As I descended toward the city, I removed the suit and stashed it in my inventory while still in midair. The cold night wind bit through my ordinary clothes right away, but I didn't care. In my hand lay the miraculously intact phone from Coulson, my only flickering hope for a connection to reality. As I approached the Parker house, I stared at 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. A cold feeling spread through my chest. The premonition that had been mere anxiety before had transformed into a sickening, 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. Long, hopeless rings followed. That was enough.
A brief pulse of vibration 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. A faint smell of apple pie still lingered in the air. May probably loved baking it. On the coffee table lay a stack of comics mixed with university textbooks. There were no signs of a struggle, not a single chair out of place. It was as if all three of them had simply stood up and walked out, 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. If you're not there by 1:00 PM, they die. Bring anyone with you, and they die. Try to cheat, and 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, heading for the abandoned airport. My fingers dialed Gwen's number on their own. Again, rings echoed 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 above going 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 on me.
And then, in the icy wind under the city's night 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? Who values me alive, yet won't risk sending their own staff agents, who might be compromised?
Several disparate facts wove together into a single, ugly pattern. And that pattern had one name.
Hydra.
All of these thoughts swirled like a hurricane 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 climbing down to join 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.
Waking them up 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 jostle them, I gathered 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 silent 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 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 move. 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 number 17 near the Gowanus Canal. I waited half an hour.
Coulson's voice came through slightly distorted by static, no preamble, no emotion. The call ended immediately.
"Homegrown spies..." I muttered. My palm clenched, vibrating faintly. The phone shook in my grip, plastic and microchips cracking, 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, rusty monster than the hangar had been. Wasting no time, I entered. I was in full combat gear, hopped up on stimulants, and 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 wearing that polite, expressionless smile. Beside him was Natasha Romanoff, this time in a black S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical suit, no civilian clothing in sight. Her gaze was another matter entirely. A mixture of curiosity, assessment, and something else I couldn't quite read.
But the centerpiece of this gathering was him. A bald Black man in a long leather coat that reeked of swagger and hidden threat from miles 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 lightweight combat suit with the arms exposed. He held a compound bow in his left hand. This was Hawkeye. Clint Barton. One of the future Avengers. On paper, he was the weakest; on par with Natasha. But I wasn't fooled by his unassuming appearance. 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 guided his arrows with thought alone. 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, shutting out the familiar visual noise, and focused, opening my spiritual perception. The world appeared in different colors, invisible yet absolutely real. It was like tuning an old radio, signals of different strengths breaking through the interference.
Coulson. His spiritual power was a steady, calm flame. Warm, but small. He was definitely the most ordinary person here, our reference point.
Natasha was a completely different story. Her energy felt denser, sharper. A compressed spring, or a thin, honed blade concealed in its sheath. There was nothing superfluous about her. Everything answered 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. Beneath his skin and that swaggering coat of his lay a cliff that would not be easily moved.
But the archer, Clint Barton, was an anomaly. His spiritual power literally vibrated in the air, bright and almost blinding, two or even three times greater than Natasha's reserves. 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 roughly at Natasha's level. This was sobering. With an Iron Blood-modified body, the System, Essence Smith, and especially Strange Science, I had expected more. I had thought I would be closer to super-soldier level, but apparently, there was still work to be done.
Then I thought of Kraven. If Barton felt like this, what kind of monster was the Hunter? Scary to imagine. His spiritual power must have exceeded the archer's by an order of magnitude or 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 had been simpler and more important. I had to survive. I had to win.
Well, I had roughly assessed the visitors' power levels. This didn't give me much, but I could draw one conclusion. If Fury had brought Natasha and this archer who surpassed her on all fronts, this was his personal scalpel for the most delicate operations. And right now, that scalpel was pointed at me.
Well then. It was time to show them they were biting into steel.
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 watched their reactions carefully. They were professionals, no doubt about it. Coulson's perpetual smile slipped for a moment. Barton instinctively tightened his grip on his bow. Even Natasha, whose composure was legendary, let a flicker of surprise show in her eyes. But Fury's reaction was the most telling. His eyes widened in shock, just for a split second, but that was enough. I had breached their defenses.
"Question." My voice rumbled through the grain elevator, distorted slightly by my mask. Resonant. Merciless. "Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. allow this bastard..." I kicked the lifeless body for emphasis. "...to attack me? I can handle myself. With my talents, I can solve problems, even if my methods are extreme. 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 tell me they weren't under surveillance!"
I wasn't entirely lying to them. The surveillance was real. Peter was a genius. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s analysts had surely marked him as a high-priority recruit. And Ben Parker was one of the two living carriers of my healing formula. A walking scientific precedent they should have been studying 24/7.
Fury remained silent for a moment, his gaze shifting from me to the corpse and back, as if weighing his words on invisible scales. Finally, he spoke, his voice as even as steel.
Sergei Kravinoff, known as Kraven the Hunter, is an elusive meta-mercenary with a service record longer than all of ours combined. By the most conservative estimates, Fury hesitated, deciding whether to share such information. He sighed and showed his hand. "He has eliminated about twenty-five Alpha-level mutants, thirteen metahumans, and one 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 that moment, my irritation changed into something else. An icy, prickly respect. This bastard hadn't earned his title for nothing, and now Fury's shock was more understandable. Kraven had simply had a fatal stroke of bad luck, running into an anomaly like me. While reveling in his twisted 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 lay in 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 said, deliberately using the formal 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. "No 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 a crooked smirk. "That's too narrow a definition for what S.H.I.E.L.D. is. And trust me, no one in the world could have approached Kraven unnoticed. It's like trying to plant a bug on an adult 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 and Xavier immediately surfaced in my mind. They could have tracked this hunter without even leaving their chairs. Fury was just deflecting. He was trying to talk his way out of failure by painting the dead man as an invincible titan, so that by comparison, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s inaction would look justified. But before I could make a caustic remark, Fury cut in.
"He was the best." The director stepped forward, passing the corpse. "And I would have believed you could escape from him. But you killed him. How you managed that remains a mystery. According to our data, he was practically impossible to wound."
"Invulnerability doesn't exist." I shrugged. "He just made three classic mistakes. Although, in the first case, it was more because his employer required it. He wanted to take me alive, he underestimated his opponent, and he bought too much into his own legend. But that's all just details. Let's get back 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 idea of betrayal without saying the word. I still wanted to live, and throwing around accusations about Hydra at a meeting that might be recorded was a sure way to get myself killed.
"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, almost 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 warehouse.
"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. It was heavy with dull, bone-deep 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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