Chapter 9.
New York City. One Month ago.
"I am so glad we could agree on this Mr. Stark." Stephen said as he clapped his competitor on the shoulder and repressed a shudder of disgust. He studied the more caviler businessman carefully, looking for further reason to absolutely hate the man as he accepted the drink from his assistant. She had grace and style, a complete contrast to the sloppily dressed Stark. Her tidy appearance told the world who the real person behind Stark Industries was, and she did not allow even a hair to fall out of place. He looked over the New York Skyline and admired the view, a photograph on the table next to him in a silver frame of a dark haired couple catching his attention and he took a long moment to study it.
"I did not exactly agree with the merger Steve. Ghemma Pharmaceuticals has been at the top of its game recently, but Stark Industries still has a card left to play. That card alone has the Shareholders extremely excited right now, and a merger may throw everything into limbo. That is one thing I can't afford , and neither can the people who have held on with us and not sold their stock." Tony said and Stephen picked up the framed photograph and looked at it. He resisted the urge to correct Tony about the deal and his name, and sipped the warm tasting bourbon as he put the photograph back and looked at one of Bruce Banner. He looked at another one of the girl and smiled at the head shot, and the way her eyes burned with an inner intelligence, resisting the urge to steal that photograph.
"Pity. I was hoping to see your Shareholders even more excited. Lovely girl, is she a relation?" He said, tapping the frame and turning back around to face the arrogant billionaire.
"Friend." Tony said and took a long drink. "But I love her like a sister. Stark Pharmaceuticals is no longer interested in treating illness, we are more interested in curing and preventing. Which is why we are rolling out six new vaccines over the next ten years, and working on a new drug that may actually eradicate cancer cells in humans. All of it is very hush, hush though, don't even think of asking to see the data, because you can't."
"Interesting, but very bad for business Mr. Stark. Your company will loose billions in revenue in result of your medicines being a success. You are supposed to know this, your business and profits should always be priority, not curing and saving the world. Which has become your interest, as of late. Already, the other companies are worried that you are stealing from their profits thanks to your newly designed Epi Pen." Stephen said, testing the waters before continuing. He found himself shocked at the complete lack of caring on Tony's face, the man truly did not care anymore about profit margins or if Stark Pharmaceuticals lost billions to this foolishness.
"The human race deserves to live long, healthy lives. Not to suffer so that I can get a little bit richer, preventing diseases should be a moral imperative of all the big Pharmaceutical Companies. Yours included, and not to be overlooked on how you jacked up the price on your blood thinners. I did notice that one, and I think it was a bad move for you. Life saving medicines should not cost patients three hundred dollars a pill."
"When one company raised the price of the Epi Pen, Stark Pharmaceuticals fired back by making a better, more efficient design and sold it for ten dollars. Our profits actually soared, and we proved that helping humanity by putting people over profits works." Tony said and walked over to pour himself another drink, Stephen looked back at the table of photographs and studied them all. Tony Stark's surrogate family, all on public display for anyone to see. He picked up the photograph of the man and woman again and admired Lilliana, her smile bright as Loki had his arm around her shoulders. Both of them leaning against the railing off the observation deck outside as the photograph was taken. Next to them a photograph of Thor, relaxed on a couch and talking to a red haired woman Stephen did not readily recognize. He turned back to Tony and let out a long breath as the woman took his empty glass from him, his exasperation showing as he glanced back at the photograph. Those eyes, and her soft smile, the way her hair shone with the light.
"Is that an excerpt from your forthcoming TED Talk Tony? Because it is quite good, it would be very inspiring to lead into it with a joke though, just a bit of advice there. I have seen many me try to change the world with words and promises, ensure yours are not empty." Stephen said and admired the view from the tower one last time.
"I will try to work on in. Maybe something about being humane when trying to cure diseases the effect millions of human beings. But maybe that would be rude, I should work on my one liners." Tony said and started on his second drink, Stephen repressed the urge to make a comment about his well known alcoholism, choosing to take the high road instead after the insult that was just thrown at him. He ignored the verbal slap and walked over to the man, offering his hand. If only he knew who he really was, he smiled to himself. Tony Stark would be horrified and shocked, he laughed to himself and shook the other man's hand.
