The meeting broke with no formal dismissal. Fury walked out first, Coulson on his heels. Robert lingered a moment longer, staring at the empty doorway.
James was already thinking ahead. Tomorrow would be calm on the surface — and in that calm, they'd start cutting deeper.
[Cortana: Recommend staggering arrests to avoid network alerts. Priority: monitor outgoing comms for irregular encryption signatures.]
"Already ahead of you," James murmured.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alexander Pierce didn't show it, but the relief was there. If he'd ever been careless, if he'd left even a shadow of leverage for Hydra to use, he might not be standing in that office. But the Division had paid a price — one-third of its roster gone overnight. That kind of gap wasn't a paper cut; it was a severed artery.
"Director," Alexander asked, turning to Fury, "how do we replenish manpower? Are we gonna do an early pull from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy?"
Coulson glanced at James. "S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy is the umbrella term. We've got separate branches to it — from Combat, Science, Communications and many other highly specialised fields. Each one builds specialists from the ground up."
James raised a brow. "That's a wide net. And the U.S. government's just fine with an organization at that size?"
Coulson's tone stayed formal. "The Strategic Science Corps — that's our predecessor — was built by the U.S. during the war. They took down Hydra under the Red Skull, then absorbed their scientists. The tech base jumped overnight. Colonel Chester Phillips, Howard Stark, Peggy Carter — they turned that victory into S.H.I.E.L.D."
Fury shook his head at Alexander's original question. "No fresh bodies for you yet. The agents you've got are vetted and clean. Keep it that way. Promote from within, and fill the gaps yourself. People need to see that there's a future here, even if the walls feel smaller right now."
It was all calculated — stabilize morale and lock in loyalty. Fury was good at those things.
Then he shifted his gaze to James. "Agent James, your work here was… efficient. Effective now, you're promoted to Level Five. You'll transfer to Head Quarters later. For now, you stay embedded here — keep the Division tightly controlled until it's no longer the most reliable branch we have."
James kept his expression neutral. "No reinforcements at all?"
"If we move HQ assets, we weaken global coverage," Fury said. "One breach becomes many. The status quo might be ugly, but it holds."
"Understood." James could read the subtext. The real job would come when he moved to HQ — quietly map the Hydra network and gut it from the inside.
"From this point on, what happened here doesn't leave this branch," Fury said. "They're jumpy already. Contain the win to this one office. The rest will need openings before we can move."
He turned to Alexander. "You're excused." The Director left without argument; some orders you didn't press for details on.
The door shut. Only James, Coulson, and Fury remained.
Fury didn't waste the moment. "What else can you do?"
James kept his voice even. "Still figuring that out. Mind reading and cardiac pattern tracking both burn a lot of fuel. I can't run them nonstop."
Fury leaned forward on the desk. "You're the point man here. No infiltration on your watch. And no replacement staff until I say so. I want to see who starts asking for reinforcements first — and how fast. That's the bait."
James nodded once. "Fine. I'll keep it locked down." He hesitated. "What about the prisoners?"
"We've got secure sites. You don't need to know where. They won't see daylight until I decide so."
That was enough. James didn't need the location; he just needed to know Hydra's captured assets were out of play.
By the time he walked into his new office — Hydra Agent James' old one — the adrenaline had tapered off. Closing the door, he locked it, then went to work. Drawers first, then vents, then every seam in the wall and ceiling panels. Bugs and cameras could live in impossible places.
[Cortana: Negative. No active signals detected. No optical lenses found.]
"Good." James slid into the chair and connected his fingertip to the desktop's USB port. "Load all Hydra intel from recent interrogations. Sort it by operative tier and cell."
[Cortana: Upload complete. File architecture restructured for rapid query.]
James exhaled and leaned back. That package would go to Coulson — with a warning. Evidence collection would be slow; you couldn't just bag a third of your own Division without airtight proof. The trick would be to act as if the Hydra problem was still a theory, not a confirmed breach.
He rubbed at his temple. Level Five clearance was enough to move freely in New York, but not enough to peek too far into HQ's shadow files. That was fine, he could take it slow. For now, his concern was local — and personal.
"Cortana, we've been burned twice now by tech surveillance. There's no feel, and no presence to pick it up."
[Cortana: Machine optics and sensors don't give off organic cues. If the camera's on you, there's no heartbeat to read, no breath to hear. Not even Stark can ghost-proof himself in a closed networked space.]
James drummed his fingers on the desk. Every compromise he'd suffered had come through tech. And in a city this wired, that was a hole you could drive a quinjet through.
"Remember Ultron?"
[Cortana: Artificial intelligence with full network mobility. Primary result: attempted human extinction. Not a flattering precedent.]
"Not talking about replicating him. I'm talking about deploying a contained AI clone — yours — in a closed net. A surveillance ring around me. It's duty is to only monitor my perimeter."
[Cortana: A high risk to make. Any AI architecture with autonomous pattern recognition can evolve beyond parameters. That's how Ultron happened.]
"You're missing the key point. You'd be building the clone, and you'd still be the gatekeeper. I don't need it to think — I need it to watch. Can you handle that?"
James's mind was already working the angles. Hydra had underestimated him once. But that might not happen again.
If they wanted to hide behind tech, he'd make tech his own tripwire.
And when the time came to move to HQ, he wanted a warning for every second his perimeter could buy.
[Cortana: I'll draft parameters. Sandboxed. With no outbound connections.]
"Do it," James said. "Then I'll go ahead and replenish my energy for you to use."