Marvel: Empire of Power-Chapter 73: A King’s Ransom, an Ocean’s Fury, a Mutant’s Echo

The news from the Ardennes – Miller captured, Captain America presumed lost, Strucker wounded but alive and undergoing Hydra augmentation – plunged Elias Thorne into a state of cold, analytical fury. He had lost key assets and inadvertently contributed to a catastrophic blow against Allied morale (though Captain America's true fate was still a closely guarded secret by the OSS). The "victory" at Schloss Adler, if it could even be called that, felt hollow, tainted by the bitter taste of strategic miscalculation.

His immediate priority was Samuel Miller. The Trauma Variant Feral Striker, fiercely loyal and forged in near-death, was too valuable an asset, too potent a symbol of Elias's ability to bestow and preserve power, to be left in Hydra's clutches. Anya Petrova's network, working in overdrive, managed to intercept fragmented Hydra communications. Miller was reportedly being held at a heavily fortified, subterranean medical research facility in occupied Poland, codenamed "Krankenhaus X" (Hospital X), where Hydra scientists, likely under Strucker's remote direction, were attempting to study and replicate his unique regenerative abilities and the Feral Striker template itself. They were, in effect, trying to reverse-engineer Elias's own creation. This could not be allowed.

The System confirmed: [HOST ASSET (MILLER, SAMUEL) LOCATION: KRANKENHAUS X (POLAND – HYDRA BIO-RESEARCH FACILITY). STATUS: ALIVE (RESTRAINED, UNDER HEAVY SEDATION, SUBJECTED TO INVASIVE EXPERIMENTATION). OBJECTIVE: IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION OR NEUTRALIZATION (TO PREVENT TEMPLATE COMPROMISE). PRIME ESSENCE SHARD POTENTIAL FROM FACILITY/PERSONNEL: MODERATE.]

Neutralization was a last resort. Elias wanted Miller back. He wanted his soldier.

Retrieving Miller from a deep-Hydra facility in occupied Poland was a task far beyond conventional means. This required a convergence of Elias's most powerful assets.

His Feral Striker "Adamantium Guard" pack – Dubois, Macgregor, Lemaire, and Beaulieu – along with Thomas MacIntyre, were immediately recalled from their successful but now secondary Pacific operations. Their journey back to Europe aboard the Sea Serpent was expedited, the trawler pushing its upgraded engines to their limits. They were now a seasoned, brutally efficient Tier 2+ unit, their loyalty absolute, their skills honed against monstrous threats. Elias knew they would tear through half of Europe to reach one of their own.

But even they might not be enough against a dedicated Hydra research fortress. Elias needed an overwhelming force, a shock and awe assault that would leave no room for failure. He turned to his most powerful, most unpredictable ally: Namor.

Through their amplified psionic link, Elias presented the situation to the Atlantean King, currently patrolling the mid-Atlantic, a self-appointed guardian against U-boat and Hydra incursions into what he considered his sovereign domain.

"Prince Namor," Elias projected, his mental voice infused with cold urgency. "One of my... land-walker warriors... has been taken by Hydra. He is being held in a coastal facility in their northern territories, a place where they commit abominations against nature and living flesh. They seek to replicate the enhancements I bestowed upon him. This cannot be permitted. His recovery is paramount." He was careful to frame it in terms Namor would understand: Hydra's unnatural meddling, a warrior captured by a common foe.

Namor's mental response was a surge of icy disdain, but also a flicker of something akin to predatory interest. "Your surface squabbles continue to spill their filth into my realm, Thorne. This 'Hydra'... their stench is pervasive. This facility... is it near the sea? Does their pollution touch my waters?"

Elias confirmed that Krankenhaus X, while inland, was reportedly supplied via a heavily fortified subterranean canal system that led to a disguised U-boat pen on the Baltic coast. This was Namor's entry point.

"Then they shall feel the ocean's judgment," Namor declared. "My warriors and I will cleanse this coastal taint. Your land-beasts may attend to their captured packmate. Provide me the coordinates. Atlantis will answer this affront."

