In a dark basement somewhere, Gravik stared at the screen before him. Twelve split-screen feeds were running at once, each showing live surveillance from a different city.
New York.
London.
Tokyo.
Moscow.
Dense clusters of red dots marked the location of every infiltrator.
There were 374,000 dots in total.
They covered six continents and had infiltrated key positions in 119 countries.
He reached for the cup on the table. Inside was Earth coffee.
It tasted terrible, but he had been drinking it for fourteen years.
These humans were simply too easy to fool—
All it took was offering them a tiny, insignificant benefit.
All it took was promising to deal with the two threats known as Osborn and Stark Industries.
That guy from Hammer Industries had even taken the initiative to connect him with three military procurement channels.
The irony was almost laughable—
Talos had tried to persuade him until the day he died.
He kept saying humans could be trusted, that Nick Fury was a friend.
A friend?
Fury had never used that word when he sent them onto the battlefield as cannon fodder.
He crushed the cup in his hand. Ceramic shards pierced his palm, and green blood seeped out before the wound quickly closed.
An encrypted message appeared in the lower-right corner of the screen.
G'iah had already made contact with Captain America.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
Those idiots.
They thought they had captured a defector, obtained intelligence, and gained the upper hand.
But unfortunately, that had only been the bait he left behind—
Gravik leaned back in his chair and waited.
Then the psychic disturbance came.
There was no warning.
His skin began to ripple and churn, his human disguise peeling away like melting wax.
Green skin was exposed beneath the cold glow of