Chapter 701

Sky hated Miles Leiden.

At this point, she never wanted to see the man again. If circumstances allowed, she might even enjoy putting a fist into his face and another somewhere considerably less forgiving.

But kill him?

That was a line she still couldn’t cross.

Sky had been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for quite a while, yet she’d barely experienced any real combat, much less killed anyone. Hell, despite being American, she’d somehow reached adulthood without ever learning how to use a gun properly. Ward had tried to remedy that, but as recently as their last mission, she still couldn’t reliably remember which control released the magazine and which one engaged the safety.

That should tell anyone everything they needed to know about how soft-hearted she was.

So the moment she overheard Evenson and Coulson discussing whether Leiden needed to die, she burst into the room.

Both men froze.

Coulson recovered first. He walked over, shut the door, and exchanged a glance with Evenson.

Evenson folded his arms.

"Sky, do you really think you’re in a position to worry about anyone else right now?"

Sky lowered her head.

"You maintained ties to a hostile organization. You warned a target before we could apprehend him. Your actions seriously compromised the mission and contributed to the consequences that followed."

His voice remained cold.

"Do you know what that makes you, Sky?"

She said nothing.

"A spy. The kind the Geneva Conventions wouldn’t exactly rush to protect."

Sky’s face went pale.

"Seriously, if you’d done what you did while working for another intelligence agency, the CIA or MI6, for example, Coulson and I wouldn’t be discussing how to deal with Leiden. We’d be discussing how to deal with you."

Evenson paused.

"And trust me, you’d probably spend quite a while being interrogated before anyone put you out of your misery."

Sky swallowed.

"So the smartest thing you can do right now is go back to your room and thank whatever deity you believe in that you’re still employed by S.H.I.E.L.D. Don’t start worrying about everyone else."

His words were frightening, but there was enough truth behind them to make Sky’s stomach knot.

She was lucky.

Very lucky.

She was in S.H.I.E.L.D., and more importantly, she was in Coulson’s team. Anywhere else, Internal Affairs might already have been preparing disciplinary action.

"I admit I was wrong," Sky said quietly. "I’ll accept whatever punishment I deserve. But Leiden..."

She knew how bad things looked.

Before this, getting kicked out had merely been a possibility. After what she’d done, it might as well have been a certainty.

Even so, she clenched her teeth and forced herself to continue.

"He made mistakes. He got greedy. He..." Her voice faltered. "He lied to me."

Regret and heartbreak twisted together in her chest.

"But he’s already been punished. He doesn’t deserve to die."

"Doesn’t deserve to die?"

Evenson sounded almost fascinated by the phrase.

"You really are new."

Sky looked up.

"You still don’t understand how S.H.I.E.L.D. operates."

"We don’t decide what to do based solely on laws or criminal charges. We decide based on threat level. If someone is a threat, we monitor them. If their threat level becomes too high, we eliminate them."

He shrugged.

"Simple."

"Even if they haven’t committed a crime?"

Sky’s shock was obvious.

Only now did she realize she still hadn’t truly understood S.H.I.E.L.D.

At first, she’d thought the organization was a shadowy force hiding the truth from the public. Later, she’d come to see it as the world’s overprotective big brother.

Now she realized both views had been incomplete.

S.H.I.E.L.D. really did protect people.

It just wasn’t particularly sentimental about how.

"Even then," Evenson said.

He nodded before giving her a faint smile.

"Fortunately, we don’t usually have to debate that point. Most people we consider serious threats have already committed plenty of crimes. We’re usually just a little less interested in the legal sentencing."

Sky took a moment to digest that.

Fortunately, she wasn’t exactly a die-hard believer in the sanctity of the legal system. If she had been, she probably wouldn’t have spent so long with the Rising Tide movement.

She had plenty of complaints about existing laws.

For instance, she firmly believed that certain people who preyed on children deserved considerably more than a prison sentence.

As for a scumbag like Leiden, who had lied, cheated, and manipulated her?

Breaking his nose and ruining his life seemed perfectly reasonable.

Killing him was another matter.

Then Sky’s eyes suddenly lit up.

"If that’s how you see things, then you have even less reason to kill Leiden."

Evenson raised an eyebrow.

"I’ve already reported all the identifying markers from the remote-access Trojan files he created to S.H.I.E.L.D. Any compromised terminal anywhere in the world can now be searched for his signatures. Once we find them, we can trace the associated network traffic past all the compromised systems and zombie machines and locate his actual position."

She folded her arms.

"His career as a hacker is over."

"Hmm."

Evenson frowned thoughtfully.

