Nick Fury sat dark and famously stern at the head of a large wooden table arranged in a surprisingly inconspicuous office; his mahogany skin was beset with wrinkles and discontent but otherwise impassive while his large paws were locked together into a collective fist. His singular eye scanned the room, calling upon years of hard-earned experience to detect any hint of unscrupulous influence.
Sat equally serious to his right was Steve Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, clad in his full costume; his vibranium shield proudly rested in front of him, laid still under his tensed fingers. Out of all the inhabitants of the room he looked the most genuinely unhappy to be there.
Sat to his left with an expression Fury could only describe as trepid was Tony Stark, the Iron Man, also encased in his full body armour; his metal fingers were rapping out a steady beat of subtle clunks onto the tabletop.
Fury wasn't going to demean either of them and ask him to stop, not in their present company, there was too much at stake.
Opposite Fury's position stood one of the most grizzled men he'd ever seen, and he'd seen plenty: clad in thick, grey plating, militarily poised with his feet apart and hands firmly clenched behind his back; his robotic countenance was marred by several blade-like scars running in rake-like lances over his thin lips. His dull-grey eyes returned the director's scrutiny tenfold.
He was flanked on either side by a pair of not quite as imposing armed guards dressed just as professionally but much less heavily than he; their helmets were comprised of small, disc-eyed gas masks outfitted with thick, expensive rebreathers to filter out airborne contagions.
All they knew about him for certain was that his name was Cross and that he was extremely dangerous. Fury did his best to observe the man without glaring; from the subdued slip of malcontent in Cross' eye then, Fury developed a hunch that he felt just as precariously placed as they did.
Perhaps Cross' superiors had the same ideas as his.
Agents Hawkeye and Black Widow had been unable to attend due to 'business' (no matter how vociferously Blackwatch claimed that all the avengers needed to hear what they had to say)
Thor had professed... dissatisfaction about being dragged back to Earth to acquiesce the 'requests' of such a shadowy collective as blackwatch. He refused to be boxed into such a tiny space and was waiting outside, he would make sure that any attempt that anyone might make in subterfuge would be thwarted directly.
but Fury wasn't worried, Blackwatch weren't daft enough to try anything here; they needed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cooperation for something.
Something important.
As Cross stiffly set up a deceptively crude looking projection board the fourth and final member of Fury's entourage: Doctor Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic began to fidget, Fury knew from the man himself that he had a little more information on the nature of this meeting but as expected he had been sworn to secrecy; once again Blackwatch intended everything to go their way here, they wanted to carefully control the information granted and how it was interpreted.
They'd done a damned job of it so far; the furthest Fury knew he was the only one on their side present who was even aware of their existence and even if what little information he had beyond that was good he knew he would have to consider himself lucky to know an inkling of their true nature.
The only defence against such an organisation in the circumstances Fury found himself in was an attentive eye and an objective mind, and he had two of the top thinkers of the present day in his company.
How was blackwatch planning to fool them if anyone at all?
Perhaps they'd decided that knowledge of this matter could be trusted in the hands of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Fat chance.
By now Cross had brought out a neat collection of documents and handed them to his guard who in turn passed them to all the others, including Fury.
Cross' voice was smoky and monotonous as he began the briefing.
"Mr Walters, gentlemen" Fury nodded at the name of his cover, it wouldn't keep them from suspecting him as something more but it was the only lead he'd give them.
"The details of your assignment you'll be able to read on the papers you've been handed, but I'll be giving you the general rundown just in case, but remember, you're only going to be told this once." His eyes took in his audience and his impression suddenly became threatening without his stance or his tone changing at all "any information exchanged here is to remain confidential, otherwise my superiors and I have the permission and capacity to systematically destroy each and every one of you, am I clear?"
Fury would've at least raised his eyebrows under other circumstances.
Before they'd left the helicarrier for this meeting the director had been very specific when he'd addressed his team about doing nothing to offend whomever 'Gentek' may have assigned to be their go-between, but he didn't think they would try such an overt tactic.
Apparently cross' methods weren't unanimously accepted though: one of his guards shifted ever so slightly in his boots while his counterpart began to absently finger the communications device on his chest.
Regardless of their inner feelings towards Cross' promise all the men in the room nodded an affirmative. Maybe it was a good thing Thor wasn't in here.
Cross, seemingly satisfied, stood aside from the projection board and allowed the small box fixed hastily to the ceiling to whirr quietly before it cast a sterile light on the white surface of the board; it blinked into an image of a face Fury had seen a couple times throughout his involvement in attempting to bring the recent attack of DX1118 under control.
Which had been difficult with Blackwatch having almost absolute control over intelligence regarding the disease as well as S.H.I.E.L.D's jurisdiction in the red zones.
Alex Mercer's pale face was shadowed by his large, grey hood; a pair of icy blue eyes stared out from the dark at Cross and his audience, rimmed with what might've been fatigue lines; his mouth was set into an emotionless line making his whole face look vapid and corpselike.
"I'll assume you've all heard of this man: Alex Mercer?" Richards was starting to look visibly uncomfortable even as he nodded with the rest of them again "The official story is that the doctor was killed in penn station, carrying a potent bio-weapon engineered by a known terrorist cell" he paused "DX1118, otherwise known as the blacklight virus"
"These claims are only partly true. Dr Franklyn, if you would?" Cross finished talking and a tall, wispy-haired woman who'd been hugging the darkest corners of the room until now suddenly moved to stand at the captain's side, she cleared her throat before revealing a voice as cold and clear as polar ice.
