Hydra Base, The Alps.
The plane dropped.
It wasn't a controlled descent; it was a surrender to gravity.
The Ju-52 was buffeted by the violent, shearing winds of the mountain range, shaking the rivets in their sockets.
Inside the cabin, the metal groaned like a dying beast.
Ernst gripped the leather strap above his head, his knuckles white.
Beside him, Azazel merely opened one eye, looking bored, his tail flicking lazily against the munitions crate he was using as a seat.
When the landing gear finally slammed onto the icy runway, the impact rattled Ernst's teeth.
The plane skidded, tires screaming against the frozen tarmac, before shuddering to a halt.
Ernst let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
He unbuckled his harness, checked his glasses, and composed himself.
"Showtime," he muttered.
The hatch opened with a mechanical whine, letting in a blast of freezing alpine air that bit at exposed skin like needles.
Ernst pulled his heavy wool collar up and stepped onto the tarmac.
The world here was monochrome. Black rock, white snow, grey sky. It was beautiful, desolate, and utterly hostile.
Azazel followed closely.
As the demon stepped into the light, his crimson skin was stark, violent against the blinding white of the snow.
The waiting ground crew flinched. One mechanic dropped his wrench.
A guard took a half-step back, his hand twitching toward his rifle.
A delegation was waiting for them near the entrance of the massive concrete fortress carved into the mountainside.
At the front stood a man who commanded the space around him.
He wore a pristine black leather trench coat over an SS general's uniform. Every button shone. Every crease was razor-sharp.
He stood ramrod straight, hands clasped behind his back, radiating an aura of absolute, terrifying control.
Johann Schmidt.
He didn't look like a monster yet.
His face was pale, his features sharp and angular, his blonde hair slicked back with military precision. But his eyes... his eyes were cold, dead things.
"Dr. Ernst," Schmidt said.
His voice was crisp, devoid of warmth, cutting through the howling wind.
"Welcome to the edge of the world. I have heard much about Berlin's youngest genius. The boy who plays chess with the Reich's resources."
Schmidt took a step forward, his boots crunching on the packed snow.
"It is... rare that reality meets expectation. Usually, the reports are exaggerated."
Ernst walked up to him, studying the man's face with the clinical detachment of a pathologist.
He was looking for the Red Skull. He was looking for the mask.
But it wasn't there.
'Not yet,' Ernst thought. 'He hasn't taken the serum. He is still just a man. A dangerous, fanatical man, but mortal.'
Schmidt extended a gloved black hand.
Ernst took it. The grip was iron, crushing, a physical test disguised as a greeting.
Ernst squeezed back, not with strength, but with firmness.
"Save the flattery, General," Ernst said, his voice bored.
He released the hand and looked around the bleak landscape.
"You know why I'm here. The Führer sent me for the artifact. I want to see it."
He turned his gaze back to Schmidt, letting a manic glint enter his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses.
A calculated performance of the "mad scientist" that these men expected.
"The Tesseract. The Jewel of Odin. Whatever you want to call it."
"I have spent my life studying theoretical energy sources," Ernst pressed, his tone sharpening.
"I left critical experiments in Poland to fly in a tin can through a blizzard. Don't tell me you brought me all this way to give me a tour of the cafeteria or discuss philosophy."
He stepped closer, invading Schmidt's personal space.
"Where is it?"
Schmidt's lips quirked into a faint, impressed smile. It was a wolf's smile.
"A man of action," Schmidt noted, nodding slowly.
"I like that. Most of the scientists Berlin sends me are... timid. They worry about budgets and safety protocols."
Schmidt turned, gesturing to the massive steel doors of the base.
"But patience, Doctor. You have traveled far. The artifact isn't going anywhere. Tonight, we dine. We discuss the future. Tomorrow, we rewrite history."
Ernst paused, calculating.
Pushing too hard would show desperation. He needed to be arrogant, but professional.
"Fine," Ernst nodded curtly.
"But I start at 0600. Sharp. And this..."
Ernst gestured to the red-skinned mutant behind him.
Azazel stood silently, scanning the perimeter, his yellow eyes dissecting the base defenses.
"...is Azazel. My bodyguard. A lab accident involving gene editing and accelerated mutation. He stays with me. He needs quarters adjacent to mine."
Schmidt glanced at Azazel. There was no fear in Schmidt's eyes, only clinical curiosity. He looked at the demon the way a butcher looks at a prize steer.
"The Führer briefed me," Schmidt said.
"Impressive work. Ugly, but effective. Consider it done."
