Guiding Wanda, redirecting her hatred toward Hydra

The night wind poured through the gaps in the window, carrying a hint of murderous chill.

On an abandoned water tower fifteen hundred meters away, the Winter Soldier's metal left arm gave an almost imperceptible whir of meshing gears. Through his sniper scope's crosshairs, the man whose head should have been blown apart by a single shot actually looked straight through the darkness, his gaze piercing directly toward him.

Barnes's pupils abruptly contracted in his perpetually frozen face.

A mocking smile tugged at Lynn's lips. He raised his right hand, gently placed his index finger against his lips, and made a silent shushing gesture in that direction.

Then he turned his wrist and yanked down the cord beside the wall.

Swish!

The heavy, lead-lined bulletproof curtains closed without a gap, completely cutting off every cold, mechanical prying gaze.

Want to play sniper? You picked the wrong time, Lynn sneered inwardly. Starting a fight now would only disrupt the perfect rhythm of his plan to kill with someone else's blade. That brainwashed mechanical head would have to be left for Steve Rogers to slowly get a headache over.

His first priority was to fit the lioness before him, who could go berserk at any moment, with a precision-guided collar.

Lynn turned around.

The smell of ozone in the bedroom was chokingly strong, mingled with Wanda's distinctive rose scent. She stood barefoot amid the shattered glass strewn across the floor, the hem of her nightdress whipping wildly in the turbulent energy currents. The scarlet particles dancing at her fingertips looked exactly like venomous snakes ready to strike and devour someone at any moment.

I have to find her an outlet.

Lynn deliberately withdrew the last bit of defense provided by his chaos magic affinity physique, allowing the magic that had just surged backward to batter his meridians. His body swayed violently, and he dropped heavily to one knee on the floor, an intensely suppressed cough rumbling out of his throat.

Drip.

A drop of dark red blood struck the wooden floor, splashing into a glaring blossom of blood.

"Lynn!"

Wanda screamed. She crossed the three-meter distance in an instant, her scorching palm clamping tightly around Lynn's arm. That extreme heat felt as though she wanted to forcibly melt his entire body into her own flesh and blood. She stared fixedly at the blood on the floor, the red glow in her eyes so intense it almost seemed about to drip blood.

"What exactly did they do to you?!" Wanda's voice trembled violently, carrying a world-destroying ferocity. "I'm going to kill that one-eyed bastard! I'm going to burn the whole building to ashes!"

"No... it wasn't Fury."

Lynn leaned into her embrace, greedily gulping down air. He raised his hand and gently stroked Wanda's trembling lips with his bloodstained thumb.

A masterful psychological game: seven parts truth, three parts lies.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is just a shell out in the open." Lynn deliberately slowed his speech, making every word land precisely on the yandere's most sensitive nerves. "The ones who really want to sever our bond are a cancer lurking at its roots."

"Who?" Wanda ground out, her nails digging deep into the fabric over Lynn's shoulders.

"Hydra."

Lynn uttered the name, his tone carrying just the right amount of exhaustion and loathing.

"Cut off one head, and two more grow back. These people have no feelings. They don't believe in bonds of any kind. In their eyes, you aren't a living, breathing person at all, but an 'instrument' they can use to intimidate the entire world."

Wanda's breathing abruptly stopped.

In her simulated memories, the cold gazes of those who had locked her in an icy laboratory and looked at her like a monster matched Lynn's description perfectly.

"And I..." Lynn gave a bitter laugh and pointed at the purple-red bruises he had made on his neck for realism. "Because I refused to hand over control of you to them, because I refused to treat you as a weapon... I've become a 'rogue ninja' on their kill list."

"A rogue ninja?"

"A variable that has to be completely erased." Lynn looked directly into those eyes that had turned from deep green to red, his voice low and resolute. "That burst of energy just now made them lose the last of their patience. Their primary objective now is to erase me from your side forever."

Erase.

That single word was like a rusty, blunt knife, cutting precisely into the deepest, most inviolable sore spot in Wanda's soul.

The gruesome image of Lynn shielding her from a sky full of lasers with his back amid Sokovia's ruins, then dying in her arms with countless bullets through his heart, tore madly at her reason like a nightmare.

"No one is going to erase you!"

Boom!

Violent chaos magic exploded outward along the floor with Wanda at its center. Gravity throughout the room completely failed at that moment. The bed, the shattered bedside lamp, and even the wall plaster all floated eerily in midair.

Wanda locked her arms around Lynn's neck, holding him so tightly she almost snapped his cervical spine.

"If anyone dares lay a finger on you, I'll make them watch their own organs being crushed bit by bit! Hydra... I'm going to kill them all! Not a single one left!"

Feeling that the yandere witch had fully turned her destructive urges toward Hydra, Lynn let out a long breath of relief inwardly.

A perfect redirection of disaster.

The power of this verbal maneuvering was practically on par with the highest-level illusion techniques.

"I believe in you, my girl." Lynn wrapped his arms around her in return and gently patted her back. "But right now, the enemy is hidden while we're exposed. We can't act rashly. Hydra has infiltrated the entire system. We need to be patient and wait for them to reveal a weakness themselves."

Wanda buried her face firmly in the crook of Lynn's neck, greedily savoring the rhythm of his carotid pulse.

"I'll do whatever you say." Her voice was muffled, carrying a sickly obedience and attachment.

But the next second, Lynn's top-tier Spider-Sense suddenly began pulsing wildly.

He could clearly sense that although Wanda had outwardly quieted down, the hand she held behind her back was silently releasing thousands upon thousands of extremely tiny scarlet particles.

Like living venomous insects, these particles burrowed underground through gaps in the floor, silently spreading wildly in every direction.

"What are you doing?" Lynn asked tentatively.

Wanda raised her head and gave him a breathtakingly beautiful yet bone-chilling smile.

"Since they want to hide in the shadows..." She extended her scarlet tongue and licked the blood from the corner of Lynn's mouth with utter infatuation. "Then I'll cover the ground beneath all of New York with my eyes. As long as those bugs dare come within a hundred meters of you..."

Wanda abruptly clenched her five fingers.

Bang!

The solid wooden wardrobe floating in midair was instantly compressed by an invisible force into wood fragments smaller than a fingernail, which fluttered down.

"I'll show them what true hell is."

Watching those magical marks spread across the entire city like a scarlet spiderweb, Lynn felt a sheen of cold sweat break out across his back.

Had this woman actually turned half of New York into her absolute surveillance zone without him even noticing?

Just then, the screen of the tactical terminal in the corner lit up faintly.

An email bearing the "Sacred Avengers" cipher showed that the recipient had read it.

Lynn narrowed his eyes.

Steve Rogers, when you see the densely packed names on that "Project Insight" purge list, will that sense of justice you're so proud of still let you sit idle?