscious. Locke's expression nearly cracked when the figure fully emerged, because the being standing there really was the Devourer of Worlds.
Except…
It was a mini version.
It barely came up to his knees. It was short, round, and weirdly chubby, with a tiny body stuffed into absurdly imposing purple armor.
Locke slowly turned to look at Fury, who also looked completely stunned. "This is your trump card?" he asked flatly. "Are you trying to kill me, or gift me a godson?"
Fury stared at Moonstar lying on the floor and then at the miniature Galactus, his expression turning darker by the second.
At that moment, the little Devourer pointed a stubby finger at Locke and spoke in a smoky old man's voice completely unsuited to its body.
"You carry an aura I hate. Die!"
Then it ran forward and started punching and kicking Locke's calves.
Locke bent down, grabbed it by the back of the armor, and lifted it into the air with one hand.
"Let me go, asshole!"
Locke's mouth twitched.
Why did something that looked like a grumpy toddler sound like an ancient chain-smoker?
More importantly, the system had just judged five Platinum-level threats, but after they condensed into one actual materialization, it had somehow dropped all the way back to Silver. That made no sense—until Locke started examining the little thing properly.
He ran his hand over the tiny Galactus and quickly discovered the real source of value.
The armor.
That miniature suit clearly wasn't normal. Even when Locke pulled on it with brute force, it showed no sign of warping or damage. In other words, most of Moonstar's power hadn't gone into creating the little Devourer at all.
It had gone into making the outfit.
Locke glanced at Fury and almost laughed. There was definitely something wrong with the serum he'd injected into Moonstar.
Meanwhile, seeing Locke casually manhandle his supposed killer finally crushed the last shred of hope in Fury's heart.
He didn't say a word.
The instant his foot shifted, trying to retreat, Locke flashed in front of him and drove a punch into his waist like a battering ram. Fury's body folded, and Locke clearly felt bones or organs rupture under the impact.
Fury dropped to his knees.
Locke casually tucked the tiny Galactus under one arm and stuffed it into the Absolute Zero Zone. Then he vanished again and reappeared beside the thunder armor, using his own lightning manipulation to drag all of the armor's stored current outward in one violent surge.
The flood of electricity blasted Red Tank unconscious on the spot.
That one got thrown into the Zone too.
Then Locke rose into the air.
Nick Fury's end had arrived.
A short time later, Locke brought him to a place ringed with barbed wire and skull warning signs. All around them, foul green sludge rolled and bubbled in a deep pit below. It was an extremely dangerous chemical waste dump, the kind of place where the air itself seemed diseased.
Locke released Fury and gestured lazily around them. "Picked a nice place for you."
Fury looked at the toxic waste below, then back at Locke, and gave him a grim smile. "You can kill me," he said, "but you'll never kill what I stand for."
Locke laughed softly. "Dear Fury, why would I kill you?" His eyes gleamed with nasty amusement. "I'm looking forward to watching you evolve into something beyond ordinary human limits. Plenty of people in this world have gotten incredible power in places like this. I'm hoping you can do the same. Honestly, I'm not done having fun with you yet."
Fury snorted. "Then let me go. Next time, I'll cut your head off."
Locke stared at him for a second and shook his head. "It's honestly impressive that the former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. can say something that stupid." Then his tone shifted. "Still, survival isn't impossible. Tell me every secret S.H.I.E.L.D. asset, every hidden base, every piece of personnel information you have, and I might spare you."
Fury laughed. "And now you're insulting my ears too."
Locke looked up at the sky and suddenly said, "Didn't you call her? Or did she stand you up? If she doesn't come soon, she'll miss the last time she ever sees you."
For the first time, Fury looked genuinely shocked.
"How do you know about her?"
Locke shrugged. "Because I'm handsome."
Fury shook his head slowly. "No need to wait. She already came back."
Locke blinked. "She did?"
Then he smiled. "And she didn't come to see me. Which means she doesn't think I'm the villain here. To the public, I'm still the savior."
Sadness flashed through Fury's eye. "She's busy out there showing her universal compassion, saving dying aliens across the cosmos. Earth doesn't deserve even a few extra seconds of her time."
Locke gave him an exaggerated look of realization. "So our great Agent Fury is just lonely."
Then his expression turned serious. "I've never understood why you targeted me so hard. I really did save tens of millions of lives. Even if I've got some moral flaws in private, so what? Last time I checked, you were the biggest embezzler in S.H.I.E.L.D. What exactly gives you the right to judge me?"
"You'll bring disaster to this world."
"Why?"
Fury ground out the answer.
"…Instinct. The instinct of a veteran agent. A good one."
"Bullshit."
Locke rolled his eyes and shoved him.
Fury tumbled screaming into the chemical waste pit.
"You're a fucking lunatic!"
Locke still wasn't satisfied. He flew up, spotted a long metal rod nearby, and pulled it free. Fury was struggling in the sludge below when Locke brought the rod down on his head with a brutal crack.
"Instinct, huh? Instinct? Instinct!" He swung again, fury and mockery mixing in his voice. "Did your instinct tell you that you were going to die today?"
....
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