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This time, Natasha had secured a massive haul of what S.H.I.E.L.D. designated as "0-8-4" items, objects of unknown or alien origin.
She had spent the better part of the morning coordinating the transfer. Everything had been processed through the official channels and was now being delivered to Camp Lehigh.
When Arthur arrived, accompanied by the Sokovian twins, whose loyalties still felt like a ticking time bomb, Natasha was in the middle of inventorying the new arrivals in the main storage bay.
Her expression was anything but pleased.
"What's eating you?" Arthur asked, his voice low and casual as he approached.
"I always assumed 0-8-4s were things truly alien, objects left behind by visitors, not found on Earth," Natasha explained, letting out a frustrated sigh. "I figured S.H.I.E.L.D.'s judgment was lacking, so I went over the manifest meticulously. But now… I think I may have misjudged what 'unclassified' means to them."
She opened a nearby crate and pulled out a weapon. "Others might not recognize this immediately, but you definitely won't find it unfamiliar, will you?"
"An old buddy," Arthur murmured.
He took the weapon, a Hydra-issue energy rifle, and felt a pang of memory. It instantly brought him back to that first encounter with the Star-Spangled Man on the battlefield, the day he'd disassembled the weapon's ancestor. It was, strictly speaking, the first true energy weapon he'd ever taken apart. It was also the day he had sparked his very first flame using the energy within him.
Life moves forward, but Arthur was finding himself looking back more and more often, sighing like an old man settling into a comfortable chair.
He shook his head, returning the Tesseract-powered weapon to its crate. "Anything else of interest?"
"Seventy-six items with an unclear purpose but zero detectable energy signature, and that's just the current count; the cataloging isn't finished." Natasha paused, giving a pointed look at Wanda and Pietro, before continuing: "Fifteen items show faint energy reactions. Most are generic alien tech, I even spotted traces of Kree design. Eleven items of completely unknown origin are pending review… So far, we have fewer than ten actual weapons that even compare to this gun's energy level. And I doubt we'll find any major surprises in the rest."
Natasha shrugged, her expression one of resignation. "Frankly, the things that are truly valuable are the things S.H.I.E.L.D. would never willingly hand over."
Arthur couldn't help but chuckle. "As expected."
If Fury had genuinely handed over a crate full of treasures with such ease, Arthur would have been genuinely worried about the one-eyed director's sanity. The humor lay in the fact that Arthur knew Fury might actually hand over priceless items, genuinely believing them to be junk.
S.H.I.E.L.D. might have cutting-edge technology, but Arthur was confident that Camp Lehigh's technological base was far more advanced. More importantly, Camp Lehigh housed people who had traveled. No matter how capable Fury was, he had never been to Xandar; he had never fought a planet.
That was the gap: while everyone else's vision was still confined to Earth's atmosphere, Camp Lehigh was already gazing into the cosmos.
"What's this?"
Making sure to stay out of the way of the busy staff, Arthur browsed the adjacent shelves. He happened to spot a stack of very old, well-preserved documents.
"A set of blueprints," Natasha said, her tone suddenly turning strange. "You might recognize the name: The Pegasus Project."
Arthur paused, a frown creasing his brow. "The only thing that comes to mind is the joint Dark Energy research facility. The base where we first met, right? S.H.I.E.L.D., NASA, and the Pegasus initiative. The official face of the Dark Energy initiative…"
"The Tesseract, you got it from that very place," Natasha confirmed with a wry smile. "Or, technically, it was given to you. But before that, it was the core of a very specific project: the so-called Pegasus Project."
"The faster-than-light engine?" Arthur began flipping through the documents.
The material was divided into two sections. One half was written in standard English. The other was transcribed in Kree script.
Just by the feel of the paper, he could tell the documents were ancient.
Which meant… the Kree had set foot on Earth in that era?
Arthur's jaw tightened. An unexpected wave of deep, proprietary displeasure washed over him. Humanity hadn't even fully stepped off its own planet yet, and he absolutely did not welcome any foreign civilization making an entry into Earth's atmosphere.
After reading the entirety of the Pegasus Project documents, both language sections, Arthur fell into a heavy silence.
"A faster-than-light engine…" Arthur rubbed his temples. "If it were ever successfully constructed, it wouldn't just be a weapon. It would be an absolute miracle for human spaceflight. But… It's too fast."
Natasha nodded gravely. "It is too fast. And the terrifying part is that this breakthrough almost happened on Earth decades ago. If humanity had mastered this technology back then… the world would be unrecognizable today."
What the world would have become was a thought no one dared to dwell on.
Arthur suddenly looked up. "Why did Fury give this to us?"
A faster-than-light engine. Even just the blueprints were an unimaginably precious treasure.
Banner and Tony would be ecstatic with this gift. In fact, Arthur was already imagining what pairing this technology with the lunar base could achieve.
The thought made him uneasy.
Fury shouldn't, no, he had absolutely no reason to hand something like this over so easily.
"Could it be because of… the Tesseract itself?" Natasha suggested tentatively. "To be honest, this whole operation is strange. Fury insists that the Avengers must take action; that's not his style. Transferring 0-8-4 items goes against his usual methods. And on top of it, hiding a gift like this among ordinary junk… What is he playing at?"
Arthur managed a weak, helpless smile. "I don't know why, but I keep getting the feeling that… he's signaling us for help."
"You think he might have sensed a danger that he can't handle?" Natasha's expression shifted to something calculating.
Arthur was silent for a long moment, staring at the old papers in his hands. "I suppose I need to go pay the one-eyed egghead a visit."
(End of this chapter)