"Interesting," Rowan Mercer said lightly, nudging Carl Creel's lifeless body aside with his foot. He looked up at the surveillance camera in the corner and smiled. "Dr. Zola, if you've got any final tricks, now would be the time. You won't get another chance."
Inside the control hub, Arnim Zola stared at the feed, his digital processes stuttering. Creel had fallen far too easily. That alone shattered every probability model Zola had built.
"What was that ability?" he muttered. "Creel couldn't even slow him down."
There were no more contingencies. No hidden reserves.
"This humiliation," Zola hissed, "will be repaid a hundredfold."
He activated the flight system integrated into his mechanical body and launched himself through the window, accelerating toward open sea. Escape was still viable.
Zola had prepared for death long ago.
If this body were destroyed, his consciousness would automatically upload through Hydra's network into a preconfigured storage core. That core could then be installed into a spare robotic shell. Functional immortality. As many revivals as preparation allowed.
But the process was costly.
Each backup required weeks of precision work. Each transfer weakened his cognition for an extended period. Until a new backup was completed, he would be vulnerable. That was why he avoided sacrificing a body unless absolutely necessary.
And this body was far from weak. It carried advanced weapon systems, powered directly by Tesseract-derived energy. Against most threats, even Iron Man, Zola's odds exceeded eighty percent.
Unfortunately, metal manipulation made all of that meaningless.
Just as Zola prepared to increase speed, his systems froze.
"Dr. Zola," Rowan's voice said calmly behind him. "Heading somewhere?"
Rowan had seen the tracking spell shift direction and knew immediately what was happening. One glance through the shattered window had been enough. A blink later, he reappeared behind Zola, magnetic control locking the robotic body in place.
For conventional technology, Rowan was a hard counter.
"HYDRA forever!" Zola declared.
If this body was lost, he would at least take Rowan with him.
The self-destruct protocol armed instantly.
Rowan reacted faster.
The wand snapped up. "Freeze."
Every mechanical component inside Zola's body locked in place as if time itself had stalled. Motors, circuits, detonators—everything halted. Only the consciousness displayed on the chest monitor continued to flicker.
Zola's confidence cracked. "Impossible. Even the detonation system is offline."
He realized the truth with dawning horror. He had lost control. He couldn't trigger self-destruction. He couldn't initiate upload. His consciousness was trapped.
For a brief moment, Zola clung to hope.
Psychic powers didn't work on machines. According to Hydra's data, Rowan's mental abilities couldn't touch him.
If Rowan destroyed the body in frustration, the automatic upload should still trigger.
Rowan placed a hand against the frozen machine.
Magnetism surged inward, threading through circuits and data pathways with surgical precision. Psychic powers might not read machines, but electromagnetism could rewrite them.
Rowan didn't need cables. Thought flowed directly into signal.
Firewalls collapsed. Data unfolded.
"Ah," Rowan murmured softly. "So that's how you did it."
He withdrew his hand, already knowing everything Zola had stored.
"If there's consciousness," Rowan continued, eyes settling on the glowing display, "there's a soul. And if there's a soul, this becomes simple."
The wand rose again.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green light struck the machine. The image on the monitor fractured, then dissolved into nothing.
"No—my consciousness—this shouldn't—"
The signal vanished.
Zola's backups never triggered.
Rowan exhaled quietly. "Good thing magic doesn't care how clever you think you are."
Without soul-targeting magic, Zola would have been almost impossible to eliminate permanently. Bodies could be replaced. Systems restored. Much like Ultron, he could have returned again and again.
But intelligence created identity. Identity created a soul.
And souls could be ended.