Only one night had passed.
That terrifying and evil organization, HYDRA, which had once hung over the entire world like dark clouds, ignited World War II, served as the Axis powers' strongest pillar, and made all Allied forces feel fear like the Sword of Damocles, officially declared its destruction.
The steel fortress located eight hundred feet underground, poured with reinforced concrete, enough to withstand any attack and practically perfect, had now become ruins.
A gigantic ravine stretching several kilometers lay across the entire Alps. Looking down from above, it was as though the entire mountain had been cut through at the waist. Dozens of kilometers away from the base, there was even a huge crater left behind.
After a night of accumulation, the blizzard had long since buried the ruins.
Within the deeply buried ruins, a mound slowly bulged upward. Immediately afterward, a person emerged from within and looked around in confusion. It was Captain America, Steve Rogers, who had fallen unconscious.
Fortunately, he had survived once again.
Looking at the empty ruins around him, with only himself standing alone in the blizzard, he could not help feeling a little fortunate after surviving disaster.
The battle... had already ended.
Steve sighed deeply in his heart. Although he was very unwilling, he had to admit that if not for that man's appearance, he would probably have died long ago.
Just those dozen or so sets of power armor alone were enough to make him suffer badly, let alone the man clad in pitch-black battle armor and radiating terrifying pressure whom he had seen before losing consciousness.
His combat instinct, tempered by repeatedly walking the line between life and death, told him that the man clad in pitch-black battle armor... was extremely dangerous!
Before him, he was like a lamb awaiting slaughter. Perhaps the other side would not even need to move. Just one gaze would be enough to kill him effortlessly.
That three-meter-tall man... was absolutely not human.
At least in Steve's previous understanding, no human this powerful could possibly exist.
Most living creatures on Earth could not make a super soldier like him faint merely through the aura they released.
Pap pap...
Steve raised his hand and forcefully patted his frozen cheeks. He deeply inhaled a breath of air. The icy, bone-piercing feeling cleared his head considerably, and his thoughts gradually returned.
"Crap... I almost forgot!"
After calming down, Steve suddenly remembered that not long before he fell unconscious, the members of the Howling Commandos had also been inside HYDRA's base. They seemed to have also been buried under the ruins.
After an entire night, the blizzard had already buried the base ruins. He, a super soldier, might not care much and could withstand subzero temperatures, but those people were ordinary humans. They could not possibly endure this climate!
The urgent task was to immediately find them, bring them out of the ruins, then call for rescue.
Steve hurriedly touched his pockets, but his face instantly turned pale: "Damn it, I forgot. When I was captured and brought in, my communicator was searched away!"
Without a communicator, it meant he could not locate his teammates' positions, much less contact headquarters to request Howard and Peggy's support.
Within the enormous ruins that had nearly completely collapsed, relying only on the most primitive method to search for members of the Howling Commandos had a success rate infinitely close to zero. Whether he could find them truly depended only on heaven's will.
In weather at minus twenty to thirty degrees, the scent emitted by the human body became extremely faint. Even if he now brought over a dozen search-and-rescue dogs, they might not necessarily find them, not to mention that his nose was worse than a dog's.
Standing in place thinking of methods was not his style. Besides, there was no time to hesitate now. The team members' situation was not optimistic. He had to act as quickly as possible.
The sooner he acted, perhaps the sooner his teammates could be saved.
Steve made up his mind. After resting briefly in place to recover some stamina, he picked up the fallen Vibranium shield, hung it behind his back, and headed deeper into the ruins.
Thankfully.
The building structure of the entire base had not been too severely destroyed. Many areas were still passable, with only very few regions completely buried under broken rock and concrete.
Steve decided to search first through the areas that were still relatively intact. Although the roads had not completely collapsed, they were almost no different from sheer cliffs. One careless step could send him falling to the bottom.
While carefully watching his footing and advancing, he cupped his hands around his mouth and loudly called out his team members' names.
One call after another, his voice nearly hoarse, echoed through the ruins, but there was never any reply.
