"John, Wade. You two are now officially auxiliary members of the Avengers," Tony Stark announced, making the task assignments with practiced ease. "I'll go with the two of you to handle this localized supernatural incident in Los Angeles. Natasha, Clint, you two track down the Ghost Rider. Banner, you stay at the tower and provide us with remote tactical support at all times."
Natasha merely shrugged upon hearing the orders. She and Hawkeye walked out of the conference room without stopping for a moment, already mentally preparing for the hunt.
As for whether Constantine and Wade actually agreed to this sudden conscription...
Deadpool looked down at the banking text message on his phone, then looked up at Tony Stark's unyielding gaze fixed on the two of them. Wade very tactfully decided to accept the mission.
"Follow me," Tony commanded, tossing a set of keys.
Saying nothing more to the two mercenaries, Tony directly led them down to the garage and pointed to an unmarked, unassuming sedan.
"Is it really that urgent?" Wade whined. "Leaving right now? I haven't even had chimichangas yet!"
"Otherwise, do you think ten million dollars is that easy to earn?" Tony Stark retorted, opening the back door and sitting in the rear row. Constantine smoothly slid into the passenger seat, leaving the driver's door wide open.
After hearing Tony's cold reply, the still-rambling Wade instantly shut his mouth.
"Huh?" Wade blinked the white lenses of his mask. "I'm driving again?"
Looking at the seats the two men currently occupied, Wade looked around the empty garage. There was clearly no full-time S.H.I.E.L.D. driver arranged for them. Wade walked dejectedly to the driver's seat and slumped behind the wheel. He really wanted to drive this crappy car straight off a cliff just to spite them.
"Where to..." Wade grumbled, starting the engine.
"The state prison."
"Huh?"
The unmarked vehicle drove through the night until it reached the towering, barbed-wire gates of a massive maximum-security prison.
A squad of heavily armed prison guards was already frantically waiting at the main gate.
"You've finally arrived," the Warden said, rushing forward to receive Tony as he stepped out of the car. The man looked extremely nervous, his face pale and slick with cold sweat. While speaking, he continuously looked around the shadows of the yard cautiously, his eyes filled with profound terror. "If this continues, forget the prisoners... even my guards are going to riot."
"What's the current situation?" Tony asked, his smart-glasses recording everything.
"That... that demon just killed someone right before you arrived."
Hearing this, Tony Stark's expression hardened. "Take me to see the body."
The group quickened their pace, led by the Warden down a series of sterile, flickering corridors to a temporary morgue set up in the infirmary. There were more than ten beds inside, each covered with a stained white cloth.
They came to the nearest bed. The Warden pulled back the sheet with a trembling hand.
"It's him. It's only been a little over an hour," the Warden swallowed hard. "The killer's appearance couldn't be seen at all. Right before everyone's eyes in the middle of the cell block... his chest just ripped open. Do you know what it's like?!"
The Warden's tone grew faster, his emotions becoming increasingly agitated. "Right before everyone's eyes, he just died like that! We couldn't do a damn thing!"
It wasn't hard to see that this incident had severely broken his psyche. No matter who it was, seeing a living person die before their eyes in such a cruel, inexplicable manner—and being entirely unable to put up any physical resistance—would cause anyone's worldview to collapse. To these ordinary men, this was simply more terrifying than a horror movie.
"Do you have surveillance footage of the block?" Tony Stark asked with a solemn expression, leaning over to observe the wounds on the corpses.
The injuries presented on the bodies were horrifying. They were massive, gaping trauma cavities, completely bypassing the sternum, as if a large hand had reached directly into the body. The injuries on every single corpse were identical; the hearts had all been forcefully gouged out.
"Is this a demon?" Tony asked, looking back at Constantine as they followed the Warden toward the security monitoring room.
Tony had absolutely no research on these supernatural events, but John Constantine was undoubtedly an expert in this field.
"It could be a demon, or it could be a vengeful evil spirit," Constantine mused, lighting a cigarette despite the indoor regulations. Nobody stopped him.
However, in the current situation, relying solely on the physical wounds on the corpses, John Constantine couldn't give a 100% accurate diagnosis just yet.
The group arrived at the monitoring room together, and the terrified guards very cooperatively pulled up the digital video logs. When things concerned one's own mortal safety, all bureaucratic rules and regulations were swiftly ignored.
In the video, everything that happened was exactly as the Warden had frantically described.
