Being a director of SHIELD came with a lot of shit to deal with: Crises, secrets, knives in the dark. Still, the job wasn't without its perks.

  Like sitting in a comfortable safehouse that was technically listed as a "developing property." As director, he had a fair amount of leeway with SHIELD holdings, and he'd used it. A few liberties here, a few quiet swaps there, and the pce had gone from a sterile concrete box to something almost cozy—still packed to the gills with equipment, servers, and secure storage, but livable.

  It came in handy when he needed to help his more discreet friends from beyond the stars. Still, all the perks in the world didn't pay enough to deal with this bullshit.

  He downed a gss and smacked it onto the table. Dozens of files y spread out in front of him, every one of them stuffed with damning evidence backing up the crazy clown's cims.

  "Cut the crap, Talos. How bad is it?" He rubbed his face, exhaustion settling deep into his bones.

  The Skrull wasn't shapeshifted this time. Green skin, unfamiliar angles, a face that somehow still managed to look painfully human. Nick had known him long enough to read the discomfort anyway.

  "…It's not too bad," Talos said, aiming for diplomatic. "About—"

  "Really?" Fury cut in, a harsh ugh breaking loose. "Half my organization's fucking spies, and it's not too bad." He started cackling. "We both failed to notice an entire spy organization hiding inside a spy organization."

  The absurdity of it hit hard enough to flip over into humor. Years of paranoia, redundancies stacked on redundancies, and he'd still been pyed. Fury ughed longer than he had in years, deep and bitter, the sound scraping at his throat.

  He ughed at every briefing he'd trusted, every report he'd skimmed instead of gutting, every time he'd told himself he'd already accounted for the worst.

  It wasn't funny at all. But what else could he do but fucking ugh?

  "Get it out of your system?" Talos asked carefully.

  "Yeah." Fury exhaled slowly. This job was going to drive him insane, just not today. He nodded for Talos to continue.

  "We ran through the names you listed. Most of them checked out." Talos hesitated. "Manpower's thin, though, so I couldn't check them all."

  Nick took another deep drink, scowling at the files. Even so, there were too many.

  Alexander, you absolute piece of shit.

  "Thanks for the help, Talos. I know things have been… tight." He set the gss down. "I'll handle the rest somehow."

  Talos nodded. "Lower ranks aren't as infested as the top, from what we can tell. We couldn't do a full sweep yet, but I'll send over a list of who's trustworthy." He paused. "Phil Coulson and Maria Hill are clean. Like you expected."

  "Good." Nick stood, already running through a dozen pns as he prepared to leave. "I've got to go clean house."

  "Ah, Nick… well." Talos looked away, shame written pinly across his face. "You're not the only one dealing with… problems. While we were checking the names you sent, I think…" He swallowed. "Some of the Skrulls are starting to look for other pastures."

  Nick closed his eyes.

  Motherfucker…

  —

  Tony liked to think he was smart.

  Okay, not think. He knew he was smart. Built the Iron Man suit out of a box of scraps. Made an AI when he was barely old enough to drink. Synthesized a new element—with a little help from his dad's ghost, sure—but it still counted.

  Which was exactly why he hated not understanding things.

  People went through life not understanding all sorts of stuff. That was normal. Expected, even. Tony didn't know how a piano worked, for example, and he didn't care to. But if he did care, if he actually put the time in, he'd be the best damn piano engineer in the world. Or whatever they called themselves.

  That certainty was kind of his thing.

  So when he wrapped up another round of Iron Man duties—fg-waving, bad-guy-punching, busting a human trafficking ring—only to find a kid shooting ser beams out of his eyes, it didn't sit well.

  Tony sank back into his chair and resisted the urge to yank his hair out.

  "Compile everything we've got from the recordings," he said. "I want a refresher."

  "Of course, sir," JARVIS replied.

  His notes vanished, repced by every scrap of data scraped from the unprotected corners of the internet on one Scott Summers. Tony repyed the raid footage, watching the moment again where the kid fired a beam that made his repulsors look underpowered.

