A/N - wrote this in one sitting last night, and the Avengers/Shield finally enter the story. Enjoy!
As Hermione spoke, Harry watched Bella's face; and, at the last, when Hermione told her she could essentially do everything a witch could do, he watched as a beautiful, brilliant smile stretched her pale skin, and her eyes sparkled like rich garnets.
"Wow," Bella whispered. When she turned to look at Harry with that brilliant smile, he felt his own face stretching into a smile before he was even aware of it.
Hermione said a few more things, but Bella's eyes had not strayed from Harry's. Finally, he winked, and it was like she woke from a brief trance.
"Welcome to the wizarding world, Bella."
Chapter 5
The Triskelion, Washington D.C
Director Nick Fury walked purposefully along one of the large, underground corridors of The Triskelion, SHIELD's headquarters and main base of operations for its worldwide intelligence network. His hands were clasped behind his back, his signature ankle-length black leather coat swishing with his long strides.
Fury's presence had been requested by the number three man in Shield, Agent Phil Coulson. After Deputy Director Hill, Coulson was the highest ranking agent in Shield, and was privy to almost everything that Fury himself was aware of. In some cases, Coulson knew more than Hill, who was his technically his superior; Fury knew that Hill usually played things by the book, but in his long years of command Fury had learned that sometimes you needed to bend the rules, and Coulson thankfully agreed with this approach, whereas Hill generally did not.
As Fury turned off the main hallway and strode towards room 3-2Z - a secure, small conference room at the end of this nondescript hall - he barely acknowledged the few agents who greeted him as he strode past. Nick had been in the middle of an important debrief regarding Tony Stark's recent kidnapping and subsequent escape from Afghanistan, and his expression was particularly grim today.
There were a lot of questions regarding Stark's recent activities, and recent reports of a 'robot' that destroyed a terrorist base a few kilometers from where Stark had been held captive had caused his superiors on the World Security Council to demand answers that he did not yet have.
Dealing with Tony Stark always left him with a bad headache. The man could be infuriating at the best of times, and those were few and far between. His personality profile indicated 'extreme narcissism, inability to work with others,' and a host of other unflattering analyses, that, unfortunately for Fury, were spot-on.
The Director had a lot of pressure on him lately, coming from all directions. The world suddenly got stranger about six months ago, when Doctor Bruce Banner and an Enhanced that the media were calling 'The Abomination' had essentially wrecked several square blocks in Harlem. To complicate matters, the army was refusing to punish the main instigator of the whole thing, the arrogant asshat General Ross.
Ross skirted along the lines of what even Fury would deem as dangerous behavior, co-opting army resources and using them like they were his own private police force. As far as Fury could tell - and he'd had several investigations run on the man - Ross operated with almost no oversight from anyone; and despite his ever-larger blunders and his tendency to cause international incidents by ignoring the sovereignty of other nations when deploying his forces, Ross seemed to be increasing the frequency and severity of his operations. This had had come to a head when his creation - The Abomination - caused the death of fifty people and over two hundred million in damages in New York.
Unfortunately, the man was just too well connected to bring down. Fury knew he was a talented orator, spinning tales about 'American strength' that seemed to resonate with an increasing number of paranoid politicians in DC. And for those who didn't drink his Kool-Aid, well, Fury strongly suspected he had a lot of dirt on those who would stand in his way. Thus, he essentially had a blank check and carte blanche to do as he pleased.
All of this made Ross a truly a dangerous man: someone who was not above using whatever means he thought necessary to fulfill his aims and ambitions. And so long as the army and some powerful politicians were protecting him, he was essentially untouchable.
With a grimace, Fury opened the last door on the hall, seeing Coulson and Hill already sitting inside at the dark, shiny rectangular table; several colored folders sat on the polished surface directly in front of them, stamped with various warnings about classification and 'eyes only.'
Fury acknowledged them both with a curt nod before closing the door and lifting a small cover on an inset panel on the wall. He activated the room's security by pressing a few oversized buttons that made a small clicking noise and glowed with a soft white light. After the last button was pressed, a soft whirring sound could be heard in the room, followed by a brief shimmering along the walls; Nick had just activated a prototype dampening field that would prevent any known tech from transmitting anything in or out of the room. The room did have other devices in there to prevent any electronic eavesdropping, but this was one of only four rooms that had the new and very expensive 'Nullification Field' installed.
"Director Fury," Phil Coulson greeted as Fury sat down in the big leather chair at the head of the table. Coulson slid an orange folder to both him and Agent Hill, and then opened his own folder before waiting for the Director to start the meeting.