Schmidt stepped aside, revealing two men standing in his shadow, huddled against the cold.
"Allow me to introduce my head researchers," Schmidt said.
He pointed to a short, bespectacled man with a nervous energy.
He was small, round, and looked like he was constantly expecting to be hit.
"Dr. Arnim Zola. Our lead physicist."
Zola bowed awkwardly, his movements jerky. His eyes darted behind thick lenses, magnified and fearful.
"An honor, Herr Doctor," Zola squeaked.
"I have read your papers on... synthetic polymers. Revolutionary."
"And this," Schmidt gestured to a taller, older man standing slightly apart.
He had weary, sad eyes and a posture that spoke of defeat.
"Dr. Abraham Erskine. He leads our biological enhancement division."
Ernst's focus sharpened instantly.
Abraham Erskine.
The father of the Super Soldier Serum.
The man who would create Captain America. The man who held the secret to human perfection in his mind.
Erskine looked tired. His coat was thinner than the others.
There was fear in his eyes, the fear of a prisoner, but also a hidden resolve. A spark of defiance buried deep under the survival instinct.
Ernst knew that look; Erskine was already planning his escape.
He was already thinking about the Americans.
"Gentlemen," Ernst said, switching to perfect academic German.
As they walked toward the fortress, passing beneath the ominous Hydra emblem carved into the stone, Ernst engaged them immediately.
He needed to establish dominance. Not physically, Azazel handled that, but intellectually.
He needed to prove he was the smartest man in the room, or they would never let him near the Cube's core functions.
"Dr. Zola," Ernst said, not breaking stride.
"I read your paper on directed energy weaponry. The theoretical application for the tank divisions."
Zola perked up, eager for validation.
"Yes! The containment fields are, "
"Brilliant, but you're thinking too small," Ernst cut him off.
He didn't look at Zola; he kept his eyes forward.
"You're trying to channel the energy like electricity. You're treating it like a current that needs a wire. You should be treating it like a fluid. Hydrodynamics, Zola. Not electrodynamics."
Zola stopped walking for a second, his mouth hanging open. He scrambled to catch up.
"Like a... fluid?"
"Have you considered dimensional siphoning?" Ernst asked casually.
"Using the energy's own pressure to create a vacuum, pulling more from the source?"
Zola blinked rapidly. "Dimensional... but the stability requirements... the casing would melt..."
"Are negligible if you use a harmonic dampener," Ernst finished for him, reciting a concept that wouldn't be invented for another forty years.
"Match the frequency of the energy to the frequency of the containment shield. Zero resistance. Zero heat."
Zola looked like he had seen a god. His mind was racing, equations rearranging themselves.
Ernst didn't wait for him to recover. He turned to Erskine.
"And you, Doctor."
Erskine looked up, guarded.
"You're stuck on the serum, aren't you? The subjects keep dying of cardiac failure? The muscle density increases too rapidly, tearing the heart apart?"
Erskine blinked, startled. He hadn't published those results. That was classified internal data.
"How did you..."
"It's obvious," Ernst lied smoothly, utilizing his future knowledge of the comic lore.
"It's not the heart's fault," Ernst said, his voice lowering so only the scientists could hear.
"It's the adrenal feedback loop. The body destroys itself trying to process the sudden influx of power. You're trying to force evolution with a hammer."
Ernst stopped. He turned to face the older scientist.
"You need to stabilize the endocrine system first. You need a catalyst to lock the cellular change. Something to strip away the impurities before the growth hormone hits."
"Vita-Rays," Erskine whispered.
He hadn't named it that yet. He hadn't even fully conceptualized it.
But Ernst's words bridged the gap in his mind.
The logic... it was perfect. It was the missing key.
"Light," Erskine breathed.
"Radiation as a binding agent."
"My god," Erskine whispered, staring at Ernst with a mixture of awe and terror.
Schmidt watched this exchange with narrowing eyes.
He saw his two best minds, men he had bullied, threatened, and cajoled for months, reduced to stuttering students in under five minutes.
He felt a spike of jealousy. It was a hot, burning thing in his gut.
But it was quickly replaced by greed.
Schmidt was a pragmatist.
'He knows,' Schmidt realized.
'He sees the patterns I cannot see.'
This boy held the keys to his rise.
"Dinner," Schmidt announced, his voice booming.
"We have much to discuss."
The Next Day
The lab was a cathedral of technology.
It was vast, built into a natural cavern. Cables the size of tree trunks snaked across the floor.
Massive generators hummed with a low, menacing thrum.
But in the center, isolated in a glass and steel containment unit, sat the prize.
