A pounce in the night, Gwen's suffocating embrace

Cold, muddy water slid down Natasha's pale cheeks.

Gwen held the top S.H.I.E.L.D. agent off the ground with one hand around her throat. The white fibers of her Ghost-Spider suit gleamed coldly in the night. Beneath her mask, eyes filled with obsession stared fixedly at Natasha's lips as they opened and closed.

"Lynn..."

Unconscious, Natasha forced the name from her throat again.

Creak.

Gwen's fingers abruptly tightened. The grinding of bones sounded especially harsh in the silent night. Natasha's face instantly turned bluish-purple from oxygen deprivation, veins pulsing on her forehead as she sank into a dangerously severe state of suffocation.

"You think you deserve to say his name?" Gwen's voice was like a bitter wind sweeping across the Siberian Ice Fields, carrying undisguised murderous intent.

She knew that look all too well. That sick obsession with clinging desperately to someone even while unconscious was exactly like her own-and that lofty witch's.

Another one trying to steal her share.

Jealousy seemed to burn inside Gwen's chest. With a slight turn of her wrist, she pressed the cold metal nozzle of her web-shooter directly against Natasha's temple. In just a tenth of a second, highly compressed web fluid could punch through this woman's skull like a bullet.

At the very instant Gwen prepared to pull the trigger-

[Simulated spacetime: Budapest, 1999.]

Boom!

The pungent smell of gunpowder mixed with the sewer's stench and surged back into the narrow ventilation duct.

The instant the Red Room assassin at the alley entrance pulled the trigger, Lynn pressed the detonator in his hand without hesitation. The homemade booby trap he had planted at the duct entrance exploded. Violent flames mixed with shattered bricks and tiles instantly engulfed the assassins.

But the blast wave also overturned the duct they were hiding in!

Weightlessness struck abruptly. Under the immense tearing force, the rusty sheet-metal duct collapsed section by section. Lynn and the gravely wounded Natasha fell like two leaves, straight toward the rubble below, bristling with jagged rebar.

"Lynn!" Natasha's eyes widened as she fell.

There was no word for "bonds" in the Red Room's assassin rules. They were trained as emotionless killing machines; any unnecessary emotion would become a fatal vulnerability. This was the creed of survival she had always upheld.

But at this moment, the man before her brutally tore that creed to shreds.

In midair, Lynn did not hesitate. He abruptly twisted around, locking his arms around Natasha's waist like iron bands and crushing her against his chest.

It was a suffocating embrace that left no room to spare, bordering on madness.

He shielded Natasha's vital organs with his chest, leaving his back completely exposed to the rusty rebar below that could impale a person.

"Hold on to me." Lynn's chin rested on the top of Natasha's head, his voice frighteningly steady even amid the howling wind.

His once-dry tactical uniform was soaked through with the dark blood from Natasha's abdomen. The scorching blood pressed against their skin as though it would forcibly fuse their souls together.

"You're insane! You'll die!" Natasha's eyes reddened, her fingers clutching the hem of Lynn's clothes. She could smell the reassuring scent of gunpowder on him and feel the tremor of his taut muscles.

"I told you..." Lynn's lips curved with resolve. "I'd get you out of Budapest alive."

Squelch!

The dull sound of flesh being pierced rang out.

A rusty length of ribbed rebar pierced straight through Lynn's left shoulder blade. The enormous impact slammed them both into the rubble. Lynn spat out a mouthful of blood, hot bloody froth splashing onto Natasha's pale cheeks, making her tremble from its heat.

"Lynn!!" Natasha let out a shrill scream like a dying beast.

In the real world, on the outskirts of Eden Manor.

"Aaagh!"

Suspended in midair by Gwen's grip on her throat, Natasha suddenly let out an agonized scream.

It was not a sound an unconscious person could possibly make. Her tightly shut eyes snapped open, their whites completely covered in spiderwebs of blood vessels. Tears mixed with muddy water streamed uncontrollably from their corners.