"What do you have for me," Fury asked, sitting and leaning back in the soft leather chair. He'd listen to Coulson's briefing before opening his folder; he knew that Coulson spoke much more succinctly than he wrote, especially in a classified document, and Fury was still distracted by the Stark case.
"Two days ago, a Level 2 background-check request came into the FBI by means of an Agent Cavanaugh, with the name and DOB of an Isabella Marie Swan." Phil looked at Fury, seeing if the Director would remember the name. When he obviously didn't, Coulson elaborated. "Isabella Swan's name came up as a person of interest two years ago when we were investigating the mass-murders in Seattle."
This time Director Fury remembered, and he leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands on the table. "Okay, Agent Coulson, you have my attention."
Nick Fury had, over the past few years, become very interested in anything and anyone that were involved with 'Enhanced' individuals. The threats that the world was facing were becoming more dangerous every year, and he'd begun to float the idea about having his own response team, comprised of their own 'Enhanced' or otherwise extraordinary individuals. And though he'd been shot down by the World Security Council when he proposed it, he knew that, sooner or later, they'd come around to his way of thinking.
"Refresh my memory," he finally said, flipping his folder open.
Phil nodded, and clicked a button on a small remote. The large screen on a rolling stand lit up, showing a still, grainy image of what looked like a warehouse district and a dock. "Starting in late spring of 2007, a large number of people began to go missing in Seattle." A press of a button, and the screen split; the dock image stayed to the left, and to the right were photos of newspaper clippings and police reports. "At first," Phil continued, "they were mostly low priority cases, as they involved indigents, drug-dealers, or prostitutes, and no one was really pressing for any sort of investigation."
Phil clicked a few more buttons, and both Fury and Hill could see the number of police reports increasing, and the newspaper clippings becoming larger, until they were front page news. "By late May or early June, the body count of missing or recovered was estimated at eighty or higher - and some estimates had it over two hundred - and the police began to find remains scattered around the city. In most cases the bodies were burnt beyond recognition, and dental records were required to establish identities." A few more clicks, and then a large print report was centered on the right panel. "On June 7th, a cache of eleven bodies was discovered in a garbage dump fourteen miles outside the city. The bodies were covered with an accelerant soaking their clothes, but for whatever reason the corpses had not been lit. Full autopsies were done on all the victims, revealing severe blunt force trauma - crushed wrists with handprints on them, shattered ribs or spines where something pressed on them with extreme force - pulverized jaws with fingerprint marks like someone of immense strength had held the victims face in place."
And then Phil looke up. "The victims also had no blood in their bodies."
He clicked another button, and a single police report dominated the screen. "On every body the police found puncture marks in the shape of human incisor bites. However, they were too deep and far sharper than a normal person could inflict. All the bites were on either the necks, wrists, or shoulder-joins of the victims."
Phil paused for a moment as Hill and Fury looked through the folder. Fury vaguely remembered some of these details, but by the time Shield got fully involved the murders had suddenly stopped and he had moved on to other things that were more pressing.
Hill, however, knew none of this, and finally looked up with a confused look on her face. "Do we have any idea what did this? Was it an animal, or an Enhanced who was trying to fool the police into thinking it was a vampire?"
Phil gave her a small smile, his eyes twinkling. "Interesting hypothesis, Agent Hill." He turned back to the screen, hitting another button. The still frame from the dock suddenly enlarged, and a time-stamp began to play, moving quickly in time-lapse. The image was from a video feed that was stationed on the warehouse near the dock; it was hazy, shot at night, clearly from a security CCTV of some sort. There was no sound on the video, just a grainy image of several large tankers in port and the gangways and tarmac in front of them. The colors were washed out, and the fine details were lacking as the equipment was not sophisticated.
"This," said Phil, "is security footage from Hanjin Shipping Corp. in southeast Seattle, on the Duwamish West Waterway." He checked his notes. "The waterway feeds to Elliot Bay and then to Puget Sound to the north. The area is very isolated, and has been known for drug smuggling operations utilizing the docks in the past." Phil flipped a page. "This feed is from one of 11 cameras that the company has; two of them unfortunately were not in working condition during this time frame."
"We are watching CCTV #4, from the early morning hours of June 6, the night before the stack of bodies was found in the dumpster fourteen miles away. I will slow the video as the time gets closer to 2am."
The video, which had been moving at the rate of 1 minute per 1 second of real-time, showed a few passerby crossing the frame every few minutes - probably dock-workers - in quick fashion in the time-lapse; a few trucks passed a well, zooming across the screen, but as the time-stamp passed 1am the foot and vehicular traffic thinned and then ended completely as the clock passed 1:15. When it passed 1:45, Phil slowed the video, and by 1:55am it was moving at normal time.