"This is bad!"
Steve's brows sank, the worry on his face intensifying as an ominous premonition surged in his heart: "Could they have been pinned under the ruins and already fallen unconscious?"
Most members of the Howling Commandos were veterans from the battlefield. Strictly speaking, their combat experience might be rich, but their physiques were not much better than ordinary people's.
In temperatures of minus twenty to thirty degrees, even someone with a will as firm as steel, if pinned beneath tons of rubble, would struggle to last ten hours.
And from the time he lost consciousness last night until now, at least fifteen hours had already passed.
Fifteen hours had already greatly exceeded the limits of the human body. Even if those teammates had not died yet, they should have already fallen into unconsciousness, entering a false-death state caused by hypothermia.
The more Steve thought about it, the more anxious he became. As a result, he failed to notice that the foothold ahead was an extremely fragile structural point.
Crack!
The instant he stepped on it, the structural point collapsed. A single thought of "not good" flashed through Steve's mind, but before he could react, his entire body dropped downward. Like a rolling tire, he scraped along the steep rock wall and tumbled down.
For a moment, heaven and earth spun.
In panic, Steve tried to grab onto some protrusion to forcefully stop his fall, but the thick accumulated snow had frozen into ice. With no friction at all, he could not grab hold of anything.
Bang bang bang bang bang...
Colliding back and forth along the way, Steve felt that he rolled for at least seven or eight seconds. His entire body was battered dizzy, stars flashing in his head and buzzing filling his ears.
When he shakily stood up, suppressing the urge to vomit, he raised his head and discovered that he had fallen into an even deeper region. The straight-line distance from where he had just been was at least thirty or forty meters.
The only fortunate thing was that there were no sharp objects below. Otherwise, with the speed of his fall, he would have turned into a human skewer upon landing.
Touching his broken scalp, Steve briefly wiped away the blood, then examined the surroundings. He discovered this place was a passageway. Aside from the cracked ceiling, the interior was actually intact.
The silver-white metal passageway seemed to be made from some kind of synthetic metal, its hardness far surpassing steel. That was why it could withstand such violent shaking.
Looking again at the height above.
It was at least fifty meters in straight-line distance from HYDRA's main base, clearly a hidden location that Red Skull did not want outsiders to discover.
Steve touched the wall and turned his head toward the end of the passage, thoughtfully saying: "What important thing is hidden inside that was worth Red Skull specifically protecting?"
Thinking of Red Skull's secret experiments, Steve vaguely felt that it might be related to this passage.
He had always been an action-oriented and practical person.
Almost without any hesitation, Steve removed the Vibranium shield and hung it on his right arm, cautiously exploring inward along the metal passage.
After only a few steps, once he turned the corner, he saw the end: a heavily protected metal door with several password locks on it, confirming his previous guess.
Steve took three steps as two and jogged to the metal door. After observing it, he let out a long sigh of relief.
Fortunately, the goddess had blessed him.
The password locks had been completely destroyed. During the tremors, the ground had cracked, causing the gigantic metal door to shift and coincidentally reveal a gap.
"Hah!"
Steve lowered his voice and gathered his breath. Grabbing the metal door, veins bulged along his arms as he poured out all his brute strength.
Kakakaka...
The sound of a heavy object moving rang out. That door, weighing at least several dozen tons, was actually forcibly pulled by Steve, and the gap widened slightly outward.
Although the gap was not large, it was enough for him alone to pass through.
Steve's cheeks were flushed red, heat rising from his whole body. After breathing heavily a few times and calming down slightly, he squeezed through the gap and entered the room.
The room did not occupy a large area. Many files were messily scattered inside. Several researchers had died miserably, eyes wide open as they lay sprawled across various corners of the room.
And in the central area of the entire room, connected by countless thin pipes, stood a transparent glass sealed container filled with unknown green liquid.
"That is... a person!"
Steve glanced at it and froze in place. Inside that transparent glass container, a young girl was actually sleeping.