"How is that possible?"
Black Widow stared at Nick Fury in disbelief.
She had infiltrated the Adirondack facility three times. The first two times were with Hawkeye; while he was distracted, she'd quietly made her preparations.
For the third operation, she'd locked Hawkeye in the Cube prison beforehand, then used Crossbones Rumlow as a human shield to get inside the Adirondacks again.
If the Tesseract data turned out to be fake, didn't that make everything she'd done completely pointless?
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Natasha." Nick Fury's expression was grave. "Either the people at the Adirondack base made a research mistake, or someone tampered with the data you brought back."
A chill ran down Natasha's spine.
She suddenly remembered that while she was stealing the Tesseract data inside the Adirondack facility, another mysterious figure had been moving in the shadows.
At the time she'd worried that person might have planted a virus in the Tesseract files, but for a long time afterward nothing had happened.
Even Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, had thought she'd overestimated the opponent.
Only now, hearing Nick Fury say the Tesseract data was compromised, did she finally understand.
Just as Fury had said—she'd been played.
Natasha immediately recounted everything that had happened at the Adirondacks. Fury's face grew darker with every word.
"So you're telling me that mysterious intruder almost certainly planted a virus in the data you transmitted, altered the files, and may even have tracked the location of Site D-4?"
Even though the Cube might already be compromised, Fury still referred to it only by codename. "Exactly. If I didn't know who was behind it before, I think I have a pretty good idea now," Black Widow said.
Fury didn't look at her. Instead he stared in the direction Tony Stark and Agent Hill had just left, and said:
"How many people on Earth can build a firewall that guy can't crack? How many can sneak into a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse without anyone noticing? How many can slip right under the nose of the great Black Widow and infiltrate the Adirondack facility without you ever seeing them?"
"The world is a big place. Maybe someone out there really could do all three… The problem is, all three incidents happened in New York."
Natasha clenched her fists. At first she'd been reluctant when Fury assigned her to infiltrate Stark Industries; she'd even pressed him about Dr. Pym.
But now, even if Nick Fury hadn't ordered it, she would have volunteered to go to New York herself.
"It's Batman," Natasha said through gritted teeth.
"Yep," Nick Fury replied. "Based on the skills and tech he showed off in my safehouse, I'm pretty sure he's capable of pulling all of this off."
Natasha nodded. She showed no sign of leaving; clearly the conversation wasn't over.
"What about Site D-4? If it really was Batman, then he definitely knows where it is now."
"I don't think Agent 19 alone can stop him."
Fury evidently agreed. He gave Black Widow a long, meaningful look.
"That's why I need you to contact Hank Pym. I don't need their brains right now—I need Ant-Man and the Wasp."
New Mexico, Gamma Bomb Research Facility.
Batman lurked in the darkness. He had followed the ventilation ducts and drainage pipes all the way to a spot slightly left of the facility's center.
Although he already knew the personnel layout from the spider-bots he'd sent ahead, seeing it with his own eyes made him double-check everything once more.
In the middle of the room stood an enormous metal cage. Aside from the patrolling soldiers outside, nearly every other soldier in the base was gathered here.
The cage was made of thick steel bars—three fingers wide when pressed together. The thing inside wasn't a monster; it was an old man who looked perfectly relaxed and comfortable.
His head was a full size larger than a normal person's, almost as wide as his shoulders.
Because of the oversized skull, his facial features hadn't had enough room to spread out; nose, eyes, and mouth were all crammed together, making him look both comical and grotesque.
Inside the cage hung wall paintings; there was a television and a sofa. The TV was playing Dora the Explorer, and the old man was sprawled comfortably on the couch, laughing heartily at the cartoon.
On the coffee table in front of the sofa sat all kinds of snacks and drinks; books lay scattered across the floor nearby.
Aside from the cage itself, he looked exactly like some shut-in with an absurdly large head living his best life at home.
But no ordinary person would warrant stationing most of a base's soldiers here to guard him.
"The Hydra soldiers' body language and micro-expressions show they're on edge?"
Batman observed silently from the shadows.
He noted that the passage leading underground was directly beneath the cage. To reach it, he would have to deal with both the Hydra troops and the old man.
"The guy's head is enormous—highly likely the result of gamma experimentation. The cage sits right on top of the entrance. Clearly General Ross thinks he can guard the passage… As for the Hydra soldiers, they're probably here more to keep watch over the old man than anything else."
In an instant, Batman selected the plan from the many he'd prepared back in the Batcave that best fit the current situation.
He had categorized gamma-ray mutations into several broad types: intellectual, physical, and reality-warping.
No matter which category the old man in the cage fell into, Batman would immediately execute the corresponding contingency.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Several crisp metallic sounds suddenly rang out among the Hydra soldiers surrounding the cage.
Most of them instinctively looked down and saw nothing. Only a few noticed the canister-shaped objects rolling to a stop at their feet.
Before they could react, a blinding white light—intense enough to burn retinas under direct exposure—exploded across the facility, instantly replacing every other light source.
These weren't upgraded flashbangs with sonic and concussive components; they were high-intensity smoke grenades.
Along with the white light came an incredibly thick cloud of white smoke composed of sedatives, anesthetics, powerful hypnotics, and white phosphorus. A single breath would instantly numb the respiratory tract and mouth, rendering a normal person unable to breathe or call for help for a short time.
Because Batman had calculated the soldiers' positions perfectly, the grenades he threw covered every single one of them.
"Ah!"
The moment the grenades hit the ground and made noise, the old man in the cage snapped his head up. His skin rapidly shifted to a reddish-brown hue.
The white light and smoke left him completely blind, yet he showed no trace of panic. Instead, he curiously took two huge lungfuls of the smoke, let it sit in his lungs for a moment, then slowly exhaled.
He wasn't worried about the gas at all. After being affected by gamma radiation, tests had shown he was immune to nearly all toxins, his skin was hard as steel, and his strength exceeded twenty tons.
But very quickly, a pitch-black gloved hand gripped the bars of the cage from within the smoke.
The next instant, the old man—and the entire cage with him—was sent flying through the air.