The Siberian Ice Fields, Natasha's Desperate Situation
The Siberia frigid storms, like countless razor-sharp knives, relentlessly slicing through everything on the icy plains. The air was thick with the stench of blood, mixed with the acrid smell of leaking engine oil from the torn Hulkbuster Armor, which pierced straight into people's nostrils.
In the center of the icy ruins.
Thick metal fingers pierced through Natasha's left collarbone, lifting her into the air. Warm blood gushed from her black tactical uniform, dripping onto the perpetually snow-covered ground with a soft hissing sound before instantly freezing into dark red ice flowers.
Give me the things.
The Siberian Suicide Squad member codenamed "Giant Bear" roared in broken Russian. His face, distorted by an overdose of serum, showed no human emotion, only pure lust for killing. His free right hand, like an iron clamp, dug desperately at the black metal hard drive that Natasha was protecting in front of her chest.
That was core data from Hydra's half-century-long infiltration, and it was also what Lynn specifically requested.
Excruciating pain washed over Natasha like a tsunami. Her vision began to blur, and each breath brought up blood and foam mixed with fragments of internal organs. It was a miracle that she had survived this long against a monster injected with the enhancement serum, a mere mortal's body.
The Giant Bear's brutal pulling caused the metal fingers inserted into the collarbone to penetrate even deeper, and the muffled sound of bones breaking was particularly clear in the wind and snow.
In the past, as one of S.H.I.E.L.D..'s top agents, Natasha would have handed over the hard drive without hesitation to save her life, or sought an opportunity to fight back. But now, all she could think about was that dark, damp sewer in Budapest in 1999.
The man named Lynn, covered in blood, pushed her out of the emergency exit, then turned and pulled the control switch. The moment the flames engulfed his back, Natasha's soul was branded with his image.
The memories forcibly implanted by the system have already twisted this sharpest blade of S.H.I.E.L.D.. into a deadly weapon unsheathed only for Lynn.
"Dream..."
Natasha coughed up a mouthful of thick blood. Her gray-green pupils showed no fear of death, but instead burned with a chilling, morbid fanaticism. Instead of letting go, she used the force of her falling body to bite down hard on the Giant Bear's thick wrist.
Even with her gums cracked and her jaw dislocated, she held on tightly, pressing the hard drive firmly against her chest.
"Court death!"
The Giant Bear was enraged. He felt no pain, but the prey's resistance irritated him. He raised his left fist, the size of a sandbag, and with a whistling sound as it tore through the air, aimed straight at Natasha's head. If the punch landed, Natasha's head would explode like a ripe watermelon.
The edge of the barrier in the distance.
The composure and mockery on Lynn's face vanished the moment he saw Natasha suspended in mid-air, gushing blood.
He could use Natasha as a pawn to pave the way, and exploit her morbid loyalty to clear obstacles. But she was his property. In this world, anyone who dared to touch his things, except himself, would die.
Protecting one's own is an instinct ingrained in his bones.
A violent surge of ferocity instantly breached the gates of reason. Deep within Lynn's pupils, the eerie glow of Invisible Force Field intertwined wildly with the instincts of his top-tier Spider Physiology.
"Bang!"
The solid, millennia-old ice beneath their feet let out a mournful cry of despair, collapsing with a deafening roar and creating a crater three meters in diameter. Countless ice blocks were shattered by the recoil.
Lynn's figure disappeared.
The sonic boom didn't reach everyone's ears until half a second later.
The Giant Bear's fist was less than three centimeters from Natasha's temple. The powerful force of the punch had already torn the skin on Natasha's cheek. But that punch would never land.
A slender, fair hand emerged from the wind and snow without warning, precisely gripping the Giant Bear's head, which was as hard as granite.
There was no fancy magic, no dazzling energy fluctuations. Only pure, extreme physical strength, and a thin, Invisible Force Field that completely sucked out the air.
Lynn stood beside the Giant Bear, his eyes as cold as if he were looking at a corpse.
"You dare touch my woman?"
Lynn's voice wasn't loud, but it pierced through the howling wind and struck everyone's eardrums precisely.
His five fingers suddenly clenched together.
"Click--"
A chilling sound of bones shattering suddenly rang out. The super soldier, who could withstand even the Repulsor Cannon of the Hulkbuster Armor, didn't even have time to scream before his entire skull caved in under Lynn's palm.
Scarlet blood mixed with white brain matter spurted from between his fingers, spraying onto the pristine white snow.
Lynn casually tossed the massive, lifeless body aside like a bag of trash, slamming it into the ice rock dozens of meters away. The corpse struck the rock with a dull thud before collapsing into a pile of rotten flesh.
Natasha, having lost her support, plummeted straight down.
Lynn stretched out his left arm and steadily pulled her into his embrace. Warm blood instantly stained Lynn's tactical uniform, and the strong smell of blood filled his nostrils.
Natasha's breathing had become extremely weak, and her pupils began to dilate. But when she saw the face so close to hers, radiating an extreme chill, a twisted sense of satisfaction burst forth in her eyes.