  A month had passed.

  That was when it really set in.

  He didn't understand it.

  Humans weren't supposed to do that. The energy yield alone vioted half a dozen ws of physics Tony had personally helped refine. No exotic fuel source. No visible augmentation. No tech. Nothing. It made no sense.

  Any real chance of figuring it out vanished when some government spook named Fred Duncan talked the kid into coming with him. Tony had managed exactly one conversation before realizing he couldn't convince him. He also couldn't exactly abduct a teenager against his will, no matter how tempting the math problem was.

  So he let him go, and it had been eating at him ever since.

  Tony blew out a breath, irritation prickling under his skin. "Anything interesting, JARVIS? You know, beyond the usual."

  A new hologram flickered to life as Jarvis read them out.

  "Fluctuations in Stark Industries stock. Another ga hosted by the Hellfire Club. A terrorist attack in Sokovia. Civil unrest. S.H.I.E.L.D. involvement confirmed."

  Boring. Mostly.

  Tony frowned at the Sokovia article, then shook it off. Fury would be on him in seconds if he started poking around SHIELD business. Funny thing was, he hadn't heard a word from the one-eyed cyclops or his boy scout in a while.

  Should he check in with the codger?

  The thought alone annoyed him. Failing to crack the mystery of the kid already had him on edge, and now he was considering calling Nick Fury on top of that.

  God, he really was bored.

  "Anything else?" Tony stood and reached for a gss.

  "I have encountered persistent rumors of a viginte operating in New York," JARVIS said.

  Tony waved it off. "Not interested in some guy in a gimp costume beating up poor people."

  A video feed popped up anyway.

  Tony stopped pouring.

  The footage was grainy, but clear enough. A fsh of white snapped across the screen, catching two people as they slipped off a rooftop. Another strand locked several fire escapes in pce, holding them suspended in midair. Tony's mind immediately tched onto the tensile strength required and promptly lost his shit.

  He ran through a dozen ways to emute it. Materials, chemical synthesis, micro-actuators. Every path hit a dead end almost immediately. Still… he wasn't much of a chemist. If he studied it, he bet he could—

  The st few seconds showed a red-and-blue blur vaulting upward, leaping far higher than any human should be able to.

  "Interested?" JARVIS asked.

  Tony sighed, lifting both hands in surrender. "Fine. You got me."

  Maybe he wouldn't be bored after all.

  —

  Asgard was at peace. For now.

  Heimdall allowed himself a small smile as he watched the city below, still alive with celebration at Thor's reinstatement as heir. Laughter carried through the streets. Banners hung bright against gold and stone. Asgard moved with the quiet confidence of a realm that believed its trials were behind it.

  From his post, he could see Asgardians going about their days with easy smiles, unburdened and unafraid.

  Yet his own heart refused to settle.

  A pressure lingered in his chest, a weight he could not shake, the sense that this calm had been borrowed. Heimdall had learned long ago to trust such feelings.

  He turned his gaze outward, his sight stretching beyond the city, beyond the Rainbow Bridge, across the Nine Realms. The echoes of Loki's st scheme still clung to the worlds he surveyed. Laufey's death had shattered Jotunheim. The Frost Giants were fractured now, their cns locked in endless strife, grinding against one another without a leader to bind them.

  With Asgard closed to them, they had nothing left but old grudges and dwindling resources. Heimdall felt no love for the Jotunn, but the fall of a people was never something to witness lightly.

  His sight moved on, realm after realm slipping beneath his awareness, yet the unease remained. Heimdall was no seer like Queen Frigga, no reader of futures, but experience had taught him that restlessness without cause was itself a warning.

  At st, his gaze settled on Midgard.

  The small world had become the axis of far too many turning points in recent years. Thor's banishment. Loki's deceit. Triumph and humiliation woven together around a single, fragile pnet.

  He thought of the prince.

  Heimdall widened his vision, searching the void where Loki had fallen. The chances of survival were slim, even for one of their kind, but Frigga had asked. Despite his misgivings toward Loki, Heimdall would not deny a grieving mother.

