The full picture of Hydra's leadership was now clear.
Madam Hydra and Arnim Zola had been removed. What remained of the Supreme Council was distributed across three points: Baron Strucker, operating out of Europe; Alexander Pierce, embedded in America; and, most significantly, the alien entity called the Hive, located on an island in the Pacific that Hydra's internal records referred to simply as Hydra Island. Secondary figures like Crossbones could be handled as opportunities presented themselves. The primary targets were enough to plan around.
Nolan stood with his helmet under one arm, processing the layout David had assembled, turning the shape of it over in his mind. Beside him, Tyberos gave off the particular quality of stillness that, in someone else, might have been patience, but in the Chapter Master read more like a large animal that had been briefly interrupted mid-hunt and was waiting, without complaint, to resume.
The communication channels opened before anyone had formally proposed next steps.
The guards' voices came through together: they had gone deeper into the base while conducting the material sweep, and in the lower levels they had found a cryogenic storage chamber. Five people suspended inside, three men and two women, preserved and waiting.
David had already pulled the relevant data from Zola's absorbed memory by the time the report finished.
The Winter Soldier programme had existed as a Hydra ambition for years, ever since Bucky's effectiveness had made the question of replication an obvious one for anyone with an interest in operational capability. The five frozen individuals were the first experimental group to have survived the process intact. But Zola's position within the Supreme Council had deteriorated over time, eroded by factional friction and the particular kind of institutional resentment that accumulates when a subordinate becomes more valuable than the people above him want to acknowledge.
The programme had been shelved. The five subjects had remained in their chambers, forgotten by everyone except the man who had created them and had then been sent to the Antarctic to be forgotten in turn.
Nolan listened to all of it, then instructed the guards through the communication channel: keep them in storage, do not disturb the suspension process. He had uses for them that would require more thought than the current timeline allowed.
The guards returned shortly after, having completed their survey of the base's material reserves. The resulting report produced a reaction from Tyberos that Nolan would not have described as visible emotion but was, by the Chapter Master's standards, eloquent: a quality of reluctance in his stillness that suggested he was calculating the weight of what he was being asked to leave behind.
Nolan assured him, at length and with more repetition than he would normally consider necessary, that the Twin Islands supply chain was sufficient to maintain the Carcharodons' combat consumption and provisions on a continuous basis. The materials here would be absorbed into that same system. Nothing would be wasted and nothing would be lost to them.
Tyberos considered this. Then he accepted it, and led his guards back up through the levels of the base toward the surface, pausing only to retrieve the boltguns that had been set down earlier.
Nolan was turning to follow when David stopped him.
It had found something in a concealed room off one of the lower corridors. A device the size of a laptop computer, silver-cased, the proportions and finish suggesting precision manufacture rather than field assembly. It looked, superficially, like a small display screen with ambitions.
David's explanation was characteristically concise. This was the technological foundation of Zola's "perfect evolution beyond flesh": a consciousness storage device. With the correct preparation, the complete consciousness of any living being could be transferred into the unit without meaningful degradation, and subsequently transferred again to another body. The process Zola had undergone with himself, the version of it that had put a pixel face on a robot's chest screen and given it a data presence in the base network, had been an early and imperfect implementation. This device was the underlying theory made portable.
Nolan looked at it for a long moment without touching it.
Then he told David to bring it back to the Twin Islands. Raditus and the others could examine it properly. There was no point in forming conclusions about it before understanding what it actually did.
The Thunderhawk lifted through the Antarctic overcast and turned north.
Below, in the excavated levels of the base, the mechanical bodies and robots that David had allowed to retain partial function began to move again. Not Zola's direction this time: David had kept a thread of processing power connected to the facility's systems, and that thread was now guiding the machines through a systematic programme of expansion and reinforcement. The Antarctic base would become Nolan's third installation, built by the machines its previous owner had left behind, which seemed appropriate.
Back at Twin Islands, David pulled up the world map on the hall's main screen and began marking positions: known Hydra bases, estimated locations, and at the far end of several converging lines of data, the calculated coordinates of Hydra Island in the Pacific. The picture it formed was comprehensive. The picture it formed was also the outline of a larger operation than anything the Inquisition had yet undertaken.
Nolan took Tyberos and the guards across to Second Son Island, where Raditus's foundry was running its usual continuous shifts. The Space Sharks' armour had taken damage during the Antarctic engagement, not severe by any meaningful standard, but the ceramite shells bore the marks of the operation and the ancient components of Tyberos's Terminator in particular warranted proper attention before the next deployment. Raditus could be persuaded to prioritise a great many things when the alternative was presented clearly enough.
While the foundry received its new work order, Nolan went back to the hall and asked David to open a communication channel to Tony.
The line connected. Tony's voice came through immediately, carrying the specific texture of someone who has been awake for too long and is deeply invested in whatever he is currently doing and is not particularly interested in being interrupted from it.
"If you want to rush my work, the best method is not to disturb me."
"Where is Thor? Is he with you?"
A pause. When Tony spoke again, there was a discernible shift in energy: the irritation had not gone away exactly, but something more engaged had come alongside it.
"You guessed correctly, actually. He had a minor disagreement with his girlfriend and she asked him to leave, so he came here to drink. The God of Thunder," Tony added, with genuine appreciation for the irony, "enduring that particular kind of domestic situation. Nobody could have predicted it."
"Then tell him to put the drink down and get ready to fight." Nolan kept his voice level. "And you should set your current project aside for now. My base has just received some reinforcement. With your assistance, we should have what we need to dismantle all of Hydra."
Silence on the line.
"Nolan." Tony's voice had gone carefully neutral in the way it went when he was taking something seriously but had not yet decided how seriously. "Are you certain you haven't been drinking as well?"
Nolan did not offer reassurance. He gave Tony the operational outline instead: the gathering point, a small European nation called Latveria. The first target was Baron Strucker, Hydra's European leadership. Coordinates would arrive before they did.
He finished with one addition, stated plainly.
"This is the first major combined operation since the Inquisition formed. Thor and you both need to be in the correct state of mind going in. This is a genuine war. It is not a performance."
Another silence, longer than the first.
Then Tony exhaled, slow and deliberate.
"Understood. I will bring additional support to this gathering." A beat. "We will see you there."