The metal bars slowly slid apart, and Alexander Pierce entered the room with several guards. The door closed behind him at once.
Soldiers in black combat uniforms had long been standing by in this prison buried deep underground. Every one of them was armed to the teeth, their guns aimed at the center of the room with the safeties off, as though thirty meters of earth and layers upon layers of security still could not contain the beast in the cage.
The shirtless Winter Soldier sat blankly in a chair at the center of the encirclement. His expression was dull, and he did not move, as though he had not noticed the seven or eight submachine guns aimed at his head.
Pierce walked into the room and waved a hand, signaling the tense agents that they could lower their weapons and leave. He approached the Winter Soldier, removed his glasses, and carefully tucked them into the inner pocket of his jacket.
The Winter Soldier ignored him, keeping his head lowered. That was somewhat unusual, and definitely not a good sign.
"Mission report," Pierce said.
The super-assassin mechanically raised his head, his face filled with confusion and bewilderment.
"Mission report," Pierce repeated. He bent down and leaned closer. "Your communications were cut off for two minutes after the retreat order was issued. What happened during that time? Were you attacked?"
The Winter Soldier stared into his light gray eyes for a long moment, then slowly nodded.
"By who?" Pierce asked. "Who attacked you?"
The Winter Soldier frowned slightly, as if struggling to remember.
"I don't know."
Pierce drew a deep breath. "Then did you eliminate him?"
Another agonizing ten seconds passed before the Winter Soldier raised his head again and met his gaze. Alexander Pierce was quite certain that he saw a flicker of strange, shifting pale green mist in those confused eyes. Then the Winter Soldier's pupils naturally contracted, and black ink emerged from beneath the mist, projecting some kind of barrier across his retinas.
Alexander Pierce instinctively stepped back. He had never seen anything like it, but his instincts told him it was probably not a good sign.
".No." The Winter Soldier took quite a while to answer. "He's here."
Pierce's expression changed drastically. In that same second, one of the Hydra soldiers in black suddenly sprang into action. He crossed his palms, and two golden, translucent fan-shaped Magic Circles instantly formed in his hands. As his body spun, they sliced outward along opposite paths. Two Hydra agents did not even have time to scream before the magical weapons slit their throats, and they collapsed to their knees.
He wore Hydra's standard black combat uniform and a helmet. Even his eyes were hidden behind ink-black goggles. He looked exactly like one of Hydra's mass-produced grunts from the same mold, with not the slightest sign of anything unusual.
"Take him down!" Pierce shouted, retreating toward the room's exit under the cover of his trusted subordinates.
It was that damned Black Knight. Not only had the Winter Soldier failed to eliminate the target, he had brought the target back to their lair!
They did not need his orders. The Hydra soldiers in the room had already moved on their own, but the task was clearly far too difficult for them. That figure darted through the crowd as nimbly as a swimming dragon, the fan-shaped magical weapons cutting through steel like mud. Blood sprayed along trails like flames. Hydra agents fell into pools of blood one after another, while the black-clad intruder did not seem to have lost even a thread from his clothes. He looked utterly at ease.
"Take him down!" Pierce repeated the command, but this time he directed it at the Winter Soldier. Yet the brainwashed super-assassin seemed determined to defy him. He remained seated with vacant eyes, watching the black-clad man slaughter everyone in the cramped prison cell as though none of it had anything to do with him.
No one could match the intruder in close combat. Nearly every man was killed by that strange fan-shaped weapon the instant they met him. Everyone quickly realized the problem. The Hydra soldiers began cleverly trying to open up distance, drawing their guns and attempting to build a web of firepower to suppress him.
Gunfire echoed through the room like thunder. Dense barrages surrounded the moving black shadow. These Hydra soldiers had received the harshest training, and their tactical awareness was in no way inferior to that of any army in the world. Their firepower crossed and complemented one another perfectly. Not even a mosquito could have passed through such a dense storm of bullets.
However, the enemy in black had no need to do so.
Not a single bullet could touch his body. The metallic storm formed by the barrage came to an abrupt halt less than half a meter away from him. It was as though the bullets had struck an invisible wall and ricocheted away. Every time a bullet was deflected, a faint golden Magic Circle flickered briefly in the air.
Shell casings clattered to the floor, while circular Magic Circles of varying sizes flashed without pause, like countless ripples spreading across a once-still surface beneath a torrential downpour.
Alexander Pierce no longer had the time to be shocked. Staying alive mattered more than anything now. Holding his head, he carefully avoided the crossing lines of fire in the room and crouched his way to the prison door, intending to slip out. But he quickly discovered that someone had locked the door.
Pierce was in charge of this facility, so naturally there was no way he would not know the door code. He tried hard to keep his fingers from shaking—no easy task with bullets flying everywhere behind his head—and rapidly entered a string of numbers into the keypad before pressing "Confirm."
The next second, the electronic lock emitted a harsh series of beeps, and bright red words appeared on the screen: "ERROR."
The intruder must have tampered with the password.
The gunfire behind him gradually weakened, which meant the battle was nearing its end. Most of the remaining Hydra soldiers in the room, including the trusted men Pierce had brought with him, had already faithfully died in the line of duty. Only the last two soldiers remained, firing as they moved apart in opposite directions, hoping to buy their superior even a few more seconds.
Pierce entered another string of numbers, activating the password reset protocol. He was one of Hydra's highest-ranking officials, so naturally he had the authority to reset passwords in an emergency.
"Code XLZ-303!" Pierce shouted. "Override the security protocol!"
The words "PROCESSING" flashed on the screen for a long three seconds, only for an even more despairing message to appear: "UNKNOWN ERROR. ACCESS DENIED."
Pierce froze.
How was this possible? He was one of Hydra's top Leaders, and this was his facility, his territory. One of his greatest trump cards was even imprisoned here.
Yet now this damned door was about to lock him inside his own territory. Wasn't that absurd?
The gunfire ceased. The final Hydra soldier finally fell, and no one remained to buy him time. The man in black swung his fan-shaped blades, cutting open the last soldier's throat and neck. Then he released his grip, and the two weapons formed from magical energy instantly vanished into thin air.
He began walking toward Pierce at an unhurried pace.
Pierce suddenly understood. The other man had never been in a hurry to stop him from leaving, because he knew Pierce could not leave at all.
Pierce's gaze finally fell on the Winter Soldier. The brainwashed fool was still sitting in that chair, staring blankly ahead, completely unmoved by the corpses covering the floor or the fact that his Boss was about to be killed.
But he was still Pierce's last hope. He shouted at the Winter Soldier, "Kill him for me! Did you hear me? I order you!"
"Don't bother." The man in black walked up to him, and Pierce instinctively stepped back.
"He was hit by a Hypnosis Spell. He won't wake up anytime soon," the man in black said calmly. "Honestly, if it weren't for that brainwashing program you put him through, this spell wouldn't have worked nearly so well."
Pierce struggled to remain calm. "Who the hell are you?"
"An old friend of yours," the other man replied. "But that isn't important. Now, I have a few small questions for you to answer. Then... I'll make sure you go as painlessly as possible."
(Thanks to reader Supreme Sage Wang Yangming for the 600 Qidian Coins reward, and to readers Smoking and Missing My Wife, Great Remnant Wanting to Sing, and Anhui Water Commoner for their 100 Qidian Coins rewards!)