The smoke from the battlefield had not yet cleared.
The air over Harlem was still heavy with the smell of blood, gunpowder, burning metal, and shattered concrete dust.
Fires crackled from overturned vehicles.
Broken glass glittered across the street like scattered ice, and the distant cries of civilians mixed with the groans of wounded soldiers.
Breaker II slowly lowered the main cannon that had been aimed at Abomination.
Behind the monocular visor, its cold gaze swept across the surroundings.
The surviving citizens who had hidden behind cars, walls, and ruined storefronts now cautiously raised their heads.
Some were pale with fear.
Some trembled so badly that they could barely hold their phones steady.
Yet almost all of them had their cameras pointed at the sudden silver steel phantom standing in the middle of the destroyed street.
The soldiers held their rifles tightly.
Several took half a step forward, only to stop again under the heavy pressure radiating from Breaker II’s rigging.
No one dared to be the first to fire.
[Detection: Multiple optical observation devices locked on.
No direct fire threat detected.]
[Unable to parse human behavioral logic.
Requesting tactical support.]
The cold mechanical request entered Emily’s consciousness, and she could not help but smile.
Of course Breaker II could not understand what humans were doing with their phones.
Without independent intelligence, it could only treat the cameras as possible locking devices.
“Explorer II, release full-spectrum electromagnetic interference,” Emily ordered calmly, her fingers sliding through the glowing code before her.
“Launch smoke-screen rounds and cover the entire main street.
Breaker II, prepare for spatial extraction.
Synchronize optical cloaking.”
[Command confirmed.
Execution beginning.]
The moment the order was given, a smaller figure appeared from the shadows between nearby buildings.
It was Explorer II, which had been silently waiting in stealth.
Its rigging launchers activated at the same time.
Dozens of smoke grenades shot into the air and exploded above the street.
Thick gray-white smoke spread across the battlefield like a sudden fog, carrying electromagnetic interference that distorted signals and blocked cameras.
Even the searchlights from the helicopters above could not pierce through it.
“What’s happening?”
“Smoke!
Where did the smoke come from?”
“Do we fire?
Should we fire?”
The soldiers were thrown into chaos.
Orders, shouts, and the sound of weapons being readied mixed together.
But no one dared to fire blindly into the smoke.
With visibility gone, they could easily hit their own people.
Inside the thick fog, Breaker II’s massive hull was swallowed by a pale blue optical-cloaking field.
Space around it rippled slightly, like water disturbed by a falling stone.
Before disappearing, Breaker II turned once and looked at Hulk, who still stood nearby in confusion.
Then its form blurred.
The silver battleship unit vanished silently from the battlefield.
There was no engine roar.
No leaving trail.
No visible escape route.
The Explorer II units also activated their cloaking at the same time, disappearing like drops of water blending into mist.
A dozen seconds later, the evening wind swept the smoke away.
Everyone immediately stared toward the center of the street.
And froze.
The silver-haired girl and her monstrous steel rigging were gone.
Only scorched cannon craters, deep impact marks, and torn asphalt remained behind, proving that the terrifying steel phantom had truly appeared there.
Hulk stared at the empty space before him.
Then he looked down at the fist he had used to touch Breaker II’s mechanical arm.
His large green eyes were filled with confusion.
He raised his head toward the empty night sky and let out a low, wronged roar.
Friend… gone.
The helicopter door opened violently, and General Ross rushed down with soldiers behind him.
He stared at the empty street, then at the collapsed Abomination, who could no longer resist.
The veins on Ross’s forehead bulged.
“Search!” he roared into the communicator.
“Lock down all of New York!
Air and ground!
Even if you have to turn this city upside down, find that thing for me!”
But deep in his heart, Ross already knew the truth.
It was useless.
Something that could appear and disappear out of thin air, something radar could not detect, was not something they could catch with normal military methods.
Not far away, Hulk’s rage slowly began to fade when he heard Betty Ross calling his name.
Betty ran toward him despite the soldiers trying to stop her.
Hulk turned toward her, his enormous body curling slightly.
He carefully reached out one hand, moving as gently as he could, afraid that even the smallest mistake might hurt her.
In his green eyes, the fury faded.
Only tenderness remained.
The clash of titans that had torn through Harlem finally came to an end before dawn.
The next morning, New York’s rising sun pierced through the lingering dust of the previous night.
Golden-red light fell across the ruined streets of Harlem.
The entire block looked as if a prehistoric beast had chewed through it.
The asphalt was covered in spiderweb cracks.
The deepest craters were three or four meters deep.
