Soren stood at the entrance of the Everlife Medical Hall, his fingers brushing against the doorframe. Outside, the late evening light had softened into a warm gold that danced over the city.
He had intended to walk. Clear his mind. Feel the pulse of the world again after so long wrapped in the sterile walls of healing.
But the stench of scorched extremis and HYDRA meddling clung to his coat like smoke.
He sighed and stepped back inside.
"Next time."
"If there is one."
Elsewhere
Six pairs of eyes stared out from behind tinted glass, jaws clenched and spines tight.
The HYDRA surveillance team had been watching the Everlife Medical Hall since before sunrise. Now, they looked like men who had just seen God…and He had not smiled.
The tallest of them, Agent Dorsey, kept his eyes locked on the silent structure across the street. "It's been too long."
"Whatever happened in there... it's over. Nothing came out. Just a few muffled booms."
Another agent stood beside him, fists shaking. "That was the entire strike team. Six Centipede-Class Extremis. Gone."
"We're the ones next," A third muttered, eyes widening with cold realization.
The secure comm pinged once. No one moved.
Then again.
Encrypted link incoming…
Agent Dorsey swallowed and patched it through. "Reporting status, sir. All six Centipede assets have~"
"What?" The voice on the other end exploded.
"You're calling me to confirm we've just lost six bio-enhanced operatives and you're still breathing?!"
The agents didn't have time to react.
The wall behind them erupted. A blur tore through the observation post like a butcher's hook through paper. Heads snapped. Limbs twisted.
Blood hit the floor with rhythmic splats, a wet punctuation to their failure.
The line went dead.
National Security Council Headquarters
Alexander Pierce leaned back in his leather chair, the skyline bleeding into night behind him. His expression was carved from stone, but his fingers tapped, once, twice, again, against the polished wood of his desk.
An encrypted receiver pulsed a dull blue on the table before him.
Line secure.
"Talk."
The report came in quiet, like a confession. A failed infiltration. Six Centipede Fighters lost. Surveillance wiped.
Soren Macaluso untouched.
Pierce's eye twitched.
"Goddammit." He whispered, low and venomous.
"Did I not say… wait? Did I not tell you imbeciles to leave that man alone until Insight was ready?"
"Sir, internal pressure~"
"Internal pressure?" Pierce's voice turned cold.
"We're weeks from full deployment. Insight satellites are still syncing with carrier-based algorithms, and we've got half a dozen key eyes inside SHIELD still unconfirmed."
"But no, someone had to poke the tiger. Now it knows we're watching."
A pause. Then: "Sir… should we initiate containment? Or silence him?"
Pierce leaned forward, face shadowed in the lamp's amber glow. "Soren isn't something you contain. He's not an asset. You don't cage fire."
"You smother it, all at once or you don't touch it at all."
Silence.
He took a breath, staring at the SHIELD insignia on a plaque across the room. Nick Fury's name was etched into it.
That damn one-eyed bastard, always watching, always doubting.
Pierce reached for another phone and dialed.
A voice picked up. No pleasantries.
"Do it. Get rid of Fury. Today."
"I'll give you a window, he's leaving HQ at 9 p.m. Escort re-routed. Traffic lights rigged. No one's watching. You'll have minutes. Make it clean."
"Understood."
Click.
The call came through encrypted lines.
"The vote failed. The Insight Plan is moving forward."
"If there's a concern, explain it to the World Security Council."
Nick Fury didn't need a crystal ball to know what that meant.
Pierce was turning the knife. The Insight helicarriers, designed to neutralize threats before they acted, were more than just military deterrents.
The files Fury had uncovered told a different story.
Names. Targets. Algorithms predicting dissidence. Millions marked for elimination.
The data was fuzzy at first, redacted reports, rerouted funding, ghost signatures, but Fury had hunted shadows for most of his life.
And now, behind every signature, he saw the same trace.
A spider's web.
If Insight launched, it wouldn't just be a tactical shift. It would be an execution order, mass, clinical, unstoppable.
He had no choice. He set out for the World Security Council in person, hoping to sound the alarm.
He never made it.
One Hour Later
The city block was unusually quiet.
Fury's black SUV rolled through the intersection at a crawl. The onboard AI chirped something about traffic detours and rerouting, but he wasn't listening.
His instincts screamed.
BAM!
A patrol car slammed into him from the right. The impact jolted the vehicle but didn't pierce the frame.
Almost instantly, three more black-and-white cruisers boxed him in.
And then came the men.
They wore police uniforms, but their movements were too precise, too in sync. Their eyes were hard, clinical.
Not cops.
Gunfire erupted. Automatic bursts chewed into the SUV's windows, bouncing off reinforced glass. Fury reached under the dash and flipped a red switch.
"Defense protocols: online."
The car roared. Mounted guns emerged from hidden compartments, firing suppression rounds and tear gas.
A sonic pulse disabled three of the attackers. Fury floored it.
Rubber screamed. The SUV punched through a side alley, scattering debris. A bullet caught his side, another grazed his arm.
Alarms inside the car wailed, but the auto-pilot caught him as he blacked out, redirecting to the only name he could trust.
Everlife Medical Center. Soren.
Minutes Later
The Everlife Medical Hall was still, almost monastic in its serenity.
Inside, Soren had finished rebalancing the healing fields when the silence was shattered.
A thunderous crash erupted from outside, glass shattering somewhere across the block.
Soren's head snapped toward the sound. He moved to the window, narrowed eyes scanning the chaos.
A black SUV… more smoke than machine now, had skidded into the side of a parked car across the street. The front grill was mangled, flames licking the underside.
A figure was slumped in the driver's seat.
Soren was at the wreck in seconds.
He wrenched open the driver-side door. "Damn it, Fury…"
Blood soaked the S.H.I.E.L.D director's jacket. His one good eye fluttered open, unfocused.
"You're… still ugly." Fury rasped.
"And you're leaking on my shoes."
With a flick of his hand, glowing runes circled the wrecked vehicle, and it vanished in a shimmer of blue light, relocated to a storage dimension.
Another gesture, and a levitation field cradled Fury as he floated toward the hall.
The HYDRA operative stood stiffly, blood on his collar, breath shallow from the sprint. His report was barely out of his mouth when Pierce snapped.
"What use are you if you can't even stop one half-dead man?"
Fury had escaped, injured, yes, but still breathing. That was unacceptable.
"Send someone after him! Now!"
The operative flinched, saluted, and disappeared like smoke.
Pierce stood alone in his office, fury boiling just beneath his polished veneer. But as the seconds ticked by, the rage cooled.
His mind, honed by decades of silent warfare, began to work again.
Nick Fury was wounded. On the run. Hunted.
He wouldn't be returning to S.H.I.E.L.D. anytime soon.
And that… presented opportunity.
Pierce turned slowly, fingers steepled, voice now calm and measured.
"The arrow's already been loosed." He muttered to himself.
"No point in aiming twice."
If Fury lived, he'd regroup. And if he regrouped, his loyalists would follow.
That couldn't be allowed.
Pierce pressed a hidden button beneath his desk. A holomap bloomed from the air, glowing red dots scattered across continents.
Each one a trusted lieutenant. A ghost still loyal to Fury.
Under his command, HYDRA unleashed its next wave… surgical elimination.
Strike teams in ghost armor. Untraceable accidents. Poisoned intel.
Before the sun set, Fury's allies were under siege from every side.
One by one, the pillars of resistance began to fade.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream