Without exchanging a single word, Mockingbird—Barbara Morse—displayed consummate military professionalism.
She pressed her right index and middle fingers together, pointing first at Hawkeye, then straightening them out while curling her other three fingers into a fist, pointing towards the outside of the cage.
Under her tactical hand signal command, the prison guards stationed around Hawkeye's cell immediately split off two men who stepped forward and hauled Hawkeye up from the floor.
They marched out of the cell, through the corridor, across the security zone, and headed straight for the top of the Cube.
A helicopter was already prepped and waiting there. As the guards threw the unconscious Hawkeye into the cabin and shut the door, the pre-set flight path engaged immediately.
Whirrrrr...
The propellers spun up, and the helicopter carried Hawkeye swiftly into the high altitude, flying in the direction of New York.
"Good luck."
Watching the helicopter disappear into the sky, Agent 19, Barbara Morse, let out a sigh of relief and waved her hand to signal the team to return to the interior of the Cube.
"Dismissed."
The knockout gas that had filled the Cube just moments ago had vanished completely under the efficient air purification system. Barbara addressed her subordinates.
Seeing the armed guards disperse, Barbara Morse slung the rifle she was holding behind her back and opened the door to the cell next to Hawkeye's.
The prisoner inside was still unconscious. Barbara stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar with one hand.
Smack!
She delivered a heavy slap. Half of the prisoner's face immediately swelled up, and the intense pain roused him from his coma.
The prisoner's first reaction upon waking was to try and grab Barbara's arm to take her down.
But Mockingbird seemed to have anticipated this. She went with the momentum, executing a shoulder throw that slammed the prisoner from her left side to her right, followed by a heavy kick that sent him crashing into the corner of the wall.
"I've been holding this back for a long time. Fuck." Barbara lowered her center of gravity, assuming a fighting stance, and beckoned to the prisoner. "Come on."
The prisoner, having been kicked into the wall by Barbara, couldn't help but let out a howl of pain. He clutched his stomach, grimacing as he spoke: "Damn it, how many times do I have to say it? Black Widow sent me! I'm one of y—"
This prisoner was none other than Hydra's "Crossbones," Brock Rumlow. He had cooperated with Black Widow to steal data on the Tesseract from the Adirondack Mountains base and had personally transported it to the Cube.
"You idiot." Mockingbird brushed her thumb slowly across the tip of her nose. "Black Widow played Hydra like a fiddle, and you're still in the dark?"
Crossbones' ears twitched. Ignoring the pain in his abdomen and back, he scrambled up from the ground. "What do you mean?"
"Fight me. If you win, I'll tell you." Barbara grinned. "I was stuck out at sea every day before, and now I'm stuck in this lousy prison every day. It's been too long since I tasted the satisfaction of beating up Hydra."
No matter how thick Crossbones was, he began to vaguely understand the situation.
"You're S.H.I.E.L.D.? So this Cube isn't the secret base Black Widow told me about... it's a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison?"
"What else would it be?" Barbara raised an eyebrow.
"Good... what a Black Widow." Crossbones gritted his teeth. "I should have guessed she was a double agent."
Seeing that Crossbones was hesitating to fight, Barbara dropped her fighting stance and leaned back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. "So, what else have you guessed?"
Crossbones grinned, baring his teeth. This time, it was his turn to raise his fists in front of him.
"Unlock all these shackles on me and fight me. If you win, I'll tell you."
As a prisoner, Crossbones wore a collar around his neck, with chains connecting it to his hands and feet, making it impossible for him to fully extend his arms or legs.
"Fine. It's a deal." A smile appeared on Barbara's face as well. She unslung the long gun from her back, opened the door, and tossed it to the soldier outside.
Then she walked up to Crossbones and used a key to remove the heavy shackles from his body.
Clatter!
The instant the shackles fell away, Crossbones suddenly moved. One hand grabbed the iron chain, and the other clawed towards Barbara.
The chain danced in the air in his hand like a living viper, attempting to bind Barbara.
But Barbara Morse didn't seem to care in the least. From close quarters, she launched a bizarrely high kick that flew up from the ground and struck Crossbones squarely on the chin.
At the same time, she twisted her waist, driving the point of her elbow to block the hand Crossbones had reached out to grab her with.
After that single exchange, both retreated two steps.
Rattle...
Crossbones held the chain in one hand and wiped the blood and spit from the corner of his mouth with the back of the other. He looked at Mockingbird with a gloomy grin.
"Worthy of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Barbara Morse slowly lowered her raised leg and rolled her neck. Amidst a series of subtle cracks, a look of satisfaction appeared on her face.
"Cut the crap. Again!"
Three minutes later.
Barbara Morse sat with her legs crossed on the chair that should have belonged to Crossbones, looking down disdainfully at the battered man lying on the floor.
"Let's hear it. What else do you know?"
One of Crossbones' eyes was swollen shut, one of his testicles was crushed, and two ribs on his right side were broken.
But he didn't seem to care.
If it came down to true strength, he wasn't necessarily weaker than Mockingbird. The reason he lost was purely that his recent prison life had left his body too weak.
After all, in a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison, they didn't practice humanitarianism or serve prisoners fine meals.
All Crossbones got to eat every day was just enough food to maintain his vital signs.
Facing Mockingbird's interrogation, Crossbones laughed loudly. "You really want to know? I didn't guess a damn thing."
Mockingbird snorted through her nose. She locked the shackles back onto Crossbones, turned around, and slammed the cell door shut heavily, leaving him alone in the cage.
"Hahaha, hahahaha!"
As soon as Barbara left, Crossbones grinned wide, laughing wildly on the floor without a care for his image, as if he couldn't feel the pain from the beating. He laughed until tears came out of his eyes.
"How could I not guess anything?"
"Hahahaha!"
"S.H.I.E.L.D., hahahahahaha!"
Crossbones laughed so hard he pounded the floor, looking happier than if he had heard Hydra had taken the presidency.
It took a long time for Crossbones to stop laughing. He looked at the tightly closed cell door and sneered repeatedly.
"I guessed it... Your S.H.I.E.L.D. has been so thoroughly infiltrated by Hydra that Black Widow couldn't even find anyone she trusted to transport the data. She could only pull a reverse operation—lying to me that the Cube was Hydra territory to get me to transport the data!"
"I risked my life to protect that data, to keep it from being known by 'S.H.I.E.L.D.' agents, guarding against my own people... and the result was that I handed it to S.H.I.E.L.D. on a silver platter."
"What a Black Widow. No one would suspect that Hydra was holding S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most important data. What a Black Widow!"
Meanwhile, on the helicopter departing the Cube for New York.
The unconscious Hawkeye, Clint Barton, suddenly scrambled up, his movements so agile he didn't look like someone who had just woken up at all.
lying quietly on the cabin floor to his left was a neatly folded purple sleeveless combat suit. On the floor to his right lay his bow and quiver.
In a few moments, Hawkeye stripped off his prison uniform and donned the purple sleeveless suit.
He quickly checked the long bow. With a slight application of force, the entire bow folded into a long staff, which he then snapped into two halves and placed behind his back. He strapped the quiver to his back, looked around, and strode quickly to the cockpit.
It was empty; the helicopter was on autopilot.
There was a backpack sitting on the pilot's seat. Hawkeye tore open the zipper to reveal hundreds of arrowheads with various functions.
Aside from this equipment that originally belonged to him, Hawkeye searched the entire interior of the helicopter countless times but found no messages or notes of any kind.
Lifting the backpack and setting it aside, Hawkeye sat in the pilot's seat, put on the headset, and looked at the destination on the autopilot navigation.
"New York... Oscorp Tower?"
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