Two large men walked-off one of the gangways, each carrying a duffel bag. They looked like sailors, probably just arrived on one of the ships and heading for home or perhaps a local hotel. When they reached the top of the gangway, one of the men stopped to take a drink from a bottle that he removed from his pocket. The detail was too grainy to see clearly, but it looked like a bottle of alcohol.
Phil interjected, pausing the video. "These men were identified as David Cho and Frederick Nasher, both full-time employees of Hanjin shipping. Their boat arrived from Hong Kong in Seattle the night of June 6th, at about six pm. They were the last off the boat that night."
Phil turned the video back on, the time stamp moving again. Just as it flicked to 1:56am, the men suddenly stopped walking, standing straight up and looking alert; their heads swiveled in different directions, clearly looking for something - perhaps a noise - but the video unfortunately had no sound, so the Agents couldn't be sure what distracted them.
As the seconds clicked by, the men both turned to face something that was off-camera to the left. The first man - the one with the bottle - slowly dropped his duffel bag to the ground and took a step backwards, his posture stiffening as something clearly disturbed him.
Fury and Hill were both leaning forward, trying to glean whatever information they could get from the video.
"Watch carefully now," said Phil.
Suddenly, two streaky blurs came into the frame from the left, before resolving into two people that stopped right in front of the two men, perhaps five feet from them. The men were clearly caught completely off guard, as the bottle fell from the hand of the first, while the second dropped his duffel and stumbled backwards, hands raised as if to ward off an attacker.
The two individuals who arrived - the video too grainy to capture any details of their face but they were clearly Enhanced in some manner - were a man and a woman. The man was of medium height - perhaps five ten or so if Hill had to guess - and dressed in what looked like jeans and a sweater or sweatshirt. The woman had on a fur vest of some kind with dark pants that might have been jeans; her main distinguishing feature was a wild mane of hair. The color was faded, but it had a faint reddish tint to it.
The newcomers appeared to speak with one another for a moment - at least, their heads turned to face each other - and then they approached the two seaman boldly, grabbing hold of them and pulling them into a fireman's carry, before vanishing from the frame in a pair of streaky blurs, leaving the image empty.
Even as Fury and Hill tried to make sense of what they just saw, Phil was speaking again. "An autopsy done on the first individual, whose body was found in the dumpster, indicated an approximate time of death of between 1am and 3am on June 5th. As we can see from the video, he was still alive at 2am, so we can put the time between 2am - when he was abducted - and 3am. Unfortunately we don't know when the body was placed in the dumpster. However, he suffered from a crushed wrist and a pulverized ankle, which indicated those injuries happened when the Enhanced threw them over his shoulders and grabbed on to victims extremeties - the wrist around the right shoulder and the ankle on the left."
Phil let that sink in for a moment before he spoke again. "Our tech-guys estimate that the two enhanced were moving between ninety and one-hundred twenty miles per hour when they entered the frame."
Hill let out a small breath, while Fury remained silent, his one good eye laser focused on the screen, his mind working hard to try and make sense of what he'd seen and heard. "Do we have a computer filtered version of the video?" he eventually asked.
Phil nodded. "Yes, here it is at 1/4 speed." He pressed a few more buttons, and a zoomed in, less grainy version of the video began to play, starting just seconds before the two blurs raced across the screen and resolved into the two enhanced individuals.
The video played slowly enough that it appeared to consist of almost discrete photos, and more fine detail was apparent though the frame width was narrowed. However, even with the clearer image, there was not much to be gained from the new video, as the faces were still too blurry to run through the facial recognition database. They could, however, see that the woman's hair was indeed a reddish-orange, and her furs a dinghy white. Any other details were still too grainy to be of use.
Phil replayed the video for a second, then a third time, but nothing new was evident.
On the fourth run-through, just as the individuals went to grab the sailors, Nick leaned forward, eyeing the screen intently. "Freeze video," he said.
Phil obliged, and Nick turned his head, trying to make out fine detail. "Can you zoom in on their faces further?"
"Yes," answered Phil, "though visual clarity drops by the square for each zoom factor."
"Do it anyway, on the female's face," Nick commanded.
As Phil centered the picture on the woman's face, he pressed a few buttons and the digital zoom began to pixelate as it focused on her.
"Stop," said Nick. He looked at the picture for another few seconds before looking at Phil. "Is the red tint on her eyes an artifact from the video?"
