Skadi watched the Hunter lunge toward her with the same expression she might wear while watching paint dry.
She swung her greatsword from her back in a single fluid motion, catching the blade with her other hand and bringing it down in a crushing arc.
The massive weapon connected with the Hunter mid-leap. But rather than cutting the creature in half, it shattered—the impact was so overwhelming that the bioweapon simply came apart, pieces scattering across the ruined floor.
Skadi lowered her weapon, expression unchanged. She'd long since grown accustomed to how fragile everything outside of the Abyssal creatures felt. The Hunter wasn't even that large. Of course it couldn't withstand a direct hit.
With the monster dealt with, she and Riven carried Luke's unconscious form back home.
Luke woke up in his own bed.
For a moment, he just lay there, taking stock. The Hunter had hit him hard enough to send him through a reinforced door. His ribs should have been powder. His internal organs should have been paste.
Instead, he felt fine. No pain. No difficulty breathing. The Sparda bloodline was no joke—normal humans would have had every bone shattered and every organ pulverized from that blow.
Then memory caught up with him.
"Wait—the Hunter! Where is it?"
Skadi appeared in the doorway. "I killed it."
"How? Did you burn the body? Please tell me you burned everything."
Luke's voice was urgent, almost frantic. Skadi tilted her head, not understanding the panic.
"Why would I burn it?"
"Damn it." Luke's face went pale. "Titi, did you or Riven touch that thing's blood?"
"No." Skadi shook her head. The Hunter had been smashed to pieces before it got close enough to splatter her. She hadn't wanted to deal with washing her clothes.
Some of the tension left Luke's shoulders, but not much. He immediately reached for his phone.
Pierce had provided Fury's private number during their negotiations, probably expecting Luke to use it for some kind of power play. The HYDRA mole had no idea what Luke actually intended.
The phone rang once before a voice answered.
"Hello."
Fury didn't say anything more—standard protocol for an unknown number.
"Nick Fury, right? This is Luke. I'm telling SHIELD about something—a terrorist organization has released a biological virus in New York. Extremely dangerous. The target location is the Hematology Research Center in the suburbs. You need to send people immediately. If you're late, the entire city could become a monster zone."
Luke didn't give Fury a chance to respond.
"Make sure everyone wears full protective gear. This virus is incredibly resilient and can spread through the air. Watch the sewers too—"
He rattled off everything he could remember about containment protocols, then hung up before Fury could ask questions.
On the other end, Nick Fury stared at his phone.
Luke. The Level 10 clearance memories kicked in immediately—the mysterious stranger who'd known about the Kree invasion. The man who'd vanished from SHIELD surveillance. Now apparently calling from an unknown number to warn about bioweapons.
Every instinct said this could be a trap.
But "monster zone" wasn't the kind of phrase you threw around lightly. And Luke had been right about enough things to earn a sliver of credibility.
Fury made a decision. He called Coulson and repeated everything Luke had said.
"If that's the case, Director," Coulson said after hearing the briefing, "we'll need military assistance."
Coulson could already feel his hairline receding further. This was too big for SHIELD alone.
"Military?" Fury's brow furrowed.
If the military got involved, knowing how militaries operated, there was no guarantee they wouldn't collect the virus samples for weapons research. That was just how these things went.
But thinking about half of New York becoming a monster city...
Fury contacted the military.
Deal with the crisis first.
"New York really is a disaster magnet," Luke muttered, watching the news. "Good thing my home is in LA now."
He didn't know exactly how Fury would handle it, but the SHIELD director would probably manage most of the threat. As for whatever remained—Luke would deal with that personally.
Meanwhile, Riven and Skadi had learned just how terrifying the Hunter really was. Not because of its strength—but because of the virus in its body.
The Blacklight virus inside the Hunter had stabilized enough that it wouldn't spawn a new Prototype. But even so, the infected it created were incredibly difficult to kill. Regular rifles needed a dozen shots to take down a basic infected. Mutated variants required hundreds of rounds.
And if a Hunter evolved from the spread, it could carry the infection to other cities.
The military's response was swift.
Word of a virus attack in New York—of all places—sent brass scrambling. First-rate epidemic prevention teams were dispatched immediately alongside combat units.
By the time they arrived, the Blacklight infected had already begun to emerge.
The familiars Luke had killed were rising. Rats that had been drawn by the smell of blood had fed on contaminated tissue and mutated into skittering horrors. Stray animals that wandered too close had transformed into things that shouldn't exist.
The epidemic prevention team had received warnings, but they didn't truly understand what a bio-weapon virus meant. They thought virus was just... virus. How bad could it be?
Then they saw the horde of monsters.
By then, it was already too late.
If the military backup hadn't arrived—soldiers in gas masks and NBC gear laying down overwhelming firepower—the entire prevention team would have been wiped out. The infected fell slowly, stubbornly, each one requiring multiple rounds, but they fell.
Then came the real horror.
The soldiers hadn't paid attention to the bodies. The ones who'd been bitten. The ones confirmed dead.
Those corpses started moving.
The secondary casualties were devastating.
Only then did the military truly understand why this hadn't been handed to the National Guard.
Coulson watched from behind the perimeter, face pale behind his hazmat mask. Dead men rising. Soldiers screaming. He recorded everything for Fury.
At the Triskelion, Nick Fury watched the footage with something approaching genuine horror.
What kind of virus does this?
The question was rhetorical. He'd dealt with biological weapons before—everything from weaponized anthrax to exotic pathogens. None of them had done this.
On screen, military and prevention teams were spraying disinfectant across every surface. But even as they killed the infected, Fury could see samples being collected. Corpses being loaded into refrigerated containers.
The military desperately wanted to know how this virus brought the dead back to life.
Fury's stomach turned.
Some things were better left unknown.