Tactical Breakout Under the Shadow of Airstrikes · Continued

The concrete at the top of the tunnel suddenly let out a teeth-grating groan, sharp and piercing like violently scraping metal, drilling straight into Lin Xiu's ears.

When Lin Xiu looked up, the energy monitor on his mask had already flashed a glaring red—an enormous circular spot of light, two meters in diameter, was piercing through the ventilation shaft and scorching black marks into the tunnel ceiling like the dangling eye of some colossal creature.

The light was a dazzling red, like a blazing flame, exceptionally glaring in the dim tunnel.

"It's a Chitauri gunship!" Novak's voice burst through with electronic static, crackling as though countless pebbles were colliding. "They used a particle beam to lock onto your Nanocore fluctuations!"

Lin Xiu clenched his back teeth until they ached. Tension surged through him, his thoughts tangled in a mess as he worried over this sudden crisis.

The armor in tactical form spread pale silver patterns across the surface of his skin. As his fingertips touched the wall, its icy roughness traveled through them. Nanobots slipped into the concrete through its cracks, and the vibrations they sent back told him that in three seconds, this wall would be completely breached.

The vibrations were faint and rapid, like an accelerating heartbeat.

"Glider membranes, deploy." he growled.

The armor on his back split open, and two translucent membrane wings unfurled like cicada wings, shimmering with a ghostly blue glow in the tunnel's darkness.

That dim blue radiance flickered faintly, carrying a trace of mystery.

The shriek of the particle beam had already pierced his eardrums. It was as sharp as a blade, and Lin Xiu could see the air at the front of the beam twisting into a bizarre vortex, as if it would shred everything around it.

The vortex spun rapidly with a rushing howl.

"Jump!"

He bent his knees and kicked off the tunnel wall, its hard, cold surface rough beneath his feet. The glider membranes pulled taut in the airflow like blades.

At the same moment, the particle beam punched through the ceiling. Chunks of concrete rained down like a storm, while a scorching blast of air slammed into the membrane wings, lifting him toward the tunnel exit like the heat of a blazing furnace.

Lin Xiu felt scorching fragments scrape across his shoulder armor. The heat was searing, and Nanobots immediately swarmed over to fill the dents. Pain shot up his nerves to the back of his neck—but he had no time to care. His gaze remained fixed on the daylight at the exit.

The light was bright and warm, like a symbol of hope.

"Report to the mothership! The target carries a Tesseract fragment and possesses countermeasure technology!"

Carl Viss's shriek, mixed with the crackle of electricity, drilled into Lin Xiu's ears.

He caught sight of the Chitauri commander sprawled amid the rubble, her communicator pressed against her bloodstained ear.

The blood was dark red and gave off a pungent, metallic stench.

Her pupils narrowed into slits beneath her mask. She had clearly noticed his movements.

"Lock onto his thermal signature! Ground forces will seal the exit within five minutes—"

Her words were cut off by the thunderous roar of an explosion, so loud it seemed as if the entire world were trembling.

Riding the blast, Lin Xiu burst out of the tunnel and was hit by the chaotic smells of New York City: the pungent stench of burnt wires, the icy scent of shattered glass, and a faint sulfurous odor lingering in the air.

He adjusted the angle of his glider membranes slightly, drew an arc through the air, and finally landed atop a pile of exposed rebar in the ruins.

The steel bars were cold and hard, rough to the touch.

"Ding—"

The Oracle System's alert made him narrow his eyes.

The tactical screen displayed energy readings three hundred meters away: twenty red dots were closing in in a fan-shaped formation. Among them, the brightest red dot, marked Carl Viss, was moving at a speed beyond human limits.

"An unfinished skyscraper." Lin Xiu's gaze swept across the leaning building frame to his left. It was huge and sinister. "The structure hasn't fully set. Nanobots can penetrate the walls." He tapped his chest armor with a bent finger, and thousands of Nanobots poured from gaps in the armor, slipping into cracks in the building's concrete like black mist.

The mist drifted slowly, making a faint rustling sound.

Three seconds later, a retinal projection unfolded—the entire building's structure became transparent before his eyes. The load-bearing capacity of every steel bar, the thickness of every wall, even the construction dust piled in the corners were all clearly visible.

The construction dust was fine and dry, carrying a stale scent.

"Battlefield perception network established." Novak's voice had steadied. "There's a ventilation duct in the southeast fire escape that leads directly to the top floor."

Lin Xiu's fingers moved swiftly across the tactical screen.