Then he leaned slightly toward Coulson and whispered, "Did you understand any of that?"

"I caught ’reported’ and ’career is over.’"

Evenson nodded solemnly.

"Same."

Every word Sky had said was perfectly understandable on its own.

Put together, however, it might as well have been an alien language.

"In short," Sky said, "he’s no longer a threat. He’s completely neutralized."

Under normal circumstances, Sky would have laughed at Evenson’s lack of technical knowledge.

Right now, she knew better.

"Killing him would be completely unnecessary. Why waste the time? We could go get bubble tea and a bunch of fish balls instead. I’ll even pay."

Evenson’s expression shifted.

"You’ll pay?"

He scratched his head.

That was considerably more generous than the Grandmaster had ever been.

He could work with that.

Sky, however, interpreted his expression differently.

She thought he clearly didn’t believe her.

"Even if you don’t trust me, you should trust S.H.I.E.L.D.’s technology. Leiden is already wearing an electronic restraint. Any electronic device he interacts with can be locked down within seconds. The restraint also has global tracking."

"Sky..."

Evenson walked around the desk and dropped himself into Coulson’s chair like he’d just been promoted to team leader.

"You’re actually pretty clever. You just have a remarkable talent for applying it to the wrong things."

Sky blinked.

"You’ve gone to all this trouble to find excuses for Leiden. But there’s one thing you still haven’t realized."

Evenson leaned back.

"The threat I was talking about was never Leiden."

He pointed directly at her.

"It was you."

Sky’s eyes widened.

For the first time, genuine fear crossed her face.

She remembered everything Evenson had said about dealing with threats.

Her voice trembled.

"I... I’m a threat?"

"Save that question for the agents who’ll be handling your case."

Evenson’s voice hardened.

"If your mistake hadn’t cost us so much time, if S.H.I.E.L.D. had been given enough time to prepare and understand what had happened to Chen Haoran, Agent Guan might still be alive."

Sky’s face went white.

"And Coulson."

Evenson turned toward him.

"Do you know how many senior agents opposed Coulson when he decided you were worth recruiting? Even Director Nick Fury thought bringing you in was a bad idea."

Sky looked at Coulson.

"But he pushed through it anyway. He took the pressure and brought you into S.H.I.E.L.D. because he trusted you."

Evenson’s voice sharpened.

"And you repaid that trust by putting him in an impossible position."

"Right now, God knows how many people are laughing at him for ignoring their warnings. They’ll say he brought this on himself."

He held up a finger.

"Your mistake is your responsibility. But Coulson still bears leadership responsibility."

Another finger.

"Agent Ward was your direct handler after you joined S.H.I.E.L.D. He’ll be held responsible for failing to supervise you properly."

Another.

"And everyone else on the team will have their own share of accountability."

Evenson leaned back in the chair.

"Trust me. Director Fury is probably already drafting their disciplinary orders."

He looked at Sky.

"And Miles Leiden? What is he? A hacker hiding in a hole. What is Rising Tide? After all these years of dancing around S.H.I.E.L.D., they’ve stolen some peripheral intelligence and caused a little irritation."

He shrugged.

"That’s nothing."

His expression turned serious.

"But you?"

"You made one mistake, and someone in charge of an entire region ended up dead. You destroyed the career of a senior agent and left a permanent stain on his otherwise spotless record. You dragged an entire special operations team into the fallout."

He stared directly at her.

"So tell me, Sky. Does that sound like a small threat?"

Sky stood frozen.

Only now did she truly understand how many people she’d dragged down with her.

S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t an organization where one person’s mistake simply belonged to that person.

Everyone carried the consequences.

That was how the organization prevented mistakes from being repeated.

Sky slowly turned toward Coulson.

He had closed his eyes and turned his head away.

To Sky, it looked like the gesture of a man whose heart had finally gone cold.

He’d given up on her.

"So..." Cold sweat formed along Sky’s forehead. "You’re going to deal with me too?"

"I already am."

Evenson rubbed his chin.

"But there are different ways to deal with a threat. Eliminating the threat itself is one option."

He raised a finger.

"Removing the external factor that could trigger the threat is another."

Sky’s breathing quickened.

"That’s why you’re going to kill Leiden?"

"You think you’ll never contact him again after what happened?"

"No."

"But what if he contacts you?"

Evenson waved a hand.

"We’ve all seen how much influence he had over you. Maybe your feelings for him are at rock bottom now. Maybe you hate him."

He leaned forward.

"But what happens if he calls you someday and talks his way back into your good graces? Or someone kidnaps him and threatens to kill him unless you cooperate?"

"You think I’d give in?"

Sky stepped forward.

