Aftermath of the Disaster

In that instant, Chu Hang thought he was dead.

The blast wave hurled him away, his body tumbling uncontrollably through the air as the entire world became an upside-down vortex of fire and darkness. Scorching air slammed into his back like an invisible giant hand. He could clearly feel his combat suit being baked brittle in an instant, followed by the sensation that his internal organs had been crushed out of place by the tremendous force.

His sense of time vanished completely. He did not know whether he had flown through the air for a second or a century. Not until his back crashed heavily into something soft yet cold did the massive impact blacken his vision and nearly knock him unconscious on the spot.

Like a battered sack, he rolled and sprawled into knee-deep snow. The enormous momentum plowed a long furrow through the snow before he finally came to a stop.

Chu Hang lay facedown in the snow, not wanting to move at all.

His lungs felt like torn bellows, every breath carrying knife-like pain and a thick stench of burning. Cold snowflakes landed on his blazing face and melted instantly, but he could not feel the cold in the slightest. His whole body, inside and out, felt as though it were being roasted by an invisible fire. This was the biological heat produced as the Healing Factor frantically repaired his damaged internal organs.

His head buzzed. The earth-shattering explosion just now had been louder than his ears could process, leaving behind nothing but a sustained high-pitched ringing, as if thousands of cicadas were shrieking inside his skull at once.

Only after several full seconds did Chu Hang recover from his near-death daze. He tried moving his fingers. The Healing Factor had shielded him from all the damage. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked back.

The sight before him made him forget to breathe.

The heavily guarded steel fortress had now become a gigantic torch reaching toward the sky.

Centered on the electrical room, the explosive force spread like a slowly blooming lotus of destruction, completely blowing away the upper half of the entire factory.

Countless twisted, burning steel bars and chunks of concrete were hurled hundreds of meters into the air, then crashed howling into every corner of the valley like an apocalyptic meteor shower, trailing long streaks of flame and smoke.

The entire valley was lit in blinding orange-red. A colossal mushroom cloud of rolling smoke rose slowly, as if it were about to swallow the black night sky. The air reeked of tar, burnt plastic from electrical wires, and another smell... the sickeningly sweet, fishy stench of scorched protein belonging to that monster, which he had smelled underground before.

Now this was a spectacle. The thought surfaced uncontrollably in Chu Hang's mind. Compared to the real devastation before him, enough to shake mountains, every effects-heavy blockbuster he had ever seen in a movie theater seemed pale and laughable.

"Cough, cough... Is everyone all right?"

Steve's voice sounded beside Chu Hang. He coughed violently as he struggled to rise from the snow. His once-vibrant blue, white, and red uniform was now blackened and gray with soot, and his face was covered in smoke and dust. He looked like a plumber who had just crawled out of a chimney. Only his eyes remained astonishingly bright in the firelight.

"Won't die."

From another direction came Logan's muffled voice. He looked even worse than they did, half his body buried in snow. He suddenly drove his fist hard into the snow before him and let out a low growl that barely restrained his extreme fury. "Fuck! What the hell was that thing?!"

Chu Hang could hear the unwillingness in his voice. For a beast like Logan, one who had battle and hunting carved into his bones, encountering an opponent that even his most prized bone claws could not harm was more unbearable than taking a bullet. It was practically a challenge to his very purpose as an apex predator.

Steve did not respond at once. He merely stared silently at the burning ruins, his expression as complicated as an impenetrable fog.

There was the relief of surviving disaster, anger at Hydra's madness, but more than anything, there was a deep concern Chu Hang had never seen on his face before.

"We need to leave immediately." He turned around. His voice was not loud, yet it was unusually firm amid the howling wind and snow. "This explosion is a signal flare. Every German and Hydra patrol within fifty miles will converge here. We need to rendezvous with Dugan and the others as soon as possible."

The mission.

His words were like a bucket of cold water poured over Chu Hang's nerves, which had been numbed by shock. Only then did he remember why they were here. The factory had been destroyed, but what about their captured comrades?

Chu Hang shook his still-dizzy head and climbed out of the snow.

"Captain, which way do we go?" Chu Hang asked.

Steve pulled the crumpled map from his waist, examined it carefully in the distant flames, then pointed toward a ridge behind and to their side. "According to the plan, once Plan B succeeds, we meet at Extraction Point Three. Dugan and the others will take the prisoners there and wait for us."

"Move." Logan was succinct as ever. He sprang up from the snow, lowered his eyes to the few nearly imperceptible pale marks on his knuckles, and a savage glint flashed through his gaze. Without a word, he followed behind Steve.

The three of them trudged through the deep snow, each step sinking heavily. The atmosphere was oppressively grim.

No one spoke. There was only their labored breathing and the crunch of snow beneath their feet. The shadow of that monster weighed on every heart like a massive boulder.

After running for roughly ten minutes and crossing a mountain ridge, the firelight from the explosion was blocked by the mountainside, and the surroundings immediately grew dim. Steve found a hollow in the rocks sheltered from the wind and signaled for them to rest briefly.

He sat against the icy rock wall, removed his helmet, and revealed a face covered in sweat and soot. He looked up, his azure eyes seeming to glow in the darkness as he stared directly at Chu Hang and Logan.

"Tell me," he said. "What did you see? About that... thing. We need to pool our intelligence."

Logan spoke first. He ran a hand irritably through his hair, his voice hoarse as sandpaper scraping together.

"That thing's hide—or shell—was insanely tough. My claws hitting it were like chopping a main battle tank with an axe. Other than making a few sparks, they didn't do shit."

He paused, then added, "And it was strong. Really strong. That hit nearly shattered my arm."

