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"Hawk's back."
"..."
Deep beneath Times Square, in SHIELD's New York Operations Command Center—now fully controlled by HYDRA's second uprising—John Garrett sat in Victoria Hand's office. The electronic voice crackling through his earpiece made him take a deep breath.
The kind of gut feeling only elite operatives possessed washed over him.
Nothing good ever came from that feeling.
"Sir..."
"You know what to do."
Dr. Zola's synthetic voice cut out after those words. In that same instant, he erased every trace of his connection to New York's SHIELD systems.
Sure, the intelligence files suggested Hawk wasn't particularly tech-savvy. His phone was a hand-me-down from his fiancée. The laptop he owned had been bought secondhand off some forum.
But better safe than sorry.
John Garrett listened as the line fell completely silent after Zola disconnected. The anxiety that had been gnawing at him finally crystallized into grim certainty.
Just then, the office door opened.
A man walked in—clean-cut, wearing a sharp suit, the picture of righteousness. Grant Ward. And right behind him, hands cuffed behind her back, expression radiating defiance, was a black-haired Asian woman named Skye.
John Garrett snapped out of his thoughts and looked up at his adoptive son Grant, a slight smile forming on his face. Then his gaze shifted to the prisoner.
"So you're Skye. Want to join us?"
"Screw you!"
Skye, still restrained in Grant's grip, spat toward John Garrett sitting behind the desk, her face twisted in fury as she made her answer crystal clear.
John didn't seem bothered. He chuckled softly and pressed a button on the desk.
Almost immediately, A HYDRA agent stepped into the room.
"Take her downstairs."
"Yes, sir."
The HYDRA operative nodded and took custody of Skye from Grant.
Skye tried to struggle, twisting against her restraints.
The next moment—
WHAM.
"Gah!"
Without hesitation or mercy, the HYDRA agent drove a fist straight into Skye's stomach and snapped coldly, "Stay still."
John Garrett watched Skye double over, a faint smile on his lips. "If everything goes according to plan, you'll all be free soon enough."
Skye thought he meant he was going to kill her. She glared at John with burning hatred.
"SHIELD will stop whatever evil plan you're running."
"And you—"
"Grant, I must have been blind."
The thought that when she'd first joined SHIELD, she'd actually gotten close to this man—Grant Ward, who wore SHIELD's badge but served HYDRA—made Skye feel physically sick.
Grant's expression remained completely blank. He didn't even look at her.
John waved his hand dismissively.
The HYDRA agent holding Skye nodded, yanked her around, and marched her out of the office without a word.
Skye's furious shouting gradually faded as she was dragged farther away, until finally, it became inaudible.
John watched as a fleeting, carefully concealed emotion flickered across his adoptive son Grant's face. He smiled.
"What's wrong? Having second thoughts?"
"No."
Grant shook his head. "Any obstacle standing in the way of our great cause will be eliminated."
John chuckled at that.
Then, in the next breath, he changed the subject.
"You need to leave."
Grant Ward was momentarily confused. He'd only just gotten back—why was he being sent out again? But he didn't voice his confusion. Instead, he quickly shifted gears and asked about his next assignment.
John didn't immediately name the next target.
"Leave New York. Head to Japan first. You'll receive your next assignment on the plane."
"Understood."
Grant Ward didn't hesitate. He nodded, turned on his heel, and left the office.
At the door, he instinctively glanced in the direction Skye had been taken, lost in thought for a moment. But he quickly snapped out of it and headed toward the exit.
John Garrett, meanwhile, watched his adoptive son walking toward the exit through the security feed on his desk monitor. His eyes flickered with unreadable emotion.
Next target?
Maybe there would be a next target.
But for him, there were no more targets. Not after Dr. Zola cut communications.
And so, Even a tiger doesn't eat its own cubs, as the saying goes.
He'd taken Grant in all those years ago, raised him, trained him meticulously, and molded him into an excellent, cold, professional HYDRA operative.
But at the end of the day, Grant was still his son.
So he'd deliberately sent him away.
Because that uneasy feeling gnawing at his gut was growing stronger by the second.
An operative's instincts were sharp. And when you were a HYDRA agent embedded in SHIELD, trusting your instincts was survival.
This probably wasn't just paranoia.
Hawk was coming.
No...
Hawk was already here.
Grant had just crossed the main floor and was heading toward the elevators when he suddenly saw space itself twist in front of him. His training kicked in instantly. He drew his weapon and fired at the figure materializing before him.
BANG.
WHOOSH.
Hawk, who had just teleported directly from the hospital to this location in a single step, saw the bullet speeding toward him. With a thought, he froze it in midair—exactly 0.1 millimeters from his forehead.
Then he looked at the man in front of him—reasonably good-looking, gun raised, muzzle still flaring—and smiled faintly.
