Chapter 128 - Open Secret

Chapter 128: Chapter 128 - Open Secret

T’Challa had watched his father walk into fights before.

The difference was that those fights had belonged to Wakanda. The warriors knew their king, the ground answered to their maps, and any witness understood that the Black Panther had arrived with the authority to decide what happened next.

On the screen before him, King T’Chaka lay strapped to an American medical gurney with his right arm gone and his left leg ending below the knee.

Federal agents surrounded him, two keeping their weapons lowered but ready while paramedics worked around the restraints crossing his chest and remaining wrist. A State Department official argued into one phone. An FBI agent ended a call, glanced at the ruined grounds of Sands Point and immediately answered another.

The Panther mask had been removed, leaving T’Chaka conscious and exposed to the cameras. "They cannot arrest him."

The elder beside T’Challa did not answer. Across the Atlantic, an American reporter shouted the same argument at a cluster of officials and received nothing but a raised hand. The camera found Lucius instead.

He stood outside his mansion in a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. Dried blood marked one cuff. Behind him, agents photographed a broken wall, damaged lawn and bodies covered beneath twelve black sheets. Someone had placed the Panther suit and the surviving weapons on separate evidence tarps. Noctis had arranged his face into the patient expression of a man forced to explain an obvious invoice, and the press rewarded him by shouting all at once.

The first questions collided over the dead Wakandans, the king’s presence, Captain America’s metal, a foreign operation on American soil and diplomatic immunity. One voice finally broke through. "Mr Noctis, why was King T’Chaka on your property?"

Lucius lifted one hand, and the questions continued until pale-gold light formed above his palm and expanded into a six-foot image of the estate. Thirteen red figures crossed its walls in three groups. When the shouting diminished, he pointed to the centre group.

"His Majesty arrived after midnight with twelve armed men, and a touching belief that trespass becomes diplomacy when everyone involved has matching equipment. They came to abduct me and steal my potion work. They were detected, warned by the presence of several rifles aimed at their organs, and persisted."

"Did you give them a verbal warning?"

"The rifles were eloquent."

Several reporters spoke over one another, asking why Wakanda wanted the potions, whether federal authorities had received evidence and what the suit was made of.

Lucius looked toward the black armour on the tarp. "Vibranium, the material in Captain America’s shield, except Wakanda has considerably more than one patriotic dinner plate. Their king crossed my lawn dressed in it, and his men carried weapons made of it. Their hidden country sits on enough of it to make every strategic-materials committee on Earth soil itself."

T’Challa watched the questions change through the crowd as quickly as fear. The reporters stopped asking whether Noctis’s claim was true and began asking how much.

"Are you saying Wakanda controls the world supply?" "How large are the reserves?" "Is Wakanda technologically advanced?" "Why conceal a resource like that?" "Did Wakanda supply Howard Stark?"

Lucius smiled before he answered. "Wakanda advertises itself as a poor country of farmers while hoarding a mountain containing untold tons of the rarest metal on Earth. They hide their cities, their weapons and their laboratories, then send spies called War Dogs into other nations. Think of sewer rats with a national anthem and a better research budget."

The elder beside T’Challa inhaled sharply. T’Challa heard it without looking away.

A reporter near the front raised her voice. "Do you have proof of this mountain?"

"Their king wore the proof to my house."

"That proves a suit, not a national reserve."

Lucius gave her an approving nod. "Correct, which is why you may ask how Ulysses Klaue escaped Wakanda years ago with a quarter ton of Vibranium and still left enough behind for the royal family to equip burglars. A poor nation does not misplace that much of the rarest metal on Earth. It certainly does not call the loss minor and keep pretending its chief export is woven baskets."

"Did you interrogate King T’Chaka?"

"He volunteered several useful opinions while trying to cut me open."

"Did you remove his arm and leg?"

"Yes, I removed both of them."

"Then why did you keep him alive?"

"I wanted him available for questions." Lucius glanced toward the gurney. "Apparently his diplomatic immunity has questions of its own. The FBI may investigate an armed foreign operation on American soil. The State Department may decide whether a king can be prosecuted for personally participating in it. The Secret Service would prefer everyone stop calling this an arrest while they transfer him into guarded medical custody."

T’Challa switched off the screen. The silence in the room lasted three breaths before another display lit with incoming reports from foreign ministries demanding confirmation. Commodity desks were moving before their governments had decided what they believed. Wakandan missions had begun receiving requests phrased as concern and demands phrased as requests.

His father’s warning had come true before the blood on Noctis’s cuff had dried. T’Challa turned the broadcast on again.

-

Nick Fury had known that Ulysses Klaue stole Vibranium from Wakanda. He had known the country exported almost nothing, guarded its borders with unusual zeal and produced intelligence gaps too clean to be accidental. SHIELD had filed those facts under unresolved strategic curiosities because other threats kept exploding on schedule.

He had not known a Wakandan king could cross a Long Island estate in armour built from the same metal as Rogers’ shield. That distinction was now one more item on the list of things SHIELD had failed to know while claiming global oversight.

Fury paused the broadcast on the three evidence tarps: the suit on one, Sonic Spears and short blades on another, then smaller pieces from the grounds tagged by federal technicians who had no idea what they were touching.

His secure phone rang before he reached the next report.

"Tell me Noctis is lying."

"He lies when the truth is less useful."

"That wasn’t what I asked."

Fury looked at the shield beside Steve in the live hospital feed, its red and white rings obscuring most of the chair where it rested.

