52: Chapter 52 Hydra Assassination, A Suicide Attempt

New York, Hell's Kitchen.

Fisk Tower, top floor office.

After a night of warfare, the entire Midtown Manhattan remained in extreme chaos and panic. Only this building, and the thirteen blocks radiating from it, were as quiet as a sanctuary in the midst of a storm.

Lynn pushed open the ruined office door and walked over to sit on the large leather sofa.

"Clang."

He casually tossed the Tesseract, which was emitting a faint blue light, and the scepter embedded with the Mind Stone onto the desktop, as if they were merely two insignificant glass ornaments.

Frank Castle stood before the desk and handed over the black physical hard drive he had extorted from S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Fury.

"Boss, the outer perimeter defenses have been fully taken over. The United Nations and Washington have not taken any military testing; they are scared out of their wits," Frank reported in a deep voice.

"As expected."

Lynn took the hard drive and tossed it into the drawer. "Go get some rest. The subsequent cleanup work doesn't need your involvement."

"Yes." Frank nodded respectfully, turned to exit the office, and pulled the door shut behind him.

The office fell into a deathly silence.

Only the Venom Hound, lying at Lynn's feet, its massive body like a black armored vehicle, was lazily licking the residual alien blood on its claws.

Lynn leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes, appearing to be resting.

However, at the third second after he closed his eyes.

Inside the office, the blinds of the ceiling ventilation duct silently turned into a pool of extremely fine iron powder and drifted to the floor.

A ghost-like black figure, like a weightless fallen leaf, hung upside down from the ceiling.

He wore a black tactical bodysuit, a black mask covering the lower half of his face, revealing a pair of cold eyes devoid of any emotion, like those of a dead man.

Most striking was his left arm, which glinted with a cold metallic luster—a heavy mechanical arm forged from a mixture of titanium alloy and some Vibranium.

HYDRA's number one assassin, the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes.

Before the Battle of New York broke out, he had already received top-secret orders from Alexander Pierce, infiltrated Fisk Tower via optical camouflage, and had been lurking there like a viper for an entire day and night.

The Winter Soldier had no fluctuations in breathing or heartbeat; his brainwashed body was a perfect machine born for slaughter.

"Swish!"

The Winter Soldier plunged down from mid-air, less than three meters from Lynn. The high-frequency oscillating dagger in his right hand, carrying enough kinetic energy to slice through composite armor, stabbed silently yet ruthlessly at the back of Lynn's neck!

This was a perfect, textbook assassination.

Speed, timing, and stealth had all reached the absolute pinnacle of a human assassin.

However.

Lynn, sitting on the sofa, hadn't even opened his eyes.

After the Bloodtrix upgraded to 30% progress, Lynn's Absolute Precision and Dynamic Vision had undergone a cross-dimensional qualitative change.

At this moment, beneath Lynn's closed eyelids, the flow of the entire World seemed to have been forcibly slowed down by a hundred times. The dust floating in the air, the tiny vortexes cut into the air by the tip of the Winter Soldier's dagger, and even the friction sounds of the gears meshing inside the mechanical arm were all clearly visible in his perception.

Too slow.

So slow it was like slow-motion in a movie.

Facing this assassination that would have killed the highest-level S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent instantly, Lynn couldn't even be bothered to move a finger.

"Click."

Lynn even picked up the wine glass on the table and took a sip of red wine.

Just as the Winter Soldier's dagger was less than five centimeters away from the back of Lynn's neck!

"ROAR—!!!"

A deafening, extremely brutal beast roar exploded in the office!

The Venom Hound, which had been "napping" at Lynn's feet, turned its massive body into a black bolt of lightning impossible for the naked eye to capture, and lunged from the side!

The Hound's speed was countless times faster than the Winter Soldier!

"Bang!"

The Hound's terrifying giant claw, capable of crushing an armored vehicle, slammed fiercely into the Winter Soldier's chest. The Winter Soldier didn't even have time to make any defensive move before he was sent flying like he'd been hit by a high-speed train.

But the moment he flew out.

