First Clash in the Dark

The icy dagger pressed against his skin, carrying the unmistakable touch of death. Lin Xiao could feel his carotid artery throbbing rapidly beneath the blade. In the darkness, those sharp eyes stared at him without blinking, as if they wanted to pierce through his skull and see every secret inside.

Gunfire drifted closer and farther beyond the ductwork, like the pounding backdrop to their standoff. Time seemed stretched thin, every second filled with a silent struggle of wills.

Lin Xiao did not move. He did not even try to break free. His gaze passed over the dagger's cold gleam and met those scrutinizing eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low and steady, in English, carrying a calm utterly at odds with the danger of the moment:

"Don't be nervous. If I'd come to kill you, or detonate those things," he tilted his head slightly toward the explosives beside them, "you'd already be dead. Or we'd both be dead."

The woman's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly, but the pressure of her dagger did not lessen in the slightest.

"Who are you?" Her voice was equally low, slightly hoarse, and filled with an unquestionable demand. "How did a Hydra grunt find this place?"

"My name is Lin." Lin Xiao gave the name of this body, speaking faster. "As for why I'm here... fighting broke out outside. I was assigned to check weak points in the internal defenses, and ventilation ducts were the first choice. Then I smelled explosives." He lied without changing expression, his gaze sweeping over the packages. "The acidic smell of an ammonium nitrate mixture, and the scorched plastic smell from the wires. Faint, but not enough to escape a trained nose."

That part was true. Experience from his previous life had made him extremely sensitive to the smells of a battlefield. Although this body had not fully adjusted yet, the imprint on his soul remained.

The woman fell silent for two seconds, seemingly weighing the truth of his words. Her gaze traveled over Lin Xiao's face, from his excessive calm to the way he gripped his combat knife without attacking, then to the crude insignia on his uniform marking him as the lowest-ranking outer member.

"Defuse it?" she finally asked, with no less suspicion in her tone. "A Hydra outer-ring soldier would volunteer to dismantle explosives inside his own base?"

"If these explosives were planted by those resistance fighters outside, we'll all die when they go off." Lin Xiao lowered his voice further until it was nearly a whisper. "If... someone inside planted them to clear out 'unstable elements' during the chaos, people like me who just arrived, or someone like you who shouldn't be here—then we have even more reason to disarm them."

His words struck at a possibility. The woman's breathing shifted slightly.

At that moment, a violent explosion erupted outside the duct, shaking dust loose from the metal walls. Denser gunfire and screams followed, sounding closer than before.

There was not much time.

"Listen," Lin Xiao said, staring into her eyes. "You have two choices. One, kill me now and gamble that these explosives won't be triggered by a stray bullet before you leave, or discovered by whoever comes in from outside. Two, let me disarm them, and at least we won't be blown into the sky immediately. After that... we each take our chances."

The blade still rested against his skin, but that resolute killing intent seemed to loosen by a fraction.

The woman finally spoke, her voice hard and cold. "How do you disarm it?"

"See that black box? A crude remote detonator, parallel circuit, with a backup power supply." Lin Xiao's eyes swept rapidly over the device. "Cut the main power line, then disconnect the backup battery, and finally separate the detonator leads. Get the order wrong, or trigger the vibration sensor, and we're finished."

He sounded far too professional, nothing like an outer-ring grunt should. The suspicion in the woman's eyes deepened, but another explosion outside drew closer. A new tremor ran through the duct, and the red indicator on the detonator flashed urgently twice.

"Do it." At last, she spat out the words. Her dagger withdrew half an inch, but remained ready to strike at any moment. "Don't try anything."

That was enough.

Lin Xiao drew a deep breath and focused all his attention on the device before him. He set down his combat knife, his hands steadier than someone who had just faced death should have been. In his previous life, he had helped handle far more complicated explosives in Tony's laboratory. This crude parallel setup looked almost like a child's toy to him—but it was still a toy that could kill.

He first pressed his ear close to the detonator and listened carefully for two seconds. No ticking timer. Good. Then he extended a finger, gently moved aside the tangled wires, and found the thickest red main power cable. His fingertips could feel the hardness of the copper core beneath the plastic insulation and the faint hum of electricity—the device was on standby.

"I need some light," Lin Xiao said quietly.

Without a word, the woman drew a compact tactical flashlight from her waist. With a push of her thumb, she turned it on, sending a cold white beam precisely onto the detonator while avoiding Lin Xiao's eyes. Professional technique.

