Chapter 766

Ghost was now securely bound to a chair, courtesy of the Eredar Twins. Her collision with the wall had been spectacular, but the advanced helmet had protected her from serious injury. Unfortunately, it had not prevented her from remaining unconscious.

Evenson had figured out what had happened. Ghost possessed an ability to shift between tangible and intangible states. She hadn’t been trying to kill herself when she’d charged into the wall earlier. She’d been trying to phase straight through it and escape.

He studied her thoughtfully.

"What’s she supposed to be? An Inhuman? Has S.H.I.E.L.D. been employing Inhuman agents for years without telling anyone?"

Her abilities naturally reminded him of the Inhumans, whose members possessed all sorts of unusual powers.

Peggy Carter, however, offered a different explanation. She looked at the unconscious woman with a trace of pity.

"Her body has certainly been altered, but she isn’t an Inhuman with an inherited genetic mutation. Her circumstances are closer to the Hulk’s. She’s the product of a failed scientific experiment."

Peggy sighed.

"She’s a victim, really."

"Can we focus, please?"

Oreses interrupted with obvious impatience.

"The important question isn’t how she acquired her abilities or whether we should feel sorry for her. It’s what we’re going to do now."

Salorass picked up where her sister left off.

"She infiltrated our facility and discovered our secrets. More importantly..."

Her gaze shifted to Evenson.

"She discovered your connection to this place. How do you propose we handle that?"

Evenson nodded. That was certainly worth considering.

"Any suggestions?"

"The simplest solution is obvious." Oreses answered without hesitation. "Kill her. Destroy her soul so completely that even a medium summoned by S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn’t extract a single useful memory."

"I object."

Peggy’s refusal came so quickly that she barely waited for Oreses to finish speaking.

"I don’t think that’s appropriate."

Salorass gave a cold laugh.

"What? Are you still concerned about the feelings of your former colleagues?"

"Please." Oreses joined in. "You can’t even determine whether this woman serves S.H.I.E.L.D. or HYDRA."

Peggy fell silent.

The distinction had become increasingly difficult to make. S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA were so thoroughly entangled that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Ghost might be a HYDRA operative, or she might be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who had been manipulated into serving HYDRA without realizing it.

Either way, she had almost certainly done the organization some favors.

"None of that changes the situation," Evenson said, shaking his head. "I agree that killing her is a bad idea."

He glanced at Ghost.

"Whoever sent her already suspects something is happening here. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have dispatched someone like her to investigate. If we don’t let her return in one piece, they’ll know something went wrong, and they’ll keep digging until they find out why."

He spread his hands.

"We can’t spend the rest of our lives guarding every wall and watching every entrance. We caught Ghost this time because we were lucky. What happens when someone else comes along and slips through our defenses? If we kill every spy who finds us, we’ll eventually run out of luck. Killing her to silence her is a last resort. We need to find a way to cover this up."

Oreses smiled in a way that suggested she had another solution in mind.

"Why not kill whoever sent her, too? Whoever they are, we eliminate them at the root. Wouldn’t that save us a great deal of trouble?"

Evenson studied the twins.

Had they both woken up in unusually violent moods today?

They rarely advocated such extreme measures without good reason. Perhaps this incident was more serious than he’d initially assumed.

He considered their proposal carefully before shaking his head.

"Not yet."

Ghost was a highly classified S.H.I.E.L.D. operative. The list of people capable of deploying someone like her was probably very short, with Alexander Pierce and Nick Fury near the top.

Evenson might want both men dead eventually, but neither could be removed just yet.

"If you’re unwilling to eliminate the problem at its source," Oreses said, narrowing her eyes, "then you’d better be ready for the possibility that we’ll have to reveal ourselves. Are you prepared for that?"

Evenson fell silent for a long moment.

Then he snorted.

"Prepared? Not particularly. But the more I think about it, the less worried I am."

He began counting off the points on his fingers.

"What’s wrong with this company? We have all the necessary permits. Our operations follow the proper channels, and we pay our taxes."

"Even if some of our research could be classified as biological weapons development, we’re not producing bacterial or viral weapons. We haven’t violated the existing biological weapons conventions. Some people might object to the ethics, but questionable ethics aren’t automatically illegal."

He sounded increasingly confident.

"Besides, the United States military specifically requested this research. We have formal authorization signed by the Secretary of Defense. What exactly have we done wrong? What evidence could anyone use against us?"

Salorass looked unimpressed.

