Steve Rogers recognised the attack before it began.
The lift stopped between floors as the men closed around Steve, cutting off his shield arm and the control panel at the same time. He drove the nearest agent into the wall before the first hand reached him.
The impact should have ended the man's part in the fight.
He folded against the rail, caught himself, and came back fast enough to change Steve's assessment. The next blow confirmed it. None of them matched him alone, but they absorbed punishment that would have dropped ordinary agents and recovered before he could control the room.
One struck his jaw while two forced his shield arm down. Another locked both arms around his waist and held him for a full second before Steve broke the grip. They were trying to contain him, which meant someone still expected to question him afterwards.
The agents were strong and fast. Half his strength, perhaps, and close to half his speed. Their coordination made the difference matter less.
Steve stopped holding back after a while. He broke their formation, drove one man into two others, and kept the shield moving through the narrow space. The agents continued coordinating even after broken ribs and damaged knees should have taken them out of the fight. Whatever strengthened them had preserved their training along with their bodies.
When the doors finally opened, another platoon was waiting outside. Their weapons were raised. He closed the doors and took the fastest route out of the building.
-
Later, Natasha Romanoff worked on the USB drive she had taken from the Lemurian Star while Steve watched the perimeter. Whatever Fury had hidden inside the rescue had been important enough to die over, or important enough for someone to make his death useful.
According to Natasha, they had less than ten minutes before the search found them.
"You know," she said without looking away from the code, "I could still arrange that date."
Steve checked the entrance again. "Does she handle encrypted drives and attempted murder?"
"I know several women who do."
"That wasn't reassuring."
Natasha kept typing. The joke had bought them a few seconds in which neither had to mention Fury.
Then her hands stopped.
"We need help, Steve," she said.
Steve considered the people he knew. There was the veteran from his morning run, Stark, and several colleagues who could be located through systems now controlled by an enemy.
Trust reduced the list to one.
"I know someone."
Natasha nodded without asking for the name.
The laptop chimed. A location replaced the last field of broken code. Natasha memorised it before wiping the machine's recent connections.
"That is where the data originated," she said.
They left in a truck Steve described as borrowed. Natasha did not challenge the description. Contacting Sam would have to wait until they understood what the drive had led them toward; bringing an uninvolved man into an unknown trap was not a good idea.
Once they were on the road, Steve returned to the part of the lift fight that had not fit.
"Those agents were enhanced."
"How enhanced?"
"Around half my strength and speed. More endurance than training explains."
Natasha looked through the windscreen before answering.
"Noctis sells three potions. One heals, one provides several hours of stamina and leaves a crash afterwards, and the third, the Strengthening Potion, increases strength, agility, endurance, and healing fivefold for thirty minutes."
Steve looked toward her and stood silent for a while. "I assume SHIELD bought enough of them."
"More than five hundred regular doses were in the inventory the last time I could see it. Other agencies had their own supply before he stopped public sales."
"The agents in the lift must have used them."
"Probably. It fits better than a secret serum programme."
Five hundred doses changed the scale of the morning. An ordinary strike team could become a threat to him for half an hour, then return to an office before anyone outside SHIELD knew what it had used.
"Can Noctis be trusted?"
Natasha did not answer for a moment.
"Not by me."
Steve waited. She kept her attention on the road until silence stopped serving her.
"SHIELD sent Barton and me to negotiate after Noctis retaliated against them. I shot him three times at point-blank range."
Steve's hands tightened on the wheel.
"He healed," Natasha continued. "He held me against a wall with telekinesis and searched my memories until Fury bought a truce."
Her voice flattened around the last sentence. Steve understood that whatever Lucius had seen was not his to ask for.
"You tried to kill him during a negotiation."
"Yes."
"After SHIELD captured him and fitted him with an inhibitor."
"Yes."
Steve looked back at the road. "Then his hostility is not the difficult part to understand."
Natasha accepted that without defending herself or SHIELD. The road passed beneath them for several minutes.
