Hydra Weapons Testing Ground, The Alps
The air in the reinforced testing chamber didn't just smell of ozone; it tasted of it.
A metallic, electric tang coated the back of the throat, the sensory byproduct of tearing a hole in the fabric of reality.
Ernst stood behind a three-inch thick leaded glass blast shield, adjusting the strap of his polarized goggles.
The rubber bit into his skin, a grounding sensation amidst the insanity of the science before them.
Next to him, Dr. Arnim Zola was practically vibrating.
The small man shifted from foot to foot, clutching a clipboard like a shield, his eyes wide and magnified behind his thick lenses.
He looked like a child about to light a firecracker inside a cathedral.
Johann Schmidt stood slightly apart. He was a statue of black leather and rigid posture, his arms crossed over his chest.
His expression was unreadable, carved from granite, but the tension in his jaw betrayed his hunger.
"The capacitor is fully charged, Herr Doctor," Zola squeaked, his voice cracking.
"Output is stable at maximum yield."
Ernst checked the gauges one last time. The needle was buried in the red zone, trembling.
"Fire," Ernst commanded.
The prototype weapon, a bulky, grotesque cannon that looked more like an industrial engine than a gun, roared to life.
It was wired directly to a glowing blue canister, a distilled battery of Tesseract energy.
The machine hummed, a sound that started low in the bass register and climbed rapidly to a shriek that tested the limits of human hearing.
A beam of pure, azure energy lashed out.
It wasn't like a bullet. It wasn't like a laser. It was a lance of solid light.
It struck the target, a decommissioned Panzer II tank heavily reinforced with steel plating, sitting fifty meters downrange.
ZAP.
The sound was anticlimactic. It wasn't an explosion. There was no thunderclap, no shattering of metal.
It was the sound of a vacuum sealing, a wet thwip magnified a thousand times.
The blue light flared, blindingly bright, and then vanished.
And so did the tank.
There was no shrapnel. There was no burning chassis. There was no smoke.
The tank was simply... gone.
In its place, the air shimmered with a heat haze that wasn't heat at all.
"Magnificent," Schmidt whispered.
The word slid out of him like a prayer. His eyes gleamed with the reflection of the afterimage.
"Total vaporization. The ultimate weapon."
"No," Ernst corrected immediately.
He didn't look at Schmidt. He was staring at the thermal sensors on his console.
"Not vaporization. Displacement."
Ernst grabbed a clipboard, ripped the top sheet off, and walked over to Schmidt.
He didn't wait for permission to speak; the data was too important.
"Look at the thermal readings, General," Ernst said, tapping the gauge with a pen.
"Physics is a strict mistress. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed."
He pointed to the flat line on the graph.
"If that tank had been vaporized, if thirty tons of steel and iron had been instantly converted into gas, the heat release would be catastrophic. It would be a localized nuclear event. We would be cooked in this room. The blast shield would have melted."
Ernst looked Schmidt in the eye.
"The temperature at the impact site is absolute zero. The energy didn't destroy the matter; it moved it."
Schmidt frowned, looking from the empty space where the tank had been to the young scientist.
"Moved it?"
Ernst quickly flipped the paper over and sketched a diagram.
A simple line representing space, folded over on itself.
"The Tesseract is a door," Ernst explained, his pen scratching furiously.
"We are using it as a battering ram. We are punching holes in the fabric of the dimension and pushing the targets through."
He gestured to the empty testing range.
"That tank isn't dust. That tank is currently floating somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, or perhaps sinking to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, or falling through the atmosphere of Jupiter. It's random teleportation."
Schmidt waved his hand dismissively, turning away from the diagram.
"The result is the same, Doctor. The enemy is gone. They are removed from the battlefield. That is all that matters to the Reich."
"But the potential!" Ernst argued, his voice rising with genuine frustration.
He was debating a warlord when he needed a physicist.
"Think about the logistics, General! If we calibrate the frequency, we don't just destroy. We travel."
"We could move an entire army division from Berlin to the White House lawn instantly. We could bypass the Atlantic."
"We could bypass the Royal Navy. Logistics would become obsolete. The concept of 'front lines' would vanish."
Schmidt turned back slowly. His face hardened, the skin pulling tight over his skull.
"We do not need to move armies, Doctor. We need to make our soldiers gods."
Schmidt walked closer, towering over Ernst.
"This weapon is finished. It works. It kills. That is enough for now. Now, I need you to focus on the priority."
"The Serum," Ernst said, the distaste evident in his voice.
"Biology is messy. It lacks the elegance of physics."
