Chapter 417: The Conspiracy Surfaces
The thinking was straightforward. Take down the four of them with Tony, sweep the Adirondack Mountains base clean, and retrieve the Tesseract that had been sitting in that facility since Batman confirmed its location. One operation. Two objectives. Clean resolution.
Behind Batman and Tony, Hawkeye raised his bow and nocked four arrows at once. Black Widow drew the twin batons from behind her back, flicked them out, and blue electricity ran along the contacts. Both of them fell one step back from Batman and Tony's line -- and began moving forward.
Batman ran the four through the Gargoyle suit's scanner as he walked. None of them registered as anything approaching normal. Baron Zemo burned nearly solid red in thermal imaging -- internal temperature significantly above baseline. Madame Hydra read like a cold-blooded animal, body temperature indistinguishable from the surrounding air. The Grim Reaper showed dense mechanical components threaded throughout his skeletal structure -- hardware integrated at depth, not surface-level prosthetics. And Sandman did not register as biological at all. The scan returned the profile of a human-shaped sculpture assembled from compacted earth and mineral grain.
Batman was not concerned. Between the Gargoyle suit, Peter Parker's physical baseline, and the contents of his utility belt -- items he'd designed to work against the Lizard Professor and the Hulk both -- his margin for error in this engagement was higher than in almost any fight since crossing over. He'd fought in worse conditions against worse odds.
The four of them stood and waited, visibly relaxed. Zemo and Madame Hydra watched Batman and Tony approach with something close to amusement. Hawkeye and Black Widow they ignored entirely.
The moment was close to breaking into open combat when Sandman moved.
He rose from the ground without hurry. His body expanded -- loose grain pulling together into solid mass, the silhouette stretching upward through three meters, four, five, until a figure composed entirely of compacted earth and stone stood more than five meters tall in the gap in the line.
Batman stopped walking.
"Please tell me you're not actually afraid," Tony said quietly.
A faint mechanical movement ran across the Gargoyle suit's faceplate -- the two Vibranium side panels at the jaw line sliding forward to close the gap at Batman's chin. He was fully sealed now, head to foot, not a centimeter exposed.
He spoke at near-minimum volume, and even with Tony standing immediately to his right, he routed the words through the encrypted channel.
"It's not that. Something about tonight feels too designed. Too convergent. As if someone has been guiding me toward this exact location step by step to put me here, fighting HYDRA, in front of these people."
Tony kept his eyes on the four. "I'm listening."
"Luke Cage gets hit. The Raft and Ryker's Island break simultaneously. Venom Robin is away on assignment. You call for backup at precisely the right moment. Every element is pushing in the same direction -- toward me arriving here alone."
Tony's tone shifted, slightly. "Are you suspicious of me?"
"No." The word was immediate, and Tony's response to it was a fractional relaxation in his armored frame. "I think someone spent considerable time setting this up. The moment we engage Baron Zemo, we step into whatever they've built."
"What trap, specifically?"
Batman's mind went briefly to the Batwing mid-flight over the Atlantic -- the white hawk-skull face of Khonshu tilted slightly toward him, the hollow eyes holding no warmth at all. The words came back with precision.
It is a conspiracy aimed at you.
"There are four creatures locked in the Batcave," Batman said. "Don't engage. We pull back."
Tony was quiet for a half-second. "I can take those four."
"Can you take four versions of the Hulk? Simultaneously?"
Batman didn't name what was actually sleeping in the City Hall Batcave -- the gamma creatures from the underground levels of North Brother Island, secured during the early weeks of his operation here. But the image he'd planted was clear enough. Four Hulks. Tony ran the calculation visibly, even through the armor.
Two seconds passed.
They looked at each other.
Then both of them moved at once.
Two simultaneous concussions split the air -- not weapons, the sound of two armored figures launching backward at maximum output at the same instant. Tony seized Hawkeye with both arms and ignited his boot thrusters into a vertical climb. Batman caught Black Widow around the waist with one arm and drove off the ground with his legs, the full force of Peter Parker's body erupting downward in a single concentrated burst.
Baron Zemo, the Grim Reaper, Sandman, and Madame Hydra had essentially no time to react. By the time any of them had processed what was happening, Batman and Iron Man had already vanished into the black above the mountain range.
The Quinjet finished collapsing behind them. Metal debris and burning fuel caught the air in both directions, and the scattered orange light fell across the four figures still standing in the gap of the encirclement.
Baron Zemo had been holding a thin-bladed rapier throughout. He turned it over once in his hand, then sheathed it in a single practiced motion. "Batman sensed something." His face was hidden behind a full purple mask. Whatever expression he wore with that observation stayed there.
Madame Hydra looked at the burning wreckage of the Batwing. In her eyes, two small flames moved. "Some of the Serpent Squad have already left with the selected ones. Our phase begins now."
The Grim Reaper said nothing. He made a short sound through his nose -- low, dismissive -- and turned his attention toward the mountain base.
Sandman said nothing at all. His towering mass of compacted earth contracted smoothly back to human scale. As his surface settled, it resolved itself into the pattern of a green-and-white striped shirt.
Around them, HYDRA soldiers who had been scattered by the Batwing's airwash and hammered with rubber rounds were pulling themselves off the ground with broken bones and ruptured muscles, grinding out suppressed sounds but not complaining. The air smelled of burned aviation fuel and scorched earth.
Madame Hydra made a slow survey of the men struggling upright around her. Then her hand went to her hip in one smooth movement, came back with a whip, and cracked it out without turning to look.
The tip found a HYDRA soldier's skull. What it did to the skull was not subtle.
The soldiers nearest the body glanced at it and kept pulling themselves to their feet. No one spoke.
"Retrieve the Tesseract," Madame Hydra said. Her voice had taken on a different register -- the one she used for orders. "Assemble every person in the base. Full armament. We move on New York."
Baron Zemo looked at her from the far side of the ring. "You and I are partners, Madame. That is the full extent of our arrangement." He was standing straight, at rest, nothing in his posture suggesting he'd just watched two of the most dangerous people on the Eastern Seaboard walk away from a fight he'd prepared carefully. "My responsibility is Captain America. That is all."
Madame Hydra shifted her eyes to the Grim Reaper.
He gave her the same sound he'd given before. Then he turned without a word and walked toward the base entrance. Zemo fell into step behind him, a few paces back.
The injured HYDRA soldiers limped after them in a ragged column.
Silence settled over the hillside. The Batwing continued to burn at the perimeter. Then the one figure still standing in the gap finally spoke.
"When can you let me go?"
Sandman's voice was quiet. He was looking at Madame Hydra.
She turned back to him slowly, her expression rearranging itself into something softer, almost playful. She blinked at him. "Oh. You want to leave? And go where, exactly?"
"I -- I just want to see my daughter. Just for a little while." He had stepped backward from the look she gave him. His head was down.
"Flint Marko." She let the name settle. Her voice had gone gentle in the way that made it harder to refuse. "You became what you are in that test zone in Georgia. I'm the one who brought you back. Is this how you repay me?"
Sandman shook his head quickly.
"I'll let you see her," Madame Hydra said. Her mouth curved. "After we finish the plan." She turned away from him and walked toward the base. Her stride was unhurried, the motion of her frame precisely controlled, dangerous in the way that had nothing to do with the whip still hanging from her hand.