That Evil Gaze

In the end, tough guy Jack still failed to achieve the first-ever jump from S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, because... Captain America had woken up!!!

Just like in the movie.

After spending decades as an old popsicle beneath a glacier, he had been thawed out and kept lying in that room on the first floor of headquarters. Then, when he woke up, he heard a live baseball broadcast from May 1941, a game he had personally attended...

It was simply a massive S.H.I.E.L.D. public humiliation incident!!!

This was also what Jack found hardest to understand.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had plenty of resources. If Fury thought Captain America should gradually accept the fact that he had been asleep for seventy years, he could have set this whole thing up in the suburbs or at a base!

Instead, they put him directly inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. office building and gave him nothing but a cubicle less than thirty square meters in size. And this counted as letting him slowly accept it???

More importantly, how could such a rigorous intelligence organization as S.H.I.E.L.D. fail to get the date of a baseball game right?

They let Captain America, who had attended a baseball game in May 1941, hear a live broadcast of that very game!

As Jack rushed out of the office building with everyone else, he could not help blushing in embarrassment over the whole affair.

That was way too careless!

After successfully squeezing into one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s SUVs with his One-Ton Arm Strength, Jack saw Coulson in the front passenger seat and froze.

If his memory was correct, Coulson should have been in New Mexico, dealing with the Odin Family's tangled love and hate.

For example, the younger brother who craved his father's affection suddenly stabbed his older brother in the back, sending his dim-witted big brother crashing down to Earth, where he then started dating an ordinary human girl over a thousand years younger than his actual age...

The Odin Family's affairs really were a complete mess...

But the point was, why had Coulson, who was supposed to play a role in all that, suddenly returned to New York?

Seeing the cards in the pocket of someone's suit jacket, Jack reached out and patted Coulson on the shoulder. "Old Coulson, ditching your mission for this middle-aged fanboy nonsense might get you sent to Hell's Kitchen to guard a pond with me..."

Hearing Jack's voice, Coulson's expression stiffened. He truly had not expected this guy to get in the car. If anyone else had squeezed in, he would not have worried, because they would all cover for him and keep Fury from discovering that he had secretly slipped back to New York.

Except Jack...

The biggest troublemaker in S.H.I.E.L.D. lately.

The last time they went to Antarctica to dig up Captain America, this guy had been sent there because he had been demoted.

This time, it seemed he had been demoted for fighting with a senior colleague over a woman in Garrett's office...

He had single-handedly dragged S.H.I.E.L.D.'s lofty image down into the style of an office soap opera.

Most importantly, that entire string of events had happened within a single month!

In order to see his idol, Coulson forced a bitter smile onto his face and said to Jack, "Good brother, don't stir up any trouble today. I just want to see him from afar..."

Jack said, "Do you realize that sounded a little gay..."

Coulson said, "If there is no gay in your heart, then it isn't gay."

The moment Jack shut the car door, Coulson immediately urged the driver to get moving. By the time they arrived at Times Square, Captain America was looking around in every direction. The ever-elusive Director Fury got out of the car and walked up to him with a single sentence.

"Listen, I'm deeply sorry about that performance, but..."

"We thought it would be best to let you adjust to all this gradually."

Jack, who had just gotten out of the car, rolled his eyes at Fury. If they really planned to let Captain America adjust gradually, could they not have sent him to Hollywood?

Those people were the true professionals at recreating vintage settings.

After hearing Fury's words, Captain America looked at New York's Times Square, now seventy years removed from the one he knew. Everything here had changed beyond recognition.

At last, he spoke that classic line with mixed emotions.

"I had a date."

Quite a few Captain America fans present immediately understood what he meant. They could not help feeling sad for that couple's story and deeply sympathetic.

Jack was not drawn into that mood. He spotted Rumlow, who had also arrived, and the two good friends bumped fists. Then Rumlow started muttering in a low voice.

"Captain America really lives up to his name. He just knocked out my two best men with one punch each. A man who slept beneath a glacier for seventy years and only woke up recently has that kind of fighting ability. I think he's a little too strong."

"Or rather, the Super-Soldier Program is a little too strong..."

"If only I could use that serum too!"

"I'd definitely be stronger than Rogers!"

Looking at Rumlow's shining eyes, Jack sympathetically patted his old friend, who was still in the dark, on the shoulder. In truth, Hydra had serum. Even the United States government had serum.

It was just that low-ranking grunts like them were not worthy of using it.

In the movie version of Captain America: Civil War, the Winter Soldier killed Tony's parents for the serum. Those doses had been injected into Hydra's elite suicide squad.

Once those guys went berserk, any one of them could take down the Winter Soldier.

In the end, Baron Zemo simply shot each of them in the head...

It fully demonstrated the brutality of Hydra's internal factional struggles.

As well as Baron Zemo's contempt for the Super-Soldier Serum.

Then there was the TV series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Isaiah, that Black Captain America, was a product of the United States' Super-Soldier Program. Of three hundred African American soldiers, the few who survived formed a squad that had fought Bucky head-on several times on the Korean battlefield.

There was one special point of knowledge here...

Isaiah had definitely fought for the United States, so which side had Hydra been on?

Jack had been in the Marvel Universe for three years. He had always thought he might encounter a Hydra faction reformed by socialism. After all, Hydra had so many branches in the Marvel Universe. There was no way none of them flew red flags.

Captain America did not stay in Times Square for long before getting into Fury's car. After all, in Marvel, this man had become the product of a large-scale god-making campaign, gradually evolving into an embodiment of the American spirit.

To avoid causing too much of a sensation for now, they would definitely send Captain America back to S.H.I.E.L.D. first, make him catch up on the past seventy years of history, then give him some work or something. That would make him a useful tool.

Yes, a tool...

Having spent three years in Marvel, Jack understood the hypocrisy beneath those glorious surfaces all too well.

In fact, this had been reflected in the movies; it was simply something many people had failed to notice.

Jack watched as the car carrying Captain America slowly passed before him. Their eyes met across the crowd, and Jack saw evil in Captain America's gaze!

That fleeting evil made every hair on Jack's body stand on end, and sweat began to pour from him.

"This... this is impossible!"

"Why would there be evil in his eyes!"