Muddy groundwater leaked from broken underground pipes, pooling at the bottom of the holes and reflecting the damaged skyline.
Apartment buildings on both sides of the street had broken walls, exposed steel bars, and shattered windows.
Storefronts were destroyed.
Shelves, broken goods, and concrete debris were scattered across the floors.
Some had melted into strange lumps of metal.
Others had been crushed flat by shockwaves.
Every piece of wreckage silently testified to the horror of last night’s battle.
Hundreds of rescue workers in orange uniforms moved through the ruins.
Life detectors beeped constantly.
Heavy cranes roared.
Walkie-talkies crackled with urgent voices.
Workers carefully lifted slabs of concrete, searching for anyone who might still be trapped.
Not far away, National Guard soldiers placed three layers of yellow cordon tape to hold back swarming reporters.
Inside the cordon, soldiers worked to recover destroyed weapons and armor.
One team struggled to pull a deformed machine gun from an overturned armored vehicle.
The barrel had been bent into a strange U-shape, and the steel casing was covered in deep dents.
Another team wore heavy biohazard suits and gas masks.
They carefully collected broken bone-spur fragments left behind from Abomination’s body.
The sharp remains carried gamma radiation, so each one was placed into lead-sealed containers marked:
High-Risk Biological Material.
Do Not Touch.
Outside the cordon, a reporter in a black trench coat stood before a camera.
“Good morning, everyone.
This is Eddie Brock from The Daily Bugle, reporting live from the disaster site in Harlem.”
Behind him, the ruins of an office building were still smoking.
“Last night, an unprecedented disaster broke out in Harlem, Manhattan.
Two unknown giant creatures fought in the center of the city.
The U.S.
military deployed armored units and air support, but the battle still caused catastrophic damage.
According to the latest reports from the NYPD and nearby hospitals, at least three hundred and fifty people have been confirmed injured, twenty are missing, and the death toll is still being confirmed…”
Before Eddie could continue, a man in black stepped out from inside the cordon and stopped him.
The man showed an ID card.
Eddie’s expression changed immediately.
A few seconds later, he could only reluctantly signal his cameraman to cut the live broadcast.
At the center of the ruins, Clint Barton crouched beside a scorched crater.
He wore a black tactical suit, with a composite bow strapped across his back.
His sharp eyes scanned the damaged ground, and his fingers lightly brushed the smooth edge of the crater.
The texture made his frown deepen.
As the S.H.I.E.L.D.
field commander assigned to this incident, Barton had arrived at three in the morning.
He had already spent four hours examining the battlefield.
“Agent Barton, we found this in the surrounding block.”
An agent hurried over, holding a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was a small, deformed metal projectile.
“This is the core of a 20mm armor-piercing round,” the agent said.
“But the material is a high-density alloy we’ve never seen before.
Its hardness is more than three times that of depleted uranium alloy.
Our lab can’t analyze its full composition yet.”
The agent swallowed and continued.
“We also completed the initial testing on the main crater.
It wasn’t caused by a conventional explosive or normal armor-piercing impact.
It looks more like an annihilation reaction.
The concrete and steel at the impact point weren’t blown apart.
They were directly vaporized.”
Barton took the evidence bag and lifted it toward the morning light.
His expression turned heavier.
He had seen the world’s best weapons.
He had fought in jungles, deserts, and war zones.
He had even worked around Stark technology before.
But this was different.
Eight shots from a portable unit with firepower comparable to heavy naval cannons.
Perfect accuracy against a moving target.
Not one round struck Hulk by mistake.
Not one civilian was hit.
The armor had withstood Abomination’s punches.
The unit had appeared and disappeared without radar, infrared, or thermal detection catching it.
This did not look like Earth technology.
Even Tony Stark probably could not build something like this.
“Anything else?” Barton asked.
“We pulled surveillance footage, civilian videos, and military combat records,” the agent said.
“From the moment the unknown unit appeared until it vanished, it attacked only one target: Abomination.
No civilian casualties caused by its fire.
No military casualties either.
Also…”
The agent hesitated.
“When military snipers kept firing at the Hulk, their weapon systems were disrupted by electromagnetic interference.
Every sniper position in the block was affected.”
Barton’s eyes narrowed.
So this unknown unit not only possessed terrifying firepower, armor, and mobility, but also had extremely precise friend-or-foe judgment.
And from the beginning, it had stood on Hulk’s side.
“It came to help the Hulk,” Barton murmured.
Then he picked up his communicator.
“Fury, field investigation has results.”
Nick Fury’s low voice came through.
“Speak.”
“Unknown unit.