"Alex Mercer was cornered in Penn Station after taking a vial of DX1118, concealed in his coat pocket as insurance." The image switched to the chronological perspectives of a series of security cameras, revealing a paranoid-looking Alex Mercer dressed in the same getup as his previous image. From each camera shot they saw him shift through the crowds in the streets before heading down into the subway "He was tracked by our associates and cornered" sure enough there was Mercer backed up against a wall, the surrounding crowd had created a small arena where the squad of overdressed operatives looked to be attempting to reason with him "he refused to surrender. Before he was gunned down he smashed the vial and released the virus onto the city"
The footage stopped after Alex Mercer cast the vial to the concrete floor then shuddered violently as he was riddled with bullets.
Dr Franklyn's voice might have quavered with her next words "we thought Alex Mercer was dead, we were wrong".
They watched as the doctor awoke suddenly from a morgue autopsy table, scaring the surgeons half to death before he too stumbled clumsily out of frame.
"What you're about to see next may also be a little hard to grasp" he was almost offended, while he could damn well feel the resentment emanating from the scientists at that remark.
They'd just seen a man pull a Lazarus
The next set of viewings were from the seat of a standard military helicopter, through the restricted view of the orb windows it could've been anywhere in New York at this time. The passengers, marines from the looks of their uniforms, were making small talk over the radio to compensate for a heavy rumbling that could've been attributed to a variety of things.
"I'm telling you man it's got to be a bunch of them, all in that hoodie getup, runnin' around, causin' shit!" this first speaker was out of frame, could've been the one holding the camera but their voices were garbled under the static of the radio.
"C'mon sir, you know that shit's against regs" the smallest man turned as the camera swivelled to focus on him and made a small, throwaway gesture before returning to staring pensively out the window.
"Kid, I know what the hell I'm doing; some o' the guys just want a bit of documentation, something to make us look good for the folks back home, so hush up alright?" a pair of soldiers, one aside the cameraman and one next to the previous objector looked like they'd meant to oblige him and start singing before the helicopter jerked violently to and fro as though something had yanked hard on its tail, close to pushing and pulling the men right out of their seats to the point where they grunted and cried out as their seatbelts kept them from falling right into the doors.
The camera almost fell out of the commander's hand on the next lurch which looked to have been to the left this time (why the man hadn't reached for his gun or ordered his men to brace themselves was beyond Fury).
The radio was already swarmed with frantic orders and expletives as the groaning of the helicopter's hull became painfully shrill.
He caught the codename 'ZEUS' and a frightened declaration of a 'highjacking'
Then the left doors were torn off with a thunderous bang to reveal the streets of what looked to be Hell's Kitchen fast approaching; the cries of the soldiers were suddenly smothered out by the wind as Alex Mercer leapt in from the pilot's cabin and... grew blades of cold silver in place of fingers that cleaved smoothly through the nearest men, reducing them to bloody mush within seconds.
The few bullets that the others managed to bury in him as they fell screaming seemed to simply disappear into his body.
Before the feed was abruptly cut off when the copter smacked into the asphalt, Fury observed a set of black, red-veined tendrils drill into what used to be human.
Alex Mercer looked like he might as well have come straight from hell in that last frame which Cross had deliberately returned to and paused on.
The whole room had grown deathly still; both Stark and Rogers had turned as pale as anyone could expect them to, desperately clinging to what shreds of composure they still had (which were just enough to keep them looking respectable thankfully) while Reed had silently buried his face in his hands.
"What was that?" Fury on the other hand had somehow managed to become even more deadpan than Cross and he phrased the question like an order.
Before Dr Franklyn had even cleared her throat to respond however Cross stepped forward and obliged him instead, "the modified virus rewrote his genetic code and reanimated his corpse to an extent we don't fully understand; Alex Mercer was a veritable genius before he became this thing and now he's a living weapon, we have no idea just how far he went with it. and we have reason to believe that he's still at large"
"That's why you need our help, to stop him." said Captain America who had locked eyes with Cross'.
"yes" he replied.
"do you have any idea where he might be?" said Tony
"yes"
"there's one more thing you should all know, it concerns our methods of locating him" Richards finally spoke up and presented their inquisitive faces with the expression of a man stuck in the path of a speeding car.
"it's not just his body he can change, there's a very good reason none of you ever encountered him before during these past few weeks"
"the same reason you and your team did?"
"yes, it concerns the methods we'll be using to track him down and defeat him, there's only one weapon that's been proven to incapacitate Alex Mercer, even temporarily".
The weather on that day was unpleasant enough to incorporate rain with the cold forcing Tony and his friends to huddle closer together and draw their coats over each other, and as per what had recently become the usual there was only one person missing.
"H-hey Al, you okay?" Tony chattered meekly and pulled his ragged coat as firmly around him as it would go as another bone-chilling breeze tightened his frail muscles and wrinkled the tails and tears of his trousers.
He resisted the urge to gasp even as the woman to his right put her arm around his shoulder and offered him a sad smile.
'Al' was standing away from the rest, in the crossroads between the alleyway and the street: his black coat and grey hood had become thoroughly soaked yet he was showing no signs of being at all bothered by the unforgiving cold, he turned to Tony and though his voice was as soft as Tony had ever heard it he still wanted to cower before those eyes of his, glinting at him even through the darkness and the rain.
"I'm fine Tony" he spoke gravelly "just fine" .