radicalducati Chapter 117 A Flying Hammer from Outer Space, Chaos within S.H.I.E.L.D.
Chapter 117 A Flying Hammer from Outer Space, Chaos within S.H.I.E.L.D.
Chapter 117 A Flying Hammer from Outer Space, Chaos within S.H.I.E.L.D.
Coulson, along with Captain America Steve Rogers, Black Widow Natasha, and Iron Man Melinda, formed a team and returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.
This time, they used the excuse that Captain America wanted to talk to the director in person and headed straight for the director's office.
No one can find fault with this reason.
Steve Rogers had only recently been dug out of the ice, so it was only natural that he wanted to see the current director who had taken over all the messes while he was asleep.
But as Coulson walked through the lobby on the first floor, past his colleagues who were chatting in twos and threes in the corridor, he noticed something extremely subtle.
Many people are observing them with a very discreet gaze.
It's normal for Captain America to get stared at while walking down the corridor of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, but the angle and duration of those gazes are just wrong.
They are more like a kind of vigilance, checking whether the target has discovered anything or deviated from the planned route.
Having worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. for so many years, Coulson clearly understands the difference between a normal chance encounter with a colleague and being watched.
When the four men arrived at the director's office, Nick Fury was sitting behind his desk.
He glanced up at the newcomers and said casually, "I heard you wanted to see me?"
Steve stepped forward and pulled the alien detection spray directly from his pocket.
His fingers had barely touched the showerhead, before he could press the button, when Fury immediately raised a hand: "Stop."
This reaction proves that the man in front of him is not Fury himself.
The real Nick Fury would never raise his hand in front of the spray; only a stand-in who has been exposed once would have a conditioned reflex when he sees this thing.
Fury pressed a button on his desk, and all the blackout panels around the windows fell down, instantly isolating the office from the outside world.
"What are you doing?" The fake Fury lowered his voice.
Coulson smirked.
Actually, as he walked from the lobby to the director's office, he felt that the way his colleagues were looking at him was a bit strange.
I originally thought it was because I was too influenced by Li En and had become paranoid, seeing everyone as a hydra.
But now, standing before this fake Fury, replaced by a Skrull, the doubts that had been weighing on his heart were gradually turning into reality.
He walked up to the fake Fury, lowered his head, and whispered in a voice so low that only the two of them could hear: "Chief, where is he?"
""
Fake Fury leaned back in his chair, spread his hands, and said with genuine helplessness, "I don't know either. That guy hasn't contacted me for many days."
17
"I am now completely following the original agreement and continuing to play the role of him."
"I sent all the documents that required his stamp and signature to the designated address on time. In the past, I would receive a signed and stamped reply the next morning. Now—nothing has come back."
The people present all frowned at the same time.
Steve was silent for a moment, then suddenly thought of something.
He leaned down, put his mouth close to the fake Fury's ear, and whispered a few words.
"Long live Hydra!"
The fake Fury suddenly turned his head, stared at Steve with wide eyes, his pupils trembling violently, and his mouth slightly open.
The composed facade that belonged to Nick Fury shattered completely in that instant.
Steve nodded, straightened up, and whispered to Coulson and Melinda, "He has nothing to do with that side of things."
Fake Fury then realized that something terrible must have happened.
Coulson, Melinda, and Natasha are all close to level eight privileges.
In addition, there's Captain America, who was just dug out of the ice.
The fact that these four people could simultaneously storm into the bureau chief's office for a confrontation meant that the situation was definitely more serious than he had imagined.
His voice carried a barely suppressed panic: "What happened?"
The four of them exchanged a glance.
Natasha spoke first: "A lot of people have been quite puzzled on the way here."
Melinda nodded: "Indeed, they all seem to be wary of us."
Coulson immediately chimed in, "We've been exposed? We shouldn't be—that story was just finalized before we set off."
Steve gently shook his head: "You weren't exposed because you never paid attention to their gaze before. Now that you've started to care, you've been able to notice."
The three of them fell silent.
Steve is right.
Before they met Li En, they walked down the corridors of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters without ever noticing their colleagues' stares or thinking they needed to.
Natasha suddenly turned around and walked towards the door, saying, "I'm going to talk to a colleague."
Melinda instantly understood who she was looking for—Clint Barton, Hawkeye.
She took two steps forward and gently patted Natasha's shoulder: "Be careful. He's one of the best among field agents. If something happens to him—"
"I believe him." Natasha didn't turn around. "He should be on our side."
She opened the door, and her figure quickly disappeared at the end of the corridor.
Steve turned to the fake Fury and cut to the chase: "Where's the Tesseract that we dug out of the ice together?"
Without a word, the fake Fury turned the computer screen in front of him toward Steve, then pushed off the floor with both feet, sliding his chair aside: "Look up whatever you want. To be honest, I'm not that interested in this stuff."
Although he was Nick Fury's stand-in, he put a great deal of effort into imitating Fury's words and actions, and also helped handle a lot of official documents.
But he remained completely detached from the truly core secrets.
He was also deliberately maintaining this distance.
In his eyes, Nick Fury was an extremely terrifying human being.
He knew that with each additional document he shouldn't have read, the overall risk posed by the Skrulls to the Earth increased.
Coulson immediately went to the computer, bent down and tried to retrieve the current location of the Cosmic Cube.
A knocking sound suddenly rang out.
knock knock knock.
Coulson immediately straightened up and stood on either side of the desk with Steve.