"Always so witty, Mr. Stark. I look forward to hearing your speech then, I prefer to stay out of the spotlight myself. No one has a face to place blame on when the medicines go awry, to each their own though. It really is not my place to judge you Tony, I am a busy man however and hope to speak with you again soon." Stephen replied, his collected exterior betraying nothing of the distaste he held for the man as he continued to shake the other man's hand. Internally, he repressed the new urge to stab the man in front of him to death. Stephen smiled nonetheless, knowing that in a few short days he would be bringing a reign of fear and discord onto the world that would resonate through history for millennia.
"Like you said, to each their own. Sorry to disappoint you Steve, but no part of Stark Industries if up for grabs or a merger right now. With everything I have planned for the company, it would be terrible business to move forward like that. And I have more people to think about than myself, I have an entire planet of people who deserve the best." Tony said as both men walked to the elevator and waited for it to arrive, he had some business sense after all or so it seemed.
"Should you change your mind Tony..." Stephen started but the more irritating man cut him off before he could finish.
"I probably won't, but you can still try. Maybe if you considered out new business model, I hear Pfizer is considering lowering the cost of many of their medications for cancer, and some of their patented vaccines. I am pretty sure we started that trend." Tony said and drained his glass, the man was proving to be extremely irritating and someday his world would crash down around him. He would see to that himself if he had to, and laugh in seeing this arrogant bastard broken. The elevator arrived and Stephen stepped onto it, smiling at his competitor as the doors closed between them.
As he descended, a soft ping from his pocket alerted him to a new text. He looked down and pulled the phone from his pocket and opened the message from his hired man Marcel, he had not expected to hear from the man so quickly and was impressed with the Greek's efficiency. The man was always impressive to him however, and he worked so very hard to please The Horsemen. He expected it to take much longer to break the carefully selected SHIELD Agents and to get them to perform as wished, and smiled widely to himself at the message appeared. SHIELD was not known for selecting Agents for their weakness, but every person had that one thing, that one puzzle piece, that could be exploited. Marcel was proving with three words, that Stephen was going to change the world after all.
ICARUS IS BURNING.
In a month, nothing would ever be the same again.
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The Conference room was packed as Fury spoke to all of us, Loki sat on the edge of the table as we ran out of chairs to seat everyone and we all had to improvise our positions. He had one foot braced in my chair next to my legs as Maria Hill was introduced again and she began briefing us about the security protocols on the Helicarrier. We all had to carry or wear Security Badges, no one was exempt and failure to do so could end up with us in a lot of trouble. I turned my badge over in my hands and it looked to me like any other corporate key card to me, a bad picture of me printed on the front with my name and a identification number under the image. Millions spent on this facility, and they could not even take a decent identification photo. It made me wonder if their camera person once worked for the DMV, or at least trained at one for his current job. Loki put his into his pocket on his coat and Twitch clipped his to the faded denim jacket he wore with all the studs and spikes, he actually looked somewhat proud of his. Give a man an honest job, you change their whole purpose for being I guess.
"We are in a state of war, and security will be very tight from this moment on. We want to avoid any mistakes regarding new persons to our group, and some that may be familiar for other reasons." Maria finished, looking at Loki as she spoke. Loki explained to me the last time he was on one of these massive ships, and it did not end very well for anyone involved. On the upside, this time he was not in a fishbowl holding cell designed to drop him from eighteen thousand feet and kill him. There was always a bonus to that, it made it easier to work when your life was not threatened.
Fury took over the briefing from Maria, and she walked toward us. Twitch stood up from his seat and offered it to her, everyone actually looked impressed at his manners and I smiled at him. He may be a bit odd, but he had a sister and he was always polite to women when he could be. Guess that happens when your mother raises you primarily, and you have no contact with your father because he is in prison for something or another.
"I think you are now aware, but we have added a new member to our team. I had my own reservations, but it seems that he is now proving his worth as a skilled computer hacker. He is also working on a new software package that is currently being overseen by Ms. Hawthorne, and may give us an edge in the fight against homegrown threats. This is not an invasion, but a threat from within our own stratosphere something homegrown but still dangerous, I suggest you put any thoughts aside toward this being an off world threat for now. Ms. Hawthorne will explain how this program all works as soon as I am done speaking, and I suggest you all listen closely. This information will be important to all of you, and it shows that nothing will be safe." Fury said and we all shifted as he spoke about what we were in for this time. I was already close to this, but everyone else had to be brought up to speed.
