The monkey moved before anyone else did.
It was already airborne, sunglasses catching the light, a revolver pulled from sowhere inside the tailored jacket and held in both paws as it completed a backflip and landed in a crouch, scanning the skyline with eyes that did not look like they belonged to an animal. The bearded man dropped his center of gravity and went still, the body language of a trained fighter locating a threat.
The Terminator guard was faster than both of them.
Five Lanters surged forward in a single motion, Terminator plate driving them ahead of Nolan as bolters ca up, forming a wall of ceramite and black-and-white paint between him and every possible angle of incoming fire.
"Three o'clock." David had already turned, optical sensors tracking. "One hundred and fifty ters elevation. Five kiloters range."
Nolan's voice went over his shoulder without turning.
Two assault teams ca out of the headquarters entrance like shadows, the jump thrusters on their speed-type power armor flaring as they cleared the building's edge. They were running before they hit the ground, black and white figures moving at a pace that made the distance to five kiloters feel like a problem asured in seconds rather than minutes.
Doom lifted off the ground between one breath and the next, dark green cloak spreading, and was gone in the direction David had given.
The ten rings drifted back down around Nolan and gathered on his forearms.
He turned to Rogers, who had opened his eyes and was processing what had just happened to the air in front of his face.
"That bullet was not ant for ." Nolan held up the round between two vibranium fingers: brass-bodied, narrow, still faintly warm, with the particular character of a round fired at extre range by soone who knew exactly what they were doing. He let Rogers look at it. "It was ant for you."
Rogers had already pulled his shield from his back by instinct. He held it for a mont, then turned toward where David had pointed.
"Duggan. Killer Monkey. With ."
Nolan's arm ca across in front of him, a bar of vibranium at chest height.
"My people are already there. Whoever it is, they are not leaving." He held Rogers's gaze. "Stay where you are."
Rogers looked at the arm. Looked at Nolan. After a mont, the shield went back.
"Thank you." He said it plainly, without performance. "Without that, I'd be having a very different conversation right now. With very different people."
"If you had died, we would have gone to war with S.H.I.E.L.D. and every official force in the country shortly afterward." Nolan dropped his arm and turned the bullet in his fingers again. "Whoever fired this round wanted to create exactly that situation. They wanted your death to drag us into open conflict with the governnt."
He glanced at Rogers.
"We are already in the situation, for what it is worth. Do you want to know why there was a firefight on our territory today? One of my agents was assassinated. The evidence strongly suggests soone inside S.H.I.E.L.D. used a cloaked Quinjet to do it. I had my people clean up so compromised personnel as a consequence."
He turned and threw the bullet to David.
"Compare this to the round that killed Madam Gao. Material and ballistics."
"As you command, my lord." David caught it without looking up, blue light already moving across the surface from its optical sensors.
Rogers was quiet for a mont. Sothing behind his expression had gone tight.
"If that is actually coming from inside S.H.I.E.L.D, then maybe the right answer is not to fix it." He said it like a man testing a thought he did not want to believe. "Maybe it needs to be torn down entirely and built again from nothing."
"There are also Hydra remnants still inside S.H.I.E.L.D.," Nolan said. "Tony and Thor have been working through them, but it is a slow process and not yet complete." He reached out and placed one vibranium hand briefly on Rogers's shoulder: not a gesture of affection exactly, but of one person telling another that they were included in a plan. "My people will bring the assassin in alive if they can. If they cannot, there are other ans of obtaining the truth from a body. Either way, we will have an answer."
He turned his gaze toward the distant point in the sky where Doom had disappeared.
Fifteen minutes later, the sound of heavy footsteps preceded them through the corridor.
Two Lanters ca through the entrance dragging a man between them. He was large, built in the way that spoke to years of deliberate physical conditioning rather than genetics, and both his hands and feet had been crushed at the joints by ceramite gauntlets. He left a continuous red line across the marble as they pulled him forward and dropped him in front of Nolan and the others.
Doom ca in behind them, cloak settling.
The man on the floor was barely conscious. Blood loss and pain had brought him to the edge of wherever the edge was for him, but his eyes were still tracking, still recording. Even flat on the marble, there was sothing in his posture that was not broken.
Killer Monkey folded both arms and looked at him.
The skull on the man's chest, white against dark fabric and now soaked through with blood, was still visible enough to read.
Nolan's frown deepened.
"Punisher." He said it mostly to himself, then turned to Rogers. "Why would he be trying to kill you? Do you have prior history with him?"
Rogers's expression was blank in the specific way of soone who had been handed information that did not fit anything they had assembled so far.
"I know who he is. Natasha gave a briefing on him at so point. He is not a conventional figure, but he does not kill without what he considers a reason. He does not go after innocent people." He looked at the man on the floor, then at Nolan. "There is sothing wrong here. We need to know what it is."
Nolan nodded once.
"Doom."
Doom already had the panacea capsule out from beneath the dark green cloak, the bottle cap twisting free with a gesture, a capsule lifting and guiding itself into the Punisher's half-open mouth with unhurried precision.
The silence stretched for thirty seconds. Then forty.
The Punisher's breathing changed. The pallor receded fractionally. His eyes opened fully and found the ceiling, then moved across the faces above him: Doom, David, the Lanters, Rogers, and finally Nolan.
He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the marble.
"My own fault for ending up here." His voice was hoarse but steady. "But Hydra remnants are worth killing wherever you find them."
Nolan's eyes sharpened.
Doom's head turned slightly toward him.
Rogers looked across at Nolan with sothing between confusion and a warning.
"Stop." Nolan's voice was quiet. "What did you just say? Hydra remnants. You an us?"
The Punisher did not blink. He looked up at them from the floor with the expression of a man who had already calculated every possible outco of his current situation and had decided none of them changed his answer.
"One of you deserves it more than the rest." His eyes moved to Rogers and stopped there. "Him. He's Hydra's man. He's always been Hydra's man."
The room held the statent for a mont.
Rogers's face was unreadable. Nolan studied him for a fraction of a second, then looked back at the Punisher.
"Frank." Nolan crouched until they were level, elbows resting on his knees, vibranium gauntlets hanging loose between them. He kept his voice conversational. "If everyone in this room is Hydra, then who exactly is Rogers to them?"
The Punisher held his gaze without flinching.
"He is their captain."
PS : The Emperor just move.
No not in this fic but in the new Warhamr 40,000 Official Cinematic Trailer
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