Before long, the joint task force fully brought the situation under control.
Most of the troublemakers at headquarters had already been dealt with in advance by Captain America, Tony, and the others.
Those remaining were largely S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel willing to surrender peacefully.
Tony, Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, and the rest left the director's office and went outside to assist the joint forces in clearing the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.
At this point, the S.H.I.E.L.D. incident was finally drawing to a close.
Across America, tens of thousands of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel were taken into custody by the joint departments and detained at different locations.
The only exception was the Dark Energy Research Facility, where the Tesseract was stored—deliberately left untouched by Nick Fury.
That very day, a large number of interrogation experts were mobilized.
Their task was to conduct exhaustive and meticulous interrogations of Hydra suspects, ensuring Hydra's presence in America would be uprooted completely.
Senator Stern was also arrested on the President's orders, and his entire network was placed under investigation and purged.
Lucas couldn't be bothered with any of that anymore.
He had already gone far enough.
Even if a few Hydra remnants managed to survive this purge, they would be nothing more than small fish lost in the ocean—utterly incapable of causing real trouble again.
"You said you were here for the Tesseract," Nick Fury suddenly asked when only the two of them remained in the office.
"So why haven't you taken it yet?"
"If you don't act now, Hydra could hide it away. Finding it later will be far more difficult."
"Who said I wasn't taking it?" Lucas replied leisurely.
"It's just not time yet."
"Are you messing with me?" Fury snapped, finally losing his temper.
If he weren't fully aware that he stood no chance against Lucas, he might have already tried to throw a punch.
This entire chain of events had begun because Lucas had demanded the Tesseract.
And now this man was saying he wasn't in a hurry?
Fury ground his teeth.
"Lucas, I have to remind you—the Pegasus Project is one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s core initiatives. There are definitely Hydra operatives stationed there."
"I left it off the list earlier only because you said you wanted the Tesseract."
"By the time the joint task force realizes this, Hydra may already have escaped with it."
Lucas stood up calmly.
"Isn't that perfect?" he said.
"The longer we wait, the more Hydra crawls out of the woodwork."
"I'll clean them up, take the Tesseract, and still make it in time to pick Carrie up from school."
He glanced at the clock.
4:39 p.m.
"Time's up. I'm heading out."
He smiled at Fury.
"Don't worry. The four departments won't interrogate you—I made that clear."
"Rest for a while. Once this settles, you'll be able to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. with the people who truly belong there."
With a casual wave, Lucas disappeared into the corridor, leaving Nick Fury slumped in his chair.
Fury leaned back and closed his remaining eye.
Everything that had happened today was more exhausting than years of covert operations combined.
---
Meanwhile, high above the clouds, Lucas swiftly arrived at the Adirondack Mountains in New York.
Just as expected, a massive research complex lay hidden there.
The facility was in chaos—soldiers stationed there were locked in a tense standoff with Hydra operatives.
But the moment Lucas descended between them, Hydra surrendered without hesitation.
This was a fight they simply could not win.
Led by the researchers, Lucas descended into the depths of the facility.
Below lay a vast hollowed-out cavern, reinforced into a colossal underground chamber—the heart of the Tesseract research site.
Stepping forward, Lucas looked at the Tesseract, suspended within a massive circular containment ring, and reached out.
"Wait! The energy inside is extremely unstable—without sufficient physical—"
The researcher stopped mid-sentence.
After all, if this man wasn't strong enough, then no one was.
As Lucas's fingers approached the Tesseract, chains of spatial energy erupted—like crackling lightning—striking his hand repeatedly.
An ordinary person would have been blasted away instantly.
To Lucas, it felt like nothing more than a mild itch.
In the next moment, his hand closed around the cube.
A violent surge of spatial energy erupted.
Even Lucas felt a faint numbness in his palm.
But it was insignificant.
With a slight exertion of strength, he tore the Tesseract free.
Once removed from the containment ring, the raging spatial energy gradually subsided, returning the cube to its calm, crystalline form.
Lucas knew this outer shell was merely a containment device—meant to prevent the Space Stone's power from leaking and causing devastation.
After securing the Tesseract, he left the facility without another glance.
Above ground, Hydra operatives had already been fully subdued by the military.
Lucas nodded in satisfaction and took off.
Whatever other secrets the facility might have held no longer interested him.
Adjusting his course in midair, Lucas flew toward Carrie's school.
But when he landed, the campus was eerily silent.
Frowning, he stepped inside.
Sweeping the building with his Ki, he discovered a group of teachers tied up in the first-floor hall.
All of them were unconscious, mouths sealed to prevent any call for help.
Lucas untied them and used his Ki to wake one of the teachers.
"Where are the students?" he asked.
The teacher shook her head groggily, panic flooding her face.
"Before I passed out, a group of armed men wearing masks stormed in. They captured us and dumped us here."
"The last thing I remember was them gathering the students and taking them away."
"They took the children… and said nothing?" Lucas asked grimly.
She shook her head.
"They didn't say a word. They just took them."
Lucas frowned deeply.
Whoever had done this was clearly targeting the students.
The most likely culprits were Hydra.
But that made no sense.
Hydra knew exactly how terrifying Lucas was.
In the previous incidents, Hydra operatives had surrendered the moment they saw him.
And yet now—
Someone had crossed a line.
Something was very wrong.