Chapter 81
The line went dead silent. I could practically hear Fury running through his options, and since there were not many of them, he finally answered.
"How urgent is it? And what do you mean by 'in person'?" Like the professional spy he was, he immediately started testing the waters.
"Urgent enough that if this meeting does not happen in the next couple of hours, it will not matter anymore. As for 'in person'... you can bring those trusted people I already know about." I meant Barton, Coulson, and possibly Natasha. "If there is even one new face at this meeting, the conversation is off."
"The grain warehouse you know. Two hours." Fury finally decided.
"And, Nick," just in case, I decided to warn him, "come without any electronics."
I ended the call before he could answer. He had heard what he needed to hear.
The next hour I spent building a powerful EMP bomb. Not for an attack. For a sterilization.
After a short flight in the absurd, beat-up Chimera, I found myself inside the designated location.
The grain warehouse greeted me with an echoing boom and the smell of old dust. There were still more than forty minutes until the meeting, but I did not just sit around waiting. I activated the EMP in one spot, moved, and activated it again. And again. I walked through the entire massive space, burning out any bugs that could have been sleeping there for years. And since this was a S.H.I.E.L.D. meeting spot, I had no doubt there were some.
Only after that did I let myself relax, sitting down on an old beam. I counted the minutes, running through scenarios for the upcoming meeting in my head.
How would Fury behave when he learned that his direct superior was the biggest mole in the organization? How would he react when he understood that I was already acting, using Gwen as an agent? How would he take to the very idea of mental manipulation?
That last point was the trickiest one. He would obviously not accept it. On the surface, he might put on a show of acceptance, but on the inside...
On the other hand, I had not yet given S.H.I.E.L.D. any reason to doubt my sanity. Yes, I had acted radically, but it had always been in self-defense. Plus, the order I had been given, I had carried out in full. That should count for something.
While I was mulling this over, two people entered the building. It was Fury and Barton.
I stayed on the beam, watching them walk into the circle of moonlight streaming through a hole in the roof. Barton made no effort to hide it. He held his composite bow in his hands. There was no bowstring on it. I also did not notice a quiver on him.
That told me more than any words could have. Barton was clearly a very different animal from his classic counterpart.
I jumped down, landing a few meters away from them.
"Sorry, Nick." I said, raising my hand with the activated EMP bomb. "But this is a very important conversation."
They closed to a distance of five meters. I pressed the button.
A soft pulse passed through the room. Fury only closed his eyes wearily, but he did not look surprised. Apparently, they really were clean. Damn, I missed Gwen in moments like these. Her sense for anything suspicious would have been invaluable.
"There must be a pretty good reason for this level of paranoia." Fury said in a flat voice, opening his eyes slightly wider.
"More than good." I nodded. "It is Hydra."
The word hung in the stale air of the grain warehouse.
However hard Fury tried to keep a stone face in that moment, he could not pull it off. His pupils widened. His eyelid twitched, barely noticeable. I could see these tiny muscle movements far too well now. Barton, for his part, looked calmer, but I caught how his fingers tightened around the bow's grip.
"I am glad you know who these people are." I continued, breaking the silence. "But unfortunately, you are underestimating the scale of the problem. That 'black' threat level in S.H.I.E.L.D., those infamous 'moles'..."
"Impossible." Fury cut in sharply. "The protocols for countering Hydra have existed since the Second World War. They have been refined to a science, and they have proven their effectiveness for decades."
"That is funny." I chuckled. "The protocols for countering Hydra were most likely written by Hydra itself. Nick, your organization is not just a fortress with moles in it. It is a branch of Hydra."
I took a step forward.
"Right now, I am going to give you just one name. Potentially one of the main heads. But before I do that, I have a simple question for you. Are you ready to trust me? Probably, in your world view, I deserve your trust no more than a talking space raccoon does. Maybe less, since a raccoon is at least cute. But if I say this name, there is no turning back. This is the point of no return. S.H.I.E.L.D. will either help me destroy Hydra, or I will do it myself."
