Tactical Breakout Under the Shadow of an Air Raid

The concrete ceiling of the tunnel suddenly let out a teeth-grating groan, sharp and piercing, like a rusty saw cutting through eardrums.

Lin Xiu had just pressed the Tesseract Fragment into his palm when warmth and tingling spread through it. The Nanocore's tremor was drowned out by the high-frequency resonance from overhead—the distinctive hum of a Chitauri Antigravity Engine, like steel needles stirring inside his skull. The shrill sound stabbed straight into his brain, sending throbbing pain through his temples.

"Oracle, distance to the energy source?" His voice was low, his tongue pressed against his back teeth, his lips trembling slightly as warm, tense breath escaped them.

The armor patterns of Tactical Assault Form flowed beneath his skin. Blue streams of light, nimble as snakes, crawled up his spine toward the back of his neck, bringing a cool, slick sensation.

The nanostructure of the glider membrane was reorganizing around his shoulder blades. The prickling itch reminded him of the burning pain from the first time he had activated the core in the laboratory, as if that heat were spreading across his skin again.

"Three point two kilometers, vertical elevation one hundred eighty meters." The system's electronic voice carried a faint static hiss, crackling like interference from an old radio.

"Target locked on the subway station entrance. Thermal imaging indicates that your abnormal body temperature readings have been exposed."

Lin Xiu's pupils suddenly constricted.

He looked at the daylight filtering through the ventilation shaft. The beam, like a golden thread, was abruptly severed by a shadow—an aerial unit's shadow, falling swiftly like a massive black curtain.

Amid the shriek of metal tearing through the air, a sound as piercing as a blade scraping across glass.

He saw a blinding white light seep from the center of the tunnel ceiling, as though someone had sliced a crack into the concrete with a laser blade. It was so bright that he had to squint.

"Time to go." He spoke softly to the fragment in his palm as the nanite swarm slipped through his fingers and into the armor's ports, leaving a faint itch between them.

When the first chunk of rubble smashed down beside his feet with a sharp crack, he bent his knees. The muscles in his back tightened like a drawn bow, making him feel like an arrow about to be loosed.

The instant the glider membrane unfolded behind him, the ceiling collapsed completely. A searing white beam, wrapped in falling debris, slammed into the spot where he had stood moments before. The blast wave hurled him backward into the tunnel wall like a surging wave.

The automatically deployed neck brace struck his cervical spine hard enough to send sharp pain through it.

"Fuck." He cursed through gritted teeth, but amid the rain of falling rubble, he spotted an opportunity. The debris crackled and clattered like a furious drumbeat.

Dense smoke rose from the crater blasted into the ground by the beam, carrying a pungent burnt smell. Using the blast's backwash, he kicked off the wall and leaped upward, his glider membrane carving a silver arc through the air.

When his eyes met daylight again, he saw three Chitauri air bikes closing in in a triangular formation. Dim blue energy was gathering in their cannons, radiating an icy chill.

"Tactical evasion!" Oracle's warning had barely sounded when Lin Xiu twisted sideways.

The nanites along the glider membrane's edge abruptly hardened into serrated teeth, slicing through the oncoming shockwave from the energy blast, which carried scorching air straight at him.

The explosion's shockwave nearly threw him off balance, but it also gave him a clear view of the battlefield below—Brooklyn's streets had been reduced beyond recognition. A wrecked bus lay across the middle of the road, its twisted frame glaring in the sunlight.

Water spraying from a fire hydrant refracted into a rainbow beneath the sun, beautiful and illusory.

And at the rainbow's end, Chitauri soldiers in silver-gray armor poured from every alleyway, their armor gleaming with an icy sheen under the sunlight.

"The target has been exposed!" Carl Weiss's hoarse roar suddenly exploded through the communicator, booming like thunder.

Only then did Lin Xiu notice the nano surveillance unit that had somehow attached itself behind his ear—it had been carried in by the Chitauri communication waves lingering in the tunnel.

He heard Carl's ragged breathing mixed with static. "Carrying a Tesseract Fragment, technological capabilities unknown... requesting air support to cover coordinates B7-12!"

"In your dreams." Lin Xiu curled his lips and rapidly formed a hand sign with his left hand, his fingers moving with crisp precision.

Nanites traced back through the unit behind his ear and invaded the communication channel, inserting a piercing buzz into Carl's transmission.

As his glider membrane grazed the sign of a damaged convenience store, the sign let out a harsh creak from the friction.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his reflection in the glass display window—his pupils glowed with an eerie mechanical blue, deep and mysterious like a dark pool.

It was the sign that the Oracle system had begun tactical analysis.

The ground rushed toward him, making his heartbeat quicken involuntarily.

Lin Xiu locked onto an unfinished skyscraper half a kilometer away. Exposed rebar jutted into the sky like the ribs of some colossal beast, gleaming with cold metallic light in the sun.

He folded his glider membrane and used his downward momentum to smash through the second-floor glass curtain wall. The shattering glass rang out bright and sharp, like glass bells being smashed.