By that light, Lin Xiao saw the wiring layout clearly. It was exactly the same model he remembered, the cheap Eastern European knockoff Hydra had favored in its early days. Its reliability was poor, but its power was not. Holding his breath, he unfolded the smallest cutter from his combat knife and carefully brought it toward the solder point between the red wire and the circuit board.

The faint click of the jaws closing sounded especially clear in the silent duct.

The red wire was severed.

The indicator light on the detonator went out instantly.

The first step was complete.

Lin Xiao did not pause. He quickly found the button-cell backup battery hidden in a corner. Using the tip of the cutter, he gently pried open the clasp and removed the battery. His movements were smooth and without the slightest hesitation.

Last came the detonator leads: three fine wires of different colors, twisted together. Cutting any one of them incorrectly could trigger an explosion. Lin Xiao narrowed his eyes, carefully distinguishing their colors and paths—the blue was the ground wire, the yellow was the signal wire, and the green was the real ignition wire.

He had seen the disassembly manual for this model in S.H.I.E.L.D. archives in his previous life. He had never expected to use it here.

The cutter aligned with the green wire.

Snip.

The entire process took less than twenty seconds. Only after the final wire was cut did Lin Xiao realize his back was soaked through. Cold sweat clung to his clothes, sending a chill through him. He slowly let out the breath he had held for so long.

"It's done," he said quietly, withdrawing his combat knife.

The woman had watched every one of his movements. Her gaze now fell on the severed wires, then returned to Lin Xiao's face. Her expression was complicated, her vigilance mixed with a trace of disbelief.

How could a Hydra outer-ring soldier dismantle a professional explosive device so precisely and quickly in darkness and under pressure?

At that moment, Lin Xiao's gaze inadvertently swept over the woman's right forearm holding the dagger. Her cuff had rolled up slightly during her movements, exposing part of her wrist. There was a wound about three inches long, already stitched, but the swelling had not subsided. The skin around it had an unnatural pale purple tint.

Lin Xiao's heart jolted.

That color... was a trace left by a special disinfectant gel used by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal medical division. The gel contained unique fluorescent compounds and healing accelerants, creating a distinctive pigment deposit during the early stages of healing. Ordinary hospitals and battlefield medical kits would never have it. Su Ying had used it when she was injured in his previous life. He remembered that color.

Was she with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Or had she once been?

The thought had barely crossed his mind when dense footsteps and shouts suddenly echoed outside the duct, German spoken with a Russian accent: "Check every ventilation shaft! Don't let them infiltrate through the ducts!"

The pursuers had arrived, and they knew about the duct system.

The woman had clearly heard them too. She immediately switched off the flashlight, plunging the duct back into darkness. The dagger remained in her hand, but it was no longer aimed at Lin Xiao's throat.

"Move." She spoke briefly and crawled deeper into the duct first.

Lin Xiao did not hesitate. Grabbing his combat knife, he followed. One behind the other, they moved quickly through the narrow duct. The metal walls scraped against their bodies with soft rustling sounds. Behind them came the sound of someone prying open a ventilation grate, along with shifting beams of flashlight light inside the duct.

"This way!" Lin Xiao suddenly said in a low voice, turning into a side passage. This duct was narrower, but it led toward the base's old warehouse district, where the complex layout made it easier to hide.

The woman paused for half a second, apparently judging his choice, but the sounds of pursuit grew closer behind them. In the end, she followed.

The duct began sloping downward at a steep angle. Lin Xiao braced his elbows and knees against the walls to control his descent. In his memories from his previous life, this duct had several badly corroded weak points from years of disrepair. It could not bear too much weight or vibration.

"Slow down, ahead there's—" Before he could finish, the duct wall beneath him suddenly let out a teeth-grating groan of twisting metal.

Crack!

A large section of corroded duct wall collapsed, and Lin Xiao plunged downward! At the last possible moment, he shot out a hand and grabbed a still-sturdy support above him, leaving himself suspended in midair. Below was a pitch-black vertical shaft of unknown depth.

Almost at the same instant, a gloved hand reached down from above and firmly seized his wrist.

It was the woman.

Her arm muscles tensed as she pulled Lin Xiao up inch by inch. They crawled back onto a relatively safe section of duct, both breathing heavily.

"Thank you," Lin Xiao said quietly.

The woman did not respond. She merely listened warily for movement behind them. The pursuers seemed to have been blocked by the collapse and had not followed for the moment.

They continued onward. Several minutes later, a faint glow appeared ahead—another vent. Lin Xiao carefully moved up to the grate and looked outside.

Beyond it lay a dim corridor. Emergency lights on the walls flickered with a ghastly white glow. Two bodies in Hydra gray combat uniforms lay on the floor, their pools of blood slowly spreading. Gunfire flashes and shouts came from farther away, but the corridor was empty for now.

"Out through here. Turn left, and the third door is an abandoned electrical room. There's a maintenance passage from there that leads out of this building," Lin Xiao said quickly.

The woman stared at him. "You know the base layout well."

"I looked over the building plans while on duty." Lin Xiao lied without changing expression. "I have a good memory."

Without waiting for her response, he gently pried open the vent's clasp and jumped down first. His combat boots landed at the edge of a pool of blood with a soft splat. The heavy stench of blood immediately filled his nose, mixed with gunpowder smoke and dust.

The woman dropped down after him, moving as lightly as a cat. She glanced at the bodies on the floor and frowned slightly.

At that moment, hurried footsteps and ragged breathing suddenly sounded from around the corner. A young man in a Hydra communications uniform, his face covered in blood, stumbled around the corner on hands and knees. He clutched a portable radio in his arms as bullets chased him from behind, striking the wall and scattering fragments.

"H-help!" Seeing Lin Xiao and the woman, the communications soldier looked as if he had found a lifeline. But when he recognized Lin Xiao's uniform, fear appeared on his face.

The pursuers appeared around the corner: two armed men in mismatched clothing, carrying AK rifles. They were clearly resistance fighters. The moment they saw the three, they raised their guns.

There was no time to think.

Lin Xiao lunged toward a corpse nearby, snatched up an MP5 submachine gun that had fallen to the floor, and rolled behind a load-bearing pillar on one side of the corridor. At nearly the same time, the woman moved along the wall like a ghost, and the dagger in her hand flew free!

Thud!

The dagger buried itself precisely in the first armed man's throat. His eyes widened, and the rifle in his hands drooped uselessly.

The second armed man recoiled in rage and swung his gun toward the woman. But Lin Xiao's MP5 had already fired, a short burst striking him in the chest. He staggered backward, slammed into the wall, and slid to the floor.

The corridor fell silent again, leaving only the communications soldier's harsh breathing and the static from the radio.

Lin Xiao quickly checked the two armed men, confirmed they were dead, then returned to the communications soldier. He looked younger than twenty, with brown hair and blue eyes. Beneath the blood and grime on his face, traces of youth remained.

"What's your name? Which department?" Lin Xiao asked in German, making his tone as calm as possible.

"W-Wolfgang," the young man stammered. "Communications Department, Team Three. They call me Wolf... Sir, you two are..."

"Don't ask." The woman cut him off coldly. She had retrieved her dagger and was checking both ends of the corridor. "Can you walk?"

Wolf nodded frantically and struggled to stand, but his legs went weak and he nearly fell again. Lin Xiao caught him and took the portable radio. There was a bullet hole in the side of the device, but its core components seemed to still work.

"Follow us. Don't make a sound," Lin Xiao said quietly, leading the two through the corridor according to the route in his memory.

For the next ten minutes, they moved through the base buildings like ghosts. Lin Xiao could always predict where fighting would break out and choose the safest route. Sometimes it was through ventilation ducts, sometimes maintenance passages, and sometimes even through spaces above the ceiling. The woman remained alert at all times, but the suspicion in her eyes toward Lin Xiao gradually gave way to a complicated appraisal.

This Hydra outer-ring soldier knew the base layout to an unbelievable degree, as if he had lived here for years. And his tactical choices were far too seasoned for a young man. Every pause and every turn came at precisely the right moment, perfectly avoiding all the main conflict zones.

At last, they crawled out through an underground pipe beneath an auxiliary building and reached the edge of the woods outside the base. The fierce gunfire could no longer be heard here. Only scattered shots and the glow of distant burning buildings remained.

Moonlight filtered through sparse clouds and spilled over a clearing in the woods. Lin Xiao leaned against a tree, breathing hard. This body's physical stamina was worse than he remembered, and the prolonged tension and escape had exhausted him.

Wolf collapsed onto the ground, hugging his knees as he trembled. The woman stood in the shadows with her back to the moonlight, almost blending entirely into the darkness. Only her eyes remained startlingly bright.