I let that hang in the air.
"And I think you know perfectly well that stopping me right now would be... pretty difficult." I hinted as heavily as I could at my newly acquired abilities. The same ones that had helped me deal with the last group of mercenaries.
For a long fifteen seconds, the grain warehouse was buried in a deafening silence. The only sound was the distant creaking of old beams somewhere up in the roof.
Fury closed his eyes partway and thought. Barton, on the other hand, kept his eyes locked on me the entire time, drilling me with an impenetrable stare. I just waited, expecting agreement. That was the only sensible response in this situation.
Fury did not disappoint. He opened his eyes and stared at me.
"What is the name?"
"Alexander Pierce."
I spoke the name into the silence, and it landed like a stone. Now the most delicate stage began.
"Impossible!" Fury snapped, even harder than before. His voice bounced hollowly off the metal walls. "Are you trying to destabilize S.H.I.E.L.D.? What is your goal? Throwing around accusations like this..."
"I must have solid evidence for it, I know." I calmly finished his sentence for him. "And I do. Pierce is one of Hydra's key figures. And he is also its critical vulnerability. Starting with him, we can unravel this whole tangled mess and finish these bastards off once and for all. But..." I studied his face, "you clearly do not believe me. So I suggest we ask Pierce himself." I shrugged.
"What does that mean?" Fury practically growled, taking a barely noticeable step forward. He understood that last line had been said deliberately.
I did not answer. Instead, I pulled my smartphone from my inventory. On the screen glowed a message that had arrived seven minutes ago. It was from Gwen. One word. It said "OK."
Judging by the fact that there was no global alarm and Fury had no idea about her movements, she had chosen the most efficient method. She had flown in on a plane, in her invisibility suit, bypassing all registrations. Fast and clean.
"That means that seven minutes ago, my agent completed her mission." I calmly explained, typing a short "return" message to Gwen, then removing the smartphone and putting it back in my inventory. "I knew perfectly well that you would not take my word for it. You are a spy, a pragmatist, and paranoid to the bone. Believing in words is an unacceptable luxury for you. So I will not throw around accusations. Instead, I will give you a demonstration."
I gave Fury a few seconds to process what I had said. But it was Barton who spoke. And his voice rang with ice.
"You kidnapped Pierce?!"
The hand holding the bow shifted, and his other hand went to the thin bowstring, drawing it. At the same moment, a ghostly arrow silhouette began to materialize on the string. The threat was obvious, and any remaining questions about Barton's power were answered.
"No. Why would I?" I was genuinely surprised.
I noticed the tension in Fury's and Barton's shoulders momentarily drop. They exhaled.
"Kidnapping? Torture? Truth serum? That would be crude. It would be unreliable, especially with one of Hydra's heads. The organization would eliminate Pierce immediately, and I would lose the trail. I acted... more cleanly."
I looked directly into Fury's eyes.
"I have a technology. Let us call it a 'bio-agent.' It is a small mental parasite that works on metaphysical principles. It does not break the brain. It does not cripple the body. It synchronizes. It attaches itself to what mystics would call the 'astral anchor.' It hooks into the very channel through which the consciousness sends its orders to the body."
In the grain warehouse, the silence was so deep I could genuinely start to hear dust settling on the distant beams. Fury's face stopped twitching. It did not turn to stone. It went dead. This was the face of a man who had just looked into the abyss and realized the abyss was looking back.
"Once the parasite is inside," I continued, in the most even, clinical voice I could manage, "it simply waits for my signal. And as soon as I find myself within a radius of twenty to thirty meters of the target, I can suggest any thought to the host. I can suggest any order. And the host will accept it as his own. Not as hypnosis, not as compulsion, but as a sudden, brilliant insight. As his own reflex."
I shrugged again, dispassionately noting how, with each word, Fury was becoming more and more dead behind the eyes.