Namor was offering more than just his personal intervention; he was offering his warriors. Elite Atlantean shock troops. The prospect was staggering. [NAMOR (PRIME CONDUIT) – OFFERING DIRECT MILITARY SUPPORT (ATLANTEAN WARRIOR DETACHMENT) FOR KRANKENHAUS X ASSAULT. Loyalty +5% (Total: 43% – Shared Objective against Defilers of Oceanic Domain; Opportunity for Decisive Action against Hydra). UNLOCKABLE SYSTEM SUB-ROUTINE: "ATLANTEAN WARFARE TACTICS (BASIC)" – PROGRESSING.]

While the Atlantean fleet (a force of swift, bio-luminescent submersibles and heavily armed shock troops Elias had only heard rumored) moved towards the Baltic, Elias focused on the third critical element of his plan: Logan. Or rather, the enduring mystery of Logan.

The System still listed Wolverine's status as [UNKNOWN – POTENTIAL FOR UNCONVENTIONAL SURVIVAL REMAINS]. Elias, drawing upon his newly refined psionic senses and the lingering ghost of their empathic link, began to reach out, to "scan" the psychic ether for any trace of Logan's distinctive, furious, pain-laced signature. It was like searching for a single, specific grain of sand in a global storm of wartime anguish, but Elias was persistent, his willpower immense.

For days, he found nothing but static, the echoes of distant battles, the screams of the dying. Then, a flicker. Faint. Almost imperceptible. A raw, primal howl of agony and rage, buried deep beneath layers of rubble, trauma, and something else... a cold, metallic resonance he hadn't sensed from Logan before. It was weak, barely a psychic whisper, but it was Logan.

[LOGAN (WOLVERINE) – FAINT LIFE SIGNATURE DETECTED. LOCATION: SUBTERRANEAN RUINS OF FESTUNG NIEMALS (AUSTRIAN ALPS). STATUS: CRITICALLY INJURED (EXTREME PHYSICAL TRAUMA, PROBABLE ADAMANTIUM SKELETAL DAMAGE, PROLONGED DEPRIVATION), CONSCIOUSNESS MINIMAL (BERSERKER SURVIVAL STATE). SIGNIFICANT AMBIENT RADIATION/UNKNOWN ENERGY SIGNATURES INTERFERING WITH REGENERATION.]

Logan was alive. Buried, broken, but alive. The Adamantium had saved him from being crushed, but the collapse and whatever energies Schmidt had unleashed had done immense damage, and his healing factor was struggling against some unknown interference. He couldn't extract himself.

Elias immediately diverted Anya from her Washington activities. Her mission: coordinate a high-risk, deep-cover extraction for Logan. This would require all her skills in infiltration, logistics, and manipulation of Allied (and neutral) assets. She would need to acquire specialized drilling equipment, a medical team capable of handling "anomalous physiology," and a way to transport Logan out of the heavily patrolled Austrian Alps once he was freed. It was an almost impossible task.

"He is alive, Anya," Elias told her, his voice resonating with a rare, almost fierce determination. "Under the ruins of Festung Niemals. Broken, but alive. Bring him home. Whatever it takes." ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

Anya, without hesitation, accepted. "Consider it done, Mr. Thorne." Her devotion was absolute. This was not just a mission; it was a rescue of one of their own, one of the pillars of Elias's strange, powerful world.

The world was now Elias Thorne's chessboard in earnest. In the Baltic, an Atlantean king and his warriors were preparing to unleash the ocean's fury upon a Hydra fortress to reclaim one of Elias's Feral Strikers. In the Austrian Alps, his most skilled intelligence operative was orchestrating a desperate rescue of his original Prime Conduit from a subterranean tomb. His remaining Feral Striker pack, led by Thomas MacIntyre, was en route to support the Krankenhaus X assault, ready to fight alongside Atlanteans against Hydra's abominations.

The cost of kings was high, the price of pawns even higher. But Elias Thorne was playing for the ultimate prize: not just victory in this war, or even global supremacy, but a fundamental reshaping of power itself. He was gathering his demigods, his monsters, his loyal soldiers, preparing for a future where the System's full potential would be unleashed. The echoes of Logan's survival, the whispers of Namor's impending wrath, the silent loyalty of his Feral Strikers – they were all pieces in his grand, terrifying design. The King was calling in his debts, and the world would tremble before the fury he was about to unleash.