"Howard Stark called Vibranium the rarest metal on Earth and said your shield used everything he had. SHIELD later connected Klaue’s stolen stock to Wakanda. We never verified the source deposit or the country’s actual capabilities."

"So you suspected it was Wakanda."

"Suspicion is what you have before evidence. Noctis put the evidence on his lawn."

Fury let Steve’s silence remain. Captain America had emerged from the river with bullet wounds, broken trust and an old friend who had disappeared again. Anger at a nation hiding behind poverty was simpler than all three.

"Romanoff reviewed the operational files we recovered. Call her before you decide what this means."

"Where can I find her?"

"If she wanted that answered, you would already know."

-

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker watched the same broadcast without sound.

At his request, the display beside it showed every surviving HYDRA reference to Wakanda. Trade estimates, satellite passes, diplomatic profiles and Klaue’s old movements filled the screen. The files provided the dimensions of a shadow and nothing inside it before Malick joined the secure connection from an unmarked room.

"You knew about the Vibranium."

"I knew Klaue sold Vibranium. I did not know he robbed a nation capable of making that suit."

Strucker enlarged the image of the armour. "Energy dispersion across woven metal. Claws integrated into the suit. Their spears are being handled as ceremonial weapons by men who do not understand the material."

"Then allow them to remain ignorant."

"The entire world is ignorant, and that creates an opportunity."

Malick studied him for a moment. "Noctis killed twelve operatives and dismantled their king because Wakanda treated him as an opportunity. You recently proposed the same mistake."

"I proposed specimens whose energy may improve the Maximoff programme."

"You proposed reaching into his bedroom."

Strucker’s mouth tightened before he answered. "Wakanda is not the same as Noctis."

"Perhaps not as of this morning. By tomorrow it will have every intelligence service, defence contractor and thief on Earth testing that claim. We should watch who survives the first requests."

Strucker returned his attention to the suit. "And what do we do while we watch?"

"We must preserve our dominion over Sokovia and the sceptre, then avoid becoming the next educational evening."

The connection closed before Strucker answered.

-

Tony Stark had spent four minutes asking JARVIS whether Lucius was exaggerating and another six becoming offended by the answer.

"The armour contains a Vibranium mass inconsistent with known commercial availability," JARVIS reported. "Its construction also demonstrates materials processing beyond any method present in the Stark Industries archive."

"Dad said the shield was all of it."

"Your father said it was all he possessed, sir."

Tony pointed at the screen. "That distinction has been waiting seventy years to annoy me."

"It appears to have succeeded."

The call from Steve arrived before Tony could begin a less polite objection.

-

Steve reached Natasha first, and she answered on the fourth ring. Wind moved across her microphone, followed by the closing of a car door. "Fury told me you reviewed the Wakanda files."

"Fury is rediscovering delegation now that his organisation fits inside a borrowed room."

"Did T’Chaka try to abduct Noctis?"

"The recovered HYDRA material mentions a Wakandan extraction plan. The bodies and estate footage match thirteen intruders in three teams. I would call that a yes until someone produces a very creative tourism brochure."

Steve gripped the steering wheel. Sands Point remained more than an hour away. "That doesn’t justify exposing an entire country."

"No, but it explains why Noctis wanted to."

"You are starting to sound like Fury."

"You want one of us to make this simple."

The road opened ahead of him. Steve had spent his life watching powerful countries describe secrecy as security and violence as necessity. Wakanda had apparently perfected both while everyone else believed it needed foreign aid. "What exactly did SHIELD know about Wakanda?"

"Klaue stole Vibranium from Wakanda. Analysts disagreed on whether it came from a mine, a reserve or a shipment passing through. We had no proof of an advanced city, advanced weapons or an industrial supply. Anyone telling you we knew about the mountain is protecting their pension."

"Tony might know what Howard knew."

"Then call Tony. After that, decide whether you are driving there to ask about Bucky or defend a king who brought twelve armed men to someone’s home."

Natasha ended the call, and Tony answered the next one immediately. "Please tell me you’re calling to donate the shield for nondestructive testing."

"No, the shield stays with me."

"Then this friendship remains horribly one-sided."

Steve ignored the request. "Did your father know it came from Wakanda?"

"If he did, he kept it out of every file JARVIS can find. He called it the rarest metal on Earth and said he had the last of it. Wakanda apparently heard that and laughed from inside its invisible laboratory."

"So you believe Noctis’s claims."

"I believe the suit that made three federal spectrometers surrender. Lucius is being Lucius, which means every fact gets dragged behind his ego until it stops looking respectable."

Steve took the next turn toward Long Island. "I’m going to speak to him."

"This is about Bucky?"

"I need answers about both."

Tony’s answer lost its humour. "Ask about Bucky first. You can dislike what Lucius did after you remember what T’Chaka did. If you walk in calling the Wakandans cowards, he’ll agree with you, improve the insult and waste the part of the conversation that matters."

"You worried I’ll upset him?"

"I’m worried you’ll let righteous anger make your plan even worse, and Sam already set a demanding standard."

Steve drove the rest of the way without making another one.

-

The press had gone by the time Steve reached Sands Point. Federal vehicles still occupied the road, and portable lights covered the damaged grounds while evidence teams worked around the bodies. The mansion gates opened before he identified himself. Lucius waited beside the pool with a glass in one hand and fresh clothes on his back. Nothing else about him suggested that the morning had required adjustment.

Steve remained standing beside the empty chair. "I need help with Bucky."