"This is impossible."
Inside the Triskelion, Alexander Pierce stared at the frozen screen as static devoured the last remaining feed. His face hardened, anger and disbelief mixing into something far more dangerous.
Gone. Every unit.
Not just infantry, but Hydra's finest. Energy weapons. Armored columns. More than thirty Winter Soldiers, each engineered to rival Captain America. All of them wiped out in minutes, without even a distress signal.
By a school.
"Was it really him?" Pierce muttered. "Rowan Mercer…"
Only now did he acknowledge the mistake he had been nursing since the beginning.
He had assumed Rowan was a mouthpiece. A convenient front placed there by Charles Xavier to draw attention away from the real threat. The academy's backbone, Pierce believed, was the telepath. Neutralize Xavier and the rest would fold.
But Xavier had been suppressed. Neural dampeners worked exactly as designed.
And the devastation still came.
Which meant there was another pillar holding that place upright.
Logan was accounted for. The students were irrelevant. That left only one answer.
Rowan Mercer wasn't the face of the academy.
He was its core.
"Contact Zola," Pierce snapped. "Deploy every combat android we have. All of them. Lock down the Triskelion immediately."
Those machines were Hydra's reserve blade. Reverse-engineered, refined, and perfected after the Queens incident. Unlike SHIELD's clumsy copies, these units were purpose-built for suppression and urban warfare.
They had been stationed at the Tesseract facility under Zola's direct oversight.
Insurance.
Pierce had intended to keep them there until Project Insight went live.
That luxury was gone.
If Coulson and the academy counterattacked before the carriers launched, everything unraveled.
Pierce paced his office, fingers flexing.
"I should've ignored the academy," he muttered. "Finish Insight first. Erase them later."
Arrogance. That was the word for it.
Killing Fury had made him careless. He had mistaken momentum for victory.
Pierce stopped.
"No. This still isn't enough."
He activated a secure channel, encryption layered on encryption, and waited.
"Strucker," he said when the image resolved. "I need reinforcements."
Hydra was vast, but not unified.
Pierce controlled the branch embedded within SHIELD. Surveillance. Algorithms. Predictive domination. Strucker commanded another path entirely. Sokovia. Human experimentation. Power through enhancement.
Different methods. Same destination.
They cooperated when it suited them. Neither bowed to the other.
"I'll send my strongest," Strucker replied after a pause. "That should stabilize the situation."
The connection cut.
In Sokovia, Baron Strucker flexed his newly upgraded mechanical right hand, the metal joints clicking softly as he turned.
"Bring Mara Vale to me," he ordered.
Minutes later, a woman stepped into the room.
She looked young. That was the lie. Calm eyes. Measured posture. The kind of stillness that came from surviving things no one else should have.
"Yes, Baron?" she said evenly.
"Gordon will escort you," Strucker said. "Take your best fighters. And bring your daughter, Daisy. I'm told her abilities have matured."
He studied her closely.
"Do not forget who saved you. Without my intervention, Reinhardt would have carved you apart to understand why you don't age. Serve Hydra faithfully, and when the world is remade, your people will have territory of their own. A future. Safety."
Mara Vale inclined her head.
"Hail Hydra," she said, voice steady. "We will do our part."
Strucker nodded, satisfied, and dismissed her.
Only when the door sealed shut did Mara allow herself to exhale.
She returned to her quarters slowly.
Mara Vale was Inhuman. Functionally immortal. One of the last leaders of a scattered people hidden far from the world's gaze. For decades, she had searched for others like her, protecting them from exposure, from fear, from men like Reinhardt.
Hydra had found her once.
She survived by chance.
She survived again by obedience.
But obedience was not loyalty.
And survival was not surrender.
...
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