The smoke in the tunnel had yet to clear. Lin Xiu pressed his back tightly against the twisted rail wreckage, while the shoulder plates of his Nano Armor still hissed with blue smoke. The air reeked of scorched metal.
The Oracle System's tactical grid flickered across his retina, red markers showing that the Iron Shadow Squad's flashlight beams had closed to within thirty meters.
The faint white light pierced the darkness, casting wavering shadows across the walls.
Meanwhile, the abnormal ionospheric fluctuations at the far end of the tunnel were intensifying—J-09 clearly would not send only one Rift Hunter.
"Oracle, analyze the Iron Shadow Squad's movement pattern." He lowered his voice. The micro-microphone at his throat transmitted the command into the armor's core, his voice deep but carrying a trace of tense tremor.
The Nanite Swarm seeped from his fingertips into the ground, weaving imperceptibly thin silver threads through the rail gaps. Like a spiderweb, they spread silently, trembling faintly as they sensed every footstep.
"The four targets are advancing in a fan formation. Thermal imager sensitivity is moderate. Sonic positioning devices are not activated." As the mechanical voice fell silent, the Tesseract fragment in Lin Xiu's palm suddenly grew hot. God Metal particles burrowed into the bracer interface like living things, and a faint current raced across his skin. "Energy Resonance detected. Immediate execution of the camouflage plan is recommended."
His pupils contracted slightly. His heartbeat quickened inside his chest, and all he could hear were his own heavy breaths and the approaching footsteps in the distance.
When he had triggered quantum entanglement at Brooklyn Laboratory three days ago, he never could have imagined that the experimental core once used to verify nano self-assembly would now become his trump card for surviving in the cracks of the Marvel Universe.
His fingertips tapped lightly against his shoulder plate, and the Nanite Swarm hidden within the armor's patterns responded. Half flowed across the Rift Hunter's remains, devouring the leftover Chitauri alloy; the other half rapidly crawled up the tunnel walls, gathering into a vague humanoid silhouette at the bend twenty meters away.
"Heat signature at the bend!" the Iron Shadow Squad's captain shouted, raising the thermal imager. When the beam swept over the false silhouette, the device emitted a piercing buzz, like an alarm or a deranged heartbeat.
All four agents raised their weapons at once. Their tactical flashlights split the darkness, revealing the patterns of a friendly operative's combat uniform—it was a S.H.I.E.L.D. special operations insignia Lin Xiu had had the Nanite Swarm replicate with precision, nearly identical even in the fabric's sheen and creases.
"Hold your fire! Friendly!" The deputy captain's voice shook with tension, his tone betraying hesitation and unease.
Lin Xiu watched the markers flicker on the tactical grid, and the corner of his mouth curved faintly.
The agents' breathing was accelerating, and their heartbeats came through clearly via the Nanite Swarm's vibration sensors. Fear was easier to manipulate than bullets. Like every breath echoing through the depths of the tunnel, it only amplified their anxiety.
"Move!" The captain kicked aside a metal fragment at his feet and charged toward the bend, his boots striking the rails with echoes that rolled through the narrow space.
The footsteps of the four men stirred echoes in the tunnel, gradually fading away.
Lin Xiu seized the chance to roll into the drainage channel beside the tracks. Icy water instantly soaked his pant legs, and the smell of mildew mixed with rust hit him full in the face.
The Nanite Swarm spread into a thin membrane behind him, instantly concealing his heat signature.
"Mia Chen's location?"
"Southeast, seventy-two meters away. She is moving toward the ventilation shaft." Oracle's report made Lin Xiu's fingers pause.
When the explosion had knocked off her hat earlier, he had caught sight of the S.H.I.E.L.D. imprint on her tactical vest. A former agent now appearing here as an independent consultant—it was no coincidence.
A metallic scraping sound suddenly came from the other side of the tunnel, sharp as fingernails dragged over steel plating.
Lin Xiu looked up just in time to see Mia crouching as she crawled into a ventilation duct. The hem of her trench coat was stained with purple energy residue from the Rift Hunter, glowing faintly.
She moved swiftly but cautiously, her right hand constantly resting at her waist. The bulge there did not look like an ordinary weapon—perhaps a signal jammer, perhaps a recording device.
"Melvin Carson has left the ventilation shaft." Oracle's notice tightened Lin Xiu's nerves again.
That hacker had stayed hidden by the vent during the fight, recording everything. By now, the footage had probably been uploaded to the dark web.
