"You... Nolan. I can’t believe what you’ve become."
Baron Strucker’s eyes shimmered with disbelief. The man in front of him had once been a failed experiment just another lab rat injected with a prototype Super Soldier Serum. A runaway. A nuisance. Back then, Hydra had chased him like vermin through tunnels and ruins.
Even with Klaue’s help, Nolan’s hideouts had been wiped out time and again.
But then... he vanished into New York.
And something changed.
Even when Hydra unleashed its full surveillance net across the city, Nolan remained invisible. Not just in body, but in data, in presence, like a ghost with divine protection.
Then came the headlines. Reports of impossible resurrections, cryogenic breath attacks, and near-mythical regeneration. Powers no serum alone could grant. Powers no man should possess.
They tried to ally with the Hydra Inner Circle to preempt his next move.
But Nolan struck first. Fast. Surgical. Lethal.
He made it look like he knew everything before it happened. Zola had barely logged in before he was dismantled.
"You’re not human anymore," Strucker muttered, awe mixing with fear. "You’re... something else entirely."
Nolan’s gaze remained cold. "Centipede Serum?" he asked, noting the glow radiating from Strucker’s exposed veins.
He’d expected Strucker to be infused with Deathspore. But Centipede too? Interesting.
Centipede was built off Extremis a volatile regenerative virus.
Deathspore, however, was something far worse. A pathogen that could annihilate life on a planetary scale.
Strucker didn’t respond.
He unleashed a burst of psionic energy implanting micro-tears inside Strucker’s body, turning his insides into ticking bombs.
Blood geysers from Strucker’s chest, limbs, and neck like ruptured hydraulic pipes. The fluid hissed as it hit the floor, so hot it ignited into open flames. For a moment, Strucker looked like a corpse in a furnace.
Then his skin regenerated. His wounds vanished in seconds.
Strucker laughed, voice cracked with pain and fire. "You can’t kill me. You won’t kill me."
"Because if I die... the virus inside me spreads. And the world dies with me."
Then stomped the ground with seismic force.
The earth shattered into a spiderweb of fissures beneath him. With a sonic boom, he launched forward—
In the blink of an eye, Nolan gripped Strucker’s neck, lifting him like a ragdoll.
Strucker’s skin blazed with magma-like heat, his blood glowing through his veins like molten lava.
But Nolan didn’t flinch.
He absorbed the heat, converted it, and metabolized it. His body, augmented by symbiote reengineering, was already adapting.
"You asked for this," Nolan said coldly.
Strucker’s backup plan activated: a thick plume of ash-gray mist burst from his chest the Deathspore pathogen.
"Any lifeform touched by these spores dies instantly," he grinned darkly. "You lose."
The mist engulfed Nolan spores burrowed into his skin, shredded cells, and devoured life.
His body began fighting back.
Not with resistance—but with assimilation.
His core trait [Evolution] activated.
Every cell began decoding the Deathspore’s molecular structure, extracting strengths, purging weaknesses, and isolating useful genes.
His immune system upgraded in real-time. A new gene sequence formed immune to all terrestrial pathogens and bacteriological weapons.
The pain was intense cellular evolution always was. Like being sliced apart and rebuilt from the inside out.
But Nolan had been through this dozens of times.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t flinch.
Strucker’s smile faded. "Impossible... You should be dead...!"
"Can man-made weapons kill a god?" Nolan said quietly.
He tightened his grip. "I’m not going to kill you—not yet."
"You still have research value."
"You will be dissected on my table"
With that, he inhaled sharply drawing wind from all directions, like a cyclone reversing its flow. Cold air surged into his lungs, compressed in his lungs like a reactor chamber.
A glacial storm erupted point-blank into Strucker’s face.
The Baron had no time to react. The extreme cold devoured the heat in his body. Even the Centipede’s heat couldn’t push it back.
Within seconds, the superheated glow faded. Steam hissed.
And then—Strucker froze solid.
A perfect humanoid ice sculpture, carved by godlike breath.
A golden portal appeared behind Nolan Al’s work. Connors stepped through in full containment gear.
"Store this safely," Nolan ordered. "Do not let it thaw."
"Understood," Connors replied, locking Strucker in a reinforced stasis capsule.
Nolan closed the portal with a flick of his wrist.
His cloak whipped behind him as he rocketed into the sky, heading toward his next target another Hydra leader marked for extraction.
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