The vibranium shield ca off the wall, off the ceiling, off the far end of the corridor, and back into Rogers's hand without him looking for it. He caught it at shoulder height and kept moving.
The Hydra agents in this section of the Hub had made the mistake of forming a tight cluster in the corridor, which gave Rogers a contained environnt to work in. The shield ricocheted between them with the efficiency of a weapon designed specifically for enclosed spaces, each impact transferring enough kinetic force to produce serious internal damage without requiring Rogers to do anything except let the physics complete themselves. By the ti he stepped into the group, there were only three left standing, and they stopped standing shortly afterward.
A figure appeared at the corridor junction ahead: slim, moving with the controlled pace of soone who had been in firefights before and had made peace with that fact. A team of agents followed behind her. She raised her firearm and put a round into the injured Hydra agent still trying to reach his sidearm on the floor, and then turned to Rogers.
"The section is clear, Captain. Civilians and wounded have been moved to secured positions. The man who calls himself Iron Man is personally verifying identity records." She paused. "I should ntion: the large armored units, the ones with the chainswords. Their thods are... the casualties they produce are not conventional. But Hydra's resistance is collapsing wherever they go. I do not think it will hold much longer."
"Agent Thirteen." Rogers adjusted the shield strap. "My friend's Astartes were built for fighting things considerably worse than Hydra. The thods are what they are." He glanced at her. "It takes sothing to stand up and lead a team against this. The Carter na was always worth trusting."
Agent Thirteen's expression moved briefly before returning to professional neutral.
"I am a Carter. I do not betray S.H.I.E.L.D. and I do not betray you." She moved forward to check the next passage. "There is sothing you should know: Agent Hill has not appeared since the beginning of the engagent. No contact, no location confirmation. And Director Fury disappeared at the very start of the operation. No communications. No signal."
Rogers frowned.
"Hill I can explain several ways. Fury I cannot." He shook his head. "He is not a man who runs from a fight because he is afraid. Whatever he is doing, it is deliberate. He has a reason."
"Whatever the reason, Captain, abandoning the organization at a mont like this is the act of soone who has decided their private agenda matters more than the people depending on them. No one here will forgive that easily." She looked at him steadily. "S.H.I.E.L.D. needs a director. It needs one now, while there is still an organization to lead."
Rogers took a slow breath. He looked down the corridor, then back at her.
"If nothing changes in the next few hours, I will take the responsibility. Hydra's penetration will cost S.H.I.E.L.D. considerably in terms of political standing with the governnt. But the core of the organization is still alive. People are still alive. That is enough to start with."
Agent Thirteen looked at him for a mont.
"Yes, Director."
She said it without ceremony and walked ahead to clear the next junction.
Three hours later, the Hub was quiet.
The last detonation had faded, the last corridor engagent had concluded, and the Lanters were moving through the facility in the systematic way they moved through any space that needed to be confird clear: thodically, without urgency, checking every room and every secondary exit. David had given specific instructions at so point during the operation, and the Astartes returning from the sweep were carrying files and hard drives in addition to their weapons, the material gathered in neat stacks outside the primary entrance.
Nolan t Rogers in the open area near the Hub's main access point. He told him the direct version: Crossbones was dead, Sitwell was dead, the Hydra leadership embedded in S.H.I.E.L.D. had been completely removed.
Rogers listened without interrupting. He nodded once when it was done.
They were discussing the next steps when Natasha ca around the corner with Hawkeye beside her and Coulson in front of them, wrists bound, wearing the expression of a man who had been having a complicated day and expected it to continue.
Nolan recognized him. Coulson returned the recognition with a wry smile that carried considerable weight behind it.
Natasha looked at Nolan first, then at Rogers.
"Nick Fury is gone," she said. Her voice was level but there was an edge below the level part. "He disappeared before the operation began. Deliberately, based on the evidence. He is not a man who panics, so he made a choice: abandon S.H.I.E.L.D. and take sothing with him in advance." She paused. "The thing he took, or the thing he is protecting, is an alien technological artifact. The files call it the Cosmic Cube."
Rogers went still.
"That should be at the bottom of the ocean. Howard recovered it during the search for , but the Cosmic Cube should not be in active use. How long has S.H.I.E.L.D. had it?"
"Long enough to have a weaponization program running." Natasha's tone developed a quality of controlled contempt. "Fury was attempting to rebuild it as a directed energy weapon. The project docuntation suggests he had ambitions beyond that. Sothing considerably more powerful than nuclear weapons." She looked at Rogers. "The Red Skull wanted to use it to conquer the world. Fury wanted to use it to protect the world. The distinction matters sowhat less when the thod is identical."
Rogers's jaw was tight.
"He has his reasons," he said, and it sounded like a habit he was examining rather than a conviction he was defending. "He always has reasons. I just cannot see them from here." He shook his head. "That does not excuse it."
"Captain." Coulson had been waiting. He spoke into the pause with the careful manner of soone who had calculated how much rope he was being given and intended to use exactly that much. "Mr. Nolan: I think you are probably the actual leadership of the Guardians of Terra. I want to say sothing, if that is permitted."
Nolan looked at him.
"The slum massacre was the event that broke Nick Fury's previous approach," Coulson said. "Thor's arrival, and the others who followed, had already unsettled him. Fury handles uncertainty by preparing for it, and the arrival of genuinely alien actors on this planet was more uncertainty than his existing preparations covered. He had been in a state of unresolved decision for so ti." He paused. "The slum incident resolved it. Whatever Fury understood about what was coming, he concluded that conventional responses were no longer proportionate. He decided he needed to be operating at a different scale. Whatever he took and wherever he has gone: I believe he is trying to protect humanity. Not to harm it." Another pause. "He may be wrong about the thod. I think he is probably wrong about the thod. But the purpose was not corruption."
The silence that followed was not comfortable, but it was thoughtful.
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