Above the Adirondack Mountains, the night wind cut like a knife.
The cabin's wreckage was ground to dust in midair by raging energy. Wanda hovered in the snowy, windswept night sky, her eyes utterly consumed by deep scarlet. Her pale nostrils twitched slightly, catching an extremely faint, sickly-sweet scent in the air.
It was the residue of highly concentrated nerve gas.
"Vermin..."
She looked down at her empty palms. Lynn's warmth had already faded. The panic of having her beloved forcibly taken from her instantly turned into a killing intent that would burn everything.
"Give my Lynn back!"
Boom! A dark red ring of sonic vapor exploded in midair. Wanda became a scarlet meteor, tearing straight through the clouds along the faint, lingering pull in the air.
Inside the Quinjet.
Crossbones, Brock, took off his tactical gloves, pulled a bottle of ice water from the refrigerated cabinet beside him, and twisted it open to take two swallows. The cold liquid flowed down his throat, suppressing the trace of hidden panic in his heart.
He kicked Lynn, who lay at his feet tightly wrapped in an insulated straitjacket, and curled his lips into a vicious grin.
"That's it? That old bastard Fury really is losing his touch, treating trash like this as some kind of treasure."
Two fully armed Hydra agents stood nearby, their muzzles still trained firmly on Lynn's head, without relaxing in the slightest.
In the cockpit, the pilot stared at the radar screen, his fingers tapping rapidly across the control panel.
Alexander Pierce's low voice came over the comms. "Brock, confirm the target's condition. The medical team at Base Thirteen is ready. Implant the neural control chip as soon as you land. The witch is ours."
"Rest assured, sir. He inhaled enough gas to put an elephant to sleep for three days." Crossbones crushed the empty bottle and casually tossed it into a corner of the cabin. "Once the chip's implanted, I'll personally break his legs and make him kneel before you like a dog..."
Before he could finish.
Beep, beep, beep, beep-
A piercing top-priority alarm rang throughout the cabin. Red warning lights flashed frantically, casting everyone's faces in a deathly pallor.
"What's going on?!" Crossbones abruptly drew the sidearm strapped to his thigh and demanded sharply.
"Sir! Radar shows a high-energy signature approaching from behind! Speed... Mach 3! Mach 4! Still climbing!" The pilot's voice warped with sheer terror. "The thermal imaging system is overloaded! That's not a missile, it's a... person!"
Crossbones's pupils contracted, and his heart abruptly skipped a beat.
Almost instinctively, he lunged toward the bulletproof window at the rear of the cabin.
In the pitch-black night sky, a streak of dark red light closed the distance like a blade slicing through the darkness, moving at a terrifying speed that utterly defied conventional physics.
"Evasive maneuvers! Deploy all decoys! Charge the main cannon!" Crossbones roared himself hoarse, cold sweat soaking through his tactical vest.
Too late.
Boom!
The entire Quinjet lurched violently, and a deafening screech of tearing metal came from its right wing. The two standing agents were hurled away and slammed heavily into the cabin wall.
Lying on the floor, Lynn slid into a corner of the cabin as it tilted. His eyes remained closed, and even his breathing rhythm had not changed in the slightest. But beneath the straitjacket, his fingertips tapped lightly against the side of his thigh.
She's here.
The special-alloy door at the rear of the cabin began to cave inward with a piercing groan. Five distinct fingerprints were forcibly pressed into the ten-centimeter-thick bulletproof armor.
Bang!
The door, weighing several tons, was ripped apart and flung away as though made of paper.
Winds at twenty degrees below zero poured wildly into the cabin with ice and snow, making it impossible to keep one's eyes open.
Blocking the doorway was that chilling figure.
Wanda hovered in midair, the wind tugging at her long hair. Dense Chaos Magic churned and boiled around her like tangible blood plasma. There was not a trace of human emotion in those scarlet eyes, only a pure desire for destruction.
