Hydra

"Handle it however you like. I used a special method to lock down the Amazon Cells in his body. That fat bastard's special ability is gone, and he has no strength to fight back now. The locked-down Amazon Cells are also rapidly deteriorating, and have basically lost their original activity. They're harmless unless you expose them to a massive dose of radiation to induce a mutation," Wei Xiuming said. "Besides, once Amazon Cells enter a living body, they bond with the host's cells, so they've basically lost any research value. I doubt you'd do anything dangerous just to figure out how to deal with contaminated Amazon Cells, would you?"

"Technological containment."

Nick Fury reached his conclusion, then fixed his single eye on Pearl. "It looks like we'll have to use him to get a breakthrough in the cases involving Doctor Death and the Shocker organization."

Wei Xiuming gave the order on his behalf. "Stop the treatment for now. Continue injecting the interrogation drug. Once it's used up, resume the blood treatment, then inject more drugs. Don't let him rest."

The researchers had been injecting a certain amount of blood into Pearl through an IV, allowing him to recover from his ordeal and keeping him from suddenly dropping dead. At the order, they switched the blood for the drug.

Pearl's face changed at the sight. He shouted at the researcher, "Don't come any closer!"

But his wails and curses were useless. Nick Fury, as the head of an intelligence agency, could be utterly ruthless when necessary—and Pearl had information he needed...

Wei Xiuming didn't return directly to the Osborn Industries complex after leaving the covert research base. The plane he was on veered off course midway. If an old acquaintance hadn't been aboard, he would have unleashed his Magnetic Field Rotation and smashed the plane apart with a single Whale Slaying Hegemon Fist.

Crossbones, Brock Rumlow, looked at Wei Xiuming. "Someone wants to meet you."

Wei Xiuming smiled faintly beneath his gas mask, then thought, Finally, they took the bait.

"My itinerary was arranged on the surface. Nick Fury is a sharp man. He couldn't fail to notice that I'd disappeared for a while without explanation."

Rumlow said, "Another plane flew back to the Osborn Industries complex. Most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on it are our people, and they were all on duty today according to the rotation schedule. In today's report, you went straight back to the complex and buried yourself in the lab. They have no clearance to know what you did."

Hydra had been exploited by countless transmigrators before him, but there had to be a reason it had endured. Take its branch embedded in S.H.I.E.L.D., for instance: it spent funds the World Security Council allocated to S.H.I.E.L.D., while S.H.I.E.L.D. agents did the work. And the helicarriers, still under construction, had long since been folded into Project Insight. Power and responsibility were two inseparable sides of the same coin.

This branch of Hydra had managed to do exactly what the armchair feminists kept advocating: I take all the benefits, you take all the blame.

Hydra also followed an elite model. Every senior figure was a high-ranking official, a business magnate, or a tech industry leader. Though its factions still had to bargain with one another over certain matters, it was more efficient—and faster in other ways—than the organizations operating in the open. Hydra was a villainous organization, after all. No laws stood in the way of its imposing inhumane punishments on members who made mistakes.

Not long after Wei Xiuming closed his eyes to rest, the plane landed on the helipad of an estate. Without prior clearance, it would have been shot down by anti-aircraft missiles as soon as it entered the estate's airspace.

Almost as soon as they landed, a squad of heavily armed men surrounded Rumlow and Wei Xiuming as they stepped off the plane. Rumlow didn't mind. He raised his hands and let them search him, surrendering every weapon he carried, both firearms and blades. They didn't dare lay a finger on Wei Xiuming.

After the search, the two were escorted to the estate's main building, a mansion designed to resemble an ancient castle.

Two elderly white men were already waiting in a reception room. One was Alexander Pierce, the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D.; the other was Gideon Malick, a current member of the World Security Council and the head of one of Hydra's branches. The two men were practically the figureheads of Hydra's two major factions.

The first faction was represented by Alexander Pierce. It had been founded by Red Skull during World War II, carrying on Hydra's ideology and aiming to rule the world. They were the ones who had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization.

Because of their shared interests, most of Hydra's newer forces belonged to this faction or agreed with its ideology.

The other faction was the original Hydra, represented by Gideon Malick. It, too, aimed to rule the world, but its methods remained old-fashioned: it sought to bring back Hive, the God of Hydra.

To trace Hydra's origins, one had to go back several thousand years.

Back then, a group of Kree had come to Earth and treated its people like lab rats in their Terrigen mutation experiments. They wanted a plentiful supply of cannon fodder for their wars against the other two great empires of the universe. If the experiments succeeded, Earth would provide them with an endless stream of soldiers. As long as they had enough resources, Earth's people could reproduce in astonishing numbers.

To better control the super-soldiers produced by the mutations, the Kree had deliberately bred a leader capable of controlling them. That leader was Hive.

For various reasons, the Kree later abandoned the experiment, leaving the mutated super-soldiers and some of their equipment behind on Earth. These mutated people came to be known as the Inhuman race.

Fearing Hive's power, the Inhumans had learned to use Kree technology during the experiments. They seized an opportunity to activate a spatial transporter and banished Hive to a distant planet.

Those who worshipped Hive were unwilling to give up the power and status he had brought them. To bring him back, they founded a secret society—the precursor to Hydra.

For thousands of years, the old guard had searched for a way to bring Hive back, pouring vast amounts of manpower, resources, and money into the effort. Even NASA's rapid development was tied to them: Hydra members had spearheaded the development of new launch vehicles and spaceships.

The spatial device used to banish Hive had also passed through many hands over the millennia before finally ending up with them. But with the loss of the civilization that had created it, they now saw it as nothing more than a stone with unusual properties. They could only conduct countless haphazard experiments in hopes of activating it, sending their best people one way to that planet as sacrifices to the God of Hydra.

Though the two factions cooperated at times, their leaders privately considered one another fools, wasting the organization's potential on unrealistic goals.

The only reason these two faction leaders were meeting today was Wei Xiuming.

After Rumlow heard him say, "Hail Hydra," he immediately reported the situation. Pierce, who held the highest level of authority within S.H.I.E.L.D., had spent several more sleepless nights combing through mountains of records before finding traces of Wei Xiuming. After analyzing them and filling in the gaps, he arrived at a terrifying conclusion. Setting their factional differences aside, he had arranged this meeting.