Fooling S.H.I.E.L.D.

Bang...

The basement door was flung open.

Nick Fury rushed into the basement with two fully armed agents.

The room was empty except for Hill, who lay motionless on the floor. A faint smell of sulfur still lingered in the air.

Nick's expression grew grave. He reached for Hill's neck and felt a pulse. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

"Hill! Hill, wake up!"

After calling out twice without a response, Nick pulled a button-sized device from inside his clothes, placed it against Hill's middle finger, and pressed it hard!

A faint electric current instantly coursed through Hill's body.

"Mm..."

"Hill, report!"

"Nick? What happened to me? When did you get here?" Hill slowly sat up, slapping her forehead hard to ease the dizziness.

"Didn't you call me for backup? Where's the enemy?" Hearing Hill's words, Nick silently backed two steps toward the exit, one hand reaching inside his jacket and the other resting behind his waist.

"I called for backup? How is that possible? I was watching..." Hill's eyes flew wide as she looked at the spot where Christine had been. It was empty!

"..."

The two exchanged a silent glance, then looked around at the undamaged walls before turning their eyes to the surveillance camera in the corner at the same time.

Knowing she had yet to clear herself of suspicion, Hill said nothing more. She silently removed all her equipment and placed it on the floor, then stepped back, letting her arms hang naturally at her sides with her palms facing where Nick could see them.

The surveillance footage was copied quickly. Nick had the two agents stand on opposite sides of the room while he took up a position at the doorway. The four stood in four different positions, keeping one another in check. They could support him at any time, and he could also run at any time.

He opened the footage, connected a separate pair of headphones, and turned the volume down to the lowest setting.

At first, everything in the video was normal.

Then Hill suddenly drew her gun, emptied the magazine, called for backup, and reloaded, shifting her aim between two directions until the vessel containing the solution disappeared.

Nick fell silent.

If not for Christine disappearing at the end, he would have thought something was wrong with Hill's mind.

In the surveillance footage, there was nothing wherever Hill aimed her gun. Stranger still, Hill seemed to have forgotten that part of her memory.

Then there was the faint smell of sulfur when he entered the room.

"Hill, prepare to undergo a drug test. And it looks like we have a big problem!"

"साधनामार्गे सत्यमेव प्रधानम्"

"On the path of magic, sincerity is paramount."

At Kamar-Taj, after connecting to the Wi-Fi with the password "gyzxtx," Lin Xu took out Essentials of the Mystic Arts and Sanskrit-Chinese Translation and began comparing them.

For some reason, his memory, which had been struggling somewhat, was exceptionally sharp now. After a single reading, he had memorized the structure and meaning completely.

To test it, Lin Xu closed both books, pulled over a sheet of scrap paper, and began writing from memory.

[साधनामार्गे सत्यमेव प्रधानम्, on the path of magic, sincerity lies in being paramount!]

"Mm, not bad. I really am a genius!"

~Why is it like this~ You hold on to me~ Saying you're feeling hesitant~

Strange, who's playing music?

~How did it come to this~ The rain hasn't stopped, yet you're opening your umbrella to leave~

Feeling a vibration from inside his clothes, he reached in and pulled it out. Ah, it was his phone.

There was no SIM signal at Kamar-Taj, only Wi-Fi. Now that he was connected, the video call had come through.

He picked up the phone and saw that his little assistant was calling.

After a moment's thought, Lin Xu put the phone on the bed and pulled a corner of the blanket over the front camera before answering.

As for the Wi-Fi, since Kamar-Taj dared to use it, that proved it definitely wouldn't reveal its location.

The video call connected, but no sound came through. Lin Xu leaned over to look and nearly laughed aloud. The other person's view was pitch-black too; presumably, they had used much the same method.

Then why the hell make a video call? Couldn't you just make a voice call?

"Spit it out!"

"Sir... Christine is gone!"

The voice of his little assistant Daisy, or rather, the level ten S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Quake, came through.

"What do you mean... gone?!" Lin Xu's heart skipped half a beat, and he immediately asked.

"As you requested, we kept Christine's cells viable, but just over ten minutes later, she disappeared along with the nutrient solution. We suspect two parties appeared and took her. Hill's memory was erased, and we smelled sulfur at the scene."

Hahahaha! It's good that she's gone. That proves his plan succeeded!

Christine's death was an established point in Strange's becoming the Sorcerer Supreme. That couldn't be changed.

Because the two were linked by cause and effect, before Strange became a sorcerer, Christine had to be dead, whether on an idealistic or material level.

In the original Dark Strange timeline, Strange had kept trying to turn back time, but he had never thought of deceiving it.

Now Lin Xu only needed to wait for Strange to grow up, then tell him this method to complete the loop.

Mm, I really am a genius!

But this matter couldn't be revealed to any being below the level of a dimension lord. Otherwise, it wouldn't serve to deceive time.

The act had to go on.

With that thought, Lin Xu worked to control his tone. "What the hell do you people do? You couldn't even keep an eye on one perfectly good living... dead person. No wonder Hydra could take over your nest. Bunch of trash!!"

"Sir..." His little assistant was cut off, and Nick Fury's voice came through.

"Hello, Lin!"

"I'm not good at all!"

"You should know who I am!"

"Mm, I do. A cat lover who got backstabbed by a cat."

"...Is this really that serious? Since you even know about that, you should know about my trump card. She can't handle it either?"

"Right, exactly!"

"Even with Thor and Asgard added in?"

"Ha, Asgard can barely protect itself, and you're still counting on them? Odin is old. His body can no longer withstand his madly growing divine power. Ragnarok is about to arrive."

"What exactly is this crisis? Why does it have anything to do with a surgeon?!"

I definitely can't tell you that, but I can make something up on the spot and give you a little sense of crisis.

"Ahem. There was once a city on Earth called Titanos, where an ancient race called the Titans lived. Their leader, Kronos, had an accident during an experiment with cosmic life and became the God of Time. His sons Zuras and A'lars fought over the leadership, and Zuras ultimately won..."

"...From then on, Uralers's son Thanos underwent a tremendous change in character. He killed all his own people, but he exiled his mother Susan's soul to Earth. He then began massacring people throughout the universe.

"Thanos used to hold back because of his mother, but now her reincarnated body is dead, and you've even lost the corpse. In as little as two years, or at most five, he'll definitely come back for revenge!"

"Oh, and if you don't believe me, you can have Thor ask Loki. He's the one best qualified to speak on the matter. Back during the Battle of New York, it was because Thanos was mindful of his mother that he wouldn't lend Loki his real elite forces and only sent a bunch of biological weapons. Otherwise, how could Earth alone have stopped an alien invasion back then?"

"You can also ask that pager friend of yours. She should have heard of Thanos, the Mad Titan, out in the universe."

Hehehe, go ahead and ask. Half of what I said was true and half was false. Everything you can find out is true.

As for his mother, hahaha, Strange probably wouldn't mind being his stepfather.