Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1668 Alliance

"He refused to reveal any information." Natasha Romanov hung up the phone. "I don't understand why, if you consider him an enemy, you would believe he would reveal any intelligence to us."

"If you considered him an enemy, you wouldn't be standing under this camera, making this call right in front of me." Nick Fury's words made Bruce Banner nervous, but he chose to temporarily trust this mysterious king of secret agents. After all, past experiences told him that Nick Fury wasn't the kind of person who would betray him. He told himself he was safe here, that he wouldn't be attacked; Natasha Romanoff's presence made him feel secure. "His omniscience is a dark cloud hanging over our heads; we can't fight him on an informational level. What surprises me is, why would you still work for him in the face of such a threat?"

"Because of the location where Tony Stark was discovered."

The female spy looked into the hospital room.

Outside the corridor window lay downtown Houston, now half the city plunged into darkness. Red and blue lights spilled from the edges of concrete and glass buildings. News helicopters still circled overhead, their flashing navigation lights like stars floating in the air. Panic spread through the city. Local police mobilized all available resources to quell the riots. Heavily armed SWAT teams patrolled the city in wheeled armored vehicles, but in the slums where order truly needed to be maintained, fires raged. Sporadic gunfire, like a tide, lingered in the sweltering autumn night, like an invisible, transparent beast expanding and shrinking, only to return with murder and violence. The firelight and the remaining lights cast grey-red patches of mold on the concrete buildings of the slums.

A corrupt, blood-red night wind swept in from the other side of the city, making her red hair shimmer. Even tomorrow's local headlines wouldn't report how many poor people died on this night of riots. Pure violence bred in the city's gutter, but no city resident with a little money would be surprised, because gangs were as numerous as cockroaches. Cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and other drugs fed these surviving parasites living in neighborhoods like Sunny Side, MacGregor, Sharpstown, Greenspoint, and North Houston. Tourists staying at the Four Seasons Hotel didn't care; they only cared about buying enough drugs. Even Houston's white-collar workers only cared about whether they could still buy a small bag of cocaine when driving to these neighborhoods.

"Stark was not found at the epicenter of the explosion. It's possible that the shockwave pushed him there, but if he were buried at the epicenter, Houston's engineering team wouldn't be able to dig him out quickly enough, even with the armor's location system alone. We've all seen the diagnosis and know what delayed rescue means."

"That guy wants Tony Stark alive, so he won't hurt us?" Nick Fury, dressed in an indigo-colored caregiver's uniform, glanced at the monitor, determined to go to security later to destroy the footage. "The reasoning is a bit far-fetched, but I hope this assumption is true. I also hope he knows I'm monitoring his behavior; that might make him more cautious. He's supposedly planning to attack Greece or even Turkey. I think he could trigger World War III or a nuclear war, and I absolutely cannot allow his ambitions to drag hundreds of millions of innocent people into the conflict."

"You're no longer the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury. When you formed the Avengers, you never imagined anyone could escape your control. To be precise, you never controlled him; he controlled you." Natasha Romanoff removed her nurse's cap and put on a mask. "Besides, I've received your payment. It's the Quinjet that you supposedly 'oversaw' that you used to pay me for—the one you should have paid me long ago, but kept delaying and trying to get more help from me. Your wealth is dwindling, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets aren't as well hidden as you think, and you can't deter him in any way. You can't stop him from waging war, just as you couldn't stop him from unifying the Balkans and suppressing the conflicts there."

She left the corridor without looking back, seemingly oblivious to the various sensors installed by the Department of Homeland Security. If she hadn't led the way, Nick Fury and Bruce Banner would never have been able to enter the security-laden door at the end of the corridor. Nick Fury didn't even know why the soldiers had agreed to let them through; he could only conclude that his biggest worry had been that a spy had been planted within the Department of Homeland Security or the Pentagon.

"Wake up Stark. We don't have many options. We have to get all the help we can."

Nick Fury pulled an ampoule containing a pale blue liquid and a syringe from his jacket pocket. Bruce Banner saw that the ampoule was labeled GH325-2, indicating it was a variant of a drug called GH325. He wasn't frustrated by Natasha Romanoff's performance; he had long anticipated the unpredictable female spy's style. No one was a reliable ally of hers, and she wouldn't be anyone's. Nick Fury believed even Hawkeye couldn't be fully trusted by her. "We need to get him here as soon as possible."

"I will not participate in your operations, Chief Fury."

The taciturn Bruce Banner finally spoke. He took the ampoule and syringe, preparing to administer the injection to Tony Stark. He didn't ask what the unlabeled drug was; the only thing he was certain of was that Nick Fury wouldn't kill them or hand them over to any official agency. Even so, when he was told he had been under surveillance all along, and was still being monitored, a deep-seated fear kept urging and awakening another part of his soul.

That person once made an evaluation of him.

He referred to Bruce Banner as Dr. Hyde, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and declared that as long as Bruce Banner's soul lived, the Hulk would never die, and Bruce Banner would never find peace. This man further claimed that the Hulk's existence had little to do with gamma rays; gamma rays were merely a derivative phenomenon of a certain concept in the material universe, and the Hulk's soul did not entirely originate from Bruce Banner himself but rather as a possession phenomenon. Bruce Banner stated that he didn't understand at all; he had always believed that gamma rays created the Hulk, and even suspected that his ex-girlfriend Betty would develop cancer due to gamma rays. However, someone suddenly told him that the so-called Hulk did not originate from gamma rays, leaving him quite bewildered.

