If Hydra were exposed now, the consequences would be catastrophic.
The entire world would turn on them.
Too many people still remembered World War II. Too many governments still carried scars left behind by Hydra's atrocities. The moment their existence became public again, every intelligence agency, military force, and superhuman organization on Earth would come crashing down on them at once.
The newly appointed leader of Hydra's North American division spoke with a dark expression.
"We can't pull out now. The Insight Project is entering its most critical phase. If we abandon it at this point, everything we've built will collapse."
"That's your project collapsing," Baron Strucker replied coldly.
"None of us ever believed in it to begin with."
Pierce's beloved Insight Project had always relied on Arnim Zola's predictive algorithm. The system scanned global data to identify individuals who could potentially threaten Hydra in the future, then used airborne helicarriers armed with precision strike missiles to eliminate them before they became a problem.
The flaw was obvious.
When fragments of the target list briefly appeared during activation tests, Bruce Banner's name had reportedly been among them.
Trying to assassinate the Hulk with conventional missiles was the kind of plan that only looked intelligent on paper.
To everyone else in Hydra, the project bordered on insanity.
Only Pierce and this new North American leader still treated it like humanity's greatest achievement.
The man's face stiffened after Strucker's dismissal.
"And if I remember correctly," he shot back, "you lost an entire facility last month. A high-priority one. Yet you still haven't explained what happened there."
His gaze sharpened.
"I think the rest of us deserve to know whether your private experiments compromised Hydra's secrecy."
Strucker folded his arms and gave a dismissive snort.
"We're still investigating the incident, but it shouldn't endanger the organization. You have my word."
"With respect, Baron, that doesn't reassure anyone."
The pressure continued mounting around the table.
Everyone already knew Strucker spent most of his time hidden away conducting experiments on enhanced humans.
A large portion of Hydra's leadership had an unhealthy fascination with superpowers. Nearly every faction monitored Strucker's progress in one way or another.
The problem was that he never shared results.
Naturally, Strucker couldn't exactly tell them the truth.
He couldn't very well announce that his facility had been obliterated by a monster attack.
Not after spending years researching superhumans only to get crushed by one.
That kind of humiliation tended to raise uncomfortable questions about wasted funding.
Besides, in Strucker's mind, monsters were natural disasters. Losing to them didn't count as incompetence.
Elsewhere, Drex Valen listened in with growing amusement.
So unleashing monsters across the world had produced some unexpected side benefits after all.
Even Hydra had taken losses.
That thought entertained him far more than it probably should have.
Then another idea surfaced.
What if he simply became Hydra's newest leader?
The concept sounded absurd at first glance.
But in Hydra?
It was practically tradition.
A completely unknown leader appearing out of nowhere while the rest of the organization remained clueless had happened multiple times before.
Whitehall was the perfect example.
Back during World War II, he had been one of Hydra's senior commanders. After the war ended, the Howling Commandos destroyed his operations, and Agent Peggy Carter personally oversaw the raid that dragged him into prison.
Everyone assumed he would rot there until death claimed him.
Instead, decades later, his followers broke him out.
Using cells harvested from an Inhuman, Whitehall restored his youth and returned to power seemingly from nowhere, reclaiming a seat among Hydra's supreme leadership.
Then there was Baron Heinrich Zemo.
Another major Hydra figure from the Red Skull era.
Another ghost from World War II who vanished for decades without explanation.
Most people assumed he was long dead.
Then suddenly, without warning, he resurfaced and reclaimed authority as if he had never left.
Hydra liked to present itself as a vast, sophisticated organization.
In reality, its internal management structure was complete chaos.
Each leader ruled their own territory independently. They cooperated when necessary, but most operated more like rival warlords than members of a unified hierarchy.
Being a "Hydra leader" was less about official rank and more about raw power.
If you had enough weapons, soldiers, influence, and resources, you could sit down at the table and declare yourself important.
And Hydra's recruitment standards only made things worse.
The organization aggressively absorbed talent from everywhere, often with almost no vetting whatsoever. If someone was useful, Hydra took them.
Half the time, members didn't even know who else belonged to the organization.
Two Hydra agents could pass each other in a hallway without realizing they worked for the same people.
The only reliable identification method left was their ridiculous slogan.
"Hail Hydra."
Honestly, that explained a lot.
During the events surrounding the Avengers, Steve Rogers had apparently tricked undercover Hydra agents simply by casually saying the phrase aloud.
Which meant identifying Hydra spies was theoretically simple.
Walk through S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters saying "Hail Hydra" often enough, and eventually somebody would answer back.
As for Garrett...
Truthfully, he had never cared much about Hydra's ideology in the first place.
Nor had he ever felt particularly loyal toward Pierce.
He joined Hydra for the same reason countless others did:
Resources.
Protection.
Opportunity.
A stable place inside the machine.
As he aged, Garrett's health deteriorated rapidly. Then came the terminal illness.
Desperate to save himself, he used Hydra's resources to launch the Centipede Project, obsessively researching variants of the Super Soldier Serum in hopes of curing diseases modern medicine couldn't touch.
Progress had been painfully slow.
Every formula came with flaws. Instability. Rejection. Failure.
All he had truly managed to accomplish was delaying his own death.
And time was running out.
Garrett had heard that Baron Strucker possessed Hydra's most advanced superhuman research division, but Strucker's faction was filled with fanatics and extremists Garrett wanted nothing to do with.
Worse, Strucker guarded his discoveries obsessively. Even trusted subordinates rarely gained access.
Then there was Drex Valen.
The man had already developed revolutionary treatments for AIDS and polio.
Garrett originally thought Drex might become humanity's greatest medical scientist.
Instead, Drex abruptly shifted his focus toward Super Soldier research...
And without anyone realizing it, he handed the world the greatest shock imaginable.
He turned himself into the strongest man alive.
At this point, Garrett had seriously considered defecting.
Telling Drex the truth about Hydra's survival.
Not out of morality.
Not out of guilt.
He simply wanted to live.
His body was failing faster every day, and deep down, he no longer believed the Centipede Project could save him.
The only thing stopping him was uncertainty.
He had no idea how Drex Valen treated former Hydra members.
If the man happened to possess an uncompromising hatred toward Hydra...
Then walking through that door would basically amount to delivering himself to execution personally.