She turned, her gaze falling on Lin Xiao's face. The moonlight outlined the profile of her face, clear and cold.

"Now," she said, her voice colder than the night wind, "answer my question. How does a Hydra grunt know the traces left by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal wound-cleaning treatment?"

She raised her right hand and deliberately rolled her sleeve up farther, fully exposing the wound with its pale purple edges beneath the moonlight.

"This gel is only available at S.H.I.E.L.D.-affiliated medical stations and a few partner laboratories. Ordinary people have never even seen it, much less recognized it at a glance." She stepped forward. Though she held no weapon, the pressure she gave off was greater than when her dagger had been at his throat. "Who exactly are you?"

Lin Xiao's heart thudded heavily in his chest. He should have known that Su Ying—if she truly was Su Ying—would never overlook that detail with her powers of observation.

His mind raced. He could not reveal that he had been reborn, but he had to give a reasonable explanation, one she could accept for the moment without provoking even greater suspicion.

"I've seen it," Lin Xiao finally said, his voice calm. "In Berlin, two years ago. An injured man hid in the alley behind the restaurant where I worked. He had the same kind of wound on his arm, the same color. He said he'd 'been robbed while traveling,' but I saw him using an encrypted radio." He paused and met the woman's eyes. "Later, I saw his photo in the newspaper. Next to it, it said, 'S.H.I.E.L.D. agent killed in the line of duty.'"

It was half truth and half lie. There really had been an incident in Berlin where a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent died in the line of duty, and the timing matched. As for the color of the wound... he could only say he had sharp eyes.

The woman watched him silently, moonlight shifting in her eyes. After a long time, she finally spoke slowly. "What was that agent's name?"

"I didn't ask." Lin Xiao shook his head. "But Old Hans at the bar later told me it was best to forget everything I saw that night. He said that knowing too much could get you killed very quickly."

The explanation seemed barely plausible. A drifting young man in Berlin had accidentally witnessed a few things and remembered the details. Later, he joined Hydra—perhaps by coincidence, perhaps for some other reason.

The woman did not say she believed him, nor did she say she did not. She merely continued watching Lin Xiao as if reassessing him.

From the direction of the base, a roar suddenly burst from a loudspeaker. It was in German and filled with furious rage:

"...We lost supplies from two entire warehouses! And seventeen men are dead! Yet those rats got away! Investigate! Search every corner! I want to know who leaked our defensive deployment! Who is helping those bastards!"

It was the base commander's voice. Even through the night wind, his hysterical fury was unmistakable.

"Did you hear that?" The woman's lips curled into a cold arc. "Your commander is looking for an informant. And an outer-ring soldier who should have been waiting on standby in the barracks turns up in a ventilation duct, along with a communications soldier and a..." She paused. "Woman of unknown origin."

Lin Xiao's heart sank. She was right. The losses from this attack were much smaller than expected—because the explosives had been disarmed and many key passages had not been destroyed. But that would only make the commander more paranoid, more convinced that traitors inside had coordinated with the attackers.

And the three of them looked far too suspicious from any angle.

Wolf had clearly realized this too. His face turned pale, and his lips trembled. "I... I was only trying to save my life... I didn't do anything..."

"There's no point saying that now." Lin Xiao interrupted him and looked at the woman. "What do you suggest?"

The woman did not answer immediately. She looked up at the sky, then toward the base. The burning glow had dyed that section of the sky dark red.

"Before dawn, they'll begin a full sweep," she finally said. "The woods aren't safe either. You need new identities, or a hiding place that's concealed enough."

"You have somewhere?" Lin Xiao asked.

The woman glanced at him, her gaze meaningful. "Maybe. But first..." She held out her hand. "Su Ying. That's my name."

Lin Xiao took her hand. It was cool, but her grip was strong, and her palm bore calluses from years of holding guns and fighting.

"Lin." He gave that name again.

Their hands clasped, then separated after a brief touch. This was not a handshake of friendship, but the formation of a temporary agreement—in the face of a greater threat, two people full of unanswered questions had chosen to cooperate for now.

Su Ying turned and headed deeper into the woods. "Follow me. I know a place where we can at least hide until dawn."

Lin Xiao helped Wolf, who was still trembling, to his feet and followed. The three vanished into the shadows of the forest. Behind them lay the burning base and the furious roar of a commander sworn to root out the "informant."

The night was still long. And the real danger might only just have begun.