"You don't need to lie to me. I won't tell you what I experienced in that mysterious underground city, and I won't let Hulk help you. I don't remember anything; those are Hulk's memories, not mine. I can tell you for sure that Hulk is no match for that person. The whole world saw the battle at the airport, and that was just one of his soldiers."

Bruce Banner's face was bitter. He could recall the complex feelings he had when he saw the Hulk defeated by a genetically modified warrior in black power armor, wielding a warhammer, through pure physical violence. On one hand, he was glad to see someone defeat the Hulk; on the other hand, he was worried that someone possessed such a widely disseminated, mass-produced machine of violence. Ultimately, he was a scholar, not a warrior. Joining the Avengers was the most outrageous thing he had ever done. Those actions driven by his own sense of justice, disregarding any rules or international influence, those days when he could choose his own research topics without worrying about harming others—those days that could be called good days—were completely gone.

“I have help, help far more powerful than him,” Nick Fury said softly, pressing his hand on his shoulder. “You know, I always have a plan. I won’t let you reappear in the public eye. You’re no longer that mad giant; you’re Dr. Banner. You’re a good man, Dr. Banner, and you know I have to do this. Someone has to stop him. We can’t let his ambition consume the world.”

Before entering the ward, Nick Fury deliberately looked back at the cameras in the corridor.

Victoria Hand shrugged, scanned the eavesdropping conversation on the data panel with her finger using an electronic stamp, and sealed the conversation into a high-security archive. She felt a pang of regret; her former boss was now a level below Natasha Romanoff in terms of surveillance level. While surveillance level wasn't the same as danger level, and there were dedicated intelligence and action teams responsible for each, Nick Fury's recruitment of Bruce Banner and his conversation with the reawakened Tony Stark hadn't raised his danger level any further.

The Emperor openly communicated his strategy of attacking Greece and capturing Constantinople to Nick Fury. This was a preparation for building a Mediterranean and Black Sea navy after reclaiming the Balkans, and for containing the US Sixth Fleet and controlling the Iberian Peninsula and even the Arabian Peninsula. Only by acquiring the resources and population of the Arabian Peninsula could the Emperor build an army capable of completely destroying the administrative centers and defense systems of the entire NATO and Western European countries. Therefore, there was nothing to hide about this strategy; it was obvious to everyone. Moreover, once Greece became the Emperor's territory, its debt default would inevitably lead to the complete failure of all efforts by the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank to build the Eurozone. At that time, the Emperor would be able to peacefully seize a large amount of high-end industrial assets and natural resources in Europe.

Even though this would benefit the United States, the Emperor believed that by then, the joint annexation of European industrial assets would be a tacit agreement between the Yugoslav Federation and the Wall Street giants who only cared about their own gains. The only things to discuss were the allocation ratio and resources. The Emperor also believed that Stephanie and Gideon of the Malik family could achieve his goal of taking control of Blackstone Group. At that time, whether Europe was rebuilt or European industrial assets were seized, he would get a share of the spoils that fell into Wall Street. He had never profited a penny from the administrative system he had established, so this part of the income would only be used by Regent Viktor von Dum for secret military expenses.

"Where is Maria Hill, Nick Fury? Where did you hide the dagger?"

Victoria Hand shook her head and began processing the intelligence files on her desk.

The Emperor is about to leave Earth temporarily; this secret is known to only a few.

The intelligence services must cooperate with Regent Viktor von Dum in all their work to ensure stability in the Balkans and the world during the Emperor's absence from Earth. Even though the Yugoslav Federation has established numerous advanced weapons production lines and foundries thanks to the technology and production capacity of the Immortal City and Mars, the modernization, training, and ideological education of its troops require time. For example, even the most basic OM (Olympus Mons) assault rifle family and its corresponding modifications require active-duty soldiers who previously used AK and AR variants like the ASH-82, M4A1A, and Zastava M92 to learn how to use these new weapons. Not to mention the new caliber general-purpose and heavy machine guns, and the new vehicles and transport equipment that ordinary soldiers need to learn to use. The soldiers responsible for teaching these skills are cyborgs transferred from Mars. In addition, there are war engines and power armor—products of the Emperor draining fifty years of Martian foundry capacity—all prepared for war. However, the current situation means that the Yugoslav Federation has very few usable assets. Victoria Hand originally planned to take more than a decade to complete this task, but the emperor told her that humanity's enemies would not wait that long and that they were coming soon.

He was going to delay their progress.

As for when he would return to Earth, the Emperor believed he could not predict it either, because the threat was not a threat from the tangible world, nor was it a threat that ordinary humans could understand. Apart from a few well-informed individuals, no one would know what sacrifices the Emperor had made or what hardships he had endured. Nor would anyone know that in order to resist these threats, he had climbed the Himalayas in his childhood, using his frozen fingers to copy scrolls of manuscripts on ancient glaciers, recording all the knowledge he had learned about another dimension, and even immersing himself in another dimension to explore the mysteries of the birth of the universe—every 175 years, all the planets in the solar system would align themselves, and Voyager 2 took advantage of this opportunity to launch itself using Jupiter's gravitational slingshot, spending several years passing by Uranus and several hours collecting a large amount of data to help humanity better understand those distant planets—the Emperor's destination was the even more distant Neptune, and the time it would take to reach it was measured in years.

(End of this chapter)