I took a bite out of my waffles as I watched Bruce Banner from nearly two blocks away. It was hardly the limit of our new psychic tags, but I liked to stay close just in case. After all, Banner was testier than most, and considering who our enemy was, I wasn't taking any chances.
Bruce was on Dante's list of world-enders, which was essentially a collection of high-potential targets and locations that the Widows had been monitoring for a while now. Our shifts were twelve hours long, and we rotated targets with breaks in between.
It was mind-numbing work, and the most excitement I'd gotten all week was when Banner's SHIELD tail threw a vague look in my direction, but I didn't mind the monotony.
If anything, it felt like the vacation the Red Room never gave me.
I was in the middle of sipping my coffee when my bracelet vibrated.
Jean Grey was trying to reach out.
That bad, huh?
She and I had never quite gotten along. Maybe it was because I was unapologetic about my past as a Widow, or because I seemed to be getting closer to her boyfriend. I didn't particularly care, but she certainly did.
She never said more to me than she absolutely had to.
"What's wrong?" I sent through the telepathic link, standing up from my chair and dropping a crisp twenty-dollar bill on the table as I walked out. I was a bit reluctant to leave the coffee behind.
"We have a problem. Scott just captured Senator Alden with help from SHIELD, and they've confirmed there's a plan in motion to activate the Hulk."
"Of course there is," I snorted. "It's always the stupid ones. Please tell me you know what their idiotic plan entails."
I could almost feel her cringe through the link. "They can't push him for information with SHIELD officers present. You know that."
"So, I'm going in blind."
"…Yes, but Scott and Kitty are on their way to assist."
"Copy that."
I slipped into the alley and tugged harder at the psychic link I'd established with Bruce Banner, gauging his emotional state. He was perfectly calm, though the SHIELD agents approaching him were increasingly not.
I teleported to the top of the building where he was. It was some artsy, overpriced bookshop in the Village.
Immediately, I activated my stealth enchantment, hiding myself completely from view, then dropped the shapeshifting enchantment, returning my armor to its base form. The cute dress I wore lengthened, and the breezy silk shifted into leather and plated armor that covered nearly every inch of me, including my nose and mouth. My enchanted blade rested along my magnetic back sheath.
"Let's see if I can save myself an afternoon of suspense."
I powered up the telepathic enchantment on my Mind Runic Array and slowly swept it over the crowd while keeping an eye out for any visible threat.
It was like rifling through garbage.
No wonder Jean is always tense.
It took nearly a minute, but I found the odd one out—and boy, was he odd.
He was an athletic guy squeezed into hippie attire to blend in. He had an energy pistol tucked into his jacket pocket. In his mind, his job was deceptively simple: find Bruce Banner at that one bookshop he frequented and shoot him dead.
The poor bastard didn't even know that he was the Hulk.
And he was close, too.
The SHIELD agents had completely missed him, and although they were closing in on Banner's location, they weren't going to get there in time.
So, I teleported—appearing in the middle of a book aisle, just around the corner from Banner—and grabbed the guy, teleporting us straight to the rooftop.
There was a sharp shriek as someone saw him vanish into thin air.
The assassin was no slouch. His knee snapped into my gut with a rising strike as we reappeared. The hit didn't even tickle, but it was orders of magnitude stronger than anything a normal human should be able to produce.
He followed up with a right cross to my cheek, which I stopped cold by catching his arm and twisting it, snapping the elbow.
The assassin gritted through it, his free hand sweeping into his jacket and wrapping around his gun. It fired, each shot precise—aimed at my gut, chest, and head—even at this range.
I let go of the broken arm and snatched the weapon, crushing it along with his fingers.
A leg sweep put him on his side, his kneecap cracking as he hit the ground with a groan.
"Who sent you?" I asked.
No reply came, but his mind was loud enough.
His name was Jared, and he was hired by some shady security guy from Advanced Idea Mechanics—one of Tony Stark's main competitors. It was run by some guy named Aldrich Killian, a tech billionaire Dante had asked me to keep an eye on. He was as cutthroat as they came and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty, but I'd always thought he had more sense than this.
"Interesting."
This attack was basically Killian's pre-launch showcase for his new super soldier and weapons program. He planned on deploying several dozen enhanced troopers into the city to "stabilize" the situation before SHIELD, the Avengers, and Dante showed up to deal with the Hulk.
By the end of it, he'd have proven his program and have thousands of companies lining up worldwide to buy soldiers and weapons from him.
The plan was flashy and unoriginal, but it didn't need to be clever to work.
Killian had also prepared multiple contingency plans in case the first assassin failed—none of which he'd shared with Jared, of course.
The failed assassin suddenly tried to crush a cyanide capsule at the back of his throat.
I stopped it, freezing his jaw with telekinesis.
His suicide attempt wasn't out of blind loyalty. Killian's people had his family, and even though they were paying him through the nose for this, the consequences for failure were steep.
"Don't worry about Rita and little Claire," I said, plucking the capsule free with a flick of my finger. "We'll find them—and the other assassins—and Killian. Quite the mess you've found yourself in, Jared. You should consider a different line of work."
Jared made confused, muffled noises, and I ignored him as I tapped into my communication enchantment, opening a line to the Widows.
"There's been a development at the New York posting. Who's ready for some real excitement?"
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