Chapter 57: Ch 56: Fury’s Busy Day
After the rescue mission on the Lemurian Star, the response team was back aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet, streaking through the night sky toward Washington D.C.
The flight would barely take 55 minutes.
In the medical bay section of the jet, Gwen was currently wincing as a field medic applied some heavy-duty first aid and handed her a handful of high-grade painkillers.
Across from her, Natasha Romanoff sat comfortably, casually scrolling through a datapad. Even after being casually tossed off a massive cargo ship by a teleporting clown, the Black Widow looked completely fine. Honestly, even if Spider-Woman hadn’t heroically dove off the edge to catch her, Natasha was more than capable of saving herself with a grappling line.
But sitting near the cockpit, Steve Rogers just stared blankly at the metal floor, lost in thought.
There were too many puzzle pieces scattered in his mind, and none of them fit together. Two things in particular made him question the very foundation of this entire mission.
First: Natasha’s behavior. While Steve and the STRIKE team were clearing the deck and securing the hostages, she had completely ignored the primary rescue objective to run a covert data-extraction errand in the server room. Nick Fury had clearly given her a separate, highly classified mission, jeopardizing the lives of everyone on board just to steal some files.
Second: Veritas’s parting words.
"Bye-bye, ’good man’."
Steve clenched his jaw.
’A good man is what Dr. Erskine said I am, the night before I was injected with the super-soldier serum,’ Steve thought, his brow furrowing deeply.
Words spoken in a private conversation over 70 years ago.
Was it a coincidence... Was he overthinking it...? Knowing something so personal from a lifetime ago... it didn’t make any sense.
[ The Triskelion: Director Fury’s Office ]
Fury was having a very busy day.
First, he’d had to field a barrage of high-level calls in the wake of the hijacking. Senators. World Security Council members. All of them demanding answers. Then came the debrief call with Maria Hill to coordinate their next in-person meeting.
After that, Steve Rogers had walked into his office, radiating barely-contained frustration. The Captain wanted answers about Natasha’s "separate mission."
To pacify Steve, Fury had taken him down to the Triskelion’s subterranean hangar to show him Project Insight - three massive, next-generation Helicarriers designed to neutralize threats before they even happened.
Steve, as expected, didn’t like it at all. He had called it holding a gun to the world’s head.
Steve’s visceral disgust secretly relieved Fury. It proved the Captain’s moral compass was exactly where it needed to be.
After dealing with Steve, Fury had to deal with the newest and probably one of the shortest-tenured employees on the S.H.I.E.L.D. payroll: Spider-Woman.
Spider-Woman leaving the organization after her very first mission was something he genuinely hadn’t expected when he’d first asked Maria Hill to recruit her.
But as Fury looked at the battered teenager, he realized it wasn’t just Veritas’s psychological manipulation talking. This was Spider-Woman’s true belief system. She was walking away because she had clearly accepted the fact that their ideologies simply didn’t match.
In a way, Fury respected that.
And it solidified something else in his mind: Spider-Woman’s moral compass was somehow even brighter and more uncompromising than Captain America’s. She had the potential to be the next great, reliable hero. Perhaps something even greater than what the world currently had.
So for now, Fury simply accepted her resignation with a few simple words.
"Good luck, Spider-Woman."
Next, the Black Widow stood before his desk, her posture relaxed but her eyes as sharp as ever. She was briefing him on the unexpected encounter she’d had in the server room.
"The reason he came to me seemed simple enough," Natasha explained.
Natasha reported, crossing her arms. "He wanted a copy of the exact same files you wanted. He handed me a flash drive of his own. But... I still sense some other motive behind the encounter."
She paused.
"He retrieved the drive from me when he threw me off the ship. Very gently, considering what his powers can do."
Fury leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "I assume you rigged that drive to ping his exact coordinates the second he plugs it in, didn’t you, Agent Romanoff?"
Natasha offered a cold, satisfied smirk. "Of course I did. Though I highly doubt it’ll work. Our comms tech couldn’t record his or even my own voice for the entire duration he was standing behind me. The guy is a complete digital ghost, and masks people around him in that digital ghost blanket as well."
"Hm," Fury nodded slowly. "Is that everything, Agent Romanoff?"
"Yeah," Natasha replied casually, turning on her heel. "That’s everything."