Phil turned to the screen, looking more closely, and realized the Director was right. There was a strange red reflection in her eyes that had either gone unnoticed or was assumed to be lens-flare. Red-eye was, after all, a common occurrence when taking photos at night. "Interesting," he finally said. "Let's take a look at her companion's face for comparison."
A few more flicks of the button, and it re-centered on the male's face. He zoomed in, the same bloom pixellation occurring; but, just like with the woman, there was a definite red lens effect on their eyes.
Nick nodded. "Check the sailors. Let's see if they have the same thing; if not, we can possibly rule out an artifact."
Excitedly - after all, this would be the first new piece of information gleaned from the video in over two years - Phil zoomed in one the two sailors. And, unlike the two Enhanced, their eyes looked normal.
Phil turned to the Director, impressed. "I'll let tech know, and see if they can clean up the pixels on their eyes any better."
Maria Hill was also impressed. Apparently, this video had been seen dozens or even hundreds of times over the past two years, and Fury was the first to pick up on the fact that the strange tint of their eyes was not a lighting artifact.
Looking at the Director, she asked the obvious question. "So what kind of enhanced do we know of that has red eyes, can run at over a hundred miles per hour, and crush a grown man's bones without effort?"
Nick leaned back, looking intently at her. "That's the million dollar question, isn't it?"
The trio sat in silence for a few minutes; they wouldn't leave until the Director dismissed them, and he was deep in thought. Hill was the first one to break the silence. "Do we have any indication that these Enhanced could actually be real, bona fide vampires?"
Fury and Coulson looked at each other, both thinking that Hill might be right. After all, they'd seen some pretty strange things during their tenures with Shield, and all the evidence they had seemed to point to fast, strong, red eyed Enhanced that left their victims with no blood in their bodies.
And while they might not be real vampires like Hollywood portrayed them, they had nothing better to go on at the moment.
Finally, Fury spoke up. "I want Romanov and Barton brought in on this; if we are going to be hunting for Enhanced, they are the only two agents that have the requisite clearance, especially if we need to reveal department M3."
Both Hill and Coulson nodded, and Phil took a quick note. Department M3 was a code phrase for the seven individuals in Shield that were aware of the wizarding world. Besides the three in this room, only four other's knew about the existence of magic. The other two US intelligence agencies - the FBI and the CIA - had their own 'departments ' - M1 for the FBI and M2 for the CIA - that dealt with the magical world. Fury was aware that the number of people 'in the know' were similarly small in both those agencies, though the FBI probably worked the closest with the Aurors of MacUSA.
By treaties signed and updated over the years, no written record of magic's existence was allowed in any files of any non-magical agency unless it was disguised thoroughly to obfuscate the details. When Fury took over as Director and had learned of Magic's existence, he had thought their secrecy requirements were way over the top.
That belief lasted less than an hour, once he'd learned what magic was truly capable of; of how entire buildings could be hidden in plain sight; of how wizards could change your memories, making you believe whatever they wanted you to; of how a magical named Gellert Grindenwald was one of the driving forces behind Hitler's megalomania in launching World War 2...
No, it was better that the secret of magic be closely guarded. The panic that would ensue should magic be revealed would be immense, and so many innocents would get caught in the crossfire and witch-hunts should it ever come to hostilities...
Drumming his fingers on the table, Fury continued. "For now, limit their knowledge to just the Enhanced. Nothing about M3."
"Understood," said Coulson.
Hill cleared her throat. "Excuse me, but what does this have to do with Isabella Swan? Isn't that why we are here?"
With a nod from the Director, Phil turned to Hill, who had not been involved in the case two years earlier. "Towards the end of June 2007, SHIELD - as well as the FBI - had surveillance equipment deployed all over Seattle, trying to catch the killer or killers responsible for all the murders. We didn't get hold of the video you just saw until a week or so after the sailors were abducted, but once we did, we moved our equipment in quickly."
Turning back to the screen, he pressed a few more buttons, and a new image appeared. It was a top-down topological map - in what was clearly infrared - that showed the dock area of what was labeled 'Sector DT-44' in the lower right side of the screen. "We had nine aerial recon drones in Seattle airspace by mid-June 2007 with special programming. Also, we had two of our satellites perform a delta-vee to move to a geo-stationary orbit over the city, giving us 24x7 telemetry data and keyed to signal us anytime it detected a human sized object moving faster than 40mph over the ground. It was tweaked a bit because motorcyclists caused some false alarms at first, but by the third or fourth day we had it working well."
A few more flicks, and then a series of red dots appeared on the screen. "This is the night of June 19th. The image is of a dock area, similar to the one in the video earlier, about four clicks from the previous location. The three red dots are moving at approximately one hundred twenty mph."
