Most powerful Hunter in Marvel Universe - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Genius and the Assassin

The cave entrance swallowed Veer whole, darkness pressing in from all sides despite the scattered lighting from electric bulbs strung along the rough-hewn walls. The air inside was different from the desert night—cooler, yes, but also stale, recycled too many times through too many lungs. It smelled of unwashed bodies, machine oil, cordite, and something else he couldn’t quite identify. Fear, maybe. Or despair.

His enhanced senses, still heightened from prolonged Zetsu use even though he’d deactivated the technique, picked up details that would have been invisible to normal perception. The cave system was larger than he’d expected, branching off into multiple passages and chambers carved both by nature and human effort over what must have been years. And throughout those passages, scattered like candles in the darkness of his awareness, were points of life.

Forty. Maybe fifty. It was hard to count precisely when they overlapped or when the signals were faint with sleep or distance. Each one registered as a small flame in his mind’s eye, not visible but felt, a presence that marked where a living human being drew breath and pumped blood and existed.

The technique wasn’t perfect. Veer couldn’t distinguish between the signals beyond their basic existence. He couldn’t tell who was a terrorist and who might be a prisoner, couldn’t identify Tony Stark from any other life sign. They were all just flames, all just targets or obstacles depending on what he found when he reached them.

It was, he supposed, very much in keeping with Zeno Zoldyck’s worldview. Everyone reduced to their most basic element: alive or dead, threat or non-threat, target or acceptable collateral.

The thought made something twist uncomfortably in his gut, but he pushed it aside. There would be time for existential crisis later. Right now, he had a job to finish.

The first chamber he encountered was clearly a guardroom, positioned to watch the entrance. Two men dozed in chairs, weapons propped nearby, a portable heater glowing orange between them. Their deaths were quick, silent, almost merciful in their swiftness. Veer left them where they’d fallen and moved deeper.

The cave system revealed itself gradually as he progressed. Storage rooms filled with weapons and supplies. A makeshift kitchen that made his nose wrinkle at the smell. Sleeping quarters where men snored in cots arranged with military precision. Each occupied space was a problem to be solved, each living presence a risk to be eliminated.

Veer moved through them like a shadow given terrible purpose, his enhanced strength and speed making short work of anyone he encountered. Most never woke. Those who did died too quickly to raise an alarm. The pile of bodies grew, though Veer stopped counting after the compound. What did it matter if it was two hundred and fifty-one or three hundred? Dead was dead. Murder was murder.

The voice that sounded like Zeno approved of his efficiency.

He was perhaps fifteen minutes into his cave exploration, having cleared what he estimated was about half of the life signs, when he found the room that made him stop cold.

It was locked from the outside, a heavy wooden door barred with a metal beam. Through the gaps in the wood, he could hear breathing—multiple people, their life signs clustered together in the confined space. Something about the pattern felt wrong. Too many people in too small a space. Too quiet for a barracks. Too still for a guard post.

Veer gripped the metal beam and pulled. The brackets tore free from the stone with a grinding screech that seemed impossibly loud in the cave’s acoustics. He froze, listening for any reaction, but the distant sleeping terrorists apparently mistook the sound for something mundane or simply slept through it.

The door swung open to reveal hell.

They were women. Mostly young, some probably teenagers. Maybe fifteen of them crammed into a space meant for half that number. They huddled together on dirty mattresses thrown on the floor, dressed in torn clothing or wrapped in blankets, their eyes reflecting the light from Veer’s entrance with the hollow stare of trauma that ran too deep for tears.

He didn’t need anyone to explain what this room was for. The evidence was written in their faces, in the bruises visible on exposed skin, in the way they flinched back from him even though he’d opened their prison.

Foreign women. Local women. Kidnapped. Used. Discarded here between uses like equipment that served a purpose.

Something cracked in Veer’s chest, something that had been holding together precariously through the slaughter outside and the methodical killing since entering the cave. For the first time since he’d twisted that first guard’s neck, he felt something other than cold efficiency.

