69novels Chapter 106 Snake Shield Bureau, Dungeon Open
Chapter 106 Snake Shield Bureau, Dungeon Open
Chapter 106 Snake Shield Bureau, Dungeon Open
"Hydra?" Tony Stark turned his head.
Of course he knew what those three words meant.
Howard Stark's study has a whole row of filing cabinets containing original documents from the Strategic Science Division during World War II.
Hydra's flag, weapon blueprints, and operation reports.
Each page has a red "decrypted" stamp at the bottom, but that's only for outsiders to see.
Howard never showed him the real core documents.
Tony shifted his gaze from Lee En's face to Coulson, his eyes instantly dropping several notches in temperature.
Compared to S.H.I.E.L.D., a massive and mysterious organization that even Jarvis couldn't uncover much of its substance.
He was more inclined to believe the officer next to him, who wore his uniform and reported to the precinct on time every morning, and who shot gangsters in the head one by one on the streets of New York.
He didn't know what Li En's source of information was.
But compared to S.H.I.E.L.D., which had an alien take the blame for the director and tried to cover things up, this is a far cry from the usual practice.
And Agent Coulson, who was standing in front of him with a smile on his face, made the difference in their credibility immediately apparent.
Coulson's smile froze.
He stood there, looking at Li En, the smile lines on his cheeks gradually receding until they became a straight, thin line, and he became tense.
He took half a step forward, shattering all the professional composure in his tone.
"Mr. Li En—what do you mean by Hydra?"
Natasha also took two steps forward, her shoulder almost brushing against Coulson's arm.
Genuine confusion welled up in her eyes, which had always been wary.
Lee didn't look at the two of them. He looked over Coulson's shoulder and gestured with his chin toward the door.
"Since you're already here, come in."
Tony followed him and turned to look at the doorway.
"Are there other people here?" He had barely finished speaking when his gaze froze.
Bruce Banner pushed his goggles up to his forehead and reached out to pat Connors' arm next to him.
"Connors, is there something wrong with my eyes?"
"You have something wrong with your eyes? Even if everyone in the world goes blind, you won't."
Without turning his head, Connors stared intently at the figure walking inside the doorway.
"Then tell me—who is the person who just walked in?" Banner pointed to the doorway, his hand motionless under the laboratory's fluorescent lights.
Connors' pupils contracted slightly.
"If I'm not mistaken, that person is Captain America—Steve Rogers."
For people of Banner and Connors' age, Captain America is not a term.
There is a text in elementary school textbooks about him leading the Howling Commandos to break through the Hydra blockade.
The middle school organized a spring outing to the Smithsonian Museum. The homeroom teacher stood in front of the vibranium shield and explained why the president personally signed his medal decree.
When I got home from school and turned on the TV, I saw a blond man with a shield and a blue uniform fighting Red Skull in every episode of the cartoon. When the ending theme song played, I could even find his face in the stickers on the refrigerator.
He is the idol of this generation since childhood.
And now, the idol is walking in through the door, dressed in that dark blue casual outfit, with standard military steps.
If Melinda hadn't been right behind him, Banner and Connors would probably have already pulled the unlabeled bottle of silver extract from under the lab bench at the same time.
Li En stepped forward, took out a spray bottle, and sprayed it twice on Steve Rogers' face and neck.
The fine mist landed on the other person's clean-shaven chin and Adam's apple, glistening for a moment under the fluorescent light before evaporating.
After waiting for a while, there was no change in skin color.
Li En put the spray bottle back in his pocket and extended his right hand.
"Manhattan Precinct Constable, Lee En."
"Steve Rogers." Steve grasped the hand.
His grip was unique; the web of his hand rested on the web of the other person's hand, and his four fingers were neatly pressed together on the outside of the back of his hand, with a steady and moderate force.
This is the standard handshake greeting used by the U.S. military during World War II.
Just now outside the door, Melinda had explained in detail the function of the spray and why everyone had to be sprayed twice before entering the door.
Lee released Steve's hand, turned to Melinda, and sprayed her twice more.
Melinda stood still, rolled her eyes, and thought to herself that this was being far too cautious.
But then again, this person's caution has already uncovered the alien who infiltrated the highest levels of S.H.I.E.L.D.
She has no right to complain.
Li En put the spray bottle back into his pocket and spoke in a calm tone.
"From the day Nick Fury was replaced by an alien, Banner, Connors, and I did a simulation, and the conclusion was not good."
"What if that alien wasn't a single individual, but a complete race?"
"If they possess the ability to perfectly transform and remain dormant for extended periods."
"If they have already used the same methods in the past to replace various departments of this country," or on a larger scale, to replace high-ranking military officials and political decision-makers in major countries around the world.
He paused for a moment.
