Steve tore the damaged panel from the second carrier's targeting housing. The black case beside his knee had survived the landing. That was more than he could say for the housing.
Fury had opened three identical cases during the briefing, each holding a replacement targeting module. Put one in every carrier, break HYDRA's connection to the weapons, and stay alive until Hill takes control. It had sounded like a plan because Fury had left out everything currently shooting at them.
Steve pulled the active module from its slot. A damaged thruster compensated beneath the deck; the carrier rolled, and he caught the edge of the open housing.
The HYDRA agent coming over the other side did not have the same problem. One hand held a pistol. The other still held the bottom of a Strengthening Potion vial.
Sam hit him before he could aim.
The wing assembly carried both men across the deck. Sam let go before the agent struck a raised antenna mount, folded his left wing under a burst from the pursuing Quinjet, and landed beside Steve with one knee against the steel.
"Tell me that was the last one."
Steve pushed the replacement into place. The housing closed around it, and the light above the slot changed from red to green.
"Second carrier is ours."
Gunfire answered first. "There is still one carrier left."
Agents poured through the nearest access door.
Sam brought the wings around. "I liked her better when she rescued us."
Steve raised his shield as the first man reached them. The punch struck hard enough to force his boots along the deck, but Sam's wing was already sweeping behind the man's knees. He went down, caught himself before his face hit the steel.
Two more had used the delay to separate. One attacked high while the other went for Steve's legs. The speed was real; the judgment behind it still belonged to men who had acquired their strength from a bottle. Sam drove the leading edge of a wing into the lower man's ribs, leaving Steve free to turn the high strike and send its owner over the exposed housing.
The Quinjet banked back towards them.
Sam glanced back. "Move."
Steve grabbed the empty case. Sam caught him beneath the arms, and the carrier dropped away as the wings opened. A burst from the Quinjet walked across the deck behind them.
The green light stayed on.
They passed beneath the carrier, close enough for its thrusters to shake the wing assembly. Steve could see the Triskelion turning below them whenever the hull allowed it. Beyond the second carrier, the third platform continued to climb.
"I am going to speak with Noctis when this is over."
Natasha laughed over the shared channel.
"You find that funny?"
"I am trying to work out which part of today made you want his company. Considering the situation, he might side with HYDRA just to spite SHIELD."
"Hill did."
"I heard that," Hill cut in.
Steve ignored her. "SHIELD attacked an enhanced man who could make these potions. They treated him like a prisoner without him committing a crime, and now the same potions are being used to aim weapons at half the planet. Hill thinks he will come back and finish what he started."
"I do not think that."
Something crashed across Hill's channel. Three shots followed.
"You have tried to resign five times," Natasha reminded her.
"Those were professional disagreements."
"Were they before or after he threatened to shatter your spine?"
Hill's silence lasted until Sam began climbing towards the third carrier.
Steve watched it clear another section of the Triskelion. "He has reasons to hate SHIELD. Maybe he will listen to someone willing to admit that."
"Maybe. Keeping Hill's spine attached will be a separate conversation."
The wing assembly shuddered beneath Steve's weight.
Sam adjusted their angle and looked up at the carrier still under HYDRA control. "Have that conversation after we deal with this crisis."
-
Pierce came at Fury with his wounded shoulder turned towards Natasha.
He had made the same mistake twice already. The potion let him cross the council chamber before an ordinary man could react, but it had not given him the habits of a fighter. His feet carried him too far. His uninjured hand swung wide as he expected Fury to retreat.
Fury stepped in.
For an instant, Pierce had nowhere to put all that strength. Natasha looped the cable around his wounded arm, braced one foot against the council table, and pulled across the joint while Fury drove the barrel of his pistol into Pierce's throat.
Pierce seized the cable and changed direction. Natasha released it before he could drag her into the table, hit the floor behind him, and heard Fury fire.
The round entered Pierce's thigh.
His leg held long enough for him to turn. It shook when he put his weight on it.
Natasha kicked the back of his knee. Pierce dropped, reaching for Fury's pistol as he went, but Fury gave up the weapon instead of fighting the pull. He caught Pierce's wrist with both hands and dragged him forward.
The cable was still hanging from Pierce's wounded arm. Natasha took it around his throat.
Pierce rose with her on his back. She crossed the cable behind his neck and fed one end beneath the fixed support of the council table. His attempt to stand lifted the near edge from the floor. The support did not move, and the line tightened.
He clawed at it.
"Turn into it. No?"
He picked up the pistol and struck Pierce's wounded shoulder with it.
Pierce tried to face him. Natasha shifted her weight, pulling his head the other way while his damaged leg folded beneath him. The potion was already healing the bullet wounds slowly. It could do nothing about the fact that Alexander Pierce had never learned how to fall with a woman hanging from his neck.
His face met the floor.
Fury planted a knee between Pierce's shoulders. Natasha kept the choke in place, looped the free cable around both wrists, and set the knot where his fingers could not reach it.