Rage.

Pure, incandescent, absolute rage that made his hands shake and his vision narrow and his aura flare involuntarily around him in a way that probably looked terrifying to the already-traumatized women but felt righteous in a way that scared him almost as much as the killing had.

Every death outside suddenly retroactively justified itself. Every terrorist he’d killed, every life he’d ended—they deserved it. They fucking deserved it. And if he’d known about this room earlier, he would have made their deaths slower, more painful, less merciful.

The realization that he could think such thoughts, that he wanted to think such thoughts, added another layer of horror to the night. But it was distant horror, academic horror, easily pushed aside by the immediate certainty that the world was better off without the men who’d created this nightmare.

“You’re free,” Veer said in Arabic, his voice rough with emotions he couldn’t fully process. “All of you. You’re free.”

The women stared at him, incomprehension and disbelief warring on their faces. One of them, older than the rest, said something that might have been a question, but Veer was already moving, already walking away. He’d opened their cage. What they did with that freedom was up to them. He had a billionaire to rescue and a fortune to collect.

Behind him, he heard whispered conversation, tentative movement, the shuffle of feet as bravery slowly overcame terror. Some of them would probably follow, would make their way out of the cave to find a compound full of corpses and freedom beyond. Others might stay frozen, too traumatized to believe in rescue.

Veer couldn’t save everyone. He could barely save himself. But he could do this one thing, and it would have to be enough.

The cave narrowed as he went deeper, the passages becoming more deliberately constructed, less natural cavern and more carved tunnel. The life signs thinned out—most of the terrorists had been concentrated near the entrance and in the larger chambers. Back here, in the depths, there were only a handful left.

And one of them, Veer desperately hoped, was worth a hundred million dollars.

The sound reached him before he found the room: metal striking metal in a rhythmic pattern, the distinctive ring of hammer on steel. Someone was working, even at this hour, on something that required metalworking.

Veer’s pace quickened. This had to be it. Had to be. Because what other prisoner would be forging metal in the dead of night? What other captive would have access to tools and materials?

Two guards flanked a heavy metal door at the end of the passage, looking more alert than their fellows had been. They died without ceremony, their bodies dragged aside to clear the entrance. Veer approached the door and found a small window set into the metal at eye level, reinforced with bars.

He peered through.

The chamber beyond was larger than expected, carved out of the living rock and reinforced with concrete. Work lights hung from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows over a space that was part machine shop, part prison cell, part mad scientist’s laboratory. Equipment and tools littered every surface. Car batteries were wired together in series, providing power to various devices. Electronics components, some clearly scavenged from missiles and weapons, were scattered across workbenches.

And in the middle of it all, two men worked on what appeared to be a metal suit.

One was older, perhaps in his fifties, with graying hair and the lean frame of someone who’d lost weight under captivity. He held a blowtorch, carefully welding pieces together while consulting a sketch pinned to the wall.

The other was younger, darker-haired, and despite being covered in grime and wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks, carried himself with a certain bearing that suggested he was used to being the most important person in any room.

Tony Stark. Had to be. The bone structure matched publicity photos, even under layers of dirt and exhaustion. The arc reactor glowing in his chest—that distinctive blue light visible even through his shirt—clinched it.

Veer didn’t hesitate. He gripped the metal door and pulled.

The door was solid, designed to hold against anything short of explosives or cutting torches. It should have been immovable, a barrier that would require time and tools to bypass.

Should have been.

The metal screamed as it tore. Rivets sheared. Hinges ripped free from their mountings. The door came away in Veer’s hands like cardboard, the sound echoing through the cave system like a gunshot.

Inside the chamber, both men jerked around, eyes wide with shock and fear. The older man dropped his blowtorch. Tony Stark grabbed what looked like a heavy wrench, holding it like a club despite how useless it would be against any real threat.

