Northeastern New York State, approximately 5,500 meters above the Adirondack Mountains.
This was the altitude for high-altitude civilian skydiving. At that moment, Batman, dressed in a jumpsuit that made him look somewhat bulky, sat inside the aircraft cabin.
"Josh, I'm not kidding—jumping under the conditions you've specified is no different from suicide."
Inside the skydiving plane's cabin, a Black man was making one final attempt at persuasion: "The spot you've chosen for the jump has never been attempted before, and you don't even want an instructor… You're really going to do this?"
Josh—a slightly overweight but wealthy man who had always dreamed of skydiving—had passed by the skydiving club earlier that day and, on a whim, decided to join in.
This was the identity Batman was currently disguising himself as. With the thrill-seeking expression of a spoiled playboy on his face, he replied:
"That's right! It has to be something no one's ever challenged before—that's the only thing that suits me!"
Skydive Perris was a high-end skydiving club in the United States, frequently visited by wealthy clients for the experience. Guys like "Josh" showed up every month.
As a result, the club had a high tolerance for rich clients. As long as the dollars were there, almost any service could be provided.
"But you're just a beginner…" The Black man sighed, feeling like he was trying to reason with a damned fool. "Listen up. According to the info on your watch, once you drop to this altitude…"
"After you hit the ground, make sure to send us a signal so we know you're still alive. Otherwise, we'll dispatch a rescue helicopter to look for you… though by then, you'll probably already be part of the dirt."
The Black man nagged on, repeating the skydiving precautions to Batman over and over.
As the plane neared the jump point Batman had specified, the cabin door slowly opened. Batman pretended to hesitate for a moment, then—before the Black man could speak—stumbled forward as if losing his balance and fell out.
"Hey, this guy—hey!" The Black man watched Batman's rapidly shrinking figure and sighed repeatedly.
A guy who had never jumped before, who had paid a fortune just to go without an instructor, and who was slightly overweight—in the Black man's eyes, Batman was already as good as dead.
The plane flew farther and farther away until Batman's figure vanished from the Black man's sight. Only then did he shake his head and return to his seat in the cabin.
"Damn it, I didn't even see him deploy the chute!"
Batman indeed hadn't deployed a chute. While in midair, he directly drew a batarang to slice through the parachute pack straps, then spent a few seconds stripping off the jumpsuit he was wearing.
The reason his disguised identity "Josh" appeared bulky was entirely because the Arkham battlesuit underneath had added an extra layer to his silhouette.
Whoosh! The cape behind him snapped and fluttered wildly in the wind of his rapid descent. Batman kept his body in a vertical freefall while opening the severed parachute pack he still held.
There was no parachute inside at all. The pack contained only the bat-cowl Batman hadn't worn on the plane, along with a biological signal decoy crafted by Dr. Banner.
Casually tossing the decoy aside, Batman slipped the bat-cowl over his wind-tossed hair.
The white lenses quietly activated. Midair, Batman shifted his posture from feet-first to head-first, angling diagonally toward the S.H.I.E.L.D. base hidden in the Adirondack Mountains.
Driving to the Adirondacks would take four or five hours, infiltrating the S.H.I.E.L.D. base to retrieve the data Batman needed another four or five, and then four or five more to drive back.
That was too much time. Venom was still waiting in the ecological containment unit at the City Hall subway station for Batman to return and conduct comprehensive research.
The other mysterious white symbiote was still unaccounted for.
And for every minute Batman delayed, weapons could slip out from Stark Industries or S.H.I.E.L.D. onto the market.
Batman had to choose the most efficient infiltration method. As for the return trip, he had already scouted that a vegetable transport truck would be stopping at the outer perimeter of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base today; he would hitch a ride back to New York hidden in the vehicle.
Batman didn't yet have his own aircraft, and buying one on short notice wasn't feasible. His chosen method of infiltrating the S.H.I.E.L.D. base was a direct high-altitude drop.
Moreover, a parachute would be far too conspicuous—even a low-altitude deployment carried the risk of detection by the S.H.I.E.L.D. base.
For all these reasons, Batman opted for a body-only descent.
"I once returned to Earth from the Moon—240,000 miles away—relying on a spacecraft's propulsion system after the lunar base exploded."
Midair, Batman's thoughts were crystal clear. He continuously calculated his descent speed and decided based on those calculations whether to deploy the bat-cape.
"All I need is to gauge the distance to the ground precisely and use the bat-cape to decelerate gradually for a safe landing."
"Peter Parker's physical conditioning far exceeds my original body's. I can afford to shorten the buffering distance."
5,500 meters sounded high, but the actual drop would take only about 100 seconds.
Batman silently calculated his distance to the ground in his mind. Then, with only forty seconds left before impact, he deployed the bat-cape.
Bzzz!
In an electric hum inaudible to human ears, the electrified bat-cape instantly stiffened, slowing Batman's descent—but he was still hurtling toward the ground at tremendous speed.
Thud!
A muffled impact. Batman crashed diagonally into the Adirondack soil.
But in less than five seconds, he braced his arms and pulled himself free from the earth, taking several deep breaths to optimize his physical condition.
In the Adirondacks, the S.H.I.E.L.D. base responsible for "Project Pegasus" lay less than five kilometers from Batman's position.