He touched the tiny receiver implanted behind his ear and, sure enough, heard a dark web forum alert. A post titled Mysterious Warrior vs. Chitauri Invader was being reposted frantically. In the attached preview video, the moment his lightsaber pierced the Rift Hunter's core had been clipped into a GIF, with sparks from the battle still lingering along the edges.
"Deal with what's in front of me first." Lin Xiu clenched his back teeth and crawled deeper into the tunnel through the drainage channel.
The maintenance passage entrance was hidden beneath the third rail segment. When he had surveyed the subway system three days ago, he had used the Nanite Swarm to corrode the cement seal.
Now, under the swarm's gnawing, the metal cover quietly loosened. Mildew and rust rushed out, carried by damp air thick with the scent of dust.
"Low-Grade Tesseract energy fragment detected." Oracle's voice suddenly rose, and the energy gauge on his retina began to flicker wildly.
Following the signal, Lin Xiu brushed away the accumulated dust. A thumb-sized diamond-shaped crystal was embedded in a crack in the wall, its surface flowing with a ghostly blue glow. It resonated at the same frequency as the fragment in his palm, humming with a vibration like some kind of summons.
He drew a deep breath and pressed the crystal against the bracer's energy interface.
The Nanite Swarm surged out like a tide and instantly enveloped the crystal. Golden patterns spread from the interface across the entire armor, gathering over the shoulder plates into the shapes of Norse runes that radiated faint warmth.
"Tactical Form, Phase Four, preliminarily activated—swarm can simulate light defensive structures." Oracle's prompt made Lin Xiu's heart skip a beat.
The last upgrade had come when he fought the first Chitauri scout. This time, he could clearly feel the entanglement between the Nanocore and Tesseract energy growing tighter, as though an invisible thread were dragging him into an even larger game.
"Warning: three energy sources approaching." Oracle's red alert suddenly covered the entire tactical grid.
Lin Xiu spun around. Footsteps came from the far end of the maintenance passage—the Iron Shadow Squad. They had clearly realized they had been fooled and switched to cross-pattern infrared scanning. Sparks of electricity crackled from the ventilation ducts, likely Mia. But what made the hairs on his neck stand up was the familiar ionospheric disturbance at the end of the tunnel—J-09's second wave had arrived.
"Having fun?" A male voice suddenly rang out, making Lin Xiu's pupils contract.
He turned and saw the Iron Shadow captain standing at the maintenance passage entrance, holding a sonic positioning device. The screen clearly displayed Lin Xiu's outline. "Thermal imaging might fool rookies, but it won't fool us."
Lin Xiu's fingers rapidly tapped across his armor, and the Nanite Swarm crawled up the walls toward the tunnel's lighting system.
The next second, every bulb flared to life at once, then went dark within 0.3 seconds. This repeated three times.
Between the alternating flashes of light and darkness, the shadows of the tunnel pipes stretched into distorted human shapes, as if specters were watching from the corners. It sent a chill down the spine.
"Fall back!" The deputy captain aimed his gun at the shadows, his voice trembling noticeably.
Lin Xiu took the opportunity to crawl out through a vent beside them. As he passed the captain, he lowered his voice and said, "You're no match for me."
When the Iron Shadow Squad's flashlight beams came on again, only fragments of the Nanite Swarm remained scattered across the tunnel floor, arranged into a mocking smile as though they were still laughing at their failure.
At the same time, a new message popped up on an underground dark web forum.
Melvin Carson stared at his computer screen as a private message from an anonymous buyer flashed in the chat window. "One hundred thousand dollars for his facial information. Biological data would be even better." He licked his dry lips and replayed the combat footage. In the instant that mysterious warrior turned around, half a face seemed to be reflected in the visor's glare.
In an apartment somewhere in Brooklyn, Mia Chen tucked her earphone cord into her ears. Her phone was repeatedly playing the Chitauri transmission she had intercepted during her escape: "Homologous energy carrier successfully located. Prey retrieval priority raised to Class A..." She stared at the words "energy carrier" on the screen, slowly clenching her fingers. The tiny tracker in the inner pocket of her trench coat flashed red—it was something she had modified from Nanite Swarm fragments while Lin Xiu was not paying attention.
The alarms in the tunnel gradually faded, and the subway system's emergency lights came back on, their soft cold glow falling over the empty tracks.
A combat video uploaded by an anonymous account was spreading across the internet like wildfire, titled <A Mysterious Warrior Appears Beneath New York: He Looks More Like the Future Than Iron Man>.
The likes in the comments section surged like skyrockets. No one noticed that in the shadows of the video's final frame, a pair of golden eyes was staring into the camera—the mark of Balder Armor's Oracle Form, and a sign that the Web of Fate was tightening.
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