"So, has our human species already been taken over from within by another race without our knowledge?"
Melinda remained silent and did not answer.
Steve didn't speak, but he slightly lowered the angle of his chin.
This question does not need an answer.
If the hypothesis holds true, everything they are doing now is merely a case of locking the barn door after the horse has bolted.
"So I have to conduct liveness checks on everyone who enters this door, without exception."
"Please excuse me, Steve, Melinda."
Steve looked away from Lee's face and nodded seriously.
Melinda exhaled softly and didn't mention the spray again.
Coulson, standing nearby, couldn't stand it anymore.
He took two steps forward, the question that had interrupted him when Melinda and Steve entered still stuck in his throat.
Hydra.
Li En just said those three words in front of Tony.
Then, she used the few minutes she spent greeting Steve to divert everyone's attention, and has yet to offer any explanation.
He swallowed hard, and his lips parted again.
"Mr. Li En, regarding the Hydra you just mentioned—"
A hand reached out from beside his shoulder and gently pushed him to the side.
Tony squeezed past Coulson and walked straight up to Steve.
The two men stood facing each other.
Tony was slightly shorter than Steve, but his posture showed absolutely no awareness of looking up at him.
"I didn't expect you, an old man, to look so young."
He looked Steve up and down, his gaze sweeping over the man's face twice—a face that looked exactly like the one in the World War II documentaries.
Steve laughed and extended his right hand to him: "Your father Howard and I are good friends and comrades-in-arms."
"Without him behind me, I might not have made it to the end of many missions."
Tony pursed his lips, as if he wanted to say something.
But in the end he didn't say anything, he just took that hand.
After Steve withdrew his hand, he glanced in Coulson's direction and gently lowered his chin.
Upon receiving this signal, Coulson swallowed the question that had already risen to his throat, took two deep breaths, and switched his expression from anxiety back to silence.
Steve turned to Lee and took over the conversation that Tony had interrupted earlier.
"I thought I had completely wiped out Hydra back then."
"After Red Skull's plane crashed in the Arctic, the Howling Commandos gradually wiped out all of their strongholds in the European theater."
"The Postwar Strategic Science Office also sealed up all their remaining files. Are they still alive?"
Instead of responding directly, Li En changed the subject.
"Where is the Tesseract, the thing you took from Red Skull back then?"
He turned his body to the side, tilted his chin towards Tony Stark, and then glanced at the two scientists holding coffees not far behind Tony.
"I mean, could I take a look around? That's genuine alien technology, and I'm very curious about who's researching it right now."
He turned back, looked into Steve's eyes, and added the last sentence.
"This laboratory is home to the brains of the world's most outstanding scientists, but they have never even come into contact with that thing."
"I've never even heard of it."
Banner put down his coffee cup, and Connors took off his glasses, wiped the lenses twice with the corner of his shirt, and put them back on. These glasses had no prescription.
They also turned their attention to S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Coulson.
Tony tilted his head and turned his gaze back to Coulson.
Coulson straightened up and cleared his throat.
"Regarding the Tesseract—after we discovered Steve Rogers, we conducted extensive excavations in the ice around the crash site, and the Tesseract was found during that excavation."
"It was kept sealed after being extracted from the ice and later transferred to a secure research facility."
"Currently, the research is being conducted in a closed and secret manner by top-level researchers, and personnel with security clearance below level seven are not allowed to access it."
After listening, Li En was silent for a moment, then smiled.
"So the current situation is no different from back then."
His voice wasn't loud, but once those words entered the laboratory air, everyone present fell silent.
"Back then, it was Red Skull of Hydra who was researching the Tesseract. He wanted to use that thing to create a weapon that could destroy all of Europe."
"Now, it's just the same group of people continuing to study the same thing; the only difference is their uniforms."
"Wait, Li En, you mean—" Tony reacted first.
His pupils contracted sharply in his eye sockets, and his voice dropped several decibels.
The others also realized what was happening one after another.
Natasha's sharp gaze instantly locked onto Li En's face, and Coulson's lips moved twice but he couldn't utter a sound.
Melinda's shoulders tensed for a moment, then slowly relaxed.
Banner and Connors exchanged a glance, but neither of them spoke.
"Impossible. Li En, what are you talking about?" Natasha strode forward and stood beside Li En, so close that she could see the curve of his eyelashes.
Her voice was very low, but her enunciation was extremely sharp.
"You mean, S.H.I.E.L.D. is Hydra?"
Coulson's voice followed at the same second: "Mr. Lee, I hope you're not joking."
Melinda remained leaning against the incubator, saying nothing, her arms crossed over her chest, her gaze fixed on Li En's face, waiting for the last half-sentence.
Steve's jawline tightened slightly, but he didn't refute.