Veer stepped through the ruined doorway, and he knew what they saw: a young man, maybe twenty-two, dressed in black tactical gear now thoroughly soaked in blood. Some of it had dried to a rust-brown crust. Some was still wet enough to glisten under the work lights. It was spattered across his chest, his arms, his face. He looked like he’d bathed in it.

He probably looked like death itself.

“Are you Tony Stark?” Veer asked, his voice calm and conversational despite the apocalyptic tableau he presented.

The question seemed to break through their shock. Tony’s eyes widened further—not with fear, Veer realized, but with surprise at hearing English. Based on the translations he’d heard during his reconnaissance, most of the Ten Rings members only spoke Arabic or Dari, with maybe some Urdu. English was the language of the prisoner’s old life, not this nightmare.

“Yes!” Tony’s voice came out hoarse, probably from weeks of breathing cave air and minimal use. “Yes, I am! Who the hell are you?”

Veer allowed himself a small smile, though behind the mask and goggles and blood, it probably wasn’t visible. “I’m the person who came to rescue you.” He paused, then added with genuine curiosity, “By the way, is your metal armor suit ready?”

The effect was immediate and dramatic. Tony’s face, which had been cycling through shock, hope, and confusion, suddenly locked down into something guarded and suspicious. “How do you know about that?”

It was a fair question. The armor was supposed to be a missile, a weapon for the Ten Rings. Only Tony, his fellow prisoner, and maybe their captors knew what he was really building. Some random mercenary covered in blood shouldn’t have any idea what was being constructed in this cave.

Veer ignored the question entirely, his eyes scanning the partially constructed suit. It was impressive work, especially given the limitations of tools and materials, but it was nowhere near complete. The torso was mostly assembled, and one arm had some plating, but the legs were barely started and there was no sign of the helmet or the propulsion system that would make it functional.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Veer said, turning his attention back to Tony. “Let’s go.”

Tony didn’t move. His eyes narrowed, taking in every detail of Veer’s appearance with the kind of analytical intensity that had made him one of the world’s premier engineers. “You don’t even have a weapon. What kind of rescue operation is this? Did you just paint yourself with blood and hope that would be scary enough?”

Despite everything—the death toll, the moral weight, the exhaustion starting to creep in at the edges—Veer felt a laugh bubble up. It came out more like a snort. “Would you believe me if I said the blood is real and all the people who owned it are dead?”

“No,” Tony said flatly. “I would believe you’re having a psychotic break and decided to play action hero in a terrorist compound.”

The older man—Ho Yinsen, Veer remembered from the movie—stepped forward slightly, his body language suggesting he was trying to position himself between Tony and potential danger. “Are you American military?” he asked in accented but clear English.

“Mercenary,” Veer corrected. “Very much not military. Very much not official. Very much not supposed to be here according to most international laws.” He checked the doorway, listening for any sounds of alarm. The cave remained quiet except for their conversation. “And we’re wasting time. More terrorists could show up. Reinforcements could arrive. Dawn is coming. Take your pick of reasons why standing here chatting is a bad idea.”

Tony and Ho Yinsen exchanged a look, one of those complex communications that happened between people who’d spent months in close quarters under extreme stress. Some decision was reached, because they both nodded slightly.

“Fine,” Tony said, his tone making it clear he thought this was probably some elaborate trick by their captors. “Lead the way, mysterious blood-covered stranger who definitely isn’t concerning at all.”

Veer turned and walked out of the chamber. Behind him, he heard the two men following, their footsteps hesitant but committed. They moved through the tunnel, past the dead guards, and into the larger passages of the cave system.

The bodies started appearing almost immediately.

The first one made Tony stop dead. The second made Ho Yinsen gasp. By the fifth, they’d both gone silent, their faces pale even in the dim lighting.

“Holy shit,” Tony finally breathed. “You actually… all of these…”

“Yes,” Veer confirmed, not slowing his pace. The bodies were scattered where they’d fallen—in sleeping quarters, in corridors, slumped against walls. Some bore obvious wounds. Others looked almost peaceful, as if they’d simply stopped living mid-action.

“How is this possible?” Tony’s voice had lost its sarcastic edge, replaced with something like awe or horror or both. “You’re one person. They had… they had to have fifty people here, at least.”

“Two hundred and ninety-seven in total,” Veer said, the number appearing in his mind courtesy of the system’s helpful tracking. “Though about half were outside in the compound proper. The cave only had about a hundred and thirty.”

The number hung in the air like a physical presence. Ho Yinsen stopped walking entirely. “You killed… almost three hundred people? Tonight?”

“Well, technically it’s still tonight, so yes.” Veer glanced back at them. “I’m a very motivated mercenary. Speaking of which, are you some kind of monster?” The question came from Tony.

Veer shook his head. “No. I’m a poor, desperate mercenary who really likes the hundred million dollar reward your company posted for your rescue.”

The explanation seemed to ground them somehow, translating his actions into a context they could almost understand. Not a psychopath killing for pleasure. Not a government black ops team with mysterious agendas. Just a mercenary chasing a bounty, willing to do whatever it took to claim it.

It was almost the truth. Just not quite all of it.

They reached the main section of the cave, where passages converged, and found the women Veer had freed earlier. Some had made it this far in their escape, moving in a tight group for safety. Others were still emerging from their prison, blinking in the better light, staring at the carnage with expressions that suggested their capacity for shock had been exhausted long ago.

Tony’s face went through several expressions in rapid succession as he took in the scene. “Jesus Christ. They were keeping… they had prisoners?”

“Sex slaves,” Veer said bluntly, because euphemism seemed dishonest. “Kidnapped women. Locals and foreigners. I opened their cell. They’re free now.”

Ho Yinsen moved toward the women immediately, speaking in what sounded like Dari, his voice gentle and reassuring. Some of them responded, hesitant words that Veer couldn’t follow but didn’t need to. He was asking if they were okay, probably, and offering help, and they were saying things that no one should ever have to say.

Tony watched this for a moment, his jaw working like he was grinding teeth. Then he turned to Veer. “Can we kill them again? Is that possible? Because I really want to kill them again.”

“Get in line,” Veer muttered.

They emerged from the cave into the compound, and the full scope of what Veer had done became visible. Bodies everywhere. Blood on every surface. The tents and buildings that had bustled with activity just hours ago now silent as tombs. Because they were tombs.

The women scattered, some heading for vehicles, others just running into the desert, desperate to put distance between themselves and their prison. Veer didn’t stop them. Didn’t offer guidance. They deserved whatever path they chose next.

Tony stood at the cave entrance, looking out at the compound, and for a long moment said nothing. Then: “I want these weapons destroyed.”

Veer’s brow furrowed behind his mask. “That’s not part of my contract. My job was to rescue you. Anything else is outside the scope.”

“I’ll pay extra.” Tony’s voice was flat, definitive. “Name a price. These are my company’s weapons. My weapons. I made them. And they were used to hold me captive, to terrorize villages, to enable… ” He gestured vaguely back at the cave, at the freed women, at the whole nightmare. “I want them gone. All of them.”

Veer considered. Extra payment was extra payment. And destroying a terrorist weapons cache would probably count as a public service. “Fine. But we do it fast and from a distance. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Good. Get to that truck.” Veer pointed at a vehicle near the compound’s edge, one of the larger transport trucks that looked sturdy enough to survive what he had planned. “Get everyone in it. I’ll be right behind you.”

Tony, Ho Yinsen, and the remaining women headed for the truck. Veer turned back to the compound, scanning for the largest concentration of explosives. There—crates marked with warning symbols, stacked near what looked like Stark Industries Jericho missiles.

Perfect.

He sprinted across the compound, his enhanced speed eating up the distance in seconds. The weapons cache was extensive, probably worth millions on the black market. Missiles, RPGs, ammunition, plastic explosives still in factory packaging. Enough firepower to wage a small war.

