Begin from the original form of torture and become immortal

Chapter 1745 Exorbitantly Priced Excrement

"Risk? Ha!"

Rumlow let out a short chuckle, straightened up, and his eyes gleamed with a knowing light. "You really believed his nonsense? To verify whether the security margin of this 'core' is really just a paper tiger, I specifically went to review the monthly briefing on the 'Fortress's' logistical energy consumption—within my authority, in compliance with regulations and laws."

He took a step closer, lowering his voice, but each word felt like a cold bullet piercing Steve's ears. "Do you know how much that pee you just peed was worth? No more, no less, including the accompanying molecular-level water circulation and purification, a full three hundred thousand US dollars! An amount that a middle-class family might not be able to save in a lifetime, just like that, it was flushed into Stark's 'safety redundancy'!"

Three hundred thousand US dollars?!

This astronomical figure was like a bombshell detonating in Steve's ear.

He jerked his head up, his azure pupils contracting sharply in utter shock, the color draining instantly from his face, leaving only an unbelievable pallor. He felt the edge of the tactical paddleboard he was holding digging deeply into his palm.

The image of his mother's frugal face in the dilapidated Brooklyn apartment, the scene of soldiers sharing their last compressed biscuit on the battlefield, and the nauseatingly extravagant burning of resources represented by this number collided violently in his mind, creating a silent roar.

As if seeing the absurd nature of this deep-sea cage for the first time, his voice was as dry as sandpaper: "You... what did you say? Three hundred thousand? Once?!"

“That’s right, once. And S.H.I.E.L.D. has already approved the project application and budget for this super health system that ‘protects the safety of all mankind’.”

"Rumlow said."

Captain America was speechless; he realized for the first time how precious his excrement was.

He then left.

Rumlow froze on the spot, the cold metal arms of the Beta suit almost brushing against his protective suit, the slight touch making him shudder.

He watched Steve disappear around the corner, his teeth grinding together.

Secondary? Dignity is secondary?
He felt like the damn bodysuit was suffocating him.

Three times a day, he was washed with strong disinfectant, his skin was tight and dry, his hair lost all its luster, and he was constantly being pierced by four pairs of invisible electronic eyes... This is the revenge that Stark "talked nonsense" in the form of!

What kind of dander molecular interference instrument?
The physical isolation and multi-layered filtration system of the core area of ​​the barrier are impregnable!
Stark was simply using the "safety director" authority granted to him by the oversight committee to torture them in the most elegant way, treating them like lab rats in ridiculous bodysuits!
He turned around abruptly, the movement so large that the sensors on the Gamma suit instantly lit up with a warning yellow light and emitted a short alert sound.

Rumlow forced himself to slow his breathing, forced a nonchalant expression, and walked toward his assigned living quarters. With each step, the hum of the thrusters felt like drilling holes in his eardrums.

The living quarters door slid shut silently behind them, temporarily isolating the four suits from the outside—but they did not leave. Instead, they hovered in the corridor outside the door like four guardian deities. Sensor beams shone through the observation windows on the door, forming four stable and unsettling red spots that were imprinted on the smooth metal walls inside the cabin.

Rumlow leaned against the cold hatch and slowly slid down to the equally cold floor. The sound of his tight protective suit rubbing against the floor was particularly jarring in the deathly silence.

He closed his eyes, and through multiple layers of tough fiber fabric, his fingertips precisely touched an extremely tiny hard object sewn onto the edge of the inner waistband—a magnetic data storage needle the size of a grain of rice.

It contained fragments he had collected over the past 72 hours at great risk: images of the non-core area of ​​the barrier, coordinates of suspected redundant nodes in the energy transport pipeline, and a summary of an internal memo that was not highly encrypted but mentioned "sample activity fluctuations".

Although the items were fragmented, they were enough for the algorithms that monitored the mothership to piece together a valuable attack model. This was the nerve ending that Hydra extended into the deep-sea barrier, and he was the node that transmitted the signal.

Sweat instantly seeped from his forehead, feeling especially sticky in the air thick with the lingering smell of disinfectant.

Pass it on? How do you pass it on?
Those four pairs of eyes outside are Stark's Absolute Territory.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta—their sensor arrays can capture a vast amount of information, from infrared radiation to the vibration of air particles.

Rumlow mentally considered countless options: using cleaning robots?

The movement paths and operation logs of those robotic arms are strictly monitored by the suit.

Pretending to have lost something?

Anything that doesn't belong in the designated location will be precisely picked up by the suit's robotic arm and sent to the disinfection and analysis room in the next second.

He even considered tampering with the daily "contributions" to the exorbitantly priced recycling system... But when he thought about the system's molecular-level encapsulation and near-incineration high-energy sterilization process, any biological or electronic signal would be completely annihilated in an instant, leaving not even ashes.

Despair, like the chill of the deep sea, slowly crept up my spine and coiled around my heart.

He suddenly opened his eyes and slammed his fist into the metal wall beside him, the dull thud echoing in the cramped cabin.

Almost simultaneously, a faint hissing sound came from outside the door, indicating a slight increase in the power of the Delta suit's attitude thrusters, as if it were a warning.

Rumlow gasped for breath, pulling his fist back; his knuckles throbbed beneath his protective suit. The data needle, pressed against his skin through the fabric, felt like a red-hot iron, searing his very soul.

The core area of ​​the fortress, this is the true heartland.

Complex energy conduits flowed with a ghostly blue light beneath a transparent protective shield, a giant ring structure operated silently, various holographic interfaces floated in the air, and data streams poured down like a waterfall.

Tony Stark leaned comfortably in an ergonomically designed suspension chair, with a tissue that had been used to wipe coffee stains lying casually at his feet.

Among the dozens of light screens unfolding in front of him, one was clearly displaying a real-time image of the area outside the Rumlow living pod, with four red dots remaining perfectly still.

Tony took a sip of the premium Geisha coffee in his hand, and the rich and complex fruity aroma spread across his tongue.

He gracefully swiped his fingertips across the control interface, zooming in on the view of the Rumlow hatch monitoring system, his gaze sweeping over the four loyal steel guards with interest.

He brought up another split screen, on which complex physiological parameter analysis graphs scrolled rapidly. The source was the sensors embedded in Rumlow's protective suit—weak abnormal skin conductance, subtle disturbances in heart rhythm, brief peaks in respiratory rate... All the data streams pointed to the same conclusion: a continuously rising pressure threshold.

(End of this chapter)