"As you all know, the world was hit by a massive terrorist attack across multiple borders in the last couple of days. Seven places of interest were targeted, and as of yesterday, nearly every country on the planet has closed their borders and much of the world's commerce has completely shut down. Every Military branch around the world is on alert, and we are as well. We do not know how or when they will strike next, but it is guaranteed that they will and we will strike back even harder. Every world leader is looking to us to give them answers, and I do not intend to disappoint them. To give you a magnitude of how much pressure we are currently under as a team, the official death toll of at eight thousand twenty-two. That is not just a number, they were part of someone's family." Fury said and paused, letting it sink in for a moment before continuing. Everyone shifted in their seats, and I crossed my arms as I pinched my eyes shut.
"I do not care what differences you all may have among yourselves. Whatever grudges you may have, it all ends now. Every person on this planet is looking to you and I suggest you not look like a bunch of bickering idiots, and pretend to be a team for the duration of this incident. Do I make myself crystal clear on this?" He finished and we all nodded our agreement. I thought about all the lives lost and I felt myself go pale, they did not ask for their fates and it tore me up inside to think that more could die. Fury turned his back to us as we all sat quietly, he looked at the Command Center below us and then turned back to us and took in a long breath. Turning back to us and gesturing toward me, he knew how hard I had worked and I wanted to impress him.
"Ms. Hawthorne, you have the floor, I suggest everyone here listens closely to what she has to say and listen good. She has insight into who we are facing, and may have further clues to who we are looking for." Fury said and I stood up, I twirled my ring on my finger as I walked up next to Fury and looked at the room full of people in front of me. I was terrible at public speaking and it showed every time I was made to do it, social anxiety could be a heartless bitch at times.
"Some of you already have the information I am going to give you, to others this is new. Some of this is also all hypothesis, but from what evidence we do have currently is that the persons responsible for the attacks are The Four Horsemen Initiative. The person I did have brief contact with claimed responsibility on their part, and he seemed too proud of the chaos to be anything less than the actual person behind it all." I started and everyone actually listened to me. It was a bit intimidating, but I pushed on and hoped that my rambling made sense.
"I have most likely been talking to a spokesperson or leader in their ranks who goes by the code name of Death, and he seems to have fixated on me for some reason or another. If you go by the Judaeo Christian teachings of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then there are most likely three more top persons in this group with similar code names. Those persons would all go by names representative of the Biblical Horsemen: Famine, Conquest, and War." I said and Clint raised his hand, I pointed at him and he spoke.
"The three other persons are theory though, you have not talked to them right?" He asked, no judgment in his voice as he spoke and I took in a breath knowing that he was trying to guide my thought process.
"That is a theory." I said and nodded. "From evidence, I have very good reason to believe that The Horsemen are also not without financial means, Death actually bragged to me once about his heavily modified Prion Disease that made us suspect a second party was involved in the last case we took on. Through my suspicions, I found The Horsemen using the Deep Web and I was led to another clue as to who they were. We found further evidence in a compromised intern that illegal human experimentation was being conducted by one or all members of their organization on fetal tissues at the genetic level." I said and paused before talking again. Everyone was quiet and I let out a long breath, the nervousness leaving me as I began talking again.
"Their hackers also have to be the best of the best, I have never been counter hacked on a Virtual Private Network before crossing paths with them. They were able to find me in minutes, and use the server connected security cameras in a Starbucks to send a team of assassins nearly killing me along with Steve and Loki, which leads me to believe that they keep sleeper cells in multiple cities close to SHIELD and Avengers headquarters. Lucky for us though, we were more resourceful and their Hit Squad sucked." I finished and Tony raised his hand, I braced for a snarky comment but it never came.
"I remember bailing you guys out, we brought a Hulk to the party. But who do you think they are if they have resources and manpower?" He asked and Fury looked at me, I shook my head as I stood quietly and I rubbed the back of my neck.
