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Fury had been having a stressful week so far... First there were the last remnants of Hydra to stamp out, their leader being Grant Ward who had been ideally positioned to provoke as little scrutiny as possible. Pierce had been aiding him in pulling this infection out root and stem, his influence in the world council being pivotal in procuring a period of non-activity for Shield as a whole. Sitwell had also been a help as he had personally found several incongruencies within the personnel files. Most of the captured Hydra agents were inside the assault teams and a sprinkling of administration staff... It seemed that the 'infection' hadn't reached the greater organisation...
On top of Hydra's activity there was also the warning from Drecarios Frost with regard to the city on the moon. Shield and NASA had been working in tandem to attempt creating a vessel capable of investigating the moon in an inconspicuous manner but it was a struggle... Normally he would have exchanged a favour with the Avenger for access to one of his best spacecraft, but that option had been blown out of the water by the World Council. They had decided that supporting the increasingly powerful Avenger wasn't the best idea and were firm in their opinions regarding the immensely prolific CEO.
Thus Shield was stuck trying to figure out how to copy some of the features of Drecarios's ships from inaccurate scans. Hell, there had even been an operation to obtain one of the trade vessels but the team had been found three hours after their check-in time, knocked out, with a post-it note on their foreheads that pretty much read, 'Pull your asses out of our business'... That had been a particularly emasculating debrief with the world council, the majority of the members calling into question the agency's effectiveness... He'd had to use some blackmail to retain his position, luckily it was only a slice of the information he had on every member.
If all of that wasn't enough there had been murmurs from the US government that they were going to re-start their sentinel program and that the robots would be lethal this time. Clint and Natasha had been sent to keep eyes on the generals responsible for developing that specific technology. With a final fuck you, at the end of the week, a massive blackout in the satellite network that had suddenly emerged from nothing had cleared out.
And now he was sitting behind his desk, his hands steepled, watching grainy footage of an enormous space station slowly spinning in place as it orbited Earth from high orbit. Maria Hill or Mocking Jay for those who followed codenames as religiously as Shield did, stood behind him and was silently in awe of the sheer size of the structure.
"I wonder how many people could fit in there...?" She murmured her question before lightly biting her lip in consternation.
"That's if it was designed for Humans to occupy it. We could be looking at a scientific test site for all we know." Fury ground out, his singular eye tracing its way across the station whilst looking for any symbols that could denote its origins.
"True... I don't suppose we could ask Stark for help in identifying what this is?" She asked whilst leaning forwards as the satellite's transmission stuttered every now and then.
"No. He is more likely to take the task as a challenge to invade Shield's servers once again." He stated tiredly as he leaned back on his plush office chair.
"Perhaps we could make inquiries inside of Frostborn Dynamics...? We would need to pull Natasha from her current mission, but it could be done." Maria mused before Fury shook his head.
"She is needed where she is... The last time the US government decided to deal with the mutant community it almost ended in another American civil war. We must ensure that the project fails on all levels or the president could potentially set these monstrosities on American citizens." He rubbed his brow as he finished speaking, the footage flickering once more before the angle shifted and another spy satellite activated from within the blackout zone.
This was when he saw the stained glass depictions of Drecarios Frost and his sisters, including quite a few people he had no files or memory of. "I need files on all of those figure... I also want Coulson's team started up immediately, their first job will be to find someone who has even a slight chance of hacking into Frostborn Dynamics' servers."
Hill nodded and pulled out an iPad with which she started taking notes of his orders.
"Additionally I want an official request from Shield to Drecarios Frost to meet at Avengers Tower for an information exchange." He paused as he considered the moves he needed to make. "And finally I want you to be the handler for the Avengers, we can't afford to let them cause this much global chaos, not without observation and intervention at the very least... That will be your job."
The stern woman narrowed her eyes at her boss before smacking the end of the electronic pen on the iPad screen and snapping it in half.
"Will that be all sir?" She uttered out in mock formality.