Hill watched in fascination as the three red dots moved through the grey rectangles that she knew were the warehouses. The dots seemed to follow the streets for the most part, though in some cases they seemed to go straight into the buildings, confusing her as they should not have been visible when they did.
Anticipating their question, Phil spoke quietly. "They didn't go inside; they either jumped over or launched themselves onto the rooftops and then jumped off without breaking momentum."
Hill's eyes opened wide at that. "How far could they jump?"
Coulson grimaced. "Angular momentum analyses indicate that one of the Enhanced was able to jump over a three story building that was a hundred feet in depth, without slowing down."
Hill let out another breath. "How many of these things are we dealing with?" she asked, her stern facade cracked as she thought about facing an armada of these things in a hostile encounter."
Phil shook his head. "There is no way for us to determine from these images how many there could be, as on different nights we might have been seeing the same individual. However, the most we tracked at any one time was twelve."
"Twelve...," Hill whispered.
Fury looked at her, his expression grim. "Now you understand why I am so focused on the Avengers Initiative. Right now we are trailing behind the bad guys."
Hill frowned for a moment before slowly nodding. She had been against it, arguing that gathering a group of Enhanced was asking for trouble. After all, if they let them know Shield's secrets, who would stop them if they went rogue?
But after seeing this...
Phil restarted the video. "As you can see, one of the three broke off and continued southwest. We'd seen this a few times before, with some of the Enhanced going as much as a hundred miles from the city, usually in a westerly or northern direction. But this time was different, and the video I am playing was cobbled together from a few different feeds."
As they watched, the signal sometimes becoming fainter as the drone had to circle around, or the footage switched momentarily to a satellite; nevertheless, the dot continued on a southwesterly course, passing around the mountains. "We lost the satellite feed at this point, as it was centered over Seattle. However, the drone was able to catch-up and track it fairly consistently. The top measured speed of the Enhanced was about one-seventy, and the slowest - over some of the mountains and across a lake - was about sixty."
Phil sped the video up, and the red dot continued on its path, until it began to approach a town that was labeled 'Forks.'
They watched as the red-dot began to slow, and the indicated mph marker in the bottom right dropped off, until it was down to about forty mph. "The Enhanced approached the town of Forks, Washington, from almost due west, during the early afternoon of June 19. As you can see as it nears the town limits, it is staying just inside the tree line so as to avoid visible detection by anyone who was outside." And sure enough, the shadows - even in infrared - from the trees was evident on the video. The small houses - indicated by their grey, dull infrared signatures with a few heat spots here and there - were dull blocks almost touching the trees.
"When the Enhanced dropped below forty miles per hour, we lost signal, as the telemetry sensors were only tracking objects that moved over 40mph. Luckily for us, the tech on duty was very alert, and had notified his superior when the Enhanced had broken pattern and left Seattle. They were able to dial their sensors in more tightly, and dropped the sensor to ten miles per hour, and thus re-acquired the target."
Suddenly there were more red dots on the screen. "You can see that the drone picked up some other signals, presumably joggers or people on bicycles. But if you look at the dot here," and Phil paused the video and used a laser pointer to highlight the dot he was indicating-, "you can see that the Enhanced occasionally put on burst of speed back up to seventy mph or so."
Finally, the red dot slowed to a walk, moving very slowly to the back of a house that bordered the woods.
Phil pressed a button and paused the video. "This house is owned by Charles Swan, the Police Chief of Forks. He'd was born and raised in the town, and had been in the police department for over twenty years." A press of a button, and a picture of Charles, in police uniform, appeared on-screen. "Mr. Swan is single, divorced from a Renee Higgenbotham, back in 1989. He lives with his only child - his daughter Isabella - who moved in with him in 2006, during her junior year of high school." And then a picture of Isabella filled the screen.
Both Fury and Hill looked carefully at the photo: after all, the reason they were sitting in this briefing was presumably because of her, though they didn't understand why just yet.
The picture was a yearbook photo; Ms. Swan had a small smile on her face, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. The girl was pale skinned, with brown eyes and hair. Fury thought she looked like a normal young woman; nothing to indicate she was somehow involved with a group of deadly Enhanced individuals.
Phil restarted the video, talking while it played. "The Enhanced was in the home for four minutes, leaving through the back entrance and immediately leaving the area at high speed; whatever brought him to that house, he left in a hurry once he was done. He did not linger at all, and it is almost a certainty that he went deliberately there, as he never approached any other houses and went straight there."
As the video played along, the speed indicator in the bottom right was near 170 as the Enhanced sped away to the northeast "Now, watch this next part carefully."