He rolled across the floor littered with broken glass to bleed off the impact. The shock-absorption modules at his armored knees gave a faint click.

"Building structure analysis complete." Oracle's projection unfolded across his retina. Red markers identified weak points in the load-bearing columns, while a green route showed the optimal path from the second floor to the rooftop. The projection glimmered with a faint blue light.

Lin Xiu tore off a bent piece of rebar, and the nanite swarm crawled along its surface and into cracks in the wall—this was his Battlefield Sensor Network. Every nanite relayed the building's vibration frequencies in real time, while the metal felt cold against his hand.

"Footsteps." He pressed his back against a load-bearing wall and kept his breathing exceptionally light. The wall was cold and hard against his back.

Oracle's alert had barely ended when crisp impacts of metal boot heels striking the floor echoed from below, sharp and rhythmic like drumbeats.

Lin Xiu looked up at the ceiling. The cracks in the concrete trembled faintly in time with the footsteps—it was the heavy armor of Chitauri soldiers. The cracks made subtle clicking sounds as they shook.

"Carl came in person." He touched the Electromagnetic Pulse Crossbow at his waist. The nanite swarm reassembled three diamond-shaped bolts in his palm, and the crossbow felt cold and metallic in his hand.

Voices came from around the stairwell corner, mixed with the crisp click of weapons being cocked. The conversation was low and indistinct.

Lin Xiu lightly tapped the wall with one finger. The nanites disguised as cracks instantly came alive and crawled through the wall seams toward the nearest ventilation duct, where the air smelled damp.

"Prepare EMP." He spoke quietly. The blue light in his pupils intensified, burning like flame with unwavering resolve.

When the first Chitauri soldier appeared at the stairwell entrance, Lin Xiu saw the thermal imaging on the soldier's helmet visor locking onto him—but the next second, the soldier's weapon suddenly erupted in sparks, and blue smoke curled from the energy cannon's muzzle.

"Interference! It's interference!" Panic was obvious in the soldier's shout.

Lin Xiu flashed out from behind the wall, and the electromagnetic crossbow bolt punched precisely through the heat vent in the soldier's chest armor with a sharp crack.

The soldier let out a muffled groan and fell. Lin Xiu did not stop. He sprinted up the stairs, leaving behind a cluster of nanites every few steps—his second layer of traps. His footsteps thudded against the stairs as he ran.

Meanwhile, at the S.H.I.E.L.D. command center...

"Director, the coordinates of the energy fluctuations in northern New York have been locked." Before the glowing screens in the S.H.I.E.L.D. command center, an assistant pushed satellite footage before Nick Fury. The screens emitted a faint blue glow as the images flickered.

The one-eyed director tapped his fingers against the desk, the sound crisp and steady.

On the screen, the black dot moving through the ruins flickered with an unnatural blue light. "Not one of ours, and it doesn't look like Hydra equipment either."

"Should we eliminate it?" The assistant's finger hovered above the communications key, trembling slightly.

Fury stared as the black dot on the screen abruptly changed course toward the unfinished building. His Adam's apple moved. "Find out what it is first. If it's a threat..." His voice sank. "Eliminate it as a priority."

At that moment, Lin Xiu stood on the top floor of the building.

He held onto the remaining glass curtain wall and looked toward the increasingly distinct wormhole in the distance—a green vortex churned across the sky, and more Chitauri warships streamed out of it. The wormhole radiated a mysterious, overwhelming presence.

The wind lifted the loose strands of hair over his forehead, cool against his face.

The Nanocore burned hot against his chest. He could clearly feel the energy of the Tesseract Fragment flowing through his veins like a cheering swarm of tiny sprites, warm as a stream running through his blood.

"Infiltrate the battlefield and confront Loki." The moment he voiced the plan into the wind, even he was startled by it.

In truth, he hesitated. On one hand, he knew the plan was extremely dangerous and could drive him into a dead end. On the other, the thought of Earth facing the Chitauri threat stirred a powerful sense of responsibility within him, strengthening his resolve to carry it out.

But the Oracle system's tactical projection soon spread across his retina: a 92% chance of approaching the wormhole, a 78% chance of completing energy sampling before the Avengers arrived, and most crucially...

"Hidden tactical-form function detected." The system's prompt suddenly became clear and bright. "Identity forgery protocol activated. Requires 10% of a Mid-grade Cosmic Cube Fragment's energy. Activate?"

When the Nanocore supplied energy to the nanite swarm, it relied on energy resonance with the Tesseract Fragment.

Inside it was a complex energy conversion device that transformed the fragment's energy into a form the nanite swarm could use.

However, prolonged high-intensity use could cause the core to overheat and even risk an energy backlash.

Lin Xiu looked at the green light cast by the distant wormhole, and the corner of his mouth slowly lifted.

He touched the fragment still burning hot in his palm, then turned toward the stairwell—closer and closer footsteps echoed from within, along with Carl Weiss's furious roar.

But this time, there was no tension in his eyes, only eager anticipation.

"Oracle, prepare the forgery protocol." He spoke softly, pressing his finger against the armor core. "Make them... unable to recognize who I am."