The black Audi A8 rolled to the curb.
Gwen unbuckled, pushed open the passenger door, and stepped out, looking over as Hawk climbed from the driver's side.
"I'll go to the airport by myself tomorrow."
"Hm?"
"You finish this and just meet me at the airport."
She rattled it off, kissed him, patted his chest, and met his eyes. "Wrap this fast. I do not want to see a whole bunch of you."
Hawk's brows lifted. He nodded to her.
A heartbeat later—
he vanished. A sonic crack boomed across the night at altitude, a perfect ring-cloud blooming in the dark.
Gwen drew her gaze back, got in, and headed the car toward Palm Street.
Meanwhile—
Alice Springs, Australia.
A small city set in the central desert, ringed by red sands and low hills. The dry bed of the Todd River cut straight through town like a scar, its pale ribbon a strange kind of landmark.
Out in that endless, ordinary-looking red desert, a battle was underway.
Whoosh!
A rocket dragged fire across the sand and—boom—turned a desert buggy into a blooming fireball. The blast wave flung four S.H.I.E.L.D. agents off their feet.
Rat-tat-tat!
Barrels popped up from buried pits, spitting sparks, stitching a dense web of fire that kept the S.H.I.E.L.D. gunship at bay.
The pilot's thumb itched over the button—one bunker-buster would solve so much.
But…
Negative.
This was a suspected HYDRA cloning base. Ops had ordered seizure, not destruction.
Out here, HYDRA had cover.
They didn't.
"Natasha."
"Go."
"Hawk's en route."
"How—"
"He's already here."
Hawk's voice came from right behind Natasha. He'd arrived without a sound. As he spoke, his Sixth Sense unfurled, sweeping everything above and below into his awareness.
He saw the hive-shaped base, buried under the dunes.
He saw the HYDRA personnel inside—nervous, frantic, hurrying back and forth.
He also saw a familiar stranger in a white lab coat and glasses, scholarly face with a crooked undertow of malice.
Dr. Merrick.
And he saw, in a sterile chamber of that hidden complex, a row of containers that could have been ripped from a movie—cloning cultivation pods.
Why was he so sure?
Because—
floating in several of those pods,
was… him, asleep.
"Heh."
"Found you."
Hawk's mouth tipped up. He turned to Natasha. "No moles inside that base, right?"
Natasha had barely processed that he'd arrived; she shook her head.
"None."
"Good."
A low note shivered in the air as his will flared. Fire took shape behind him—a phoenix projection blooming with heat.
An instant later,
the scene S.H.I.E.L.D. had witnessed at the Tri-Carrier HQ played again in the desert.
One by one, HYDRA troopers who thought themselves safe, snug under the sand, were plucked out by Hawk's Sixth Sense—Psychic Transference—dumped topside in neat lines like schoolkids at recess.
Line up. Share the fruit.
Before their expressions could even change, a sheet of incandescent phoenix light washed across them.
By the time the glare faded, two hundred-plus HYDRA soldiers had vaporized—gone without a trace.
"Done."
"I'm heading down."
Hawk's eyes cooled. He tossed the words to Natasha and stepped forward—and with Sixth Sense—Teleportation, he was inside the subterranean nursery.
He looked at the nearest pod—filled with azure fluid.
Inside, a "Hawk" about his age floated curled like an infant, arms around his knees, sleeping soundly.
He pulled his gaze aside to the man he'd just yanked here across bulkheads from the command room—the man in the lab coat.
Dr. Merrick had recognized him the instant he arrived. He ducked his head like an ostrich and didn't dare breathe loudly.
Hawk's brows rose.
"Dr. Merrick?"
"Y-yes."
His voice trembled. Then he seemed to remember something and blurted, "Mr. Phoenix, this isn't my fault. I was forced. HYDRA forced me. If I didn't do what they said, they were going to torture me."
Hawk smiled faintly.
If he hadn't just watched Merrick posturing like a little overlord in the control room through his Sixth Sense, he might almost have bought it.
But…
he wasn't here to argue. Whether Merrick was willing or coerced didn't matter to him.
He turned back to the pod—his own face asleep in blue—and tilted his head. "So are we calling this a success or a failure?"
Success? HYDRA had, technically, made a copy of him.
But he sensed zero life force from the body in the pod.
To be blunt:
what floated there wasn't a "clone of Hawk" so much as a corpse that happened to look like him, pickled in fluid.
He hadn't sensed any other nursery chambers in the complex, so—success or failure?
He glanced at Merrick again.
The scientist's heart stuttered. A researcher's instinct screamed that this answer was life or death.
So—
Merrick swallowed audibly and rasped, "Some were successful. Some failed."
Hawk's brows edged up. "Where are the successful ones?"
"Destroyed."
"Destroyed?"
"Yes."
Merrick swallowed again. "There were five successes. But once they opened their eyes, their consciousness destabilized. They collapsed quickly. We had no choice but to terminate."
Hawk nodded, thoughtful, then flicked his eyes to the five drowsing "him" in the room. "And these?"
Now that he'd spoken to save his neck, there was no point holding back.
"They were scheduled to receive consciousness uploads today," Merrick said. "Before we could begin… you found us."
The discovery had been a coincidence, in its way.
Everyone knew:
the facility sat in the desert.
The desert is barren. Everything is scarce. With over two hundred HYDRA staff, supplying a base like this had been easy enough back in the days of deep cover.
But once HYDRA blew their cover—and once Maria Hill's rapid consolidation of S.H.I.E.L.D. took hold—the hammer fell harder and harder.
HYDRA remnants grew jumpy, afraid S.H.I.E.L.D. would drop in out of nowhere and bag them.
Some started wavering—among them the HYDRA crew running a "factory" in Alice Springs that quietly funneled supplies to this facility.
One had joined HYDRA less than three years ago. He decided he wasn't dying for them—reached out to S.H.I.E.L.D. through a buried online forum—offered to flip and turn state's witness.
If Arnim Zola still controlled the net like he used to, the instant that message was sent, that kid would've been flagged for deletion.
But Zola had vanished. HYDRA's net-grip had vanished with him.
Natasha took a team and rolled up the Alice Springs node.
But the number of HYDRA who even knew the clone site existed was small—and the loyal "old snakes" had died resisting.
So the lab likely wouldn't have been exposed—
except Nat's takedown happened to land exactly on the monthly window when "excess" supplies were routed to the clone site.
Nat clocked how much was in the warehouse—way beyond what the "factory" could use—so she inferred a hidden facility nearby. She scrubbed the site, then had their turncoat help stage a little play to earn his keep.
The clone lab sweated through missing its monthly delivery and finally sent a runner to town to see what had happened.
By luck, that runner knew the turncoat.
Nat bagged him alive.
And…
that was that.
The lab was burned.
Hawk had heard the wistfulness in Merrick's voice when he said "before we could begin the upload."
He looked from the five pods to Merrick, whose face held a flicker of regret at the ruined "work," and the corner of Hawk's mouth ticked up.
"I'll give you one chance to live."
"Wake them."
"…"
(End of Chapter)
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