"Fire! Fire!" Crossbones screamed hysterically, holding down the trigger.
Ratatatat!
A dense barrage of armor-piercing rounds spewed from the guns, only to stop dead half a meter from Wanda. The bullets spun rapidly in midair, throwing off dazzling sparks from friction, yet could not advance a fraction.
Wanda tilted her head slightly, her gaze passing over Crossbones to settle on Lynn in the corner, bound tightly in a straitjacket with a shock collar still around his neck.
At that moment, the air inside the cabin froze completely.
"You..." Wanda's voice was as soft as a sigh, yet reached every person's ears clearly, carrying a shiver-inducing tremor. "How dare you... touch him with this filthy thing?"
Whoosh!
The hundreds of bullets suspended in midair instantly reversed, shooting back at ten times their original speed.
Thud, thud, thud!
The two Hydra agents who had just climbed to their feet did not even have time to scream. Their bodies were instantly riddled with holes, their mangled flesh pinned dead against the cabin wall. Warm blood splashed across Crossbones's face, and the thick stench of blood spread through the cabin.
Wanda did not spare the two corpses a glance. She raised her right hand and abruptly clenched her fingers around empty air.
"Aaagh!"
The two pilots in the cockpit let out a shrill scream. Dark red energy pierced the bulletproof glass and plunged straight into the openings of their faces. Two muffled bursts sounded, and the cockpit glass was instantly coated in scarlet.
Without anyone at the controls, the Quinjet began to plummet toward the ground.
Wanda merely waved her left hand casually, and an invisible force held the entire aircraft, weighing dozens of tons, aloft in outright defiance of gravity.
Crossbones's legs buckled, and he dropped straight to his knees. The fighting skills he took such pride in and Hydra's elite training were nothing but a joke before such unreasonable, godlike power.
Wanda slowly floated into the cabin. With every step she drew closer, another inch of the compression bandages on Crossbones's body split apart. His wounds reopened, and blood stained his tactical uniform red.
"Don't... don't kill me..." Crossbones forced broken syllables from his throat, trying to inch backward.
Wanda came before him and looked down at him from above. Scarlet energy formed an invisible giant hand that clamped tightly around Crossbones's neck, lifting him from the floor inch by inch.
"Which foot did you kick him with?" Wanda tilted her head, her gaze filled with utter cruelty and sickness.
Crack!
There was no need for an answer. Crossbones's right knee folded backward at a grotesque angle. Stark white shards of bone pierced straight through his tactical trousers, and blood gushed out.
"Aaah-!" Crossbones let out an inhuman howl, his features twisting together in extreme pain.
His communicator fell to the floor, Pierce's anxious shouts coming from it. "Brock! Report! What happened?!"
Wanda's gaze fell on the communicator. With a light twist of her toe, she crushed it to pieces.
She looked back at Crossbones, suspended in midair with his eyes rolling back from suffocation and agony, and slowly began closing the fingers of her right hand.
Crossbones's cervical vertebrae cracked under the unbearable strain. His eyes bulged, bloodshot, and his tongue hung far out of his mouth. The shadow of death had engulfed him completely.
Just as Crossbones's head was about to be crushed like a watermelon, Lynn's eyelashes fluttered faintly in the corner, where he lay wrapped in the straitjacket.
An extremely faint, muffled groan escaped his throat.
The groan was so soft it was almost inaudible, yet it struck like a thunderbolt, scattering the madness in the deepest reaches of Wanda's eyes.
She whipped her head around, her hand abruptly stopping. Crossbones slammed heavily onto the floor, vomiting mouthfuls of blood like a dying dog.
Wanda could no longer spare any attention for this Hydra scum. She lunged to Lynn's side as though teleporting, her trembling hands tearing at the insulated straitjacket.
Lynn slowly opened his eyes, meeting those bloodshot green eyes. His cracked lips parted slightly, and he uttered words that made Crossbones feel as though he had plunged into an ice cellar.
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