Chapter 373: Guiding Hydra from the Start (Part 1)

"Did you know? I hate people who leave their sentences half-finished…," Shiler said, cradling Pikachu in both hands and placing it on the desk, staring at its round face. "... nd rats."

"Cough, cough…" Pikachu placed his tiny hands over his mouth and coughed deliberately, like a man pretending to be wise. "You'd better show some respect. Right now, only I can solve your problems."

"Oh, really?" Shiler stood up and walked to the office bookshelf, his eyes scanning the shelves. "Let me see… where did I put my recipe book? God willing, there must be a dish here called Braised Rat…"

"Do you have any idea how awful you look right now?" Pikachu wasn't fazed. He flicked his lightning-shaped tail, then propped one hand against the wall and placed the other on his hip. "Poor Master Planner finally exhausted himself with a stupid plan. How many days have you been working nonstop? Four? Five?"

As he spoke, Pikachu walked over to the desk and spread his hands toward Shiler. "When you first devised this scheme to manipulate the Serpents, didn't you think they'd latch onto you?"

Shiler took a deep breath, suppressing his anger at the mockery. After a moment, he sighed helplessly. "I knew it would be troublesome. I just didn't expect it to be this bad."

That's right. As of now, Shiler had been working eighteen hours a day for five consecutive days—not counting the times he was woken by phone calls in his sleep.

Everyone knows Hydra is a spy organization. Stark and Steve were both right: no one who goes to bed at nine p. . can possibly be a spy or agent. A spy guiding spies is still a spy. Shiler, embedded inside Hydra, was nearly dead from exhaustion.

Shiler wasn't a blank-slate appointee. He had assumed command of Pierce's old team under Pierce's name. Like every outsider taking over a unit, he faced a mountain of problems at first.

In this world, every newly appointed team leader inherits a disaster. The predecessor was always a reckless fool who stirred up trouble, left behind a mess of bugs, and abandoned half his unfinished work—otherwise, he wouldn't have been replaced.

Pierce was meticulous by nature, but since retiring from S. . . . . . and joining the World Security Council, he had been remotely controlling S. . . . . . remotely. That method was inefficient, so a backlog of work piled up. To extract useful intelligence from it, Shiler had to work overtime, untangling the damn mess.

But that wasn't the worst. If Hydra had been operating normally, Shiler wouldn't have had so much to do. But now, the Snake Heads, chased into hiding by Stark and Steve, had gone silent. Only Shiler's channel remained open—and every trivial thing, no matter how small, was called to him.

Whether they knew him or not, whether they fell under his jurisdiction or not, whether he could handle it or not—if you had a problem, you called "the Doctor."

Worse still, Shiler hadn't anticipated this situation. He'd wanted to finish it quickly, so he'd swiftly sorted out Pierce's mess, executed the security plan with ruthless efficiency, and even seized control of several Snake Head factions, dismantling and reassigning them to Arkham Sanatorium.

Such efficiency in Hydra wasn't just rare—it was unparalleled.

Don't forget: Pierce was one of the Snake Heads, but he had superiors. The deeper, hidden leaders of Hydra saw this: here was a gold-standard salesperson producing another gold-standard salesperson. Naturally, they had to give him more weight.

So one morning, after receiving a mysterious call ordering him to take full control of all affairs in New York State, Shiler's nightmare of overtime began.

Could he have ignored some of it? Technically, yes. But Shiler had a touch of OCD. When he saw a personnel schedule in utter chaos, he couldn't help but organize it. When he saw a base's security as porous as a sieve, he couldn't help but redesign it.

And so, after repeated cycles, he'd already worked nonstop for five or six days—and judging by the current situation, he'd have to keep going.

These days, the phrase Shiler repeated most often was: "Where's Iron Man? What's Iron Man doing?!" and "Check Captain America's status!"

If you don't close the net soon, I'm going to save Hydra from the fire and brimstone myself.

This situation affected more than just Shiler's sleep schedule. In fact, this was the smallest consequence of Shiler taking over Hydra. The ones truly shaken were Stark and Steve.

After teaming up, they began tracking down safe houses—but that didn't stop their other operations against Hydra. Yet these past few days, they felt the game's difficulty had skyrocketed like a rocket—*whoosh*—and their blood pressure had followed suit.

Shiler's tactic was simple but devastatingly effective: he finally turned Hydra, this bloated, hollow shell of an organization, into a true phantom—appearing nowhere, vanishing without a trace.

In short: three steps—alert, secure, disappear.

Today, Hydra's personnel structure resembled a vast, sprawling canopy. Each main trunk branched into countless limbs, and each limb into smaller branches.