Just as Phil finished speaking, three red dots suddenly appeared from the west, and began a pursuit of the Enhanced. Each dot had a small arrowhead next to it, and the speed indicators were at the bottom left.
"Shit," mumbled Hill, her eyes wide as she saw the new dots moving at over 190. "As you can see," Phil said, "three new Enhanced have begun what looks like a pursuit of the first Enhanced. Later analysis seems to indicate that these new Enhanced are larger in size than the target from Seattle, perhaps more than double the body mass." They all watched as the three newcomers began to converge on the target, who sped up a bit - closing on 180 now - and started to move in an erratic fashion.
Phil was speaking again. "The target is now zigzagging and is almost certainly aware of the pursuit. His movement was later analyzed with a terrain map, and he is currently jumping across ravines and through riverbeds, clearly trying to lose his pursuers." The trio watched as the three newcomers sometimes were unable to follow the path of their target, going around certain obstacles that the target was able to circumvent with ease.
Seeing the question in their eyes, Phil nodded. "Yes, the pursuers - while faster - don't seem to be as agile as the target. They seem unable to climb steep crevices or get out of deep ravines if unable to jump across. Also, some of the sudden direction and acceleration changes by the target seem to indicate that he might be running or springing across the treetops, though this cannot be confirmed."
The video continued, the target now heading almost due north, the pursuers gaining on him; and suddenly, two additional pursuers entered the frame, coming up from the southwest, joining the chase. "The two new Enhanced match pretty closely in body mass with the other three, and came from a similar vector, to the west of the Swan house in Forks."
For another minute or so they watched the chase, until the dots crossed a relatively open area just to the east of the town of Port Angelas. They saw the pursuers close the gap over the open terrain, and Phil zoomed in the picture to give them a better view. "The scale of this frame is about 100 yards, so you can see the lead pursuer is less than fifty yards behind the Seattle Enhanced now. At their current speed differential, unless something interferes, he is going to catch him in less than thirty seconds." And sure enough, there he was, gaining inexorably. The target's speed inched up, closer to 185 now, but the other three were now topping 200 and were literally right on his heels, less than ten yards behind, heading due north.
Suddenly, the frame showed a huge body of black just to the north - the bay, Hill realized - and the target continued straight on, the red dot disappearing as the Enhanced leapt out over the water and vanished beneath the waves.
To her surprise, the pursuers stopped right on what must have been the shoreline, speeding to the east and then back west. They then disappeared from the feed - she thought they might have entered the water too, but then they reappeared for a moment, still on the shoreline, before vanishing again.
Hill realized their speed must have dropped below forty, becoming invisible to the sensor. And less than a minute later, the other two pursuers arrived on the shoreline. There was no movement for almost a minute more, before they re-appeared, moving at about 130mph in a line of five across heading back towards Forks.
Phil flipped off the video. "Our drones continued back towards Seattle, though we had two new ones after that always over Forks, trying to track these other Enhanced. One of the documents in the folder has our findings on the Enhanced from that area, but the salient points are that they never strayed any further than about seventy miles from the Forks area, and only then if they were pursuing one of the Seattle Enhanced. And they seemed to patrol the areas between the Swan house and the small Indian reservation at La Push most frequently."
He flipped open another note, before looking up. "On at least three more occasions, they intercepted and drove off or destroyed at least one of the Seattle Enhanced heading towards the Swan house."
Having finished the video, Phil folded his hands. "About two weeks after this event - on July 2nd, 2007 - we was alerted to an anomalous fire near an abandoned warehouse near the Seattle docks. Our agents reported they suspected a chemical fire - the smoke was purple and quite thick - though we found no traces of any chemical or accelerant during our analysis."
"A forensic team found burned clothing remains from approximately twenty individuals, though no bones, or teeth were found at the scene. Whatever burned them, was hot enough to melt everything, yet somehow some of the clothing survived." Here Phil paused for a moment. "There were no more murders or missing persons reported after that night, and SHIELD closed down it's Seattle operation about twenty days later."
Hill looked at Phil incredulously. "So, what, the Enhanced were all destroyed somehow in a strange fire, all at once? By what?"
Phil shrugged his shoulders. "We don't know. Perhaps those other Enhanced came from Forks and finished them off? Or maybe something else did the job?" He shook his head. "We simply have no idea. The whole case raises a lot of questions that we can't answer."
Hill looked upset. "What was Isabella Swan's role in all this? How do we know she was the target of that Enhanced, and not her father? He was the chief of Police after all, maybe one of the Enhanced had a grudge?"
Coulson smiled at her, his eyes twinkling. "We recovered some additional items at the warehouse that were not caught in the fire. Take a look at the next to last set of photographs."
