Bex Water Treatment Plant Grant Ward led a S.H.I.E.L.D.
assault team through the labyrinth of rusting pipes with painstaking caution.
The plant was eerily silent.
Water coursed through aging conduits overhead.
Droplets echoed through the darkness as they struck concrete.
The humid air carried the smell of stagnant water and corroded steel.
Every shadow seemed to be watching.
Twisted pipes and skeletal support beams loomed out of the darkness like the ribs of some enormous carcass.
Even before anything happened, the place felt wrong.
Ward had survived countless black-ops missions.
He’d infiltrated terrorist cells.
He’d stared death in the face more than once.
Yet nothing had ever triggered an instinct like this.
Something deep inside him was screaming that he didn’t belong here.
An ironic thought crossed his mind.
He wasn’t even a real S.H.I.E.L.D.
agent.
Not really.
He was HYDRA.
A sleeper operative buried inside the organization.
If he died tonight, he’d go down in history as a S.H.I.E.L.D.
hero before he’d accomplished a single thing for HYDRA.
They’d probably pin a medal on his coffin.
Maybe hang his portrait in headquarters.
For a spy, there were worse endings…
…but not many that were more embarrassing.
A deep, animalistic growl echoed through the tunnels.
Metal groaned.
Something enormous shifted somewhere beyond the walls.
Ward froze and raised a clenched fist.
The entire squad halted instantly.
Weapons came up.
Safeties clicked off.
Every flashlight focused on the darkness ahead.
Nothing moved.
Then everything happened at once.
A crimson appendage exploded through the concrete wall.
It looked like a giant whip covered in muscle and chitin.
Before anyone could react, it wrapped around an agent’s waist.
The man barely managed a startled cry before he was ripped bodily through the hole in the wall and swallowed by darkness.
His scream ended almost immediately.
“Open fire!” Ward shouted.
His rifle barked first.
The rest of the squad followed.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the tunnel.
Hundreds of rounds tore into the darkness.
The deafening gunfire echoed through the plant as bullets vanished into whatever lay beyond the walls.
A guttural roar answered them.
Then…
Silence.
No one spoke.
Fear settled over the squad like a suffocating fog.
These weren’t inexperienced recruits.
Every one of them had accepted the possibility of dying the day they joined S.H.I.E.L.D.
Death itself wasn’t frightening.
The unknown was.
Being dragged into absolute darkness by something they couldn’t even identify…
…that was another matter entirely.
Ten seconds passed.
The next attack came from below.
Concrete erupted beneath two agents’ feet.
More whip-like appendages burst through the floor, coiling around their legs before either man could pull the trigger.
They vanished underground in an instant.
Ward reacted immediately.
As the hole swallowed them, he hurled two grenades after them.
One high-explosive.
One incendiary.
“Down!” The blast shook the entire facility.
A pillar of fire erupted through the fractured floor, roaring upward like a volcanic eruption.
Heat washed over the squad.
The steel ceiling glowed orange under the inferno.
For a heartbeat…
Everyone thought it had worked.
Then the floor began to shake.
Not from the explosion.
From underneath.
A deep roar rolled through the earth.
Louder.
Closer.
The vibrations intensified until the entire water treatment plant shuddered around them.
Ward’s eyes widened.
“Fall back!” “Move!” The order came a second too late.
Walls burst apart.
More crimson tendrils speared through concrete from every direction.
Agents disappeared one after another, dragged screaming into widening cracks.
The building itself began to fail.
Fractures raced across the walls.
Concrete split apart.
Dust and broken stone cascaded from the ceiling.
The ground fractured beneath their boots like a shattered eggshell.
Then something enormous forced its way upward.
Tentacles erupted first.
Then a colossal crimson mass burst through the collapsing foundation.
Pipelines exploded.
Steel beams twisted apart.
The entire structure disintegrated as though caught in an earthquake.
The ground caved inward.
In seconds, the water treatment plant simply…
…ceased to exist.
Ward ran without looking back.
The collapsing earth nearly swallowed him.
By sheer luck, he escaped the sinkhole.
When he finally stopped and turned around, only two members of his squad had made it out with him.
Everyone else was gone.
Coulson rushed toward them.
“What happened?” Before Ward could answer, the scientist monitoring the sensors shouted from behind his tablet.
“It’s coming!” “The entire mass is moving!” “It’s surfacing!” The earth exploded.
A towering column of dust shot into the night sky.
Something emerged.
Slowly.
Relentlessly.
The creature unfolded to its full height.
At first glance…
…it resembled an insect.
Its armored body was deep crimson.
A long tail dragged behind it.
Its circular maw bristled with vicious feeding parts.
From each forelimb extended massive crimson tendrils, the same appendages that had slaughtered the strike team moments earlier.
It stood nearly fifty meters tall.
No one spoke.
The scientist stared upward in mute disbelief, clutching his tablet against his chest.
“My God…” Even Coulson and Ward, veterans of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s strangest operations, found themselves speechless.
They had encountered aliens.
Advanced technology.
Things the public would never believe.
Nothing remotely like this.
Coulson forced himself back into command mode.
He keyed his communicator.
“All units.” “Maximum firepower.” “Bring it down.” “Copy.” The Quinjet dropped to attack altitude.
Its ventral heavy rotary cannon extended beneath the fuselage.
The barrels spun.
A torrent of armor-piercing rounds hammered into the monster’s shell.
Sparks burst across the crimson carapace.
The creature barely reacted.
Missile racks deployed.
Twin missiles streaked through the night before slamming squarely into the giant insect.
The explosion blossomed into a massive fireball that illuminated the entire industrial district.
Just beyond the quarantine perimeter, Richard Carter arrived at a dead run.
He took in the burning ruins…
The hovering Quinjet…
The towering insect trading blows with S.H.I.E.L.D….
…and stopped cold.
For several long seconds, his brain refused to process what he was seeing.
Hold on…
Did I accidentally wander onto the set of a giant monster movie?
Because from where he was standing…
This looked a lot less like the Marvel Universe…
…and a lot more like something that belonged in an Ultraman battle.