Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 489 I am the Hydra (Part 1) (Second Update)

He was furious! That was Salomon's initial thought.

The scorching flames of his heart, the rage surging through his veins like boiling oil, clinging to his very bones like the most stubborn virus, as if somewhere on Earth someone was gloating over having toyed with him. He took a deep breath of purified seaside air, which he then channeled into this massive underground city hundreds of feet below the surface.

The air temperature here is constant, maintained at a cool and comfortable level by the ventilation system. Stephanie suddenly felt a bit stuffy and glanced at the thermometer on the table. Being underground, you can't help but check the carbon dioxide level constantly—she noticed that the temperature in the Immortal City had suddenly risen a few degrees without her notifying her.

Salomon quickly regained his composure.

His gaze turned icy, all his emotions deeply concealed, but his breathing still carried a fury enough to ignite the air.

It was his fault, without a doubt. It was absolutely his fault, without a doubt.

The hard drive that was supposed to contain the Samaritan's Code didn't contain programs, but a bunch of worthless documents. Someone had thoroughly fooled him, rendering all the programming knowledge Salomon had acquired over months of traveling between Oxford colleges specifically for this purpose useless. An entire semester had been spent studying artificial intelligence, and this hard drive felt like the harshest slap in the face, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. He didn't believe a worthless hard drive was worth the effort of that cyberterrorism organization; Harold Finch's classmates must have done their job, and someone must have switched the hard drive.

After calming down, Salomon poured himself a glass of wine.

Who? When?

He sent Tita a message, asking her to bring him the operational documents. Then, he sat on the sofa in his office, gazing out at the eternal night. After Tita handed him the documents, Salomon began to review everything he knew.

“I just seem to know everything, Rogers,” Agent Natasha Romanoff said. “But there’s someone who definitely knows what’s going on, someone who foresaw this situation at S.H.I.E.L.D. I can assure you he has absolutely nothing to do with this; he simply knows what’s going on.”

Not long ago, Steve Rogers had visited the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., one of his favorite places. This time, however, his life became a museum exhibit; he was called a walking artifact, hailed as a global hero. Honor, courage, and sacrifice were the themes of the exhibition, but Steve Rogers felt nothing. As he strolled through the museum, standing next to the Howling Commandos mannequins, he felt as if he too had become a meticulously crafted exhibit.

In his eyes, the world is no longer the one he used to strive for.

In the screening room, a 1953 interview with Peggy Carter was playing. "It was a tough winter. A blizzard trapped half a battalion inside the German lines. Steve, Captain Rogers, single-handedly broke through Hydra's blockade and rescued Allied soldiers who had been trapped for months. He saved thousands of people, including... the man who later became my husband."

Even Peggy Carter was no longer the person he remembered from the videos. Without a doubt, Steve Rogers went to see her, watching the once young and beautiful old woman once again step into the mists of time. That sight tore at his heart. By the time he left, his conviction was unwavering.

He would absolutely not agree to Project Insight. Whatever Nick Fury's original intentions, S.H.I.E.L.D. had changed; it was no longer the same as when Peggy Carter created it. And not long ago, he had watched Nick Fury be pronounced dead by the doctors, and then S.H.I.E.L.D. was besieged.

Natasha Romanoff uttered the name, and unsurprisingly, Rogers hesitated. "Nick Fury is dead. But I assure you Nick Fury would trust him," she said. "He said many times that the guy was someone with the same ideals as him. He wasn't some kid; I've known him longer than you have. He was already quite extraordinary when he was about fifteen. He was a man of plan from the very beginning. And I've seen his abilities. He's not some gypsy circus girl using tarot cards for prophecy. I believe he saw it all along, but nobody believed him then."

Romanov's expression was so resolute that even Steve Rogers couldn't help but waver.

"How are we going to find him?" he asked. "Nick Fury has buried all of Salomon Damonette's files, and I haven't seen him in a long time."

"I know a way," Natasha Romanov smiled confidently. "I guarantee it will work."

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Salomon walked out of the server room with a gloomy expression, frost forming on his eyebrows. The low temperature generated by magic was sealed inside the heavy door that had just been closed.

He accepted the proposal for artificial intelligence.

Although the artificial intelligence had no such motivation, Salomon felt deeply humiliated by accepting the proposal under duress and losing the initiative. Destroying the Samaritans together had become his next objective, and the machine had already devised a countermeasure, having Ms. Groves tamper with the Samaritans' servers.

The machine never told Salomon about this; it simply watched as the arcane mage's efforts were in vain.

Even if the Samaritans come online, the machine can still create an information blind spot. Though small, it's enough to keep a few people from being tracked by the Samaritans. Now, the machine needs Salomon to expand this capability, because only Salomon possesses armed forces beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

Destroying a server doesn't destroy an artificial intelligence, Salomon understood this deeply. He now waited for the Samaritan to come online, and then, based on the Samaritan's server location detected by the machine, he would coordinate a cyber offensive to destroy everything the Samaritan needed to survive.

Like hunting.

Salomon's plan was brewing. He wouldn't be content to watch the machine regain the upper hand in the transaction. Salomon was furious that the machine had concealed the truth, because he had seen in the bank's surveillance footage that the two hard drives had already been switched by bank staff before Catherine took them from Harold Finch and his classmates.

The "always vigilant" attack was merely a smokescreen. The online unemployed attracted everyone's attention, including Salomon's and the machine's. However, only the machine knew the truth, and it chose to keep it from Salomon. Although this was only due to a trade-off—the machine didn't want another terrifying artificial intelligence to emerge—Salomon was still dissatisfied with its concealment.

An electronic God can do many things in this world, and there happens to be more than one such God. Even the most powerful artificial intelligence needs a user, and Salomon plans to give the Samaritan a new master, to operate alongside that machine.

He invested heavily in building servers to provide services to the AI, and he also provided measures to protect it. However, so far, their cooperation has been superficial. The Samaritan incident will completely determine the primary and secondary relationship between him and the AI. This is related to the mission of the Martian Foundry, and Salomon will show no mercy to anyone.

The machine seemed to have sensed Salomon's intentions, so it has been working quite hard lately.

It sent two video clips to Salomon.

The first video shows a black vehicle surrounded by a black SWAT team, taking place on a street in Washington, D.C.

The second video shows a red-haired woman waving at the camera, mouthing the name Salomon.

Please vote for me!!

(End of this chapter)