Jack awoke with a gasp, not to the cold stone of the Underworld, but to the familiar, shifting landscape of his own soul. He stood on the shore of a black, glassy sea that reflected the star-dusted cosmos above. Before him, the Monkey King stood, his golden armor gleaming, his expression a mask of ancient amusement.
"So," the Great Sage's voice rumbled, a sound of mountains and mischief. "How was it? What kind of memories do you have now?"
The memories were a chaotic storm in Jack's mind, a tyrant king, a heretic scholar, lifetimes of pain and defiance. But one name, one impossible face, floated above the rest. Jack strode forward, his hands clenched into fists, and grabbed the front of the Monkey King's armored collar.
"What the fuck is happening?" he demanded, his voice a raw, desperate thing. "What kind of past do I have?"
The Great Sage threw his head back and laughed, the sound a wild, echoing "Kekekekeke!" that seemed to shake the very stars. "Such an impatient young fellow. So, what do you remember?"
"Achilles," Jack said, the name a strange, foreign thing on his tongue. "But how? What timeline do we live in?"
For a fraction of a second, the Sage's triumphant smile faded, replaced by a flicker of profound, ancient sadness. "It is not time for you to remember," he said, his voice softening. "It is better to experience it yourself. Search for the other fragments. There is still more you need to remember."
"Just say it to me, goddammit!" Jack shouted, tightening his grip. "You know it! Tell me now!"
The Monkey King's smirk returned. "You seem more distraught than I thought you would." With a casual, almost lazy motion, he lifted his pinky finger and broke Jack's hand from his collar. He then sat down, cross-legged, on the star-dusted shore. "Does it have to do with those alien gods?"
Jack just nodded, the fight draining out of him, leaving only a hollow confusion.
The Sage's gaze turned distant. "Did you build a friendship with one of them?"
Again, Jack could only nod.
Wukong let out a long, weary sigh. "Just be yourself," he said, his voice a quiet, final instruction. "Follow what your gut says. After that, check it with your heart. Between those two, it will tell you which path you should take."
The ground beneath the Monkey King began to shimmer, his form dissolving like smoke into the glassy shore, becoming Jack's own reflection once more. "See you next time," his voice echoed, a final, fading whisper in the quiet of Jack's soul.
Jack Hou's eyes snapped open with a sharp, ragged gasp. He was awake. For real this time. The salty air of Cape Matapan filled his lungs, and the sound of the gentle waves was a soothing, solid presence. He looked around and saw, resting in his right hand, a simple, unadorned gourd. He opened it, and the smile of a divine drink, a scent of ambrosia and forgotten sunlight, drifted out. As he drank it, contrary to his thoughts, it felt like heaven had touched his mouth, and for a blissful moment, he swam in it.
…
Deep within a nameless HYDRA facility, where the only light was the cold, sterile glow of surgical lamps, a frustrated groan tore through the silence.
"MY SPECIMEN!"
A scientist, his eyes wide and wild, slammed his fists against the reinforced glass of a containment unit. He cried and drooled at the same time, a picture of manic despair. The other lab technicians, baffled and weary, exchanged nervous glances.
They had a lot of blood from the two Jack Hou clones, vials of the impossible, swirling red and gold liquid. But as the fifth minute passed, just as it had every other time, the blood began to shift, to shimmer, and then simply evaporate, leaving behind no trace, no residue, nothing. They had tried everything to prevent it, cryo-freezing, vacuum sealing. None of it succeeded.
The head scientist, the crazy one, turned from the empty vials, his gaze landing on the two still, unconscious figures strapped to adamantium tables. "Shhh… shhhh," he cooed, his voice a strange, unsettling mixture of a lullaby and a threat as he approached one of the clones. "Give me more now, okay? Don't react. I will take your flesh this time. You will be alright, right?"
The rest of the HYDRA team had grown used to the head scientist's one-sided conversations with his subjects. But this time, there would be a different outcome. As he raised an adamantium-edged scalpel, about to take a sample, a lazy, amused voice cut through the room.
"Wipe your drool, crazy pervert."
