Lynn's fingers were warm. The heat of his palm passed through Wanda's cold skin, reaching her taut nerves.
"Wanda."
Lynn's voice was soft, yet it sounded like a spell that could not be defied.
Suspended in midair, the scarlet particles churning in Wanda's eyes abruptly stilled. She turned to look at Lynn, so close beside her, and the terrifying pressure capable of tearing space apart forcibly halted the instant her gaze met his.
But the witch's possessiveness had not subsided. She bit her lower lip, her chest heaving, her voice carrying a chilling obsession. "She touched you. That filthy bug's hand touched your skin! She has to die!"
"Let her go." Lynn tightened his fingers slightly, his tone carrying a hint of command that brooked no refusal.
Just as Wanda was about to erupt in resistance, the scarlet in her eyes boiling again, Lynn's brows suddenly twisted in pain. Without hesitation, he triggered the magical backlash remaining inside him, forcibly reversing the energy flow of his newly acquired Chaos Affinity Physique.
Agonizing pain instantly tore through his meridians, and his face visibly turned deathly pale.
"Cough-"
A mouthful of glaring blood spilled from the corner of Lynn's mouth and dripped onto his tattered shirt, blooming into a shocking red plum blossom.
"Lynn!"
Wanda's pupils contracted sharply, and her world-destroying killing intent vanished in that instant. Panicking, she clasped Lynn's hand in return. Gwen Stacy, suspended in midair, instantly lost the restraint of her magical shackles and crashed into the glass-strewn rubble, clutching her throat and coughing violently.
"You're hurt... did my energy hit you just now?" Wanda cupped Lynn's cheeks with trembling hands, her scarlet eyes brimming with guilt and panic. She did not even dare use magic to examine his body, afraid her violent energy would hurt him again. In her world, Lynn's safety stood above everything, even the jealousy that had just ignited within her.
"I'm fine." Lynn leaned into Wanda's embrace, resting his chin on her shoulder, and used her blind spot to cast a cold glance at Gwen Stacy on the ground.
Gwen Stacy knelt on one knee amid the rubble, gasping for breath. Beneath her mask, her bloodshot eyes remained fixed on Lynn. The obsession in them had not faded; instead, his "injury" made it burn even more wildly.
He'd rather cough up blood himself than stop protecting that old woman... Gwen Stacy dug her nails into the scorched earth, her logic utterly warped through a pathological lens. She's controlling him too deeply. I have to become stronger to take him back!
"Take me away." Lynn withdrew his gaze and murmured weakly into Wanda's ear, his warm breath brushing the witch's neck. "It's too noisy here. I don't like it."
Those words were like an imperial decree.
A vicious glint crossed Wanda's eyes. She swept a cold glance over Gwen Stacy on the ground, her tone like a god of death pronouncing a death sentence. "You're lucky to be alive, bug. If I ever see you within a hundred meters of him again, I'll rip out your soul and stuff it into a sewer rat."
Before her words had faded, violent Chaos Magic formed a dark red spherical shield, enclosing them both.
Boom!
The air exploded outward. Holding Lynn, Wanda shot into the sky, becoming a scarlet meteor that instantly tore through the clouds above Brooklyn's night sky and vanished without a trace.
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away in Washington, D.C.
With a deafening rumble, the Triskelion's last load-bearing wall broke apart completely.
Tens of thousands of tons of concrete and steel poured down like an avalanche, kicking up a gray-white dust storm dozens of meters high. Alexander Pierce's corpse, along with Hydra's decades of ambition, was buried beneath bottomless rubble.
Nick Fury stood in a safe zone several streets away, his sole remaining eye fixed on the ruins. The night wind carried over the pungent smell of gun smoke and the nauseating stench of burning.
"It's over." Steve Rogers walked up beside Fury carrying his scratched Vibranium Shield, his voice hoarse with the exhaustion of shattered faith. "S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra... they're all history now. We won, but the price was too high."
"Won?" Fury gave a cold laugh and turned to Steve, his lone eye full of gravity and apprehension. "Captain, do you really think we won?"
