radicalducati Chapter 120 Steve Rogers is a Hydra
Chapter 120 Steve Rogers is a Hydra
Chapter 120 Steve Rogers is Hydra
Li En continued walking in the direction the hammer had fallen.
During the day, only a few scattered presences lingered in the distance, but by evening, the number of dark creatures began to increase dramatically.
The closer you get to New Mexico, the denser the red dots that converge from the wilderness become.
It was around 9 p.m. when we approached our destination, and there were at least three thousand red dots in the darkness behind us.
These red dots are generally smaller than those of the lower-level vampires and werewolves.
They have fewer weaknesses, but are stronger.
Most of them were significantly stronger than the group of intermediate vampires and werewolves he had killed along the way.
The phone rang.
He held the handle with one hand and took out his phone with the other.
"Hey, Coulson."
The voice on the other end of the phone was extremely agitated, each word sounding like it was being forced out through gritted teeth: "Lee En!!! What on earth is that thing following you?"
"Didn't I already tell you? I only brought some dark creatures with me."
Lee Eun's tone was considerate, as if she were comforting an overly anxious colleague.
The usually mild-mannered Coulson's tone suddenly became incredibly impassioned: "We only have less than a hundred people on our side! You brought thousands—how are we going to fight?"
"Moreover, based on previous observations, there are werewolves inside, completely different from vampires. They are not afraid of silver, and their bodies can regenerate even if they are shattered by bullets."
"Aren't you trying to ruin us all?"
Coulson stood in front of the command console at the temporary base, staring at the thermal imaging on the screen.
The dense red dots covered the desert surrounding the camp for several kilometers, like a red tide that was slowly receding.
He originally thought that Li En would bring at most a few hundred people.
With their armed force of nearly a hundred men and the fortifications they had set up beforehand, it wouldn't be too difficult to deal with them.
But now the scale has expanded to several thousand, how can we fight like this?
He almost suspected that the other party was trying to frame him as a Hydra agent.
Hawkeye and Natasha beside him were also staring at the same screen in silence.
These two top agents are not afraid of death, nor are they afraid of encountering a large number of enemies during their mission.
But the sight of this vast, dark mass of creatures surging in from all directions truly evokes a sense of powerlessness.
"Don't you have Thor's hammer over there?"
Li En gently steered the handlebars a few degrees to the left, bypassing a piece of gravel that had been pushed to the middle of the road by the wind and sand.
"Has Thor arrived yet?"
Coulson took a deep breath and tried to lower his voice back to normal: "We did just arrest a suspicious person who came in the middle of the night crying and shouting while holding a hammer, but he couldn't lift it at all. He looked pretty handsome, with blond hair."
"Initial scans confirm that they are different from us Earthlings, but no abnormal energy readings were detected."
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database contains biometric samples of vampires and werewolves.
A slight comparison is enough to determine whether the other party is a dark creature.
But the suspicious person didn't display any supernatural power other than being beaten.
After a direct confrontation with Hawkeye, he was pinned to the ground and couldn't even muster a decent resistance.
What kind of god could be so pathetic?
Li En said calmly, "Don't worry, this wave of enemies isn't that stupid; they won't launch an attack easily."
He made this judgment based on evidence.
He had stopped once before in the desert, just a few minutes before sunrise.
He wiped out hundreds of dark creatures that were charging at the front in one go.
After that, the guys following behind never launched an attack rashly again.
Even the dumbest and most stupid animals learn their lesson after being harvested twice in a row.
This time, they will definitely wait until they have gathered enough fighting power before making a move.
Conversely, by the time he reaches the location of Thor's hammer, the dark creatures gathered around it will likely number far more than the few thousand behind him.
"Set up the perimeter security first, we'll talk about everything else when I get there."
He hung up the phone, twisted the throttle, and the motorcycle left a deep roar as it sped across the empty desert highway.
Coulson stared at the black screen of the phone in his hand, his face taut with tension.
He never imagined that a routine mission to investigate extraterrestrial debris would turn into this situation.
His original plan was clear: to take control of this thing that fell from the sky before the Hydra infiltration forces within S.H.I.E.L.D. were exposed.
But now, let alone controlling the situation, it's questionable whether the entire squad can even survive and get out of this desert.
The most troublesome thing is that he still doesn't know how many of his staff members are actually Hydra agents.
If so, then so be it.
But if not, he would never allow his squad to be wiped out here.
He immediately dialed the number again.
"Coulson?" came Steve Rogers' voice from the other end.
Coulson spoke quickly, his words rapid-fire: "Captain, we need backup—"
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone.
Coulson heard the sound of wind, and the faint echo of some extremely subtle metallic clanging.
Then Steve's voice came back into the microphone, calm in tone, but the sound of wind in the background was noticeably more urgent than before: "Sorry, Coulson."