"Dr. Erskine is stalling," Schmidt said coldly.
"He claims the formula is unstable. He claims he needs more time. I do not have time. The Americans are mobilizing."
Schmidt leaned in, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
"You figured out energy extraction from the Tesseract in a day. You rewrote Zola's equations in an hour. Go fix his biology."
Ernst grit his teeth. He felt the weight of the demand.
He knew better than to push Schmidt too far.
Not yet.
Schmidt was still the man signing the checks and commanding the execution squads.
"Fine," Ernst negotiated, his mind shifting gears instantly.
"I will stabilize Erskine's formula. But I have a price."
Schmidt raised an eyebrow.
"You are in no position to bargain."
"I am the only one who understands the Cube," Ernst countered smoothly.
"I want the surplus energy cells from the weapon testing. The drained ones, and the overcharged ones that are too unstable for the cannons."
"For what?"
"For... ballistic analysis," Ernst lied without blinking.
"I need to study the decay rate of the Tesseract energy to improve the weapon's range."
Schmidt narrowed his eyes, weighing the request.
He didn't care about "decay rates." He cared about results.
"Take them," Schmidt nodded curtly.
"Just get me my serum."
The Bio-Lab
Ernst walked into the biological wing half an hour later.
He was carrying a heavy lead-lined crate filled with glowing blue Tesseract batteries.
He moved with purpose, bypassing the general storage and heading straight to his private workbench.
He stashed the crate underneath the table, hidden behind a stack of manuals.
'My private stockpile,' he thought, a satisfied smirk touching his lips.
'Let Schmidt have his ray guns. I have the fuel for the next century.'
He turned his attention to the lab.
It was a chaotic mess of bubbling beakers, centrifuges, and anatomical charts.
In the center, Dr. Abraham Erskine was hunched over a microscope.
The older man looked defeated.
His shoulders were slumped, and he was rubbing his eyes as if trying to erase the fatigue etched into his face.
"He wants miracles, Ernst," Erskine muttered without looking up.
He recognized the footsteps.
"The formula burns out the subject's nervous system. It amplifies everything. The muscle growth tears the tendons. The metabolic spike stops the heart. It amplifies the flaws along with the strengths."
Ernst walked over and picked up a vial of the prototype serum sitting in a rack.
It was a vibrant, hypnotic blue, swirling with a strange, pearlescent viscosity.
It looked less like medicine and more like liquid magic.
"Schmidt gave me the ingredient list," Ernst said, holding the vial up to the harsh overhead light.
"Most of this is standard chemistry," Ernst noted, analyzing the refraction.
"Adrenal boosters, synthetic testosterone, metabolic enhancers... but this?"
He pointed to a suspension of dark red particulate suspended in the blue liquid.
It didn't mix; it floated, defying Brownian motion.
"A gift," Erskine whispered, looking around nervously to ensure no guards were within earshot.
"From Egypt. A wizard, they say. Or a mutant. Schmidt has contacts in the underworld that even I do not understand."
Ernst analyzed the substance with his eyes, his mind cross-referencing his meta-knowledge.
Egypt. En Sabah Nur? Or perhaps something from the Wakandan border? Or the Hand?
It wasn't just chemistry; it was biological magic.
A mutagen that defied the laws of nature.
"It's a biological mutagen," Ernst said softly.
"It defies standard biology. It's trying to rewrite the DNA instantly, but the human body fights it."
"The immune system identifies the upgrade as a virus and attacks it. The resulting fever boils the brain."
He set the vial down.
"The body rejects the magic because the energy spike is too sudden," Ernst realized, the pieces clicking into place.
"The chemical bridge is missing."
He looked at Erskine.
"We don't need to change the ingredients, Abraham. The formula is sound. We need a delivery system. We need to bombard the cells with radiation at the exact moment of injection."
Erskine looked up, his eyes wide with horror.
"Radiation? That would kill the subject. The cellular walls would dissolve."
"Not Gamma," Ernst corrected quickly.
"Gamma creates monsters. We want a stabilizer."
Ernst grabbed a piece of chalk and walked to the blackboard, wiping away Erskine's failed equations.
"Vita-Rays," Ernst wrote the words in large, block letters.
"A specific wavelength of light. Something in the ultra-violet spectrum, but stabilized. It stimulates cellular growth and inhibits the immune response. It acts as a key for the lock."
He drew a quick diagram of a cell membrane opening.
"The radiation prepares the body to accept the mutagen. It hardens the bone density instantly to support the new muscle mass. It's not just a serum, Abraham. It's a process."
