DC Apostle in the Marvel Universe

After a night of intense fighting, even superhumans like Russell and Allen, who had undergone enhancements, felt a bit of fatigue.

To avoid drawing attention from higher authorities, both Russell and Allen had held back, not displaying their full, extraordinary abilities.

Allen, in particular, had gone the entire night without transforming, fighting in his normal human state.

However, these were just ordinary gang members, hardly worth Allen transforming into the green giant.

Using the green giant form for this fight would have been nothing short of a one-sided massacre.

As the sun rose high in the sky, Russell turned to Allen and said, "Let's go grab some breakfast, then head back."

After the embarrassment of not being able to pay the bill last time, Russell had learned his lesson.

After raiding a gang's headquarters, Russell not only commandeered a brand-new pickup truck, but also tossed all the cash he could find in the gang's base into the truck's back seat.

Now, they didn't have to worry about not having enough money to pay for their meals.

After a night of intense fighting, the duo had burned through a lot of energy. So, at the random diner they found, they put on quite a show.

The two of them devoured enough breakfast to feed twenty to thirty people at an astonishing speed...

What shocked everyone even more was that when they walked out of the diner, their bodies showed no signs of change.

If the diner staff and customers hadn't witnessed them eating that mountain of food with their own eyes, they would have thought they were hallucinating.

The task of driving the pickup truck back to the farm fell to Allen.

Ever since he found out that Russell didn't have a driver's license, he refused to let Russell behind the wheel.

So, Allen drove the brand-new pickup back to the farm, while Russell sprawled out in the back seat and slept.

As for the bags of cash they had stolen, Russell casually tossed them into the truck bed.

When Allen drove the pickup back to the farm, their arrival startled the soldiers guarding the place.

If one of the snipers hadn't recognized Allen as the driver, they would have been greeted with a hail of bullets before even reaching the farm.

After resting during the drive, Russell had regained some of his energy. So, as soon as they returned to the farm, he immediately sought out Dr. Wilson to discuss the establishment of the biotech company.

How to set up a biotech company in the U.S. and obtain the necessary research credentials was something Russell didn't know much about.

But he wasn't worried, because he had experts on hand.

Both Dr. Wilson and the researchers who had come with them were professionals in the biotech field. They knew better than anyone how to establish a biotech company and secure the required permits.

After briefing Dr. Wilson, Russell returned to his room and opened the heavily encrypted laptop.

This laptop was one of the items they had brought from the base. However, before leaving the base, Dr. Wilson had thoroughly checked and reset the device.

So now, the laptop was clean and undetectable by Hydra.

After hesitating for a few seconds, Russell composed an email and sent it to a secret account using a specific encryption method.

The owner of that secret account was Jasper, who had returned to Hydra headquarters as a spy. This account was the only contact method Jasper had left for Russell.

After discovering Jessica in Hell's Kitchen, Russell had decided to reach out to Jasper.

Many of his upcoming plans would require intelligence from the bald agent.

Jasper could provide official, classified intelligence, while Jessica could supply information from the shadows.

These two sources; one overt, one covert, would be his primary intelligence channels moving forward.

In the email to Jasper, Russell didn't include much. He simply asked Jasper to investigate the daily movements of a few individuals.

Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Grant Ward, Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz, and the hacker Skye...

Aside from Skye, the others were all members of S.H.I.E.L.D... at least on the surface. So Jasper should have no trouble gathering information on them.

As for Skye, it would depend on whether Jasper could access the relevant data and whether his clearance level within S.H.I.E.L.D. was high enough.

Russell didn't ask Jasper to investigate the Extremis soldiers. He didn't want Jasper to get involved with the Extremis program, as it could risk exposing him.

The Extremis data was something he was determined to obtain.

But how to obtain it was a delicate matter.

He needed to gather intelligence on the Extremis program without compromising Jasper's cover, so he had to take a more indirect approach.

As the saying goes, if you follow the vultures, you're not far from the graveyard.

And Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. team was the vulture Russell wanted to follow, with the Extremis data being the graveyard.

If he remembered correctly, Coulson's special team had located the Extremis program's labs multiple times. So, as long as he followed them, he was bound to find what he was looking for.

Two days later, the convoy from the base finally arrived at the farm.

As Dr. Wilson was about to have the equipment unloaded from the trucks, Russell stopped him, "Don't bother unloading. Tomorrow, have them drive straight to Hell's Kitchen. We'll set up the lab there directly."

After giving these instructions, Russell, along with Allen and six soldiers, headed back to Hell's Kitchen.

This time, Russell wasn't going to establish dominance. He was going to claim his spoils.

Two days ago, their battle had not only cemented their reputation in Hell's Kitchen, but also dismantled several gangs.

Now, Russell's goal was to take over the territories of these gangs and make them his own.

The reason he had waited two days to do this was simple: he wanted to see if any foolish gangs would try to seize his spoils in his absence.

If they did, he wouldn't mind flexing his muscles again.

However, he hadn't anticipated that his plan would fall flat.

Although Russell and Allen had deliberately held back during the previous battle, avoiding a full-blown superhuman showdown, their actions had still caught the attention of Newton York's underground Kingpin, Wilson Grant Fisk.

It was impossible not to notice. Overnight, several of his 'dogs' had been mysteriously taken out.

If Kingpin hadn't noticed that, he wouldn't deserve his title as the feared ruler of the underworld...