Steve frowned. "Pierce is dead, Project Insight has been destroyed, and almost all of Hydra's leadership has been rounded up. How is that not a victory?"
"Do you still not see it?" Fury gritted his teeth, lowering his voice to a near whisper. "From beginning to end, we were nothing but pieces on a chessboard! That agent named Lynn used you to expose Hydra's true face, then used that witch's power to destroy the Helicarriers. He dismantled the two largest intelligence organizations in the world without shedding a drop of blood himself!"
Steve froze. The image of Lynn looking tragic and quietly enduring in the café surfaced in his mind, and an inexplicable chill crept up his spine.
"The real nightmare has only just begun." Fury clenched his fists. "He took away a nuclear bomb powerful enough to destroy the world, and we don't even know what he really wants."
Thirty thousand feet in the air, above the clouds.
The fierce, biting winds were kept entirely outside the shield of Chaos Magic. Wanda held Lynn tightly, her eyes full of aching concern and anxiety.
Yet Lynn, resting in her arms, had his eyes lightly closed, an almost imperceptible cold smile curling his lips.
He had not been seriously injured at all. That mouthful of blood had merely been a routine maneuver for a master of keeping both sides appeased.
At that moment, his mind was racing. His Top-tier Spider-Sense acted like an all-weather radar, keenly detecting the scanning bands of every military radar installation on the ground below.
Fifteen degrees to the left, to avoid Nevada's air defense array. Lynn silently planned the route. Meanwhile, the miniature terminal concealed in his sleeve flashed frantically with streams of blue data.
One second before the Triskelion collapsed completely, Lynn had used the Level Seven Clearance Card Pierce had given him, along with the backdoor Trojan planted beneath Project Insight's firewall, to complete an epic "harvest."
Beep-data transfer complete.
A crisp notification sounded in his mind.
Lynn slowly opened his eyes.
The core database Hydra had amassed over more than half a century in hiding, the coordinates of seventy-three secret bases scattered across the globe, route maps for smuggling tons of vibranium, and all the research data on superhuman beings... all of it now lay quietly in his terminal.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had disbanded, and Hydra had fallen. The Avengers were questioning their lives amid the rubble, while Fury was overwhelmed in the shadows.
And he, a Level Three agent who had initially been worth less than cannon fodder, had not only stripped both warring sides of every hidden asset, but had also gained a Skyfather-level obsessively lovesick bodyguard for free and walked away unscathed.
"Lynn, where are we going?" Wanda's gentle voice interrupted his thoughts. She lowered her head to look at the man in her arms, the madness in her eyes now completely replaced by a pathological tenderness. As long as Lynn was beside her, she was the most obedient wife.
Lynn looked at the last top-secret coordinate file decrypted on the terminal screen, his gaze shifting slightly.
It was a secluded estate in the countryside of Upstate New York, marked "Hydra safe house-codename: Eden."
"To the countryside in Upstate New York." Lynn raised a hand and gently stroked Wanda's cheek, his voice tender yet carrying unquestionable authority. "There's somewhere absolutely quiet there. We're going to build a home of our own."
At the words "a home of our own," Wanda's eyes lit up. She obediently nuzzled his palm and increased her flying speed.
Just as Lynn closed the terminal, a scarlet warning suddenly popped up in the lower-right corner of the screen.
[Warning! S.H.I.E.L.D.'s remaining highest-clearance network has been detected releasing a top-secret dossier to the global dark web...]
Lynn's pupils contracted slightly, and he opened the file.
It was a dossier personally authorized by Nick Fury. Photographs of Lynn and Wanda were prominently displayed on its cover, overlaid with a stark black stamp:
[Zero Number Taboo: Absolutely no contact. Absolutely no provocation.]
At the end of the dossier was an encrypted directive that only someone with director-level clearance could see:
"Find superhuman powers capable of countering Chaos Magic at any cost. We must find his weakness."
An amused, cold smile curled Lynn's lips.
Looking for my weakness?
Fury, you have no idea. These crazy women around me, who would destroy the universe for me, are my most impenetrable armor.
Before you continue