The whole room went silent. The head scientist froze, the scalpel hovering inches from the clone's arm. The other clone let out a long, theatrical yawn, his golden eyes fluttering open. He looked around the sterile room, then at the stunned scientists.
"What?" he said, his voice a lazy drawl. "Never seen a handsome man wake up before?"
One of the younger scientists, his face pale with shock, slammed a large red button on the wall. A blaring alarm began to shriek through the facility, red lights flashing in a frantic, panicked rhythm.
The first clone, still strapped to his table, looked over at his now-free brother. "Hey," he said, his tone one of genuine, academic curiosity. "How can you get out of the restraint?"
The other clone shrugged. "Change into a snake or something. It can't strap you if you change, dumbass."
"Kekekeke, you're right."
With a shimmer of displaced air, the first clone's form dissolved, becoming a small, black snake that slithered effortlessly out of the adamantium straps. He then reformed, dropping to the floor. As he looked around, he and his brother both realized something at the same time. They were naked. The only things they wore were the golden headbands on their foreheads and the single, dangling earring on their left ears.
One looked at the other. "Hello, small dick."
The other looked down, then back at his brother. "Your dick is the same as mine."
Just then, the doors to the lab burst open. A platoon of HYDRA STRIKE operatives stormed in, their black armor a stark contrast to the white room. They raised their weapons, a dozen laser sights painting red dots on the two clones' chests.
One clone looked at the heavily armed soldiers, then back at his brother, then to an unfortunate, rather short officer at the front. "Well," he said with a cheerful grin, "at least mine's bigger than that guy's. Kekekeke."
They both laughed, a wild, joyous sound that was completely out of place in the tense, sterile room.
A voice, distorted and amplified, suddenly boomed from the intercom system. "Jack Hou, go back to your bed, or else we will shoot you."
The clones laughed louder. "KEKEKEKEKEKEKE!"
The voice on the intercom was seething with a cold, controlled fury. "We have each of the guns loaded with adamantium-coated bullets, which we now know can penetrate your skin."
One of the clones stopped laughing. He looked up at the ceiling, a wicked, taunting grin on his face. "How about I penetrate your mom? Kekekeke."
The voice on the intercom was silent for a long, tense moment. Then, a single, final command echoed through the lab.
"Shoot."
…
In his quiet, tastefully decorated home office miles away, Alexander Pierce watched the scene unfold on a high-definition monitor. He leaned forward, his expression a mask of cold, clinical focus, and spoke into the secure microphone on his desk.
"Shoot."
The command was a quiet, final thing. On the screen, the lab erupted in a storm of muzzle flashes. The sound, a muffled roar, crackled through the speakers. A dense fog of smoke, plaster dust, and debris from the rain of adamantium-coated bullets instantly obscured the camera's view, turning the feed into a swirling grey mess.
Pierce clenched his jaw, his fingers gripping the arms of his leather chair. He waited. The shooting stopped. The dust began to settle. Through the haze, he could make out two figures, sprawled on the floor in pools of their own impossible blood. He let out a slow, controlled breath, a sigh of profound relief. At the very least, now they could sweep this whole failed experiment away, using the remaining clone bodies for a more… discreet dissection.
Then, an unexpected sound crackled through the speakers. A sound that made the blood in his veins turn to ice.
"KEKEKEKEKEKE!"
Through the thinning smoke, the two laid-out bodies began to stir. One of the clones sat up, stretching his arms over his head with a loud, satisfying crack of his joints. "That was one way to freshen our joints," he said cheerfully.
The other clone rolled his neck with a wet pop. "Let's do this, bitch."
One of them leaped to his feet, his nude form a stark, impossible silhouette against the carnage. He threw his arms wide, a mad, brilliant grin on his face, and roared at the top of his lungs.
"QUEUE THE FUCKING MUSIC, BABY!!!"
The massacre began not with a roar, but with a dance.
The first clone moved, a blur of motion that the HYDRA operatives couldn't track. He didn't run; he flowed. He plucked an adamantium bullet from the air with two fingers, examined it with the critical eye of a jeweler, and flicked it. The bullet shot back with impossible speed, embedding itself in the throat of the soldier who had fired it. The man dropped his rifle, clutching his neck with a gurgling sound.
"Ooh, a return-to-sender policy!" the clone chirped. "I didn't know you guys were so eco-friendly!"
The other clone was already in motion. He vaulted over a lab table, his body a graceful, deadly arc, and landed amidst a squad of terrified soldiers. He grabbed the nearest man's rifle and, instead of firing it, used it as a baseball bat, caving in the helmet of the soldier next to him with a sickening crunch. He then spun, using the rifle's stock to break the jaw of a third before snapping the weapon in half over his knee.
"Cheap plastic crap!" he complained. "HYDRA's budget must have been cut. Sad!"
More soldiers poured in from the corridors, their disciplined formations breaking into a panicked mob. One of the clones touched his earring, and the Ruyi Jingu Bang appeared in his hand. It extended instantly, not into a pillar, but into a thin, whip-like rod. He lashed it out, the golden tip whistling through the air. It didn't just strike; it disarmed. Rifles were torn from hands, pistols sent skittering across the floor. He then shortened the staff to the size of a chopstick and, with a series of quick, precise jabs, began to disable the soldiers, targeting pressure points with a cruel, surgical glee.
"This one makes you wet the bed for a month," he hummed, tapping a soldier on the neck. "This one makes you think you're a chicken." He jabbed another. "And this one… this one just really, really hurts."
The other clone, weaponless, simply used the soldiers themselves. He grabbed one operative by the legs and swung him like a flail, his armored body a brutal, effective weapon that cleared a circle of his comrades. He then tossed the dizzy, groaning man into a control panel, which exploded in a shower of sparks.
"Body bowling!" he cheered. "I'm going for a strike!"
They found the head scientist cowering under a desk. The clone with the staff strolled over, his smile gone, replaced by a cold, curious stare. "My specimen," the scientist whimpered, his eyes wide with terror.
"Oh, you want a specimen?" the clone asked, his voice a low, dangerous purr. He grabbed the scientist by his lab coat and dragged him out. "Let's play a game. It's called 'Anatomy Lesson.'" He began to twist the scientist's arm, slowly, deliberately, until it bent at an angle nature never intended. The sound of snapping bone was drowned out by a scream.
"Fascinating," the clone mused, dropping the man. "It seems your humerus is not so humorous now. Kekeke."
The other clone joined him, looking down at the sobbing, broken scientist. He plucked a bloody, adamantium-coated bullet from a nearby wall and held it in front of the man's face. "You know," he said conversationally, "I've always wondered what would happen if you reverse-engineered a bullet." He then shoved the bullet, point-first, into the scientist's open, screaming mouth and, with a final, decisive punch to the back of his head, drove it clean through.
The two clones, now drenched in blood, stood back-to-back in the center of the ruined lab, their laughter echoing in the sudden, terrible silence. From the intercom, Pierce's voice, now shaking with an uncontained fury, roared, "All units! Contain them! Do not let them leave that lab!"
One clone looked up at the ceiling. "Did he just lock us in here with you?" he asked the dead soldiers around him.
The other clone cracked his knuckles. "I think he did."
They shared a final, wicked grin.
"Let's show him what happens when you lock the monkeys in the zoo."
"Hey," the first clone said, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face. "You know that moment in a horror movie? When the main characters, for some inexplicably stupid reason, decide to split up?"
The other clone, who had been inspecting the carnage with a detached air, turned. "Yeah. What of it?"
The first clone's smile turned mischievous. "What do you think? We split up. We see who can inflict the most creative horror on these agents."
The second clone was silent for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face. Then, he nodded. "Deal. The loser stays naked until we reach a border, wherever we end up."
"Deal."
They bumped fists, a silent pact of chaos sealed. Then, they split. One vaulted over a pile of rubble and vanished down the right corridor. The other strolled casually toward the left.
