Opportunity, Just This Once

The alarm sounded like a rusty, blunt saw, dragging slowly and cruelly across Chu Hang's eardrums, stroke after stroke. Every flash of the blood-red emergency lights dyed the pristine white cell a slaughterhouse crimson, and amid the shifting light and shadow, it almost seemed possible to smell the promise of blood.

Explosions, gunfire, and screams laced with terror and despair surged in wave after wave from outside. The roar drew closer and closer, like tides from hell battering his tiny boat.

Chu Hang stood in the center of the room. His body, frozen for half a century and only recently awakened, was still wracked by profound weakness that made him tremble uncontrollably. Yet the eyes within that frail shell burned with startling brilliance, as though they could pierce this cage. They were the eyes of a traveler who had crossed an endless desert for months, teetered on the edge of death from thirst, and finally spotted a trace of green at the horizon—filled with madness, Greed, and the resolve to pay any price.

An opportunity.

He knew S.H.I.E.L.D.'s methods better than anyone. Once this sudden chaos subsided, freedom would not await him. Tighter imprisonment would. More extensive research would. They would dissect him layer by layer like some rare lab rat, analyze him again and again until they had squeezed out every last secret tied to the Cosmic Cube, then turn him into a specimen and seal him away forever. He could not allow that future to happen.

He had to escape.

Right now, at this very moment!

Boom—!

A deafening blast, heavier and more violent than all the previous explosions, erupted nearby, as if some prehistoric beast had turned over beneath the earth. The entire room shuddered violently. Dust rained down from the ceiling like a miniature snowfall. Chu