Five days after the fall of the Triskelion, the world was still burning.
Governments scrambled to reassess their intelligence networks. SHIELD's files—its secrets, missions, surveillance logs—were all public. News anchors were breathless. Panic echoed in the streets. Protests flared outside U.N. embassies. Every screen in every city broadcast the same message: HYDRA was real. And it had been inside all along.
In Washington, the Potomac still rippled with debris. The Triskelion's twisted skeleton rose from the water like a monument to betrayal. Ironically poetic—an organization that worked in shadows was finally destroyed by light.
Across Europe, rogue HYDRA cells vanished overnight, burning their compounds and erasing digital footprints. Those that didn't run were found—by angry mobs or by silence.
But in a blacked-out hangar in Sokovia, a new war was already beginning.
The air inside the facility was cold and sharp. Generators hummed beneath grated floors. Flickering overhead lights revealed steel corridors lined with prototype weapons, cryo-vaults, and biomechanical limbs suspended in glass.
In the center stood a tall man in a long coat, silver hair falling to his shoulders.
Baron Wolfgang von Strucker.
He watched a monitor flicker to life.
Footage of the helicarriers falling. Of Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and a third unknown operative escaping the ruins. He leaned closer, pausing the feed on Alexander's silhouette disappearing into smoke.
"So he's real," Strucker murmured.
He clenched his fist behind his back. "Time to move forward."
He turned to his assistant. "Release the twins."
Two doors hissed open.
Inside one, a young woman sat cross-legged, her eyes closed, hands trembling with red energy. Glass cracked near her fingertips, the walls of her chamber pulsing faintly with unstable chaos. Monitors displayed her neural activity, all off the charts.
In the other, a white-haired man stood motionless, eyes narrowed, muscles tensed like a coiled spring. His heartbeat was slow, unnaturally steady.
"Soon," Strucker said, watching them both. "Soon, the age of miracles will begin."
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away—
Alexander stood at the edge of a canyon, deep in a forgotten mountain range in Pakistan. Wind howled through the jagged peaks. The sky above was the color of steel, and clouds loomed like silent sentinels.
His system interface hovered silently before him.
[SYSTEM CLASS — ???: UNLOCK CONDITION PENDING]
[Shadow Army: 41 Active Units]
[New Quest Available: Locate the Hidden Mind]
He narrowed his eyes.
Behind him, three figures emerged from the dark.
Vasili. Noctis. Nortis.
Nortis, his newest and most aggressive pawn, still bore the scarring from his last resurrection—a long diagonal scar across his right eye that glowed faintly with corrupted mana. He stood with arms crossed, silent and brimming with repressed energy, the air around him almost vibrating with anticipation.
Noctis's cloak flowed like vapor in the wind, his presence cool and unreadable. His eyes never stopped scanning. "There's something deep below. Artificial. Buried."
Vasili knelt beside a stone ledge, one hand pressed to the rock. "I hear machines. Sleeping ones. Old. But waking."
Alexander stepped forward, boots crunching over ancient gravel.
Below the cliff, something pulsed underground.
Not a sound. Not a light. Just a vibration—an artificial rhythm too precise to be nature.
A faint mechanical hum.
"I feel it," Noctis whispered.
Nortis stepped closer. "You want me to break in, Master?"
Alexander shook his head slowly. "Not yet. We need to understand it first."
He raised his hand. Shadows began to coil outward from his fingers, pouring down the cliffside like living smoke.
Then—he stepped forward.
And vanished into darkness.
His pawns followed without hesitation.
Above them, lightning cracked the sky.
End of Chapter 113
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