"That’s the official story. It’s easy to defend ourselves when everyone follows the law. But what happens when they stop playing by the rules?"

She tilted her head.

"There’s a reason people fear attacks from the shadows. What if S.H.I.E.L.D. decides to use its intelligence network to destroy us by any means necessary? Isn’t that precisely the kind of thing its agents are trained to do?"

Peggy nearly choked.

Is that what S.H.I.E.L.D. is known for now?

She’d helped build the organization. She’d devoted years of her life to the ideals it was supposed to represent.

Then again, fabricating evidence and framing people when it suited the agency’s interests had become depressingly familiar practices.

She couldn’t exactly claim the accusation was baseless.

"That’s even less of a problem," Evenson declared.

He looked at the twins with complete confidence.

"Don’t take this the wrong way, but if we’re talking about underhanded tactics, do you honestly believe they can compete with you two? S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to play dirty? Against a pair of high-ranking Eredar? They won’t know what hit them."

The Burning Legion had never been burdened by anything resembling a moral code. Its members didn’t merely bend the rules. They operated as though rules and boundaries had never existed in the first place.

Trying to outmaneuver the Eredar Twins in a contest of ruthless manipulation was practically an invitation to ruin your own life.

If the twins couldn’t outplay someone, they could probably outplay that person’s descendants, too.

Oreses nodded thoughtfully.

"Very well. Gospel Company’s position is defensible."

Then she raised an eyebrow.

"But what about Umbrella?"

Evenson’s confidence faltered slightly.

"Umbrella?"

"When we were renovating the company offices, you insisted on plastering the Umbrella logo all over the place. We suggested removing it, and you threw a fit. What will you say if someone discovers those connections?"

Evenson blinked at her.

"What’s there to explain?"

He seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

"Umbrella was simply one of my old cover identities. The company never really existed. Every piece of evidence anyone has ever found was manufactured by me."

He shrugged.

"All those rumors about a new world order, all those stories about a bioterrorism corporation. They’re just things I’ve said. There’s no real organization behind them."

He leaned forward, warming to his argument.

"Is S.H.I.E.L.D. really going to try to destroy a legitimate company with extensive military contracts, one that helped rescue the President aboard Air Force One and deployed personnel to fight invading aliens during the Battle of New York? Are they going to bring down a company with that kind of record based on nothing but rumors?"

Evenson spread his arms.

"The U.S. government wouldn’t stand for it. And the World Security Council would never approve it, either."

He didn’t even need to investigate to know that Nick Fury had no concrete evidence linking the nonexistent Umbrella Corporation to anything substantial. Fury’s special investigation team had probably wasted a great deal of time chasing shadows.

Umbrella had never existed in the first place.

The one incident that could potentially cause trouble had occurred long ago, when the Corrupted Ones attacked a classified military storage facility. Yet the U.S. military had been among the most direct victims and the most important witnesses. If the military denied that the incident proved anything about Umbrella, the accusations would have little substance.

And the incident had involved Daniel Whitehall, a senior HYDRA figure. Alexander Pierce, who belonged to the same faction, would have every reason to help bury any evidence within S.H.I.E.L.D.

That avenue of attack was effectively closed.

"Very good," Salorass said, applauding lightly. "You’ve managed to separate the company from the problem quite neatly."

Her smile sharpened.

"But what about you personally? Surely you aren’t planning to sacrifice yourself to protect the company. We’d be very disappointed if you suddenly developed such a strong sense of civic responsibility."

The company’s position might be defensible, but Evenson’s was considerably murkier.

If Umbrella were exposed, it could look as though he’d been working for two organizations simultaneously while serving in S.H.I.E.L.D. Worse, investigators might conclude that he’d joined S.H.I.E.L.D. specifically to infiltrate it on behalf of Umbrella.

That would amount to a serious breach of trust.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had internal disciplinary procedures for precisely that sort of behavior.

Evenson chuckled.

"After all this time, Nick Fury has been pretending not to understand me. But I’ve been playing dumb around him, too."

He spoke with the confidence of a man who had finally figured out the rules of a game.

"From his perspective, I’m probably just a man with some unusual abilities who’s greedy, cowardly, and unlucky. I chase after anything that looks profitable, run from trouble faster than anyone else, and occasionally pull off a clever trick when I think I can get away with it."

Oreses burst out laughing.

"Are you sure that’s an act? Because it sounds remarkably like the real you."

Evenson froze.

For several seconds, he stared at her in wounded silence.

Then his face reddened.

"That’s not the point! I’m talking about the larger situation! The actual facts!"

"We’re talking about the actual facts, too," the twins replied in perfect unison.

They exchanged a glance and nodded solemnly.

Evenson inhaled sharply through his nose, his face growing even redder.

"Fine! Even if some of that is true, so what?"

He straightened his back and continued as though his dignity had never been challenged.

"I’ve worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. for a long time. I’ve done my job, endured plenty of hardship, and made significant contributions. If this ever comes to light, the worst that should happen is that they fire me."

He raised his chin.

"I haven’t broken any laws. And even if I had, they don’t have the evidence to prove it. S.H.I.E.L.D. could try to discipline me internally, but that doesn’t mean they’d succeed."

His confidence grew with every sentence.

"The whole world is paying attention to extraterrestrial civilizations now, and Asgard is at the center of it. Britain was invaded by aliens just days ago, and the whole fiasco involving unauthorized entry into Asgard has given the United Nations and the World Security Council a massive headache."

He opened his arms in a grand gesture.

"And then there’s me."

The Eredar Twins watched him with growing amusement.

"I’m the World Security Council’s designated and exclusive special adviser on Asgardian affairs. Whenever anything involving Asgard comes up, they have to consult me."

He held up a finger.

"I’m also the only known person on Earth who can go straight to Asgard, meet the All-Father, and chat with Odin as though we’re old friends."

A second finger joined the first.

"Furthermore, I’m the first heir to the Asgardian throne, the legitimate supreme commander of the Asgardian legions, and the first chosen of Hela, the Goddess of Death. I’m also the High Priest, assistant priest, bishop, and an ordinary member of her faith, depending on what the situation requires."

He paused to let that sink in.

"And now that Odin has personally acknowledged the abdication of Earth’s former king, the Ancient One, and the new queen, Clea, has officially ascended the throne, I hold the title of prince consort."

He seemed to remember something else.

"Queen Frigga also relies on me heavily. She’s even granted me a noble title in the Kingdom of Midgard, Province of the Americas, County of the United States, Township of New York, Borough of Brooklyn. I’m a knight!"

Peggy stared at him.

Evenson wasn’t finished.

"I’m also on excellent terms with Sif, the commander of the newly formed Valkyrie Corps. With all those titles, connections, and favors, even if Nick Fury decides he wants to come after me, he’ll have to think very carefully before making a move."

He tapped his temple.

"He’d better take a moment to count his blessings before he tries anything."

Evenson finally fell silent, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

The Eredar Twins seemed perfectly comfortable with his speech.

Peggy, on the other hand, was stunned.

Did this man really have all those titles?

Apparently, he did. Unless he committed some truly monstrous crime, taking him down would be an extraordinary headache for anyone involved.

It was a little like dealing with an American soldier stationed overseas. As long as he didn’t kill someone, even serious misconduct could sometimes be swept aside with an apology and a diplomatic headache.

Still, Peggy couldn’t shake the feeling that something about Evenson’s triumphant display was deeply questionable.

After thinking it over, she found a phrase for it.

Using foreign connections to inflate your own importance.

"Excellent," the Eredar Twins said, clapping their hands in approval. "It seems your mind is working properly after all."

Evenson blinked.

"Wait. You two..."

Understanding dawned on him.

He’d delivered that entire speech without preparation, pulling each point from his memory as the conversation progressed. He hadn’t realized just how many protections and advantages he possessed until the twins had pushed him to examine the situation from every angle.

Now he understood why they’d been so aggressive in suggesting murder and the elimination of everyone involved.

They hadn’t genuinely believed those were the best solutions. They’d been forcing him to think through the consequences until he recognized the strength of his own position.

They’d wanted him to understand just how important he was, and how difficult he would be to replace.

Oreses yawned lazily.

"Now that you’ve finally recognized your own importance, perhaps you’ll stop looking so miserable whenever trouble appears. Even if something goes wrong, you’re not so fragile that one setback will leave you unable to get back on your feet."

Evenson looked at them indignantly.

"We’re supposed to be close, aren’t we? Couldn’t you have just told me that directly?"

The twins exchanged a knowing glance.

"Could we?" Salorass asked.

They knew Evenson’s personality all too well. Give him a little praise, and he’d build himself a throne out of it. Tell him directly that he was powerful and important, and he’d probably spend the next week convinced he could personally conquer the universe.

No, it was much better to make him figure it out himself.

That way, at least, he might remember it.