Hermes guided their every step with eerie accuracy. The vault was no ordinary security room. It was a fortress within a fortress.
Yelena and Widow Two ghosted past rotating laser grids, dropped into crawlspace gaps under pressure-sensitive flooring, and timed every movement perfectly.
They reached the final chamber.
It was massive. A high-ceilinged vault room, circular, lined with steel alloy plating and powered by its own isolated generator. In the center stood a containment pod. It was a thick, hexagonal chamber made of reinforced glass. Blue-white energy fields surrounded it in concentric rings, each one crackling faintly with power.
Inside, suspended in a magnetic field, was the crystal.
Glowing.
Red veins ran through the blue core, pulsing faintly with rhythmic energy... like a heartbeat. The size of a grown man's palm. Crystallized mutation. The legacy of Subject 0X. Essex's obsession. Oscorp's secret weapon.
And it was guarded.
Twelve Oscorp soldiers in heavy armor circled the chamber, stationed at each segment of the outer wall. Above them, four automated sentry drones hovered, slowly rotating, scanning for threats. A multi-angle surveillance system covered the entire chamber. Every possible blind spot accounted for.
Hermes' voice whispered into Yelena's comms:[Notice: Standard stealth penetration is not possible. Recommend an alternate approach. Initiating illusion protocol.]
Yelena selected the utility potion. The nanites shifted, creating small silver disks. Widow Two did the same thing. It was a micro-holographic illusion projector. The two crouched near opposing walls of the chamber. Then, one by one, they activated the discs and rolled them silently across the floor.
Six projectors spread out like scattered coins, each one clinging to a different angle of the room's perimeter. A soft shimmer followed, barely visible to the naked eye.
Hermes gave the go-ahead.
[Projection field stabilized. Begin execution. Warning: Limited window — 87 seconds until next system recalibration.]
Yelena moved.
The projection kicked in instantly. To the guards, the chamber remained unchanged. Still. Guarded. Perfectly secure.
But in reality, Yelena and Widow Two were inside.
They weaved between the patrols, careful not to bump even a breath of air too close to a sentry's range. The projection made it look like nothing was disturbed, but the Widows knew better. One wrong step, one static crackle from a suit, and the whole illusion would shatter.
Yelena reached the containment pod.
A circular interface floated above the base... six locks in total, biometric and code encrypted. Widow Two stepped in and pulled out a Stark-augmented decryptor chip. She plugged it in.
[Hermes: Bypassing biometric grid… Decoding neural-locked pattern… Estimated time: 10 seconds.]
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Yelena stared into the containment unit as the crystal hovered within. The red veins swirled as if reacting to her presence.
"This thing's alive," she muttered under her breath.
"Careful," Widow Two replied. "We have no idea what we are dealing with here."
The containment pod hissed. The energy fields collapsed inward with a whump of displaced air. The platform released a small plume of cold vapor as the magnetic suspension faded.
Yelena manipulated the nanites, forming a containment box. Reinforced. Radiation-dampening. Telemetry-blocked. No signal would escape. For all she knows, that thing is dangerous. Then, she carefully moved the box up, putting the crystal inside without touching it.
[Hermes: Extraction successful. Projection field has 22 seconds remaining.]
"Time to vanish," Yelena said. She placed a fake projection disk in the crystal's place. 'I wanna see Norman's face when he realizes his precious crystal has vanished in the thin air.'
They slid back the way they came, the illusion holding perfectly. The guards continued with their routine, and the drones still patrolled as usual. Not a soul noticed that the very thing they were guarding, the reason this room even existed... Well, it was now gone.
Once they slipped out the perimeter, Yelena hit the recall button.
The projectors flickered, then short-circuited and the devices turned to dust without raising any alarm.
"Widows, status?" she asked over comms.
"Clear."
"All files secured."
"Exit path ready."
Yelena exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of the container against her side.
"Then let's go before someone figures out they've been robbed blind."
And like shadows never seen, they vanished...
...
[Norman Osborn's Penthouse – Upper East Side, Manhattan] [2nd team]
Lina and two Widows landed silently on the balcony of Norman Osborn's private residence. There were the usual guards and security measures which were useless against them.
"Go," Lina whispered.
The two Widows nodded and split up, one heading toward the downstairs office, the other toward Norman's personal server room. Their goal: copy everything. Emails. Schedules. Private documents. If Norman sneezed near a secret, they were to know about it. And set up bugs.
Lina, meanwhile, moved upstairs. There she heard some voices inside.