"What's wrong?" Coulson's brows furrowed sharply.
"It seems that Li En's intelligence was correct from beginning to end."
Steve hung up the phone.
Coulson listened to the busy tone on the receiver, then turned and exchanged a glance with Natasha.
The two realized the same thing at the same time.
Something big has happened at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.
Steve stood in the center of the plaza in front of the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters building, holding a shield and with his back to the fountain.
More than a dozen fully armed agents surrounded him in a fan shape, their guns all pointed at him.
All the lights in the square were turned on, and the cold white light shone on him from all directions, making the red, white and blue paint on the shield shine.
At the very front of the encirclement stood a blonde woman named Sharon Carter.
Sharon Carter was standing by his bedside when he was first thawed from the ice and lying in that 1940s-style hospital room.
Tell him the war is over, tell him it's a new era, and tell him the rebuilt S.H.I.E.L.D. still needs Captain America.
And now, Sharon Carter, like everyone else, has a gun pointed at him.
Steve took a deep breath.
He spoke to the dozen or so agents in an extremely loud voice.
"My name is Steve Rogers, and you—do you really know what you're doing right now?"
No one fired a shot, and no one put their gun down.
"I am a soldier, and I know better than anyone that a soldier's first priority is to obey orders from his superiors."
He moved the shield slightly away from his body and straightened up.
"But obedience alone is not enough. I know that each of you has a patriotic heart."
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"I understand that you believe what you are doing now is to protect humanity and the Earth."
"But you also have your own judgment; you are not tools."
"So I have a question for you—does S.H.I.E.L.D. still have any sense of justice left?"
"Who exactly are the people who give you these orders?"
"Is the person sitting in that director's office still Nick Fury?"
The title of Captain America holds a very special meaning for S.H.I.E.L.D.
One of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D. was Peggy Carter, Steve's comrade-in-arms and his lover before he fell into a deep sleep.
The "shield" in the bureau's name comes from the round shield in his hand.
He himself is the hero archetype that generations of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have been repeatedly instilled with from their first day on the job.
Sharon Carter was the quickest to react.
She lowered the gun to the ground, turned to her teammate beside her, and asked with a hint of hesitation in her voice, "Was this arrest warrant really issued by the chief himself?"
The male agent next to her was holding a gun, and the muscles in his arms were taut with bulging veins.
He didn't want to point his gun at Captain America, but an order is an order.
"The arrest warrant was indeed issued directly through the chief's encrypted channel."
His voice was as dry as sandpaper rubbing against glass.
"The reason is clearly stated: Captain America, Steve Rogers, is a Hydra infiltrator."
The air in the entire square became extremely heavy the moment he finished speaking.
For all agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the name Hydra means the ultimate enemy they are taught to fight for the rest of their lives from day one.
All the training, all the sacrifices, all the predecessors who fell in the missions—all pointed to the same opponent.
At that moment, their superiors told them about the hero they had read about in textbooks and documentaries since childhood.
The man whose name is engraved on the emblem is Hydra.
The male agent's gun barrel swayed slightly in the air.
His mind was completely a jumbled mess.
Just then, another armed squad strode out from the main entrance of the headquarters building.
The leader was a short-haired, lean agent named Brock Rumlow.
As he walked, he repeatedly shouted the order: "Captain America is the enemy! Arrest him immediately!"
The moment Steve met Brock Rumlow's gaze, he caught a strangely familiar cold glint in the other's eyes.
That wasn't the seriousness one should show when carrying out orders; it was pure ruthlessness and murderous intent.
He grabbed the shield, spun halfway around, aimed the rim at the densest concentration of gun barrels in front of him, and shouted, "Trust in the justice in your own hearts!"
Then he suddenly turned around, climbed onto the motorcycle behind him that hadn't been turned off yet, and twisted the throttle.
"You're just going to run away like that, Captain America!" Brock Rumlow shouted sarcastically as soon as he entered the arena.
"Your teammate Melinda is already under our control!"
The motorcycle engine was already emitting a deep roar.
Steve gripped the handlebars and remained silent for two seconds.
Then he twisted the throttle again, and the motorcycle passed through the gap between the two agents.
It rushed down the slope in front of the headquarters building and turned into the traffic on the main road, its taillights quickly shrinking into a distant red dot in the night.
None of the agents who had the opportunity to shoot and intercept pulled the trigger.
Brock Rumlow stood there, turned around, and roared at the agents around him who were still holding their guns but hadn't fired, "What are you doing? Are you planning a mass defection? Why aren't you stopping him!" No one answered him.
Everyone had their heads down, gun barrels pointing towards the ground.
He laughed in anger, turned around, and strode towards the headquarters building.
Sharon Carter walked through the crowd, the name Steve had just called out echoing in her mind.
Melinda.
Her eyes flickered slightly as she followed the group into the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters building.
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