He noticed the red dots around the building closing in. The Chitauri soldiers' particle guns were already charged, while Carl Viss's red dot had approached within a hundred meters.

He felt a flicker of anxiety as he considered how to deal with the coming battle, while worrying about the innocent civilians of New York City.

"Time to set out some gifts." He chuckled softly and pressed his fingertips against a load-bearing pillar in the stairwell.

The pillar was cold and solid, rough beneath his touch.

Nanobots surged into the wall along with his touch, restructuring into a dense mesh inside the concrete—these seemingly ordinary "cracks" were actually the casings of miniature EMP generators.

"Click."

The voice-activated lights in the stairwell suddenly flickered.

Lin Xiu backed away along the base of the fire escape wall. In his mask's infrared mode, six red dots were flooding in from the first floor.

The wall was cold and damp, clammy to the touch.

The leading Chitauri soldier held a particle gun, blood still dripping down his armor—it was one of Carl's personal guards.

The blood dripped onto the ground with a steady patter.

Get closer to the load-bearing pillar. Lin Xiu fixed his gaze on the lead soldier's boot tip.

When that boot, covered in metal scales, stepped onto the third stair, his thumb pressed hard against the tactical screen.

"Buzz—"

An invisible wave spread through the air.

The particle guns' blue beams abruptly turned dark purple. The lead soldier's armor system immediately shut down, its metal joints producing a piercing scraping sound.

The scraping was shrill and grating, like metal grinding against metal.

The soldiers behind him fared even worse. Two were directly knocked over by the EMP wave, their weapons emitting bluish smoke like burnt toast.

The bluish smoke carried a pungent burnt smell.

"Trap!" someone screamed in Chitauri.

But Lin Xiu had already rushed to the second floor amid the chaos. His shadow flashed across the shattered glass curtain wall, leaving behind a trail of glowing markers made of Nanobots—"signposts" for the pursuers.

The glass curtain wall was shattered and sharp, cold to the touch.

At the same time, at the S.H.I.E.L.D. command center.

Nick Fury's one eye stared at the satellite footage as his fingertip tapped the desk. "Zoom in."

An assistant quickly operated the terminal. The black dot moving through the ruins gradually became clear—not human, or at least not an ordinary human.

His movements were too fluid. When he leaped across broken rebar, something like translucent membrane wings seemed to unfurl from his back.

"Energy signature?" Fury asked.

"Similar to Stark's Mark armor, but more..." The assistant paused. "More organic."

It looked like an exoskeleton made of some kind of living organism.

Fury's fingers stopped moving.

He recalled the anomalous signal intercepted by the intelligence department three days ago—the quantum experiment data from an underground laboratory in Brooklyn, and the Chinese graduate student who had suddenly vanished.

His mind was full of questions as he considered the connection between this mysterious person and the current situation.

"Send someone to investigate." He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eye socket with his knuckles. "If he's a threat..." His voice dropped. "Eliminate him first."

Meanwhile, atop a ruined building twenty kilometers away, Lin Xiu braced himself against half a broken wall.

The broken wall was cold and fractured, rough to the touch.

The wind lifted his membrane wings and carried distant thunder into his ears—the precursor to the wormhole opening. A strange tremor had already appeared in the air, as if someone were plucking the strings of the universe.

The tremor was faint and mysterious, carrying an unknown power.

He looked toward the purple-black clouds gathering in the east, where Loki's portal was about to open.

Those purple-black clouds were heavy and oppressive, as though concealing endless danger.

The Nanocore burned in his chest as the Oracle System suddenly displayed a prompt:

[Abnormal spatial energy fluctuations detected. Recommend approaching for observation.]

He touched the fragment slot beneath his chest armor—residual warmth from the energy it had just absorbed still lingered there.

He could not help recalling the moment he had crossed over three days ago. It had been a mysterious, chaotic moment, when a deep and enigmatic voice had said in his mind, "Find the Tesseract fragments, and you can rewrite fate." That voice had carried an unquestionable force.

And now, the gears of fate were turning in the east.

He looked at the gradually forming outline of the wormhole, his throat moving as he said softly, "Loki... it's time I came to meet you."

The wind swept up a shard of glass, carving a long, thin arc at his feet.

The glass shard was sharp and cold, smooth to the touch.

In the distance, the roars of the Chitauri forces drew closer and closer, but Lin Xiu's gaze remained fixed on those purple-black clouds—there lay the beginning of his plan.