Chapter 700

Evenson had finished talking with Melinda and Coulson. The favor they had asked of him was hardly difficult, so he had agreed without much fuss.

What was the big deal? He just had to get one lunatic out. Flash his credentials, sign a form, walk the man out, and call it a day. If anyone had to take the embarrassment, it was SHIELD. Evenson had nothing to lose.

He turned his attention back to the fight between Lily Grant and Chen Haoran.

And immediately wished there were something more interesting to watch.

The two of them were barely fighting at all. Neither wanted to make the first move.

Lily’s weapon said enough about how seriously she was taking the duel. The moment she brought out that Liuhe spear, Evenson knew she wasn’t playing around. In Bajiquan tradition, fighting barehanded was considered a lesser skill. The truly accomplished practitioners were expected to master the spear.

And Lily clearly wasn’t helpless.

She had already smashed apart one of Chen’s fireballs with a single sweep of her spear. The problem was that this was her first real fight against an Inhuman. She had no idea what his abilities could do, so she was testing him before committing herself.

That caution made sense. Her spear work favored offense over defense, and against an opponent with strange abilities, one mistake could get her killed.

Chen was being just as cautious for a different reason.

He had only recently begun to understand his own powers, and he still had no idea what his limits were. Yes, he could throw fireballs, which gave him a ranged advantage against a melee fighter.

Except Lily’s so-called melee weapon happened to be a six-meter-long spear.

That was the kind of weapon ancient warriors used from horseback. Give Lily a couple of quick steps and she could strike anything within ten meters without breaking a sweat.

With that kind of range, who exactly was supposed to believe she was a close-combat fighter?

Chen had no intention of rushing in, getting within that killing zone, and giving her the chance to find a weakness. One mistake and he’d leave the fight with several extra holes in his body.

So the two of them stood there.

Neither willing to move.

The duel had somehow turned into a turn-based game.

Evenson watched for another moment, then rolled his eyes. He cleared his throat loudly enough for everyone to hear, though he made a point of looking toward Melinda as though he were speaking only to her.

"Some people are very good at making big promises," he said. "But when the time comes, they’re all chestless and short-winded. No ambition. Nothing remarkable. Hardly comparable to people with broad horizons and even broader ambitions."

The effect was immediate.

Lily’s eyes widened until the whites nearly disappeared beneath the blood rushing into them. Her nostrils flared as she wheeled around and fixed Evenson with a murderous stare.

Even Melinda reflexively glanced down at herself.

You bastard.

Who exactly are you insulting here? Why do I feel like I just got caught in the crossfire?

Lily roared.

"Ha!"

She launched herself forward.

A flash of steel came first, then the spear struck like a dragon.

Slash.

Cover.

Lift.

Thrust.

Evenson’s little provocation had done its job. Lily was suddenly fighting as if someone had flipped a switch. Her six-meter spear whistled through the air, its point flashing with enough menace to make Chen yelp.

He had never seen anything like this.

His previous experience consisted mostly of street-corner magic tricks and flashy performances for strangers. He had seen people put on impressive displays with weapons before, but those had been showmanship.

This was different.

This was a killing art forged on the battlefield.

Chen stumbled backward, throwing fireballs desperately as he dodged left and right. The flames disrupted Lily’s attacks just enough to keep him alive. Without them, he might already have taken a spear through the throat.

But Chen had power without technique.

His footwork was chaotic, his movements lacked discipline, and now that Lily had seized the initiative and closed the distance, every motion he made left openings.

Lily saw one.

The spear point snapped forward toward his throat.

Chen’s blood ran cold.

Instinctively, he threw up a wall of fire between them, blocking his entire body from view.

It was crude, but it should work.

No matter how skilled her spearwork was, if she couldn’t see him, how was she supposed to land a precise thrust?

Lily answered that question by stabbing straight through the flames.

She didn’t stop.

The spearhead vanished into the fire wall, and Lily twisted both hands with brutal force. The wall split open around the weapon, carving a hole straight through the flames.

