The helicopter touched down with a light thud, jerking me from my thoughts. An agent on the landing pad rushed forwards and slid the door open, gave a salute to the Captain, and then scurried away.
"Here."
I looked over to see that Captain America was holding my switchblade out to me. I took it from him and tucked it into my jacket before giving a nod of thanks.
"Almost forget it?" Steve asked as we stood to exit the helicopter.
"No. Just wondering if you were going to give it back or not. You could've gotten my fingerprints off of it, identified me."
"I promised to try and keep Fury off of your back about your identity. A promise is a promise." He shrugged.
I decided that Captain America was the type of person who was honest, straightforward, and kept his word. That didn't mean that I had to trust him.
When I stepped out of the helicopter, Director Fury's scowling, irritated face was the first thing I saw.
"Briefing room. Now." He demanded, turning on his heel and stalking towards the building, leaving no room for discussion. Steve and I complied, following him down a series of hallways and elevators until we reached the room I was taken to when I first arrived at S.H.I.E.L.D.
The rest of the Avengers were already sitting at the long, mahogany table surrounded by dark, leather chairs. The second we entered the room, all of the discussions came to an abrupt end, but I caught fragments of the team members' conversations.
"-keep your eyes open." Agents Barton and Romanoff looked to be in deep discussion about something. The way the assassins looked at me with a spark of distrust and suspicion in their eyes on an otherwise carefully blank face told me it had something to do with me.
"-no, Thor, cars don't run on magic. They run on gas, which..." Tony's voice explained to a confused Thor. Dr. Banner, who was seated next to Stark, had a look of amusement on his face as he listened to Tony and Thor's exchange.
"Good morning." Fury addressed the group, all eyes now focused on him. Steve sat next to Banner and I sat on the far side of the table where none of the chairs close to me were occupied.
"Is that what you call being dragged into a meeting room before six in the morning and without any coffee?" Stark grumbled.
Fury ignored him. The doors to the room opened and a woman wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. catsuit and who had her dark hair in a bun, a man wearing a smart, black suit and tie with brown hair, and Vincent Crowe, with his graying hair slicked back and wearing a similar suit to the other man, stepped into the room.
"Hill, please pull up the information. Crowe, take a seat." Fury ordered.
The woman, Agent Hill, obediently strode to a laptop at the end of the table and typed something, causing a holographic display of information to flicker to life.
My eyes followed Crowe as he sat a few seats away from me to my left. He turned and gave me a chilling, almost mocking smile, before turning his attention back to Director Fury. Something about Crowe set me on edge, but I kept my face, even though you couldn't see much of it, blank and maintained my composure, no matter how irritated or uneasy I felt. Or how much I wanted to smack that stupid smirk off of Crowe's face and demand why I had a feeling that we'd met before.
"Coulson, I assume the mission went well?" Fury asked the agent standing next to him.
"Yes Director, though it was a bit harder than I anticipated. Made it a bit more interesting, though, even with the extra resistance."
Fury nodded in approval.
Thor stood as he noticed Agent Coulson, eyebrows drawn in confusion and looking shocked. "Sir Coulson, how can this be that you are in my presence unharmed and alive? I watched Loki kill you before my very eyes."
"Almost kill me, you mean." Agent Coulson said.
"You see, Thor," Tony supplied, leaning back in his chair with an air of slight disinterest, "St. Nick here thought that the team needed a push, so he told us that Loki had killed Coulson when, in fact, he was in stable condition and resting in a hospital somewhere in Norway while he healed."
Tony's words from earlier rang through my head. "You probably shouldn't trust Fury. His secrets have secrets." No surprisethere.
Stark sent a glare at Fury who shrugged and said, "The Avengers needed a push. It worked, saved millions of people, the world wasn't conquered by aliens. End of story."
"And I got to see Norway." added Coulson, a slight smile on his face.
"I am glad you are well, my friend." Thor beamed, smiling.
"Ok, enough chatting!" Fury cut in. He stalked to the front of the room where the display was and waved his hand. A picture of Corvus Vermont popped up. My father's face seemed to gloat at me as he smiled like a wolf, eyes glinting. A window of information appeared beside his picture.
"Corvus Pyre Vermont. 48 years old, one of the twelve city council members of Fycon City. He married Camilla Alexa Combe and had two daughters. The eldest was Talia Alexandra Vermont, the youngest was Sophia Elizabeth Vermont. They were eleven years apart in age."
Oh, looky here, S.H.I.E.L.D. has my whole life on file. Surprise, surprise.
"Two years ago on February 19th, Mrs. Vermont and her two daughters were killed in a car accident when the car skidded on a path of ice, sending them over the guard rail and into a ditch."
The "car crash", otherwise known as my mother's, sister's, and I's staged death, happened two days after my birthday. That would mean it happened the day after Sophia and I were imprisoned. My father told me that he had faked our deaths in a car crash, but I didn't know the date he did it until a few days ago at O'Leery's Bar after watching the news report.
