Lucius returned to Sands Point with the last sour trace of Australian weed clinging to the back of his throat and the combat experience taken from Thena and Gilgamesh refusing to settle quietly inside his skull.
He reached through the Nexus before his feet touched the rear lawn. Five conditioned soldiers broke from their patrol routes and assembled in front of him, rifles slung across their chests. Each stood a little over six and a half feet, broad enough to make ordinary security personnel reconsider the profession.
Lucius looked them over. "Attack me with everything you have."
They opened fire.
A telekinetic shield formed around him before the first round arrived. Bullets flattened against it in a sustained metallic rain, layered themselves into a curved wall, and began falling into the grass as fresh rounds struck behind them.
Lucius watched one soldier change magazines while another moved to improve his angle.
"Perhaps reducing your intelligence was not the wisest investment."
The gunfire stopped.
For one hopeful moment, Lucius believed the criticism had reached whatever independent judgement remained beneath the conditioning. Then two soldiers opened a secured equipment case. One lifted a rotary gun from it while another distributed energy weapons. The other three returned carrying rocket launchers.
Lucius's right eye twitched.
Metal locked under his magnetic control. Telekinesis caught hands, shoulders, knees, and every weapon before anyone could test whether the pool house was rated for anti-armour fire.
"I meant physically."
The growl carried across the lawn.
All five saluted as soon as he released them. Guns, launchers, and the rotary cannon dropped into the grass. The soldiers rushed him together.
-
Several hours later, Steve Rogers drove the final control chip toward its slot while Bucky Barnes tried to kill him.
The third Project Insight carrier shook around them. Somewhere below, the other two machines had accepted the replacement chips. This one remained under HYDRA's control, and the Winter Soldier stood between Steve and the last chance to change that.
Bucky fired until the shield stopped being enough. One round entered Steve's side. Another tore through his thigh. Steve closed the distance because bleeding was cheaper than letting the carrier finish linking to its targets.
"Bucky."
The name brought no recognition. Bucky struck with his metal arm, caught the shield when Steve raised it, and drove both into Steve's chest. There was no anger in his face. HYDRA had scraped the man down to task, route, and obstruction.
Steve hit the deck and rolled before the next shot. The final chip had landed several feet away. He had spent the approach watching for a hesitation that belonged to Bucky. Every movement committed to the order. He threw the shield low. Bucky stepped over its path, exactly as expected, and Steve used the opening to dive for the chip.
His fingers closed around it. Bucky caught his ankle and pulled him back. Steve turned, kicked the pistol from his hand, and took a metal fist across the mouth for the effort. The world narrowed to steel, blood, and the open control housing beyond Bucky's shoulder.
Steve stopped trying to win the fight.
He let Bucky drive him against the housing, trapped the metal arm between them, and forced the chip into the slot with his other hand. The carrier accepted it.
-
Maria Hill saw the third control link turn from red to white while an enhanced HYDRA commander tried to break her spine over a console.
The man had swallowed his vial before reaching the control centre. Ten times an ordinary man's strength made the first grip dangerous. Ten times the healing made every careful shot temporary unless it destroyed something important.
Hill gave him the console instead. She let his pull take her forward, planted one foot against its edge, and drove both heels into his damaged knee. The joint folded. He released her long enough for two loyal technicians to loop a heavy cable around his throat and pull in opposite directions.
The knee was already trying to straighten. Hill needed the control link before it did.
"All three links are ours."
Hill returned to the controls.
"Confirm targeting authority."
"Authority confirmed."
The three carrier icons moved across her display. Each carried enough weapons to erase the people HYDRA had decided might become inconvenient. Destroying the machines would bury SHIELD with them, along with careers, secrets, and whatever remained of Fury's institution.
Pressing the final command felt more productive.
"Retarget all batteries."
-
Sam lost his left wing to the Winter Soldier and approximately half his remaining patience.
Bucky caught the assembly while Sam banked past the third carrier. Metal tore away behind him. The sudden imbalance rolled him toward the hull, and only a hard release kept the damaged frame from dragging him into the deck.
Sam fell.
His parachute opened late enough to be insulting. Tracer fire crossed above the canopy as the carriers continued to climb, and the Triskelion rose beneath him with several windows already missing.
Hill's voice reached his earpiece. "Sam, report."
"One wing, no flight, terrible landing options."
"Can you reach the control centre?"
The first carrier rotated above him. Gun housings moved away from the city and toward the other two machines.
"Ask me again after gravity finishes its part."
A pull on one steering line missed a burning section of roof by less than a yard. Glass gave way under both boots, but the loose canopy snagged outside and jerked him backwards until he cut the harness. By the time the nearest HYDRA agent settled on a response, Sam had taken his rifle.
Helping Steve had sounded simpler when it involved two fugitives at his door.
-
Natasha reached Pierce's access terminal with one hand. The other remained wrapped in the cable he had used to throw her across the chamber.
Enhanced healing had closed most of the wound in his shoulder. It had not removed the blood from his shirt or improved his first experience of fighting two people who knew exactly what they are doing.
Pierce crossed the chamber. Fury shot him through the same shoulder again.
"That vial cost five million dollars," Fury said. "I intend to get the full audit."
Pierce turned on him. Natasha pulled the cable tight around his injured arm and used his momentum to drag him into the council table. The furniture broke beneath him, leaving Natasha enough time to turn back to the terminal.