"I wouldn’t. I would never trust him again. Even if something like that happened, I’d report it through the proper channels."

"I’ve learned my lesson."

"Don’t be so certain."

Evenson shook his head.

"History has taught us one thing above all else. Humanity’s greatest lesson is that humanity never learns its lessons."

He looked at her.

"Your promise and a dead man. Which one do you think I’m more likely to trust?"

"I trust her."

Coulson’s voice cut through the room.

The argument stopped.

"I trust Sky."

Evenson slowly turned toward him.

"You still trust her?"

His expression was almost comically incredulous.

"After everything she’s done? After she’s betrayed the trust of everyone on this team? You’re still willing to trust her again?"

"Yes."

Coulson nodded firmly.

"Young people make mistakes. I think she deserves another chance."

Sky clapped a hand over her mouth.

Her eyes immediately filled with tears.

Coulson had never looked more heroic to her.

At this moment, if he’d asked her to call him Dad, she probably would’ve done it without hesitation.

Evenson grunted.

He seemed to consider the matter carefully before finally sighing.

"Fine. This is getting boring."

He stood.

"She’s your team member, after all."

Evenson stepped around the desk and walked over to Sky.

He looked her directly in the eye.

"Coulson is willing to trust you, so I don’t have a reason to interfere. Just don’t betray that trust again."

"I... won’t."

Sky’s voice broke.

"I won’t."

She lowered her head and wiped away her tears.

"Then consider this my sermon."

Evenson patted her shoulder.

"If you make the same mistake again, next time it’ll be you getting sent to the afterlife."

"I understand."

Sky nodded rapidly.

Then she suddenly looked up, her eyes red and swollen.

"You’re not kicking me out?"

"I keep telling you. You’re clever. You just never use it where it matters."

Evenson poked her firmly on the top of the head twice.

"If we wanted you gone, would we really waste this much time talking to you?"

He grinned.

"You’d already be sharing an urn with Leiden."

"Thank you..."

Sky started crying again.

This time, however, they were tears of relief.

She wiped her eyes and hurried out of the room.

The moment the door closed behind her, Coulson crossed the room and locked it.

Then he let out a long breath.

"That was exhausting."

Evenson nodded.

The entire confrontation had been an act.

Coulson had originally thought that simply forgiving Sky and tightening security around her would be enough to make her settle down.

Evenson had disagreed.

Mercy without consequences would only teach her that she could get away with things.

Coulson had plenty of evidence for what happened when someone was given too much indulgence.

Five particular disasters living under his roof came immediately to mind.

Better to give her both mercy and fear.

"That girl..."

Evenson picked up a glass of water and drained it.

His throat was dry after all that theatrical lecturing.

"She’s barely keeping herself out of trouble, and she still wants to plead for someone else. You’d think she’d realize what she put all of you through."

"She’s still new," Coulson said with a laugh and a shake of his head. "How could she possibly think that far ahead?"

"At the time, she genuinely thought she’d pulled off the perfect operation."

Coulson smiled.

"She thought she could avoid exposing Leiden, get the information she wanted, and somehow make both sides walk away happy."

"Luck."

Evenson curled his lip.

"An agent’s worst enemy."

"I’m confident she’ll learn from this."

Coulson smiled.

"Still, thanks for playing the villain again."

"Doesn’t bother me."

Evenson shrugged.

"I was never exactly a good guy."

Meanwhile, Miles Leiden had already been released.

He walked alone down an empty street with a shoulder bag hanging from one side.

He hadn’t gotten the money.

He’d lost his girlfriend.

At this point, he was seriously considering buying a plane ticket and going home.

Then he looked down at the electronic restraint around his wrist and sighed.

Back when he was free, he could book a flight without worrying about whether his payment would even go through.

He had just passed an alley when two men who looked like petty street thugs suddenly appeared behind him.

A sack dropped over his head.

A baseball bat cracked against the back of his skull.

Leiden collapsed unconscious.

One of the men pulled out a machete.

He grabbed Leiden’s restrained wrist, raised the blade, and chopped the hand clean off.

He was about to toss it into a nearby trash can when—

Smack!

Someone holding a cup of milk tea smacked him on the back of the head.

The newcomer wore a spotless white suit.

"What the hell are you doing? First day on the job?"

The man sounded furious.

"You couldn’t be any sloppier if you tried. Take that hand with you. Walk around with it for a while, then burn it together with the Big Circle guy’s body."

He jabbed a finger toward the severed hand.

"Burn it to ash. Every last bit."

"Y-yes!"

The thug nodded frantically.

"I’ll take care of it, Brother Weng!"