There, he would find the local network data he needed, the Tesseract he had built his commercial empire to access up close, and more information about this world hidden in the network—details he didn't yet know.
Time was tight. Batman had to prioritize the most urgent task: hack the local network and search exhaustively for information on Stark Industries weaponry.
The other secrets and the Tesseract data would have to wait for a future opportunity.
The sky hadn't yet darkened. Batman didn't sprint at full speed but instead walked at a steady, rapid pace toward the base.
Most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base was concealed within the mountain, with only a small portion exposed. Cameras and patrolling sentries with early-warning systems were virtually everywhere.
For Batman, however, this broke down into a simple three-step process.
Step one: Hack the base's surveillance network so his movements wouldn't trigger capture or alerts.
Step two: Employ peak Batman-level stealth to slip past the heavily guarded sentries and enter the base interior.
Step three: Commandeer a S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite as a hidden node, allowing him to begin hacking the local network immediately upon reaching the interior without tripping any internal firewalls.
As for the external S.H.I.E.L.D. firewalls—Batman had written them himself. He knew exactly how to exploit them.
Tap, tap.
Crossbones—Brock Rumlow—sat in the cab of a cargo truck, idly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel's edge.
His truck was parked openly in the distribution area on the outskirts of the Adirondack S.H.I.E.L.D. base, loaded with several tons of vegetables and meat.
His current identity was that of a driver hired by S.H.I.E.L.D., making twice-weekly food deliveries.
Crossbones Rumlow's face had been meticulously disguised; he had already passed the earlier security checkpoint without raising suspicion from the inspecting sentries.
Now, the sentries were conducting a thorough vehicle inspection: X-rays, ultrasonic scans, fuel cap seal checks, fuel sampling…
The identity disguise was complete, but the truck still had to pass layer after layer of scrutiny.
Crossbones Rumlow drummed his fingers on the wheel, glancing at the sentries' every move in the rearview mirror.
After Black Widow—Natasha—had locked away her biggest obstacle, "Hawkeye" Clint Barton, in the Cube prison, she had come to work at this S.H.I.E.L.D. base in the Adirondacks.
This was Black Widow's third time entering the facility. The previous two visits, she had taken no action.
But now, on her third entry, even the infamous Black Widow could delay no longer—she had to execute the mission.
The objective: Steal the research data on the "Tesseract" from "Project Pegasus."
Crossbones Rumlow was here to extract Natasha. The two had never met; everything was proceeding according to Hydra's arrangements.
He had concealed the data-reception device inside the truck's door panel, secured behind the crash beam after removing the interior trim—an area that evaded key metal detection zones.
Tap, tap.
Rumlow's drumming slowed. He watched the sentries scan the cargo hold inch by inch with various instruments, even using tools to inspect the truck's undercarriage.
Fortunately, the device hidden in the door went undetected. Rumlow saw the lead sentry flash an OK sign in the rearview mirror and quietly exhaled in relief.
Now it was up to Black Widow Natasha to perform.
Whether she succeeded or not, Crossbones Rumlow would drive away once the food unloading was complete.
Inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, Black Widow Natasha—wearing a form-fitting skirt—walked gracefully toward the monitoring room. One of the sentries on duty there had been flirting with her for days; her visiting him was perfectly natural and wouldn't arouse suspicion.
As an undercover spy within S.H.I.E.L.D., she had to complete the mission while leaving a logical trail of behavior for any post-incident review.
She had less than half an hour, but for her, that was more than enough.
Before Crossbones Rumlow arrived, Black Widow had already prepared the data for packaging and transmission without alerting anyone.
Now, she simply needed to return to the monitoring room and activate the data-reading device she had previously installed in the core server room—the internal local network hub.
Incidentally, that device had been planted during her last visit to the base with "Hawkeye" Clint.
Even if it were discovered, the trail would lead straight to Hawkeye—with no connection to Black Widow Natasha.
As for Hawkeye, he remained locked in the Cube prison.
"Hey, Natasha!" The sentry lit up with an enthusiastic smile and stood to greet her as she pushed open the monitoring room door.
The other sentries in the room teased him good-naturedly, envious that the lucky guy had managed to charm the famous Black Widow.
But Natasha knew the best way to string a man along was to keep him at arm's length. Even though she had been batting her eyes at this sentry for days and had now come to him on her own initiative, she now acted reserved—retreating flustered to a corner of the room and pulling a data receiver/transmitter from inside her skirt to plug into a port.
Meanwhile, in the power supply and cooling systems of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base's internal local network servers.
Batman had installed a tiny self-powered man-in-the-middle hardware device on the controller of a cooling pump.
To hack the internal local network, Batman didn't need to approach it like an ordinary hacker through the system.
He only needed this hardware to precisely manipulate coolant flow rates, allowing those minute changes to affect the server CPUs' operations and induce rare, nearly irreproducible micro-errors at specific moments.
This wasn't sabotage—it was to create a fleeting, nanosecond-level window.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite under his control would, during that window, accept an abnormal command that would normally be rejected due to the "hardware fault"—a backdoor Batman had left.
Then Batman would simply leave S.H.I.E.L.D., using the travel time from the base to the vegetable truck parked outside to locate the information he needed via the satellite window.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s security experts focused on network firewalls and software vulnerabilities. Almost no one would imagine someone manipulating the cooling system physically to manufacture an attack window. It was entirely beyond their frame of reference.