Chapter 83
"Miss Stacy." Fury didn't bat an eye when the girl removed her mask, which, until then, had been nothing but a blind spot, became visible. "I knew she was your agent. Now," he nodded at the suit shimmering with residual interference, "I know how she pulled it off. But your motives, Thompson..."
"I have one motive." I shot back. Honestly, this dialogue was starting to tire me. A seditious thought crossed my mind. Maybe it really would be simpler to put Fury under my control. "I want to deal with all of the global threats so I can live in peace. I want to build something new. And I want people to stop trying to shoot me with a laser satellite or some psi-emitter every few days." I looked him dead in the eyes. "That is literally all of it. Power, money, strength for the sake of strength. I do not need any of that. I am probably some kind of broken person, but I want to believe I am not a hypocrite."
"Not a hypocrite!" Gwen cut in sharply, stepping between me and Fury. "Nothing stopped you from asking me to process Fury too! Or anyone else! I would have..." She stumbled for a moment. "I would not have refused."
Then she lifted her chin again, and her gaze bore into Fury.
"You are the only hypocrite here!" She poked her finger into his chest. He stared coldly at the girl's tiny finger. "If you had a tool like this, everything would have been normal. It would have been for the common good, it would have been a useful tool, and you would have said you knew exactly how to use it better, and you would have come up with other justifications. But the moment this tool shows up in the hands of someone who has given you no reason to distrust and who deserves more trust than anyone in this building, you immediately slap labels on him. You say he is dangerous, he is uncontrollable, he is playing God. You are just furious that this is not your toy!"
If only it were that simple, girl. Fury exhaled wearily, averting his gaze.
"Thank you, Gwen," I said sincerely, gently moving her hand aside. Then I turned back to Fury. "I've revealed too much. To you, to Barton, to Gwen, and soon to Hyperion. Just because your paranoia refuses to see my sincerity doesn't mean it's absent. And if you already see me as a problem that needs solving, go ahead and try. This isn't a threat, Nick. It's simply a fact. I'll defend myself."
There was another silence.
"I don't like the direction this conversation has taken," Fury admitted honestly, running a hand over his face. "But I'll be frank with you. I don't like your tool, but I do like your openness. That doesn't change what I said. You're an uncontrolled element. But at the very least, when it comes to destroying Hydra, I'm ready to trust you."
"Hooray, peace!" Gwen laughed cheerfully, slightly undercutting the gravity of the moment.
I just smirked at that, and Fury rolled his eyes dramatically.
"I prefer to call it parity," he cut her off. "You can stay here for now. I'm going to get Hyperion and Barton. It's time to discuss the plan."
After receiving confirming nods from me and Gwen, Fury left the Aquarium.
In the room, it was just me, Gwen, and Pierce. He'd been standing there the whole time with a polite, calm smile, treating the situation as perfectly normal.
Right before his eyes, a discussion had just taken place about the destruction of his life's work, literally the foundation on which his entire personality, all his accomplishments, and his very identity were built.
And he did not give a damn about it. No. It was even scarier than that. He considered this perfectly correct and logical. He considered it his own. He considered it his new personality, his new identity.
It was frightening.
Why had I even created something like this? How had I even thought of this? And why was it only now, looking at this living, smiling corpse, that the full weight of Fury's words about playing God was finally hitting me?
We sat on a small couch in the interrogation room. Not knowing what to say, I stared at the blindingly white ceiling, thinking about how I had even ended up here.
"Everything is fine," Gwen said quietly, carefully taking my hand. Her voice was soothing, pulling me out of my dark thoughts. "Hydra turned out to be far more powerful than anyone could have guessed. And this is only the first thread we have unraveled. Fighting them any other way..." She shook her head. "Would have been impossible."
It was strange, but what she said and how she said it calmed me down.
She was right. Against a machine like that, against followers of a Nazi ideology, against cultists of a creepy deity, and against a shadow government with limitless resources, what other methods were there? An information attack? Gathering compromising material? Building a coalition and delivering pinpoint strikes? All of that was a long game. The slightest miscalculation, the slightest leak of information, one trusted agent turning out to be a sleeper, and everything would go down the drain. And what was at stake was the entire world.
I needed to act decisively. I needed to act without regard for ethics. Gwen understood that. I was grateful for it.
"Marry me."
I said that instead of "Thank you."
Gwen blinked. For a moment, she seemed to stop breathing. The pause stretched. And then, instead of shock, laughter, or a lecture about appropriateness, she simply nodded.
"Alright."
And as if nothing had happened, she laid her head on my shoulder.
"It turns out I still got caught in your web," I chuckled, hugging her.
"It turns out you did," she answered softly.
For the next couple of minutes, we sat in the interrogation room's silence next to Pierce, who smiled. But I broke the quiet to ask a question that had been gnawing at me for quite a while.
"Why are you with me in all of this? You are risking your life and getting involved in ventures, each one more questionable than the last. It would have been much safer for you to just stay a hero on the streets of New York."
The question hung in the air. Gwen was quiet for a while, but without lifting her head off my shoulder, she finally answered.
"Because I can feel the sincerity. I can feel yours. I can feel Peter's. I can even feel Eric's. Since I got my powers, my sense has constantly shown me how unreliable people are in general. Actually, that is why I was a loner most of the time. But," she smirked, "loners do not save the world. Not even loners like you or the superstrong Hyperion. And I am a heroine. I have to save the world. At least once. Otherwise, what is even the point of all this masquerade?"
"It's because you're programmed by a Multiversal Conceptual Entity that gives you your powers," I answered seriously, so she wouldn't think I was joking. There had been too many revelations today. One more or one less wouldn't make a difference.
"So... free will does not exist?" Gwen asked with a tired smile. She was taking it surprisingly well. Then again, she already knew about the source of her powers. Now she also knew where her motives came from. "It turns out Hydra's ideology is, in a way... meaningless?"
"It's more that you were suited for this role from the start, by your character and way of thinking. So you became it. They are like the millions of Gwens, Peters, and Mileses in other parallel universes. I think free will still exists. Though, yes, coming from me, it would be hypocritical to discuss that."
"No." She turned her head, looking up at me. "It's actually the opposite. Precisely because the nuclear button is in your hands, only you can truly discuss what awaits the world: either a wasteland or a utopia. And who is Miles, by the way?"
"He's another version of Spider-Man. There are quite a few of them out there." I answered easily.
"Which ones are the coolest?"
"Hmm, that's a tough question. I'd probably still say the classic ones, yours and Peter's, are the coolest. There's also a Spider-Man from the year 2099. His name is Miguel O'Hara. But from what I know, he's kind of an asshole."
"I won't ask where you got that information from."
"I'll definitely tell you everything. But only if you marry me."
"I already said yes."
For a while, the room settled back into a cozy silence. My mind was nearly blank. Was this a joke? Had what just happened been a joke? Had I really just gotten a cat-spider wife? Was this fate, or some form of conceptual providence born from the mishmash of strange skills in my body?
I suddenly realized with perfect clarity that tying my romantic fate to Gwen was the best option for me. Every self-respecting isekai protagonist should have one, after all. She was beautiful. She was smart. She was emotionally stable. And I already sensed, on some intuitive level, that she was absolutely loyal. From any angle, she was an ideal girl.
It was interesting. What had I done to deserve such happiness? And where would we have the wedding after all this?
My amusing, somewhat happy thoughts were interrupted by the sharp hiss of the airlock door. The cozy atmosphere burst like a soap bubble.
Three people walked in. Fury. Barton. And Hyperion, in his blue and gold superhero garb.
How much time had passed? Seven minutes? And in that time, Hyperion had already gotten here? Did he even sleep? Or maybe he lived on this base? That last thought, by the way, sounded surprisingly logical. Located between Washington and Virginia, the Triskelion building was a convenient hub for the kind of travel Hyperion preferred. He had essentially become the first and only transnational hero on the planet.
I couldn't resist. I activated my spiritual vision.
It was bright. Blazingly bright. Like staring into the sun. No, a hundred suns at zenith, blazing down on the Sahara with photosensitive eyes. I squinted against the spiritual radiance pouring off him.
That was the sensation of looking at this world's Superman. He studied the room in turn, his gaze moving from the smiling Pierce to Gwen, and finally settling on me.
Officially, this powerhouse topped my personal power rankings by a massive margin. He surpassed Barton by about fifty times. And it wasn't about the quantity of his Reiryoku. It was the quality. Hyperion's spiritual structure itself was different. Non-human. Divine.
It was hard to describe, but an average human compared to Hyperion wasn't like a beat-up Moskvitch compared to a brand-new Bugatti. No. It was a cart. An ordinary wooden wagon. That was how serious this was.
Now I was definitely sure that against someone like this, my mental worm would not work. His Spirit would simply burn the parasite to ash without even noticing. It became a bit uncomfortable. Especially considering that this powerhouse surpassed me by an order of magnitude and, if anything happened, he would kill me. Not with the pinky toe of his left foot, of course, but he would kill me. Now I understood how he alone had managed to stop the last fight between the Hulk and the Abomination.
"Have you seen enough?" Fury asked with interest. His keen gaze carefully tracked my reaction, noting my heightened attention to this demigod.
