[Location: SWORD Temporary Command Post, Virginia]
[Perspective: Director Tyler Hayward]
The temporary office smelled of stale coffee and fear.
Tyler Hayward sat behind a cheap folding table, staring at a stack of printed reports that detailed the exact cost of the materials vaporized in the Mojave.
His tie was loosened, his collar unbuttoned. A bottle of antacids sat open next to his keyboard. He popped three tablets into his mouth, chewing them dry, the chalky taste doing nothing to settle the burning acid in his stomach.
It was sabotage, he repeated the mantra in his head. A S.A.B.E.R. incursion. A deliberate hit by Nick Fury.
The heavy metal door of the command post banged open.
Hayward jumped, knocking over his empty coffee cup.
Agent Monti stood in the doorway. He looked pale. The kind of pale that preceded a heart attack.
"Monti," Hayward snapped, trying to project authority. "I told you I wasn't to be disturbed unless the President was on the line."
"Sir," Monti said, stepping into the room and closing the door tightly behind him. He stayed near the door, as if preparing to flee. "The President... the President isn't buying our narrative. The Secretary of Defense just called. They are assembling an independent investigative commission. They want full access to our financial logs for the last three years."
Hayward gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white.
"Stall them," Hayward ordered, his voice tight. "Tell them our servers were compromised in the blast. Tell them we need forty eight hours to recover the backups."
"Sir, that's not the worst of it," Monti swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "We just lost contact with the perimeter team at the crater."
"Lost contact?" Hayward stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum floor. "What do you mean, lost contact? Did their comms go down?"
"We intercepted an encrypted S.A.B.E.R. transmission five minutes ago," Monti said, his voice trembling. "Agent Keller's team breached the perimeter. There was a confrontation. Shots were fired."
Hayward felt the blood drain from his face. "Shots?"
"Davis fired on a S.A.B.E.R. operative. The operative is dead, sir. Keller's team subdued Foster and Davis. They've taken them into custody."
Hayward couldn't breathe. The walls of the cheap office seemed to be closing in on him.
A dead S.A.B.E.R. agent.
It was an act of war between intelligence agencies.
"Fury," Hayward hissed, slamming his fists onto the table, the plastic buckling under his weight. "That self righteous pirate! He sent spies into my facility! He sabotaged my core, blew up my billion dollar asset and now he's trying to frame me for a shootout in the desert!"
"Sir," Monti cautioned, taking a step back. "We have no proof S.A.B.E.R. caused the blast. The telemetry… "
"I don't care about the telemetry!" Hayward roared, grabbing the stack of financial reports and hurling them across the room. The papers scattered like dead leaves. "Fury wants to take SWORD's funding and funnel it into his little space station! He pushed my scientists, caused a catastrophic overload and now he's playing the victim!"
Hayward began pacing the length of the small office, his breath coming in short gasps. His career was over. If the DOD looked into the black budget, they would find the vibranium purchases.
But the physical evidence was gone. The base was a crater. White Vision was atomized.
"They have no proof of Project Cataract," Hayward muttered to himself, pacing faster. "The servers were in the basement. They're slag. The blueprints are ash. Fury can scream about spies all he wants, but he has no physical evidence that I resurrected the synthezoid."
He stopped pacing. He stared at the blank wall.
No physical evidence.
His mind raced, desperately searching for a lifeline.
Who else knew? Who else had seen the dismantled body of Vision?
"Maximoff," Hayward breathed, the name tasting like poison on his tongue.
"Sir?" Monti asked, confused.
"Wanda Maximoff," Hayward turned slowly to face his aide. His eyes were manic. "She was there. Three weeks ago. She knows what we were trying to do."
Monti blinked. "But she left, sir."
"It doesn't matter!" Hayward stepped toward Monti, pointing a shaking finger. "If the DOD commission interviews her, if Fury brings her in to testify... she tells them she saw the dismantled synthezoid. She is the only living witness to my Accords violation."
"Sir, she's currently residing in Westview, New Jersey," Monti said, pulling out his tablet. "The news is covering it heavily. She's living with a civilian doctor. They... they saved a choking baby."
"I don't care if she cured cancer!" Hayward spat, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "She is a loose end. And right now, she is the only thing standing between me and a life sentence in a supermax prison."
Hayward walked back to his desk. His hands were shaking, but his mind was solidifying around a single plan.
"Monti. Scrub the remaining servers here. Burn the hard drives in the furnace. Erase every email, every memo, every digital footprint connecting us to Cataract."
"Sir, destroying evidence during an active DOD probe is… "
"Do it!" Hayward screamed.
He leaned over the desk, his eyes burning with a feral intensity.
"Then, I want you to assemble Alpha Team. I want the prototype sonic cannons loaded into the armored transports."
Monti's eyes widened in horror. "Director... you can't be serious. You want to authorize a strike team against an Avenger? In a populated civilian area? The collateral damage alone… "
"She is not an Avenger!" Hayward interrupted, his voice dropping to a deadly cold hiss. "She is a dangerous entity who hallucinated a threat. We are conducting a preemptive strike to secure a volatile asset before she can cause a catastrophic event. That is the official narrative. Do you understand me, Monti?"
"Sir, she will destroy the strike team. You saw what she did to Thanos."
"She is playing house," Hayward sneered, imagining the news footage of her holding hands with that pathetic suburban doctor. "She's distracted. We go in fast, we go in heavy and we neutralize the threat before she even knows we're there."
Hayward grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair, shrugging it on with violent movements.
"I am going to personally lead the convoy," Hayward stated, checking the magazine of the sidearm holstered at his waist. "We leave in twenty minutes. If she talks to Fury, we cut the tongue out before she can speak."
"Yes, Director," Monti whispered, his face pale as he turned and ran from the room to deliver the orders.