Fire curled around the shaft.

For a moment, the spear looked like a dragon made of steel and fire.

"AAH!"

Chen screamed.

Fortunately, he had shifted his position when he raised the flames. The spear missed his chest and only ripped along his upper arm.

He was still bleeding.

And now he was directly beside the shaft.

Lily could have used a crushing technique and shattered his waist.

Desperate, Chen reached for the only solution that came to mind.

He lunged forward, grabbed the spearhead with both hands, and pulled it against his body.

The principle was simple. It was the same reason a boxer couldn’t generate much power once the opponent had been pulled into a clinch.

No distance meant no leverage.

And with a spear this long, surely she couldn’t do anything once he was that close.

She could still bite him, maybe.

That was about it.

At least, that was what Chen hoped.

Lily planted herself in a horse stance.

Then she drove both hands upward.

Chen was ripped off the ground.

The spear lifted him high into the air and began spinning him around in a dizzying circle, his body whipping through the air like a human propeller.

Lily’s ancestor, the legendary spear master William Grant, had once been able to use a full-length spear shaft to lift a stone mill and swing it around as though it weighed nothing.

Lily didn’t have the audacity to claim she had reached that level.

But tossing a roughly two-hundred-pound man around?

That was still easy.

Chen gritted his teeth and held on.

No matter how violently Lily spun him, he refused to let go.

One person fighting with everything he had could stop an army.

Apparently, Chen had finally reached that point.

Evenson watched the spinning disaster with growing interest.

"He’s got some impressive physical conditioning," he remarked. "Anyone who can tolerate centrifugal force like that could probably pass a pilot’s medical."

Melinda stared at the spectacle in disbelief.

"I really didn’t expect this."

She watched Lily send Chen around in another violent arc.

"Is Chinese martial arts some kind of natural counter to Inhuman abilities?"

It was an understandable conclusion.

A few minutes ago, Chen had been talking confidently enough to think himself untouchable. Now he looked like a man clinging to the last thread of his life, surviving only because he’d found a desperate, borderline ridiculous way to hang onto Lily’s weapon.

Evenson clicked his tongue.

"She’s William Grant’s great-granddaughter. She has ridiculous natural talent, and she received the full family inheritance when it comes to technique. At this point, she’s probably the strongest practitioner in the Bajiquan lineage."

He glanced back at the fight.

"The day before yesterday, I watched her use a technique called Fierce Tiger Climbs the Mountain on a Kamar-Taj sorcerer. The poor guy ended up asking to be transferred to another assignment."

Evenson shrugged.

"And she’s got the advantage of that weapon. Put somebody else in her place and Chen would have been ash by now."

"Oh."

Melinda and Coulson nodded slowly.

Neither looked particularly reassured.

Lily apparently decided she had spent enough time spinning Chen around.

"Let go!"

She suddenly planted the spear upright and slammed it down.

Six meters of weapon.

Nearly two hundred pounds of opponent.

And all the force Lily could put behind the motion.

The exact amount of force involved was something anyone interested in calculating could work out for themselves.

Chen hit the ground sideways and immediately vomited.

His face twisted with pain, but he still didn’t let go.

"Break!"

He screamed.

While he had been airborne, Chen had been quietly heating the metal spearhead with the flames concealed in his hands. Now he poured all his remaining strength into the motion.

Crack!

The steel spearhead snapped.

The broken tip fell to the ground.

Chen stared at his hands for half a second, stunned that he’d actually managed it.

Unfortunately for him, the moment he lost his grip on the spearhead, Lily reclaimed the shaft.

Her movements flowed seamlessly.

She slid along the shaft, turned her body, stepped behind him, and reversed the weapon.

A returning thrust.

The spear drove straight into Chen’s shoulder.

Chen nearly died of fright on the spot.

His entire body went cold.

Then he noticed the broken spearhead lying several feet away.

Relief washed over him.

"You idiot!" he shouted. "You knew there wasn’t even a spearhead on it and you still stabbed me!"