The Tesseract.
It was a perfect cube.
It pulsed with a deep, rhythmic blue light. It didn't just glow; it breathed.
It hummed with a sound that didn't register in the ears, but vibrated in the teeth and the marrow of the bone.
Ernst stood before it, mesmerized.
The Space Stone.
To the others, to Zola, to Schmidt, it was a battery. A really, really big battery left by Norse.
But only Ernst knew the truth.
It was a Singularity. It was a crystallized aspect of the universe itself. It was a door to anywhere.
He worked alongside Zola for hours.
It didn't take long for Ernst to realize why Hydra had succeeded where future scientists failed.
In the 21st century, SHIELD would treat the Tesseract with kid gloves.
They would poke it with sticks, afraid of radiation, afraid of opening a portal to an invasion fleet.
Zola and Schmidt had no such fear. They were reckless. They were desperate.
"We are not getting enough output," Zola complained, adjusting a dial on a massive console. His brow was slick with sweat.
"The energy... it resists. It trickles out. We need a river, and we are getting a garden hose."
"Then force it," Ernst said, looking at the readings.
The energy signatures were chaotic.
The Cube was reacting to their probing like a sleeping animal being poked.
"The Cube is dormant. It's sleeping," Ernst murmured.
"You can't tickle it awake, Zola. You have to burn it."
"Burn it?" Zola asked, his glasses slipping down his nose.
"Heat the casing to 5,000 degrees," Ernst ordered, stepping up to the main control panel.
"Active plasma containment. Agitate the energy matrix until it fights back. Create a hostile environment so it has to dump energy to stabilize itself."
Zola looked horrified.
"That is... that is unstable! If we heat it that high, the feedback could vaporize the facility!"
"Then we siphon the overflow before it detonates," Ernst said calmly.
"It's a simple pressure valve equation."
It was insanity. It was a recipe for a nuclear-level event.
If containment failed, the entire Alps would be vaporized. There would be a crater where Switzerland used to be.
But Schmidt was watching from the observation deck above.
He stood behind the glass, arms crossed, watching the two scientists argue.
Schmidt pressed the intercom button.
"Do it," Schmidt's voice boomed over the speakers.
Zola flinched. He looked at Ernst, then at the Tesseract.
"God help us," Zola muttered.
He began to turn the dials.
The machinery groaned. The hum became a whine, then a scream.
The temperature gauges climbed.
Inside the chamber, the air shimmered.
The Tesseract began to glow brighter, the blue light turning blindingly white at the core.
It began to scream.
Blue energy lashed out against the containment field, wild and violent, like lightning trapped in a bottle.
Arcs of pure space energy whipped around the room, scorching the concrete.
"Stabilizing!" Zola shrieked over the blaring alarms.
"Output is at 400%! 500%!"
The floor shook. Dust fell from the ceiling.
"Hold it..." Ernst watched the needle. He needed the peak.
He needed the moment the Cube panicked.
"Now!" Ernst commanded.
"Siphon it now!"
Zola slammed the lever.
Heavy conductors clamped onto the containment field.
The angry blue energy was sucked out, pulled into thick cables. It traveled through the room, condensing, compressing, until it was pressed into a glowing, volatile battery cell the size of a thermos.
The sound was deafening.
And then, silence.
The machine powered down. The Tesseract returned to its rhythmic, low pulse, as if it had merely exhaled.
The room fell silent, save for the heavy breathing of the technicians.
Zola walked over to the extraction port.
With shaking hands, he pulled out the canister.
It glowed with a terrifying, beautiful blue light.
Zola held it up.
It hummed with enough power to level a city block. It was pure, clean, destructive energy.
Ernst wiped sweat from his brow.
His heart was hammering against his ribs.
He looked up at the observation deck.
Johann Schmidt was smiling.
It was a smile of pure, unadulterated ambition.
They had done it. They had bottled the divine.
"Incredible," Ernst muttered, watching the blue light dance on the walls.
But his mind was already ten steps ahead.
Schmidt saw a bomb. Schmidt saw a way to win the war.
Ernst saw opportunity.
Schmidt will use this to build weapons. Vaporizing guns. Mega-tanks.
Weapons I can sell. Weapons I can improve.
And eventually... weapons I control.
He looked at the Tesseract again.
'One down,' Ernst thought.
'Five to go.'
——
Authors Note:
I have analyzed the physics of 'Writer Motivation.'
It turns out, my typing speed is directly correlated to the number of shiny blue rocks (Power Stones) in my inventory.
200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter
10 reviews = 1 bonus Chapter