"It's this one."
Still in a daze, Selene suddenly heard William's voice through her phone. "Sweetheart, take my things and head home first. The rest is between me and Mr. Pierce."
"Wait."
Pierce quickly slammed the lid of the briefcase shut, but this played right into Selene's plan. Just before he could grab the handle, Selene seized it herself and took a few steps back. She pulled a tablet from her pocket, placed it on the desk, and kindly warned him, "Sorry, Mr. Pierce, but you'd better not move. I don't want to hurt you."
Pierce instinctively wanted to move forward but immediately froze. The cold, alluring woman in front of him was no weak, harmless plaything. She had spent centuries in a vampire hunting squad and had likely killed at least a thousand, if not three thousand, werewolves. For someone like her, killing an old man with graying hair like him might take no more than a single punch.
So, when one of his trusted men, a bald enforcer, burst into the office with a gun aimed at Selene, Pierce sighed in resignation and waved him down. "Put the gun down."
At those words, Selene nodded at Pierce, then carried the briefcase, ignoring the gun pointed at her. She opened the glass door to the balcony, leapt onto the railing with two quick steps, and propelled herself straight into a hovering spaceship.
The craft rotated its nose upward, and with a "whoosh," it soared into the sky and disappeared from sight.
"Chief..."
"Leave."
Pierce cut off his subordinate's words as he watched the spaceship vanish. "Get rid of the reporters outside."
"Understood, sir." The bald man, knowing when to retreat, holstered his weapon and left the office, closing the door behind him.
"Alright, it's just the two of us now. Isn't it time to talk about my payment?"
It was impossible for Pierce not to be angry after having the Tesseract stolen right in front of him. He was beginning to realize that William had likely wanted the Tesseract from the very beginning. Although Pierce had no proof, a strong intuition told him he had suffered a major loss.
Fortunately for him, he didn't know the Tesseract contained the Space Stone—nor did he know what a Space Stone even was. Otherwise, he would have understood that this wasn't merely a matter of losing out; William wouldn't have wasted time negotiating if not for the need to study the stone in a secure and hidden location.
Unbuckling himself from the pilot's seat, William stood and swept Selene into a kiss. Only when he heard Pierce's frustrated voice in his ear did he finally pull away and take the briefcase from her hands.
"Sunday, grant Selene full access to the spaceship," William ordered his AI, then turned to Selene. "Darling, you're going to fly the ship back to the London estate. Let Nyssa know to be ready. If all goes well, you and she will be the ones coming with me to Mars."
"Really?"
Selene, still a bit dizzy from the kiss, lit up with excitement at the prospect of going to Mars. This meant she and Nyssa would no longer have to remain in the shadows as secret protectors in the household.
"Of course. Have I ever lied to you?" William waved his hand to open a portal. "Alright, if you don't want to learn how to pilot the ship manually, Sunday can guide it with autopilot. I'll likely head straight to Mars after dealing with Pierce. Let Nyssa know to keep a low profile around my mother. We don't want her suspecting anything."
"Got it." Selene nodded with a smile. Lately, Lina had been insisting that Selene and Nyssa stay close for protection. Over time, the two vampires' refined demeanor and noble upbringing had left a positive impression on Lina, leading to a surprisingly harmonious relationship among the three women.
While Selene eagerly began learning how to operate the spaceship, William stepped through the portal, arriving at the Yellowstone base.
There, he had Sunday project a simulated Mars spaceship scene. A holographic beam emerged from the phone on Pierce's desk, displaying William in a space armor suit.
"Apologies. Mars is quite far from Earth, so the data transmission took a moment."
Hearing this, Pierce instinctively nodded, his irritation over the delay gradually easing as he processed William's polite tone.
Sensing the shift, William inwardly chuckled at Pierce's attempt to feign barely contained rage. Pierce spoke up, "You took my item right from under my nose. So, in the interest of fairness, shouldn't you tell me what exactly the Tesseract is and what it does?"
"Haha."
Pierce clearly underestimated William. As if William would ever feel guilty about seizing something from someone else. If exterminating Hydra were as simple as wiping out the vampires and werewolves, he would have done so already, without wasting words.
Since completely eliminating Hydra was unrealistic, some level of cooperation seemed feasible.
As for questions of morality—good versus evil—William couldn't care less. If anything, he often thought he would be classified on the "evil" side of the spectrum.
At this moment, though, Pierce, the very man who had just unknowingly handed him the Space Stone, was looking particularly agreeable to William.
However, agreeable or not, there was no reason to hold back when it came to exploiting others. William intended to have Hydra test the waters with Kamar-Taj, to see if the sorcerers there truly intended to stay out of worldly affairs. In the process, he would pit Hydra against an overwhelmingly powerful opponent to prevent them from causing real harm to the world.
Compared to the Ancient One, few on Earth could match the sorcerer's strength. Even if Hydra somehow gained control of the entire world, there was no way they'd get their hands on the Time Stone.
At worst, if things went catastrophically wrong, William could hide the Space Stone in his storage dimension. Surely, the Ancient One had similar hidden spaces.
The mere thought of the Ancient One's potential retaliation made William shiver. After all, this was the same entity that even Thanos—the "cosmic population control advocate" himself—was wary of confronting directly.
While he doubted the Ancient One could outright kill Thanos, she had certainly succeeded in keeping him from daring to invade Earth.
As for the other Infinity Stones, William figured he would never personally acquire the Soul Stone in his lifetime. The Power Stone was far too dangerous to wield without the Infinity Gauntlet or Reality Stone to control it. The Mind Stone was likely in Thanos's possession, and the Reality Stone remained sealed by Odin's grandfather. However, England might have access to a spatial rift near the seal.
With these thoughts in mind, William smiled warmly and said, "It's not called the Tesseract. Its real name is the Space Stone."
"The Space Stone?"
Pierce stared at William's holographic projection, puzzled. He was about to press further when his expression abruptly shifted. Fear overtook his face, and within moments, his entire body began trembling uncontrollably.
(End of Chapter)
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