Wanda's embrace tightened.
A dull sound of compressed bones came from Lynn's chest. Dark red energy layered over itself like solid amber, sealing the two of them inside the cramped, spherical barrier.
The oxygen in his lungs drained rapidly, and black spots began creeping into the edges of his vision. Lynn knew that unless he acted now, he would truly become the first transmigrator in the Marvel Universe to be strangled to death by a heroine's love.
But he could not push her away.
Faced with a Skyfather-level yandere on the verge of a mental breakdown and desperately lacking any sense of security, even the slightest resistance would be magnified endlessly, ultimately triggering her impulse to destroy everything.
He could only soothe her.
Lynn struggled to free his right hand from the suffocating embrace. Instead of prying at Wanda's arms locked around his neck, he tentatively lowered it onto her slender back, trembling slightly.
The moment his fingertips touched her dark red coat, he could feel that the body in his arms, seemingly possessed of world-destroying power, was actually shaking violently.
"Wan... da..."
Lynn squeezed the broken syllables from his throat. His voice was quiet, but held just the right amount of bewilderment, weakness, and a trace of instinctive tenderness.
The instant she heard that name, Wanda went rigid.
She jerked her head up as though electrocuted, her scarlet eyes formed entirely of energy fixing on Lynn's face. Frenzied possessiveness and an extreme terror of losing him intertwined wildly in her eyes.
"What did you call me? You still remember me? Say it again!"
Wanda's voice turned shrill and distorted, and her fingers tightened instinctively.
Lynn coughed violently. The intense pressure forced a genuine trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. He gasped for breath, gently stroking her back with his palm as though soothing a frightened young animal.
"Wanda... I'm here... I'm not dead..."
At the sight of the blood at Lynn's mouth, the madness in Wanda's eyes was instantly replaced by overwhelming panic.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry!"
The raging Chaos Magic around them abruptly contracted like an ebbing tide, and the air pressure inside the barrier instantly returned to normal. Wanda frantically tried to wipe the blood from the corner of Lynn's mouth, her cold fingertips trembling unnaturally as she smeared that glaring red streak all over his face.
"I can't control it... Whenever I close my eyes, I see you lying in the rubble, bleeding so much, and it just won't stop..." Wanda murmured incoherently, large tears falling onto Lynn's chest. "I just want to hide you away, where no one can see you, where no one is allowed to touch you! I'm afraid this is all just a dream!"
Lynn drew a deep breath of air mingled with gunsmoke and the scent of roses, then took her icy hand and pressed it firmly against his warm cheek.
"Can you feel it? I'm warm." Lynn looked straight into those scarlet eyes, speaking the most calculating lie in the most loving tone. "I promised you that even if I had to crawl back from hell, I would return to your side."
Those words pierced Wanda's last psychological defense with precision.
She let out a mournful sound like a sob and buried her head in the crook of Lynn's neck again, greedily drinking in his warmth and scent. This time, the embrace was no longer deadly, only suffocating in its dependence.
As Lynn felt the witch soften in his arms, the night breeze finally dried the cold sweat on his back.
An extreme balancing act. Alive, for now.
But this was only the beginning.
Outside the barrier, amid the ruins.
Crossbones, Brock Rumlow, lay prone on the scorched concrete, his shattered kneecaps digging into his flesh, the pain bringing him out in a cold sweat. Enduring the agony, he stared fixedly at the dark red energy sphere dozens of meters away.
Through the translucent energy barrier, he clearly saw that terrifying witch clinging to the low-ranking agent's arms like a docile little accessory.
Crossbones's entire understanding of the world was crushed.
A monster who could tear apart S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters with her bare hands and casually crush elite agents into balls of flesh was actually crying in front of a level-three logistics agent like a little girl who had lost her toy?
What the fuck was going on?!
At the same time, three hundred meters beneath S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, in the Anti-Nuclear Bunker Command Center.
Harsh red lights flashed wildly. Nick Fury's remaining eye was fixed on the surveillance footage on the main screen, his expression utterly thunderous.
"Director, the target's energy readings are dropping rapidly and stabilizing." Agent Hill swallowed and pointed at the two embracing figures on the screen, her voice still unmistakably strained. "We've confirmed that agent's identity. Lynn, twenty-two, a level-three agent in logistics, primarily responsible for inventorying and transporting field equipment. No special background, no recorded superhuman abilities."
"No special background?"
Fury sneered and slammed a fist onto the console. "A guy who can make a world-ending mutant obey his every word, and you're telling me he just moves boxes? Is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s vetting department getting paid to do nothing?"
To an ultimate schemer like Fury, there was no such thing as coincidence.
An utterly inconspicuous low-ranking agent could exercise precise control over a terrifying being with Skyfather-level combat power. The secret hidden behind this sent a shiver through Fury that he had not felt in a long time.
