Chapter 774

Pierce had arrived in high spirits.

After all, Gideon Malick—the man who normally looked down on him, treated him like a wayward disciple, and carried himself as though his branch of Hydra represented the only legitimate tradition—had actually swallowed his pride and come asking for a favor.

Not only that, but Malick had been unusually polite about it.

He had asked Pierce to come watch a little production featuring his daughter.

Pierce had been more than a little amused by the invitation.

He had not expected the evening to end with Peggy Carter dropping an entire nuclear bomb into his understanding of reality.

By the time the recording reached this point, however, there was little else worth watching. Evenson’s report on his trip to Asgard contained nothing Pierce hadn’t already seen in the official report submitted to S.H.I.E.L.D. The only difference was that the official version had been mercifully free of Evenson’s shameless self-congratulation.

Pierce finally remembered why he had come.

He reached for the remote and shut off the recording.

"That’s enough. This ends here. You are not to investigate this matter any further."

Even Pierce felt a little guilty saying it.

The situation was complicated.

If this had involved Umbrella alone, he would have been more than happy to let Nick Fury investigate. In fact, Pierce might even have helped him.

He had always been deeply wary of Umbrella.

From everything Hydra had managed to uncover, the mysterious corporation possessed advanced technology, enormous financial resources, and influence that stretched across the globe. They had facilities everywhere, and some of the world’s strangest incidents could very well have been connected to them.

Maybe they’d bought one of the old Soviet submarine bases and turned it into a research center.

Maybe the strange diseases appearing across Africa weren’t ancient pathogens resurfacing at all, but the result of Umbrella’s biological experiments.

Maybe all those bizarre reports of people venturing into remote forests to collect insects and rare species were connected to their search for unusual genetic material.

Hell, even the dramatic rise in cancer rates over the past few decades could theoretically be connected to Umbrella gathering experimental data.

An organization like that had ambitions. Pierce would have been an idiot to believe otherwise.

And if Umbrella ever acted on those ambitions, who would be among the first to get crushed?

Hydra.

More specifically, Pierce’s branch of Hydra.

The Red Skull’s faction was a newer branch of the organization, and the old families had never forgotten that.

The Allies?

They had been enemies. Fighting to the death was simply business.

The Red Skull had certainly done enough to earn their hatred.

Most of his operations against the Allies had been thwarted by Captain America, while the few that hadn’t been had usually collapsed under their own weight. The man had spent more resources creating disasters for his own side than he ever managed to inflict on the enemy.

And then there were the Germans he’d supposedly been working for.

The Red Skull had drained them of money, soldiers, and resources with one scheme after another. There were even rumors that Hitler had diverted funding intended for an enormous Tiger tank production program to support one of the Red Skull’s projects.

Once the project was completed, the Red Skull had simply sold the results.

His greatest—and practically only—successful operation had been the bombing of Berlin.

The joke practically wrote itself.

Betrayal hurts more than any enemy. The Red Skull betrayed me.

And yet, according to everything Pierce had uncovered, Umbrella might have evolved from those very remnants—or at least helped establish the regime that eventually became connected to them.

Either way, the relationship between Umbrella and the old Nazi power structure was far too tangled to ignore.

If Umbrella had finally recovered from its old wounds, why wouldn’t it want revenge?

Look at what had happened with Whitehall.

He had managed to do business with Umbrella twice, taking advantage of the same temporary alignment of interests. Whitehall had walked away with practically nothing while causing himself considerable trouble.

And now?

Umbrella had simply ignored him.

Instead, they were working directly with Malick, one of the representatives of Hydra’s oldest families.

And Malick had even sent his precious daughter to participate.

Pierce didn’t need much imagination to see where that could lead.

A Hydra-Umbrella alliance.

Possibly even a marriage between the two factions.

Those old families had always been fond of political marriages.

That alone was enough to make Pierce deeply uncomfortable.

Worse, Umbrella had already reached into his own territory.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be his territory.

Yet Umbrella had quietly inserted Evenson Richter into the organization, and Pierce had never even realized what he was.

If today’s little performance hadn’t happened, he might still have been completely in the dark.

And then Pierce remembered something else.

Years ago, his branch had nearly been exposed because of Evenson.

At the time, Pierce had never understood how a few street-level gangsters could possibly have led back to Hydra.

Now he had his answer.

Umbrella.

And then there was Peggy Carter.

That was the real nightmare.

If Carter and Umbrella were working together, then the Avengers might already be under their influence as well.

Umbrella would effectively have one hand inside S.H.I.E.L.D. and another inside the Avengers.

Wonderful.

A corporate takeover of the entire superhero ecosystem.

And Carter wasn’t just some random agent. She was a founder of S.H.I.E.L.D., a legend with decades of connections and countless protégés.

How many of those supposedly incorruptible S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had already been recruited by her?

The Ghost, for example.

Pierce and Fury had thought they controlled her because they knew how to keep her in line.

Apparently she’d already become an Umbrella asset.

That was terrifying.

Pierce suddenly remembered his own Insight Project files.

Where the hell am I supposed to hide those?

There probably wasn’t a secure enough place anymore.

Maybe he should memorize the entire thing.

No.

That was ridiculous.

Even he had limits.

And then there was Coulson’s Special Operations team.

Pierce was beginning to suspect that team had gone red-and-white too.

Coulson had been close to Evenson for years.

According to Rumlow’s report, Evenson had personally reclaimed Coulson’s soul from Mephisto after Coulson’s death.

Then there was Melinda May.