It would make one hell of a bomb.

Veer grabbed several explosive charges, checking their timers. Thirty seconds. That would be tight, but he’d make it work. He armed them quickly, his fingers moving with a certainty that came from muscle memory he’d inherited from the previous owner of this body. Another reminder that he wasn’t quite himself anymore, if he ever had been.

The charges placed, timer started. Veer activated Ren, feeling his power surge, and sprinted for the truck.

Twenty-five seconds.

The truck engine roared to life. Tony was behind the wheel—of course he was, the man couldn’t help but be in control—and he floored the accelerator the moment he saw Veer running.

Twenty seconds.

The truck lurched forward, tires spitting gravel. Veer pushed his legs harder, faster, his enhanced physiology turning the sprint into something that would have looked superhuman to anyone watching.

Fifteen seconds.

The truck was pulling away, gaining speed on the rough desert terrain. Veer closed the gap, his hands reaching for the tailgate.

Ten seconds.

His fingers caught metal. He pulled himself up and over, landing in the truck bed with a heavy thump. Through the rear window, he could see Tony glancing back, a wild grin on his filthy face.

Five seconds.

“Drive faster!” Veer shouted, and slammed his hand against the cab roof.

The explosion, when it came, was biblical.

The charges detonated the main cache, which set off sympathetic detonations in every other weapons stockpile in the compound. The effect cascaded, each explosion feeding into the next, creating a chain reaction that turned the entire terrorist base into a miniature sun.

The shockwave hit the truck like a physical fist, making it lurch sideways. Veer grabbed the sides to keep from being thrown out. Inside the cab, he heard screams and shouts. The truck’s windows cracked but held. Tony fought the wheel, somehow keeping the vehicle from rolling.

Behind them, the night was banished by fire. Flames reached up toward the stars, consuming everything—buildings, tents, weapons, bodies, evidence. When the fire burned itself out, nothing would remain but ash and slag and maybe some scorched stone. The Ten Rings compound would cease to exist, scrubbed from the earth by its own weaponry turned against it.

Veer watched the conflagration, the heat making the air shimmer even from this distance. He should have felt triumph. Victory. Success. He’d completed the mission, rescued the target, and would soon be a hundred million dollars richer.

Instead, he felt tired. Tired and hollow and old in a way that had nothing to do with his young body’s age.

“Hell of an exit,” Tony’s voice came through the broken rear window, still carrying that sarcastic edge despite everything. “Very Michael Bay. Do you do all your rescues with this much property damage?”

“First rescue, actually,” Veer called back. “How am I doing?”

“Well, I’m alive, so that’s one point in your favor. The traumatic memories I’ll be unpacking for years count against you. We’ll call it even.”

Despite himself, despite everything, Veer laughed. It sounded wrong, almost manic, but it was genuine. “Fair enough.”

The truck continued into the desert, carrying them away from the burning compound, away from the corpses and the prison cells and the weapons that would never kill anyone again. Behind them, the fire burned. Ahead, the horizon was just starting to lighten with the first hints of approaching dawn.

Veer settled into the truck bed, his back against the cab, his blood-soaked clothes sticky and uncomfortable. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving him aware of minor injuries he’d accumulated during the night’s work. Nothing serious. Nothing his healing factor wouldn’t handle. But uncomfortable enough to remind him he was still human.

Mostly human, anyway.

Through the rear window, he could see Tony at the wheel, arguing with Ho Yinsen about something. The two men had survived months of captivity together, had built something impossible in a cave with scraps, and were now free. They’d probably never fully recover from the experience, but they were alive.

Mission accomplished.

So why did success taste like ashes in his mouth?

The truck drove on, racing the sunrise, and Veer closed his eyes against the wind and the light and the weight of three hundred deaths he could never take back.

He tried not to think about Zeno Zoldyck’s voice in his head, still whispering approval.

Tried, and mostly failed.