Chapter 131: Dragon Bone and the Eternals
The Hand's remaining leadership occupied a building that had once been considerably more impressive when there had been more of them to fill it.
Three fingers. The scale had not adjusted gracefully.
Bakuto broke the silence first.
"The federal government is moving on Hell's Kitchen," he said. "Everyone has received this information."
Sowande glanced at him. "And?"
"And we have a decision to make."
"Our decision," Sowande said, "is straightforward. We have two enemies. We allow them to fight each other. Whichever survives is weakened. We benefit from the wreckage." He settled back. "This is the obvious choice. Why are we discussing it?"
Alexandra had not spoken yet.
She was looking at the glass in her hand with the quality of attention she brought to information she was still assessing. She set it down.
"I found the Dragon Bone," she said.
The room changed.
Sowande was on his feet before he'd processed standing. Bakuto had leaned forward with an expression that had stripped away the professional composure entirely. They were, underneath everything else, people who had been looking for this for a very long time.
"Where," Bakuto said.
Alexandra looked at them both for a moment — measuring something, deciding something.
"Hell's Kitchen," she said.
The Dragon Bone.
For the three surviving Fingers of the Hand, this was not a resource. It was the point. They had come from K'un-L'un, had been expelled for attempting to use its power to extend their lives, had built the Hand around the project of finding it again. The centuries of operations, the assassinations, the criminal infrastructure — all of it had been, at some level, in service of this.
The federal government was going to level Hell's Kitchen in three days.
After which, the site would be rubble, accessible to whoever controlled the rubble, and the Dragon Bone buried under it might be retrievable — or might not.
"We go before them," Bakuto said.
"We can't fight both sides," Sowande said.
"We don't fight anyone," Alexandra said. "We position ourselves correctly."
She explained it simply. They had relationships with certain congressional figures — people who had found the Hand useful over the years and had not examined the arrangement too closely. Those people were involved in the current operation's authorization.
A request: not to stop the operation, but to shape what happened after. A specific piece of territory, in the reconstruction, designated for private development.
A specific piece of Hell's Kitchen.
The one that mattered.
"We don't care who wins," Alexandra said. "We care what's accessible when it's over."
Bakuto smiled.
Sowande made a calculation and arrived at the same place.
"Done," they said.
SHIELD headquarters. A conference room that had been repurposed.
Carol was making an introduction.
The man beside her was tall, dark-haired, with the specific quality of presence that came from being considerably older than he looked and having had time to develop opinions about things. He was also visibly uncomfortable to be in this room, which he was expressing through the controlled body language of someone who had decided to be polite about it.
"This is Ikaris," Carol said. "He's—"
"Friend," Fury said.
"Close friend," Carol said.
"Former—" Ikaris started.
"Former," Carol confirmed. "But present. He agreed to help."
Fury looked at Ikaris with the assessment he applied to everything — cataloguing, filing, evaluating. The man looked like someone who went to gyms. He looked like someone who had good posture because he'd been told to have good posture for a very long time. He did not look like someone who would materially affect an engagement with Ethan Cross.
"What does he do," Fury said.
"Cosmic energy projection," Carol said. "Optical beams. Flight. Super-strength." She paused. "He's an Eternal."
Fury's expression did not change. He had learned to absorb surprising information without visible reaction.
"Eternal," he said.
"Created by the Celestials," Carol said. "They've been on Earth for thousands of years. They're not supposed to interfere with human conflicts, which is why he's uncomfortable."
Fury looked at Ikaris.
Ikaris looked back with the expression of a man who had been maneuvered into a position through a combination of personal loyalty and a specific conversational threat.
"She mentioned telling Sersi something," Ikaris said. "I'd prefer not to elaborate."
"Sersi is another Eternal," Carol explained to Fury. "They have history."
"I see," Fury said, which was a diplomatic way of indicating he did not fully see but was willing to proceed.
He reached for his phone.
"I'm going to need everything you have on the Eternals," he said, to Coulson through the door. "All of it. Now."
Back at the Lucky Dragon, Ethan was upstairs, going over the Ancient One's briefing notes on Earth-42, when his Observation Haki picked up something he hadn't expected.
Not a threat, exactly. More like — weight. New significant presences, arriving in the city.
He filed it.
More variables, he thought. Of course there are more variables.
He went back to the notes.
Dawn tomorrow. Portal would be open whether he was ready or not.
He was going to be ready.
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