Triskelion Headquarters, top-floor elevator lobby.
The elevator doors opened to reveal guards stripped of their clothes lying all over the floor.
Lin Huai didn't enter Pierce's office; instead, he turned and pressed the button for the fire escape.
"Why?" Steve Rogers gripped his shield, still simmering with rage. "The leader is right inside. Just one punch..."
"And then what? Have tomorrow's newspapers call us crazed veterans for beating up a disabled philanthropist?"
Lin Huai sneered, pulling out a paper effigy and waving it.
"Killing him is easy. If I wanted to, I have six ways to make him die in his own bathtub tonight, but that's a poor move. If Pierce dies, a new HYDRA leader will just emerge, and everyone else in S.H.I.E.L.D. will still be in the dark."
Lin Huai looked Steve in the eye.
"We need to expose his crimes, not assassinate him. We need to drag all his secrets into the light and show everyone what he really is. Natasha is waiting for us in the garage downstairs. I'm taking you somewhere that hides one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s deepest secrets."
Steve was silent for two seconds before loosening his fist and following... Wheaton, New Jersey, the abandoned Camp Lehigh.
It was raining at night, making the abandoned military camp look eerie. The "No Trespassing" signs on the chain-link fence had long since rusted into flakes, and the wind howling across the empty parade ground made one's skin crawl.
"This place is creepy enough," Lin Huai remarked, flipping up his collar. "By the usual tropes, a chainsaw-wielding Lunatic should be jumping out from around the corner any second now."
"Don't say that," Natasha said, scanning the surroundings alertly with a portable detector. "Now that you've said it, I feel like the wind's gotten colder."
Steve walked at the front without a word. Looking at everything here, he remembered the old days; now, it was nothing but a pile of unwanted ruins.
"It started here, and it ends here."
Steve stopped in front of an administration building that used to be an armory. He had a good memory and found a hidden underground elevator behind a dust-covered office cabinet.
"This place isn't on any S.H.I.E.L.D. maps." Natasha frowned, looking down the dark elevator shaft.
"Of course not; the living don't stay here." Lin Huai was the first to jump into the car, his fingers quietly gripping several Rune Talismans. His intuition told him that although the things underground weren't alive, they were full of malice.
As the elevator descended, the air grew dry and carried the scent of machine oil.
The Door opened.
A massive server room appeared before the three of them, filled with equipment that looked like 1970s relics. Hundreds of tape drives were spinning slowly with a raspy whir, their indicator lights blinking in the Darkness.
"Welcome home, Captain Rogers."
A synthesized electronic voice suddenly rang out, and all the screens lit up simultaneously, piecing together a large face with green pixelated lines.
The face wore round glasses, its expression both smug and sinister.
"Arnim Zola." Steve stared at the face, his pupils shrinking. "You... aren't you supposed to be dead?"
"The flesh may rot, but the mind can live forever."
Zola's voice echoed through the Underground Room.
"In 1972, before I succumbed to illness, I uploaded my consciousness into the database here. Though primitive, I survived! I am HYDRA's most precious asset, and the true brain of S.H.I.E.L.D."
The pixelated face on the screen grew even more smug as it began to boast of HYDRA's history—from parasitizing S.H.I.E.L.D. to sowing chaos, and finally to his Insight Project algorithm. With it, they had eliminated every potential threat over the past few decades.
"We won, Captain." A mocking look appeared on Zola's pixelated face. "You fight for freedom, but humanity does not deserve it. Look outside; the current World is one we shaped."
Natasha pulled out her phone to trace the signal, but the screen was filled with garbled code. Steve's face turned pale as he listened to Zola's boasting, his fists involuntarily clenching.
Clap, clap, clap.
A few casual claps interrupted Zola's speech.
Lin Huai stepped out from the Shadow. Without even looking at the screen, he touched a warm server rack with interest.
"Impressive speech, Dr. But I have a few technical questions."
Lin Huai turned around and leaned against the server rack, looking at the screen as if he were looking at an idiot.
"First, this 'immortality' you speak of—is it just stuffing yourself into a bunch of tapes and being trapped in this moldy Underground Room where you're finished as soon as the power goes out?"
"Ignorant!" Zola's image on the screen began to flicker with rage. "I am data! I am a god!"
"No, you're a ghost."
