The television screen flickered with breaking news footage—Prince Sai collapsing in a spray of blood, the screaming crowd, Phil Coulson standing frozen with royal blood splattered across his impeccable suit. Nick Fury's finger jabbed the remote, silencing the reporter mid-sentence.
The Triskelion's conference room hummed with tension thick enough to choke on. Fury turned slowly, his lone eye burning into Coulson like a laser sight.
"What. Happened. Out there. Phil?" Each word dripped with barely contained fury.
Coulson's usually unflappable demeanor showed rare cracks. "Sir, I was approaching to establish dialogue when the shot rang out. The prince took a round to the upper left thorax. Based on his reaction..." He swallowed. "He believes this was a sanctioned assassination."
"Well no shit, Sherlock!" Fury's fist slammed onto the conference table, making the half-empty coffee cups jump. "He just exposed half our black ops on live TV, then gets shot on our doorstep? Even I'd think it was a hit!"
As if on cue, Fury's encrypted phone vibrated across the table like an angry hornet. The caller ID read POTUS. Fury ignored it.
"Where's the prince now?"
"Gone. Vanished." Coulson's jaw tightened. "His security detail extracted him before EMTs arrived. No hospital admissions, no traffic cam traces after they turned down 42nd. It's like they evaporated."
Fury's eye twitched. A prince shot on American soil—now missing? This wasn't a PR nightmare. This was an extinction-level event for US foreign relations.
"Get me satellite recons of every alley between here and the UN. I want facial recognition sweeping every—"
"Sir," Maria Hill interrupted from the doorway, her tablet displaying trending hashtags. "#AmericaShootsPrinces is now global. Protesters are storming our embassy in London. And the Kremlin just issued a statement 'condemning imperialist brutality.'"
Fury's migraine pulsed in time with the blinking red light on his phone. Somewhere, somehow, the chessboard had been flipped—and he was suddenly playing checkers with a grandmaster.
Back in the Warehouse, in the Medical Wing, the bullet clinked into a stainless-steel tray, its deformed shape glistening under surgical lights. My Shadow Doctor—a gaunt figure in bloodstained scrubs—bowed before dissolving into darkness.
"
I reached for the Low-Tier Healing Potion, its crimson liquid swirling like captured sunset. One gulp later, the gaping wound in my shoulder knitted itself into an angry pink scar.
Sebastian entered with a basin of steaming water, his golden monocle catching the light. "A Normal-Tier potion would've left no trace, Master."
"Where's the fun in that?" I grinned, flexing the newly healed muscle. "Scars make for great conversation starters at state dinners."
Outside the medical bay, muted news broadcasts played on every screen—
"—shocking lack of security—"
"—State Department denies involvement—"
"—Wakanda recalls ambassador—"
Sebastian dabbed at the dried blood with practiced efficiency. "The German chancellor just called for an emergency UN session. It appears your performance was... convincing."
I examined the puckered scar in the mirror. Perfect. Not too dramatic, but visible enough for cameras to catch.
"People love wounded royalty," I mused. "Yesterday I was a dubious prince with conspiracy theories. Today?" I gestured to the screens where my bloodied image looped endlessly. "Today I'm the martyr who proved America's guilt with his own flesh."
Sebastian's lips quirked. "Shall I prepare the next act, Master?"
Somewhere in Manhattan, a sniper—one of my own Shadows in disguise—melted back into the city's veins. The bullet had been real. The blood? Genuine. But the narrative?
That was the real weapon.
The screens in my private office flickered with a mosaic of global outrage—Metube clips of my "assassination attempt" amassing millions of views, Mwitter threads dissecting frame-by-frame footage of Coulson standing over my "bleeding" body, Stargram influencers posing with "#JusticeForGenosha" filters.
I leaned back in my chair, swirling a glass of iced tea. "Beautiful, isn't it?" I mused to Sebastian. "Give conspiracy theorists half a thread, and they'll weave you an entire tapestry."
On screen, a popular Metube analyst with wild hair and red-string-covered walls gestured wildly:
"[Connect the dots, people! Prince exposes black ops, gets shot hours later? This is MKUltra-level silencing!]"
Sebastian placed a coffee and sandwich tray beside me. "Your media ecosystem performs admirably, Master. The narrative is... self-sustaining now."
I took a satisfied bite. He wasn't wrong. By owning the platforms where history unfolded, I'd turned the internet into my personal propaganda engine—one no government could throttle without looking guilty.
"Speaking of ecosystems," I tapped my tablet, pulling up Metube's dashboard. "1.2 billion daily active users. And Stargram's thirst traps?" I smirked at a trending post of some D-list hero posing shirtless with my Genoshan flag poorly photoshopped in the background. "Already rotting brains exactly as planned."
Sebastian's monocle gleamed. "One might call it cultural warfare."
"Cultural 'enrichment'," I corrected with a grin. "The world was already doomed to meme hell. I'm just... curating the descent."
The holographic displays shifted to Shadow Magina's quarterly reports—energy sector dominance, defense contracts undercutting Stark Industries.
"Richards and Stark play with their toys in ivory towers," I muttered, flipping through R&D projections. "Meanwhile, we're building empires from their scraps."
Tony Stark and Reed Richards, despite being the greatest mind in the world, barely do anything for the public, all they do is just do what they want. If the 2 were like that, than I have the rights to do whatever I want as well. One might say, I am reproducing my old Earth internet landscape; despite knowing it's consequences.
To that, I wholeheartedly confessed that I am doing that, I am recreating the brain rot landscape of the future internet. I am doing it for my own profit and my own amusement, I want the unhinged internet of the earth future in this world, it was fun that way, naturally I will have some failsafe in place to make things a little bit proper.
As much as I like the chaotic nature of the digital world, with me holding the power sway over it in many of the platform, I will make sure that it would not be swarm with too much negativity, not to mention the profit motivation to own and run all these famous sites is something that I want on my ownership as well, more money is always good.
Sebastian produced a second tablet. "Speaking of empires, the Morlock integration proceeds smoothly. Their living quarters are prepared, and Dr. Rao has begun preliminary gene therapy to mitigate their... visible mutations."
I paused. "How exactly did you recruit them again?"
"Ah." Sebastian adjusted his cuffs. "I was challenged by their leadership to an honorable combat. Defeated Callisto and Sunder with..." He cleared his throat. "...a single slap each. By their laws, you're now their sovereign."
I nearly choked on my coffee. "You 'slapped' them into submission?"
"Efficiency over brutality, Master." His smile was razor-thin. "Though young Leech required a head-pat."
The mental image—a 300-year-old dragon butler delivering disciplinary pats to feral mutants—nearly short-circuited my brain. I forgot that the Morlock do have their own 'unique' way of dealing with politics of their own, and they just got owned by Sebastian.
"Haha, that's a good one, Sebastian," I laughed, before sobering. "But good. With the Morlocks, we've got our first Meta-human enclave. Next?"
Sebastian's eyes glinted. "The Alley, Master. Then...."