"Yes. And for what it is worth Hill, I would prefer you to be at my side... This is just much more important than managing my schedule and the running of the Triskelion." He stated calmly as she begrudgingly accepted his explanation. "Now, you will be getting a level 10 clearance as the handler of the Avengers as well as the Omega level clearance for every single Avengers' file."
Shock spread across her face as she considered the sheer amount of information she would gain access to. "A-are you sure that is necessary sir?" She asked in amazement as her personnel file gained the clearances he had described, her staff card automatically updating with the information.
"It is, I need you to be capable of acting on behalf of shield if I am incapacitated or killed. With this level of clearance you will automatically become the next director, should any of the hundreds of horrible scenarios that make me incapable of the task occur." He finished succinctly as the doors to his office opened, admitting Hawkeye and Black Widow, who should be near the Pentagon and nowhere near the Triskelion.
"The Sentinel operation has been shut down by Thaddeus Ross, his branch of spec-ops went through that wing of the Pentagon this morning and posted several noticed throughout the section that the president had shut down illegal research." Natasha debriefed as Fury took a deep breath internally, thanking whatever higher powers there may be that something was going his way.
"Good work Widow, Hawkeye... I have one final task for you both before you officially resign from the agency..." He said plainly. Hill was watching the meeting from the side of the room.
"What's the task boss?" Clint asked.
"I need you to speak with Drecarios and see if he can illuminate the World council and myself as to why he has a space station in high orbit above Earth." Both of the Avengers looked surprised and gobsmacked by the level of progression their team mate had made.
"A... Station?" Natasha repeated in confusion.
"Yes, have a look." He turned the computer screen towards them, showing the grainy footage of the distant space station as it slowly rotated on its axis... The light of the sun sparkling off of the stained glass artwork.
Both of them became utterly silent as they watched several ships swoop into the video before disappearing inside the station.
"How did he do that?" Clint exclaimed in exasperation.
~~~
Meanwhile, inside the White House...
"Mr President, as far as the treasury is concerned, Frostborn Dynamics offers a massive boon to the American economy and has already raised tourism throughout the East coast by several percentage points. Trying to ascertain how they achieve their technologies would jeopardize a significant portion of the Stock Exchange and our nation's defences." A wiry man dressed in a sleek blue business suit explained in a sycophantical voice, his fingers pushing the edges of his square glasses up his nose every few moments.
"What do you mean 'defences'?" The erudite politician questioned, his aristocratic bearing and somewhat hooked nose making him resemble a Goblin from Harry Potter far more than a Human, despite his height and the lack of ugliness.
Another suited man with a similar disposition to the first stepped forwards, his voice a touch more monotone than the last man's. "There have been numerous, blips, inside our security systems this month alone and the rate at which they occur has been increasing as time lingers on... It is the FBI's, the CIA's and the Secret Service's opinion that this 'blip' was sourced from Frostborn Dynamics..." His fingers lightly shuffled in the palms of his hands as the President leaned his chin onto his hands.
"You are telling me that a company has been invading secure Government files and programs without any investigation or arrest having been made...?" he whispered his question with extreme displeasure, his hawk-like eyes narrowing onto the bean-stalk of a man.
Said man gulped before nodding and continuing his explanation. "Yes sir. These agencies have ordered all investigations and reviews of the company to be quelled immediately. Before this meeting I asked the FBI director why he made such a decision in tandem with the CIA head and the Secret Service head and he simply explained that Singularity, or Drecarios Frost, the Avenger, has enough dirt on the American Government to delegitimize entire generations of Presidencies." He finished speaking with a wipe of the sweat from his forehead.
The president sat back into his chair and considered all of the facts presented to him. After several minutes he only came to one answer... He had to allow Drecarios to continue his invasive scans of the Government and couldn't interfere with anything he ever did... He had taken too much donor money from AIPAC to ever be clean and with the amount of information Drecarios had the on the government he could only imagine the dirt he had on him.
'Very well played Mister Drecarios...' The president thought before speaking once again.