Natasha entered the release sequence. SHIELD's files opened beneath her fingers, HYDRA buried inside them so thoroughly that separating one from the other would have taken years and a faith in institutions she no longer possessed.
Pierce saw what she was doing. "You release that, and the world gets all of you with us."
Pierce was right about the cost. Natasha confirmed the upload anyway.
Fury caught Pierce's next charge with three rounds to the chest. The enhanced potion kept the older man moving through the first two. The third turned his step into a collapse against the broken table.
"Hill has control," Natasha said.
Fury kept the pistol trained on Pierce. "Then tell her to use it."
-
The first carrier fired.
Its forward batteries struck the second across the port side. Armour opened, machinery ruptured beneath it, and the answering barrage crossed the air before the debris began to fall. The third carrier turned its guns on both.
Steve watched through the torn hull as the machines started to destroy one another.
The mission was over. Bucky was not.
A collapsing support trapped him against the deck. Steve could have left him there and reached the water before the carrier came apart. Instead, he crossed the tilting compartment and lifted the beam.
Bucky stared up at him without understanding why the mission target was helping.
"You know me."
Bucky answered with his metal fist. The carrier had accepted the chip. Steve let the shield fall and did not raise his hands again. Bucky hit him until the deck dropped away beneath them.
Steve woke briefly in the river with no strength left for the surface. A hand caught the back of his harness. Bucky's expression did not change as he hauled Steve toward the shore, then disappeared before help arrived.
When Steve next woke, Sam was sitting beside the hospital bed with an expression suggesting that friendship had imposed unreasonable working conditions.
"He saved me."
"He also shot you. I like to judge a man by the whole afternoon."
Steve looked toward the window. Bucky had chosen to pull him from the river after the mission ended, and that was enough to try. Natasha had named three possible telepaths. Xavier was safer, and the girl at his school might have been kinder, but Noctis was the worst option. Steve had dismissed him because of what he might do to Bucky. After fighting HYDRA soldiers empowered by the man's potions, trusting him felt worse.
"I need to speak to Noctis."
Sam leaned back.
"Is he the one who sold the potions that turned an already terrible day into a nightmare?"
"Yes."
"Good. I was worried this plan might be sensible."
-
Earlier, at Sands Point, five soldiers had proven insufficient.
The regular Strengthening Potions improved their speed, endurance, and recovery, but improvement did not create an opening where none existed. Lucius held the centre of the lawn while they attacked from five directions. His force fields redirected the first rush. A pale-gold shield formed along his forearm, caught a punch, and narrowed into a short sword before the soldier could recover.
Lucius stopped the edge against the man's throat. The construct dissolved. A hooked blade replaced it behind another soldier's ankle and pulled his stance apart without cutting flesh. Lucius turned through the gap, drove his shoulder into a third man's chest, and allowed Gilgamesh's understanding of weight to carry the larger body into the other two.
The useful part was how little thought it required.
Thena's experience supplied answers before conscious thought caught up. A shield lasted until the angle changed, then became a hook when control mattered more than injury. Gilgamesh's mastery governed the body beneath it, choosing where force entered and how the ground returned it.
Lucius called five more soldiers. At ten, the problem became interesting. Three soldiers pressed his left while two stayed beyond the first exchange, ready for whichever construct he committed, and the rest restricted his retreat. Lucius let the formation close.
Under three impacts, the shield widened and split into two short swords. One turned flat against a wrist while the other passed beside a soldier's neck, then both joined into a hooked pole behind the next attacker's knee. A touch of Telekinesis carried Lucius over the falling man and into the centre of the formation.
Nothing remained after its purpose ended. Preserving a design because he liked how it looked had cost Lucius forty-eight sets of testicles in Australia, and he had adapted.
The soldiers struggled to find a clean strike. A fist brushed Lucius's shirt once, more cloth than body, before a circular shield took the man's feet from beneath him. Lucius caught him telekinetically before his head reached the ground.
"Enough."
Ten bodies stopped. Those still standing saluted. The rest rose and joined them while Lucius dismissed the last golden hookblade.
The additions had passed. He sent the soldiers back to their patrols and walked toward the pool.
Beyond the estate wall, a Wakandan observer watched him cross the terrace, lowered the binoculars, and sent the confirmation the team had been waiting to provide. Noctis was home. Lucius noticed none of it. He called for Sebastien before reaching the lounger.
"A Long Island iced tea, sir?" Benjamin called from the open doors.
"And fruit. Combat mastery requires responsible recovery."
"Of course, sir."
Lucius sat. The moment his arse touched the lounger, the remembered sequence finally arranged itself. Project Insight was the new trend. Three carriers, three replacement chips. Steve Rogers and his incurable belief that giving weapons a conscience was less reliable than destroying them.
The carriers would shoot one another apart if Lucius allowed the film to finish without him.
He had spent years complaining that Earth institutions kept wasting valuable technology, and three flying arsenals were preparing to prove the point at once. Stark thrusters, SHIELD systems, HYDRA targeting architecture, and enough weapons to turn a lawyer honest, for a time at least.
Stealing only one would be an act of restraint. Lucius smiled. There was still time. He did not check the news. Benjamin's service was more important and had never failed him, and a man should not rush into grand theft thirsty.