CHAPTER 21

[Nick Fury POV]

After the call came I ordered for the body to be brought to the makeshift medical tent that was set up on the first day due to radiation poisoning.

It was when he was brought to the room that I found out a discrepancy that everyone took notice of: He was unhurt.

That immediately rang bells in my head.

"Coulson, I want a security detail to be around him at all times. Level 4 danger threat." I told my shadow.

"Sir are you sure? He doesn't look harmful or hostile." What kind of jackass reasoning is that?

"So does Jellyfish and Lettuce. But guess what, they are!" What the hell do they medicate them with these days?

You'd think finding a healthy man in the middle of a ground zero of what could be considered a nuclear strike would make them be cautious and increase their danger sense, but no it apparently doesn't. Even my grandaunt had more danger sense than them… and she was a blind paralyzed invalid.

I turned to the medics in tent with me. "What going on with him?"

"We don't know yet sir. His brain activity spikes at irregular intervals and any effort to resuscitate him makes him flatline."

"So there's something wrong with him?" I asked again.

"Yes sir, but we don't know what…" I levelled him a stare, "… yet." At that I nodded.

"I want to know exactly what is happening to him. If his heartbeat increases two-step I want to be the first to know of it, capisce?" They all nodded like hens pecking on grains of rice.

Leaving the tent I contacted Coulson to kill any leak of information. I didn't want the council rubbing their slobby hands on this.

After the call to Coulson, I contacted another person

"Barton. Got anything?"

"No sir. Trails ran cold 6km out, none of them recent. The closest being two days ago."

Two days. That narrows down a lot. "You think there are our hitters?"

"That I don't know, could be." He contemplated before he gave me an answer.

"Ok round up your search, I need you here in 30."

"On it." With that he cut off. And that people is how you become dependable.

All these things happening in a short time-frame didn't amuse me at all. Since the Manhattan bombing, lot of things went to shit, politicians took the opportunity of the chaos to eliminate their opposers, the mutant community was facing what was practically a witch hunt, S.H.I.E.L.D, the DoD, CIA and other homeland security were put the wringer because of letting a terrorist attack happen on American soil, the biggest no less.

Now when everything was settling down, the damned deranged cluster of fuckers who took the mythos all too literally decided to rear their heads.

What was he supposed to make up from all this.

…

[Meanwhile Somewhere Else]

"This is bad! I told you listening to that psychotic doctor would bite us in the rear, now look what happened!" Someone banged the table and shouted out in anger.

"Last time I checked, you did support the notion of putting him on the field," someone else countered and rebuked could only look in as his face went green in chagrin.

In a room lit up by lights from various monitors familiar faces could be seen as they all had pensive expression on their faces.

"What do we know about what happened?" Another one asked.

"Not much. According to the report everyone at the site was dead," the entire room sucked in a breath at that, "there have been no reports of survivors yet."

The room devolved in a small bout of silence which was broken as someone asked a question they had in their minds, "do you think he survived?" He asked the question to no one in particular but directed it at all of them.

"I don't think so." One of them replied but there was uncertainty in his voice, "I mean if the explosion didn't kill him the radiation and the collapsed facility should." He then tried to convince the others of his thoughts.

"Be that as it may, we lost a lot of data on him because that bastard Ernst wanted to be the center of everything concerning his favorite test subject, now look where that has got us." Someone spat out in anger.

"While it is unfortunate, we could work with whatever little we have and hopes he survives."

"Even if he did survive how would we get him out from S.H.I.E.L.D custody without making it look suspicious?" Another pointed out.

"You forget that S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra are two sides of the same coin. They act hilariously like a shield for us."

"What we need to do is make sure they don't find anything implicating and S.H.I.E.L.D now knows about us so we'll have to be cautious when we skirt around them. We need to eliminate Fury. Even though he's been our bunt dog for over a decade now, he's too much of a dog to not be able to sniff something in this particular shit storm." Proposed someone and the others agreed.

"Not yet. Fury still has his uses." A voice of refusal was heard but it seems its decision didn't sit well with some.

"Pierce! This is not a time to take chances!" The former countered.

The man now known as Pierce was however not deterred. "While we can influence most of S.H.I.E.L.D's decisions, we however do not control it in its entirety. Fury dying the moment of Hydra's resurgence would only serve to highlight our presence and since the information hasn't been spread the first to face suspicion and scrutiny would be us in the Council. So no, Fury cannot die yet."

That reasoning pacified them and they could see how one misstep in such fragile times could spell a lot of problems for them.

"That would be all for now. Keep your ear peeled gentlemen." With that the digital meeting was cut close as all the monitors powered down in the dark room leaving only an individual inside.

The setback was very costly for their plans, delaying most of it by a decade at minimum. This was a great loss to him, not only the soldiers but the research products under the base.

The US Army secretly greenlighted research and experiments to recreate the super soldier serum, but with their soldier they were at least 5 years ahead of them and that was not talking of the avenues that particular mutant gene opened for them.

He opened a folder before him that had a title, 'Project Destroyer of Worlds'.

It was a project Reinhardt started with his student that was further furthered with the adaptability gene of that soldier, I-039, now it was delayed.

It wouldn't be far from the truth if someone were to say he absolutely pissed off by this.