"Forget this conversation ever happened. We will ignore every blip from those specific sources. In fact, I want you to prepare as much of our above-board research to be compiled into a singular file and hand it to him on a platter. Perhaps if we can garner some sympathy and rapport from the man he will slowly give us insights on how he made those spacecraft..." The two men looked excited at the prospect before jotting down several points on their papers.
It was at this impasse that the door to the oval office opened to admit several sweating Generals who looked as if they had run to the office in a hurry.
"Mr President, we are here to inform you of a structure that has recently appeared in high-orbit above Earth." The president rubbed his temples as the Generals clattered onto the seats before his desk and gulped mouthfuls of water and anything they could get their hands on. The two men he had been meeting were quickly escorted out by his secretary as the generals quickly started dribbling out all of the information he needed to know...
Yet again it was this Drecarios man... He sighed as he leaned back in his chair and listened to his generals explain the sheer size of the 'station' and the apparent capabilities they had been able to discern through several telescopes around the country.
'Curse this day...' He growled inside his mind as the generals quickly started pouring out hundreds of documents on contingency plans, possible attack vectors if they were able to launch a nuclear device into space and several other insane sounding plans that sounded as if some doomsday prepper had come up with them.
~~~
The world council was in an uproar as the 3 dimensional image of Drecarios's station hovered in the middle of their meeting room. The German representative was shouting expletives at the Russian representative as he merely shrugged his shoulders and said it was none of Russia's business what an international company did in space, where none of the nations of Earth had claimed anything yet.
The French rep and the British rep were oddly working together to the calm the rest, the two of them explaining that making decisions on so little information and running high on emotions wasn't the wisest concept.
It was underneath the 3 dimensional image that Alexander Pierce internally raged at the sheer insanity of Singularity, the Avenger. Everything had been going swimmingly for Hydra until that particular member of the goody-two-shoes team was able to infiltrate some of the most secure sections of the Shield database. Then that same man who had caused so many headaches for him had suddenly revealed that he had access to spacecraft that put Humanity's greatest technological marvels to shame... Then he took the cargo industry by storm and shut down several profitable businesses for Hydra, crushing them out of the smuggling market almost entirely. And now he had created a space station that was somewhere in the ballpark of 300 to 380 kilometres in circumference... And that wasn't counting any further upgrades made to the megastructure...
The chamber hushed for a while until the Latverian representative, Victor Von Doom himself, spoke. "This is a nonsensical argument... Shouldn't we be celebrating such an achievement for Humanity? Imagine the sheer advancement we could make if he were willing to have people live within his station!" His raspy tone hid nothing of his salivation at the technology on display.
Pierce knew that he was a figure to be weary of, he knew that extremely well. Hopefully Drecarios would be too busy dealing with Victor Von Doom to notice Hydra's activities...
~~~
Athena, goddess of Wisdom and Strategic Warfare, watched the council of Earth's most powerful puppets argue over the power wielded by this Drecarios Frost.
Their words were of little interest to her. Mortals had always been remarkably talented at arguing over things they barely understood. Her attention instead drifted toward the enormous holographic representation of the station hovering above the chamber.
She studied it for several moments before noticing something peculiar. Images had been carved, painted and embedded throughout the structure. Gods. Not abstract symbols, either. Distinct depictions...
Specifically, Apollo, Hermes, Artemis and Hestia. And...Herself... Athena's eyes narrowed.
'Is that a depiction of me?' She drifted closer to the rotating holographic image, examining the architecture surrounding the figures.'It is.' That was... unexpected.
Humanity had long since relegated the Olympians to the realm of mythology. Their names remained in books, stories and the occasional temple ruin, but genuine belief had become exceedingly rare. Yet this mortal had constructed a vast fortress in the heavens and filled it with their likenesses.
'A shrine?' Perhaps. The thought brought the faintest smile to her lips.
'Perhaps this Drecarios is worth more than I thought.' She found herself wondering why... Why these gods? Why now? And, perhaps most importantly...How does a mortal who supposedly knows them only through ancient stories manage to make a monument that feels so strangely familiar?
It would be interesting to watch this man in the sky above New York. That was certain.
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