"We don't know, the only leads we had were the Deep Web, and the Ammonia Nitrate in the Bombs, but that was all circumstantial until I can connect more dots. No one has really come forward to claim responsibility, and it still could be anyone but it all points to them." I said and Clint raised his hand again, I pointed at him and he nodded. I was starting to wonder if he was picking on me, and Fury looked like he was wondering the same.
"How do you plan to find them? Because it looks like you are as lost as the rest of us here, and we don't have much more to go on." Clint said and everyone shifted in their seats. Twitch laughed into his hand as I waved a finger at him, Fury lowered a drop down screen from the ceiling. I connected to the server and booted up Ouroboros, I entered my administrative protocols and the screen displayed with all learned words in its Lexicon and their values.
"I was actually getting to that, if you had not interrupted me Clint. But since you did, you get to be my subject for my sample run through this system. Do you want to divulge anything before I begin? It will find everything by the way, so you may want to come clean." I said and typed Clint's full name into the search field and I grinned at him as I let Ouroboros assign values to both names automatically. Knowing it would take several minutes, I began speaking again.
"For those of you who were not around for the meeting, you are looking at the newest weapon we have in our arsenal. Twitch is actually the one who gave me the original idea for the program, but this brainchild of us weird kids is the most advanced A.I. Next to Friday. It is capable of learning and working independently of the user and interface, it assigns values to key words based on emotional value and intensity of usage, and can add words it deems necessary to complete a search to its Lexicon."
"On top of that, it is also able to teach itself different intrusion methods to navigate into and through different firewalls and gather the information completely undetected. It will return with any information you want, and it will not even leave a bread crumb behind to show it was there." I said and looked at the screen, Natasha, Clint, and a few others raised their hands and I smiled sheepishly as I crossed my arms. Everyone looked like I had their undivided attention, and it was kind of cool to be a part of creating this program.
"He is Twitch." I said and pointed at the skinny, purple haired rock star leaning against the window in the corner. Three hands went down and I grinned to myself.
"Official Code Monkey." Twitch said and gave an involuntarily jerk. All of the hands slowly drifted down as the readout showed the firewalls it had gone through and the files it was bringing back, the DMV must have been easy but a few of them were designed to be more hacker proof. Not a single blip on any of the agencies collective radars popped up, and Ouroboros was stampeding ahead with its search.
"It just breached Stark Tower in under thirty seconds, any alerts on your end Tony?" I asked as it returned copies of a large file and stored them for my use later. The whole room looked at Tony, who was staring at his phone with a finger up and growing very pale as he looked through it. Ouroboros finished with Stark Tower and the simultaneous attack on SHIELD resulted in a breach. Phil crossed his arms and looked really pale as Maria Hill crossed her arms as well, concern crossing her face. The program continued to work, scanning every server it could, and fetching everything on the shaky looking man across the table from me. Fury leaned against the wall, a sly smile on his face.
"Nothing, not even an alert that something may be happening. What the hell did you create Princess?" Tony said and shook his head. The program found everything and pulled back, Fury looked scared of what we had created suddenly, yet somewhat proud.
"Because we had an actual name to work with, it will come back to us much faster with the information we requested. On top of that, it just learned six hundred and fifty four new words and will finalize them before adding them to the Lexicon and assigning them values." I said as the retrieved files began displaying on the screen, everyone in the room shifted as pages displayed on the monitor and Clint actually started looking very worried. At least everyone here was trustworthy, all that information could be destructive if it was lost or fell into the wrong hands.
"Jesus Clint, pay your parking tickets." Tony quipped and Loki snorted at the joke. I turned back around and saw a lot of nervous faces looking at me, I suddenly got the feeling that this was going to be an uphill battle to explain how the software package was helpful.
"I need to talk to my wife about paying attention to the meters when she goes shopping." Clint said and let out a long breath.
"What is to keep anyone out there from using this software against us? It seems like a huge temptation for anyone to steal." Maria said and I nodded at her, understanding her concern and ready to give her all her answers.