The horrific images of that rainy night in Budapest, the man impaled by rebar for her sake, came with real pain that crossed dimensions. Like a red-hot branding iron, they seared deep into her soul.

"Let... go!"

A hoarse growl squeezed out of Natasha's throat. Her body, already limp from oxygen deprivation, erupted with unimaginable strength. Instead of prying at Gwen's hand around her neck, she abruptly raised her right leg. The hardened steel heel of her combat boot whistled through the air, viciously driving toward Gwen's knee!

It was a desperate killing move that abandoned defense entirely.

Gwen's pupils contracted slightly beneath her mask. The sharp warning from her Spider-Sense made her instinctively release her grip and backflip away.

Thud!

Natasha landed heavily in the muddy grass. She greedily gulped down the cold air, violent coughing sending spasms through her entire body. But her eyes remained fixed on Gwen several steps away, like two poisoned blades.

"You... wanted to kill me?" Natasha slowly stood, casually wiping the muddy water from her mouth. Her voice no longer held the cold tone of an agent; instead, it carried a spine-chilling, pathological obsession.

"You were spying on my man. Killing you is only natural." Gwen lowered her center of gravity, aiming both wrists at Natasha as her web-shooters switched to rapid-fire mode. "S.H.I.E.L.D. lapdog. Don't think I won't touch you."

"Your man?" As though she had heard some colossal joke, Natasha suddenly began laughing under her breath, neurotically.

Her shoulders shook with laughter, tugging at her abdominal muscles. In a daze, she seemed to feel that length of rebar piercing Lynn's body in Budapest again. That heart-rending sensation of being torn apart made her possessiveness grow wildly like weeds.

"He was willing to give up his life for me." Natasha's gaze changed completely, locking on with the absolute focus of a hunter targeting prey. "No one... is taking him away from me. Anyone who touches him dies."

Gwen's scalp prickled.

Insane. This woman was completely insane. That look was exactly like Wanda's when she had wanted to erase everything on the terrace!

"Then die!" Gwen could no longer suppress her murderous intent. Her fingertips tensed, ready to fire lethal webbing.

At that critical instant-

"Cough..."

An extremely faint yet perfectly targeted cough traveled along the "Bond Line" belonging to Lynn in Gwen's mind and exploded directly within her mental landscape.

Gwen's movement froze abruptly.

In the second-floor living room, Lynn leaned against the leather sofa, his face as white as paper. He had just endured the extreme pain of being impaled by rebar in the simulator. Though his real body was unharmed, the sensation of his mind being torn apart had nearly made him faint.

Enduring the ringing in his head, he attached a thread of chaos energy to the frequency of his Spider-Sense and sent a one-way voice transmission to Gwen outside.

"Gwen... stop." Lynn's voice was so weak that he sounded as though he might stop breathing at any moment. "Don't kill her... she's bait Fury sent... if you kill her, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heavy firepower will immediately blanket this place... my body can't withstand another bombardment right now..."

Gwen's fingers trembled sharply.

Lynn's weak breathing stabbed at her heart like needles. Reason finally overcame her murderous intent.

"Consider yourself lucky, old woman." Gritting her teeth, Gwen retracted her shooters and stared coldly at Natasha. "If I weren't worried about stirring up S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flies and disturbing his rest, you'd already be a corpse."

Natasha said nothing. She merely looked past Gwen's shoulder with that dangerously intense gaze, staring fixedly at the shattered floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor.

That was where Lynn was.

"Go back and tell Nick Fury," Gwen said, leaping onto a thick branch and looking down at Natasha, "if he dares send anyone here again, I'll plow through the Triskelion's ruins one more time."

With that, the white Ghost-Spider disappeared into the night, swiftly retreating toward the villa. She had to return to Lynn immediately and make sure he was safe.

Deathly silence returned beneath the oak tree.

A cold wind swept past, stirring a few fallen leaves.

