Chapter 40: The Eagle’s Nest Burns, a Stone is Loosed
The sub-basement chamber of Adlerhorst became a maelstrom of desperate combat. Logan, a feral whirlwind of adamantium fury, was locked in a vicious, close-quarters battle with the Hydra-enhanced bodyguard. This wasn't like fighting SS troopers or even the augmented creatures in the French labs. This Hydra agent was a true super-soldier, his movements preternaturally fast, his strength immense, his pain tolerance seemingly limitless. Crackling energy batons seared Logan's flesh, the wounds smoking and healing almost instantly, but the impacts were bone-jarring even for him. His claws raked across the agent's advanced armor, seeking purchase, tearing at joints and visor slits. Each blow Logan landed was met with a retaliatory strike of equal or greater force. It was a brutal, grinding ballet of destruction.
Meanwhile, Gabe Jones, under the cover of this chaotic duel, reached the humming machinery powering the Tesseract. His fingers, though numb with cold and fear, worked with practiced desperation, planting his explosive charges, his mind racing against the clock as the sounds of battle intensified around him. Other Hydra elite guards were now engaging the remaining Commandos who had breached the outer perimeter and were fighting their way down. Dum Dum Dugan's distinctive shouts and the chatter of his Thompson submachine gun echoed from the corridors.
Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, watched all of this with an unnerving, almost ecstatic calm, his gaze still fixed on the pulsating Tesseract. It was as if the chaos, the violence, was merely a prelude to some grand, terrible apotheosis he was about to unleash. He raised a hand, and the sickly green light from the cube intensified, bathing the chamber in an ethereal, nauseating glow. The air crackled with an unknown energy.
Elias, monitoring the comms from his distant command post (a temporary setup in a Swiss chalet, "Mr. Blanchard" now a conduit for extremely high-risk, high-reward Allied operations), felt a surge of pure dread. The energy readings from the Tesseract, even filtered through the primitive sensors of the era that Anya had managed to have SOE deploy near similar suspected sites, were spiking off the charts.
"Sawyer! Status!" Elias barked into his microphone.
"Pinned down, Blanchard!" Sawyer's voice was strained, punctuated by gunfire. "They got something... energy weapons! We can't advance! Jones is at the objective! Logan is... he's fighting something godawful!"
Logan, grunting with effort, finally found an opening. He feinted high with one set of claws, then drove the other deep into the Hydra agent's unarmored knee joint. The super-soldier screamed, a sound quickly cut off as Logan's other claws tore through his throat. The body collapsed, sparking and twitching.
But there was no respite. The second enhanced bodyguard was already moving to intercept him, this one wielding what looked like a miniaturized flamethrower.
No time for this, Logan thought, his berserker rage rising, fueled by the pain, the unnatural energy in the room, and the sight of Schmidt calmly preparing to do... something with the cube.