She crouched low and approached a door at the end of the hall... large, black wood, with a silver handle. Norman's study. Locked, of course. But she didn't need to go through the door.
She activated the nanites mites and placed her palm on the floor.
Tiny nanite mites spilled out, no bigger than grains of sand. They shimmered briefly under her HUD before sliding across the floor and under the door.
The feed came through. The mites linked to her HUD and gave her full view and sound from inside the room.
It was a large office. Dark marble floor. A glowing digital screen on one wall showed data and research logs. At the center, Norman Osborn stood. He looked tensed and angry. There were hologram projections of four men.
'Early stage holographic tech, interesting.' She thought.
Military men. Defense officials. High-ranking.
One of them was mid-sentence, voice low but cold.
"We gave you two years, Osborn. Two years of black-budget funds, stolen research, and access to assets you shouldn't even know about."
Norman scowled. "You don't understand how complex the process is. The G-Serum..."
"We don't care about your excuses," another official snapped. "We care about results. We want a stable super soldier serum. Now. Not another mutated corpse, not another failed subject. Soldiers. Perfect. Controllable."
A third official leaned forward.
"You have one week. One. If you can't show us something by then... something real, then we pull the funding. We'll shut down the whole damn thing and move to another contractor."
"And you know who's already waiting in line."
Norman's jaw clenched.
"Stark?" he muttered.
"Stark… I'm pretty sure Howard would be delighted to work with us to improve our country's defenses."
The first official gave the final word. "You either deliver, Norman... or you're done."
"You can not do this to me," Norman said.
"One week..."
The holograms flickered once and then vanished.
The room fell deathly silent.
Norman stared at the empty air where the projections had been, breathing hard, eyes wide with fury. Then, he slammed his fist onto the glass table. It cracked under the force, spiderwebbing like ice. "ARGGG!"
He stood there, hunched, breathing heavily, knuckles bleeding. His reflection glared back at him from the fractured surface.
"One week..." he muttered bitterly. "One week to finish what should take a decade..."
He slumped into the chair behind him, the leather groaning under his weight. His eyes went to the dark corners of the room filled with half-built prototypes, old serum samples, and vials labeled with numbers and warnings. Data logs blinked faintly on the walls.
"Damn fools. They think Stark can save them?"
He laughed bitterly... dry and humorless.
"Howard was always the golden boy, wasn't he? Perfect hair, perfect suits, perfect ethics..." He spat the word like poison. "He didn't understand sacrifice. He didn't understand what we were up against."
His voice dropped to a whisper. "I should've sent more men after him that night. Damn that robot, coming out of nowhere and saving him."
Nothing was going his way.
He failed to kill Howard, failed to develop the new SSS, got only 1 week and his latest stunt to recover the Symbiote has also failed. To make things worse, Harry's condition was worsening every day.
He closed his eyes, trying to calm his nerves.
Norman leaned forward, clutching his head in both hands.
"I was so close..." he whispered. "Subject 0X should've worked. The mutation was perfect. The fusion ratio was stable. But incompatible with Harry's DNA. Damn it! I'm running out of time. I have to do something... anything for Harry. I can't lose him too. Not after all the suffering he went through."
He pulled out the drawer and took out a metal briefcase. Inside was a vial of green liquid and a note.
"Revision X9 shows 93.4% stability in primate trials. Cognitive retention remains intact. Enhanced musculature growth confirmed. Initial aggression levels are elevated but within manageable range. Risk of neurodegeneration: reduced by 41%. Unknowns remain, but progress is substantial."
Norman stared at the vial.
No more delays. No more trials. No more sacrifices.
He was out of time and so was Harry.
...
[Horizon Island]
Tony stood in front of the screen, arms crossed, jaw clenched. Melina has just returned with the Symbiote. He decided to keep it locked in for the time being because messing with Symbiotes can lead to Knull's awakening and he'd very much like to avoid that freak of nature.
The feed from Lina's mites was still playing. Audio clear, visuals synced. He had watched the whole conversation.
Norman's whisper.
"I should've sent more men after him that night. Damn that robot, coming out of nowhere and saving him."
For a moment, the room was silent.
Then Tony's voice cut through the still air like a razor:
"It was him."
His hands curled into fists.
"That son of a bitch tried to kill my father."
He turned to Lina's channel.
"Bring him to me."
Lina's face popped up on the screen, calm and collected despite the tension.
"Copy that."
Tony didn't blink.
"Alive. I want that bastard breathing when I look him in the eye. And secure his son. Bring him here."
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