The two walked into the room. The interior was spacious and bright, decorated very warmly.
Thick carpets, soft sofas, and even a pre-assembled crib in the corner.
Fury helped Vara sit on the sofa, his gaze fixed intently on her stomach.
"Is it true?" Fury's voice trembled slightly.
Vara nodded, her hand gently stroking her abdomen. "It's true, Fury. More than four months."
"I didn't know I was pregnant at first. Not until I came to the Compound to surrender." Vara took Fury's hand and pressed it against her lower belly.
"Their tests found this little guy. But... the combination of human and Skrull genes makes the embryo very unstable; a miscarriage was likely."
"It was Homelander who saved the child. He injected me with some kind of white substance... Vought people said it was a gene stabilizer, and it really worked."
Vara touched her face.
"Moreover, to allow this child to develop and be born smoothly, Homelander made an exception and allowed me to keep my shapeshifting ability. It allows me to maintain human form constantly so the embryo can grow in the most suitable environment."
Listening to Vara's story, a long-lost surge of emotion welled up in Fury's heart.
"I'm really going to be a father..." he murmured to himself.
He had originally thought Homelander was just using him.
But he hadn't expected that when it came to his wife and child, Vought International and Homelander would be so meticulous and caring.
Not only did they save the child, but for the sake of his wife's safety, they even broke the principle that "all Skrulls must have their shapeshifting abilities removed."
Fury turned his head to look at the wind and snow outside the window, his eyes feeling a bit warm.
He had plotted against countless people in his life, but this time, he was firmly trapped by someone else's debt of gratitude.
"Getting old... once you have a child, your heart softens." Fury let out a long sigh and reached out to pull his wife into his arms again.
...
Meanwhile, Homelander was preparing for tomorrow's White House meeting.
Suddenly, a system prompt sounded in his mind.
Prompt! Harvested special popularity value +20,000! (From Nick Fury)
"Heh, to actually harvest twenty thousand popularity points from that terminally paranoid black braised egg... I'm pretty damn good."
Homelander picked up a glass of milk beside him, feeling extremely pleased.
Setting aside the amount of popularity value, the sense of achievement was immense!
He knew Fury too well.
With this kind of person, if you use force to threaten him, he will only submit on the surface while stabbing you in the back.
If you talk to him about ideals, he'll think you're a hypocrite.
But with this child, even if Fury has boarded Vought International's pirate ship, he can forget about ever getting off.
To give his child a stable future, he would transform into the most frenzied interstellar bloodhound to expand Vought International's territory.
"Employees with families are the perfect employees." Homelander, acting as a black-hearted boss, gave a satisfied evaluation.
Skynet.
"I am here, sir. What are your orders?" The holographic projection flickered, and Skynet's elegant figure appeared in the center of the room.
"Issue a group-wide announcement immediately." Homelander thought for a moment and gave the command.
"Starting today, comprehensively increase the family benefits for all official employees of Vought International. This includes, but is not limited to, full medical insurance coverage, top-tier educational fund trusts, and priority protection rights for immediate family members."
"I want everyone working for Vought International to have their families tightly bound to the company's chariot of interests, understand?"
"Understood, sir. This is an inspiring decision; your benevolence will spread throughout the company," Skynet responded with a smile.
...
In the wild, deep mountains, and deserts, the hunt for the remaining Skrulls continued.
But the Skrulls within the cities had basically been cleared out.
However, while the alien threat was resolved, a crisis within human society erupted.
Because during their reign, the Skrulls had replaced a massive number of officials, executives, and military generals at all levels worldwide.
Now that these imposters were being purged en masse, a huge vacuum appeared in the management of human society.
City halls had no mayors, Police stations had no Directors, and the military had lost its chain of Commander.
In the absence of management, serious chaos began to break out in various places.
Thugs took advantage of the chaos to loot, the resource distribution system was paralyzed, and water and power outages spread across many large cities.
Fortunately, Vought International's heroes fanned out across the World, maintaining basic order alongside the Sentinels.
This reduced much bloodshed and also garnered quite a bit of popularity value.
Meanwhile, some former political figures from various countries who were originally replaced but luckily survived began to emerge.
They tried to speak out on the internet and in the media, proposing to abolish the "Human Federation" established by the Skrulls, dissolve the unified government, return to their original nations, and redraw borders.
"It's time to reclaim our national sovereignty!" a former high-ranking official from a European country shouted before the television cameras.
"The Human Federation is a freak, a tool used by aliens to enslave us! We must restore the old order!"
But they soon realized, to their sorrow, that going back was already very difficult to achieve.
The reason was simple: in their short few months of rule, the Skrulls had been too thorough.
First was the complete economic integration. National treasuries were emptied, gold reserves and foreign exchange were unified and transferred. All original fiat currencies were abolished and forcibly converted into unified digital Credits issued by the Human Federation.
Banking systems and financial data were completely intertwined and impossible to untangle.
If the Human Federation were dissolved now, the existing economy would collapse in a second, and everyone would lose everything.
Second was the reorganization of the military command system.
The Skrulls had abolished the military command systems of all nations.
The new command system was entirely under the unified deployment of the Human Federation.
If the Human Federation dissolved, who would the army listen to? Who would pay their salaries?
Most fatal of all, all border walls and customs data had been physically destroyed and deleted.
Border issues were originally the most prone to dispute; no one wanted to lose even a centimeter of land.
The only way to return everything to its original state would be to fight a global war to redraw territories.
And the billions of humans who had just experienced apocalyptic panic now craved stability above all else; any politician attempting to stir up war would be torn to pieces by the angry populace.
The good news was that within the original framework of the federal government, some core officials with actual power had not been completely replaced by Skrulls.
These T-1050ti high-ranking officials quickly banded together and took over the remaining functions of the Human Federation headquarters.
They formed a temporary delegation and issued a public meeting invitation to the White House, broadcast to the whole World.
The meeting was held in Geneva.
United States of America President Matthew Ellis attended with a massive cabinet team.
Accompanying him were Homelander and several high-level executives from Vought International.
The meeting proceeded unexpectedly smoothly, with neither side bickering over trivial details.
The two sides hit it off immediately.
Two hours after the meeting ended.
On every screen, network, and street billboard in the World, the explosive news of this meeting was broadcast overwhelmingly.
[Breaking News! The United States of America has officially announced its full accession to the Human Federation!]
[To distinguish it from the puppet regime established by the Skrulls, the Human Federation has been officially renamed—the "Galactic Human Federation"!]
[By unanimous vote of the Federal Interim Parliament, former United States President Matthew Ellis, by virtue of his outstanding leadership and firm conviction in the fight against the alien invasion, has officially taken office as the first... Galactic President of the Galactic Human Federation!]