Agent Hill flipped a few pages, and lifted a photo to get a closer look at it. There was an evidence tag, along with the picture of a red blouse, and a small, framed photograph of Isabella, perhaps a year or two younger than in the yearbook photo they'd seen.
"Those items were found in a small bag in one of the rooms in the warehouse. The blouse was tested, and had Isabella's DNA and hair all over it. A covert search of her home determined that the photo had been taken from the fireplace mantle in the living room, where a series of other photos of Ms. Swan during her teen years were displayed. The photo we recovered was taken when she was sixteen, and was the only year missing from the photos on her mantle."
Hill frowned for a few seconds before finally nodding. Clearly Isabella Swan was somehow involved in this mess. "Is it possible these Enhanced wanted to use Isabella as a hostage or bargaining chip to get to Charles Swan?"
Coulson shrugged. "It's possible of course; and there is no way to really know at this point, unless we interview them both." But he shook his head. "I don't buy it, though. We looked back through his record as a policeman, and no cases stick out that would lead us to believe that someone wanted revenge on him. No, every instinct tells me that they were after Isabella Swan."
Hill let out a slow breath. "Then she must have a Guardian Angel or something. To have a group of Enhanced gunning for you, only to be protected by another group of Enhanced...I'd like to learn more about this girl." Hill then asked another question. "Did we ever get any more details about the Enhanced that were in Forks?"
Phil shook his head. "No. We had a couple of agents stationed there, working at the post office and the diner, but we never were able to learn anything of substance."
Finally Fury spoke. "Thank you for refreshing my memory, Agent Coulson. Your briefing was much better than I remembered from two years ago."
"We have a much better understanding of the timeline of events now, Director. But thank you anyway."
Fury nodded. "So, now that we are caught up. Tell me about this request for a background check on her. Who initiated it, and what are they looking for?"
Phil turned back to the video and flipped it on. A few presses of the buttons, and a new picture emerged, of a young man - perhaps in his mid-twenties - with black hair and brilliant green eyes.
Fury drew in a breath, immediately recognizing the individual, though Hill did not. She glanced at him curiously, wondering who this man could be that would surprise the Director so much.
"This," Coulson said, looking at Hill, "is perhaps the most recognized and famous individual in the Wizarding world. His name is Harry Potter."
Hill frowned, remembering seeing the name somewhere when she had her briefing on the wizarding world a few years earlier. She remembered he was famous for defeating a really dangerous wizard terrorist, but the details were fuzzy. She'd been so overwhelmed learning about magic that she didn't really remember what she had learned about this guy.
"Two days ago, Harry Potter was involved in an altercation that spilled out from the wizarding shopping district into the streets of London. We don't have the video of the event yet, as wizards typically have such video erased immediately after events like this occur. We also don't have many details of the actual altercation and who might have been involved, though we have a few assets working on it."
Fury nodded, knowing this, and understanding that details about them were always sparse. Having videos of wizards in action - no matter how secure they tried to make it - would be bad if it ever leaked.
"Regardless of what happened, that night an American Auror - the equivalent of a Magical Policeman - received a request from London about our Ms. Swan. The exact nature of the request is unknown, but the Auror initiated a level 2 background check on her. We know it was her as the DOB matches up. All we know about the request beyond that, is that it originated from Harry Potter."
Phil flipped another button. "Ms. Swan left the US eight days ago, and is currently in London. We did some fast checking, and she is staying at the home of her college roommate, a Ms. Sophie Danvers. They attend Georgetown together, and will be sophomores this year. Ms. Swan is scheduled to return this Sunday, and is booked out of Heathrow to Jacksonville Florida. That's the current residence of her mother, Renee Dwyer."
Phil finally closed his folder, his briefing finished.
Fury sat quietly for a moment, digesting everything he'd heard. Finally he sighed. "Conclusions?"
Phil gave him a small smile. "Our own sources have confirmed that Ms. Swan is not registered here with MacUSA as a Witch. Therefore, I suspect that she somehow came into contact with Harry Potter during the altercation he had in London. For some reason - and we have no idea what that might be - he contacted his American counterpart with a request about Ms. Swan that resulted in the American initiating his own background check on her. We've no idea what that request from Harry Potter might have been - perhaps he himself requested the background check - we simply don't know and unless we can get an answer from this Auror Cavanaugh I can't see how we could find out; either way, however, she is now on the radar screen of MacUSA who have initiated the check."
Fury looked at Coulson closely. "It seems quite the coincidence that Ms. Swan, who has previously been involved with a group of Enhanced, suddenly runs into the most famous Wizard in the world while vacationing in London."