The same picture that was shown on the news a few days ago popped up, along with a family picture. The smile on my face made me sick. The smile on my father's face made me feel even more nauseated. This was a couple of months before I discovered my father was insane and should be locked in a mental asylum, before I found my mother dead on the living room rug with a knife wound to the stomach. Before Sophia and I were prisoners in the basement of our own home.
I closed my eyes and attempted to calm down my anger and resentment and gain some mental and emotional composure. I looked at the screen in time to see a new picture come up, one of a red, totaled Cadillac in an icy ditch. What made me sick was that you could see three mops of hair, all covered in blood, in the car from where the picture was taken from the back. Silvery blond hair: my mother's. Golden curls: Sophia's. Fiery red hair: mine, or the color it used to be.
Did my father murder three more people, possibly with their hair cut and dyed the same way as ours or who were wearing wigs, to make the scene look completely convincing? He already had control of the head of police, he needn't bother making the scene look more realistic if he was already paying the head of police to cover up the crime and say that the bodies were identified as us.
I already knew the answer to my own question: would he murder three more people to complete the accident scene when it was unnecessary? Yes, he would. Why? Because he kills people for entertainment, for fun.
My anger rose and I strained not to draw my dagger and drive it through the image of his face or dive out the window and attempt to find him right then and there and make him plead for mercy. Make him feel what would only be a fraction of my physical and emotional pain.
Fury continued his report of his findings. "Talia was sixteen and Sophia was only five. Their funeral was held a few days later on the 22nd. The story made big news in Fycon City because Vermont is one of the most influential council members of the city, and as Quinn has already stated, the most powerful."
What better way for my father to gloat over me than to give me a funeral? I remember that day because he came into the cell in the basement that Sophia and I were being held in and gave us a bouquet of flowers that someone had left on our graves.
"Wait, hold on a second." Tony interjected, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "JARVIS, where was I two years ago on February the 22nd?"
A smooth, male, and slightly robotic British voice answered Tony. "You were at the funeral of Mrs. Camilla Vermont and her two daughters, sir. Ms. Potts made you accept the invitation to their funeral because at the time you were sponsoring a project of the city council's called The Soul of Fycon City, a project that gives donations to many nonprofit organizations in Fycon City that need extra financial help."
Wow, Tony Stark was at my funeral. And he donated money to "The Soul of Fycon City". What he doesn't know is that the money donated to that fund undoubtedly went into my father's pocket to sponsor his little human "projects", aka experiments and torture.
"Thanks, JARVIS." After sending a glance at me, Tony explained. "JARVIS is my butler. He's an artificial intelligence that I made, seeing as all of the butlers I had when I was in my teens quit because I pulled so many pranks on them and terrorized them to the point of them leaving, even with their hefty salaries. Safe to say I didn't like any of my butlers, they nagged too much. That's why I made my own. JARVIS still nags, but I can always reprogram him. Did you know..."
"Sir, I believe that you are rambling." JARVIS interrupted.
Tony paused mid-sentence and glanced around the room at everyone's slightly annoyed and exasperated faces.
"Right. Sorry. JARVIS, do I still donate to that fund?"
"No, sir. You ceased funding the program after you had a disagreement, shall we say, with one of the council members while you were at the funeral." If an AI could show slight distaste and disapproval, it was JARVIS.
Tony's eyes lit up with mischief. "Ah, I remember that! During the visitation, (they had a lot of food, it was really quite fancy), a man was yelling at a waitress who he had run into, causing her to drop a tiny bit of caviar on his shoe. He threw a hissy fit, was being a real jackass. Anyway, I ended up pouring a glass of wine down his suit."
Tony looked up to see that a few, like Barton and Thor, were slightly amused. Everyone else looked slightly annoyed, and Steve was giving Tony a disapproving look. I kept my face stoic, but was actually amused and fought back a smirk. I wondered which council member Tony had encountered, all of them were righteous, pompous jerks, Corvus Vermont being the worst.
Fury sighed. "Okay, story time is over. Stark, have you ever met Vermont? Do you know which council member it was that you fought with?
"No, I've never had an actual conversation with Vermont. And I don't know which council member that was. JARVIS, any ideas?"
"Josiah Enderton, sir."
At this, I wanted to get up and give Tony Stark a metal. Josiah was my great uncle, something like three times removed. I had met him before, and the only word to describe him was asshole. I never liked it when he came over to discuss business with my father.
Coulson, who had been flipping through files on the council members, said, "Josiah Enderton is a distant uncle of Corvus Vermont."
"Well, that settles it. I still regret nothing." Tony said.
Fury then went into detail about Corvus Vermont's address, his family (He was an only child and his parents were already deceased, same as with my mother), and his job as a councilman. Fury was able to uncover some of Vermont's business partners, but S.H.I.E.L.D. only knew about half of them. They had already run into a few dead ends because they couldn't prove who was in the League and who wasn't, but they had some leads.
