Location: Unknown – SHIELD Surveillance Hub, NYC
Time: 4:00 a.m.
"Run it again."
The room was dark, humming with silent tech. Surveillance feeds lit the walls like a digital war room. In the center stood Maria Hill, arms crossed, jaw tight.
The footage replayed:
Victor Wick walking through fire—again. Calm, precise, lethal.
A blur of motion. A knife. A body falls. No wasted effort.
Hill exhaled slowly.
"That's the fifth Hydra lab in two months."
"He's efficient," said Agent Coulson, stepping up beside her with a datapad. "And disturbingly precise. Like someone ran a super soldier through a special forces blender."
Hill's eyes narrowed.
"He's something else."
---
Location: Victor's Safehouse – Brooklyn
Time: 7:12 a.m.
I woke to the sound of rain pattering softly against the glass. My system booted up the second I opened my eyes.
[Status Check: Sign-In Reward Active]
Template: Deathstroke (DC Variant)
Stat Boost: +30% Reflexes, +25% Tactical Prediction, Healing Factor (Moderate), Weapon Proficiency Enhanced]
New Skill: Tactical Echo – Briefly simulate enemy's next 3 moves (10-second cooldown)
It felt… surreal.
John Wick had made me a ghost in combat.
But Deathstroke?
He turned me into a chessmaster with a shotgun.
---
I stretched. Bones cracked. Muscles shifted like a coiled spring.
System showed my improved agility and reaction time in the HUD—my sprint speed had doubled. My pulse slowed under pressure. A bullet-dodge scenario simulation scored me at 83% survival rate.
Not bad.
Still not enough.
Hydra wasn't just experimenting anymore—they were distributing.
The files from Polaris showed three more facilities under aliases.
One of them?
In Manhattan.
Five blocks from SHIELD headquarters.
---
That was a problem.
Because if I broke in, SHIELD would notice.
But if I didn't—Hydra would gain ground.
And Victor Wick didn't let snakes slither unpunished.
---
Location: SHIELD Helicarrier Dock – New York Bay
Director Nick Fury stepped off the Quinjet with the usual commanding presence of a man who'd stared down gods and lived to mock them.
He walked straight toward Hill.
"You said he's using tech we don't understand."
"He's not using it, sir. It's using him—or working with him. Either way, he has a system."
Fury raised a brow. "System?"
Hill tapped on a screen. It showed a freeze frame of Victor using something SHIELD couldn't identify—a glowing panel floating in midair during the Polaris raid. HUD-like.
"It acts like an AI. He scans, analyzes, upgrades in real-time."
Fury studied it. "Alien?"
"We don't think so."
Fury nodded slowly.
"Prep a file for Stark. Discreetly. Let's not spook him yet."
"And Victor?"
Fury looked into the screen as Victor drove a combat knife into a Hydra soldier's knee without blinking.
"…We watch. We wait. And if he turns hostile, we put him down."
---
Location: Manhattan – Hydra Facility Codenamed "Obsidian Core"
Time: 10:37 p.m.
Dressed in black, a matte helmet concealing my face, I slipped between alley shadows and climbed a drainage pipe to the third floor.
My HUD mapped the facility layout via the previous data files.
[Targets: 14 guards, 2 supersoldiers, 1 unknown signal]
Goal: Extract Research Logs + Eliminate Prototype
I set my silenced pistols into holsters, flipped the knife in my grip, and inhaled once.
Deathstroke focus: activated.
---
Inside, the halls smelled like oil and wet metal. I crept past three guards, disabled two, and left the third tied to a steel beam with his own belt.
Wick wouldn't waste a bullet on someone unconscious.
I reached the central chamber.
It looked like a miniature reactor core—hydra-green light pulsing in rhythm with some bio-synthetic engine.
Inside the containment chamber stood a woman.
No, a girl.
Young. Maybe 16. Wires in her skull. Energy coiling around her fists like dancing lightning.
[Scanning…]
> Codename: "Voltgeist"
Status: Alpha Mutate – Electrokinetic
Brainwave Sync: Incomplete (76%)
Emotional Stability: Unstable
Directive: Obey Hydra Commands
---
She looked up.
Our eyes met.
"Are you… them?" she asked, voice glitching like a broken speaker.
"No. I'm the guy who burns 'them' down."
Then the lights died.
---
Power surged. The girl screamed. Lightning exploded from her body in a wave of raw energy.
I was thrown backward, slammed into a steel wall. My suit crackled, smoking.
[Warning: External Damage – 14% Systems Compromised]
I staggered up, shielding my eyes.
She floated now. Pupils glowing. Her hair levitating like storm threads.
I knew that look.
Weaponized child.
Wick would've tried to talk.
Deathstroke?
He'd act.
So I fused both.
---
"System! Tactical Echo!"
[Activating...]
Predicted Moves: Arc Shot – Right; Shockwave Pulse – Mid; Recovery Lag – 2.3 sec window]
I lunged before she did.
Dodged the first blast, rolled beneath the pulse, and shot her ankle—not lethal, just enough to break her concentration.
She screamed.
I closed in and stabbed the neural implant behind her ear—gently. Not enough to kill, but enough to short the sync.
She dropped, unconscious.
The lights flickered back.
I exhaled.
---
I looked around.
Hydra wasn't just creating monsters.
They were building armies.
And I was running out of time.
---
Back at my safehouse, I placed Voltgeist in cryo-stasis with equipment stolen from the Polaris lab. The girl was a victim. Not a weapon.
I wouldn't become what I hunted.
The system chimed softly.
[Bonus Objective Complete – Rescue Mutated Subject]
Reward: +1 Custom Draw Token (Ultra-Rare Tier – Unlocked)
My pulse quickened.
That kind of draw? It could be anything.
A power. A weapon. A bloodline.
"Let's roll it," I whispered.
---
[Initiating Custom Draw – Ultra-Rare Tier...]
Congratulations! You've obtained: "Template Fragment – Moon Knight (Marc Spector)"
Unlocked Trait: Shadow Cloak – Blends into low-light environments. Temporary invisibility.
I blinked.
That… was huge.
Now I had John Wick's precision, Deathstroke's tactics… and Moon Knight's stealth.
I was becoming more than a man.
More than a soldier.
More than a weapon.
I was becoming a system unto myself.
---
As I powered down the system for the night, the encrypted laptop buzzed.
Another message.
From SHIELD.
Simple. Direct.
"Meet at 10th & Broadway. No backup. No tricks. Just talk."
Attached was a timestamp… and a surveillance image of me leaving the Obsidian Core.
So they saw everything.
Let them.
Because now?
I was ready.
And if Nick Fury wanted to talk…
He'd better be worth listening to.
---