"You should already know that the Hand has no interest in your internal disputes," Murakami said calmly.
"We're willing to cooperate with whichever faction controls the operation, but that's where our involvent ends. Neutrality benefits us far more."
"You can try telling that to Baron Strucker," Garrett replied with a shake of his head. "He doesn't see it that way."
That was the polite version.
The truth was much simpler. The five ancient leaders of the Hand had beco infamous for one thing above all else: their terror of dying. Practically every organization with even a little knowledge of the underworld knew those relics would do anything to preserve their own lives.
Neither man realized that soone else was casually listening to their entire conversation while working on a personal project.
With his super-hearing active, Drex Valen had beco the greatest surveillance system on Earth. Sound waves, radio frequencies, gravity, atmosphere, distance... none of it mattered. His hearing ignored physical limitations entirely. Whether the source was across the city or on the other side of the planet, it reached him as clearly as if he were standing in the sa room.
"Clairvoyant? Which Clairvoyant?"
He frowned for a mont before rembering the alias Agent John Garrett had used back in the early days of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Then again, there probably weren't many people arrogant enough to call themselves that.
A lot of transmigrators loved plotting their way into Hydra, or finding ways to exploit the organization from the shadows. The reason was painfully obvious.
Hydra's employee benefits were absurd.
Joining was almost laughably easy. Get recomnded by the right person and you were practically guaranteed entry.
Unlimited resources. Global influence. Friendly operatives embedded in every major field imaginable. Military officers, politicians, intelligence agencies, corporations... Hydra's network reached everywhere.
Need sothing done in another country? Chances were another Hydra cell was already there waiting to help.
People liked pretending Hydra mbers were all fanatics obsessed with world domination, but reality told a different story.
Every eting was packed with dramatic slogans and theatrical speeches about reshaping humanity, yet almost nobody actually believed in any of it anymore.
Most joined because Hydra was useful.
High pay. Loose oversight. Endless opportunities.
For ambitious people, it was paradise.
And Drex Valen had gone one step further than infiltrating Hydra.
He had effectively taken control of every Hydra branch in North Arica.
By all rights, that made him Hydra's newest leader.
Gideon Malick, mber of the World Security Council and one of Hydra's secret rulers, had beco the key.
Among the surviving Hydra leadership, Malick's bloodline was the oldest and most legitimate. His family had served Hydra for generations without wavering.
Unlike most modern mbers, they had never abandoned the organization's original doctrine.
Of course, Hydra's original purpose had very little to do with conquering the world.
That idea ca later.
In the beginning, Hydra existed for one reason alone:
To bring back the being they worshipped as the Hydra God.
Their so-called divine leader had originally been nothing more than an ancient Inhuman with extraordinary abilities who had been exiled to another planet through a portal created by a mysterious stone.
For thousands of years, Hydra had safeguarded that stone.
And for thousands of years, loyal Hydra traditionalists kept sending people through the portal in search of their god.
None of them ever ca back.
Pouring unimaginable amounts of money and manpower into rescuing a prehistoric superhuman who was probably long dead sounded insane to any rational person.
The Red Skull had clearly agreed.
When he inherited Hydra during World War II and reviewed its doctrine, his response had essentially been:
Forget the space cult nonsense. We're conquering the world instead.
That ideology eventually beca mainstream Hydra doctrine.
By the present day, the Malick family was one of the last remnants still obsessed with reviving the so-called Hydra God.
Though thanks to Drex Valen, even they had been folded into the ever-growing ranks of the World Serpent... the Burning Legion.
Drex had located Gideon Malick personally and extracted every mory necessary to contact Hydra's remaining leaders.
Most of Hydra's upper leadership fell into one of two categories:
Ancient survivors from World War II who had prolonged their lives through various thods...
Or descendants inheriting power from those sa immortals.
In other words, nepotism ruled Hydra from top to bottom.
Alexander Pierce was the rare exception.
He had clawed his way upward through sheer competence, influence, and political maneuvering.
A self-made king among hereditary aristocrats.
Naturally, the old guard hated that.
For years, Hydra's entrenched elites had been quietly trying to suppress Pierce's growing influence. So factions had even considered replacing him entirely.
But after Pierce suddenly vanished, the issue beca irrelevant.
"Who exactly took those hundred Decepticons?"
One of Hydra's leaders slamd a hand onto the table, furious.
"Do you have any idea how difficult it was for us to infiltrate S.W.O.R.D.? Then soone steals everything without warning, and now the entire world is investigating us!"
After Hydra's North Arican branches went dark, the remaining factions beca cautious, but none of them were willing to abandon such valuable territory.
At the sa ti, both the new S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D. had erged onto the global stage, creating opportunities Hydra couldn't ignore.
They infiltrated both organizations almost imdiately.
Unfortunately, the rebuilt S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed before Hydra could gain much from it, costing them a significant number of operatives in the process.
S.W.O.R.D. turned out to be a completely different story.
As the world's highest-level authority on tahuman incidents, the organization possessed unprecedented international privileges. Their agents could enter sovereign territory and conduct operations without prior approval.
The justification was simple:
Superhuman threats escalated too quickly for normal bureaucracy.
Hydra abused that loophole rcilessly.
One cell would stage an attack disguised as rogue enhanced individuals. S.W.O.R.D. agents would deploy directly into foreign territory to resolve the crisis. anwhile, embedded Hydra operatives quietly extracted whatever resources or technology they actually wanted.
Sotis the target nation even thanked them afterward.
Honestly, Hydra loved S.W.O.R.D.
It was far more useful than S.H.I.E.L.D. had ever been.
Flash a S.W.O.R.D. badge, and organizations that once acted untouchable suddenly stepped aside without protest.
Even S.H.I.E.L.D. had never wielded that level of authority.
Baron Strucker adjusted the monocle resting over one eye and folded his hands together.
"If necessary," he said slowly, "abandoning S.W.O.R.D. entirely is still an option. At this stage, Hydra no longer depends on it to survive."
The truth was that Strucker had beco deeply wary of Drex Valen.
The man was too dangerous.
Too brilliant.
Every new invention and breakthrough seed to appear out of nowhere, overturning expectations yet again.
Strucker genuinely feared that one day Drex might casually unveil sothing absurd like a "Hydra Detection System" or an infiltration scanner capable of exposing every sleeper agent hidden inside S.W.O.R.D.
And if that happened...
Hydra's position inside the organization would collapse overnight.
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