Deep in the Alps, at Hydra's main base.
Buzz. Buzz.
Sebastian Shaw's face was taut with tension as he cautiously placed all ten fingertips on the Tesseract.
Crackling, icy-blue arcs of energy coursed over Shaw. He wore a black wool coat styled after the Hydra troops' uniforms, and it was steadily scorched and eaten away by the passing arcs until it was in tatters.
Hah!
With a savage roar, Shaw clasped both hands tightly around the Tesseract. His body trembled violently and blurred, shaking the ground beneath his feet and the walls around him as if they had been struck by an earthquake measuring seven or eight on the Richter scale.
He absorbed a small portion of the icy-blue energy arcs, but most of them continued to envelop and consume his clothing.
A clear sound, like crystal shattering, rang out. A patch of black void opened above Shaw's head, studded with pinpricks of starlight.
It was as if a corner of the galaxy had appeared in the hall of this mountain base.
Shaw's figure flickered, growing dim and bright by turns, as though space itself was gradually rejecting him. He hurriedly exerted all his strength and wrenched his hands free of the mysterious force holding them fast. The galaxy above his head abruptly shrank to a single point and disappeared.
Most of his clothes had been burned away. Bare-chested, his body was lean but clearly muscled, and a vast amount of Tesseract energy still swirled across his skin. Trembling, he thrust both palms toward the enormous floor-to-ceiling window facing the snow-covered mountains.
Boom.
The observation deck, with its steel framework and glass panels, was blasted to pieces. Two thick, blazing beams of Tesseract energy, trailing surging arcs, shot toward the distant snowy peaks of the Alps.
The rumbling destruction sounded