Lin Huai's voice turned cold, a faint glimmer flashing in his black eyes.
Spirit Vision activated.
In his eyes, this wasn't high technology at all. The broken Robot were covered in grayish-white threads of resentment and obsession. The so-called "Zola consciousness" was nothing more than an earthbound spirit. Because his obsession was too deep to dissipate, he used the magnetic fields here to glue his spiritual fragments onto the circuit boards.
Furthermore, this thing was hideous.
"You're not a god, and you barely count as human." Lin Huai took out the silver mirror Arrodes from his pocket. "Since you're just an expired junk file, it's time to empty the recycle bin once and for all."
"What are you trying to do?! I am indestructible!"
"You talk too much." Lin Huai pressed Arrodes' mirror surface directly against the interface of a main server.
"Dinner time."
A blood-colored vortex suddenly opened on the mirror's surface.
To a Sealed Artifact of Arrodes' level, a creature like Zola, composed purely of information and spirit, was the perfect meal.
"No! What is this thing?! My data! My soul!"
Zola let out a piercing electronic scream. The face on the screen distorted and stretched violently, as if an invisible hand were grabbing him by the neck and dragging him into the mirror.
A few seconds later.
Zzzzt—
All the screens went black, and the Underground Room fell into a deathly silence. Even the noise of the Robot stopped.
The World was finally quiet.
A line of text appeared on the mirror: "Tastes like spoiled pizza, Master. But there's some good stuff in his memory—the list for the Insight Project..."
"Got it. Save it, and we'll send it to Fury when we get back." Lin Huai put away the mirror, his expression calm, as if he had just turned off a light.
Steve and Natasha shared a look in the Darkness.
"Is it... over?" Steve asked.
"Far from it." Lin Huai's ears twitched; he heard a faint whistling sound rapidly approaching. "On the contrary, the show is just getting started."
He suddenly lunged toward the two: "Run!"
Boom—!
A massive explosion thundered overhead. The entire Underground Room shook violently, and dust cascaded down.
Pierce never intended to leave any survivors. While Zola was rambling, a missile had already locked onto this location.
"The elevator is too slow!" Natasha shouted.
"There's no time! This way! There's a drainage well over there!" Although Steve wasn't familiar with the layout, his tactical intuition immediately found a sturdy piece of cover.
But the explosion's Impact was faster than their legs.
The ceiling collapsed instantly, and thousands of tons of concrete, engulfed in Fire, came crashing down.
Seeing they were about to be crushed into pulp, Lin Huai grabbed Steve and Natasha and threw them to the ground, shielding them with his body.
His fingers hidden in his sleeves moved rapidly, and three paper effigies instantly caught fire behind them.
Paper Clone Substitutes!
This ability couldn't make them vanish into thin air, but as the powerful Impact and flames swept over them, the force weirdly slid past, as if it had missed its target.
The clothes on the three of them were instantly scorched. Lin Huai felt as if his internal organs had been displaced, and a sweet taste rose in his throat. The substitutes could block fatal injuries, but the massive Impact force couldn't be entirely negated.
"Cough, cough..."
He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, his hand already gripping the prepared Rune Talismans.
The moment the first wave of Impact passed.
Flame Leap!
Using the surrounding firelight, the three figures flickered through the ruins. Each flash only covered a dozen meters, and they looked quite battered.
Finally, after several consecutive leaps, they tumbled out of a collapsed vent.
It was still raining outside.
Lin Huai lay face down in the mud, gasping for air, feeling as if his lungs were about to burst.
Steve scrambled up, covered in dust, instinctively raising his shield in a defensive posture, only to find they had escaped to a small grove two hundred meters outside the camp. Behind them was a sea of Fire.
He looked at the soaring flames and then at Lin Huai, who was lying on the ground looking barely human, and for a moment, he didn't know what to say.
"Is this... what you meant by 'a little trick'?" Natasha wiped the soot from her face, her voice still trembling.
"Cough... something like that."
Lin Huai rolled over and looked up at the pitch-black sky. The cold Water hitting his face actually helped clear his head.
"Zola is gone, we know S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets, and I've got the intel."
Lin Huai grinned, his mouth full of mud.
"This missile is the proof that that old bastard Pierce is digging his own grave."
Let's go, back to Washington.
Go tell Falcon it's time to bring that old friend of yours back home.