Its hierarchy was more like a spindle: the middle layer was by far the largest. Unlike the low-level operatives who didn't even know they worked for Hydra, these middle-tier members had joined because they believed in Hydra's ideology—but not purely for ideals. They also sought personal gain, like most spies in the world.

Every organization has a few idiots. Due to the sheer size of the middle layer, Hydra had an unusually high number of them—and the most vulnerable were precisely the highly educated intellectuals Steve had mentioned.

They weren't trained agents. They'd never undergone espionage training. Yet because of their professional authority, they enjoyed high status. Among them, self-interested types were especially common—they refused to sacrifice more to conceal themselves. And so, Steve and Stark pulled them out like carrots, dragging up entire chains.

Shiler turned the tide precisely by targeting this group. The process sounded complex, but in essence, it boiled down to four words: sever the limb to save the body.

In every evacuation, all data had to be destroyed. All experimental equipment had to be smashed. Entire bases could be burned. When ordering evacuation, Shiler never contacted the base's highest-ranking officer—because those were usually doctors and professors. He contacted only the security personnel, ordering them to forcibly extract the researchers. Anyone who refused was shot on the spot.

Shiler's reasoning was sound: knowledge and data must be preserved. Hydra's most valuable asset was its researchers. They had to leave. Anyone who disobeyed was classified as a loss.

In most research bases, tension between security personnel and researchers had festered for years. No professional agent could endure these scientists' capricious, troublemaking personalities.

So when Shiler's order came, the evacuations were swift. No dragging feet. No leaving power on. No failing to destroy data. No leaving behind crates of hard drives.

*My Healing Game*

Someone might ask: if this plan was so effective against Stark and Steve's investigations and raids, why hadn't Hydra used it before?

If you pulled up the statistics from a god's-eye view, you'd find that the number of Hydra personnel lost in Shiler's evacuations far exceeded those captured by Stark and Steve.

Killing your own people so the enemy has no one to kill—that's the secret to success.

Plainly put, this land isn't Shiler's. He naturally wants to sell off whichever plot he pleases. He doesn't have to worry about Hydra's future: how it'll cope with the collapse of experiments due to massive loss of technical talent, or how it'll maintain existing technologies.

But from another angle, Stark and Steve were having high blood pressure. In the Avengers' base, Stark pressed his temples. "We need to reassess Hydra's leadership. They actually cut off their own tails to escape."

Steve's expression was hesitant. "I suspect they've received direct orders from the German headquarters."

"In my day, we knew American Hydra was nothing. The real threat was the bunch under the Little Mustache. I always called them madmen—but I had to admit, his top lieutenants were formidable."

"Indeed. Such decisive action isn't something an ordinary person could make. They're more troublesome than I thought." Stark's face was grim. He rose from the sofa and walked to the war map. "My tactics against Hydra were adapted from my original plans against S. . . . . . My assumed enemy was Nick Fury."

"But now it seems the enemy is even harsher. They're willing to sacrifice two-thirds of their personnel in a base just to ensure the escape of key figures…"

"But I must say, they're clever," Steve walked over and stood beside Stark. "This is actually the best choice. If they'd dragged their feet, clinging to every casualty, they'd have collapsed already."

"Because the more key personnel we capture, the more branches we can trace back along the trunk," Stark continued smoothly. "Capturing a hundred branches is worth less than capturing one main trunk."

"But something's odd…" Stark frowned, puzzled. "At first, their reactions were predictable. But lately, their strategic level has skyrocketed. If they'd started with this intensity, I'd have immediately upgraded their threat level."

"That's why I think someone powerful from the German headquarters has taken over. Their style matches the men under Red Skull too closely."

"We need to revise our strategy. If necessary, I'll reach out to the members of the Luminous Alliance," Stark crossed his arms.

"First, call an Avengers internal meeting," Steve turned and sat at the conference table. Just then, a ringtone came from Stark's pocket. He pulled out his phone and answered: "Hello? Shiler? … Again? Can you please stop calling me?"

To Stark's surprise, the other end hung up immediately. Moments later, Peter's phone rang beside him. He picked it up. "Hello? Dr. Shiler? … What? How's our progress? Not going well—Stark and the Captain are planning to adjust tactics…"

"Alright, I'll nudge them. But why are you in such a hurry?"

"…Oh, right. This damned evil organization has harmed too many people. We must act immediately to stop them from causing more chaos!" Peter said solemnly into the phone. "Yes! I agree. I'm on my way now!"

He hung up, walked over to Stark and Steve, and said: "Dr. Shiler wants to know why there's been no progress these past few days. He's desperate…"

Peter's face was grave. "He says he can't endure these evil Serpents—not even one more second."