As the roar of propellers tore through the dusk, a thin layer of sweat formed on the back of Lin Xiu's neck.
He stared at Natasha, trapped below by the Nanite Swarm—she was prying at the bottom of the rolling shutter with a tactical knife, its tip screeching against metal. Silver sparks from collisions with the Nanite Swarm clung to the ends of her hair.
The Oracle System projected the Quinjet's flight path across his retina. A red arrow was closing in at thirty meters per second.
"Core temperature has reached 92%." Oracle's mechanical voice was low. "Quantum encryption will require three more minutes. Forcibly interrupting it will result in the loss of 40% of the data."
Lin Xiu gripped the Vibranium dagger tightly. The sprout-shaped engraving on its hilt pressed red marks into his palm.
Howard Stark's signature from the photograph still swam before his eyes. The Nanocore from twenty years ago was nearly identical to the one inside his body—this was no coincidence. It was more like a carefully designed closed loop.
He remembered the blue flash before the laboratory explosion, the buzzing that had sounded in his ears during the crossing. All the fragments suddenly came together in his mind: the Observer Organization, the Sentinel Program. Perhaps from the very day he came into contact with quantum experiments, he had already been written into someone's script.
"Encryption progress has reached 87%."
The searchlights outside the factory swept across the second-floor windows, casting a sharp boundary of light and shadow over Lin Xiu's face.
He looked at the flashing red light inside the command vehicle—more secrets were hidden there, but the Quinjet's cannons could blow the entire factory to pieces in thirty seconds.
His fingertips lightly tapped the Nanocore behind his ear. It was growing hot with the