What they didn't know is that I had already interrogated all of their leads and then some more they didn't know about. After I interrogated someone, I made them forget that the conversation even happened, thanks to a piece of technology that I had. A month or so after I escaped, I called a friend of mine, Lucius Nash. He works in a high position job for Fletcher Industries, which is a large business in Dayton City, New York that makes technology and weapons.
My father used to take me to business parties, but the only reason I went to any of the parties was because it made my father look good, gave him a little toy to show off. At one of these parties, I met Lucius. He was the only person I met at any of the gatherings that my father used to drag me to that was actually nice and we quickly became friends. He's the only person that I have ever told about what my father did and the only person who knows that I'm the Phantom.
Lucius was shocked that I was alive, but he did admit to having suspicions against my father and had dropped all business deals with him after my 'death'. When I told him my plan to seek vengeance against my father, he was opposed to it at first, saying that it was extremely dangerous and he didn't want me to get hurt. I argued that since everyone already thought I was dead it was a perfect opportunity to investigate and get some information. Also, I was the only person who knew how to kill the demons that were plaguing Fycon City that had already taken more than thirty lives. Lucius eventually relented and agreed to help me, but he made me swear that if I needed help I was to call him.
He made me my daggers, my leather jacket, and these little memory erasing chips. After I interrogate someone, instead of having to kill them, I have these tiny, clear patches that I put on the person's neck, right behind the ear. The chip instantly dissolves into the person's skin and causes memory loss of about fifteen minutes.
That way, if the person I interrogated does realize that something had happened, they would forget who it was and what was said. It helps my conscience knowing that I don't have to kill someone after I get information out of them.
The leather jacket that Lucius invented is quite genius. He created something called microfabric. Microfabric isn't really fabric, but is made to look, feel and act like it. Lucius cut a large patch out of the back of my leather jacket and put microfabric in its place. The microfabric instantly looked like the leather around it, taking its texture and color. When I put the jacket on and open my wings, the microfabric instantly shifts and allows my wings to come though the back of the jacket.
This prevents me from having to cut slits in the back of my jacket for my wings. It would look a little bit suspicious if I wore my jacket to work after prowling about the city as the Phantom and I had two gaping holes in the back of my jacket. People would either find me sketchy and suspicious or think I'm a lunatic. Either way, it would draw unnecessary attention to me that I don't want.
"Phantom, do you have anything to add to this meeting? Since apparently you know more about this than we do."
I could hear the dry sarcasm in Fury's voice. Of course he thinks that S.H.I.E.L.D. knows more about Corvus Vermont's past and personal life than I do.
"Anyone have paper and a pen?" I asked.
This seemed to take Fury by surprise, but he nodded to Agent Coulson who acquired the items I requested and placed them in front of me. As I sketched, I explained.
"The League has a group of the most elite and powerful, the people with the highest ranking. It's called the Inner Circle. The leader of the Inner Circle is no other than Corvus Vermont."
In the center of the paper, I sketched a skull with six squid-like legs coming from it and curling downwards, making it resemble an octopus. Above the skull was a triangle, pointing downwards. Three thick, dark, horizontal lines were in the triangle. The first was at the top and was the thickest line of the three, the second was in the middle, and the third was at the point, making a smaller triangle.
"This," I stated, turning the paper around so the rest of the room could see, "is the symbol for the League."
"The symbol underneath the triangle is the HYDRA symbol." Steve Rogers said.
"The League was originally a part of HYDRA. After HYDRA fell in the forties, a group split away and created the League. They kept the HYDRA symbol, but added their own, which is the triangle. Every member in the Inner Circle has to go through an initiation of sorts, where the triangle is branded on their left wrist. The left wrist was chosen because the symbol can be hidden beneath a watch."
Some people winced at the mention of branding something into your skin.
"So, what you're saying is don't trust people with watches?" Tony Stark intoned as the paper was passed around the room for everyone to look at. "Because they might be in a creepy brotherhood of blood thing."
At this, many people rolled their eyes.
"You do realize that you're wearing a watch, right?" Barton deadpanned, Romanoff smirking beside him.
Tony then preceded to move his watch to his right wrist.
"And how do we know that you aren't making this up? You have no proof." Vincent Crowe sneered at me. "For all we know, you could be lying to throw us off of the trail."
"And why would I do that?" I retorted. "I want innocent people to stop getting their souls ripped from their bodies. I want the League destroyed. I want Corvus Vermont dead. Why would I lie to a high-intelligence agency that has valuable resources that I can use to find Vermont and his colleagues?"
Crowe leaned back in his chair, eying me with disdain. "Why do I not trust someone who won't reveal her face and where she gets all of her information? Someone who is out to kill a man and won't tell us why."
"Agent Crowe, I believe that is enough. Please return to your other duties. You are dismissed." Fury ordered, emanating an air of indisputable power with just those words.
Crowe stiffly nodded and rose. As he passed me on his way out of the room, he hissed something low enough for only me to hear.
"This isn't over."
Believe me, I thought, I never assumed it was.