"It was my decision," she said. "Fury authorised the operation. He did not order the shots."
Steve heard no request for forgiveness in it. She was giving him the part that belonged to her because he had asked whether Lucius could be trusted, and the answer required knowing what she had done first.
"Would he help us?" Steve asked.
"For money, mostly. But he might simply assist HYDRA to have his revenge. He will use any opportunity to hurt SHIELD, perhaps. Duty will not move him."
"What about Barton?"
"Undercover. I do not know where or what he is doing, and I am not supposed to. He will not be available for a couple of months."
They neared the location they got from the laptop.
"This is why I don't like spy work."
Natasha shrugged. "I thought it was the attempted murder."
-
The exchange at Sands Point ended without violence.
HYDRA's cases remained behind. One and a half billion dollars became Lucius's money, which mattered more to him than anything Pierce might have said during the handover. In return, the convoy received one thousand regular Strengthening Potions and two hundred enhanced vials, separated and clearly marked.
The sceptre remained a different obligation.
Pierce did not mention any delivery time. Lucius let the omission stand while the purchased goods were still on his property. Every driver, guard, and agent in the convoy knew the sale had been completed; the sceptre debt could be collected without confusing it with the cash already received.
Pierce's men counted every case before loading it, and Lucius allowed the delay. Thirteen armoured SUVs then returned to the road beneath the escort helicopter. Lucius watched until the last vehicle passed beyond the outer firing lines. Once the gates closed, his squads left their temporary positions and resumed the estate patrols.
Lucius went to his study.
He sent a telepathic request to the petite Dark Elf woman. She entered with a glass in one hand and a deliberate sway in her hips.
Lucius took the drink and pulled her onto his lap. She laughed until his teeth closed lightly around the pointed tip of one ear. Black-violet wisps started to dance around her, and her nails dragged across his hand.
"Behave," he whispered.
She bit his lower lip.
Lucius put the glass out of reach and pushed her beneath the desk. She went willingly, her resistance ending when his hand closed in her silver-white hair.
His schedule continued with less stress.
-
The War Dogs returned with reports of a mansion that had become harder to approach.
They had counted soldiers larger than ordinary men, marked new positions around the estate, and watched heavy convoys use the road. Thirteen armoured vehicles and a helicopter had arrived during their latest observation, unloaded, and departed under the same protection.
The lead War Dog finished his report and waited. A map of Sands Point lay open between them, marked with the observed patrols, rooftop positions, gates, and the routes used by the convoy.
"You believe the estate cannot be entered," T'Chaka said.
"Its defences have increased, my king."
"That was not my question."
The agent chose his words carefully. "An extraction will cost more than our first assessment allowed."
T'Chaka looked across the assembled War Dogs. Their caution was not cowardice. They had seen the positions and understood what a failed approach would expose.
Wakanda had hidden its superiority by allowing foreign nations to display rifles, vehicles, and manpower as proof of strength. The disguise had worked because Wakandans knew it was a disguise. T'Chaka would not let Noctis's visible guards make them forget what stood behind their own silence.
"Noctis either stole knowledge connected to the Heart-Shaped Herb or created a formula every nation will attempt to buy," he said. "In either case, the method threatens Wakanda while it remains beyond our control."
No one disputed him. Concern remained in the room, and T'Chaka allowed it to remain. A king who ignored the judgment of his own agents did not become braver.
He carried the mantle of the Black Panther. If the operation required Wakandan lives, he would not simply sit behind a diplomatic desk.
The extraction would begin only after the War Dogs confirmed Noctis at the estate. The potion's formula mattered more than striking quickly, and T'Chaka would not expose Wakandan technology merely to seize an empty laboratory. No weapon would be used outside the estate unless the operation had already failed. They would enter once, take the man who possessed the knowledge, and leave before American authorities understood what had happened.
His certainty did not erase the risks on the map. It gave him responsibility for meeting them.
"Prepare the extraction team," T'Chaka ordered. "I will lead it."