"Sir, the Avengers have pushed into the inner perimeter. The guards outside can't stop them."
Baron Strucker, wearing a monocle, looked grim. He glanced at the Hydra soldiers still heading out to reinforce their comrades, then waved the soldier reporting to him away.
"They must be here for the Scepter."
The elderly, gray-haired man in charge of the base's experiments lowered his voice as much as he could and offered his guess to Baron Strucker, who had turned toward him.
"Do you think we can stop them?"
The old man shook his head.
Strucker slammed his fist onto the table with a bang, chipping off a small piece of its corner.
"We were exposed too soon! There are still so many plans we haven't had time to put into action!"
He gritted his teeth as he glanced at the feed from the Surveillance Camera, then shouted, "Deploy all tanks! Concentrate your fire on their weak points!"
"Baron, with all due respect, we cannot stop the Avengers with the forces we have. There are superpowered people among them, and more than one. These are abilities we've never seen before."
The old man's gaze fixed on the screen, his lips moving. "These children... how could these children possess such tremendous power? It's simply unbelievable."
Outside of powers arising from innate genetic traits, cases of people gaining abilities later through drugs and experiments were exceedingly rare. During their experiments to create superpowered people using the Scepter's power, only the twins, out of hundreds of subjects, had endured until the end.
He was certain these children were not mutants from Xavier's School, much less Magneto's subordinates.
Professor X's protectiveness toward underage mutants meant he would never let them take part in an operation like this, and Magneto would not let his subordinates act alone