Phil smiled back at him. "Quite a coincidence indeed, if I believed in coincidences like that."
Fury pursed his lips, deep in thought. "Okay, what else do we know?"
"Since the FBI are the ones that do level 2 checks, we had the results of that almost immediately. As expected from our own review two years ago, nothing in her file was particularly noteworthy, save for a number of hospital visits that would be considered well above normal; our own interest in her was not revealed, and probably wouldn't be for anything less than a full level four investigation: our files are locked down tight."
"Hospital visits?" asked Hill. "Possible abuse?"
Phil shook his head. "No, clumsiness," he said with a small smile. "Several of the agents following her remarked on it in her file. She had a penchant for tripping over her own feet."
Hill nodded, fighting a grin. "Doesn't sound like she's too dangerous to me."
Phil grinned and closed the folder. "That's all we currently know, anything else is pure speculation."
"Speculate for me then," Fury ordered.
Coulson nodded. "For a reason we don't know, Ms. Swan had come to the attention of a group of dangerous Enhanced that left behind a massive body count in Seattle two years ago. What her association with that group is, or was, is unknown. For two years after that event, Ms. Swan remained off our radar, quietly attending college here in DC. Our own investigation of her ran out of steam when nothing of significance was discovered."
Phil looked up at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts. "Fast forward two years, and she takes her first verified trip out of the country, where she somehow comes to the attention of the most public figure in the Wizarding World; a man that, by all estimations, is a powerhouse. And while we don't know what she did to get his attention, she nevertheless managed it."
He looked up at the photo of the young woman, so very unassuming looking. Her small smile that didn't reach her eyes, the pale skin and pouty lips. So innocent looking, and yet...
Phil was quiet for a few more seconds, his voice getting quieter. "There is clearly more to this girl than meets the eye. She somehow has associations with some very powerful and dangerous people, and I recommend that we institute protocol F and see what we can learn. We clearly did not go deep enough after the Seattle murders."
Fury leaned back, thinking it over. Coulson's suppositions were sound: clearly this Isabella Swan was able to, somehow, get on the radar screens of some extraordinary individuals. And while Fury might have written it off once...twice was too big a coincidence. No, after the Seattle killings, with her somehow a target of those enhanced while being protected by another group, she was clearly a subject of interest.
She was a mystery, and Fury hated mysteries.
Protocol F was a comprehensive monitoring program designed to have Shield operatives perform covert surveillance on someone who may have Enhanced abilities or be in contact with those who do. It made the assumption that the target could have abilities above the norm, and thus relied on multiple agents and technologies working in concert to avoid detection by the subject.
Thus, depending on the individual being monitored, Protocol F could take up considerable manpower and effort to institute, and could be a major resource drain. Hence the reason it was rarely used without serious consideration.
After the events in Seattle, SHIELD had assigned a pair of agents to monitor Ms. Swan for almost six months. They tracked her phone, movements, and bugged her dorm. They eventually gave it up about six months after starting, having found absolutely nothing that hinted at any contact or activities that could be associated with an Enhanced. She seemed to be just a typical college student.
Fury drummed his fingers for a few moments, before speaking. "I'd like our own background check run on the girl first. We should have went deeper last time. I want to know everything she did from the moment she set foot in Forks to the moment she left for college. Something happened there to bring her to the attention of those Enhanced. I want to know what it was."
He turned to Hill. "I want you to find out what happened in London. How did she meet Potter, what did they do, and what is she doing while she's over there. The works. And if we can get eyes on Potter, let's find out if she is meeting or speaking with him outside of the Wizarding World."
Finally stepping from the table, he looked at Coulson. "If we find something fishy, then we go with your idea and we institute protocol F."
And with that, nick Fury turned, hit the buttons in the wall, and walked away, thinking about the mystery named Isabella Swan.
AN - The Shield/Avenger arc has started. The little inquiry of Auror Cavanaugh has come home to roost.
AN 2 - I've gotten some PM's expressing confusion about the events in Seattle. Remember, in this story, Bella never jumped. Hence, Edward never went to Volterra. Hence, Aro never read his mind and discovered how strong the Cullen family was, and Jane never got upset with Bella and Edward.
This plot divergence changed everything.
Thus, when the Volturi arrived in Seattle to investigate the newborns risking exposure, they had no reason - unlike in Eclipse canon - to wait and see how the Cullen's fared against the newborn army. Instead, Jane and her enforcers took them out as soon as they had them all together.
Now, whether they got them all or not, and what Jane and the Volturi may have learned from them...we shall see.