Marvelous Meditations

Nathan pulled the car into the lot of a crumbling warehouse, its skeletal frame barely holding together against time and neglect. The headlights briefly illuminated the rusted-out husk of a building before he killed the engine, letting darkness swallow them whole.

He sat there for a second, fingers drumming lightly against the steering wheel, eyes flicking once more to the rearview mirror. Satisfied, he exhaled and pushed the door open.

Sterns, stepping out with considerably less enthusiasm, gave their surroundings a skeptical once-over. The cracked concrete, the shattered windows, the half-collapsed roof—it all painted a grim picture of abandonment.

"Hm." Sterns sniffed, adjusting his coat as if to shield himself from the very air. "I really hope this isn't my work environment. I'd prefer…" He trailed off, wrinkling his nose. "Well, anything else, really. Though I suppose it's still a slight improvement over my SHIELD cell. Slight."

Nathan smirked, striding toward the rusted metal doors. "Relax. This isn't your new office. Just a pit stop to throw off anyone watching."

Sterns followed but frowned, eyes narrowing. "Throw off who? You've been checking that mirror like a paranoid wreck the entire drive." His tone was laced with amusement, but there was an edge to it. "And every time you did, I looked too. Nothing. No cars, no drones, no signs of pursuit."

Nathan didn't slow his pace, pulling open the warehouse door. Inside, the space was even worse—warped beams barely held up the collapsing structure, and the floor was littered with broken glass and rusted scraps of machinery. Dust swirled in the air as they stepped in, the dim moonlight casting jagged shadows.

Sterns sighed dramatically, brushing some imaginary filth off his sleeves. "Charming."

Nathan smirked but didn't respond, leading them deeper inside.

Sterns folded his arms. "Alright, I'll bite. If no one's following us, what's got you so spooked?"

Nathan finally turned, regarding him with a knowing look. "You're assuming you'd see them," he said. "But tell me—did you account for traffic cams? Satellite imaging?"

Sterns' expression faltered slightly. "That seems… excessive," he admitted. "Who the hell would go to that much trouble just to track you?"

Nathan chuckled, shaking his head. "You're thinking about it all wrong." He took a step closer, voice lowering slightly. "They're not tracking me. They're tracking you."

Sterns blinked. His lips parted slightly, then pressed into a thin line.

Nathan continued, gesturing lazily. "You don't get it, do you? SHIELD might've kept you locked up, but they didn't operate in a vacuum. Someone else has eyes on you."

Sterns narrowed his gaze. "From what I saw, SHIELD doesn't seem like the kind of organization to let intel like that slip." His voice held skepticism, but beneath it was the creeping realization that something wasn't adding up. "Unless SHIELD itself is tailing us, which makes no sense—"

Nathan cut him off with a dry chuckle. "That's because SHIELD isn't SHIELD anymore." He folded his arms, tilting his head slightly. "It's a rotting shell, infested with Hydra down to the damn foundations."

Sterns stared at him.

Nathan took another step forward. "And you? You're a very valuable asset. Hydra would love to get their hands on you." He let the weight of his words settle before adding, "So the real question is—how long do you think you have before they make a move?"

Sterns exhaled slowly, rubbing his temples as if trying to ward off a headache. He let out a quiet, mirthless chuckle before shaking his head.

"Just one moment," he muttered. "By Hydra, you mean the Nazi death cult from World War II? The one the U.S. government supposedly eradicated?" His tone was drenched in skepticism, but there was an uneasy edge beneath it.

Nathan smirked, crossing his arms. "The Hydra. The one and only." His voice was casual, but his eyes were sharp. "I'd give you a full history lesson on how they survived like a damn parasite—how they slithered their way into governments, corporations, even SHIELD itself—but we don't have time for that."

Sterns let out a low hum, as if he were processing it, but he didn't argue.

Nathan turned his head slightly, scanning the shadows. Then he called out, "Rick, you there?"

A flashlight blinked three times in the distance, a silent confirmation. Nathan nodded. "Come on out. I've got Sterns."

From the darkness, a figure emerged—a tall, lean man dressed in dark tactical gear. Rick's sharp gaze flicked to Sterns before moving to Nathan. Behind him, five armed men stepped forward, each gripping a sleek, high-tech rifle—Elihas Starr's anti-superhuman models, state-of-the-art and deadly.

Rick stopped a few paces away. "You sure about this guy?" he asked flatly, giving Sterns a once-over.

Nathan smirked. "As sure as I need to be. Take him to the lab. I'll stay here and roll out the welcome mat for any uninvited guests."

Rick turned to his men. "You heard the man. Adam, you're on Sterns. The rest of you—split up, take different routes, and lead any tails to the designated spots."

It was a regular extraction. Each of the soldiers would go on foot from here, take routes that can not be monitored, and from there, each would find a vehicle waiting for them that would take them through complicated routes across the city just in case.

Adam would take Stern to the lab, and as for the others, each of them would head to safe houses that were heavily defended. If anyone did manage to tail them, they'd be walking into their own graves.

The soldiers nodded without hesitation. One of them, a burly man with a buzz cut—Adam—stepped forward and gestured for Sterns to follow.

Sterns gave Nathan a measured look, lips curving into something resembling amusement. "Thorough. If perhaps overly paranoid," he mused. "I can respect that."

Nathan shrugged. "You'll thank me later."

Sterns exhaled through his nose, saying nothing more as he turned to follow Adam. Soon enough, he disappeared into the night, leaving only Nathan and Rick behind.

Rick sighed, rolling his shoulders. "So, what's the play?"

