By the time Rex Viper was done, there were no survivors left at the checkpoint.
The M1A1 Abrams sitting in the middle of the yard never even got the chance to prove its worth. It remained silent and useless, little more than a steel monument surrounded by corpses. Rex moved through the camp with cold efficiency, then casually tossed several grenades into the ammunition storage area before vanishing into the darkness.
A second later, the night exploded.
The blast ripped through the entire checkpoint, swallowing the yard, the barracks, and the tank in a storm of fire. What had been a functioning military position moments earlier was reduced to a burning ruin.
That was only the beginning.
That same night, on the edge of a nearby city, a group of CIA operatives met with some of Afghanistan's "good people" inside an abandoned factory. The transaction moved with practiced efficiency. The agents tossed over bundles of green cash, and in exchange, the locals carried out a sack full of neatly packed square bricks.
Neither side wasted time with courtesy.
Everyone knew what they were there for, and everyone knew better than to ask unnecessary questions. The whole deal was completed in seconds.
Then the light bulb overhead suddenly shattered.
A rock had smashed straight through it.
In the darkness, one of the agents instantly raised his weapon and barked, "What, you bastards trying to rob your own kind? We're agents of the United States. You've got a death wish?"
One of the Afghan men panicked immediately. "No, sir, we didn't mean—"
Gunfire erupted.
The factory dissolved into shouting, screams, and desperate pleading. By the time the lights flickered back on, the men who had come to do business were lying in pools of blood. The lead agent spat on one of the corpses and sneered.
"Pathetic. You think you can play us? You're not vicious enough."
He turned to leave.
Then he noticed something was wrong.
A shadow had moved in the darkness, and one of the operatives behind him was suddenly gone.
His body tensed at once. The remaining agents snapped up their rifles, turning in circles, scanning every corner and broken pillar inside the factory.
"Did you hear that?"
"Shh—"
Someone else vanished.
Panic hit instantly.
"What the hell is this?"
"Shoot! Shoot at anything suspicious! Kill it!"
More gunfire rang out through the abandoned building.
If anyone had been close enough to listen carefully, they would have noticed something chilling. The first burst came from six men. Then five. Then four. Then three.
Then silence.
Elsewhere, in a dark cave hidden deep in the rough terrain, a group of terrorists had just finished attacking civilians. They were in a good mood, loud and full of swagger, already talking about who to call for payment and which foreign intelligence service might be the better customer if this one tried to haggle.
"Hurry up and contact them," one of them said. "If they don't transfer the money, we're done working with them. Someone else will pay."
They never made the call.
An uninvited guest entered the cave without warning, and what followed was not a fight. It was slaughter.
Blood splashed across the rock walls. Men who had spent years spreading fear suddenly learned, in their final seconds, what helpless terror actually felt like. Only when the blood poured out of their own bodies did they understand how painful it was to die.
The legend of the devil began spreading across the land that very night.
At Bagram Air Base, the atmosphere had become tense.
A group of senior American officers gathered in a conference room and watched footage on a screen. The material was all related to the same emerging threat, the being now whispered about everywhere in Afghanistan.
The Death Devil.
Photos and fragments of video filled the display, some blurry, some disturbingly clear. When a front-facing image finally appeared on the screen, the room fell into a collective intake of breath.
It was monstrous.
One officer immediately rejected it. "I'm a hard materialist. I question the authenticity of these images and videos. A devil? That's nonsense. Something like that can't exist."
Another nodded. "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe a literal demon is killing our men. It's more likely some kind of suit. Advanced armor, maybe."
General Pulver, the intelligence chief, stood with a grim expression. "I'm afraid it is real, gentlemen. We have enough evidence to confirm that the entity exists. Pretending otherwise would be stupid."
The room went quiet.
Then the muttering began.
"Is this God's punishment?"
"How could that be? We're God's chosen people. We're white. Anglo-Saxon. Why would God punish us?"
The only black general in the room stared at the speaker for a long moment, but in the end he said nothing. He was the lowest-ranking man present, and that silence said more than any argument could have.
Admiral Glenn, the highest-ranking commander in Afghanistan, clapped his hands once and cut through the noise.
"According to current intelligence, the Death Devil isn't only targeting us. Stop making stupid guesses. I called this meeting to discuss how we deal with it." He looked to Pulver. "Give them your analysis."
"Yes, sir."
Pulver stood straighter and opened a folder.
"Based on the available data, we've reached a tentative conclusion. The Death Devil is attacking the U.S. military, the CIA, elements of the Afghan National Army, and multiple armed groups. So we believe it is not targeting us specifically. It seems to be selecting targets based on a shared trait."
"What trait?"
Pulver hesitated.
Then he said it.
"Possibly… criminality."
The room erupted.
"What?"
