"Hey, beautiful. You miss me?"
"I did, actually. How was Christmas?"
"Great. Just had some barbecue and fishing with my dad. Wanna join next time?"
"Tempting, but I was working last night. Pulled some intel on that woman. Everything looked normal."
James smirked. "Then it means you're surrounded."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"What do you mean?" Maria Hill's voice grew tense.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" James said it with certainty. "There are things happening inside S.H.I.E.L.D you can't even see. If you're not surrounded, then what would you call it? Alice Roy wasn't loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D—she was loyal to someone else. She was a Level 5 SHIELD agent, but embedded by another organization. One that's already woven into SHIELD at every level."
Maria fell silent for a beat. "If that's true… then SHIELD would be—"
"Compromised. Yeah," James interrupted. "She's already dead. That was our warning. If anyone else comes for me or Carlos, we'll deal with them the same way."
"You should've brought her in, not killed her!" Maria snapped. "We could've interrogated her."
"You still don't get it. Your structure's clean in theory, but it's the very hierarchy that's been exploited. Your top-level access? It's already been co-opted. And Nick Fury isn't the only one calling the shots, is he?"
Her breath caught. "How much do you know?"
"More than you'd like," James said. "But this isn't a phone conversation we should make. We'll talk in person."
He hung up without letting her reply.
Maria stared at the phone in her hand for a moment before standing up and heading to find Nick Fury.
"Director, we need to talk."
Nick looked at her. "Go ahead."
"Not here."
His face tightened. This was the S.H.I.E.L.D Washington HQ Director's office—supposed to be the most secured. But he stood up without a word, grabbed his coat, and walked out.
They drove in silence to an old underground garage complex—dozens of storage units lined up, most repurposed as cheap warehouses.
Fury unlocked one, flipped on the lights, and shut the door. "This is one of my off-grid gear caches. No one knows it exists. Now talk."
Maria nodded. "You remember Carlos's employee? Alice Roy? James asked me to dig into her background, but I found nothing."
"So she's clean."
"She's not. James called. Said Alice was a Level 5 SHIELD agent—loyal to Hydra. But there was nothing that came up in the database. He said the situation's worse than we imagined. We're surrounded."
Fury's jaw clenched. He had his suspicions. He'd felt something was wrong inside S.H.I.E.L.D for some time now, but this confirmed it.
"He said our structure makes it easy for a hostile takeover," Maria continued. "Whoever's behind this, they've infiltrated deeply. Maybe even outranked you."
"That can't be... but if it's true, it explains a lot." A cold sweat ran down Fury's neck. "What else did he say?"
"He hung up. Said he'd talk in person. But he was angry—furious. Said someone sent a woman who looked like his mother to manipulate them. That was a line they wouldn't tolerate. He warned that if it happens again, there'll be a massacre."
"He's not wrong," Fury muttered. "Bringing that woman in would've tipped our hand. We'd expose ourselves, and the enemy would stay hidden. They've already embedded themselves—too deep."
"Should we contact James again?"
"No. Not yet. Let him cool off. He's got an invite to the Stark Expo anyway. We'll talk to him there. Play it casual."
Meanwhile, James was back home, pacing. His mind spun with everything Cortana had confirmed. Extracting Alice's memories had burned through a lot of his energy. Without more power, finding other Hydra agents was nearly impossible.
"The Tesseract is out of reach," he muttered. "Stark's new arc reactor tech—now that's viable. If I'm there when he synthesizes the new element…"
[You'll have a shot at it.] Cortana said. [It's your best bet for a short-term boost.]
"They gave me three months of leave. That's not a coincidence. They're trying to minimize contact."
[Possibly a smart move by them. S.H.I.E.L.D's integrity is, shall we say, compromised.] Cortana added dryly.
James nodded, then had a sudden thought. "What about League of Legends? Can I develop it as an actual product here?"
[You're not getting powers from it, if that's what you're thinking.] Cortana replied. [I'm not alien tech. I'm your former smartphone, remember?]
"Still, if we push out League of Legends early, we can create a global platform—and revenue. You've got the full data, right?"
[Yes. Game files, the meta, even patch notes. You want to start a gaming empire?]
"Might as well build an empire while waiting for a mission."
[Very well then, I prioritize searching and sorting out the game archive. The only limit of games we can publish are those of virtual reality variants, and the weaker pc specs available in the market to run unoptimized and processor heavy games.]
James picked up the phone and called Stark Industries.
"Hello, this is Stark Industries. How may I assist you?"
"I need to speak with Pepper Potts. Tell her it's James. She'll know."