"And by 'the mission,' I meant exactly this. Seven minutes ago, my agent implanted a mental parasite into Alexander Pierce. All we need to do, Nick, is arrange a meeting. You, me, and Pierce. And you can ask him any question. Absolutely any question. And he will gladly answer it, sincerely believing it is entirely his own decision."
I paused, taking in how much the atmosphere in the grain warehouse had shifted. This was no longer a dialogue. This was a hostage situation. And Fury, in his own modest opinion, was the hostage.
The veins on Barton's neck swelled up so much they looked like they might burst. The wrist holding the bow had gone white from the tension, and the bow itself, with its ghostly arrow, was now pointed at me without any pretense. He was right on the edge, and it was only Fury's icy calm keeping him from taking the shot.
As for Fury himself... he was silent.
He was not looking at me. He was looking through me. I tried to figure out what exactly he was thinking.
Hydra? That was a problem. A huge, deadly problem, but a comprehensible one. An enemy he understood.
I, on the other hand, had broken everything.
For him, a master of intrigue, the game had literally come to an end. My technology had made everything meaningless. It had rendered the agent networks, the double agents, the blackmail, the trust, the lies, the very concept of secrecy, meaningless.
Surely his first thought was, "Is one of these mental parasites inside me right now?"
His second thought was, "He just admitted to taking a high-ranking government official under his absolute control. And he is standing here as calm as if he were discussing the weather."
His third thought? I did not know. Unfortunately, I was not a telepath. But it was probably something like, "He did not come here to ask for help. He came here to inform me."
...Ha. Though that last thought was not quite right. I had genuinely come to ask for help. After all, my resources were pretty limited.
Slowly, very slowly, Fury exhaled. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and stripped of all emotion. It was the voice of a man standing on the edge of a cliff.
"You..." he stopped himself, choosing his words carefully. He understood he could show neither fear nor rage. But he had not yet realized that I mostly did not care either way. "Do you understand what you have created?"
"It is a tool." I answered calmly. "For solving unsolvable problems. And Pierce is one of them."
"You have created an absolute weapon." Fury hissed, leaning forward. "A weapon with no defense against it."
"Really?" I tilted my head. "I am standing here in front of you. I told you about this. Obviously, I have no intention of taking over S.H.I.E.L.D. That is precisely why I am here, Nick. I am giving you a choice. I am laying my cards on the table, honestly."
There was another silence. In Fury's eyes, I could see the struggle. His paranoia fighting against his pragmatism.
I was dangerous. I was uncontrollable. But I was also right. I had come to him with dialogue and a plan. Hydra was real, and he knew it. And Pierce was...
Fortunately, his pragmatism won out. Fury was a spy. And I had just handed him the only tool capable of winning this war.
"A meeting." He cut himself off. "In a few hours. I will arrange it. You will be there. And if Pierce truly confesses, we will burn Hydra to the ground."
He took a step toward me, and his eyes burned with an icy fire.
"But remember this. From this second on, you are not a partner and not an asset. You are a nuclear bomb. An uncontrolled one. And I will treat you accordingly."
He leaned in even closer. His voice dropped to a whisper.
"And if I ever even suspect that one of your tools has ended up inside anyone on my team..."
He did not need to finish the sentence.
"Now," he turned sharply to the exit, signaling Barton, "let us go. We have a lot of work to do."
The door behind the agents leading their "guest" to a waiting room closed. In the S.H.I.E.L.D. director's office, a heavy, thick silence hung in the air.
"So..." Barton finally broke it, sitting down across from the desk. "What are we going to do about this... fact?"
"It is a bad situation." Fury rubbed his temples hard enough to give himself a headache. "Honestly, Clint, this is the first time in my career that I simply do not know what to do."
"And the meeting?"
"It will happen." Fury nodded seriously. "We have no choice but to play his card. Alright, this is what I am going to handle right now."
He picked up the landline telephone from his desk. It was a device without a single microchip in it. A clean line. Pressing one button, Fury rhythmically tapped his finger on the desk for several seconds, waiting for an answer.
