Wei stood in front of the large hole he had created, whistled, and patted the concrete debris off his boxing gloves with satisfaction.
"See? I told you, didn't I? The master key."
"Now the entire base knows we're here!"
Maria lowered her voice, her tone filled with anxiety and helplessness.
"Quick! This way!"
"Turn left!"
"The maintenance passage for the archives is behind the third valve from the front!"
The three rushed to a rusty, round valve.
The valve is secured with three industrial locks.
As Maria was about to take out her electronic hacking tools from her backpack, a large hand wearing Hextech Gauntlets reached out and roughly shoved her aside.
Let the professionals handle it.
Wei grinned and gripped the metal valve with both hands.
The muscles in her arms tensed, and the blue energy cores on her gauntlets emitted a high-frequency humming sound.
"Open it for me!"
With a furious shout, the heavy steel valve's lock core snapped and the bolts deformed under Wei's brute force!
Without pausing, Wei raised her foot and kicked hard.
"Bang!"
A dark entrance appeared before them.
Beyond the entrance, rows of towering metal filing cabinets stand like silent Giant.
This is the archive.
"Quick!"
Maria was the first to rush in. She skillfully pulled out a hidden interface from under a row of servers and connected her handheld terminal to it.
Her fingers flew across the virtual keyboard, her eyes filled with focus.
"Found it!"
A minute later, she looked up, her eyes gleaming with excitement.
"Number 77-B-5! It's in the third row, the seventh cabinet!"
Carol rushed over.
That cabinet was larger than the others, with no handles on the surface, only a complicated electronic combination lock and a fingerprint reader.
She ignored the complicated equipment.
She placed her hands on the encrypted cabinet door.
Golden photon energy overflowed from her palm.
With a chilling creak of metal bending, the heavy cabinet door was forcefully pulled open by Wei!
The cabinet doors bend to both sides, revealing layers upon layers of encrypted document boxes inside.
In the very center, an orange recorder with an impact-resistant coating and marked "Top Secret" lay quietly.
Black box!
That's it!
Six years of confusion, a stolen life, all the answers... perhaps they are all condensed in this small box.
She reached out, her fingertips trembling as she was about to touch the object that would decide her fate.
"Don't move! S.H.I.E.L.D.."
Nick Fury, pistol in hand, appeared at the door with several fully armed agents, the dark muzzles of their guns pointed at them.
He recognized the three people at the scene immediately.
S.H.I.E.L.D..?
Vi stood in front of Carol, her Hextech Gauntlets charging and emitting a threatening buzzing sound.
Mind your own business!
Maria Rumble.
Fury ignored Vi's provocation.
"And you, Carol Vers. We have a lot to talk about."
Just as Fury was about to continue speaking...
"Crack... Bang!"
A thick ventilation duct in the ceiling above their heads suddenly burst open from the inside!
Metal fragments flew everywhere.
Several agile figures descended from the sky and spread out in battle formation on the open ground of the archives.
Their skin had eerie green patterns, and their ears were long and pointed.
They're Skrulls!
The Skrulls's gaze was fixed on the opened cabinet, on the orange-black box.
"Hand over the stuff, Earthlings, it doesn't belong to you."
For a moment, a strange triangular standoff formed within the small archive.
S.H.I.E.L.D..
Carol's squad.
And then there were the uninvited Skrulls.
The three parties, each with their own objective, all share the same goal: that small black box lying quietly in the cabinet.
The leader of the Skrulls, Talos, had a chillingly clear objective.
He didn't hesitate for a moment.
He lunged straight at the cabinet in front of Carol that had been violently pulled open!
His target was that orange black box.
"Fire!"
Fury's roar echoed throughout the archives.
"Trying to steal something?"
Wei's voice carried a mixture of offended excitement.
"Did you even ask my fist?"
She approached a Skrull warrior who was following closely behind.
The Skrull warrior reacted with lightning speed, wielding a dagger and slashing towards Vi's neck.
Wei neither dodged nor avoided.
He raised his left fist, using the Hextech Gauntlets to block the bone blade.
"Not bad strength."
The next second, her right fist slammed into the Skrull warrior's abdomen.
"Bang--!"
The Skrull warrior was sent flying backward, crashing into three rows of filing cabinets before coming to a stop.
"A grunt should act like a grunt."
S.H.I.E.L.D.. agents engaged the remaining Skrulls in a firefight, with energy beams and bullets flying wildly in the confined space.
In the midst of this chaos, Talos seized an opening and flashed in front of Carol.
He did not attack.
Talos looked at Carol and spoke, word by word, in a pure Kree language Carol knew all too well:
"You've been fooled, soldier."
"Mar-Will's legacy is the hope for peace, not a weapon of war."
Carol was startled.
Mar-Will?
In the instant she was distracted, Fury rushed in from the side.
He couldn't let this mysterious alien get close to Carol.
Stay away from her!
Fury raised his gun and fired.
Talos tilted his head, and a bullet grazed his cheek.
He reached out with his hand, Fury felt a numbness in his wrist as the gun in his hand had already changed hands.
Talos followed up with an elbow strike, hitting Fury in the chest.
Fury groaned and staggered back several steps, but he forced himself to lunge forward despite the pain.
A top-notch, rigorously trained agent.
A battle-hardened alien warrior.
The difference is obvious.
Talos easily deflected every chokehold and attack Fury made, then retaliated in a simpler and more efficient way.
Carol looked at everything before her.
My mind is a complete mess.
Vi is engaged in a brutal, hand-to-hand combat with another Skrulls.
Maria seized the opportunity to take the black box and then held it tightly, nervously looking around.
Fury and the Skrulls who called himself Talos were locked in a fierce battle.
Gunshots from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
The roar of the Skrulls.
The doctrines of the Kree Empire.
Yon Rogers's "benevolent" face.
"Mar-Will..."
"The hope for peace..."
You've been scammed...
"Ah--!"
A scream burst from deep in her throat.
She could no longer suppress the violent power within her!
Golden photon energy erupted!