The price was several strips of muscle torn from Steve's right arm, deep enough to expose bone, as well as large flakes of bone scraped off his own bone claws, along with blue flesh clinging to them!
Excruciating pain made Steve let out a muffled roar, and blue blood poured out even more violently.
Rumlow used the force to launch himself backward, moving as fast as a ghost and instantly opening a gap of more than ten meters.
He hovered in the darkness, the mutated bone claws on his right hand trembling slightly, their tips dripping with viscous blue blood and his own fluorescent tainted blood.
The left side of his body had visibly collapsed inward. Every breath came with bloody froth and bubbles spilling from his split scales. His ghostly green eyes stared fixedly at Steve, filled with bone-deep hatred and a faint, barely detectable alarm.
Steve steadied himself. The wound on his right arm was deep enough to expose bone, blue blood dripping heavily and drawing bizarre trails through the deep sea.
His left shoulder was a complete mess. The Blue Cuticle had shattered, revealing the equally tough but shock-injured muscles beneath.
His head had taken a blow, and black spots flickered at the edges of his vision.
Rumlow's scale-covered face, twisted by excruciating pain, pulled into an utterly vicious smile.
He was badly injured, but the madness brought by the Green Goblin Serum and the tenacious Life Force of the Godzilla cells sustained him.
He needed time to catch his breath. He needed to let that astonishing self-healing ability take effect.
"Hack, hack..."
The hoarse voice mixed with bloody froth rang out in Steve's mind again, filled with malicious mockery.
"Does it hurt, Captain? Look at what a sorry state you're in! A big blue brute, bleeding