Most of the biological projects they had currently going on were relying on his genes but now they had lost 77% of their advancement against others who were also in the same field of human enhancement.

While they didn't make the amateurish mistake of betting their everything on a single soldier, it was also not a lie that his value was unsurmountable by any other.

Both Zola and Reinhardt agreed with this.

Even if minuscule, he was praying the soldier survived the explosion he caused but it has been days since the explosion and Fury nor any of his spies reported a living victim.

Hopefully they could salvage this and make it work for them but the fact that HYDRA's existence has been unearthed couldn't be swept under. There was too much power factors at play here.

… Time alone will tell what this means.

…

[Nick Fury POV]

A week.

A fucking week and they still hadn't found anything substantial that could help us figure out what HYDRA ran in this base.

Howard Stark and the former Director Carter countless times had stressed out how tenacious and cunning HYDRA was, so finding a tail of them here was a trail he hoped would lead him to its head.

A myth or not there won't be anything left of HYDRA when he was through with them.

The only clue he had to what happened here has been asleep since they found him. The stethoscopes were saying he was flatlining and absorbing what remnants of radiation there was in the atmosphere which they didn't know what to do about.

He made the call for them to stealthily transport him 500m to the center of the explosion since it was reported that he was spasmodic after the radiation in their vicinity dropped.

All this did was to make him increase the danger level of this individual. Who the hell absorbs nuclear radiation? If it wasn't for some of the things he had seen he would have called alien and have him sent to the labs.

The doctors though were pretty sure of the fact that he was a mutant which was another reason the danger level went up to 5.

Barton came but he couldn't identify if it was the man he shot so they were back to base one before he ordered a background check on him.

Now the check came through but what was on it wasn't what he expected.

Now he wasn't racist to the mutant species, but he had to acknowledge that what he expected wasn't what he got.

His background was clean… too clean for it forged. He was a normie.

Nothing outstanding. He was as normal as the average American citizen which made up 80% of its population.

Normal parents, last relationship was 5 years back, normal school, normal friends, average grades, back account was average figured. Everything from his birth came out clear except that his activity for the past 2 years came up blank.

Whatever brought him to this HYDRA base and the explosion were linked, that's what his spy instinct told him.

It was on the second day of the next week that he received the report that subject had woke up.

It's about damn time.

….

[Draul St. Cross POV]

I woke up in a room… no not a room, some kind of medical lab!

Shit!

I tried to stand up but I found out that I was shackled to the bed. This was not what I expected.

I was stopped when some men with guns came into the room and aim it at me. Seriously?!

One of them brought his hands to his ears and communicated with who was most likely his boss as I waited.

How do I get out of this? I was cuffed to a bed, which I could likely break out from, a dozen men with guns pointed at my face and… yeah I don't see me escaping from here easily when I can guarantee that there are more armed men outside this room. Not when I didn't the layout.

It wasn't up to five minutes that three people came inside the room.

A black man with an eye patch covering his left eye in all black, from the eye patch to his boots topped with a badass black trench coat – Nicholas 'Motherfucking' Fury, The Spy.

A younger Caucasian male with an arrow quiver strapped to his back wearing a black bullet proof vest with black trousers and boots – Clint Barton 'Hawkeye'.

With the last man wearing a black suit with a face that you'll find in the grocery store every Saturday, melding with the background – Phil Coulson.

Now I don't know if me being found by S.H.I.E.L.D is a bad thing or a good one.

Bad because I'll be in HYDRA's sights making me easier to target.

Good because I'll be in HYDRA's sight making me hard to target, while using S.H.I.E.L.D to fuck them up.

"Who are you guys?" I asked breaking the stare down.

"We should be the one asking you that." Nick Fury didn't even budge a breath.

"You are the ones who came in." I pressed on.

"You are the one cuffed to the bed." A full counter.

"It's common courtesy…" I tried again but he completed it for me, "… to thank the people who saved you." This guy is made of tough stuff.

"Draul St. Cross." I told them my name.

"That's a hippie's name." He didn't even look amused as he insulted me. Ok that's it…

"Sir, I do believe we should be civil." Phil Coulson started, there was something about him that gave you Dumbledore vibes… the good kind. "We are from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division…"

"That's a mouthful." I gave him my two cents.

Without even being bothered by it he continued on, "… or S.H.I.E.L.D for short. We would like to know exactly what happened here and why we found you at a bomb site."

"First of all, I've never heard of you. Second, I want to see a badge."

"You think this is funny," Nick fury didn't look all too pleased at all, "Now you either gonna answer the questions or you going off the grid for global terrorism. I ain't got no time to waste for this shit so if you know what's good for you, you better answer the goddamned questions." He said as he gave me a hard stare and twisted his head at an angle. At the point I'm not going to lie, the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D definitely was intimidating.

I looked between him and Coulson and then at Barton and the other grunts in the room.

"This is the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, and that is Agent Barton. My name is Phil Coulson," he said as he showed me a badge, "We would like if you could answer some questions for us."

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A/N:

I'm burned out. Took me a while to finish typing this chapter.

Draul won't be joining S.H.I.E.L.D. There will be collaboration of sorts to take down HYDRA but there will be no Agent Draul in this fic.