She was supposedly close to Evenson as well, and she was one of Peggy Carter’s direct protégés.

Where else would she stand?

And then there was Skye.

That girl had practically been dug out of a dumpster, yet somehow she’d ended up inside Coulson’s elite team.

Evenson had been involved from the moment she was recruited. Coulson had fought tooth and nail to keep her there.

At first, Pierce had wondered why.

Was it her hacking ability?

Her potential?

Or maybe—

No.

Now he understood.

It was her looks.

That beautiful mixed-race woman was practically a professional distraction.

It hadn’t taken long before she’d started flirting with one of the people Pierce had worked so hard to place inside that team.

The two were practically halfway to becoming a couple.

It was disgusting.

This was infiltration by seduction!

Hydra agents were being corrupted by attractive women!

Pierce couldn’t allow it.

John Garrett and Grant Ward could no longer be trusted.

And if they had already been compromised, who knew how many agents they’d recruited?

That was why Pierce found himself caught between two terrible choices.

Part of him desperately wanted Fury to investigate Umbrella and eliminate the threat.

The other part knew that Umbrella was already cooperating with Malick, and that the organization had apparently infiltrated his own branch of Hydra.

The entire situation had become an impossible knot.

If Fury started pulling on the thread, something was going to unravel.

And Umbrella’s exposure was currently limited. They had only a handful of identifiable people.

Hydra, on the other hand, was everywhere.

If Fury started digging, Pierce would be the one who paid the price.

There was no way to make that trade worthwhile.

So the best option was obvious.

Cover this up.

Buy time.

Once Insight succeeded, it wouldn’t matter whether someone was a Hydra elder, an Umbrella executive, or a member of some secret alliance.

They could all be dealt with afterward.

Across the room, Fury stared at the blank monitor.

He looked mildly surprised.

The remaining footage might have contained nothing important, but who knew what might have appeared next?

Why had Pierce been so quick to shut it down?

Pierce had prepared his answer before he ever entered the room.

He simply hadn’t expected to need it this quickly.

"The World Security Council exists to manage and supervise S.H.I.E.L.D. Our authority has expanded to the point where it has become difficult to control. Their investigation and oversight are therefore completely legitimate."

He folded his arms.

"Simply watching this recording is already questionable. If you continue investigating the matter, or deliberately conceal information from the people conducting that investigation, then you’re crossing a serious line."

Fury wasn’t impressed.

"And I’m supposed to stand there while bureaucrats strip away the authority I need to do my job?"

"You’ve been surrendering some of that authority yourself."

Pierce stood and put his hands on his hips.

"Your self-restraint is admirable. Why not continue?"

"I can choose to give up my authority."

Fury’s voice hardened.

"I just won’t let them quietly take it away."

"You know what those bureaucrats are like. Everything is checks and balances, oversight and restrictions."

"I’m not saying checks and balances are bad. They’re necessary."

Fury stepped forward.

"But if you care about balance more than the authority itself, you end up paralyzing the organization. Imagine a serious crisis. By the time everyone has argued over which department has jurisdiction, submitted the forms, obtained approval, debated the deployment, and approved the deployment again, the crisis might already be over."

Pierce raised an eyebrow.

"Then what do you want?"

"Nothing."

Fury rose as well.

"When they take one of my powers away, I want the right to appeal. That’s all."

"You have that right."

Pierce nodded firmly.

"But only when they’re actually deciding whether to take that authority away from you. The Council may be bureaucratic, but they’re not idiots. They will listen to your arguments."

His expression hardened.

"But if you keep playing with fire..."

He pointed toward the storage device the Ghost had recovered.

"If you keep doing things like this, they won’t give you the opportunity to appeal."

There was a simple distinction.

If the Council tried to take authority away and Fury objected, that was normal procedure.

If Fury actively resisted an investigation and tried to circumvent the Council’s decisions, that became abuse of office.

At that point, he could forget arguing about whether his powers were necessary.

He’d be looking for a lawyer to defend his own civil rights.

After a long silence, Fury finally nodded.

He hadn’t started the investigation to challenge the World Security Council. He had only wanted to determine whether Evenson could be trusted.

The Council’s involvement had been an unexpected complication.

Now that he understood the situation, there was little reason to continue.

"This should be destroyed," Pierce said.

He pulled the storage device free and held it over the mouth of the glass he’d been drinking from.

Then he produced a lighter.

"Wait."

Fury immediately raised a hand.

Pierce ignored him.

"What? Worried about the storage device, or worried about the drink?"

He flicked the lighter.

The liquor was strong enough that the flame immediately spread across the surface in a blue sheet.

For several seconds, the storage device sat over the makeshift alcohol burner.

Then—

Beep.

An alarm suddenly erupted from somewhere inside the office.

Pierce froze.

A moment later—

Pffft!

Water exploded from the ceiling.

The storage device disappeared beneath the deluge.

It didn’t take long before an agent waiting outside the office witnessed one of the strangest sights of his career.

Director Nick Fury and Secretary Pierce emerged from the office looking like two men who had just lost a fight with a fire hydrant.

Pierce stripped off his soaked coat and tossed it aside before wiping water from his face and hair.

"Why the hell is your fire alarm so sensitive?"

Fury looked considerably less miserable.

His leather coat was waterproof, after all.

And being bald had at least one advantage.

"My office contains classified material. Of course the fire suppression system is sensitive."

Pierce glanced through the open doorway.

Several computers and pieces of expensive electronic equipment were still being drenched by the sprinklers.

He stared at the destruction in silence.

Whoever designed that fire alarm system was an absolute idiot.