"That's ridiculous."
Pulver quickly raised a hand. "I said possibly. In multiple attack zones, some National Army units were hit while others were left alone. The same pattern appears with local armed groups. There was even a case where the Death Devil entered a National Army base, killed about half the personnel, and then left. When we compare the dead to the survivors, commonalities begin to appear."
One colonel cut in sharply. "That's nonsense. We've never seen American soldiers spared. Are you suggesting every U.S. serviceman in Afghanistan is guilty? Cooks, clerks, mechanics, men who have never even left the wire?"
The room sank into silence again.
At last, someone exhaled and said quietly, "But they are still soldiers in another country's land."
No one answered that.
Eventually another voice muttered, "So we're all guilty?"
"Then this isn't the devil's business," someone snapped. "That should be God's job."
Another slammed a fist on the table. "Forget philosophy. Kill it. Figure out how to kill it."
"Yes. Kill it. We have planes, artillery, armor. We're the strongest military on Earth."
Admiral Glenn knocked on the table hard enough to silence them.
"That is exactly the problem before us," he said. "Killing it is not up for debate. The only question is how."
Pulver immediately continued.
"From the current evidence, this Death Devil may not be as overwhelmingly powerful as initial reports suggest. It has never attacked a medium or large base with over a hundred personnel. It focuses on checkpoints, guard posts, and smaller temporary installations with only dozens or fewer defenders. That suggests limitations."
He flipped a page.
"We believe it may possess extraordinary reconnaissance capabilities. It seems able to predict or intercept many of our temporary movements. To reduce losses, I recommend consolidating scattered personnel into larger bases immediately. They can be reassigned temporarily to Bagram or other major installations. As for the Death Devil itself, we should organize a specialized hunting unit based on its habits and attack patterns—"
As they discussed ways to deal with him, Rex sat elsewhere and listened to the whole thing live.
None of the officers in that conference room had the slightest idea how the Death Devil kept obtaining American troop movements.
Wiretaps.
That was all it took.
After so many years of near-total dominance in Afghanistan, they had become arrogant. The possibility that someone might be secretly listening to them wasn't even something they seriously considered. It existed too far outside their sense of vulnerability.
And it wasn't only the U.S. military that feared the Death Devil now.
Afghanistan's armed groups were spooked too.
During the massacres of the last few days, Rex had stumbled onto a terrorist cell connected to the Ten Rings. Better yet, they were direct subordinates of the bald bastard Raza, the same man involved in Tony Stark's kidnapping.
What did it mean to gain something without effort?
This was it.
Rex wiped out most of them. The few survivors fled in sheer panic, desperate to report to their superior and beg for protection. Rex simply followed them.
That led him straight to the cave where Tony Stark was being held.
Late at night, when the guards were at their weakest and the exhaustion in the camp ran deepest, Rex slipped inside. There were several layers of iron doors between him and the inner holding area, but he had prepared for that too.
Poison Master Jiu Zhu had equipped him with several useful little vials before he left.
One of them was especially effective.
Light the wick, let the smoke drift, and anyone who inhaled it would quickly drop into a deep, unnatural sleep. Guard after guard went down without understanding what had happened. By the time Rex reached the largest iron gate, the passage behind him was silent.
He leaned closer and peered through the small viewing window.
Tony Stark was inside.
The man was sleeping heavily, head tilted awkwardly, even letting out a faint snore.
A smile tugged at Rex's lips.
Perfect.
The plan to butcher a fat chicken was going to depend on Tony after all.
His gaze shifted, and he quickly noticed several electrical wires running from the back of the gate deeper into the cave. A fast mental calculation told him where they led. He followed them, found the monitoring system, and attached a compact device that would freeze the security feed on a fixed frame.
The timing worked perfectly.
It was the middle of the night. Stark and Yinsen were both asleep. A frozen camera image showing two sleeping prisoners wouldn't look suspicious for a long while.
After that, Rex used the sleeping smoke on Stark and the other man again, making sure their rest deepened into something closer to unconsciousness. Only then did he slip into the room itself.
From his pocket, he took out another vial and waved it gently under Stark's nose.
This one was a hallucinogen.
When combined with the sleep poison, it could coax a target into giving up secrets unconsciously while half-dreaming. Rex crouched beside the bed and kept his voice low.
"Tony," he murmured, "did you leave a backdoor in the Jericho missile system?"
The Jericho missile was Stark's famous cluster weapon, the one he had shown off so proudly during the weapons demonstration. There had originally been three demonstration units. One had already been used. Two remained in sealed storage inside a U.S. military arsenal not far from the test site.
Killing a giant flock of fat chickens with that would be beautiful.
The only issue was the missile's launch sequence. It was complicated, layered, and designed to require multiple confirmations and authorization chains.
Unless…
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