Once upon a time, Soren wouldn't have given a damn.
Nation-states crumbled, empires rose from ash, and tyrants painted their flags red with blood, the cycle meant little to him. He preferred neutrality, silence, and the occasional medicinal tea brewed at sunrise.
But HYDRA had made things personal.
It wasn't about toppling governments anymore.
They had come for him, his hall, his people.
The Centipede-enhanced thugs they sent had scorched part of his sanctuary, and though they fell easily.
He'd considered going to S.H.I.E.L.D. for answers.
That was before the house of secrets collapsed in front of him. With the agency exposed as HYDRA's puppet and Nick Fury fleeing like a wounded general,
Soren had no illusions left. The military?
Likely riddled with similar rot.
So instead of chasing bureaucracy, he chased results.
And one man came to mind.
Deadpool.
The first time they'd crossed paths, Wade Wilson was just a walking tumor with a foul mouth and an itchy trigger finger.
But after Soren had reconstructed his body and face, a side project.
Deadpool had returned to society with charm, confidence, and deeply inappropriate energy to spare.
Soren pulled out a silver-plated burner phone. No biometric nonsense. Just numbers. He dialed.
"Beep-beep... Beep-beep..."
The line picked up… static, then moaning. Female.
"Ohhh Soren, you still remember me!" came Deadpool's voice, loud and gleeful, as if he were calling from a strip club DJ booth.
"You're lucky. I was just about to blow someone's~"
"Deadpool."
"When you're done trying to impress a bored Instagram model, get over here."
The woman in the background groaned in protest, or pleasure, hard to tell.
"Make it quick."
"Oof, cold and clinical. I like it." Wade's voice dropped an octave. "One hour. Pants optional."
Click.
True to his word, Deadpool arrived fifty-eight minutes later. No chimichangas.
Just a black duffel bag full of guns and a grin behind a face he no longer had to hide.
Deadpool stepped into the ward where Soren sat calmly beside a softly glowing ward-stone.
"Well well well, Doc Zen himself." Deadpool said, striking a faux-bow. "You rang?"
"I did." Soren replied. "And you're early."
"Which tells me you either finished quickly, or she was unimpressed."
"Rude…" Deadpool muttered. "But fair."
Soren gestured toward the ward-stone, which shifted from blue to crimson.
"I want you to find HYDRA. Any branch. Any cell. Any lab."
"If it has a logo with a skull and tentacles, you burn it to the ground and bring me proof."
Deadpool blinked behind his eyeholes. "No flirting? No build-up? No 'Hey Wade, how's your mental health lately?'"
"This isn't a date, Wade. It's war."
That got his attention.
Deadpool adjusted his harness, something serious sharpening in his gaze.
"And if I say yes?"
Soren reached into a wooden case beside him and held up a vial, no larger than a thumb, crackling faintly with silver-blue arcs of lightning.
"You remember Dillon? Electro?" Soren said.
"I reverse-engineered his power. Refined it. Stabilized it."
He handed the vial to Wade. The glass shimmered like lightning bottled inside a dream.
"Every HYDRA base you find, I'll give you a new ability."
Deadpool took the vial like it was a holy relic.
"Okay." He said finally, voice tight. "Okay, damn. You had me at 'upgrade,' but you sealed it with the gift bag."
He looked up, nodding. "You got yourself a skull-squashing, tentacle-slashing, HYDRA-killing machine, boss."
Soren didn't smile, but he offered a brief nod of approval in his own quiet way.
"Don't let me down."
"Oh, I won't." Deadpool said, already heading for the door.
"This time, I'm not just in it for the blood and the boobs…"
"I'm on it. You'll hear back in three days max, probably sooner if nobody dies... or too many people die."
"Either way."
Deadpool gave a mock salute before vanishing with a thwip and the scent of cheap cologne.
He hadn't needed further persuasion. Soren's promises were never empty, and Deadpool could smell an opportunity like a bloodhound sniffing out a high-end steakhouse.
HYDRA had always courted him. So had S.H.I.E.L.D. and even that bald professor with the weird hover-chair. Wade had refused them all, not out of principle, but because institutional uniforms made him itch.
Still, HYDRA had kept in contact.
And Deadpool remembered one of their local handlers, a slippery little agent named Vassily who used to smuggle tech, drugs, and the occasional orphan super-soldier through backdoors in Moldova.
Now, Vassily was just a frozen corpse somewhere under a Siberian pine, his neck twisted at a clean ninety-degree angle.
After the Party
Exactly thirty-six hours later, Deadpool strolled back into the hospital ward with a wide grin and blood on his boots.
"You said three days."
"I gave you one and a half. That's express delivery, baby."
Soren, seated cross-legged on a rune-inscribed tile, glanced up. His voice was as calm as it was cutting.
"Hm. So you can work efficiently... when you're not busy chasing blondes."
"Hey now." Wade said, placing a hand on his chest, mock-offended. "I multitask. Anyway…"
"I've got a lead. A full branch. Beautiful place this time of year if you like frostbite."
Soren stood and walked over to a small medical kit. From within, he retrieved a vial swirling with pure electric-blue fluid. It sparked faintly volatile, alive.
"Hold still."
"Oh baby, you didn't even buy me dinner."
Soren ignored the jab and stabbed the gene-infusion syringe straight into Deadpool's neck. Most men would have screamed or convulsed.
"Wow." He murmured, watching his fingertips spark like frayed wires. "Tingly. I like it."
"It'll take time to fully integrate." Soren said. "But you're functional."
"Functional?" Deadpool chuckled. "Buddy, I'm glorious."
The foothills of Siberia. A wind-whipped wasteland of ice, stone, and regret.
Soren and Deadpool reappeared in a silent flash, their boots crunching into snow that had never known warmth. Mountains loomed like sleeping titans, and in the distance, the outline of a structure, black against white, peeked from beneath a snowbank.
Deadpool whistled. "Creepy enough. Definitely HYDRA."
Below them, faint movements.
Men in white armor, camouflaged like phantoms. Their guns matched the snow, their movements, efficient, trained.
But then came the call.
"Identify yourselves!"
Soren sighed, glancing down at his loose tunic and thin-soled shoes. "I told you I didn't want to teleport straight into visual range."
"I said it'd be dramatic." Deadpool shrugged. "You didn't object loudly."
The HYDRA soldiers closed in, maybe five, maybe six, their rifles raised, breath fogging their visors. One of them barked something in German-accented Russian.
The others formed a half-circle, flanking the duo.
Deadpool tilted his head, sparks dancing along his gloves.
"Doc... I need this." His voice unusually earnest beneath the humor. "Let me try it. Just one good spark of violence."
Soren looked at him. Deadpool's smile didn't match his eyes, there was hunger there, a thrill-seeking gleam he couldn't suppress.
"Fine." Soren replied.
"No survivors. I want the alarm system intact."
"You got it, boss. Time to plug in."
He raised both hands, and with a twitch of his fingers, lightning leapt from his palms.
Blue arcs danced through the snow, lighting up the white landscape with electric fury.
The HYDRA soldiers didn't stand a chance.
One tried to shout, silenced by a bolt that shattered his chest armor. Another reached for a grenade, Deadpool's spark raced up his arm before he could even pull the pin.
By the end of it, the snow was scorched in black streaks. Bodies steamed under the falling snow.
Deadpool exhaled, his eyes alight.
"…Dude. I think I just came."
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream