Taking the initiative: Lynn's ultimate balancing act

The air in the living room of Eden Manor was thick enough to wring water from.

Supported on either side, Lynn fell heavily onto the broad leather sofa. The leather gave a muffled creak, and the cold sweat on his back instantly soaked the cushion.

The crisis was nowhere near over.

"All right, you can piss off back to your own universe." The moment Wanda set Lynn down, she turned and blocked Gwen Stacy's path. The scarlet particles swirling around her fingertips gave off a faint, high-frequency hum, a precursor to Chaos Magic shifting into attack mode. "The medical care here doesn't need some bug crawling all over the place worrying about it."

Gwen Stacy stood her ground. Although her mask was off, the obsession in her clear blue eyes was deeper than the night. She met Wanda's gaze without yielding, raising her wrist slightly as the mechanism of her web-shooter cocked with a crisp click.

"Your magic nearly tore him apart just now." Gwen Stacy's voice was ice-cold, her gaze passing over Wanda's shoulder to lock firmly onto Lynn. "I need to make sure his bones aren't displaced and he doesn't have massive internal bleeding. You witches playing around with illusory energy don't understand physical injuries at all."

"You're asking to die!" The scarlet in Wanda's eyes surged, and the gravitational field throughout the living room pressed down with a thunderous force. Cracks instantly covered the crystal glasses on the coffee table.

Lynn leaned against the sofa, his eyelids slightly lowered, frantically weighing the situation in his mind.

I can't keep playing dead.

Back on the terrace, he had forcibly hit pause by injuring himself, coughing up blood, and inventing a "Hydra dimensional anchor." But these two women were too possessive and exclusive. Once they had nothing to do, even something as trivial as fighting over "who gets to pour a glass of water" could leave this villa in ruins.

If I keep defending passively, sooner or later it'll all go wrong. I have to take the initiative and seize control again.

The core of this extreme balancing act wasn't making them coexist peacefully, but giving each of them an exclusive sense of purpose: "I'm irreplaceable," and "only you can save me." He had to use their pride and strengths to create separate, self-contained spheres of authority that wouldn't interfere with each other.

"Ahem..." Lynn suppressed the blood rising in his throat and forced himself to sit upright. Rather than trying to break up the fight, he spoke in an utterly exhausted voice that nevertheless carried unquestionable resolve. "Wanda."

Wanda shuddered, her raging magic instantly subsiding. She immediately turned and knelt on one knee beside the sofa, pressing her hot palm against Lynn's cheek. "I'm here, darling. Where does it hurt?"

"That anchor..." Lynn took Wanda's hand in his, gently stroking its back with his thumb, his gaze as deep as a still pool. "Hydra's technology is far beyond what we imagined. I can feel it. Although the rift has closed, that sensation of being watched from a higher dimension is still there. This house's dimensional barrier is too weak."

He paused, adding just the right touch of dependence and fervor to his voice. "Physical defenses can't stop them. I need you, Wanda. Use your Chaos Magic to completely erase Eden's dimensional coordinates. Apart from you, no power in this world can protect our 'home.'"

The word "home" struck straight through Wanda's psychological defenses.

The hostility in her eyes was instantly replaced by an utterly sacred sense of purpose. The pride of a Skyfather-level powerhouse, combined with her obsessively possessive territorial instincts, made her accept the task completely.

"No one gets to spy on my territory." Wanda rose and glanced down at Gwen Stacy, her eyes filled with the arrogance of the woman who held the rightful place at his side. "I'll wrap this place in Chaos Particles so tightly that not even a higher-dimensional bug can crawl inside. Stay here. Don't go anywhere."

Before she had finished speaking, Wanda turned into a streak of scarlet light and passed straight through the ceiling, heading above the manor to set up an absolute barrier capable of cutting it off from the Multiverse.

Only Lynn and Gwen Stacy remained in the living room.

Gwen Stacy bit her lower lip, her eyes slightly red. Wanda's superior attitude, along with Lynn's dependence on her just now, left this girl who had crossed universes to find her husband feeling deeply wronged and excluded.

"So I'm just some useless extra, right?" Gwen Stacy said quietly, her fingers clutching the edge of her suit.