"Nick? Is something urgent?" A familiar voice, Pierce's, came from the other end.
It sounded surprisingly natural. Calm. A bit sleepy, which was no surprise given the time of day. There were no traces of mental zombification in it. That only added to the unease.
"Yes, Alexander. It is an emergency." Fury spoke evenly, reciting a prepared cover story. "A prototype of the Cleanser was just used in Lagos without our knowledge. I have no idea where the leak came from. But on your end, you need to personally calm down the U.N., while my people sweep the traces."
The cover story was perfect. If Pierce was Hydra, he would think that someone in his own ranks had gotten cocky and arranged a leak using their shared assets. He could not ignore this. It was uncontrolled chaos in his domain.
If he was not Hydra, the situation would still require his immediate intervention as Secretary of the Security Council. Either way, Pierce took the bait.
"You are in New York?"
"For now, yes." Fury admitted.
"Head to the Triskelion. We will meet there. I am flying out in ten minutes." Pierce said, understanding that in this situation he could not afford to delay. Then he hung up.
"Damn." Barton winced, having been a witness to the whole exchange. "I hate the Triskelion. It is a glass box. This place... has more character, or something."
"There is that." Fury agreed, rising from his desk. "Go warn Thompson that we are heading out."
"Are you hiding Natasha from him?" Barton asked, getting up from his chair.
"I am hiding him from her, more like it."
"Alright." Barton nodded, heading for the door. "I hope this whole thing works out."
Fury stared grimly at the dark monitor of his turned-off computer.
"He did not leave any other options." He quietly answered the empty office. "Not for us. Not for himself."
Sitting in the leather seat of the government jet heading toward the Triskelion's hidden airfield, Pierce tried to figure out which bastard had gotten it into his head to reveal the existence of the Cleanser to the world. It was a gas capable of weakening the X-gene and, in high enough doses, outright destroying mutants. It had been developed at Zola's suggestion as the ideal solution to the mutant problem.
This gas was a critically important asset. It was supposed to be deployed only by command and only in sync with the launch of the future Insight project. They had finally managed to find the reactors for it. The entire essence of Zola's Algorithm was in a preemptive, surgical strike against future threats calculated decades in advance. And some idiot had decided to use this tool prematurely. They had used it in Lagos, creating chaos and attracting unnecessary U.N. attention.
The plane began its descent. Through the porthole, it appeared. The Triskelion. Made of glass, cold, piercing the sky. It was not simply S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, as the uninformed thought. No, this was Hydra's temple. Built on its enemies' money, it was the central nerve node. In the depths of its servers, in a way, Zola himself lived and worked. It was an irony Pierce enjoyed every day.
Fury was waiting for him right on the landing pad. He looked gloomier than a storm cloud, which was no surprise considering what a reputational disaster the revelation of the Cleanser could turn out to be. Xavier would hardly let that slide.
"Alexander." Fury nodded, skipping the handshake. "This way. We are going to the Aquarium. This conversation needs to be absolutely clean."
Pierce nodded agreeably. It made sense. If a leak of this magnitude had occurred, Fury's paranoia was warranted. He needed to assess the damage and find the guilty party. Pierce planned to make a public example of whoever it was.
They entered a soundproof conference room at the very heart of the building. The door hissed shut, sealing the room. Fury, without sitting down, turned to him.
"So, Nick, how bad is everything with..." Pierce began.
"Hydra." Fury cut him off, staring him dead in the eye. "Are you connected to Hydra?"
For a second, Pierce froze. The question was so absurd, so direct, and so wildly out of place in the given situation. Then a light, condescending smile spread across his face. The thought that it was time to stop this tiresome charade with Fury struck him as sudden but absolutely correct. What was the point of hiding it any longer? The time had come.
"Yes, Nick." He answered calmly, as if confessing to a love of golf. "Of course. Hail Hydra."
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