Web of the Multiverse - 165 (Patreon)

Chapter 165: Let’s Pull Off a Big One! (Part 2)

Peter ignored Venompool and rushed straight into the secret room, dropping into the chair in front of the old computer.

The bulky old monitor lit up automatically.

A torrent of data immediately streamed across the screen before resolving into a dark green background and a small password field.

Venompool arrived just in time to see it, and instantly deflated.

“Great. After all that running around, we still need a password? How the hell are we supposed to know what it is?”

“Relax. I’ve got a way around it.”

Peter’s confident reply made Venompool’s eyes widen.

“Don’t tell me your Spider-Sense can actually sense passwords!”

“Of course not. My Spider-Sense isn’t that ridiculous.”

Peter raised both hands and lightly pressed his left hand against the armor on his right wrist. The wrist armor immediately split open to either side, revealing a crystal chip hidden underneath.

“This is a decoder made by Nick Fury from my universe. We may be from different universes, but S.H.I.E.L.D.’s encryption systems should still have some things in common.”

As he spoke, Peter inserted the crystal chip into the old computer’s data port.

A rapid sequence of numbers, letters, and symbols began flashing through the password field.

They changed so quickly that it was almost dizzying to watch.

Peter’s decoder had begun doing its job.

Standing in the pitch-black secret room, both of them unconsciously began breathing a little faster.

They stared fixedly at the old monitor as flickering lines swept across it, feeling as though time had never passed so slowly.

After all, they were inside the Triskelion, a building jointly controlled by S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA.

If they failed to crack the system and get out in time, the two of them could very well end up trapped here.

Once a large force of Poison Hosts arrived, there would be no escaping even if they grew wings.

Fortunately, the saying [If it’s made by S.H.I.E.L.D., you know it’s quality] proved true once again.

In less than ten seconds, the stream of numbers and symbols in the password field came to a stop.

A 32-character ultra-secure password now filled the box.

Then the old computer tower gave a soft ding.

The display changed, switching to the S.H.I.E.L.D. database.

“We’re in! Nice work.”

Venompool was so excited he nearly jumped for joy.

Peter wasted no time. He opened the database search engine and entered keywords such as “Krakoa” and “Mutants.”

As huge amounts of data scrolled across the screen, Peter quickly found what he was looking for.

Krakoa was located in international waters in the central Pacific Ocean, at the precise coordinates [-49.20142, -123.16214].

More top-secret information about Krakoa soon appeared on the screen.

It included details on the island’s defensive perimeter, surveillance footage from orbital satellites, and reports estimating the number of Mutants on the island.

Peter even found detailed files on every member of the Hellfire Club.

At that moment, he realized Krakoa had already been marked as a target by the Venom Clan.

Otherwise, they never would have gathered such detailed intelligence on the island.

If Peter hadn’t appeared, Krakoa probably would have fallen to the Venom Clan before long, and the tens of thousands of Mutants living there would all have been turned into Poison Hosts.

If things ever reached that point, there really would be no coming back from it.

Peter’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he hurriedly packaged all the information and copied it into the decoder.

“Did Spidey used to work as a spy or something? Why does he look so damn professional?”

Venompool muttered quietly from beside him. He had assumed Peter wouldn’t hear, apparently forgetting that he was standing right behind him. There was no way Peter could miss it.

“I know a guy named Coulson. He taught me how to use this system to get the information I need. That’s why it pays to know people. You never know when one of those connections will come in handy.”

Peter rose from the chair. Then, under Venompool’s astonished gaze, he smashed the old computer tower to pieces with a single punch.

“Are you crazy? Why would you destroy something that important?”

“Relax. All the important data is already copied onto this.”

Peter held up the crystal chip, then slid it back into his wrist armor.

“We’re leaving. Now. My Spider-Sense is telling me they’ve noticed something’s wrong. They’ll be here any second.”

The moment they burst out of the secret room, flashing red lights lit up the entire hallway ceiling.

A piercing alarm began blaring at the same time.

Venompool felt his scalp go numb. Without Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense saving them at every turn, this infiltration would have failed more times than he cared to count.

“Stay close. We’re not going back the way we came.”

Without looking back, Peter sprinted in the opposite direction.

Venompool was confused, but he assumed Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense had kicked in again and found them a better escape route.

So he didn’t think twice before racing after him.

They sprinted through the corridors and rounded several corners in quick succession before Venompool finally realized something was wrong.

They didn’t seem to be retreating at all.

They were heading even deeper underground.

“Spidey, did we take a wrong turn?”

Unable to hold back any longer, Venompool accelerated until he was running beside Peter.

“No. We’re going underground on purpose.”

Peter kept running without looking back. At the same time, he relied on the route map in his memory to pick the correct path through the maze of branching corridors.

After looking up the information on Krakoa, he had also pulled up S.H.I.E.L.D.’s structural layout of the building and scanned the entire thing with the built-in scanner in his Iron Spider helmet.

At this point, Peter probably knew the interior of the Triskelion better than Nick Fury did.

“What the hell? Aren’t we supposed to be escaping? Why are we going underground?”

Venompool almost wondered if he had misheard him.

“If all we do is escape, we’ll be wasting a rare opportunity.”

“I spotted something interesting in the files. There’s an unregistered large transport-class Quinjet stored in the Triskelion’s underground warehouse. It was probably already in the maintenance area before the Poisons invaded, so they never got around to requisitioning it.”

Peter kicked open the emergency access door at the far end of the hallway and charged into the stairwell with Venompool, racing downward.

The narrow stairwell echoed with the harsh clanging of their boots pounding against the metal steps.

“I’m planning something big! If we can get our hands on that thing, we can take a lot more people out of New York and fly straight to Krakoa.”

Venompool’s mood was going through more ups and downs than a roller coaster.

“What, do you think you’re filming a movie? Mission: Impossible 10? You say you’re getting a plane, and then you actually go steal a plane? Even Tom Cruise isn’t this insane!”

Venompool kept complaining, but his feet never stopped following closely behind Spider-Man.

Deadpool might normally be a loudmouthed pain who seemed anything but reliable, but when things got serious, he could still be counted on.

With the alarm shrieking around them, the two raced down several underground levels without incident.

Then they slammed into the security door at the bottom of the stairwell together, bursting through it and entering an enormous underground space.

The ceiling was absurdly high, constructed from massive steel plates welded together, and the chamber stretched so far that they couldn’t see the end of it.

Powerful spotlights mounted overhead cast enormous beams down into the space below.

Peter and Venompool stood on a steel platform in one corner of the underground chamber.

Looking over the railing, they could see rows upon rows of vehicles and shipping containers below.

“Damn. Those lunatics at S.H.I.E.L.D. practically hollowed out the ground beneath Washington, D.C.!”

Venompool craned his neck and peered into the distance.

Every vehicle below was covered in black waterproof tarps.

Even so, their outlines made it obvious that they were armored vehicles and aircraft.

There were even Quinjets too large for the tarps to cover completely.

Farther away, Venompool finally spotted the transport-class Quinjet Spider-Man had mentioned.

The Quinjets developed by S.H.I.E.L.D. were not a single model, but the collective name for an entire series of aircraft.

Among them, the transport-class Quinjet was the largest.

Although its fuselage retained the sharp, falcon-like silhouette of the Quinjet series, its interior space was more than five times larger than that of a combat-class Quinjet.

It could easily transport a force of two hundred people and deploy them with precision anywhere in the world.

It was a formidable weapon of war capable of operating almost anywhere.

Now, that enormous machine rested silently in the deepest part of the underground warehouse, waiting for someone to awaken it and send it soaring into the skies once more.

“That’s the one!”

Peter and Venompool were just about to vault over the railing when a sharp, familiar pain suddenly stabbed through Peter’s mind.

His Spider-Sense had triggered.

Following the warning, Peter snapped his head upward.

Several grenades were silently sailing toward them.

They were different types. Some were flash grenades, some were high-explosive grenades, and others were even nastier concussion grenades.

Every one of them had come from Agent Venom Hilt.

At another entrance to the steel platform, Agent Venom Hilt and Venom Crossbones had appeared with a large force of S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA agents.

Peter’s breath caught and his pupils contracted. He immediately snapped his hand out and fired ten web-shots in rapid succession.

The ten web-shots burst apart in midair, weaving themselves into a massive web that caught every grenade.

Like insects trapped in a spiderweb, the grenades stuck fast and could no longer move.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The grenades detonated one after another, unleashing violent explosions and shockwaves that tore the resilient web apart.

In the next instant, two black-gloved hands seized the shattered pieces of webbing and hurled them upward.

Poison Crossbones roared as he charged through the cloud of flying web fragments.

He lowered his head and barreled forward like a rampaging rhino.

Then two blue jets of flame suddenly erupted from behind him.

His HYDRA combat suit was actually equipped with a propulsion system.

With both his own charge and the thrusters accelerating him, Poison Crossbones became a human missile hurtling straight toward Peter and Venompool.

“You Poison bastards are like gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. No matter what I do, I can’t get rid of you!”

Venompool cursed as he charged straight at Poison Crossbones.

A split second before they collided, Venompool suddenly flipped into the air and brought his remaining Carbonadium Sword down with both hands.

Clang!

The Carbonadium Sword crashed against Poison Crossbones’ black gauntlets.

For an instant, both of them seemed to freeze in midair.

A smug grin spread across Venompool’s face beneath his mask.

His right hand suddenly produced an energy pistol he had stolen from Rocket Raccoon, and he jammed the barrel right against Poison Crossbones’ face.

“We’re breaking up. Don’t call me again!”

He pulled the trigger.

Buzz!

A blinding light erupted from the barrel, and an energy blast exploded directly against Poison Crossbones’ face.

Boom!

Poison Crossbones was hurled backward, trailing thick smoke.

Peter seized the opportunity and jumped from the steel platform with Venompool.

Even while falling through the air, Venompool twisted around and emptied the rest of his magazine behind them, blasting nearly the entire steel platform apart.

The combined S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA task force could no longer keep up.

Moving at full speed, Spider-Man and Deadpool crossed most of the massive underground chamber in barely more than ten seconds.

At last, they made it safely into the cockpit of the transport-class Quinjet.

Venompool charged ahead and dropped straight into the pilot’s seat.

Then he grabbed the control stick with both hands, looking ridiculously confident.

“I’m launching in Gundam mode!”

But one second after making the Gundam reference, Venompool realized there was one very awkward problem.

“I only know how to fly helicopters and fighter jets. I have absolutely no idea how to fly this thing.”

Venompool turned to Spider-Man.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to fly it either…”