The compound had one critical flaw: it had both color and scent. That made silent takedowns impossible, and despite years of research, Viper had never managed to refine it further. Eventually she'd shelved it entirely.
But today, the burning cement stench was perfect cover.
The Mandarin's constitution was formidable — the compound got largely filtered out before it could settle into his system. But it kept coming in with every breath. Accumulation has a way of winning arguments that brute resistance loses.
And the Mandarin was still a man. He still breathed. He still got tired. He hadn't ascended to some higher-dimensional existence that put him beyond chemistry. This was the same formula that had once brought down Red Tank — and whatever his constitution, it wasn't stronger than Juggernaut's.
"I am immune to all poisons!" He fell back on his usual method — reversing his blood circulation to flush toxins out. It backfired completely. This wasn't a toxin. The accelerated circulation just spread the anesthetic through his system faster.
"Not a toxin—?!"
The realization hit him. He pivoted his technique immediately, trying to expel the foreign substance entirely. But he was half a step too late. The left side of his body — nearly a third of it — had already gone numb, slipping out of conscious control. You can't expel what you can't feel.
The room blurred. His head filled with fog, like someone who hadn't slept in days.
No hesitation. He made the call instantly: get out.
Left side gone. But the right hand still worked.
He gathered everything he had into the right thumb ring. Matter Reconstruction detonated outward — the slurry, the acid, the vault walls, the alloy blast doors — all of it folded into the ring's reach. In a shimmer of surging energy, a black dragon hauled itself upright from nothing: long neck, massive body, wide-spread wings. Western design, distinctly so — though its eyes were blank voids. A construct, not a creature.
In three quick steps, the Mandarin vaulted up the dragon's wing and onto its back. One command.
The dragon rose.
It punched through the ceiling. It blasted up through the underground base and into open air, trailing dust and concrete behind it.
Ground-based artillery opened up immediately — it was hard to miss a target that size. But every chunk shot away crumbled back into sand and gravel, and the dragon kept climbing. The jets scrambled after it. The Mandarin swatted two of them out of the sky. The rest broke off and headed home.
High above the earth, he lay flat against the dragon's back, working to purge what remained of the compound while regulating his breath.
The jets had actually hurt him: his left hand was numb, his right hand was down one ring, and his internal energy flow was disrupted. When the Sidewinder missiles had found him, he'd barely held together — the blasts had cracked something inside. Right now he was running on fumes and stubbornness.
The black dragon carried him east. His memory was muzzy, unclear on what lay in that direction — but his gut said that direction was safest. He followed it.
He crossed the plateau. He entered the snow mountains.
The temperature plunged.
His mind gave out.
The dragon lost cohesion, reverting to sand and stone. The Mandarin dropped from altitude and disappeared into the deep snow with a sound like the world cracking apart.
Then the mountain was silent.
At that precise moment, Daisy was sitting in the Kandahar command center playing dead.
Official story: adrenaline overuse. Current condition: severely weakened. Do not disturb.
She'd suggested using surface-to-air missiles to bring the Mandarin down before he crossed into the country to the east. One of the generals had vetoed it on diplomatic grounds. Daisy had considered pushing back, then let it go.
"You doing okay, ma'am?" Mockingbird stayed close, attentive as always.
Okay? That was the Mandarin. The man who punched through iron armor with his bare hands. She'd been running from him for five minutes straight. Her entire body was one continuous complaint.
But she couldn't let on. The base doctors weren't blind — her recovery rate would set off every alarm they had. So she sat in her chair and looked appropriately wrecked.
"I need to go file my report." She nodded to the two generals — SHIELD and the military base were under completely separate chains of command, so she had no obligation to brief them — grabbed her agents, and walked out fast. The two old men politely nodded back.
They very much wanted SHIELD to share in the reconstruction costs. But she was already gone.
Lacking any other option, they called Colonel Rhodes in and made it abundantly clear that his personal connections might prove useful in arranging funding for the rebuild. Rhodes had no such connections of his own — he had one very, very wealthy employer. He hedged, stalled, and ultimately agreed to one thing: if Stark was rescued, he'd covertly pressure the man to cover part of the bill.
Meanwhile, Daisy retreated to SHIELD's Kandahar liaison point with her team.
She opened the containment box carefully. The Atomic Cutter ring sat perfectly still. No reaction at all.
She let out a breath. This one mattered to her — the rapid silver cutting wire it produced had serious potential as a finishing move. She tucked it away, showered, and was unconscious almost before she hit the bed.
"Rise and shine, beautiful."
Half-awake, brain still fuzzy, Daisy's first instinct was: beautiful? Where?
She opened her eyes.
Black Widow was sitting on the edge of her bed, studying her.
Natasha was still in her combat suit — deliberately one size too small, fitted in ways that consistently drew the eye. At the moment, she had one arm propped up, her chin resting in her palm, with those devastating eyes doing all the work.
"Not bad," she said, with the air of someone conducting a clinical assessment.
Daisy sighed. Right. She was the one being evaluated.
She didn't make a production of it — just stripped off the sleep shirt and changed into regular clothes in full view. No fuss.
"When did you get here?" she asked.
"An hour ago. Fury's waiting on the line."
Daisy yawned, logged into the SHIELD network, punched through the verification sequence, and connected.
She'd already filed an initial report. This time it was just the combat narrative — the edited version. No mention of rings. No mention of fingers. No mention of what was currently tucked away in her gear.
"In your assessment," Fury said, skipping every pleasantry — how are you, are you injured, do you need leave — none of it, straight to the most serious question he had — "does the target represent an ongoing threat to global security?"