Natasha stood alone in the muddy water. Her black combat uniform was filthy, but her back remained ramrod straight. She neither retreated as Gwen had warned nor reported to her superiors.

She slowly lowered her head and looked at her mud-covered hands.

"Bait?" Natasha's lips curled into an eerie smile.

She knew Nick Fury's methods all too well. If contact with her was lost here, Fury would activate his backup plan without hesitation and flatten the place with missiles.

And Lynn was very weak now. He could not withstand any physical bombardment.

A trace of resolute madness flashed through Natasha's eyes. Since he had already shattered the Red Room Assassin's Creed, she would protect this bond forged in blood in her own way.

She slowly opened a hidden compartment in her tactical belt and took out a miniature detonator, only the size of her thumb, flashing red.

This was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s highest-grade location tracker, which she carried on her person. If she crushed it, Fury would immediately pinpoint the coordinates here.

But Natasha did not crush it.

She raised her head and looked deeply at the second-floor window, as though she wanted to carve that man's silhouette into her bones. Then, without hesitation, she pushed the tracker into her mouth and swallowed hard!

Gulp.

The tracker slid down her esophagus into her stomach.

Immediately afterward, Natasha drew the large-caliber tactical handgun from the holster on her outer thigh. Without the slightest hesitation, she aimed the muzzle directly at the artery in her left thigh.

Bang!

The dull gunshot tore through the night.

Blood splattered. Natasha grunted and dropped to one knee in the muddy water. The intense pain made her mind exceptionally clear.

She would use her own grave injury and moving vital signs to forcibly draw S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention away from Eden Manor.

As long as she kept moving, as long as the tracker kept transmitting from inside her body, that suspicious old fox Nick Fury would never rashly unleash indiscriminate fire on this place.

"Hiss..."

Natasha bit through her lip, enduring the excruciating pain of her torn thigh artery. She ripped strips from her tactical uniform and roughly tied a tourniquet tight around the top of her thigh to keep herself from quickly going into shock from blood loss.

She took one last look at the dimly lit second-floor window, her eyes mingling deeply twisted fervor and tenderness.

"Once I've wiped out the scum trying to hurt you... I'll come back for you, Lynn."

Natasha turned away, dragging her blood-soaked, crippled leg. Like a mother wolf protecting her cubs, she plunged without looking back into the dense mountain forest in the opposite direction from the manor.

The second-floor living room.

Lynn abruptly opened his eyes as he leaned against the sofa.

His top-tier Spider-Sense outlined a clear picture in his mind-a hundred meters away, a suppressed gunshot, accompanied by the strong smell of blood rapidly receding into the distance.

In the shadows, Lynn's lips curved into an extremely dangerous smile.

[Ding! An irreversible change has been detected in target "Natasha Romanoff's" mental state.]

[Settlement of the third simulation, "Battle of Budapest," complete.]

[Rating: SSS.]

[Congratulations, host. Rewards obtained: Top-tier Disguise and Stealth Specialization, Super-Soldier Serum Physiology (incomplete version), Red Room Ultimate Combat Technique.]

As the system's mechanical voice faded, an overwhelmingly powerful surge of heat exploded throughout Lynn's limbs and body. It swiftly soothed the sensation of his mind being torn apart by the simulation. His muscle fibers gave off faint popping sounds as the super-soldier serum transformed them, and his strength multiplied.

Chaos Magic Affinity, Top-tier Spider-Sense, Super-Soldier Serum Physiology.

With these three trump cards combined, the strength of Lynn's body had completely surpassed the so-called "human limit."

Yet his face retained that pale, weak look of an invalid. Because he knew this performance was far from over.

Whoosh!

A white figure nimbly vaulted through the floor-to-ceiling window and landed on the living room carpet. Gwen removed her mask and hurried to the sofa, her azure eyes brimming with an urgent desire for praise.

