Chapter 197. How to Handle a Nuclear Warhead
"Noah, we have a complication. A strike craft is inbound, carrying a nuclear payload. Destination: New York City."
Noah stood amidst the swirling winds of the upper atmosphere, the Tesseract still pulsing with a faint, satisfied light in his palm. He had just turned the Chitauri's own teeth against their throat, effectively lobotomizing the invasion. Below him, the city was a graveyard of alien technology; the Chitauri soldiers lay in heaps like discarded toys, their connection to the hive-mind severed the moment the flagship became stardust.
He looked down at the sprawl of Manhattan. The celebratory cheers of the survivors were beginning to rise from the canyons of the streets, a fragile sound of hope amidst the ruin.
The first of his Grade-A objectives was all but secured. The invasion was broken. All that remained was to deal with the rat cornered in the trap—Corvus, who was currently wrestling with the spatial cage Noah had woven. Once the Black Order general was dealt with, the Scepter of Mind—and the Stone within—would be his. Two objectives, one final blow.
But the world, it seemed, was determined to be its own worst enemy.
"A nuclear strike?" Noah's voice was flat, devoid of surprise but heavy with a simmering disdain.
The memories of the original timeline flickered in his mind. He recalled the World Security Council—those shadowed men in suits who sat in comfortable rooms while others bled. In their cowardice, they had attempted to "sanitize" the problem, willing to trade eight million lives to close a door they didn't understand. In the old story, Tony Stark had nearly died carrying that cross into the heavens.
But history was no longer a fixed rail.
"The irony is almost poetic," Noah mused. "Eight million people, and they'd burn them all just to feel like they're in control. Do they even consider the consequences? If Thor were to perish in that blast, the wrath of Asgard would descend upon this rock like a hammer. Earth wouldn't survive the 'justice' of the All-Father."
The tactical stupidity was too glaring to be mere incompetence. It smelled of something more sinister. Hydra. It had to be. This was the perfect moment to decapitate the burgeoning Avengers before they could become a threat to the New World Order. A "tragic accident" to wipe the slate clean.
"Does Fury know?" Noah asked.
"He knows," Lissandra's voice drifted into his mind, cool and melodic. "He's currently screaming at a wall of bureaucracy. He's informed the Council that the threat is neutralized, but they aren't listening. The order stands."
"Of course they aren't listening. There's a rat in the cellar. Fine. I'll divert the missile with the Tesseract. A simple fold in space and the Council can have their fireworks in the middle of the sun."
"Noah, focus on the general," Lissandra interjected, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips from her perch on the tower. "You have your prey. Let me handle the delivery."
Noah paused, then a slow smirk spread across his face. "Very well. It's all yours." If Lissandra was offering, he knew the solution would be nothing short of spectacular. He turned his attention back to the shimmering distortion of the spatial trap where Corvus was desperately trying to find a seam in reality.
Miles away, a sleek F-35 Lightning II tore through the clouds, its engines a dull roar against the wind. Inside the cockpit, the pilot's breathing was heavy and ragged. His gloved hand hovered over the weapon release, sweat stinging his eyes beneath his visor. He knew what he was carrying. He knew the coordinates. He wasn't a monster, but he was a soldier, and the "Council of the World" had told him this was the only way to save the planet.
As the skyline of Manhattan pierced the horizon, the pilot saw the twin rifts in the sky—the violet and the blue. He adjusted his heading, his finger tensing on the trigger.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed.
A vast, billowing shroud of silver mist erupted from the clouds, moving with a speed that defied aerodynamics. It didn't drift with the wind; it hunted.
The pilot's heart leaped into his throat. "What the hell is that? Tower, I have an unidentified aerial phenomenon at twelve o'clock! It's... it's a cloud? No, it's moving!"
He yanked the stick, banking the jet into a high-G turn to bypass the shimmering fog. But the mist was alive. It swerved with him, maintaining a terrifying proximity as if it were tethered to his very soul.
"Get away from me!" the pilot hissed. He toggled his weapon systems, and the jet's rotary cannon let out a brief, vibrating snarl.
The bullets tore into the mist, but there was no impact. The silver shroud simply absorbed the lead, growing larger and more dense with every round fired. These were Lissandra's children—the nanobots. And they were hungry.
The swarm surged. The pilot had no time to scream before the silver fog enveloped the fuselage. He watched in primal horror as the reinforced glass of his canopy began to spiderweb with thousands of tiny, microscopic fractures. Then, the glass didn't shatter—it was simply eaten.
The roar of the wind hit him like a physical blow. The cockpit was dissolving. The instruments were sparking, turning into silver dust before his eyes. The jet began to pitch violently as the wings were stripped of their control surfaces.
Eject! Eject! Eject!
The pilot punched the handles. The seat fired, casting him into the freezing air. He tumbled through the sky, his parachute blooming above him like a white flower of mercy. Below him, he watched as his multi-million dollar aircraft—and the world-ending weapon it carried—simply vanished into the silver maw.
By the time he splashed into the cold waters of the Atlantic, there was nothing left in the sky but clear blue air.
Back on the Stark Tower, the silver mist returned to Lissandra. It didn't return empty-handed. While the nanobots had feasted on the jet's airframe and the missile's casing, the radioactive core—the volatile heart of the nuke—was far too complex and dangerous to be broken down so crudely.
The swarm deposited a heavy, lead-shielded sphere into her waiting hand. She looked at the weapon of mass destruction as if it were a curious seashell found on a beach.
While Lissandra secured the nuclear threat, Noah's attention was snapped back to the spatial cage. Corvus, sensing the destruction of his fleet and the narrowing of his options, had stopped clawing at the walls.
A dark, suffocating energy began to radiate from the general's silhouette—a power that Noah hadn't anticipated. The air inside the trap began to turn black, and the Tesseract's cage groaned under a sudden, overwhelming pressure.
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