"Knock, knock, knock."
Three knocks sounded against the old security door, evenly weighted, with a forcefulness that allowed no refusal.
Steve Rogers snapped back to his senses. Without the slightest hesitation, his callused fingertip pressed the physical destruction key on the keyboard. An extremely muffled miniature explosion sounded inside the computer case. The fragmentary files on "Project Insight," enough to overturn the entire world, became a pile of irrecoverable, charred scrap along with the hard drive.
Once that was done, he took a deep breath, righted the overturned chair, and strode toward the door. The moment he turned the handle, a strong smell of cigars hit him along with the cold wind.
Under the hallway's dim motion-activated light, Nick Fury stood in his signature black leather trench coat, his remaining eye bloodshot from staying up all night. He offered no pleasantries. His gaze swept past Steve's broad shoulders and searched the room like a spotlight.
"Aren't you going to invite me in for a glass of water, Captain?" Fury's voice was hoarse, carrying a barely perceptible trace of agitation.
"There's only ice water in the fridge, sir." Steve stepped aside, his muscles taut beneath his sweat-soaked gray T-shirt. He keenly picked up on several unnatural folds near the hem of Fury's leather coat-the outline of a bulletproof vest. What was this Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. afraid of?
Fury walked inside and casually tossed a holographic projector onto the wooden table. Blue light instantly lit up, projecting two photographs into the air.
One showed the devastated landing pad of the Triskelion, where a scarlet energy storm warped space as though it had physical substance.
The other showed a young agent with delicate features, dressed in an ordinary field uniform. His head was lowered, and the witch wreathed in destructive power held him tightly in her arms.
Steve's pupils suddenly contracted. His gaze locked onto the young agent's face.
Just five minutes earlier, the sole contact portrait attached to that top-secret email titled [Sacred Avengers] had shown this very face!
"Lynn. A Level Three Logistics Agent with S.H.I.E.L.D." Fury walked to the window and closed the blinds, completely shutting out prying eyes. "That's what our files say. But twelve hours ago, this 'bottom-rung agent' strolled into my building leading a nuclear bomb powerful enough to flatten half of North America by the hand."
Steve forced down the turmoil surging inside him and offered a feint in the calmest voice he could manage. "A Mutant? She looks out of control. Why didn't you take coercive measures?"
"Because anyone who touches him dies." Fury turned around, fixing his lone eye on Steve and emphasizing every word. "She crushed Crossbones's task force like bugs. And this guy named Lynn never had a heart rate above sixty-five the entire time. He's not a victim acting under duress. He's the one holding the detonator."
Fury took two steps closer and lowered his voice. "He's made that witch his own 'instrument.' An absolutely loyal, extremely dangerous weapon. I need you to step in, Captain. Make contact with him and assess where he really stands. If he sides with Hydra..."
The corner of Steve's eye twitched almost imperceptibly.
Hydra. Fury had actually mentioned Hydra to his face. Was this a test? Or was Fury himself being kept in the dark?
"If he's a threat, what should I do?" Steve met Fury's gaze, his tone stiff.
"Find out what cards he's holding." Fury patted Steve's shoulder. "S.H.I.E.L.D. needs a flawless piece of 'jade' like you to keep that madman steady."
After seeing Fury off, Steve stood at the window and watched the black Chevrolet SUV disappear into the night. He lowered his head to look at the thick calluses on his palms, and his lips curved into a cold smile.
Fury thought he was sending him to probe a dangerous individual. He had no idea that this played right into that "dangerous individual's" hands.
Early the next morning, Brooklyn.
Cold air blew off the Hudson River into the streets, sweeping up a few withered yellow leaves. Lynn pushed open the safe house's iron door and took a deep breath of air tinged with car exhaust and morning dew.
He hadn't brought Wanda today. Before leaving, he had used a deep kiss lasting a full three minutes, along with the words, "I need to buy cinnamon rolls from your favorite place. Be good and wait for me at home," to successfully settle that lioness, who could go berserk at any moment, on the couch.
Of course, Lynn knew perfectly well that Wanda's Chaos Magic mark was currently clinging to his skin like an invisible film. The slightest mortal threat to him would turn half the block to dust in an instant.
With both hands in his trench coat pockets, Lynn casually rounded two street corners. His top-tier Spider-Sense emitted an extremely regular, low-frequency hum in his mind.
At twelve o'clock, a field agent disguised as a homeless man.
At three o'clock, a van parked beside a fire hydrant.
And...
Lynn stopped outside an old-fashioned bakery. The rich, roasted bitterness of coffee beans drifted out, mingled with the sweet scent of cinnamon. He pushed open the glass door, and the brass bell above it gave a clear jingle.