From the first day Fury woke him from the ice, he felt that this organization was too big.
He never trusted Nick Fury from the beginning, and he doesn't intend to fully trust him now.
Even if Fury told him personally that S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded by Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and several other old comrades.
As a soldier, he understood better than anyone that once an organization becomes so large that it needs to use layers of secrecy to manage trust, the trust itself has already been hollowed out.
Li En looked down at Natasha, and Zi Guang didn't dodge.
He spoke in a tone as if he were stating the weather.
"My sources of intelligence are infallible."
"You can recall the condition I initially proposed."
Natasha was stunned.
Her lips silently repeated what Li En had just said, and then her memory rewound.
"At first you said—" she raised her eyes again, "you only trusted four people: Coulson, Melinda, me, and the director—Nick Fury."
"I trust Coulson, I trust you, I trust Melinda," Li En said, pursing his lips.
"As for Nick Fury—I've never even met him in person, so I can't trust him."
This revision is minor, but it has torn a hole in the original list.
Li En continued speaking at a slow pace, without any accusation or sense of victory in her tone; she simply drew a conclusion.
"In short, there are big problems in your bureau right now, and that scoundrel director has probably already found out."
"Otherwise, he wouldn't have had Coulson personally bring Steve Rogers out to run errands and come talk to Tony and me."
"That guy's thoughts are probably deeper than you can guess."
"He may have wanted to separate the Avengers program from the S.H.I.E.L.D. system from the very beginning and make it operate independently."
Coulson remained silent for a long time.
The expressions on his face faded layer by layer, from confusion and denial to wavering.
Finally, it stopped in a gray area between unease and sudden realization.
He felt something was wrong when Fury called him last night to transfer full control over the Avengers program.
Fury never gives everything to anyone.
He always kept a card up his sleeve, an information gap, a way out that only he knew.
It wasn't last night, except for last night.
Steve stood by the window, watching the construction crew's crane lift a steel beam onto the fourth-floor frame.
He didn't wait for Li En to continue. He spoke first.
"Li En, I know better than anyone here just how dangerous the Cosmic Cube is."
"That thing absolutely cannot remain in the hands of uncontrollable people."
“That’s right.” Li En turned to look at him. “So my suggestion is clear—the Rubik’s Cube must be handed over to these three people to study.”
He tilted his chin toward Tony, then glanced at Banner and Connors.
All three people were called out at the same time.
Tony crossed his arms over his chest, his lips twitched slightly, but he didn't say anything.
Banner slowly stood up from beside the lab table, his expression a mixture of scientist's curiosity and the alertness conveyed to him by the Hulk's memories.
Connors pushed up his glasses, shifted his gaze from Steve to Lee, and then back to Steve.
"So the first step is for you to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. and retrieve the Tesseract."
"As for the subsequent Avengers plan—"
Li En walked from the window to the center of the laboratory, his gaze sweeping over everyone present before finally settling back on the windowsill.
He put his hands in his pockets and added the second half of the sentence in a casual tone.
"With today's advanced technology, if aliens really attacked, we could just tune our communication channels to the same frequency and set off together. There's no need to put on some kind of organizational structure."
"When an organization gets big, people will start to put their own agendas in there."
"The reason why the Strategic Science Agency was not infiltrated by Hydra back then was because the entire department had fewer than fifty people."
How many people are there in S.H.I.E.L.D. now?
Coulson opened his mouth.
He has a standard answer to this question: the total number of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel worldwide is classified internal information and is not disclosed to unauthorized personnel.
But he did not answer.
Because he suddenly realized that among everyone present, the one who knew the answer would not reveal it.
Because the answer itself precisely confirms Li En's question.
Li En turned his gaze to Tony, raised his finger, and tapped Tony's chest through the air.
"If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you can ask Jarvis to pull up all the global terrorism data and do a comprehensive analysis."
"Where do these so-called terrorists really come from—are they born with a penchant for bombing buildings, or is it because their own homes have been bombed before?"
He looked Tony in the eyes, his tone unchanged.
"I'm not talking about those ready-made explanations from TV news, letting Jarvis run the data himself, running the raw data."
He withdrew his finger and walked slowly toward the laboratory door.
As I passed the lab bench, I casually took the cup of coffee that had gone cold from in front of Connors and placed it by the sink.
"These are my suggestions. You can come back to me when you've thought it through."
He pushed open the lab door, turned towards the restroom, randomly found an empty stall, closed the door behind him, and stood behind the door.
A curtain of light suddenly appeared before my eyes.
[Available Dungeon: Annihilation of a Prefecture (Province) Level]
He reached for the doorknob, grasped it, and locked the door.
[Enter the instance: Devil May Cry 3]
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