Title: The Set-Up
Author: SLynn
Summary: Three months after Clint Barton's death and what remains of the Avengers is still struggling to make sense of it all as the threat to SHIELD, and to them all, looms larger.
Notes: I don't say it enough... thank you, Tripp3235 for being an awesome beta!
Director Fury, Agent Morse, Bruce and Tony were all waiting on Steve and Maria.
Tony had filled Bruce in on a lot of the details he'd missed out on but after that was done, and it didn't take nearly long enough, there was nothing else to say.
Morse kept fiddling with her communicator and throwing dirty looks over her shoulder at the door. Fury remained stock still, his chair turned slightly towards the front of the room. Bruce would every so often sneak a glance at Tony, who could only shrug his shoulders in response.
All Tony could assume was that they were either killing one another or...
Thankfully, the elevator arrived.
Maria stepped off first, completely changed into her uniform, her face steady and calm. Steve was right behind her, only a few steps back, his own visage blank and impassive.
Neither of them offered any kind of explanation for their delay.
Director Fury waited until they both took their seats before standing and moving to the front of the room.
"We should have had this conversation a long time ago," he began, giving each of them a hard look and pausing for half a beat before continuing on. "There is a faction inside of SHIELD looking to end my tenure," Fury said without a hint of emotion. "Their first actions were political and I'd hoped those actions would not extend to those closest to me, but that hope was in vain. This has been a long time coming. I knew it. Agent Coulson knew it. Agent Hill as well. How long it has been coming, I didn't even know, until Agent Morse left her post in Los Angeles and implored me to listen."
"If I had listened then, some of this might have been averted," he went on, and for the first time he sounded disturbed. "I didn't listen. I didn't understand what she'd been trying to say and I ignored the warning signs that this was larger than I wanted to believe. I thought it was personal, but it's more than that. This is a regime change happening in shadows."
"Phase Two, which I was onboard with, was not the beginning," he explained. "It was always a back-up plan for me, but not for them, and when you succeeded, you derailed all of that; all their work, but not for long. So they struck back. They began to further limit me where they could. They struck at the agents they could reach, Barton and Romanoff. They tried again tonight with Agent Hill, despite the fact that I had already removed her from the situation as best I could."
"How's Jasper?" Maria asked as soon as he paused.
"On his way," Fury answered with a brief nod at the recognized danger. "I've been working on his transfer back since his relocation. And tomorrow, Dr. Banner, you need to bring Romanoff home."
"How exactly am I supposed to do that?" he asked warily.
"You'll think of something," Fury said with a nod, dismissing his doubts. "It's time to close ranks."
"These weapons SHIELD was creating," Steve said, trying to follow along but feeling as if something key was missing, "there are more?"
"And if there are more," Tony interjected, "how are there more? The Tesseract is no longer on Earth."
"May I?" Agent Morse asked Director Fury, getting to her feet and awaiting his approval. He gave her a nod and retook his seat, giving her the floor. "Understand that I have known for some time that all of you were under surveillance, inside of SHIELD and out. I've been a part of those teams and have filed reports. Along the way I've discovered... certain information wasn't adding up to me in the way it should have. A story started to emerge that wasn't... it wasn't what it seemed. Counter Intelligence likes to pretend that HYDRA is still very active when they know it isn't. It's kind of like a double-blind. Most agents don't take it serious, they dismiss it, but at the same time it is of importance. Not as an active entity but because of what they once did."
"What exactly did they do?" Tony asked curiously, casting a glance at Steve and Bruce, who each looked wary.
"Your friend from Asgard already told you," Morse shrugged. "I've reviewed all the file footage from the Helicarrier on the day from New York and it comes back to the Tesseract. Things didn't change here on Earth two years ago because of the incident in New Mexico; they had already changed. That was just a more visible event. SHIELD was not the first organization to create weapons with that... thing," she explained. "Seventy years ago HYDRA was making their own weapons with the Tesseract and by doing that they had already signaled that Earth was ready for a higher form of war to these other realms we know nothing about."
"You're serious," Tony stated not sure if he shouldn't be asking. "You believe this."
"Then why haven't we already been invaded and conquered?" Steve asked with a growing sense of dread. "What's holding them back?"
"Luck," she shrugged. "I don't have an answer for that. I'm sorry. I don't know."
"So this is a guess?" Bruce inquired, leaning forward and rubbing his eyes in an effort to focus clearer.
