Levi's casually spoken words—"There's something else"—were like a drop of ice water falling into a pan of boiling oil. The atmosphere froze instantly.
"Explain. Now."
Steve Rogers' face—handsome enough to belong on a Greek statue—snapped tight. His hand clamped down on Levi's shoulder like a steel vise. If Levi hadn't just finished a full "hardware upgrade," that grip alone would've cracked bone. The future leader of the Avengers had no trace of warmth in his eyes now—only the razor-sharp focus of a hawk locking onto prey.
Up front, Logan stiffened as well. He didn't turn around, but the ever-present cigar slipped from the corner of his mouth, hit the snow, and went out with a sizzle. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air like a lone wolf sensing a natural enemy, every muscle in his body shifting into combat readiness.
"A signal source? No… not that." Levi closed his eyes, pushing the fully integrated super-soldier serum to its limit. His brain instantly transformed into a precision sonar system, filtering, analyzing, and modeling the flood of soundwave data pouring in.
"Not one. Thousands… maybe more." Levi's eyes flew open, his expression strange—not fear, but the excitement of discovering a new continent. "They're moving. Right under our feet. Inside the walls. Like a swarm of awakened insects. And they're… powered up."
"The smell's wrong," Logan finally said, his voice rough like sandpaper. "Besides rust and blood, there's ozone. Burnt wiring. These things are electrified."
Electrified. Massive numbers. Moving inside the walls.
Those keywords combined into something deeply ominous. Steve and Logan—veterans of countless battles—instantly understood this was very bad news.
Levi, meanwhile, recalled the conversation he'd overheard earlier from that Hydra officer.
"The Final Purification Protocol!" he blurted out at just the right moment, putting on a perfectly timed look of dawning horror. "That's what he was talking about! They're not blowing the place up—they're releasing these things to clean the underground facility, along with our guys!"
Steve's face went completely pale.
This was no longer a rescue mission. This was pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth—while the volcano was already rumbling.
"Move!"
Steve didn't hesitate for a second, charging straight down the pitch-black underground stairwell. Levi and Logan followed close behind—one already calculating how much this "experience pack" would help his new body adapt, the other driven purely by a beastly instinct for battle now fully unleashed.
They plunged underground, greeted by a stench of oil, dust, and sharp ozone. From deep within the walls came a scritch-scritch sound—metal grinding against metal, enough to make teeth ache. Like countless crabs crawling through pipes, drawing closer by the second.
Suddenly—
Crack!
A slab of concrete fell away from the wall ahead. A mechanical spider the size of a fist poked its way out, six segmented metal legs clinging to the surface. Its crimson compound eyes flickered once—and locked onto them.
Then a second.
A third.
With a thunderous boom, the entire wall collapsed like a termite-eaten dam. Hundreds—no, thousands—of identical mechanical spiders poured out like a black tide. Their legs clattered against the floor in a deafening chorus, red electronic eyes linking together into a sea of despairing stars.
"Explosive mechanical spiders," Levi muttered, staring at the spectacle. "Hydra's creativity really does only go down the wrong paths."
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Steve raised his shield and became the very definition of immovable. The spiders hurled themselves at him without fear, detonating on impact in bursts of electric sparks. The scene looked absurdly festive—like New Year's fireworks, just louder and deadlier.
"RAH!"
Logan was even simpler about it. Instead of retreating, he charged straight in like a berserker with god mode enabled. Bone claws flashed, metal tore, explosions chained together—his efficiency was terrifying.
Levi chose a third path.
"Time to test the limits of this new body."
He kicked off the ground, light as a feather, tapping the wall with his toes and flipping smoothly—ending up hanging upside down from the ceiling, moving on all fours.
Perfect balance. Complete spatial awareness. Agility and strength from the super-soldier serum, pushed to their fullest expression.
"The view from the ceiling really is different."
Grinning, Levi scuttled across the ceiling like a true predator. Each movement placed him precisely above the densest clusters of spiders.
Then he stomped.
BOOM!
All the serum-enhanced force in his body poured straight down through his feet. A massive section of ceiling collapsed along with the spiders beneath it, pulverized into scrap and dust. Way more satisfying than stomping cockroaches.
One tank. One berserker. One hyper-mobile assassin.
The classic iron triangle—holding the line against the metallic tide.
But just as Levi was getting into it, his full-range "sonar" picked up something deeply wrong.
The real swarm—the vast ocean of mechanical bodies—wasn't engaging them at all. Using backup pipes and ventilation shafts, it was bypassing the fight entirely, converging from all directions toward Cell Block B.
A feint.
Small units to pin them down. The main force going for the prisoners.
"Shit!" Levi instantly switched to panicked teammate mode, shouting down below. "Captain! We've been played! The main swarm's going around us—target's still the cells!"
Steve and Logan froze for a split second.
"Disengage! Push through!"
Steve made the call immediately. No hesitation. The three forced a breakout, carving a path straight through the storm of sparks and steel.
But when they burst out of the corridor and reached the main artery leading to Sector B, all three slammed to a halt.
Ahead of them, two machine-gun nests—sandbags and steel plates hastily assembled—completely blocked the only passage. Two MG42s, the infamous "Hitler's buzzsaws," stared at them with black, hungry barrels.
Behind them, the mechanical spider tide regrouped, the scritch-scritch of metal legs rising again as it prepared to surge forward.
Heavy fire blocking the front.
Endless self-destructing mobs closing in from behind.
Levi licked his dry lips. The light in his eyes only grew brighter.
Now this was getting interesting.
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