"Hmph."

Lily gave a contemptuous laugh.

Then she released the spear.

The shaft bounced once.

Twice.

Then stopped in midair.

Chen had barely regained his senses when agony exploded through his shoulder.

The weapon hadn’t needed a spearhead.

The blunt steel shaft had already punched straight through the hollow of his shoulder.

"Who said you need a spearhead to pierce something?"

Lily planted one hand on her hip and blew her bangs out of her face.

"My spear technique has been trained to the point where I can still put a spear through someone even after the tip is gone."

She grabbed the shaft again and ripped it back out.

Blood poured from Chen’s wound.

He collapsed to the ground like a punctured balloon.

Lily lowered the spear until its broken end rested against Chen’s throat.

Then she turned her head slightly toward Evenson.

Evenson raised his right hand.

Coulson understood the gesture instantly.

"Wait..."

He barely got the word out.

Evenson’s hand dropped.

Lily drove the spear forward.

Chen Haoran’s throat was pierced.

The fight ended instantly.

Coulson stared at Evenson in disbelief.

"You killed him."

Coulson had never been casual about killing. He had once put his philosophy into simple terms: every war had a casualty count, but as far as he was concerned, that number should always be zero. On any mission, he would avoid killing an enemy until every other option had been exhausted.

That was why this bothered him so much.

Evenson had shown Chen remarkable restraint earlier. Enough that Coulson had honestly begun to wonder whether something in the man had changed.

Yet now Evenson had looked at a defeated opponent and ended his life with one gesture, as casually as a Roman aristocrat deciding the fate of a dying gladiator.

"I gave him a chance," Evenson said.

He examined his fingernails as if they were far more interesting than the corpse in front of him.

"He rejected my mercy."

"So your answer was to punish him by killing him?"

Coulson’s voice hardened.

"No."

Evenson smiled faintly.

"This was still mercy."

He looked up.

"Better to die than live without freedom. That’s what he chose. He was willing to fight me to the death for the sake of what he called freedom. What exactly did you want me to do? Drag him back to a SHIELD black site and lock him away for the rest of his life?"

Evenson gestured toward the body.

"He wanted freedom badly enough to die for it. He got what he asked for. I’m simply respecting his final choice."

"I don’t understand."

Coulson’s instincts were rooted in a very different worldview. He knew the famous idea that freedom could be worth sacrificing everything for, but he still believed that life came first whenever there was a choice.

"So what part of that is supposed to be mercy?"

"Maybe it’s a cultural difference."

Evenson’s eyes sharpened.

"But let me put it in terms you’ll understand."

He stared directly at Coulson.

"He rejected my goodwill. He chose to stand against me. Once he’d made that choice, giving him a quick death was the greatest mercy I could offer."

A chill ran down Coulson’s spine.

He lowered his head and sighed.

"You’ve changed. I don’t remember you being like this."

"Really?"

Evenson gave him a strange smile.

"Maybe you’ve just misunderstood me because I’m usually easygoing."

He shrugged.

"I’ve always been like this. Fury understood that a lot better than you did."

Coulson said nothing.

"He sent me on plenty of missions," Evenson continued. "How many of them ended without bloodshed? He never had to explicitly tell me what to do beforehand, and he never came after me afterward, either."

Evenson’s smile faded into something colder.

"Because Fury already knew what I’d do. And what I would do was exactly what he wanted."

Coulson let out another tired breath.

He had to admit that he might have been projecting.

Evenson’s usual attitude, the joking, the casual manner, the cheap-skate behavior and constant attempts to profit from every little thing, made it easy to overlook the fact that when he decided someone needed to die, he could be absolutely ruthless.

And this time, while Evenson had certainly made the decision himself, Chen had resisted arrest first.

There was another problem.

Agent Guan, the Chief Executive’s brother, had died by Chen’s hand. If SHIELD captured Chen alive and refused to kill him, the political fallout could be ugly.

At least this way, the matter was settled.

