The bone-deep chill of glacial meltwater instantly woke her, and her hazy drowsiness vanished in the blink of an eye.
Victoria Hand had already lived here for several days. Aside from the old professor who had led her into the valley—Master Hamir—and a few dim-witted young people, she had not seen anyone else. Even her lessons were written on printer paper rather than in printed books like everyone else's. At first, she had prepared herself to eat wild animals every day, but to her surprise, all her food consisted of vegetables and meat brought up the mountain by packhorses from herders at its foot, as well as food from around the world delivered here by the First Secret Regiment's cargo aircraft. Yet that did not change this place's isolated nature. If not for its excellent Communication System and the steady stream of news from Latveria, she might even have forgotten why she was studying here.
Every piece of information she learned, every story she heard, and every landscape she saw told her that the troubles she had once considered grave threats to world peace and the survival of the Human Race were merely insignificant ripples. A terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb would not destroy all of human society. Murderers with special abilities who had made it onto surveillance lists would not remain at large for long, much less destroy all the civilization humanity had built to this day.
These people, who had come from nowhere and been stationed here for thousands of years, remained vigilant against the true Great Enemy at all times.
In these people's eyes, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s claim to be humanity's protector was laughably ignorant and arrogant. Victoria Hand, who had initially still taken pride in her identity as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, had been somewhat angered by this. But