"The outer physical defenses are clear." Gwen knelt on one knee beside Lynn's legs, tightly clasping his cold fingers in both hands. "I chased away a female S.H.I.E.L.D. fly. She definitely won't dare come anywhere near here again anytime soon."

Gwen concealed the detail of Natasha calling Lynn's name. That pathological possessiveness made her instinctively reject any woman who might form a bond with Lynn.

"Well done, Gwen." Lynn turned his hand to grasp her wrist, gently stroking her pulse with his fingertips. "I knew trusting you with my back was the right choice."

Those words were like the most potent hallucinogen, instantly turning the obsession in Gwen's eyes into delight. She could not even resist pressing her cheek against Lynn's palm and nuzzling it like a cat that had successfully defended its food.

Just then, the air above the living room suddenly distorted violently.

The strong smell of ozone instantly filled the room. Scarlet energy forcibly melted a large hole through the solid-wood ceiling, and Wanda descended like a world-destroying deity.

Her feet did not touch the floor; she hovered in midair. Scarlet chaos particles surged wildly around her, and the entire villa was completely enclosed within an utterly isolating Higher-Dimensional Barrier.

"I erased the coordinates." Wanda's voice carried lofty arrogance, but when her gaze fell on Gwen's cheek pressed against Lynn's palm, the scarlet in her eyes instantly flared. "But it seems I missed a bug inside the house."

A violent gravitational field came crashing down!

Gwen's Spider-Sense screamed warnings. She abruptly raised her head, the muscles beneath her suit instantly tensing as she met Wanda's gaze without backing down. "What? Finished setting up the barrier, and now you want to burn your bridges?"

"Who gave you permission... to touch him?" Wanda raised her right hand, the red light at her fingertips already condensing into a solid blade.

The tension reached its breaking point again.

Lynn cursed inwardly, preparing to put on another performance to interrupt this deadly Shura Field.

But at that very second, his Spider-Sense suddenly caught an eerie fluctuation from an electronic signal extremely far away.

At the same time, in the Temporary Safe House hundreds of meters beneath Washington, D.C.

Nick Fury's sole remaining eye stared fixedly at the large tactical display before him. On the screen, the red dot representing Natasha was moving toward the New York State border along an extremely strange route.

"Director, Agent Romanoff's heart rate has exceeded 180 beats per minute, and her blood pressure is plummeting! She's mortally wounded!" Agent Hill stood beside him, her voice carrying anxiety she could barely conceal. "And the source of her tracker signal... is in her stomach! She swallowed the tracker!"

Fury's expression darkened ominously.

Natasha had gone to investigate Zero Number Taboo, the man named Lynn. Now, not only was she gravely wounded, but she had swallowed her tracker and was running wildly. This completely violated the S.H.I.E.L.D. Infiltration and Withdrawal Protocol.

"Connect to her encrypted communications channel," Fury ordered coldly.

"Bzz... bzzz..."

Harsh static came through the communicator, accompanied by Natasha's heavy, near-death breathing.

"Natasha, report your situation. Who injured you? That witch, or Lynn?" Fury clenched his fists.

The other end remained silent for a full five seconds.

Then an extremely cold voice, filled with crazed murderous intent, traveled back over the airwaves to the underground base.

"Director, if S.H.I.E.L.D. dares fire so much as one bullet at Eden Manor..." Natasha's voice carried a spine-chilling smile. "I'll stuff what little remains of the Triskelion's ruins into the Hydra Sewer, along with your head."

Click. The connection cut off completely.

Deathly silence filled the underground Safe House.

Agent Hill drew a sharp breath, disbelief written all over her face.

Nick Fury's lone eye trembled violently. The tactical pen between his fingers snapped under his grip.

He had finally discovered the terrifying truth that shattered everything he knew-not only had Lynn leashed that Skyfather-level witch like a dog, but without anyone realizing it, he had even made S.H.I.E.L.D.'s finest ace agent switch sides completely, turning her into a rabid dog protecting her master!