Chapter 13: The Needle's Eye
The transition was not a blink; it was a flaying. Arthur awoke strapped to a vertical surgical bed, his limbs held by magnetic restraints that pulsed with a rhythmic, dampening frequency. The air was sterile, cold, and hummed with the vibration of high-altitude engines. He wasn't in a bunker—he was aboard The Needle, Hydra's experimental mobile command center.
The Architect of Erasure
Doctor Aris Thorne stood at a glass console, his back to Arthur. On the screens before him, data streams flickered in a language that shouldn't exist in 1944. It was a digital-binary hybrid, glowing with the same eerie blue light as Arthur's internal interface.
"You're awake. Impressive," Thorne said without turning. "Most subjects experience neural liquefaction when transported via spatial fold. But your [Mercury Catalyst] blood seems to act as a stabilizer."
Arthur's heart hammered against his ribs. "How do you know that name?"
Thorne turned, his scarred face illuminated by the monitors. "The Red Skull found a cube. I found something much better. I found a Record." He tapped a screen, revealing a grainy, distorted image of Arthur's own [System] interface. "You think you're a player in a game, Arthur. But to me, you're just a corrupted file that needs to be cleaned."
[ SYSTEM STATUS ]
Core Integrity: 78% (Dampened)
Active Debuff: Neural Suppression Field.
Warning: Thorne is accessing your 'Archivist Logs'.
The Finished Shroud
As Thorne spoke, the midnight-navy fabric of Arthur's new armor—the [Archivist Combat Shroud]—began to pulse against his skin. Thorne had made a tactical error: he thought the suit was merely clothing. He didn't realize it was a semi-sentient extension of the Archivist Protocol, finished by the very energy used to capture him.
"You're trying to edit the MCU," Arthur gritted out, feeling the Shroud slowly absorbing the magnetic frequency of his restraints. "You're not just Hydra. You're a virus."
"Hydra is a means to an end," Thorne dismissed with a wave of his hand. "The war, the Tesseract, Steve Rogers—they are all variables. I am the one who decides which variables are deleted. And right now, the 'Archivist' is the most redundant piece of data in the system."
The Breach
Thorne reached for a heavy, needle-like probe glowing with blue thermal energy. "Let's see what happens when I delete your memory of the future."
Before the probe could touch him, the Shroud reached its saturation point.
[ ARCHIVIST COMBAT SHROUD: 100% ACTIVATED ]
[ EFFECT: KINETIC DISPERSION ]
The magnetic restraints didn't just release; they shattered. The Shroud emitted a violent burst of spatial pressure, throwing Thorne across the lab and shattering the glass consoles.
Arthur stepped off the platform, his feet making no sound as they touched the floor. His staff, leaning against a nearby wall, flew into his hand as if pulled by a vacuum.
"You want to edit the record, Thorne?" Arthur's voice was a low growl, the Tesseract shard in his staff flaring with murderous intent. "Let's start by deleting your clearance."
[ NEW OBJECTIVE ]
Escaping The Needle: Sabotage the engines and find a way back to the Howling Commandos.
Current Divergence: 21.2% (Thorne's interference is accelerating).
Current Status:
DP Balance: 3,200.
Armor: [Archivist Combat Shroud] (Equipped - Provides 50% resistance to energy weapons).
Ability: [Blink] is partially restored.