In the crowded cafeteria, everyone was eating normally. Suddenly, a prisoner's face contorted into a mask of pure agony. His body was abruptly lifted two feet in the air, as if an invisible giant had picked him up by the throat.
The prisoner kept raising his hands to struggle, his fingers sweeping wildly in front of him, but there was only empty air. The cellmates who were eating quietly nearby all screamed and backed away to avoid him.
Under everyone's terrified, helpless gazes, the fabric of the prisoner's jumpsuit at his heart was violently pierced, and the deep, bloody indentations of five massive fingers appeared in his flesh. Then, blood began to erupt outward, and finally, the entire heart was violently ripped out, floating exposed in the air.
A massive chunk suddenly went missing from the floating heart with a sickening squelch, and then the remains were casually discarded onto the cafeteria floor by the illusory figure.
"That guy... took a bite?" Wade asked, leaning closer to the monitor. "It seems so."
In the monitoring room, the guards' faces were pale with fear, while Tony and John's expressions were grim. Only Wade was watching with morbid interest, being the only one to actively point out such a gruesome, specific detail at the very end.
"John," Tony Stark crossed his arms. "What kind of thing eats a living person's heart?"
"An evil spirit," Constantine answered definitively, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "Demons all prefer the taste of souls. It's their currency. Only corrupted evil spirits and feral poltergeists crave the taste of physical blood or internal organs."
Hearing this absolute confirmation, the guards in the monitoring room looked slightly relieved to at least have a name for their nightmare.
"Since we know the origin of this guy," Tony said, tapping his gauntlet. "Can we kill him now?"
However, John Constantine's next words plunged the room into despair once again.
"We have absolutely no way to track this thing's spiritual trail right now. It's incorporeal," Constantine explained bluntly. "We can only wait for it to manifest and attack again. And that means... there will be at least one more victim tonight. Or multiple."
No one in the room wanted to be the next victim. At this moment, several guards looked at each other, silently agreeing to stay right behind the man in the Iron Man armor at all times.
Night fell heavily over the prison. The cell doors locked automatically, and all surviving prisoners were confined to their cells.
Still in the cramped monitoring room, John Constantine, Tony, and Wade were staring closely at the grid of security screens.
"Here! Something's happening in Block C!" a guard shouted.
Everyone rushed behind his chair. John Constantine took just one look at the flickering static on the feed and immediately sprinted out of the monitoring room. The others followed closely behind.
"Is everything ready?!" Tony yelled as they ran down the concrete corridors.
"Don't worry! Everything is ready!" Constantine shouted back.
When they arrived at the specific cell shown on the screen, blood had already begun to seep rapidly from the screaming prisoner's chest as he levitated off his cot.
Seeing this, John Constantine didn't dare to be careless. He snatched a heavy tactical pouch of coarse rock salt he had requested from the guards earlier.
He ripped it open and threw a massive handful of salt directly into the empty air in front of the dying prisoner.
HISS!
The salt violently disrupted the ambient electromagnetic field. Suddenly, a towering, blurred, rotting figure flickered into view right before their eyes, screeching in pain as the salt burned its ethereal form.
"It really is an evil spirit!" Constantine yelled.
He reached into his trench coat and drew a heavy-caliber revolver, its barrel engraved with countless protective crosses. He pulled the trigger frantically, firing specialized rock-salt and iron rounds directly at the entity.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The evil spirit's figure twitched continuously under the barrage. It dropped the bleeding prisoner to the concrete floor, slowly turning its rotting, hollow-eyed face toward Constantine's position.
"Quick, leave! Retreat to the open space!" Constantine ordered, backing away. "Unless we find its bones and burn its remains... there's absolutely no way to permanently kill it with bullets!"
After Constantine finished shouting to the people around him, he turned to retreat. But as soon as he looked up, the evil spirit had bypassed physical space entirely and was already blocking his way.
Its freezing, rotting palm clamped down brutally on his neck.
'It's over!' Constantine thought, his eyes widening.
Constantine only felt his windpipe crush inward. Then, the suffocating sensation of death completely enveloped him.
And just then, the ambient temperature in the cell block plummeted to absolute zero. Frost instantly spread across the iron bars and concrete walls.
An unfamiliar, calm, and majestic female voice echoed from the shadows.
"Dance, Sode no Shirayuki."
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Give me powerstones.
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