Erskine stared at the board. He stood up slowly, walking toward the diagram.
"Light..." he whispered.
"Using light to catalyze the change. It... it makes sense. But the power requirements to generate that specific frequency..."
"We have the Tesseract," Ernst reminded him.
"I can generate any frequency you need."
Erskine looked at Ernst with a mix of gratitude and fear.
"You are brilliant, Ernst. Truly. But I fear what we are building."
"We are building the future," Ernst said coldly.
He grabbed a pencil and began to rewrite the procedure.
He wasn't just helping Hydra. He wasn't just saving his own skin.
He was learning how to build a peak human. He was memorizing the recipe.
And one day, when the time was right, he would use this knowledge for himself.
The Corridor
While Ernst was rewriting the laws of biology inside the lab, Azazel was sitting on a cold steel bench outside, bored out of his mind.
He picked at a hangnail with a clawed finger, his tail flicking rhythmically against the metal leg of the bench.
Click. Click. Click.
He hated waiting. He hated the cold.
He hated these humans in their stiff uniforms.
A nervous researcher in a white coat approached, holding a silver syringe tray.
The man was trembling so hard the instruments rattled.
"M-Mr. Asazel?" the researcher stammered, mispronouncing the name.
"General Schmidt has ordered a full workup. We need... a sample. To ensure you are... healthy enough to remain on base."
Azazel looked at the man.
He saw the jugular vein pulsing in the man's neck.
He could snap the researcher's neck before the man could blink.
He could teleport them both into the stratosphere and drop him, watching him freeze before he hit the ground.
But he remembered the notebook.
Play the brute. Play the victim.
Azazel sighed, a long, guttural sound that rumbled in his chest like a growling engine.
He rolled up his sleeve, revealing his red, thick-skinned arm.
The muscle defined and dense, hard as rock.
"Take it," Azazel grunted, slumping his shoulders.
"Make it quick. I hate needles."
The researcher blinked, surprised by the cooperation.
He had expected resistance. He had expected the monster to bite.
He quickly found a vein, which was difficult given the toughness of the skin, and drew the blood.
The blood was dark, almost black in the syringe.
"You... you are very cooperative," the researcher noted, relaxing slightly. He capped the vial.
"Why not?" Azazel shrugged, feigning a look of deep, existential sadness.
He let his tail drag on the floor.
"Dr. Ernst already told me. I'm a genetic dead end."
"Excuse me?" the researcher asked, pausing.
"My mutation," Azazel lied, repeating the script Ernst had drilled into him during the flight.
"It looks scary, yes? Strong? But inside... rotting."
Azazel tapped his chest.
"The Doctor says my cells divide too fast. Like cancer, but everywhere. I have maybe ten years left. Then? Poof."
Azazel made an exploding motion with his hand, opening his fingers.
"Gone."
The researcher stared at him.
The fear in his eyes was replaced by pity, and then by dismissal.
He looked at the vial of blood with suddenly diminished interest.
It wasn't the blood of a super-weapon anymore. It was the blood of a dying freak.
"Oh. I... I see."
"If you can fix me," Azazel said, grabbing the researcher's shoulder with a desperate, pathetic grip.
"Please. I don't want to die."
"I... I will see what I can do," the researcher squeaked, pulling away from the red hand.
"I must process this."
He hurried down the hall, eager to get away from the smell of brimstone and despair.
Azazel watched him go.
Once the researcher turned the corner, the pathetic look vanished instantly.
A cruel, sharp smirk returned to Azazel's lips.
"Idiots," he whispered.
Schmidt's Office
Two days later, the medical report landed on Schmidt's desk.
Schmidt picked it up, sipping his coffee.
"Subject 'Azazel'," Schmidt read aloud, scanning the summary.
"Physical strength enhanced, dermal density high. However, cellular stability is catastrophic. The blood samples confirm rapid telomere degradation. The mutation is unstable and aggressive."
He flipped the page.
"Conclusion: Subject is effectively terminal. Estimated lifespan: 8 to 10 years maximum before total organ failure."
Schmidt tossed the file into the trash can next to his desk.
"Useless," Schmidt scoffed.
"A defective prototype. I thought Shaw had sent me a warrior. Instead, he sent me a tragedy."
He looked at his aide.
"Let Ernst keep his dying pet. It saves us the bullets of executing him later. He is no threat to my leadership."
——
Authors Note:
I have analyzed the physics of 'Writer Motivation.'
It turns out, my typing speed is directly correlated to the number of shiny blue rocks (Power Stones) in my inventory.
200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter
10 reviews = 1 bonus Chapter