Chapter 302: The Blue Book of the Bunker
After leaving the New York Sanctuary, George thought for a moment and immediately cast a tracking spell:
"Direction Revealed – Stephen Strange!"
Although he felt his guess was likely correct, he still wanted to confirm it in person.
Following the arrow indicated by the tracking spell, he quickly arrived at the entrance of a hospital twenty blocks away from the New York Sanctuary.
It was eight in the evening, and just in time, he saw Stephen coming out of the hospital after finishing work. However, he didn't immediately drive away—he seemed to be waiting for someone.
With a wave of his hand, George activated his superpower, forcibly causing a speeding car to swerve and crash toward Stephen, who was standing by the roadside.
"Oh, God!"
Stephen, seeing the car barreling toward him, was so frightened he froze on the spot.
At that moment, a strong hand appeared and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him away from the car's path just in time to save him.
"Careful, Doctor Strange,"
George said with a smile.
Stephen snapped back to his senses and couldn't help cursing at the car that had already driven off. Then he turned to George and thanked him:
"It must've been a drunk driver. Guys like that really need a few years in jail to sober up.
Thank you—if it weren't for you just now, I'd be needing my colleagues to operate on me."
"If a brilliant doctor like you got injured, that would be a great loss to the medical field."
George casually complimented.
Stephen was clearly pleased by that and smiled broadly, extending his hand:
"Hello, Stephen Strange, neurosurgeon at this hospital.
For some reason, I feel like I've seen you before. Have we met?"
"Just call me George. I've been a patient here before. Everyone says you're the most skilled doctor at this hospital."
George shook his hand.
Even though George had used a forgetting spell on Stephen, it didn't completely erase everything. It was natural that Stephen instinctively felt a sense of familiarity.
"Stephen!"
At that moment, a beautiful woman walked out of the hospital and called out to Stephen.
"Your girlfriend?"
George asked deliberately.
Stephen nodded:
"Yes, my girlfriend—and also my fiancée—Christine Palmer."
"She's beautiful. Congratulations."
George already understood—there was no doubt now.
In the cinematic universe, although Stephen and Christine had a close relationship, they didn't seem to have gotten engaged.
Later, because Stephen was often busy with affairs in Kamar-Taj and then disappeared for seven years, Christine fell in love with someone else. Stephen even attended her wedding.
"Thanks. Let's have dinner—my treat. You just saved my life."
Stephen looked at the approaching Christine, a hint of happiness on his face.
George smiled and waved his hand:
"No thanks, I've got something to take care of. Maybe next time."
With that, he turned and left.
But as he walked away, he silently muttered to himself:
"If that's how it really is… then sorry, Doctor Strange!"
Of course, he wasn't planning to kill Doctor Strange. Even if Strange could lead to the destruction of the universe, the Ancient One wouldn't let George kill him.
So George already had another solution in mind.
That was, before Christine's car accident in 2016, to find an opportunity to cause a car accident for Doctor Strange first, and directly cripple both his hands—just like in the cinematic universe.
Then guide him to Kamar-Taj, where he would learn magic to restore his hands.
This way, Doctor Strange would smoothly become the Sorcerer Supreme, and perhaps the node of fate could be changed.
Meanwhile, in a desert somewhere on Earth…
A plane marked with the Hydra symbol slowly landed.
"Sin, think of this as me repaying a bit of the debt I owed your deceased father. If you want a place within Hydra in the future, you'll have to earn it yourself."
Baron Zemo, one of Hydra's leaders, stepped off the plane along with a group of Hydra soldiers clad in exo-suits.
Beside him was a cloaked woman, who pulled back her hood to reveal blood-red skin.
"Zola and Pierce—those guys were supposed to obey me. I'm my father's daughter, yet they acted so arrogantly and got defeated by a few mutants.
Once I get my father's legacy, I'll definitely rebuild our branch of Hydra!"
Her name was Sin, daughter of the Red Skull.
During World War II, the Red Skull, aiming to breed and raise elite Hydra successors, selected numerous Nazi elites and women as breeding tools and took them to a secret island.
He also accidentally had a child with a laundry worker, resulting in the birth of Sin, who inherited his genes.
However, due to the Red Skull's extreme preference for males, he never valued Sin nor acknowledged her as his heir.
After his death, all his subordinates were taken over by Zola, who had ostensibly been absorbed into S.H.I.E.L.D.
"I've always said that 'Project Insight' wouldn't work. Putting it in the sky just made it an easy target. Zola and Pierce were too arrogant. But according to our intel, those mutants aren't to be trifled with.
I advise you not to mess with them for now."
Baron Zemo offered a word of caution.
Even Baron Stratt, who was obsessed with superpowers, refrained from making a move after seeing what those mutants—especially that so-called Principal George—did, blowing up a Helicarrier in an instant.
The Academy of Superpowers gathered not just a few mutants, but also included their greatest enemy: Captain America—an enemy that would have to be eliminated for them to unify the world.
But now wasn't the time. The enemy was too powerful. They had to wait for the right moment.
They excelled at waiting—for that moment when the enemy was most off-guard and weakest—then they would deliver a fatal blow.
"I know. Do you think I'm as stupid as Pierce?"
Sin replied with a hint of disdain in her eyes.
"This is the place. According to the information my father left behind, there should be a bunker built by him beneath this spot."
The two of them, along with the Hydra soldiers in exo-suits, began digging at a site not far from the plane.
Half a day later, a bunker sealed for nearly seventy years appeared before them.
They forcibly blasted open an entrance in the bunker, violently dismantled all the defensive measures, and in the deepest hall of the bunker, found a thick blue book.
"It really was here!"
Sin stepped forward, picked up the blue book, and quickly flipped through it.
Moments later, a smile appeared on her skull-like blood-red face—one terrifying enough to make a child cry.
Back then, her father had been in pursuit of mythical artifacts. Aside from the Cosmic Cube, he had also found a divine hammer that had fallen from the sky.
And this blue book recorded the precise location of that divine hammer, which no one had ever been able to lift.
(End of Chapter)