"There is a fail safe written into the code, if anyone tries to hack the program, or copy it to another computer it will copy itself to a server in SHIELD and hide itself. The fail safe also makes it self delete the original that the attempt was made against, and it cannot be traced to where it hides unless someone with administrative rights searches for it. It seems extreme, but it way the only way we could guarantee that it would not get used against us or stolen by another entity. We are also restricting access to the program itself, the only three people with any administrative access right now is Twitch, myself, and Director Fury. Anyone we decide among the three of us to allow access with have to be granted with two of us entering our credentials and our pass codes. We also decided that Fury has the right to remove users as he wishes, even if he decides that I cannot be trusted with the program, I have to surrender my access to Ouroboros and delete myself as an administrative person." I said and Steve raised his hand. I was worried about him asking questions, his do-right attitude could screw this entire project up completely for all of us. If any group had a conscience too, it had to be him. Fury pointed at him and I braced for his question, taking in a shaky breath and waiting.
"I like this idea, but what if it pulls some kid's homework for school in its search? Not many school kids are planning terrorist attacks." He said and a few people nodded at the reasoning behind his question. I had to agree with him on his point as well, and I gave him a quick nod as he sat back in his seat.
"At least we hope they are not, you really don't know kids these days Steve." I said and a few chuckles came from around the room. "The sad fact of life now, is that kids are more aware of the scale of Global Terrorism and that it has become a part of the lesson plan in schools as part of the History Curriculum. The human element of having an actual living, breathing person check the data the program returns to us will be an asset to it being a success."
Steve nodded and people in the room looked agreeable to the new software as Tony continued to glance nervously at his phone, his face drawn with worry as he looked at me and then back at the device in his hand. I knew he was waiting for a report form Friday about the cyber attack, but it was never going to come.
"It is not going to come Tony, you can put your phone away." I said and a few people laughed, the nervousness in the sound showing. Tony darkened the screen and put it in his pocket, rubbing his face and glancing back at me.
"What do you call this program?" Phil asked and I looked at him and smiled, proud of my new naming abilities.
"Ouroboros. The name seemed fitting considering that it will unify all the data in the world for our use." I said and Fury took back control of the meeting, he looked somewhat happy that everyone was open to the new spy software. I returned to my seat and made myself comfortable as Fury closed out the screen and retracted it into the ceiling.
"I have to cancel those credit cards now." Clint said and I grinned at him, served him right for being such a jerk to me. I resisted the urge to announce that Clint would be paying for pizza at the end of the meeting, and just settled for giggling to myself.
"Now that Ms. Hawthorne has shown us our new tool to fight our new and very present threat to global security, I feel the need to point out that we do still have a mission. During out last contact with the Horsemen, we got a very strong lead thanks to our colorful new friend, we found a server still operating in an abandoned research facility outside a town in Scotland called Durness. Call it my need to know, but I want a team to go and check the building out. And if possible, bring the server back for the tech team to see if they can pull any information off it." Fury said and I glanced up at Loki nervously. I had a feeling that this was going to require one of both of us to go. I really just wanted to stay in the nice, safe lab on this one and not end up on another insanity spree.
"Barton, Romanov, Hawthorne, and Loki will make up this team. This should be a simple sweep and clear as the building has been abandoned and there are no listed owners. The former owner however, was a Weapons Manufacturer called Jupiter Engineering, I do not currently believe that a person with several Government Contracts would leave a server behind for anyone to find." Fury said and my hand shot up, something clicking in my mind as he finished talking.
"Something to add Ms. Hawthorne?" Fury said and everyone looked at me.
"It think we just identified War." I said and everyone shifted as they studied Fury's reaction. "Jupiter was the Greek God of war, weapons manufacturers make their money during times of conflict. I have a feeling that whoever owns Jupiter Engineering is the representation of War within The Horsemen."
"That actually makes sense, scary as that seems." Tony said and Fury crossed his arms, studying me as he waited for the room to settle.
"Right now, I am going to give this possible lead some resources, but very few of them. We can't gamble on this one, seeing as though, how we do not have many options or leads to work with. Robert can run a search for the owner of the manufacturer through your program." Fury said and I looked back at him, mildly confused.
"Who is Robert?" I said and Twitch shrugged, giving another jerk as I sat back in my chair and shook my head.
"You real name is Robert? You gave me shit about my real name, and you give them yours willingly?" I said, shaking my head and looking annoyed.
"I had to tell them my real name, this is a legit job." Twitch said and I shrugged up at Loki who was studying the weirdo openly.
""Today just got weird." I said and sighed.