"Lock down the scene immediately! Without my highest-level authorization, no one is to come within ten meters of them!" Fury ordered through gritted teeth. "Also, raise this Lynn's file to the highest classification. I want to know every person he's met and every word he's spoken in the last twenty-two years!"
He would never allow an uncontrollable nuclear bomb to remain brazenly inside S.H.I.E.L.D.
At a secluded private estate on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.
Alexander Pierce stood before an enormous floor-to-ceiling window, holding half a glass of scarlet Romanée-Conti. His terminal screen was playing the encrypted live feed transmitted from Crossbones's tactical helmet.
The image froze on the moment when Wanda, protecting Lynn, had instantly compressed the agent who fired into a ball of flesh.
Rather than feeling afraid, Pierce's wrinkled old face flushed with extreme excitement.
"What a perfect weapon..."
Pierce swirled his wineglass, undisguised greed blazing in his eyes.
S.H.I.E.L.D. feared this monster, but his Hydra did not!
Anything with a weakness could be controlled. And this witch with world-destroying power had only one weakness: the agent named Lynn!
As long as they held Lynn firmly in their grasp, this power, sufficient to overturn the entire world, would become Hydra's sharpest butcher's blade. Project Insight was hardly worth mentioning before such power!
Pierce activated his encrypted communicator, his voice feverish. "Brock, bring back that agent named Lynn, whatever the cost. Remember, alive. As long as we have him, that woman will be our most loyal dog."
In the center of the ruins.
While gently patting Wanda's back, Lynn secretly observed the situation around him.
Although he was currently only a novice with a "Chaos Magic Affinity Physique," that physique gave him perception far beyond an ordinary person's. He clearly caught the flash of calculation and greed in Crossbones's eyes and guessed what Hydra's leaders were plotting in the shadows.
Want to use me as a bargaining chip?
An almost imperceptible sneer curved Lynn's lips.
He gave Wanda a gentle push in his arms and spoke in an extremely exhausted, uneasy tone. "Wanda, everyone here wants to kill me... Will you take me away? Somewhere with only the two of us."
Wanda snapped her head up, killing intent instantly boiling in her scarlet eyes.
"If anyone dares stop you, I'll erase this place along with the entire city." She took Lynn's hand, and raging Chaos Magic gathered beneath their feet again, lifting them slowly into the air.
Just then, Crossbones, having received Pierce's absolute orders, bit through the tip of his tongue. Using the intense pain to force down his fear, he staggered to his feet.
"Agent Lynn!"
Fighting his trembling, Crossbones shouted, "Your superior orders you to return to duty immediately! Cooperate with the investigation!"
The instant those words rang out, the air around Wanda froze. Dark red energy formed a solid blade, locking onto Crossbones's throat from afar.
With a single thought from her, this ace Hydra agent would lose his head.
But at that critical moment, Lynn turned his hand over and clamped down on Wanda's wrist.
He turned toward Crossbones, his face taking on an expression of utter terror, coercion, and helplessness, like an insignificant man completely crushed by authority.
"Don't... don't hurt him!" Lynn pleaded with Wanda, his voice trembling. "If I run away, they'll kill all my friends... I have to go with them."
Crossbones froze.
He had thought this would be an extraction mission of hellish difficulty and had even prepared for them all to be wiped out. He had never imagined that Lynn would be so cowardly and afraid of trouble that he would volunteer to return to duty!
Wild delight instantly went to Crossbones's head. He immediately waved for the only two remaining agents who could still barely stand to take out their handcuffs and approach Lynn cautiously.
Wanda's eyes reddened with distress as she desperately tried to stop them, but Lynn held her firmly in an even tighter embrace.
"Trust me," Lynn said against her ear, in a voice so low that only the two of them could hear.
The two Hydra agents approached Lynn, trembling with fear, took out specially made high-strength alloy handcuffs, and moved to fasten them around his wrists.
Just as the metal cuffs were about to close.
Crossbones clearly saw that the low-ranking agent, who had been trembling and acting utterly meek all along, suddenly tilted his head in a spot completely outside Wanda's field of vision and gave him a strange smile of extreme mockery and bone-chilling coldness.
That smile was like one directed at a corpse slipping a noose around its own neck.
Click.
The crisp snap of the handcuffs echoed through the ruins.
Before Crossbones could ponder what that smile meant, he suddenly saw a dazzling burst of scarlet light erupt without warning from Lynn's cuffed wrists.
Immediately afterward, a surge of utterly violent chaos energy rushed straight along the handcuffs' metal chain, pouring into the two agents like a flood bursting through a dam, then raced along the ground toward the soles of Crossbones's feet faster than the eye could follow.
Crossbones's pupils abruptly shrank to pinpoints.
Lynn could actually control that woman's power?!
He opened his mouth to scream, but endless blood-red light had already swallowed his vision whole.
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