Grant Ward.
The next second, His eyes flared crimson.
BOOM.
"Agh—"
Grant Ward—who should have had at least two more seasons of screen time—had his expression frozen in shock. Before he could even process what was happening, he vaporized on the spot.
"HOLY—"
"WHAT THE HELL?!"
"INTRUDER! INTRUDER!"
"IT'S THE DEMON KING!"
The moment Grant Ward disintegrated into nothing, the surrounding HYDRA operatives finally snapped to attention.
Some, unaware of Hawk's identity, immediately drew their weapons and opened fire, apparently thinking they could gun him down right there.
Others—those who knew exactly who Hawk was—screamed in terror and bolted for the emergency exits.
But there were no survivors beneath the Phoenix Ray.
WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH.
"AAAHHH!!"
Hawk stood perfectly still. Twin beams of crimson energy shot from his eyes and swept in a wide arc around the room.
Everywhere the [Phoenix Ray] touched, matter ceased to exist. Desks vaporized. Equipment disintegrated. HYDRA agents—whether firing at him or fleeing—vanished in puffs of ash.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of HYDRA operatives in the main operations hall had been completely erased.
Physically erased. Gone.
The next second, Hawk turned toward the corridor, where more HYDRA agents—drawn by the sound of gunfire—were now rushing toward him, jamming the passageway.
He flickered. One moment he was across the room. The next, he was standing at the mouth of the corridor. The Phoenix Ray lanced out again, cutting through the densely packed HYDRA forces like a scythe.
In the span of a single blink, dozens more HYDRA operatives vanished into thin air, quite literally.
Hawk finally understood why both Ikaris and the DC version of Superman were so fond of heat vision.
Simple.
Heat vision was efficient.
Unlike punching—where you could only take out one target at a time—heat vision let you sweep through crowds. Against normal humans, it was instant death for anyone in the line of fire.
And it barely took any effort.
Hawk's mind wandered through these thoughts even as his expression remained ice-cold.
After witnessing General Ross's massacre and Wakanda's genocide, Hawk—already a transmigrator at heart—had completely shattered whatever mental barriers he'd once had about killing.
This was exactly why you didn't mess with transmigrators.
Because they would actually do it.
And Hawk would.
He'd come here to kill people.
So, with his new Phoenix Ray ability at full power, Hawk accomplished in under five minutes what HYDRA had taken nearly five hours to secure. He'd completely retaken SHIELD's New York branch.
And of those five minutes, four had been spent hunting down stragglers.
By the time he reached the door to Victoria Hand's office, ninety-nine percent of the HYDRA operatives in the facility had already been vaporized.
Hawk pushed the door open without ceremony.
...
Inside.
John Garrett sat calmly in the chair behind the desk, hands resting on the surface, a cigarette held between the fingers of one hand.
When he saw Hawk enter, he took a long drag, held it in his lungs for a moment, then glanced down at the freshly lit cigarette in his hand—his last one. He looked back at Hawk.
"Mind if I finish this last smoke?"
"Since you didn't try to kill yourself, sure. Go ahead."
"Thanks."
John Garrett nodded his appreciation, then took another deep pull under Hawk's watchful gaze.
The look of pure bliss on the man's face almost made Hawk want to light one up himself.
But no...
Smoking was bad for your health. And supposedly, it could affect the baby. Gwen had told him—if he wanted to smoke, fine. Wait two more years. Wait until they turned twenty-one, had the baby, and then he could smoke and drink all he wanted.
Soon enough, the cigarette burned down to nothing.
After one last deep drag—pulling the smoke all the way into his lungs—John Garrett exhaled with an expression of complete peace. He looked at Hawk.
"Thank you, Mr. Phoenix."
"Don't mention it."
Hawk smiled faintly, suppressing the urge to bum a smoke, and looked at the man before him.
"Were you the one who sent those three HYDRA agents to my house?"
"Yes."
"Mind telling me why?"
"Sharon Carter is a SHIELD agent. I'm a HYDRA operative. I was ordered to take over the entire New York branch. If she escaped alive, it would have made me look incompetent."
"Fair point."
Hawk listened to John Garrett's explanation and nodded. Then he chuckled.
"Didn't you think doing that might piss me off?"
"I did."
"And?"
"Sharon Carter had to die."
"Alright then."
Hawk let out a soft laugh, watching as John Garrett leaned back in his chair, apparently settling into a comfortable position to meet his death.
"You've got one chance to say your last words."
John Garrett rose from his chair. He straightened his suit jacket, adjusted his tie, and then—under Hawk's steady gaze—raised his arm in a salute that had been banned across Europe for decades.
And then—
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~# 70 Advanced Chapters Available on my Patreon!
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