The flagpole incident made Steve an oddity among the candidates.
A freak who defied all conventional reasoning.
Colonel Davis wore a grim expression.
He felt that a frail kid and a man of unknown origins had joined forces to make a fool of his authority.
Losing the cross-country run could be blamed on poor stamina.
But the flagpole incident was a slap in the face to him as head instructor!
It mocked the "elites" he was so proud of as a bunch of simpleminded idiots!
"A coward who resorts to cheap tricks!"
Davis launched into a tirade at Lynn and the other two in his office.
"War needs lions who can tear through enemy lines, not monkeys who play clever little tricks!"
Dr. Erskine's face turned red.
He was about to argue, but Lynn beat him to it.
"Colonel, I understand your concerns."
Lynn's tone was calm, even somewhat approving.
"Things change in an instant on the battlefield. Stamina and strength are the foundation of survival."
Davis looked at him suspiciously.
"But we can't ignore the most essential thing in a soldier, either."
Lynn turned his gaze to Peggy Carter.
"I've been studying Soldier Boy, and I've found that the more powerful an individual is, the more their first reaction to a sudden crisis reveals their true character."
Peggy Carter's gaze sharpened.
She had caught the key words.
"Those soldiers who perform perfectly on the training ground react in all sorts of ways when a shell actually lands in their foxhole."
"Some instinctively throw themselves toward their comrades, while others push their comrades out to use as shields."
"Strength magnifies everything, but it doesn't change what's at the core. I suggest adding a simulation to the test."
"One that gives them no time to prepare, and is enough to make everyone believe they'll die the next second."
Colonel Davis snorted.
"How do we simulate that? Fight it out with real weapons?"
"For example..."
Lynn glanced over the map on the desk, then finally spoke as if the idea had just occurred to him.
"A grenade with the pin pulled."
Carter's eyes lit up.
She didn't believe in Davis's theory of relying purely on muscle, either.
But she also doubted whether Steve's frail body could bear such a heavy responsibility.
This test was undoubtedly the best way to see through everyone's disguise.
"I agree."
Carter looked at Davis.
"This is the most important test. We need to see who they really are."
Davis looked at the resolute Carter, then glanced at Lynn, who was still smiling, and finally gave in.
"Fine! We'll do it your way! I'd like to see if that little runt pisses his pants in fright!"
The day of the final test.
Colonel Davis stood before the formation.
He toyed with a pineapple grenade with its safety pin pulled.
Of course, it was a fake.
"Listen up, maggots! This is your last chance! The United States doesn't need weaklings, and the army doesn't feed freeloaders!"
Davis's gaze raked over Steve like a knife.
"War isn't a dinner party. The enemy won't give you any time to react!"
Before he finished speaking, he suddenly threw the grenade into the middle of the formation!
The crowd erupted!
The soldiers who had stood ramrod straight a second ago, their faces full of elite superiority, screamed in terror.
They fled in every direction on hands and feet, rolling and scrambling.
They wished their parents had given them two more legs.
Some even knocked their comrades to the ground in their panic.
The training ground was in chaos.
Only one figure moved against the fleeing crowd.
Steve Rogers.
Without the slightest hesitation, he threw himself at the smoking grenade.
"Get down!"
He pressed the grenade firmly beneath his laughably scrawny body.
The expected explosion never came.
The fleeing soldiers stopped and stared in shock at the frail figure lying on the ground, ready to meet death.
Silence fell over everyone.
Colonel Davis's face was a complicated mix of disbelief, shock, and shame and anger.
Dr. Erskine's eyes grew moist.
He gripped Lynn's arm, unable to say a word.
Peggy Carter watched Steve slowly get up from the ground, his face full of confusion, and an unprecedented light burst into her eyes.
At that moment, she didn't see a frail soldier. She saw a true giant.
Lynn smiled as he watched the classic scene.
A perfect script, perfect actors.
Bavaria.
Deep inside an ancient castle shrouded in sinister fog.
A former wine cellar had been converted into a nauseating laboratory.
Professor Pyg, wearing his white coat that never seemed to come clean, was concentrating on cutting with a bone saw.
He hummed an opera tune out of key.
His movements were practiced, as if he were carving a rare work of art.
A scientist in a Hydra officer's uniform stood nearby, watching it all through the glass.
His face was filled with undisguised disgust.
"Professor Valentin, your dolls are truly masterpieces ahead of their time!"
Professor Pyg stopped what he was doing and turned his head.
The two hollow eye sockets of his pig mask faced the scientist.
"No..."
His voice was hoarse.
"This is only a half-finished product."
He pointed to the creations in the corner of the laboratory that were already "finished."
They were monsters haphazardly stitched together.
Their bodies were assembled from different limbs.
Their skin was stretched out of shape, and crude stitches covered their bodies like centipedes.
Some had their arms replaced with sharp bone saws, while others had exposed machine-gun parts implanted in their chests.
"They feel no pain, possess limitless strength, and obey absolutely."
The Hydra scientist rubbed his hands together excitedly.
"I can't wait to see the looks on those Allied idiots' faces when they see them!"
Professor Pyg ignored his excitement.
He walked up to one of the "dolls" and stroked its crude stitches with a filthy gloved fingertip, utterly entranced.
"Art... needs an audience."
He murmured under his breath.
The Western Front, at a position locked in a stalemate.
Late at night, several exhausted Allied soldiers dozed against the muddy walls of a trench.
Rainwater dripped from the rims of their helmets.
No one noticed that, behind them, in the no-man's-land that had been plowed over countless times by artillery fire,
More than a dozen figures were approaching silently with a bizarre, reverse-jointed gait.
In the silent, rainy night, they were like nightmares crawling out of hell.
A soldier on watch heard a strange sound. He warily raised his rifle and stuck his head out.
"Who's there..."
Before he finished speaking, a dark figure pounced down from above the trench!
"Squelch!"
Blood gushed out.
Before the soldier could even scream, he was dragged into the darkness.
Immediately afterward, a silent massacre began.
There were no gunshots.
Only the sound of things breaking and desperate whimpers forcibly muffled.
In just a few minutes, the entire outpost became a bloody slaughterhouse.
Early the next morning.
The atmosphere inside Colonel Phillips's command tent was terribly oppressive.
He clutched an urgent telegram just received from the front, his knuckles white from the force of his grip.
A young communications officer stood before him, trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind.
"Colonel... we... the troops we sent to relieve them... found them..."
The communications officer's voice was thick with tears.
"They were... taken apart... taken apart like children's toys, then haphazardly put back together..."
Phillips slapped the telegram down on the table.
His sharp, hawk-like eyes were filled with unprecedented horror and rage.
It wasn't as if he had never seen dead men. He had seen mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
But the description in the telegram went beyond the bounds of war.
It was a horror that desecrated life and sought to destroy human sanity!
His gaze instinctively shifted to the enormous military map on the wall.
On the map, a red arrow marked Soldier Boy's latest achievement from the previous day.
Phillips's breathing grew heavy.
He realized with absolute clarity that dealing with one monster really did require another, fiercer, more vicious monster!