I'd been in denial. I never believed that it was really Loki, or that SHIELD was allowed to disregard even our most basic rights and just arrest people at random. I ignored it because it seemed too far-fetched, and because I thought I was safe behind my college-dropout-gas-station-night-manager veneer. Then again, I should have known better; their morals were greyed and I was technically considered a terrorist.
The Public Service Announcement had ended with Fury announcing a 'short term truce' with Loki, in which he would be assisting SHIELD in hunting the hacker down. They'd all been escorted off stage, with Loki throwing a casual smirk out to the camera amid the sudden uproar of panic and pandemonium. New York had a collective heart attack, the public took to the streets, and from the helicarrier it was hard to tell if the orange spider-webbing city night light was due to streetlamps or firelight.
It was debatable whether or not this was the reaction that SHIELD had hoped for, but no one could deny that they weren't prepared for it. Larger cities with their hyperventilating populace suddenly found themselves surrounded by black vans with agents spilling out, and mid-sized towns like my own had at least five agents patrolling the more important buildings. Terrified citizens were essentially bullied into peace without any explanation; and the Avengers were nowhere to be seen.
My guess was that they were up in SHIELDS space ship pretending to guard Loki. Or at least the actor playing Loki; the whole situation seemed like a scare tactic intended to frighten me out of hiding. Best case scenario, Fury probably hoped that I'd turn myself in and beg them not to sic their scary god on me. Based on the agent's reaction though, he seemed to expect nothing short of 'no response' from the hacker.
I'll give them this though; they did technically get a response from me – which might end up being my downfall. I had initially panicked along with everyone else, and took to the internet to figure out just what the hell. That was my damning step; in my panicked daze I went to the one place I was sure would have answers - the hacking community (which was abuzz like the kicked hornets' nest that it was). These were the people that would be affected most by SHIELDS sudden move; of course they'd look to one another with a "what the hell do we do now?" expression carved into their digital faces.
I realized a second too late that these were the exact sites that SHIELD would be tracking. I've never ripped a modem apart faster in my life. But it was too late by then, my computer had made a ping in their servers and I was now present and accounted for. Sure, I was now one in a billion – but one in a billion is a lot worse that none in a billion when you're trying to hide.
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It seemed impossible, but the inside of the helicarrier was nearly as chaotic as the streets it hovered over. Agents scurried around dragging reams of papers with numbers and names attached, tripped over wires, and fell face-first into screens that emitted a sickly green glow. The director stood in the middle of it all, somehow dodging the spilled coffee, flailing limbs, and sheets of paper raining from above. Fury glanced up to the bridge that spanned over the control center to see a fallen agent attempt to gather his runaway papers back into a box.
Three of the Avengers had themselves pressed up against a wall, keeping out of the way and a wary eye on the unorthodox member chained to one of the chairs. Once again, Loki seemed to be the only one enjoying his time on the helicarrier. No one else present was cheerful, least of all the Avengers. Not a single one of them had approved Fury's plan to bring Loki back to earth; but when Fury fetched him regardless of their input, they found themselves thrust into the position of being Loki's babysitters.
To be fair (and if you judged it by the chaos that ensued), Loki had so far behaved himself and upheld his end of the deal to help Fury shake the hacking community. Fury had also foreseen the massive public outcry that Loki's plan would cause, and reacted accordingly. Seven years of research into various hacking attempts and the coming and goings of the community as a whole had given SHIELD a vague idea of where to start looking once the shit hit the fan. They were now into the process of wire-tapping and tailing persons of interest, both within and without the US. If substantiated as possibly being the hacker, these people would be moved down the line to have their backgrounds checked, family checked, alibi checked – everything. If they 'passed' and there was great probable cause that they were the hacker – they'd be put into SHIELDS 'program'. Not one at a time though – all the possibilities would be scooped up at once to avoid them warning one another.
The goal of the program was to have all the possible hackers join SHIELD and through a process of elimination smoke the real hacker (or hackers) out. That was Loki's job once they all arrived; either in the helicarrier or one of shields bases depending on how many there were. Fury's reasoning was that one slippery bastard could easily recognize another.
Also he really was desperate.
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It took a few days, but after talking myself down from destroying everything electronic within a three mile radius, I managed to fall back into my regular routine. I'd sleep until three PM, bum around the house, and then leave for work around nine PM. I used to gas station's Wifi to look up on SHIELDS current events on Google's news page; and it took a great deal of self-control not to go back to the chatrooms. I knew for a fact that there was a hacker on one of the sites who worked in SHIELD; and I also knew that he was first and foremost, more hacker than SHIELD. I bet he knew more about what was going on than anyone else. I'd kill to get a hold of him.
I originally thought the riots would've lasted much longer, but the SHIELD agents were very thorough. It died down in a little under three months; and nowadays there were only the occasional cop cars and black vans rolling through. In the beginning the agents had crawled through the cities until the public either felt safe enough or more terrified than before - and then suddenly moved on. From the traffic in the cities though, their movement seemed random. Some bigger cities with more riots had less SHIELD agents than some smaller towns. Our one initially only had five agents - but now there were eleven… and they all hung around the military records tower. While I'm sure that military records are very important; I knew for a fact that the only thing that building held was receipts for military supplies and audio logs. It's an odd place for a party.
I wondered when they'd be going back to whatever point they'd spawned from, but they stayed a full year after Fury had appeared on TV. Their movement remained as vague as ever, with odd conglomerations of them going through the records tower and then driving off again. They'd sometimes roll up in their vans and buy some gas, cigarettes, soft drinks – they seemed human almost. Well, I only ever saw one or two; but I heard from the day manager that they had driven up demand by fifty percent – they preferred this gas station to the other (which he insisted was because he was such an attractive person). Personally, I thought it was just because this one was a whole ten miles closer than the other - but what do I know.
The agents eventually left the surrounding areas – save ours and another town over. The ones that left the other towns all seemed to pool into ours and the one over; I was beginning to think that SHIELD had claimed that building as their own. It wouldn't surprise me - they had a habit of doing whatever they want. But there they stayed, unmoving and ultimately forgettable, for a full year. Their black vans no longer surprised me when they pulled up, and the oddness of them coming in and buying Funions and Skittles in the middle of the night eventually wore off. I should've recognized it for what it really was – the calm before the storm.
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There was an odd peace that had settled over the agents in the helicarrier. After a full year, Loki had finally been moved to the below ground facility that the hackers would be introduced to. There had been too many in the end for Fury to safely contain on the helicarrier – nearly three hundred in all. That number was a lot smaller than what had originally been projected, but in order for Loki's plan to work they needed room for five hundred total, plus the regular SHIELD agents. The helicarrier just wasn't a feasible option at that point.
"Could be a good thing," Bruce had commented in the end. "There's so much technology up there – say they hack that too…"
Fury had grumbled an agreement and moved the Avengers, Loki, the agents that he wanted for the operation, as well as regular field agents to keep the control - all back down to earth. With the initial phase of the plan through, he intended to move on. And the helicarrier was now stress and Loki-free to send out a mass missive to the remaining agents in their cities to move in on their targets.