  He drew a breath and prepared to sweep Midgard once more, just to be sure—

  What?

  His sight faltered.

  A smear of white marred the surface of Midgard, as though paint had been dragged across reality itself. Heimdall focused, sharpened his perception, pressed against it from every angle avaible to him.

  Nothing.

  His eyes could not pierce it.

  The blockage was total, clean in a way that set his nerves on edge. Heimdall's sight was not absolute. It could be deceived. But this was different. The prince himself had proven the limits of illusion before.

  Could Loki have—

  No. There was no trace of him. Heimdall had combed Midgard for two years without result.

  Still, something was happening there. Something capable of blinding even his eyes.

  That alone demanded his king's attention.

  —

  Baron Strucker had been having a terrible week.

  Losing a subject that potent had been a direct blow to his standing within HYDRA, and the timing could not have been worse. His patience had already been thin. Pierce's slow, ckadaisical expansion of SHIELD influence into Sokovia had been unacceptable, so Strucker had moved ahead with his own pn.

  He sent his men to seize control of the Sokovian bck market and begin ying the groundwork to turn the state into a proper HYDRA puppet.

  It should have been simple.

  They had insider intelligence. They had top-of-the-line equipment. They had two of his own enhanced subjects backing the operation. Success had been all but guaranteed.

  And yet, by some godforsaken twist of fate, every single squad had failed. The operation colpsed so completely that it nearly exposed HYDRA's presence to the world. Only swift intervention from other cell leaders had kept the damage contained; his men had been silenced before they could talk.

  The loss of the two enhanced subjects was a bitter pill, one he had no intention of swallowing quietly.

  With failure stacked so visibly against him, Strucker could feel his position begin to wobble. Pierce and Whitehall were already circling, murmuring about reassignment and consolidation for the so-called greater good—as if they weren't eager to carve up the fruits of his research for themselves.

  Greedy bastards.

  Strucker drew in a slow breath, forcing his temper down. Not everyone was blind to their ambitions. Arnim Zo, at least, had spoken in his defense, reminding the council of Strucker's past successes and his unique contributions.

  The support came at a cost. He now owed the scientist a favor, an irritation but a manageable one.

  What mattered was progress.

  His steps carried him deep into the secured boratory wing, past yers of clearance and humming machinery. Gss doors hissed open at his approach.

  Doctor List stood before a reinforced observation window, staring into the chamber beyond with open fascination.

  "I trust you have good news, Doctor?" Strucker asked.

  "Yes," List said immediately, still pointing, eyes never leaving the specimen. "After many failed subjects, we have successfully synthesized a living example."

  Strucker moved closer to the gss.

  Inside, two technicians in hazmat suits cautiously prodded what looked like a fleshy, pulsing egg. Each touch made the red surface ripple, shifting from organic tissue to wood, then to metal, before settling back into flesh once more.

  Strucker felt his mood lift.

  "Well done," he said, nodding. "And how close are we to weaponization?"

  List hesitated. "We are still some distance away, Baron. My apologies."

  "Funding is not an obstacle," Strucker replied coolly. "The results you've produced have drawn interest from the council. Better equipment and additional manpower can be arranged."

  "It is not funding," List said carefully. "It is an impasse of ideas. This material behaves outside conventional frameworks. We require specialists in adjacent fields to advance further. With your permission, I know several minds who would be very interested in joining the project."

  Strucker considered that. Outsourcing was uncommon, even for HYDRA, and bringing outsiders into such a critical effort carried obvious risk. But his future hinged on mastering this alien material harvested from the monster.

  "Give me names," he said at st. "They will be vetted."

  Doctor List straightened, visibly energized. "Of course, Baron. With proper assistance, I am confident we will achieve the results you desire. I have several acquaintances in mind. Professor Essex. Mr. Warren. Dr. Trask…"

  ***

  And so the world keeps spinningComments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.

  I have advanced chapters on my if you wanna read ahead.