As he walked, the corridor lights flickered erratically, casting long, dancing shadows. He raised a hand to his face, his golden eyes glowing with a faint, internal light. He activated his Golden Gaze, and the world sharpened into a symphony of energy and intent. But this time, it was different. He felt it, a new depth, a new layer of perception. The memories of his past life, specifically those of the tyrant king, who had used these very eyes to judge and command armies, had upgraded his sight. He could see more now, not just the flow of Qi, but the faint, shimmering threads of fear and adrenaline in the soldiers' auras. It was disorienting, a flood of new data that made his head throb. He shook his head, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest.
One by one, he began to punch every light source he passed. The fluorescent tubes shattered in a shower of sparks, plunging the corridor into a strobe-lit nightmare.
He heard them before he saw them: the rhythmic, disciplined stomp of combat boots. A platoon of STRIKE operatives, moving in perfect formation. The clone grinned. He leaped, his form dissolving, and in a blink, he was a small, black spider, scurrying up the wall and onto the ceiling. He clung to the cold metal as the team passed directly beneath him, their helmet-mounted lights cutting sharp, anxious beams through the flickering darkness.
As the last soldier passed, he dropped. He didn't make a sound. In the space between one flicker of the dying lights, the spider was gone, and in its place stood a perfect, identical copy of the HYDRA operative. He even had the man's rifle. He fell into step at the back of the formation, a predator hiding in plain sight. His main act had begun.
The captain's voice was a low, steady growl in their comms. "Stay sharp. Eyes open. We don't know what he's capable of."
They moved deeper into the base, the only sounds the rhythmic stomp of their boots and the erratic, buzzing flicker of the damaged lights.
Flicker.
A soldier at the back of the formation was gone. Just… vanished in the split-second of darkness. The man marching in front of him felt a faint, warm spray on the back of his neck.
Flicker.
Another man gone. This time, the only evidence was a single, bloody boot left standing in the middle of the hallway.
The captain stopped. He turned, his light sweeping over his now-depleted squad. "Miller! Thompson! Report!"
Only static answered.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prick at the edges of their discipline. "Sir," one of the younger soldiers said, his voice trembling slightly. "The lights… we can't see."
"Night vision," the captain commanded. "Now."
They flipped down their visors, the world turning a grainy, sickly green. But the strobing of the remaining lights was a new kind of hell, the intense flashes blinding their enhanced sight, turning the corridor into a disorienting mess of light and shadow.
"Sir, the NVGs are useless with this strobing!"
The captain made a decision. A logical, tactical decision that would be his final, fatal mistake. "Take out every light source!" he roared. "We'll move in total darkness. He can't see us if we can't see him!"
His men obeyed instantly. A volley of precise shots, and the last of the flickering lights shattered. The corridor was plunged into absolute, pitch-black silence. The only thing they could hear was the sound of their own breathing through their masks.
To the clone, whose Golden Gaze needed no light, the darkness was a canvas. The terrified, green-glowing figures of the soldiers were his paint.
"He's flanking us from the vents!" a voice whispered, a perfect imitation of one of the soldiers. The squad spun, firing blindly into the ceiling.
From the opposite end of the hall, the clone, still disguised, stepped out of the formation. He moved through the darkness like a phantom, his bare feet making no sound on the cold floor. He came up behind a soldier and, with a casual, almost lazy motion, snapped his neck. The man crumpled with a soft thud.
The captain saw one of the green figures on his visor just… drop. "What was that?! Status report!"
"It was nothing, sir," the clone's voice, now mimicking the dead soldier, answered calmly. "Just a rat."
He continued his silent, deadly work. A hand, transformed into a sharp, bony talon, pierced through the back of another soldier's helmet. A tendril of shadow from the floor wrapped around another's ankle, dragging him screaming into the darkness.
It was down to the captain and two others. They stood back-to-back, their rifles sweeping the empty, black corridor. One of them was the clone.
"Sir," the clone whispered, his voice a perfect imitation of the soldier next to him. "He's right behind you."
The captain spun, his training taking over. He fired a burst into the chest of his last remaining man. The soldier looked down at his own body, his expression one of pure, betrayed shock, before he collapsed.
