While Peter and the others were enthusiastically preparing a "Bloodstone trap" for Belasco, Hydra received word from Dario Agger. To be precise, the highly independent Dario had dumped the demons of Limbo onto Hydra.
To hell with making deals with demons. If Hydra wanted to deal with the Avengers, they could do it themselves; he was going to focus on his own plans!
Consequently, on Hydra Island, Madame Hydra—serving as the temporary Supreme Hydra—looked at the remaining members under her command with immense frustration. Dr. Faustus had died in the Savage Land; the Gorgon had been taken out with a single shot from the Punisher; Dario was clearly jumping ship to join Malekith; Strucker was still locked away in the Mansion Prison; Zemo had gone undercover again; and Alexander Pierce could hardly just show up on Hydra Island for a meeting.
Now, when the Hydra High Council convened, she was left with only Hydra and Arnim Zola.
How the hell had Hydra fallen to this state?
The more Madame Hydra thought about it, the angrier she became. This current proposal hadn't even been given to them by Dario for free; he had sold it to them. Hydra had provided both the technology and the funding! When had Hydra ever been this pathetic?
Madame Hydra sighed, pushing the thoughts aside, and turned to address the others. "Let's discuss this. What does everyone think of this plan? Anyone who experienced the Kang Dynasty should have a deep impression of Ultron. Take a look at this... and tell me if this demon's plan is actually viable."
"I think it's completely unreliable," Hydra, a veteran member, voiced his opposition immediately. "Leaving everything else aside and ignoring all prerequisites, what we know for a fact is that the artificial intelligence Ultron never betrayed the Avengers until the very moment it was deleted. What does that mean? It means it hadn't even developed to that stage yet. I believe that if we really try to bring Ultron into existence, what we'll end up creating is just another helper for the Avengers. It would take at least a few months for it to turn into their enemy."
And Hank Pym could simply delete it again the very next day.
Furthermore, no matter how one looked at it, this plan was a suicide mission. To use the data brought back by Mephisto to reconstruct Ultron, they would need to locate Ultron's data remnants. This wasn't some data leftover that Hank Pym had failed to delete properly; rather, it referred to the operational traces Ultron left behind during its various battles, such as its conflicts with the Green Goblin AI and Nimrod.
So, where were the Green Goblin Corps' equipment, Nimrod, and the Super-Adaptoid chassis located?
The answer was the Avengers Mansion.
In other words, to destroy the Avengers, they needed to create Ultron. To create Ultron, they needed to storm the Avengers Mansion, break into the Avengers' secure vault, run the program, and wait for Ultron to fully activate.
On top of that, they had to gamble on the certainty that Ultron would become an enemy of the Avengers, instantly hack the Avengers' tech systems, and engage them in an all-out battle.
If I already have the capability to storm the Avengers Mansion and hold it for several hours, why wouldn't I just take out the Avengers directly? We bombarded the Avengers with nuclear weapons for half an hour in the Savage Land and nothing happened to them, so what exactly are we going to use to charge into the Avengers Mansion?
"Indeed. What are we supposed to use to storm the Avengers Mansion?" Arnim Zola's television screen-head also expressed dissatisfaction. "We have lost the entire Hand and almost all of our major bases. Faustus is dead, and a large number of our people are imprisoned—Strucker, the Grim Reaper, MODOK... Our super soldiers were bombarded relentlessly by the S.W.O.R.D. flagship in the Savage Land, leaving our reserves completely depleted, and we still haven't recovered. As for the Symbiote Project, it can be declared a total failure; Spider-Man alone can counter every single symbiote."
For the first time, Madame Hydra felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness within the organization. She held her head in her hands, pondering for a moment before tentatively asking, "How are Dr. Oyama's experiments in Madripoor progressing?"
Oyama, a doctor originally from Japan who belonged to the Hand, had been promoted directly by Hydra and had been highly productive ever since. He had repaired Bullseye's spine, turned Luke Cage into Power Man, and created Cloak, Dagger, and Mister Negative...
Though, currently, his overall contribution to Hydra was essentially a net negative.
At the very least, he had successfully replicated the Erskine serum and had been actively researching a so-called " Erskine serum with a thousand times the efficacy," consistently reporting smooth progress.
Faced with Madame Hydra's question, Arnim Zola, who headed the scientific division, hesitated with an "uh" before reluctantly explaining, "His laboratory in Madripoor ran into a bit of trouble..."
"What happened? Was it discovered by a superhero?"
"No, not that. It's just that every single test subject who received the injection... died."
Madame Hydra froze for a moment before asking back in disbelief, "That was over a thousand people!"
"I know."
"Those were the individuals he specifically requested, over a thousand people whose DNA we matched by leveraging Hydra agents within S.H.I.E.L.D. and various national governments."
"I know."
"We even delayed our base relocation and used Norn Stones to prioritize shipping those thousand-plus people to him."
"...I know."
Madame Hydra sighed in exasperation. Oyama had initially claimed the process was foolproof and would create at least ten invincible superhumans. As it turned out, the reports he sent to Hydra were completely fabricated—nothing but empty presentations with zero actual results.
"Hydra, go sever his head. We don't keep useless freeloaders in Hydra."
"I'll head out now."
"No, wait, finish the meeting first."
Madame Hydra covered her mouth, remaining silent for a short while before questioning Zola again. "So, there's been absolutely no word from Mister Sinister either?"
"Quiet as the grave. Of course, it's entirely possible he actually died during the Kang Dynasty," Zola said apologetically. "In short, we have no troops available."
"So we're really just going to sit on our hands and do absolutely nothing with this data?" Madame Hydra countered, somewhat unwilling to give up. "This is something brought back by a major demon, after all. It can't possibly just be for resurrecting an AI, right? Maybe there's something else hidden inside?"
The two veteran executives left over from the World War II era fell into silence. After a moment, Hydra looked toward Madame Hydra and spoke up. "Actually, it's not entirely impossible to give it a try. However, our objective must absolutely not be the resurrection of Ultron. Or rather, resurrecting Ultron can serve as a distraction; what we truly want to accomplish lies elsewhere."
"And what is that?"
"A prison break. We raid the Mansion Prison to break Strucker and the others out. Even if we can't save them specifically, we rescue as many of those scoundrels and villains as we can to stir up some chaos. But we can't go ourselves. We'll hand this flash drive over to someone else to execute."
Madame Hydra understood immediately, nodding slightly. "You mean... outsourcing?"
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