Lynn sneered inwardly. The fish took the bait.

He abruptly leaned forward, seized Gwen Stacy's wrist, and pulled her forcefully in front of him. In an instant, they were close enough to hear each other breathe. Gwen Stacy could even smell the faint traces of gun smoke and blood on him.

"Don't be ridiculous." Lynn looked straight into Gwen Stacy's eyes, his tone turning extremely serious, even carrying a hint of command. "Magic can defend against higher dimensions, but it can't stop physical assassination attempts. What Hydra does best is gunfire from the shadows and poison."

He pressed Gwen Stacy's hand against the left side of his chest, letting her feel the steady, strong heartbeat there. "My body is very weak right now. Even a slight physical impact could kill me. Magic is too violent. I don't dare entrust my back to it completely."

Gwen Stacy's pupils suddenly widened, and her breathing quickened.

"I need your Spider-Sense to be my second pair of eyes." Lynn lowered his voice, every word striking Gwen Stacy's vulnerable spot. "Go check the outer physical defenses for me. Inspect every blind spot in surveillance and sniper coverage. Gwen Stacy, in this world, yours is the only intuition I trust."

I trust only you.

Those words were like a shot of adrenaline, instantly dispersing all of Gwen Stacy's hurt and resentment. Her obsessive desire to protect him took the upper hand once more. So it wasn't that he didn't need me. He was entrusting me with his most critical, closest line of physical defense!

"Leave it to me." Gwen Stacy tightened her grip around Lynn's fingers, her gaze turning as sharp as a blade. "Even if it's a mosquito carrying a listening device, I'll tear it to pieces."

Gwen Stacy pulled on her mask and sprang up like a white ghost, silently vaulting through the shattered floor-to-ceiling window and merging into the night outside.

The living room finally fell quiet.

Lynn sank back into the sofa and let out a long, stale breath. The back of his shirt was completely soaked, clinging coldly to his skin. This extreme balancing act took more brainpower than fighting Thanos.

But he didn't even have time to rest.

He closed his eyes, and his consciousness instantly sank into the system backend deep within his mind. There, the progress bar for the third simulation was flashing wildly.

On a rainy night in Budapest, icy rain struck his face with terrifying realism.

Lynn's consciousness took over his simulated body. Holding the gravely wounded Natasha, he was hiding in a narrow ventilation duct. At the mouth of the alley, the Red Room's assassins had already raised their rifles.

Boom-!

The overlap between reality and the simulation sent a stab of pain through Lynn's brain. He had to leave a mark deep enough to be carved into that suspicious Black Widow's soul within the simulation before he could bring this pawn fully under his control.

Meanwhile.

At the manor's perimeter, beneath a huge oak a hundred meters away.

Like a nimble cat, Gwen Stacy landed soundlessly beside a dense thicket. Her Spider-Sense gave no warning of lethal danger, but it did register an extremely faint, abnormal fluctuation in bioelectric signals.

She parted the thorny branches and swept her gaze downward.

A woman in a tight black combat suit lay unconscious in the muddy grass. Her forehead had been split open, and blood ran down her coldly beautiful face. She still clutched a tactical sniper rifle fitted with a high-magnification night-vision scope.

Gwen Stacy's gaze instantly turned icy.

She crouched and picked up a miniature communicator that had fallen out of the woman's ear between two fingers. Extremely faint electronic static and the distinctive ticking of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s encrypted frequency came from it.

"A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent..." Behind her mask, Gwen Stacy's eyes turned exceedingly dangerous.

She remembered how weak Lynn had looked just now, and what he had said about "gunfire from the shadows and assassination." This woman had actually dared to aim a gun from the darkness at her entire world!

What made Gwen Stacy feel an even more pathological sense of alarm was that this unconscious woman's lips moved as she murmured senselessly, uttering one exceptionally clear name.

"Lynn..."

Gwen Stacy's fingers abruptly tightened, crushing the communicator into a lump of scrap metal under her tremendous grip.

A killing intent even more intense than when she faced Wanda erupted from Ghost-Spider.

"Another one trying to steal him?" Gwen Stacy seized Natasha by the throat and lifted her out of the muddy water with one hand, pressing her web-shooter directly against Natasha's temple.