"It's not a guess," she answered confidently. "There have long been alien sightings. Reports of encounters and, probably not without coincidence, those instances have gone up during major world conflicts."
"Tabloid fodder," Tony said as he shook his head dismissively. "Do you have proof?"
Morse's hand went up to her pendant and with a twist it detached into a usable USB drive. She slid it across the table to Tony. He got up and hooked the drive up before returning to his seat and sliding a remote back her way.
She pulled up several files and video clips before turning back to the gathered group and looking a little anxious.
"This is early February, 2009," she explained. "There was a joint training exercise off of a carrier in the South Pacific with both Navy and Air Force pilots. This is a composite of the audio and video recordings from the three pilot's cockpits and radio transmissions. Can we dim the lights?"
"You heard the lady, JARVIS," Tony said, and the lights automatically turned down.
Morse stepped back and clicked play.
The view from the lead jet's dash was serene. All blue sky and ocean with very few clouds. For the first minute there was minimal chatter, just the three pilots confirming the exercise's success to command and then silence.
"Race you back, Burger," the first voice said over the din across the line.
"Wouldn't be fair, Mellow," the second voice, a woman this time, replied. "I'm much better than you are."
"Quiet on the comms," the final pilot said, a different man. And for a second or two it was quiet. "And Danvers is right, Marsh. She'd wipe the floor with you."
"Ha-ha," Danvers, call sign Burger, laughed. "Hear it. Learn it. Live it, Marsh. I'm better. Termite says so. It is a fact."
"Faster isn't better," Marsh, a.k.a. Mellow said, but he sounded amused. "You'd think Termite would have figured that out already. That's why all his girls come to me at the end of the night when he's done."
Both Danvers and Marsh laughed, and Termite, whose real name was Haskell, responded with a spirited, "Fuck both of you."
They only laughed harder for his efforts.
Until a sudden beam of light was clearly visible, if only briefly, off on the left side of the cockpits.
"Hold on," Danvers said, sobering in an instant. "You see that? I saw some kind of light back there."
"What island chain is that?" Haskell asked.
"No clue," Marsh responded. "Sure it wasn't the water reflecting the sun or something?"
"I know what I saw," Danvers said, and this time she sounded irritated. "Could have been a signal flare."
"Command," Haskell said over the main line, "we've spotted something off one of the smaller uncharted chains out here. Going back for a second look."
"You're clear," the voice responded. "Just make it quick and keep this line open."
"Roger that," Haskell said.
He swung back around, still in the lead of the formation, but this time the other two jets were just within peripheral sight. As soon as the island chain came back into view, as the three dipped lower into the horizon, the beam of light flashed again.
"We're going to swing back for another pass," Haskell decided and this time. "Still not sure what-"
It became chaos.
The jet swung wide around the small island in the center of the chain and it looked as if an explosion had taken place. There was fire and smoke and suddenly, it no longer looked like an explosion but like a rocket launch. Except, it wasn't a rocket, and it was much faster than the three jets, and bigger too.
It ripped straight through the jet on the left, the one Marsh had been piloting, and tore the wing off of Haskell's jet in the process.
Everything spun.
Morse stood up and paused the scene and frame by frame reversed the descent until...
"What in the hell is that?" Tony asked stressing each word clearly and half rising out of his chair.
The image was a little blurry on the screen, but clear enough. It was gigantic and humanoid and certainly nothing they'd ever seen before. It was like the Iron Man suit, but not. It was more robotic. Larger, much larger than even Obadiah Stane's monstrosity of a suit had been. The metal was unfamiliar; the colors deeper and ingrained.
"Is it... is it sentient?" Bruce asked, also on his feet and moving closer to the image with a look of bewildered unease.
"For four years whole departments in SHIELD have known about..." Maria stammered, pointing at the screen and at a loss. "What is that?"
"It is a Sentry."
Every set of eyes in the room turned towards the sound of the new voice at the back of the room.
Thor removed his cloak and gazed about the room before his eyes found the bow Tony had hung up in remembrance of Clint. Without saying more, Thor strode across the room and placed his hand on it, briefly shutting his eyes and dipping his head, before moving back to the table and continuing on as if he hadn't just shown up out of nowhere.
"It is from the Kree Empire," he said, dropping his cloak against the back of the chair nearest Tony's own, but staying on his feet. "They are their eyes and ears. Their guardians. They have been watching Midgard unaware for some time."
"Not this one," Morse said. "At least it isn't any more."