Humanoid core, equipped with a warship-grade main cannon system, heavy armor, high mobility, and optical cloaking.
Firepower, armor defense, and technology level are far beyond current Earth standards.
It is not Stark Industries technology.
It is not known military equipment from any country.”
Barton’s voice became more serious.
“Also, it behaved like a friendly unit. Find the original chapter at g.com.
It only attacked Abomination.
It caused zero civilian casualties and even prevented some friendly-fire incidents.”
The other side went silent for several seconds.
Then Fury said, “Natasha has something to ask.”
A moment later, Natasha Romanoff’s calm voice came through the communicator.
“Clint, did you find any special traces at the scene?
Energy residue?
Something blue, maybe like a data stream?”
Barton paused, then looked at the technical agent beside him.
The agent quickly handed him a tablet.
On the screen was an abnormal energy spectrum captured briefly at the scene.
It showed a pattern of regular code-like signals, completely different from normal electromagnetic waves.
“Yes,” Barton said slowly.
“There was a brief abnormal energy residue.
Blue-black code spectrum.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
Why?
Do you recognize it?”
On the other end of the line, Natasha stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Triskelion headquarters, looking down at New York City.
Her fingers lightly touched the peace charm Emily had once given her.
Her eyes were filled with shock and suspicion.
She finally remembered where she had seen that style before.
When S.H.I.E.L.D.’s tech department investigated Emily’s online traces, the report included a similar code spectrum.
The tech team had said it was the trace left behind when Emily repaired an encrypted database.
And that silver hair…
It was far too similar to Emily’s white hair.
One was a young genius programmer.
The other was an unknown entity with technology beyond Earth, appearing on the Harlem battlefield.
In Natasha’s mind, the two figures slowly overlapped.
“Natasha?” Barton’s voice pulled her back.
“Are you still there?”
Natasha took a slow breath.
“I might have a lead on the unknown individual,” she said.
“Fury, I request permission to follow this line alone.
No field support.
We should not alert the target.”
Inside S.H.I.E.L.D.’s command room, Fury stared at the large screen showing Harlem’s ruins.
His one eye narrowed.
After a few seconds, he replied in a deep voice.
“Approved.
Natasha, I want to know exactly what this thing is, where it came from, and whether it is a threat to Earth.
Find out whatever you can.”
“Understood.”
Meanwhile, in an apartment in Queens, Emily sat calmly at the dining table, eating breakfast.
There were golden sunny-side-up eggs, crispy toast, and a steaming bowl of preserved egg and pork congee in front of her.
On the nearby television, The Daily Bugle was still broadcasting reports about the Harlem disaster.
Emily’s fingertips tapped lightly against the table.
But her consciousness had already entered S.H.I.E.L.D.’s internal communication channel.
She had heard the conversation between Fury, Natasha, and Barton clearly.
“Oh?
Natasha suspects me already?”
Emily raised an eyebrow and took a sip of congee.
As expected of Black Widow.
Her intuition was frighteningly sharp.
Just from a familiar style, she could trace the possibility back to Emily.
But Emily was not too worried.
Suspicion was only suspicion.
Natasha had no proof.
When Breaker II extracted, it had left nothing directly connected to Emily.
The energy signals and code traces had been erased the moment it withdrew.
Even if S.H.I.E.L.D.
turned the entire city upside down, they would not find concrete evidence linking her to Harlem.
Besides, who would believe that a nineteen-year-old high school girl who lived between home and school on a fixed schedule could be the mastermind behind a storm that shook half of Harlem?
Emily put down her spoon.
With a flick of her finger, the news on her tablet changed into real-time surveillance footage from Columbia University’s biology lab.
Dr.
Curt Connors stood in front of a clean bench, holding a tube of green serum.
His eyes were full of urgency and obsession.
His left sleeve hung empty where his missing arm should have been.
On the lab bench, inside a white mouse cage, a mouse with a previously broken leg had already grown a new limb.
But it had also grown green scales.
Now it was biting crazily at the metal bars of the cage.
Emily looked at Dr.
Connors on the screen, and a faint seriousness flashed in her sea-blue eyes.
The Hulk and Abomination crisis had temporarily ended, but the next danger was already approaching.
Dr.
Connors’ Lizard Serum had completed animal testing.
It was only a matter of days before he injected himself and became The Lizard.
Emily placed her cup down and lightly swiped the tablet screen again.
The genetically modified spider she had captured rested inside a sealed tube, crawling slowly against the glass.
Emily looked at the spider.
Then she looked back at Dr.
Connors.
A faint smile touched the corner of her mouth.
It did not matter.
She had plenty of time to play with this world slowly.
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