Pierce strained. The table groaned against its mounting, and Natasha tightened the line until he stopped.
Fury bent near his ear. "You are going to unlock the system."
"Insight has already launched."
Hill's voice reached the chamber. "Two carriers belong to us already. The third is still under HYDRA control."
Fury pressed the pistol into the torn shoulder. Pierce made a sound through his teeth.
Natasha held the cable with one hand and reached for the access terminal with the other.
--
The runes completed a strange circle around Gilgamesh.
Thena watched them close around what Lucius had left of him. Dark glass covered the ruined ground. The spear remained through Gilgamesh's abdomen, with the lines flaring all over the runes. He could barely turn his head. His eyes found her.
Lucius stepped onto the first mark and whispered.
"Sacrifice."
Gilgamesh began to disappear.
Light broke through his skin in small fragments. There was no blood. The spear became visible through his chest, then his chest was gone as well. His eyes stayed on Thena until the last pieces of him went with the rest.
The runes faded. Nothing remained inside the circle.
Thena looked at Lucius.
His eyes were closed.
-
Gilgamesh settled badly.
Lucius had used the Array to take knowledge before, but never the specific memories of someone who had spent millennia fighting. He kept the selection narrow enough to avoid drowning in a life he did not want: the standard Eternal package to hopefully deepen his own, Gilgamesh's expertise in Cosmic Energy manipulation, his combat experience, and the long familiarity that had made Thena so difficult to reach.
The first change made him understand the importance of footwork.
His stance corrected itself, shifting weight by less than an inch. The movement felt obvious once it had happened and embarrassingly absent before. A punch no longer belonged to the shoulder and fist. It began against the ground, passed through the leg and hip, and arrived with the body behind it.
Then came the memories of Thena attacking him again.
The last fifteen hundred years of practice came with the memory. Blades changed length halfway through a defence. Shields appeared where a hand had been empty. An opening that looked accidental became the beginning of a throw they had rehearsed centuries ago and improved each time it failed.
Gilgamesh knew where she would move because he knew what she protected, what she ignored, and which wound would drag her attention away from herself. Lucius received the habits without the years that had made them instinct.
He opened his eyes and Thena's gaze. Her right arm and left leg were gone, and the transmuted rope still held what remained against the force fields. The empty circle lay between them.
He had begun with Gilgamesh to test if he could focus on select memories. His regeneration and healing powers had kept him alive. The same powers also left pieces of him across the forest, while two people with much fewer options used theirs properly. If the Array failed to carry experience, he preferred discovering the limitation before sacrificing the better fighter.
Luckily It had worked.
"Do not be angry with me, love." Lucius lifted Thena with telekinesis. "I am no different from you. You are not even the first Eternal I have hunted."
The force fields carried her across the glass. He lowered her into the centre of the same circle and settled the rope with her.
"So be a good girl for once and stay still. I am still angry with you."
Thena looked past him to the place where Gilgamesh had vanished.
Lucius stepped onto the first rune. "Sweet dreams, Thena. The Mahd Wy'ry will not trouble you again."
She smiled at him.
Lucius's mouth tightened.
"Sacrifice."
The smile remained while the Array took her. She looked at peace in her last moments.
Lucius selected the standard Eternal package, her expression of Cosmic Energy, and every useful part of her martial experience.
What followed had less order.
Battlefields opened across his thoughts. A spear point slipped past a shield, returned in another hand, and met the same defence from the opposite side. Swords shortened when the distance collapsed. Empty hands took over when weapons broke. He knew the strain in shields he had never carried and the answer to stances he had never seen.
Gilgamesh's experience had shown him where a defender needed to stand. Thena showed him what could be done to anyone who stood there.
The two lives struck each other inside him, disagreement after disagreement. Neither replaced the other. Each exposed the other's gaps, and the Array drove the corrections below conscious thought until balance, distance, and the line of an approaching weapon stopped requiring names.
When the last of it settled, Lucius was still standing on the rune.
He tested his weight once, heel to toe, there were small changes to his stance. His gaze roamed the area. The forest required work.
He gathered parts of himself first. Especially the pile of ball sacks. Severed limbs rose from the craters and broken undergrowth, followed by blood, tissue, and everything else he preferred not to leave for an Australian government laboratory. He searched twice for pieces belonging to Thena or Gilgamesh, brought the remains together, and opened the ground beneath them.
Stone softened into magma and swallowed the evidence. Lucius sent the abandoned spear after it. The transmuted rope had disappeared with Thena, leaving nothing else of a figure who gave life to a Greek Goddess.
He floated above the pool until the surface began to darken. This acquisition, different from the others, did not make him a very happy Eternal+. No, he was feeling sadness, killing Thena left a bad taste. As if he had bullied a child. The Mahd Wy'ry has turned the serene butcher to an innocent figure and while he was the one who lost limb after limb. he still felt like he desecrated something.
With a deep sigh he teleported away.