With trembling hands, she raised her blood-soaked hand and forcefully shoved the metal hard drive, which she had been clutching tightly to her chest, into Lynn's palm. Her fingers, gripping Lynn's collar with excessive force, dug into it.
"Lynn..." Natasha's lips curled into a tragic smile, blood gushing from her chin. "Your mission... I've kept it. No one... can take it away..."
Even if she were to die, she wanted to die in this man's arms, to die with meaning.
Lynn looked at the top agent in his arms, whose soul had been completely twisted by the system, and his heart clenched slightly. He tightened his arms around Natasha, and a faint light of Chaos Magic shone from his fingertips, forcibly sealing her bleeding wounds.
"Shut up. I didn't kill you, and even Death won't dare take you." Lynn's voice was domineering and unquestionable.
From within the distant barrier, Wanda took in everything.
Seeing Lynn tightly embracing the blood-soaked woman, Wanda's Scarlet Particles eyes began to throb wildly. Intense jealousy and a morbid envy gnawed at her reason like venomous snakes. She hated any woman looking at Lynn like that, and she hated even more Lynn getting angry over another woman.
Chaos Magic coalesced at her fingertips, transforming into sharp, dark red blades, ready to slice that obnoxious red-haired woman into pieces at any moment.
Just then, Lynn turned his head.
Those bloodshot eyes, swollen with rage, were fixed on Wanda through the wind and snow. It was a look of superiority, of absolute control, carrying an undisguised warning.
Wanda's heart skipped a beat. She had never seen Lynn in this state before. The overwhelming pressure he exuded made even a powerful being of the Skyfather-level feel a primal tremor.
Protect her.
Lynn uttered three words, leaving no room for discussion, only an order.
Wanda bit her lower lip, a hint of grievance flashing in her eyes, but her body instinctively obeyed. Reluctantly, she waved her hands, and a Scarlet Chaos Magic shield burst forth, precisely enveloping Natasha within it, completely isolating her from the extreme cold and snowstorm, while simultaneously keeping her alive for the last time.
Lynn gently laid Natasha flat on the snow and slowly stood up.
He twisted his neck, and his cervical vertebrae cracked like popping beans. He turned around and faced forward.
The remaining four members of the Siberian Suicide Squad, along with the Winter Soldier nearby, simultaneously stopped what they were doing and focused their attention on the man who had crushed the Giant Bear with his bare hands.
Dozens of meters away, inside the wrecked Hulkbuster Armor.
Tony Stark sat slumped in the cockpit, his face covered in blood. The backup power screen flickered a faint blue light, clearly projecting Lynn's silhouette onto his retina.
Tony swallowed a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood and foam, his pupils trembling violently.
That low-level agent who survived at S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, sipping coffee and only thanks to the Witch's protection? That guy who kept insisting he was just an ordinary person?
The sheer physical power he unleashed in that instant even surpassed his prized Hulkbuster Armor!
"JARVIS... reassess his danger level..." Tony's voice was terribly hoarse.
"Sir, the system cannot analyze the target's current energy fluctuations. He... defies the common sense of physics." JARVIS's electronic voice surprisingly carried a hint of anthropomorphic fear.
The wind and snow automatically dispersed around Lynn, creating an absolute vacuum.
The Winter Soldier's Mechanical Left Arm, inlaid with Tesseract Extract, roared with a deafening engine roar once more. The eerie blue light was even more blinding than before, and the surrounding space was distorted into a visible vortex under the extremely high-frequency energy vibrations.
In the distance, hidden behind the ice and rocks, several heavy energy cannons with astonishing calibers were also set up on the Crossbones remnants, their dark muzzles all aimed at Lynn.
"Perfect."
Lynn's lips curled into a cruel smile as he casually ripped off his blood-stained tactical jacket, revealing well-defined muscles brimming with explosive power.
"Use you guys to test my current limits."
Lynn took a half step back with his right foot, his calf muscles instantly tensing to their limit. Just as he was preparing to charge into the enemy ranks like a cannonball and tear these monsters apart with his bare hands...
A sudden change occurred.
The eerie blue light on the Winter Soldier's Mechanical Left Arm suddenly went out of control. The energy, powerful enough to cleave space, didn't shoot towards Lynn, but instead let out an extremely sharp scream and crashed directly into the millennia-old ice beneath the Winter Soldier's feet.
"Boom--!!!"
The earth shook violently.
The ice surface, spanning hundreds of meters in radius, collapsed instantly, sending countless massive ice blocks plunging into the Abyss.
The raging, azure energy sliced through the rock layers beneath the earth as easily as cutting through tofu. Then, a crimson light, more chilling than wind and snow and imbued with an intense Aura of Death, erupted from the bottom of the Abyss and shot straight into the sky.
Bathed in red light, a massive metal dome, over a hundred meters in diameter and covered with eerie Runes and the Hydra symbol, slowly rose from the ground.
Lynn's Spider-Sense sounded an unprecedentedly piercing alarm at this moment.