Fury sat alone in the quiet hum of his office, twirling the flash drive between his fingers. The drive Natasha had handed him before her briefing. The one containing all the files related to the Lemurian Star, Project Insight, and its targeting algorithms.
He stood up, walked over to his primary terminal, and engaged his office’s absolute highest security mode. The heavy blinds automatically lowered, the glass walls frosted over, and the electronic locks engaged with a heavy thud.
He plugged the drive in.
A loading screen popped up, prompting him for his Director-level override credentials. Fury spoke the audio password.
[ ACCESS DENIED ]
Fury even tried director override...
[ Override denied. All files sealed. ]
"On whose authority?" Fury asked.
[Fury, Nicholas J.]
His expression darkened.
With a grim shake of his head, Fury unplugged the compromised drive and shoved it deep into his pocket.
He turned on his heel and made his way toward the private elevators, heading straight up to the World Security Council floor.
.
.
.
.
Forty floors up, Secretary Alexander Pierce was currently dealing with his own massive headache.
He stood in the center of a darkened boardroom, surrounded by the holographic projections of the World Security Council. And they were not happy.
Councilman Rockwell: If Nick Fury thinks he can get his costumed thugs and STRIKE commandos to mop up his mess, he’s sadly mistaken. This failure is unacceptable.
Councilman Singh: Well, considering this attack took place one mile from my country’s sovereign waters, it’s a bit more then that. I move for immediate hearing.
Councilwoman Hawley: We don’t need hearings, we need action. Terrorists like Veritas have been rising all over the world. Just a few years ago, Magneto had almost succeeded in assassinating the president. We need Project Insight.
Councilman Yen: A breach like this raises serious questions. I don’t care why a SHIELD officer tortured an innocent family. That clown managed to find dirt on SHIELD and even stigmatized its image across America and the world LIVE...
Councilman Rockwell: Like how the hell did a local American terrorist and his French so-called friend manage to hijack a covert SHIELD vessel in broad daylight?
Alexander Pierce: For the record, councilman, his friend is Algerian. I can draw a map if it’ll help. And at the time of hijack, it was nighttime in India.
Councilman Rockwell: I appreciate your wit, Secretary Pierce. But this Council takes things like international piracy fairly seriously.
Alexander Pierce: Really? I don’t. I don’t care about one boat, I care about the fleet. If this Council is going to fall into a rancor every time someone pushes us on the playing field, maybe we need someone to oversee us.
Councilman Yen: Mr. Secretary, nobody is suggesting...
Yen started, but he was suddenly cut off.
The door opened. Pierce’s assistant stepped inside, leaned down, and whispered something directly into his ear.
Pierce nodded once. He turned back to the glowing holograms. "Excuse me, Council."
"More trouble, Mr. Secretary?" Rockwell asked dryly.
"Depends on your definition of trouble," Pierce replied smoothly, turning on his heel and walking out of the room, leaving the holograms to bicker among themselves.
Out in his spacious, sunlit office, Pierce found Nick Fury waiting for him.
"I work forty floors away, and it takes a hijacking for you to visit?" Pierce asked, offering a small, dry smile.
"A nuclear war would do it, too," Nick Fury replied, turning around.
They shook hands like the old friends they were.
"Busy in there?" Fury asked, gesturing vaguely toward the boardroom Pierce had just exited.
"Nothing some earmark can’t fix," Pierce waved off.
"I’m, uh... actually here to ask a favor," Fury said, his voice dropping to a serious, quiet tone. "I want you to call for a vote. Project Insight has to be delayed."
Pierce stared at him, genuinely surprised. "Nick, that’s not a favor. That’s a subcommittee hearing. A very long one."
"It could be nothing. It probably is nothing," Fury insisted, his single eye locked onto Pierce. "I just need some time to make sure it’s nothing."
Pierce watched him closely, sensing the gravity in his old friend’s voice. "And what if it’s actually something?"
"Then we’ll both be damn glad those Helicarriers aren’t in the air," Fury replied flatly.
Pierce hesitated as if weighing the political cost. After a moment, a small smirk broke through his serious expression. "Fine. But you’ve got to get Iron Man to stop by my niece’s birthday party."
Nick shook his hand, letting out a small, relieved breath. "Thank you, sir."
"And I don’t mean just a flyby, Nick," Pierce called out as he turned to leave. "He’s got to actually mingle."
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