Steve's brow furrowed even deeper as he turned to Chu Hang. "Chu, your hearing is the best. Did you hear anything unusual down there?"

"I think... those scientists didn't release it on purpose." Chu Hang gave his deduction based on what he had observed. "It seemed more like an experiment going out of control. Those scientists looked even more terrified than we were. They opened the door themselves to escape, and ended up dragging us down with them. That countdown may have been the activation time for some kind of sedative or destruction protocol, but it failed."

After listening, Steve fell silent for a long time. He lowered his head to look at the shield in his hand, stained with grime and green slime, before speaking slowly. "I blocked one of its attacks head-on with my shield. That force... was pure physical impact, like being struck head-on by a Tiger Tank charging at full speed. If this shield hadn't absorbed most of the kinetic energy, my arm would have been completely ruined from that one blow."

He paused, then lifted his head. A rare trace of lingering fear showed in his eyes. "And it was intelligent. It was absolutely not a mindless beast. After I blocked its first attack, it didn't repeat itself. It immediately changed tactics and used that tentacle to attack my legs from below. It was probing, looking for weaknesses, learning in battle. All of that happened within seconds."

Chu Hang's heart sank again. Overwhelming strength, nearly invincible defense, and combat intelligence capable of analyzing the battlefield and adapting in an instant. What exactly was Hydra trying to do? Create a perfect killing machine to rule the world? This had gone beyond the scope of conventional warfare.

"No matter what kind of son of a bitch it is," Logan spat viciously, speaking as if he were making an oath, "if I run into it again, I'll rip its heart out alive!"

"I'm afraid there won't be a next time." Chu Hang instinctively replied. Half of it was a reasonable deduction, and half was heartfelt self-comfort. "That explosion was so violent. The whole base was leveled. No matter how tough it is, it must be buried beneath hundreds of tons of steel and concrete, burned into charcoal."

But Steve shook his head. His expression was exceptionally serious, even grave. "No, Chu. In war, you can never be that optimistic. Until we see its remains with our own eyes, we have to assume it's still alive."

The moment he said that, Chu Hang felt the air around them turn several degrees colder.

Assume it was still alive?

What kind of joke was that?! That explosion had been powerful enough to flatten a small mountain! No carbon-based life-form could survive an explosion at the heart of that kind of energy release!

Yet, seeing Steve's unquestionable gaze, Chu Hang forcibly swallowed the rebuttal that had reached his lips. He was the captain. His judgment always began with the worst possibility. That was an attitude of responsibility toward everyone's survival.

Just as the oppressive atmosphere was about to solidify, a faint burst of radio static mixed with hissing crackled from the communicator at Steve's waist.

"Bzz... calling... Thunderbird... this is... Eagle's Nest... respond if you can hear... repeat..."

It was Dugan!

Steve instantly perked up and grabbed the communicator, pressing the transmission key. "Eagle's Nest, this is Thunderbird! We read you! What's your situation? What about the prisoners?"

"We... bzz... succeeded!" Dugan's voice came through the radio, both excited and utterly exhausted. "We got everyone out! God, Steve, the commotion you made in there was way too big! We thought you'd blown up the entire mountain! We're heading to Extraction Point Three according to plan. Where are you?"

"We're on the way too. We should be there in about twenty minutes!" A genuine smile finally appeared on Steve's face. "Excellent work, Dugan! Everyone stay alert. Once we rendezvous, we evacuate immediately!"

"Understood! Eagle's Nest out!"

The transmission ended. The good news was like a shot of powerful adrenaline, instantly scattering all the gloom and fear in their hearts.

"Let's go!" Steve put his helmet back on, his voice regaining its unstoppable momentum and infectious resolve. "Let's bring our brothers home!"

Chu Hang and Logan immediately rose and followed him. Even their steps felt much lighter. As long as they could rendezvous with Dugan and the others and get everyone out of this damned place, then every sacrifice and risk tonight would have been worth it.

However, just as Chu Hang happily imagined all of that, his ears, enhanced to their limits, caught an extremely faint yet incomparably familiar sound.

It came from behind them, from the direction of the fiery ruins.

It was soft and muffled, almost completely concealed by the howling wind and snow, as well as the crackling aftermath of the flames after the explosion. If his hearing had not surpassed human limits and reached something inhuman, he would never have noticed it.

It was a very rhythmic sound.

Once, once, then once again.

Like... a gigantic drum buried deep underground, being struck slowly.

Chu Hang's steps abruptly halted. His entire body froze in place as though he had been struck by a binding spell.

"What is it?" Steve, walking ahead, noticed something was wrong and immediately stopped, turning back to ask warily.

Chu Hang did not answer. He merely turned around stiffly, inch by inch, aimed his ear toward the direction of the sound, held his breath, and focused all his attention on listening.

Wind, snow, burning flames, the hissing of scorching metal touching ice and snow in the distance...

Then, beneath all that noisy background, the sound entered his ears again with absolute clarity.

Thump...

Thump...

Thump...

It was not an illusion!

It was not his heartbeat, nor was it an echo from the explosion!

It was a heartbeat.

It was the pulse of that huge heart he had seen in the underground laboratory!

It had not died.

Despite that violent, total explosion and collapse, it was still alive!

And that heartbeat was steadier and stronger than before. Every pulse seemed to shake the earth, brimming with a wild, violent savagery, as though something were breaking free from its cocoon and casting off its restraints.

A bone-deep chill shot from his tailbone to the crown of his head, making every hair on his body stand on end. His body began to tremble faintly beyond his control.

"It... it's still alive..."

In a hoarse voice that sounded almost dreamlike and unfamiliar even to himself, Chu Hang told the bewildered Steve and Logan a fact that was enough to plunge anyone into complete despair.

"That monster... isn't dead..."