"They will know if it is no longer in service," Thor advised, but only after giving her a long, hard look. "Whether or not they care is another matter."
"What do you know about this empire?" Fury asked Thor, getting back to his feet and squaring his shoulders.
"Little," Thor admitted easily. "We have no dealings with them but my brother has had much to say as of late. The Chitauri were eager to get to Earth before the Kree arrived in force, but he could not say when or even if that force was actually to arrive."
"Couldn't say?" Tony asked skeptically.
"Or would not," Thor said with shrug. "The Kree are an extremely advanced people. A dangerous one. You'll have reason to fear them."
"And not very friendly," Bruce tacked on, pointing at the screen. "Three jets downed. How many more did it take to finish it off?"
"No more," Morse answered, pulling up an additional files for view on screen and at their individual monitors set into the table. "It was apparently malfunctioning. The carrier registered the shockwave when this... this Sentry exploded. SHIELD was able to recover some of the pieces and the remains of the officers on scene. Major Haskell and Lieutenant Marsh were killed almost instantly. Captain Danvers was not."
"So, SHIELD is using bits and pieces of this thing?" Bruce asked.
"To make more weapons?" Morse asked, waiting for the nod she knew she'd get in response. "Yes. And they have been now for years as a part of Phase One."
"She survived this?" Steve asked, still stuck on that glossed over piece of information and pointing at the wreckage on the screen. "You said Captain Danvers wasn't killed."
"Initially she was classified as MIA, but two days later she was recovered, unconscious, unresponsive, and completely unharmed. There wasn't a scratch on her. Not a burn. Nothing."
"This press release says that all three pilots perished," Tony said, pushing the article he'd found to the main screen. "In a training accident, my favorite standby."
"Going off of the reports I have been able to dig up, Captain Danvers status was kept under wraps. There was concern that she'd become contaminated. Her blood work was... altered."
"So they let her family think she was dead?" Steve pushed, clearly not happy as he looked down at the photo he'd found.
"This is nothing I had control over," Morse felt the need to say as she shifted uneasily from one foot to the next. And it was true, she'd only discovered this; she hadn't perpetrated the ruse.
"Wait a second," Bruce said, shaking his head and looking stern. "Go back. Altered. Altered how?"
"I don't know."
"And they just... kept her?" Steve persisted, leaning forward and feeling more than a little annoyed. He was angry. And without looking, he knew Bruce was angry too.
"Were they experimenting on this woman?" Bruce asked.
"I don't know," Morse repeated, stressing her words carefully. "I didn't order it. I don't condone it. It wasn't my call."
"What do you know?" Tony asked, having picked up what Steve and Bruce's concerns were about. If there was a rogue section of SHIELD randomly picking up people with altered biochemistries, Steve and Bruce were probably on the top of their wish list.
"The report is largely redacted," Morse sighed. "How Captain Danvers was altered isn't explicit, I only gleaned that it was at a cellular level and it was unlike anything heard of before. It's all there," she said, waving at the files they already had access to. "That's all I've got and it doesn't really matter. It's a moot point now."
"Why is that?" Maria asked, her eyes on the report Morse had mentioned.
"She died," Morse answered flatly.
"How?" Tony asked sounding unconvinced.
"Of seemingly natural causes two weeks after she'd been picked up."
"And then what happened?" Bruce asked, crossing his arms and feeling very much like he already knew the answer.
"Do you know why I started looking into this?" Morse asked Maria directly, momentarily ignoring Bruce and waiting until she had the other woman's full attention. "In a way, it was because of you. When you started looking into changing certain bylaws SHIELD still carries for the disposal of unclaimed remains, I was told to squash it. I was told to shut it down and to keep it from happening. And because of that, because it sounded like such a non-issue, I grew curious. How often do you think that bylaw has been enacted?"
"I can think of two times in very recent memory," Maria answered with a frown.
"In all the years since SHIELD was formed, just after World War II, Captain Danvers was only the third person to be cremated under that clause. And since her cremation an additional sixteen agents have been handled in the same fashion. That's nineteen total in nearly seventy years; seventeen of those very recently."
Tony first looked at Steve who shook his head slightly; he wasn't sure.
Tony then looked at Bruce who nodded his head; he was.
"That sounds like murder," Morse concluded. "That sounds a lot like murder and like someone wanted very badly to get rid of the evidence."
Tony gave Steve one more look and the other man shrugged; go for it.
"There may be more to it than that," Tony said.