The safehouse was buried beneath an abandoned shipping depot on the edge of the Mediterranean coast, a concrete tomb that technically didn't exist. Power came from a self-contained generator that had been humming in the background for the last two months, providing the only heartbeat in a room filled with ghosts.
Nick Fury watched the world change from a cracked monitor bolted to the damp wall. Behind him, Natasha Romanoff sat on a folding chair, boots resting on the edge of a crate, watching Fury's reaction instead of the screen. Clint Barton leaned against the far wall, arms folded, his expression as unreadable as the encrypted files they once handled. Near the equipment table, Phil Coulson stood quietly with a tablet in hand, his calm exterior barely masking the tension in his eyes as data streamed past faster than he could process it. A few other former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were scattered around the room, their posture stiff, conditioned by a war that had officially ended without them.
The broadcast started without fanfare. The signal snapped into place with a level of clarity that should have been impossible for their pirated receiver. Natasha noticed the technical perfection first. "That's deliberate," she said quietly. "They're dominating the spectrum."
The Leader appeared on screen. Clint squinted at the image. "That's it? That's the guy?"
Natasha nodded slowly, her eyes scanning the Leader's micro-expressions. "Doesn't look like he's here to sell anything. He's delivering a status report."
As the speech progressed through the collapse of the old systems and the rise of the Earth Federation, Natasha leaned back. "So S.H.I.E.L.D. really is dead."
Clint shrugged. "We kind of knew that when the paychecks stopped and the safehouses started feeling like coffins."
"Yeah," she replied. "But hearing it announced like a software update hits different."
The Leader moved into the galactic disclosure. Kree. Nova Empire. Asgard. Clint stopped spinning a stray arrow between his fingers.
"Okay," Clint said, his voice dropping an octave. "That's new."
Natasha frowned, looking at the technical benchmarks displayed. "You think they're exaggerating?"
"I think they know more than I ever did," Fury replied, his voice a low gravel. He had spent decades being the man with the deepest files, the keeper of the last folder. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been built on the principle that someone had to keep the whole picture together. Now, a man he'd never met was explaining galactic politics to eight billion people like it was a routine weather report.
The Kree appeared. Blue skin. Segmented armor. Massive dreadnoughts. Clint let out a low whistle. "That's not friendly."
"No," Natasha said, her mind already calculating threat levels. "That's compiled intelligence. Look at the sensor data signatures. That's not a guess; it's a dossier."
Then came Asgard. The Leader framed it as a Tier-One civilization, a hyper-advanced protectorate that had protected Earth for millennia. Natasha exhaled slowly, her eyes fixed on the holographic rendering of the golden city. "So the myths weren't just stories told by Vikings to explain the stars. They were sightings. We've been calling them gods because we didn't have the vocabulary for their physics."
Clint leaned forward, squinting at the imagery. "Hyper-advanced is an understatement. If that place is real, and they've been 'protecting' us this whole time, it means we've been living in a backyard we didn't even know was fenced in."
"It's a shift in classification," Natasha noted, her voice low. "We aren't looking at a religion anymore—we're looking at a neighbor with a much bigger house."
The broadcast reached the disclosure of Wakanda. Fury's jaw clenched so hard the muscle ticked. The feed showed a city that defied every piece of intelligence he had ever gathered—clean lines, energy systems, and architecture that made the Triskelion look like a Lego set.
"Africa," Fury muttered. "Of course it was Africa."
Natasha glanced over. "You knew?"
"I knew something was off," Fury replied, his eye fixed on the screen. "Signals that didn't match the terrain. Economic anomalies. I didn't know it was a goddamn utopia."
Clint stared at the shimmering spires. "That's… been there? This whole time?"
"All this time," Fury said slowly. "While we were playing world police, they were playing the long game."
Natasha's jaw tightened as she watched the Leader explain their isolation. "Hydra never touched them."
"No," Fury replied. "Because Hydra didn't know they existed. You can't infiltrate what you can't see."
The broadcast moved to Talokan. The ocean peeled back to reveal glowing structures beneath the waves—cities built into stone, technology adapted to the crushing pressure of the abyss.
Fury let out a sharp breath. "Atlantis," he said. "Son of a—"
Clint blinked, looking at the bioluminescent warriors and the high-tech spears. "You've gotta be kidding me. We've got space empires, secret mountain cities, and now fish-people?"
"Talokan," Natash corrected, reading the subtitle. "Different branding."
She remembered missions near the Atlantic ridge—sonar disturbances that shouldn't have been there, files that ended with 'inconclusive' because the equipment supposedly malfunctioned. "They were watching us," she said. "Every sub we put in the water, every cable we laid. They were right there."
Clint shrugged. "Can't blame them for staying down there. Look at the mess we made up here."
Natasha turned to Fury. "You never found it?"
"I chased myths," Fury said, his gaze never leaving the screen. "Found plenty of dead ends and a lot of empty water. Turns out the myths were just smarter than the agency."
The broadcast shifted into the logistical conclusion—the Origin currency, the education modules, the structural reset. Clint leaned back against the wall, watching the charts move with mechanical efficiency. "Okay, now this part's wild."
Natasha watched the global market metrics. They were smooth. Stable. No spikes of panic, just a steady transition. "No riots," she said. "No collapse. The Leader is using a dampening effect on the broadcast. Look at the people in the background of the Geneva feed. They're too calm."
The broadcast ended, leaving the safehouse in a silence that felt heavier than before. The monitor flickered over to the Universal Civilization Studies landing page. The old world was officially a memory.
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