Marvel/DC: The Under Ground Doctor C230 (Patreon)

Chapter 230: S.H.I.E.L.D.? HYDRA!

Steve unwillingly raised his binoculars again, re-aiming them at the clinic lobby.

This time, the lens locked directly onto William, who was lying in the boss chair.

Just as Steve was preparing to carefully observe the man's micro-expressions, the William in the lens suddenly stopped his hand as he was pressing the calculator.

Immediately after, William slowly raised his head.

Across a distance of 120 meters, through the clinic's explosion-proof glass, and through the dusty windows of the abandoned apartment building.

William's black eyes, hidden behind gold-rimmed glasses, locked onto the binoculars' lens with extreme precision and a direct gaze!

Steve's heart skipped a beat.

"Did he discover me? How is this possible?!"

Every muscle in Steve's body instantly tensed. He was currently in absolute shadow, without any reflections, and he had even suppressed his breathing frequency to the lowest level.

Even the World's top snipers couldn't lock onto him with the naked eye from such a distance without any instrument assistance!

But the next second, the image in the lens made this battle-hardened Captain America break out in a cold sweat instantly.

William looked in his direction, the corners of his mouth curling into an extremely playful, even slightly mocking smile.

Then, William slowly raised his right hand and waved it at the lens extremely casually.

"Hi."

Although he couldn't hear the sound, Steve could clearly read William's lip movements.

"Exposed!"

The alarm in Steve's brain went off instantly. Without the slightest hesitation, he ripped off the binoculars and stuffed them into his backpack. His right hand drew the M1911 tactical pistol from his outer thigh with extreme fluidity, and his entire body entered the highest level of combat readiness, like a cheetah.

Meanwhile, inside the clinic lobby.

"Boss, why are you waving at the air? Did your Parkinson's flare up early?"

Jessica spat out the apple core in her mouth and looked at William with a bewildered expression.

"It's nothing, I just saw a hundred-year-old geezer on the second floor across the street spying on us." William picked up his goji berry tea and took a sip, his tone as calm as if he were talking about the weather.

Ever since the man in the duck-billed cap stepped into the range of this half-street, William's primary Observation Haki had already locked onto him tightly.

The Super Soldier Serum is indeed impressive, pushing every function of the human body to its limit.

But in front of an unreasonable "Heart Network" radar like Observation Haki, Steve's strong heartbeat and steady breathing were as glaring as a searchlight in the night.

"A peeping tom?" Jessica's eyes widened, and she instantly perked up, standing up while clenching her fists. "I hate perverts like that the most! Boss, let me go break his third leg!"

"Just rest." William waved his hand. "That's an antique; if you punch him, S.H.I.E.L.D. will come after me with everything they've got."

Unohana Retsu, who had been quietly kneeling beside the coffee table brewing tea, slowly raised her head at this moment.

She set down the purple clay teapot in her hand, a gentle smile that felt like a spring breeze appearing on her graceful face.

"Boss, guests from afar should be treated as such." Unohana Retsu's voice was as soft as water. "Since this old gentleman is out there catching a cold, why not let me go invite him in for a cup of hot tea?"

William pushed up his glasses and glanced at Unohana Retsu's eyes, which were already beginning to glow with an eerie light.

"Go ahead, Sister Retsu." William instructed, "Mind your measure, just leave him a breath. His bones are hard, don't break our floor."

"Understood."

Unohana Retsu bowed slightly.

The next second, her graceful figure in a dark green cheongsam dissipated into the air of the lobby like an extremely gentle breeze, without any warning.

Loki, who was mopping the floor, happened to look up and saw this scene, nearly dropping the broken mop in her hand from fright.

"Tel—Teleportation?! Without even any magic fluctuations?!" Loki swallowed hard, mentally raising the danger level of the devil, William, by another three notches.

Shifting the scene back to the abandoned apartment building across the street.

Steve Rogers had already cleared all traces he had left behind with extreme speed.

He leaned against the graffiti-covered wall, holding his gun with both hands, the muzzle pointed diagonally toward the ground, scanning the stairwell and outside the window with a piercing gaze.

"Tactical retreat. The opponent possesses some kind of beyond-visual-range sensory ability. I must report to Fury immediately."

Steve made his judgment quickly in his heart. He lowered the brim of his cap, held his breath, and, like a weightless ghost, prepared to retreat silently down the stairs.

He had just turned around.

"Sir, standing so high up, don't you feel the wind?"

An extremely gentle, soft woman's voice, even carrying a hint of the proper politeness of a well-bred lady, sounded without warning from directly behind him, less than half a meter away!

"Hum—!!!"

In that instant, Steve's brain felt as if it had been struck hard by a giant hammer, his scalp instantly tingled, and every hair on his body stood on end!

This is impossible!!!

Steve's pupils contracted violently.

Who was he? He was Captain America, who had been injected with the Super Soldier Serum! His hearing could catch the sound of a needle dropping fifty meters away; his sense of smell could distinguish the extremely faint scent of gunpowder in the air; his intuition could predict a bullet's trajectory before it was fired!

Yet, until the second before this woman spoke, all his senses, and even his combat intuition that he prided himself on, had not given him the slightest warning!

It was as if this woman had grown out of thin air!

"Who!"

Steve's physical reaction was far faster than his brain. Instead of turning around, he executed a highly experienced tactical forward roll to create distance, while simultaneously twisting his waist mid-air, gripping the gun with both hands, and locking the dark muzzle instantly onto the direction the voice had come from.

The entire movement was smooth as flowing water, taking less than 0.5 seconds.

But when he saw who was behind him, Steve froze.

Standing there was not some heavily armed super assassin, nor was it some hideous mutated monster.