Lily arrived a moment later, carrying her leather jacket.

"Hey. How’d I do?"

She slapped Evenson on the shoulder as casually as if they’d just finished sparring.

"Pretty good," Evenson said, only slightly interested.

Then he immediately moved on to business.

"You’re qualified. Here’s what we’re doing. Head to New York first and get settled. I’ve got some business to handle in London."

He waved a hand dismissively.

"And don’t worry. I’ll teach you everything I promised. Not a thing less."

"She’s going to New York too?"

Melinda sounded genuinely surprised.

"Of course."

Evenson looked at her as though the answer were obvious.

"She’s my student now. How exactly am I supposed to train her from halfway around the world? You expect me to illegally sneak into Hong Kong every day?"

Melinda considered that.

"So does she need to register too?"

Coulson had already seen what Lily could do. From SHIELD’s perspective, someone with that kind of capability belonged on their watch list.

"I thought we had an Inhuman registration system."

Evenson frowned.

"She isn’t an Inhuman. She hasn’t mutated. So what exactly are you planning to register?"

Coulson’s brows drew together.

He was beginning to wonder whether SHIELD should expand its definition of an Inhuman to include people who could do things like this without any supernatural mutation at all.

At last, the mission was over.

Evenson had intended to find Clary and head back to New York.

But since he was already there, he figured he might as well visit the plane and say hello to the kids.

That was when he learned just how badly Skye had screwed up during the operation.

Badly enough that she could lose her position entirely and possibly face disciplinary action.

Apparently getting dumped into a swimming pool last time hadn’t taught her much after all.

What Evenson didn’t know was that Skye regretted every decision she’d made.

She finally understood the truth.

She had spent all that time with Rising Tide, believing she’d been fighting for a cause, struggling to prove herself and chasing a future she thought she wanted.

It had all been a lie.

A game.

A deception.

Meanwhile, SHIELD was different.

These people actually cared about her.

For the first time, Skye understood that this place might be the home she’d been searching for all along.

And because of her own stupidity, she was about to be thrown out of it.

She still had one chance.

Maybe.

Painfully aware of how badly she’d screwed things up, Skye decided she had to try to salvage the situation. She headed for Coulson’s office, prepared to apologize and promise that from now on she would follow every order and every arrangement without complaint.

She didn’t care what assignment they gave her.

She just didn’t want to be kicked out.

When she reached the office, however, something immediately felt wrong.

The door wasn’t locked.

It was slightly open, leaving a narrow gap.

Voices came from inside.

Several people were arguing about something, and Skye quickly realized the argument was about her.

One of the voices was impossible to mistake.

She stopped outside the door and listened.

"That’s it?" Evenson’s voice boomed from inside. "That’s all it took for you to let Layden walk?"

Coulson answered just as loudly.

"We took security precautions. We put an electronic monitor on him. He won’t be able to access electronic systems for quite some time. And the money that came into his accounts has already been seized and distributed to Agent Guan’s family."

"Terrible decision."

Evenson’s disapproval was impossible to miss.

"What exactly did you want me to do?" Coulson shot back. "He’s already been released."

Evenson leaned against the desk, folding his arms.

"Fury asked me to cooperate with your team. He didn’t ask me to make coffee and carry paperwork."

His voice dropped into something colder.

"He wants me to have your backs. To deal with the things you can’t deal with and eliminate the problems you can’t solve."

He glanced toward Coulson.

"Give me five minutes. I’ll find him in three. Then I’ll make sure he’s dead in one."

A faint smile appeared on his face.

"And I’ll do it thoroughly enough that even the best forensic pathologist won’t be able to look at what’s left and determine it used to be human."

Skye’s eyes widened.

Evenson continued, completely calm.

"That leaves one minute. I might use it to grab a cup of yuanyang."

He paused.

"And, if there’s time, maybe a few fish balls."

"No!"

Skye couldn’t hold herself back any longer.

She shoved the door open and stormed into the office.

"You can’t do that!"

The room fell silent.

...