Fury immediately patched a secure three-way line.
"Steve, Natasha—drop everything and return to base. Now."
Captain America's voice crackled through the line. "Director, can't you brief us over comms? We're stretched thin out here."
"No," Fury cut him off sharply.
He didn't dare say the word Zola over an open channel. Even a whisper might alert the digital ghost lurking in the global network. If Zola realized S.H.I.E.L.D. was onto him, he could ambush the Captain and Natasha before they ever made it back.
Neither of them knew the details, but they trusted Fury's tone—something serious was happening.
Minutes later, a Quinjet hovered outside Fury's office windows, fifty stories up. Captain America and the Black Widow didn't even bother with the elevator—they vaulted straight in.
Fury went straight to the point.
"Steve, Natasha, I'm sending you to Camp Lehigh, Wheaton, New Jersey. You should know the place—it was where you trained."
"Beneath that base is a massive archival vault—rows of magnetic tape. If it's still intact, Arnim Zola's original consciousness is stored there."
He turned to Natasha.
"Nat, bring a completely offline storage drive—no network access, no Wi-Fi, nothing. Copy the entire database, then…"
Fury's single eye hardened. "Destroy it. Leave nothing behind."
The two agents exchanged quick, confused looks, and Lock (Apocalypse) stepped forward to explain Zola's rebirth in cyberspace, giving them just enough detail to grasp the danger.
Once briefed, the pair climbed back out the window and into their jet.
But before leaving, Black Widow's gaze landed on Helen—an attractive, composed woman standing beside Lock. Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
When Natasha leaned in for a "goodbye kiss," she bit Lock's lip just hard enough to draw blood.
Lock could only sigh. I've managed to earn the title of a scoundrel before I've even done anything to deserve it. Talk about bad PR.
A few hours later, Black Widow returned carrying a heavy lead-lined case—the kind used for nuclear material.
This time, it wasn't plutonium inside but something arguably more dangerous: the trapped essence of Arnim Zola.
They'd taken every precaution. The entire container was sealed to prevent even the faintest radio signal from escaping.
Fury activated the full isolation protocol in his office, cutting all external lines. Then he connected the drive.
The screen flickered. Slowly, a pixelated face formed—a bald man with thick glasses. Zola blinked and looked around.
"Where am I? Who are you people?"
He didn't recognize anyone. This fragment of Zola had been buried in the analog archives for decades, completely cut off from the outside world. He had no memory of Lock, no awareness of the modern Hydra collapse.
Fury ignored him and turned to Lock.
"Can you use that… thing you do—the soul-chasing, life-ending magic—to kill the rest of him remotely?"
Lock's brow twitched. Soul-chasing, life-ending magic? He'd told Fury his name a dozen times, yet the man still found new ways to make it sound ridiculous.
"It's called the Luck Disinfection Technique," Lock corrected dryly. "But sure, I can give it a try."
Normally, the technique required a physical body as an anchor point—a thread of fate to follow. A digital being like Zola was uncharted territory.
Still, Lock placed his palm on the hard drive.
Instantly, he sensed it—the faint hum of encoded life, a swarm of radio-wave consciousness confined to one machine.
He reached deeper, letting divine energy intertwine with Zola's digital essence. Even without an Internet connection, the data structure resonated faintly with its countless copies scattered across the planet.
Lock's eyes narrowed. "Got you."
Luck Disinfection Technique—activate.
A burst of invisible force radiated outward, sweeping across the continent in an instant.
Within a thousand-kilometer radius, every Zola copy—every fragment, every data ghost—collapsed at once.
Their coherent code dissolved into raw zeroes and ones, scattering as meaningless static through the world's networks.
Machines across the globe froze mid-attack.
Rogue servers went silent.
Drones dropped from the skies like stones.
Screens flickered, then returned to their normal displays.
And then… silence.
Even without touching the Internet, Lock's will had scoured every Zola within range. Anything digital, offline, or online—it didn't matter. Within his field of influence, annihilation was absolute.
"Did it work?" Fury asked, his voice tight.
Lock exhaled slowly. "It worked… but not completely."
Fury frowned. "Explain."
"I erased every copy within a thousand kilometers," Lock said. "But the technique burns through too much energy. I don't have enough strength to purge the entire planet at once."
The room went quiet.
Helen and Vision looked stunned. Even Quicksilver, who'd seen Lock perform miracles before, was speechless.
One press of a hand—one breath—and he'd wiped out every digital entity across half a continent.
Vision analyzed the event with awe. "Fascinating. A metaphysical process overriding quantum information structure. I… cannot yet comprehend it."
Quicksilver, ever the simple one, just grinned. "Idol, clearing out a thousand kilometers in one go is already insane. You don't need to overdo it—just clean up the rest bit by bit."
The others turned toward him with exasperated looks.
"What?" he said. "I'm just saying he doesn't have to tire himself out."
Black Widow sighed. "You don't get it. Zola can copy himself anywhere on Earth in seconds. If even one fragment remains, he'll replicate again instantly. We have to wipe him all out at once—or it's useless."
"Oh…" Quicksilver scratched his head. "Yeah, I'm not really an Internet guy."
Given his years of captivity under Hydra, no one blamed him.
Fury turned back to Lock. "So—how much stronger would you have to be to cover the entire planet?"
Lock did some quick mental math. The last cast had cost thousands of luck points just to reach a thousand kilometers.
He had roughly ten thousand points total—barely enough to extend that range to two thousand kilometers in diameter. But Earth's diameter was over twelve thousand.
To span the globe, he'd need… at least double his current power.
Lock's expression darkened. "At least twice as strong as I am now. Including orbital systems and satellites."
Everyone drew in a sharp breath.
Even Fury's one good eye widened.
Double Apocalypse's strength? That wasn't just difficult—it bordered on the impossible.
And yet, somewhere in the world, Zola's surviving fragments were already rebuilding.
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A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
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