It was interesting. Who was stronger, Hyperion or Thor? Of course, that assumes Thor wasn't from the inferior MCU... Stop. Why the hell did that matter? I needed to stop staring at him. With effort and fighting through the sharp spike in Reishi concentration filling the room, I forced myself to shut down my spiritual vision.
"He's the strongest," I exhaled. "Hydra is doomed. By the way, Pierce, what can you tell me about Hyperion?"
"Under no circumstances should we attract his attention," Pierce stated evenly. "His threat level is Omega-Plus. Any protocols against him are useless."
"That's what I expected." I chuckled. "So Hydra definitely doesn't have anyone of similar caliber."
"Or Pierce simply doesn't know about them," Fury cut in, immediately dampening my enthusiasm.
"Alexander Pierce?" Hyperion finally spoke. His voice was ordinary, a pleasant baritone. "What is he doing here? And what is this Hydra?"
Right. If you weren't looking at him with spiritual vision, he was simply a man who commanded respect. But then, so did Fury. The S.H.I.E.L.D. director had spent years in the tense world of espionage, building a different but no less powerful aura.
Over the next five minutes, we briefly brought Hyperion up to speed. Pierce. Hydra. The main problem figures: Zola, Malick, and Strucker. And, of course, the potential threats we hadn't yet identified.
Hyperion's reaction was unexpected. To some extent, it was also unpleasant.
"I am not concerned with your spy wars," he finally said, shaking his head, his voice perfectly even.
I realized the situation required urgent action. Without Hyperion on our side, the plan for a quick decapitation strike could drag on. Any delay would mean failure.
"Spy wars?" I repeated. "Hydra is a threat to the entire world. Take Gideon Malick, for example, the man we just discussed. He's a cultist who wants to summon some damn cosmic god to Earth. Tell me, Marcus," I said, remembering he'd asked me to use his first name, "what do you know about cosmic threats?"
"I'd like to think I know more about them than you do," the man answered, frowning slightly.
"You're from another planet, right? Your physiology clearly isn't human." I was feeling him out carefully.
"Yes." Marcus nodded, admitting the obvious. "Yours, by the way, isn't human either," he added offhandedly, making it clear he saw right through me.
"Why are you here? Are you protecting ordinary humans? And how is this connected to your arrival, appearing almost simultaneously with the Richards expedition?"
"I cannot answer that." He shook his head again. "This knowledge would do more harm than good."
At that moment, I genuinely wanted to say just one word: Galactus. But intuition, or something like it, stopped me from giving in to that impulse. Hyperion obviously wasn't ready to show his hand. Right now, he was an unknown variable to me, just as I was to him. Explaining how I knew about Galactus would be nearly impossible. In short, forget Galactus. I'd deal with the situation at hand.
"Nevertheless," I pressed on, "since you've taken on the burden of protecting humanity, and since a cosmic god who could theoretically be summoned by Malick any day now is no metaphorical threat to humanity..."
"We need to get Malick under control," Fury finished my thought. "That way he can give us the details. Then you can decide whether or not you want to fully participate in this mission."
"Control?" Marcus finally addressed the elephant in the room. His gaze shifted to Pierce, who had remained silent all this time. "Pierce... he's under someone's control? Right now?"
Naturally, Fury, Barton, and Hyperion all turned their attention toward me. Another delicate moment.
"Don't rush to judgment, Marcus." I raised my hands in a placating gesture. "With Hydra, it was a necessary evil. Otherwise, chaos would have engulfed the world, triggered by the Dead Hand protocols. Besides," I looked him straight in the eye, "since you're officially the strongest of us, you'll most likely have to storm Strucker's base in Sokovia. Then you'll see why I had no choice with Hydra. You'll see that, right?" I turned to Pierce.
"Experiments on children. Forced organ transplants. Slave trading. The kidnapping of curious human and non-human specimens." Pierce began listing in an even voice. "The creation of sentient weapons. Hundreds of prisoners kept as biological material."
With each word, Hyperion's expression darkened. He clenched his fists.
"And this is only the tip of the iceberg," Pierce finished. "This is what's in my reports. There is much I do not know."
I glanced at Gwen. Her face had gone pale, and she squeezed my hand hard. That was understandable. In the rush of the interrogation, Pierce had not gone into such details, though he certainly could have. The phrase "experiments on mutants" hardly suggested anything harmless.
"I..." Marcus let out a heavy breath, his shoulders dropping slightly. "I understand."
I exhaled too, allowing myself to relax. We had him.
"So." Hyperion straightened up again, a steely edge entering his voice. "What is the plan?"
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