From the darkness, a slow, mocking clap echoed. The disguised clone stepped forward, his form dissolving, shifting back into his own naked, blood-streaked glory.
He looked at the lone, terrified captain, and his grin was the only light left in the world.
"Tag," he said. "You're it."
…
We then see the other clone, the one who went right.
This corridor was different, a network of maintenance tunnels, the air thick with the smell of damp concrete and ozone. He didn't bother with the lights. Instead, he let a soft, ethereal melody drift from his lips. It was a lullaby, haunting and sweet, the same song the blind slave girl from his past life had sung in her final moments. The sound, carried by the sterile, recycled air, echoed through the labyrinthine tunnels, a ghostly, disembodied voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
He found what he was looking for: a massive, exposed network of industrial piping that ran along the ceiling, thick and strong as the bones of a leviathan. He leaped, his fingers gripping the cold metal, and began to move through the rafters like an ape, silent and unseen.
Below, another STRIKE team moved cautiously, their lights cutting sharp, nervous beams through the darkness. They heard the singing.
"What the hell is that?" one of them whispered.
Then, they heard a new sound. A low, groaning creak of stressed metal from above. They looked up. And they saw them.
One by one, their comrades were being hoisted into the air, their bodies dangling from the thick pipes like grotesque Christmas ornaments. The clone moved with a silent, brutal efficiency. He would drop from the ceiling, snatch a soldier, and with a single, powerful twist, use the man's own tactical webbing to hang him from the pipes. He didn't kill them. He just left them there, swinging gently in the darkness, their muffled screams lost in the haunting melody of the lullaby.
The last conscious soldier stood alone, his rifle shaking in his hands as he watched the horrifying puppet show of his swinging, helpless team. The singing stopped. And from the shadows, the clone dropped, landing silently behind him.
"Peekaboo," he whispered.
The soldier didn't even have time to scream.
With the last of the operatives taken care of, the clone turned his attention to the base itself. The memories of the geokinetic architect, the one who had built a tower of pride and suffering, flooded his mind. He saw not walls, but load-bearing structures. Not floors, but stress points. He saw the facility's skeleton, its weaknesses, its inevitable breaking points.
He walked to the central support column, a massive pillar of reinforced concrete and steel. He placed a hand on it, feeling the vibrations of the base, the hum of the generators, the quiet, steady groan of a structure under immense pressure. "You've got bad foundations," he said to the empty room.
He didn't need a bomb. He just needed to know where to push. He began to strike the pillar, not with brute force, but with a series of quick, precise, resonating blows. Each tap was a perfectly tuned note in a symphony of destruction. The pillar began to hum, to vibrate, a low, ominous thrum that spread through the entire facility. The ground trembled. Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls. The base was tearing itself apart from the inside out.
The clone strolled casually toward the exit, his lullaby returning, a soft, cheerful melody against the groaning, collapsing world behind him.
The two clones met on a vast, flat plain of rubble that had once been the HYDRA facility. The first flakes of snow had begun to fall, dusting the mangled steel and shattered concrete in a soft, ironic blanket of white.
The clone who had orchestrated the hanging puppet show stood with his hands on his hips, admiring his handiwork. The other, the one who had played a deadly game of tag in the dark, was currently using a severed HYDRA helmet as a makeshift bowl to catch the falling snowflakes on his tongue.
They looked at each other, at their naked, blood-streaked bodies, and then, in perfect, unhinged unison, they laughed.
"Kekekeke, your dick is smaller now," the first one said, pointing.
The other clone looked down, then back at his brother. "It's cold, you asshole. You'll be naked until I say so."
"What?" the first one shot back, his grin faltering. "I'm the one who inflicted the most horror on the HYDRA agents. I win."
"No way," the other countered, stomping on the head of a dead HYDRA agent for emphasis. "Psychological trauma is temporary. Structural annihilation is forever. I destroyed the base. I win."
They continued to bicker, their childish argument a strange, chaotic counterpoint to the silent, snowy graveyard they had created.
**A/N**
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**A/N**