The fake Fury pulled the chair back to its original position, placed his hands clasped on the table, and said in a deep voice, "Please come in."
An agent rushed in, clutching a freshly printed thermal image: "Director, an extraterrestrial object has appeared in the desert outside the town of Puente Antigu, New Mexico."
His gaze swept quickly across Melinda, Coulson, and Steve's faces. Without asking any questions, he walked up and handed the documents to Fury.
The fake Fury took the documents, glanced at the satellite photo on the cover, and said calmly, "Understood, you can go now."
The agent responded and left the office, the door closing behind him.
The fake Fury spread the documents on the table, and several people looked down at them simultaneously.
The satellite image shows a huge, neatly edged impact crater with a very ancient-looking hammer standing in the center.
The subsequent photos were taken from a closer distance, clearly showing many locals taking turns trying to pull the hammer out of the pit.
Their expressions shifted from confidence to confusion to defiance, and finally to complete surrender, while the hammer remained unmoved.
"What is this?" Fake Fury looked up after flipping through the last photo.
Even with his Skrull knowledge, he couldn't understand what was going on with this hammer.
Steve suddenly spoke up: "This hammer fell from outer space."
Coulson looked up at him. Steve didn't explain his reasoning; he just stared at the hammer in the photo.
The fake Fury shook his head and uttered a comment that only he, in his true identity, was qualified to make: "This tiny thing broke through the atmosphere, its outer shell completely undamaged, and it even created a crater of this size. Even we couldn't create something like this on our side."
Coulson immediately turned to Steve, his speech quickening to the point of maximum efficiency: "Captain, I know the situation is urgent—"
Before he could finish speaking, Steve nodded: "You take your men to New Mexico to investigate. Leave this to Melinda and me."
Coulson turned and took a step, then immediately turned back, took the information on the meteorite crater from the fake Fury's desk, and tucked it under his arm.
Then he flung open the office door and shouted in a voice loud enough to be heard at the end of the corridor, "Yes, Chief! This task is mine!"
The door closed behind him, and the office fell silent again.
Melinda walked to the computer and continued searching for the location where the Yu Shen Rubik's Cube was stored.
Before the keyboard had even been clicked a few times, there was another knock on the door.
knock knock knock.
Melinda straightened up and moved back to the side of the desk, her face expressionless except for her eyelids drooping slightly.
Steve shook his head slightly and sighed.
Fake Fury sighed and nodded: "That's just how the world is, you're never really done."
He raised his voice: "Come in."
Another agent pushed open the door and entered, this time carrying even thicker files than before.
His pace was faster than the previous one's, and there were marks on the collar of his uniform where the buttons had just been undone.
"Reporting to the Director, a large number of unidentified creatures are attacking Umbrella School."
Steve whirled around, his gaze fixed on the agent's face: "Umbrella School—you mean the one next to Hell's Kitchen?"
Faced with Captain America's direct question, the agent instinctively straightened his back even more: "Indeed, Captain."
He took two steps to his desk and spread out all the documents.
This set of photos is not a satellite image, but a compilation of various road surveillance and aerial reconnaissance footage.
The figures in the picture are clearly abnormal.
Most of them are humanoid, but their gait is no different from that of a normal person. However, they have no body temperature in infrared mode, and they look like walking corpses.
Even stranger was another group.
He has a semi-hunched posture and his leg proportions are abnormal. He can take a step that covers the distance of two steps for an average person.
"The number has exceeded four digits, and judging from the way they were assembled, it is an organized siege."
The fake Fury stood up, braced his hands on the edge of the table, and turned to look at Steve.
"Captain America, could you please provide backup?"
Without saying a word, Steve turned and walked towards the door.
He paused at the door, turned around, and looked only at Melinda: "If—"
"Leave it to me, Captain." Melinda didn't let him finish his sentence.
Steve glanced at her for a second, then strode toward the elevator.
He walked through the corridor, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the button for the first floor.
Before the elevator doors closed, his right hand was already on the edge of the shield at his waist.
He rushed out of the elevator, crossed the lobby on the first floor, and found a motorcycle parked next to the stairwell at the front desk, with the key still in the lock.
He straddled the motorcycle, twisted the throttle, and the engine let out a deep roar.
The front wheels bounced out of the parking space, rushed down the ramp in front of the headquarters building, and drove into the traffic on the main road.
After the office door closed again, only Melinda and the fake Fury remained in the room.
The fake Fury collected the documents that had just been spread out, folded them neatly, and placed them on the corner of the table.
Then he crossed his arms and placed them on the table, letting out a deep sigh: "Why did you do this?"
As soon as those words were spoken, the agent who had just reported the attack on the Umbrella school suddenly reached for his waist.
The holster latch popped open, the pistol was drawn and pointed at Melinda, who was standing to the side of the desk, while the other hand pressed a hidden switch on the wall.
The office door was pushed open from the outside, and several fully armed agents poured in.
The gun barrels were locked onto Melinda and the fake Fury sitting in the chair.
Everyone's fingers were on the trigger guard.
Melinda glanced at the gunmen; they were all familiar faces.
She didn't question him, but simply turned her head slightly to look at the fake Fury sitting in the chair: "Were you with them?"
Fake Fury shook his head and slowly raised his hands, palms facing forward: "No, I can just sense their malice; it's a kind of talent."
The agent at the front took half a step forward, the gun still pointed at the fake Fury's forehead.
His voice was deep and cold, and he deliberately pronounced his words very accurately.
Where is the real Nick Fury?