Chapter 531

There was no need to guess who the woman effortlessly holding Savin aloft by the throat with one hand was.

Peggy Carter.

Someone like Savin, whose body constantly radiated high-energy emissions, stood out beneath a demon hunter’s spectral sight like a beacon in the dead of night. There was no chance he could have slipped past her.

"You’re interesting." Peggy smiled as she tightened her grip around Savin’s throat. Then her expression hardened. "You’re the one who blew up Tony’s place, aren’t you?"

"How could I be?" Savin wheezed. Both hands clutched desperately at Peggy’s wrist. "I was just swimming around here. And, uh... practicing extreme cliff climbing."

He didn’t recognize either of the two people standing before him, but the unmistakable shield had already given away their identities. That left him scrambling for the first excuse he could think of.

"Liar."

Peggy’s voice turned cold.

She had been an agent for far too long to fall for something that flimsy. A single sweep of the scene had already told her plenty. She had a good idea where the attack had originated and what kind of weapon had been used.

And now there happened to be a man standing in exactly that direction, his body saturated with a strange energy signature.

He didn’t appear seriously injured, but his battered trousers were unmistakably scorched.

Coincidence?

Hardly.

"Who are you?" Peggy demanded. "And who sent you?"

Her grip tightened.

"Hah!"

Savin suddenly twisted his face into a feral grin.

A red glow erupted beneath his skin.

He had pushed the power of the Extremis organism inside him to its absolute limit.

He couldn’t worry about the possibility of exploding anymore. He had only one option left: gamble everything.

Savin knew perfectly well that answering her questions wouldn’t guarantee his survival. Worse, the stability of his body depended on a drug Killian had given him, one he had to take regularly.

If he exposed Killian, he might never receive another dose.

And then what?

Savin had personally witnessed what happened to unstable test subjects. He knew exactly how badly things could end.

Peggy frowned.

The man in her grip was suddenly fighting with considerably more strength. For a moment, it seemed as though one hand might no longer be enough to restrain him.

But that was all it was.

A moment.

Her arm trembled slightly, yet her grip remained ironclad.

After several seconds of struggling, Savin was the one who began to falter.

Orange-red patches of light spread beneath his skin.

Radiance spilled from his mouth.

Even his eyes began to glow.

He had reached the brink of detonation.

"Throw him down!"

Captain America saw the danger immediately.

He couldn’t sense the energy building inside Savin, but he didn’t need to. The man’s appearance made it painfully obvious that something terrible was about to happen.

Steve charged forward with his shield raised, intending to protect Peggy.

Then a sudden black wind swept across the ground.

Steve looked up.

His wife was gone.

In her place stood something straight out of a nightmare.

Skin black as obsidian.

Curved horns.

Massive wings.

Reverse-jointed hooves.

Green markings crawling across her upper body.

"Look into my eyes."

Peggy had entered her demonic form.

Fel fire blazed within her eye sockets as she stared directly at the man on the verge of exploding.

"No... No, that’s impossible!"

Savin’s terror was absolute.

The energy that should have erupted from his body was being transformed in an instant into something entirely foreign to him.

And whatever was happening to him was far worse than simply exploding.

His skin slowly turned black, resembling coal reduced to ash.

The orange-red patches of energy shifted into an eerie green, leaking outward through the cracks in his hardened flesh.

His body went still.

Savin exhaled his final breath.

"Hmph."

Peggy swept her wings forward.

Savin’s body disintegrated into ash.

Only a charred skull remained, which Peggy casually caught in one hand.

For some inexplicable reason, she had the strange feeling that she ought to keep the skull around and fiddle with it whenever she was bored.

That seemed questionable even by her standards.

So she crushed it.

The skull crumbled into dust between her fingers.

"Phew..."

Peggy scattered the ashes into the wind before dismissing her demonic transformation.

She looked at Steve with a helpless expression.

"Well, looks like we’ll have to find someone else who knows what’s going on."

"Yeah... okay."

Steve’s reply came out remarkably flat.

He reached into his coat and produced another pair of sunglasses.

The previous pair had been shattered when Peggy transformed.

At this point, Steve was beginning to realize that his wife somehow became more terrifying by the day.

At this rate, his entire retirement pension was going to disappear into buying sunglasses.

"We should talk to Pepper."

Peggy slipped the new sunglasses onto her face.

"My niece-in-law should know something about this."

It didn’t matter what Tony thought about it. Peggy had already decided that Pepper was her niece-in-law.

If circumstances allowed, Peggy genuinely would have arranged the marriage herself.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark was having a rather miserable Christmas Eve down in Tennessee.

First, he’d called home to let everyone know he was alive.

That had resulted in his aunt threatening him over the phone, leaving Tony with a thoroughly unsettled feeling.

And now he was dragging an Iron Man suit through the streets like a homeless man.

Of all nights, it had to be Christmas Eve.

Never mind the festive atmosphere. The temperature alone was enough to kill him. Tony was still wearing nothing but a short-sleeved shirt, and if he didn’t find somewhere to shelter soon, he was going to freeze to death on the sidewalk.

Fortunately, he found a small warehouse.

It looked abandoned.

So Tony kicked the door open and walked inside.

What? He’d only kicked down a door.

It wasn’t exactly a federal offense.

And if the owner had a problem with it, Tony could always pay them back.

If necessary, he could buy the warehouse.

Hell, if they’d mortgaged it to a bank, he could buy the bank too.

Problem solved.

Tony connected his armor to a charging station and switched on a desk lamp. He was just beginning to adjust the sensors on his suit when a kid burst into the warehouse carrying a potato gun.

Tony narrowed his eyes.

Time to unleash his considerable diplomatic talents.

With a single flash grenade, Tony managed to negotiate an impressive exchange with the kid named Harley.

One sandwich.

One notebook.

One cellphone.

And a limited-edition cartoon electronic watch that belonged to Harley’s sister.

A stunning victory for international diplomacy.

Harley might have only been eight years old, but he was playing the role of an old man in all this.

Not only did he provide Tony with equipment, he also led him to the location Tony had been looking for.

The site of the original explosion.

Once Tony arrived, he immediately began investigating.

What he didn’t know was that every move he made was being watched.

Far away, atop a high-rise building, Dottie watched Tony through her tactical goggles.

"Tony Stark has found the location," she reported through her mental connection to Evenson. "What next?"

"Open the numbered item."

Dottie took out the encrypted briefcase and entered the password.

When it opened, she found only a dark green sphere inside.

"Put it on the ground."

Dottie removed the sphere and placed it on the rooftop.

The object vibrated twice.

Then it cracked apart with a sharp pop.

A green magic circle, roughly one meter across, appeared on the ground.

The runes flickered.

The circle brightened.

And Evenson’s figure appeared upon it.