Nathan flexed his fingers, the faint whir of his vibranium arm accompanying the motion before he cracked his knuckles. His voice was calm, almost bored, but his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

"It's simple," he said. "The warehouse is already rigged. Motion sensors, pressure triggers, a few lovely surprises waiting to go off the moment they step inside. I'll sit back, let them walk right into it." He rolled his shoulders. "If anyone survives, I'll handle them myself."

He turned to Rick then, giving him a pointed look. "Speaking of which—why the hell are you still here?"

Rick scoffed, folding his arms. "Is that a rhetorical question? Because you know why." He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "Handling paperwork, sitting through endless meetings, dealing with all the politics—that shit is killing me. I need action, and I need it now."

Nathan smirked, leaning back slightly. "Suit yourself. Unless all that sitting around has made you soft. In that case, just go home..."

Rick shot him a glare, jaw tightening. "And whose fault do you think that would be?"

Nathan just chuckled, turning his gaze toward the shadows beyond the warehouse doors. The night was still—for now. But soon enough, the hunt would begin.

...

The operative moved like a specter in the darkness, his boots making no sound as he advanced. His squad—fifteen of Hydra's most enhanced warriors—moved with the same silent precision. They were a product of Hydra's most recent advancements, cybernetically enhanced and trained beyond human limits.

Their bodies were augmented with reinforced muscle fiber, neural implants for faster reflexes, and subdermal armor that made them nearly bulletproof. They were the future of warfare—cold, efficient, unstoppable.

At least, that's what they were told.

Samuel Stern had been a high-priority asset for some time now. His intellect was unparalleled, and Hydra had long sought to claim him. But with Nick Fury personally keeping tabs on the man, any move would have exposed Hydra prematurely. Now, with Fury out of the picture and S.H.I.E.L.D. rotting from within, the time had come to strike.

There was only one complication.

Nathan Cross.

The secondary target. And a target of elimination.

They had tried to bring him in once before. That operation had ended in disaster. Cross had been taken alive, transported to one of their more secure facilities for questioning. The base was well-defended, stocked with Hydra's finest—including high-value assets like Baron von Strucker and Crossbones himself.

And yet, Cross had wiped them all out.

By the time the facility went dark, every single operative stationed there was dead. The Baron was reduced to little more than a corpse, and Crossbones—one of Hydra's most lethal enforcers—had been torn apart by an explosion they suspected was of his own doing.

Now, the mission was simple: retrieve Stern. Kill everyone else.

...

The infiltration was textbook at first. The warehouse was in ruins, abandoned, a forgotten husk of a structure—but Hydra had learned not to underestimate their target. They moved carefully, scanning for hostiles, keeping formation as they pressed inward.

Then the traps hit.

The first operative barely had time to scream before the floor beneath him exploded, sending him flying into the rusted remains of a support beam. His enhanced bones might have saved him if not for the secondary trap—thin, razor-sharp wires that wrapped around his throat and tightened until his head popped clean off.

The next soldier tripped an infrared laser, activating a series of high-velocity tungsten darts. His enhanced reflexes let him dodge the first two—but not the dozen that followed, perforating him like a pincushion.

In less than twenty seconds, half their squad was gone.

The survivors fanned out, moving in a tighter formation, their enhanced optics scanning the darkness for movement. That's when the real killing began.

A sudden pop echoed through the warehouse. The man directly to the operative's left staggered mid-step before crumpling to the floor. A perfect hole had appeared in his forehead, his cybernetic enhancements useless against whatever had just pierced his skull.

A second later, another operative went down, his brain matter splattering against the wall as a single, precise shot obliterated his head.

The remaining soldiers turned their weapons toward the source of the attack, but there was nothing there. No muzzle flash. No enemy in sight.

Then Rick made his entrance.

He emerged from the shadows like a phantom, moving between the crates with uncanny speed. His weapon—a sleek, futuristic-looking pistol—spat death at a relentless pace. Each shot found its mark, a single round between the eyes, before he vanished into the darkness again.

It was methodical. Precise. Unrelenting.

And then he appeared.

Nathan Cross.

The operative barely had time to process the blur of movement before Cross was upon them. He moved like something out of a nightmare—jumping, twisting, flipping through the air with impossible agility. But it wasn't natural.

Something else was moving with him.

A shadow. A shape. An unseen force that bent and shifted around him, forming solid platforms beneath his feet, letting him launch himself in any direction. He wasn't just moving—he was flying, using the invisible force as a stepping stone, dodging bullets as if he knew where they would be before they were fired.

Then the real massacre began.

Cross hit the ground between two soldiers, and his vibranium arm blurred as it caved in one man's skull with a single punch. Another raised his rifle, only for Cross to sidestep the muzzle and rip the gun from his grasp, flipping it around and unloading the entire magazine into his chest.

The operative fired his own weapon, but Cross was already gone, flipping over him, landing behind another Hydra soldier. A single, vicious twist of the head—and the soldier went limp, his neck snapped cleanly.

The remaining operatives tried to regroup, but it was already over.

The last man standing—the operative himself—staggered backward, his enhanced lungs gasping for breath as he found himself on the ground, a sharp pain in his side. He hadn't even realized he'd been hit.

Cross stood over him now, a pistol aimed directly at his forehead. His expression was unreadable, his stance relaxed—like he had done this countless times before.

The operative turned his head slightly. From the corner of his eye, he saw something on the ceiling—a figure clinging to the rafters, shrouded in darkness, its presence barely perceptible.

A shadowed grin flashed in the dim light, illuminated by two orbs glowing in an eerie red color.

The operative reached out weakly, his lips forming the words. "Hail HYD—"

The gunshot cut him off mid-sentence.

The grin in the darkness widened, full of amusement.

...

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