Chapter 559

Finally, home.

After being away for so long, Evenson returned to his own house only to discover that Krea wasn’t there.

She had gone back to Kamar-Taj.

According to Taylor, who had been left behind to pass along the message, the Ancient One was preparing to hold an important meeting soon. As a senior administrator of the New York Sanctum, Krea was required to attend.

Evenson frowned.

There wasn’t much he could do about it.

Krea’s official affiliation was still with Kamar-Taj, after all. She had grown up there and had deep ties to the place. If they needed her for work, he couldn’t exactly stop her from going.

Besides, Krea wasn’t the only member of the household who had returned.

Habs was back.

That surprised Evenson.

The dog had finally decided to leave the animal shelter?

Honestly, Evenson had been hoping Habs would stay there a little longer.

Not because he wanted to get rid of the dog permanently. Quite the opposite. He already had a contract with Habs. Whenever he needed the dog, all he had to do was snap his fingers and summon him.

Which meant that if someone else was willing to feed the enormous, shameless creature and deal with his habit of abandoning his owner the moment someone offered him better food...

Well, that was a pretty sweet arrangement.

"I didn’t exactly want to come back either," Habs grumbled, lying flat on the floor.

Of course I didn’t!

Back at the shelter, he’d eaten his fill, slept whenever he pleased, and had people waiting on him hand and foot. Even baths had been someone else’s problem.

And thanks to his devastating good looks, he’d somehow assembled an impressive little harem of female dogs.

Life had been magnificent.

A king among canines.

"But I didn’t have a choice."

Habs’s ears drooped.

"They’ve euthanized me three times already. If I stayed any longer, they were probably going to send me to a research facility."

His thoughts drifted sadly toward the many wives he’d been forced to leave behind.

Evenson blinked.

"Euthanized?"

He shook his head solemnly.

"That’s terrible."

He almost felt sorry for the dog.

Almost.

If the animal welfare people ever managed to get euthanasia abolished, Evenson thought he might be able to beat Habs unconscious again and dump him back at the shelter for another extended vacation.

With nothing else to do, Evenson eventually wandered over to the basement door and stared at it.

Strictly speaking, this cramped basement, barely a dozen square meters and mostly filled with miscellaneous junk, had once been the first and only laboratory in the world dedicated to researching magic.

It had even been used to store nuclear weapons for a time.

So installing a high-tech security door worth more than a million dollars wouldn’t exactly have been excessive.

Unfortunately, the doorway itself was too small.

Expanding it would mean tearing into a load-bearing wall.

Too much trouble.

Better to leave the old door alone and just convert it into cash.

And so, with nothing particularly urgent to do, Evenson spent the rest of the day relaxing at home.

The following day, he headed to S.H.I.E.L.D.

He and Peggy Carter had arranged to meet there. Today, they intended to get some answers from Nick Fury.

The two arrived together.

Fury was already waiting in his office, apparently having expected them.

The moment they entered, Peggy skipped the pleasantries.

"Fury, what exactly happened this time? Don’t you think you owe us an explanation?"

Evenson immediately backed her up.

"A powerful terrorist suddenly appears. New York suffers a catastrophic attack. People die. The President nearly gets kidnapped."

His voice sharpened.

"Whether the whole thing was a conspiracy or simply what it appeared to be, it happened under S.H.I.E.L.D.’s watch. You can’t walk away from that responsibility."

"And yet, right up until the very end, you did absolutely nothing. You didn’t even provide us with intelligence."

Evenson stared directly at Fury.

"What exactly were you trying to accomplish?"

"What was I trying to accomplish?"

Fury remained remarkably calm despite the two of them confronting him together.

"It’s simple. I made the wrong call."

He leaned back slightly.

"At the beginning, I believed there was a good chance the situation wouldn’t develop the way it ultimately did."

"A good chance?"

Peggy stared at him.

Then her expression hardened.

"Nick Fury, you’re the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Your job is to make decisions with confidence, not hide behind ’good chances.’"

It was practically a reprimand.

There weren’t many people in the world who could speak to Nick Fury that way.

Peggy Carter was one of them.

Evenson’s tone was slightly less aggressive, but his position was no different.

"Given S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intelligence network and operational efficiency, I don’t believe this was simply an honest mistake."

S.H.I.E.L.D. might have changed.

That didn’t mean it had become incompetent.

If anything, the organization had become more powerful than ever, possessing both enormous authority and enormous capability.

"Enormous?"

Fury gave a quiet, humorless smile.

"Yes. S.H.I.E.L.D. is enormous now."

He looked at them steadily.

"And that’s precisely why things aren’t as simple as you seem to think."

"When a threat appears, you deal with it. Enemy identified, enemy eliminated. That’s easy."

His expression remained calm.

"My job is different. I have to consider every possible factor."

Peggy and Evenson exchanged a glance.

"Then what factors did you consider?"

"Good question."

Fury stood.

"While everyone, including the two of you, assumed the Mandarin was the central figure behind this incident, I received reliable intelligence that Aldrich Killian was actually the mastermind pulling the strings."

His expression darkened slightly.

"But that’s not all."

"I also learned that Killian had extremely close ties to the U.S. military. In fact, his entire rise was built on cooperation with them."

Fury folded his arms.

"So I had to consider another possibility."

"Was this entire incident staged by the United States itself?"

Silence settled over the office.

The theory wasn’t entirely unreasonable.

The U.S. government had a history of backing terrorist organizations when it suited its interests.

Build an enemy in the shadows.

Let that enemy attack you.

Then point the finger at someone else and launch a righteous war against them.

The investment paid during the organization’s creation could be recovered through the political and military benefits that followed.

Even the losses suffered while playing the victim could eventually become part of the calculation.

Fury’s explanation, then, was that S.H.I.E.L.D. was now a global organization without political allegiance.

It deliberately avoided becoming involved in politically sensitive conflicts.

That was why he had stayed out.

That was his story.

It didn’t convince Peggy.

"This is complete nonsense."

She didn’t wait until they’d left the building to say it.

The moment they reached the corridor, she dismissed Fury’s explanation outright.

Evenson nodded.

"Pretty much."

Fury’s argument wasn’t completely illogical.

But using it to explain everything S.H.I.E.L.D. had done during this incident was far too convenient.

Then Evenson glanced at Peggy.

"Although... you don’t seem angry with him."

Peggy’s expression remained cold, but there was little actual fury in it.

"Because I know Nick Fury."

She continued walking.

"Given his ability, he should have been able to come up with an explanation that was completely airtight."

Evenson listened.

"So the fact that he gave you such a weak excuse means..."

"He doesn’t agree with what he’s doing."

Peggy’s eyes narrowed.

"He’s resisting it."

She paused.

"But he’s still doing it."

Evenson kept his expression neutral.

"I remember you saying that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s behavior isn’t unfamiliar to you."

He glanced at her.

"What do you think Fury is really planning?"

Peggy’s eyes narrowed further.

"9/11."