The Hound's blood-red maw, filled with rows of razor-sharp fangs, fiercely bit down on the Winter Soldier's prized metal left arm!

"CRACK—!!!"

Accompanied by an extremely harsh, tooth-aching sound of metal tearing!

Sparks flew!

That expensive mechanical arm, forged from special alloys, was bitten clean off, just like a fragile piece of sugarcane, under the Venom Hound's terrifying bite force, which was more than ten times that of a hydraulic press!

"Argh!"

Even the Winter Soldier, who had undergone deep brainwashing and suppressed most of his pain sensation, let out a piercing grunt under the horrific trauma of having his shoulder torn apart.

He slammed heavily into the wall a dozen meters away, creating a crater in the bulletproof wall, and slid to the ground covered in blood.

The Hound spat the severed piece of the mechanical arm onto the ground in disgust, let out a low growl in its throat, and stepped on the Winter Soldier's chest, its sharp claws piercing directly through his collarbone.

With just a single thought from Lynn, the Hound could bite this assassin's head off at any moment.

Only then did Lynn slowly open his eyes.

He set down the goblet, stood up from the sofa, and walked with steady steps to the Winter Soldier who was being pinned firmly to the ground.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. just signed a treaty with me, and they immediately send someone to assassinate me?"

Lynn looked down at the Winter Soldier's face, which was slightly twisted from extreme pain and cold sweat, and a mocking sneer curled the corner of his mouth. "Nick Fury isn't stupid enough to go that far."

The Winter Soldier gritted his teeth tightly. There was no fear in his cold eyes, only the dead silence of a failed mission. He attempted to bite the poison sac hidden in his teeth to commit suicide.

"In my territory, dying isn't that easy."

Lynn saw through his move, slammed his right foot onto the Winter Soldier's chin, and with a "crack," crushed his jawbone, preventing him from even making a biting motion.

"Let me see who let this old dog of yours out."

Lynn slowly crouched down.

He had no intention of using torture, as that would be too much of a waste of time.

Lynn raised his left wrist. The crimson blood watch erupted with an extremely eerie red light.

A dozen sharp, scalpel-like dark red biological filaments emerged from the watch face like vipers, piercing directly through the Winter Soldier's scalp and stabbing deep into his cerebral cortex and spinal nerves!

"Uh... Aaaah..."

The Winter Soldier rolled his eyes, his body twitching violently. The so-called "psychological suggestions" and "mental brainwashing defenses" of HYDRA were as fragile as a layer of window paper in the face of such a high-level cosmic biological gene reading from the Bloodtrix.

[Target Locked: Super Soldier Serum Variant (Winter Soldier).]

[Starting deep memory reading and neuron analysis...]

Countless images, encrypted information, codes, and names surged into Lynn's mind like a violent torrent of information along the biological filaments.

In just ten seconds.

Lynn retracted the biological filaments. The Winter Soldier passed out completely.

Lynn stood up, pulled a tissue from the table, and wiped his hands with extreme elegance.

In the depths of his eyes, a trace of extremely violent, chilling crimson light gradually emerged.

In his mind, a shocking list had just been stripped away.

On that list, hundreds of names were densely listed.

Former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and current Minister of the World Security Council, Alexander Pierce.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike Team Captain, Brock Rumlow (Crossbones' superior).

S.H.I.E.L.D. Senior Agent, Jasper Sitwell.

...

The entire S.H.I.E.L.D., from the high-level strategic decision-making room to the mid-level action teams, and down to the grassroots logistics support. More than half of the people were loyal to an ancient and evil name—HYDRA!

Nick Fury thought he controlled the most powerful intelligence agency on Earth.

Little did he know, S.H.I.E.L.D. had long since become a shell completely parasitized and hollowed out by HYDRA.

And this assassination was a silencing operation that Pierce had launched in a hurry because he was afraid that Lynn would crack S.H.I.E.L.D.'s technology library, thereby exposing HYDRA.

"How interesting."

Lynn looked at the New York skyline that had just lit up outside the window, and a cruel, extremely cold smile spread across his lips.