There weren't many customers inside. Lynn went straight to the counter and ordered a cinnamon roll and two black coffees. Carrying the tray, he didn't head for an empty booth. Instead, he turned and walked straight toward the burly man in the corner, who wore a gray baseball cap and was reading a newspaper with his head lowered.
Bang.
The two cups of scalding black coffee were set heavily on the wooden table. The coffee sloshed violently at the rims, almost spilling.
The man in the baseball cap paused, pinching a deep crease into the edge of his newspaper.
"Your heart beats half as fast as an ordinary person's, and there are seven seconds between your breaths." Lynn pulled out a chair and sat down with his legs spread, his gaze piercing the shadow beneath the other man's cap. "Pretending to be an ordinary person reading a newspaper is far too crude a trick against someone with superhuman senses. Wouldn't you agree, Captain Rogers?"
Steve Rogers slowly lowered the newspaper and raised his head. His blue eyes held the sharpness and scrutiny of a veteran of countless battles.
"Fury said you were an extremely dangerous manipulator." Steve left the coffee untouched, his voice low and carrying an unquestionable pressure. "It seems he underestimated your intelligence-gathering capabilities."
"Director Fury has a habit of treating anyone outside his absolute control as a weapon that might turn on him at any moment." Lynn lifted his coffee and took a sip. The bitter liquid slid down his throat, and a trace of weariness and self-mockery appeared in his eyes at just the right moment.
Award-winning acting officially went live.
"But I'm not a weapon, Captain. I'm just a bottom-rung agent who could be thrown into the meat grinder as cannon fodder at any moment." Lynn leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingertips rhythmically against the table. "While you were sleeping beneath the ice, the world outside rotted through. For the sake of so-called 'order,' some people wouldn't hesitate to turn living, breathing people into mindless 'instruments.'"
At the word "instruments," Steve's brow suddenly tightened. Fury had used that word last night, too. But coming from Lynn, it meant something entirely different.
"You mean that Mutant girl?" Steve ventured another feint. "You used some means to control her so you could hold S.H.I.E.L.D. hostage."
"Control?" Lynn reacted as though he had heard an utterly absurd joke. He abruptly leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table, his gaze instantly turning intensely aggressive. "Captain, have you been to the ruins of Sokovia? Have you tasted what it's like to have an armor-piercing round tear through your back and blood clog your windpipe?"
Steve's breath caught. In Lynn's eyes, he saw the utter madness of someone who had truly lived through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, who had faced death itself. That look couldn't be faked.
"I didn't control her. In those ruins, I simply took the bullet that should have killed her." Lynn slowed his speech, every word striking precisely at Steve's moral weak spot. "I pulled her out of hell, and now certain higher-ups in S.H.I.E.L.D. want to shove us back into the abyss. They want to strip her of her will and turn her into the next..."
Lynn deliberately paused, his gaze locked on Steve's eyes as he delivered the final words. "...brainwashed killing machine."
Those words struck Steve's nerves like a sledgehammer.
Brainwashing. A killing machine.
That black-and-white photograph of a man holding a sniper rifle exploded in Steve's mind again. Bucky!
Steve's fists clenched beneath the table, his knuckles giving faint cracks. His initial wariness toward Lynn wavered violently at that moment. The young man before him wasn't the ambitious terrorist Fury had described, but a lone wolf forced to declare war on an entire rotten system to protect the woman he loved.
The air between them seemed to freeze. The other customers' conversations and the roar of the coffee machine all receded at that moment.
Steve took a deep breath. He knew that conventional probing was now meaningless. Faced with a wild card who dared to tear the sky open, he had to lay his cards directly on the table.
He suddenly leaned forward, his broad shoulders blocking almost all the light coming through the window. His resolute face drew close to Lynn's, and his voice dropped to the lowest register that only the two of them could hear.
"You say you're just an ordinary person trying to stay alive, Lynn." Steve stared into Lynn's eyes and delivered the fatal question. "Then tell me. Why would an ordinary logistics agent know about the 'Zola Algorithm'?"
Lynn's right hand, which had been about to lift his coffee cup, paused in midair for a moment with perfect naturalness.
The surface of the coffee reflected his slightly lowered eyes.
The next second, Lynn lifted his eyelids, and a meaningful smile slowly curved his lips.
"Because..." Lynn turned his hand to grasp the coffee cup, his fingertips brushing lightly over its surface. "I don't just know about the Zola Algorithm. I also know that the assassin who aimed a sniper rifle at me from the water tower last night had a metal left arm."
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