Instead, it was an Asian woman wearing a dark green, high-slit cheongsam, with her long black hair braided and hanging in front of her chest, possessing an extremely gentle temperament.

She had her hands folded in front of her lower abdomen, a very proper smile on her face, just watching him quietly.

"Who are you?" Steve didn't lower his gun, his gaze extremely sharp.

"My name is Unohana Retsu, and I am a medical staff member at Yang's Clinic." Unohana Retsu bowed slightly, her tone as gentle as if she were chatting with an old friend.

"Sir, our boss said that you must be very tired after standing outside for so long. He specifically asked me to invite you to come to our place for a sit-down."

Steve stared fixedly at the woman in front of him.

No weapons, no bulletproof vest, and even her standing posture was full of openings.

But for some reason, Steve's palms, gripping the gun, had broken out in a thin layer of cold sweat.

"What if I refuse?" Steve asked in a deep voice, his finger already resting on the trigger.

"Refuse?"

Unohana Retsu repeated softly.

The smile on her face didn't disappear; in fact, the curve deepened slightly.

But in that instant, her hand, which had been folded in front of her lower abdomen, rested extremely casually on the hilt of the unsheathed Zanpakuto at her waist.

"Boom—!!!"

A tangible, thick, terrifying killing intent, as if it could drip blood, erupted from this gentle woman like a bursting ocean of blood, without any warning!

The temperature of the entire abandoned apartment building dropped to freezing point in that moment!

Steve just felt everything go black before his eyes.

He seemed to see a boundless sea of blood and mountains of corpses! Countless severed limbs floated in the sea of blood, and in the very center of this sea, the woman in the cheongsam was stepping on the bones of countless strong warriors, staring at him with the cold gaze of someone looking at a dead person!

"Drip—"

A drop of cold sweat slid down Steve's chin and dripped onto the dusty floor.

His Super Soldier instinct sounded the highest-level Death alarm frantically at this moment!

Intuition told him: if you shoot, you will definitely die! And you will die in an extremely ugly way!

This woman is not a medical staff member at all; she is a killing machine that crawled out of hell!

"Hoo—"

Steve took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the suffocating feeling of fear in his heart.

He was a soldier, but he was not a reckless fool throwing his life away. Facing a monster that completely defied common sense, fighting head-on was the stupidest choice.

"Click."

Steve slowly engaged the safety on his pistol and holstered it back into the holster on his outer thigh.

"Since it is an invitation from your boss, I will respectfully accept." Steve stood straight, straightened his duck-billed cap, and his eyes returned to calmness.

"You are truly a wise guest."

Unohana Retsu released the hilt, and the terrifying bloody killing intent instantly dissipated without a trace, as if everything just now had been Steve's hallucination.

She turned to the side and made an extremely elegant gesture of "please."

"Please follow me, old gentleman."

Steve's mouth twitched. Old gentleman? Although he was indeed over a hundred years old by birth year, his body was clearly only in his twenties, okay!

A few minutes later.

Steve followed Unohana Retsu through the street full of trash and foul water.

Along the way, several gang thugs who were originally wandering at the street corner, the moment they saw Unohana Retsu, were like mice seeing a cat, scrambling to hide into the alleys, not even daring to take a second look.

This gave Steve a deeper understanding of the dominance this clinic held.

"Jingle—"

The wind chime on the clinic's glass door made a crisp sound.

Steve stepped into the lobby.

"Yo, the new guy?"

Thor, who had just finished moving a stack of bricks from the backyard, walked in, drenched in sweat. Seeing Steve, he patted him on the shoulder, acting extremely familiar.

"You look pretty sturdy. What, are you also here to work off a debt to the boss? Did you choose brick-moving or toilet-scrubbing?"

Steve stumbled from the pat, looking at this blond, muscular man with a face full of confusion.

"I—"

"Alright, Thor, don't scare our honored guest."

A lazy voice interrupted Steve's awkwardness.

William was still slumped in the boss chair, his legs propped up on the desk, holding a cup of goji berry tea, watching Steve standing in the center of the lobby with a look that was half-smile, half-mockery.

"Welcome to the Hell's Kitchen Yang's Clinic."

William pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, a flash of cunning light shining on the lenses.

"Let me guess. Instead of doing your rehabilitation therapy properly in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sterile ward, you ran to my backwater place to spy."

William leaned forward slightly and said, word by word: "What? Is that black egg Nick Fury so anxious to throw you, this 'old popsicle' that just thawed out, as cannon fodder to test me?"

Once these words were spoken, the air in the lobby instantly went quiet.

Steve suddenly raised his head, his deep blue eyes staring fixedly at William, his gaze as sharp as a knife.

He had just woken up less than three days ago, and his identity was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top secret! Except for Fury and a few core Agents, absolutely no one knew that Captain America was still alive!

How did this black-market doctor in Hell's Kitchen know?!

"Who exactly are you?" Steve's voice was extremely low, his muscles once again entering a state of tension.

"Who I am is not important."

William sneered, pulled open a drawer, and casually took out an unmarked kraft paper file bag, tossing it onto the desk with a "slap."

"What's important is, you old antique who has slept for seventy years, do you really think the current S.H.I.E.L.D. is still the Strategic Scientific Reserve you knew back then?"

William leaned back in his chair, hands crossed in front of his lower abdomen, throwing out a shocking hook that was enough to shatter Captain America's worldview.

"Captain, you think you woke up to save the World. But did Fury tell you that outside the Director's office he currently sits in, exactly how many Agents are privately shouting 'Hail HYDRA'?"

Steve's pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpricks.

HYDRA?!

Weren't they completely wiped out seventy years ago?!