The Gamma Bomb research base was hidden deep inside a dry arroyo in New Mexico.
The moon hung high and the stars were sparse. As always, the area around the base was quiet, but tonight the silence felt… excessive. Not a single voice came through the comms channel.
Cassius was one of the night-shift guards assigned after the facility's restart. In his opinion, General Ross had scheduled way too many sentries.
One soldier every two meters, every man armed to the teeth: rifle, sidearm, compact submachine gun, combat knife.
To Cassius, it seemed like overkill, but Hydra's chain of command was ironclad. A bottom-rung grunt like him followed orders without question.
A cold breeze brushed his face. Cassius shivered, then felt a sudden pressure in his bladder.
"Hey, Luke, Dean—cover for me a sec. Gotta take a leak." He spoke to the two comrades standing exactly two meters away on either side.
The soldier named Dean didn't turn his head. He stood perfectly still like a statue and gave the tiniest nod.
Relieved, Cassius slung his rifle across his chest, stayed right where he was, and unzipped.
As the stream hissed against the dirt, something occurred to him. He glanced at Luke, the one who hadn't answered.
"Hey, Luke, what's with the silent treatment?"
Luke slowly turned his head. One arm rose stiffly and a finger pressed against his lips in a clumsy "shh" gesture.
Instantly, an icy chill shot up Cassius's spine. Something was wrong—very wrong. That movement hadn't looked human. It looked like one of those stiff-limbed zombies from the movies.
"Dean? Dean?!"
Cassius yanked his pants up and whipped around to the other soldier who had nodded earlier. Dean hadn't moved an inch, not even when called.
"Luke?"
Getting no response, Cassius steeled himself and edged closer to Luke. He reached out and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"You okay, man?"
Luke's face was blank, eyes shut tight, but his head tilted slightly as if looking at Cassius.
Cassius jerked back in shock. When he pulled his hand away, it was coated in something sticky—like he'd just touched industrial-strength glue.
"What the hell is this?"
Heart pounding, he leaned in for a closer look at Luke.
Under the moonlight he saw it clearly: Luke's body was wrapped in strands of pitch-black, viscous silk that forced him into the rigid posture of a sentry on duty.
Luke wasn't standing on his own. A single thick strand suspended him from above, his boots barely brushing the ground.
Every motion—the head tilt, the "shush" gesture, the glance toward Cassius—had been puppeted by those black threads.
Cassius stumbled backward, yanking out his communicator and screaming, "Officer! Officer! Someone—anyone—respond, damn it!"
Nothing. Dead silence on the channel.
Only now did he realize how unnatural the quiet really was.
And the creepiest part? Even though he'd been yelling his head off and had abandoned his post for nearly thirty seconds, Dean on the other side still hadn't reacted at all.
A horrifying possibility crawled into Cassius's mind. His whole body trembled as he backed away from Luke and approached Dean.
Dean was exactly the same—bound and dangling in black silk, posed like a perfect sentry, but clearly long past caring whether he lived or died.
Thump-thump-thump!
Cassius retreated several steps until he was more than a dozen meters from his original post.
Moonlight poured down cold and clear. He stared at the ring of sentries lining the base perimeter and felt the air leave his lungs. He clutched his throat and collapsed to his knees.
Every single guard—except him—was suspended by black threads, hanging silently in rigid "attention," two meters apart like macabre mannequins.
Row after row of densely packed soldiers, held up by an equally dense web of dark silk beneath the base's walls. In the pale moonlight the scene was indescribably wrong.
Cassius never found out what had happened.
His vision went black. A strand of ebony webbing shot down from above, wrapping precisely around his arms and head before hoisting him neatly back into his original position.
"Daddy, why didn't we just take him while he was pissing?" From the moon-cast shadows, Venom's low, curious voice rumbled.
"I was waiting for him to pull his pants up," Batman answered flatly.
Without looking back, he melted into the darkness toward the far side of the base. He repeated the process: first disabling each sentry's weapons, then letting Venom extend a fist to knock them unconscious before binding them in webbing to maintain the illusion of standing guard.
Batman needed to infiltrate the base undetected and extract Norman Osborn just as quietly.
But planning for the worst-case scenario, there could be gamma-spawned monstrosities inside. Rescuing Norman Osborn might force a confrontation—or an all-out fight.
In that situation, he didn't want human soldiers getting in his way.
Soldiers were the most unpredictable variable in any base's defenses. Panic could make them spray bullets wildly, trigger unforeseen alarms, or even blow critical systems just to stop him.
His real opponents were gamma monsters. When facing supernatural power, ordinary Hydra grunts would only drain his focus needlessly.
Batman wasn't here to play judge and executioner, but neither would he let them become shackles that left him fighting with one hand tied behind his back.
Ten-odd minutes later, every sentry on the outer perimeter of the Gamma Bomb research base had been knocked out and trussed up.
Inside the facility, the electronic virus Batman had planted earlier had already paralyzed the internal mail and comms systems completely.
Time for the next phase.
"I'm a man of my word. No weapon upgrades—don't even ask," Tony Stark said, standing inside the Mark III suit as he faced Nick Fury. "But I can help in other ways. Like upgrading the propulsion systems on this flying fortress of yours."
"Agent Hill, escort our fashionably armored gentleman to the power section," Nick Fury replied, utterly unsurprised, as though he'd expected exactly that answer.
Agent Hill craned her neck up at Tony, who towered over her in the Mark III. "This way."
Nick Fury stayed where he was, watching Tony disappear deeper into the Helicarrier, then tapped his earpiece.
"Natasha, starting tomorrow you're employed at Stark Industries. Investigate everyone Tony has regular contact with."
Black Widow had never shown herself in front of Tony the entire time. Only after he left with Hill did she step out of the shadows.
"Batman breached your safehouse. Yet Tony's friend built a firewall even Tony himself can't crack…" She looked at Fury. "You think Batman is one of Tony Stark's friends?"
"Exactly," Nick Fury said.