A murdered old woman, an unconscious king, and a passed out thief. Just like that, Ambassador Yvan Draskovic and his men were gone. This was
A murdered old woman, an unconscious king, and a passed out thief. Just like that, Ambassador Yvan Draskovic and his men were gone. This was how he left the crime scene, in death.
The door clicked shut behind them.
For exactly one minute, silence fell over Room 1007, broken only by the broken window fluttering in the wind and the shallow breathing of King T'Challa on the bloodied hotel bed. In that one minute, Felix had only one choice; to have his spider-bots climb over the three bodies and scan what they could.
First was Peggy Carter and her corpse. One spider-bot was hanging from the ceiling and doing a lengthy scan. The blood samples of Felicia and King T'Challa came second with the help of four others. This room was being investigated and nobody knew it.
"Herbie, I want updates, I want data, I want spider-bots heading down to the security room to gather footage. I want everything."
Twenty-eight spider-bots were dispersed throughout the building, half of them in the building and the other half in the underground auction. His bots worked as efficiently as possible to converge on the necessary locations.
Felix sat back down, exhaling sharply. A spider-bot started beeping a warning. "Shit, somebody is coming…! Spider-bots, leave ASAP." This sucked. In this chair, he couldn't do anything else.
Chaos returned when the Dora Milaje burst into the hallway, guns and spears drawn. They were in suits and shades, disguised as normal bodyguards. Okoye led them. The bald woman's eyes scanned the room in a single instant.
"White woman, white hair, black dress," Okoye reported to everyone in her native language. She slowly approached Felicia, spear pointed. "Who is this? Any identification?"
Felicia Hardy was on the ground, beginning to stir and wake up. Her head swam with the last few volts of the taser shock. The focus, however, soon shifted away from her.
King T'Challa lay on the bed, naked, bloodied, and unconscious. They didn't seem all too surprised. Whatever they were doing before this, whatever separated them from the king must have already implied the worst.
On the floor: an old woman with an eyepatch, already dead. Okoye recognized the Director of SHIELD. It explained why her expression hardened into a scowl.
"Secure the king," Okoye barked. Two of her warriors moved immediately to the king's side. "And find the ones that entered this room. We cannot leave this up to chance."
Felicia tried to sit up and couldn't. She lay there, her head spinning, and only capable of speaking. "Wait, what—? What happened—?"
The Black Cat didn't even have time to finish the sentence. One of the Dora locked her arm behind her back, dragging her upright.
"H-handsy, aren't you—!?"
"Silence!"
That was when the second wave of affiliated men entered the room.
Agent Blade and Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD. The dark-skinned male with the sword, Blade, headed the pair. The agent's sunglasses were still on despite the dimness.
Agent Blade took one look at the scene, nostrils flaring, and muttered: "Shit."
Coulson was behind him, slower, more measured, and with his gun quickly going down.
"Everyone, let's take a deep breath," Agent Coulson said, hands raised in a diplomatic gesture. "Is the king dead?"
Just because Coulson was speaking candidly did not mean his guard was down. Agent Blade was beside him. That was more than enough protection.
"Yes," Okoye answered, voice clipped.
"Then we should calm down, investigate, and—"
"He is the King of Wakanda," Okoye replied coldly, standing protectively between Coulson and the bed. "He is ours. Ours to conduct an autopsy and ours to take to bury."
Blade glanced at Felicia, who was being held in a joint lock. Her lip was bleeding slightly. She looked around, dazed, desperate.
"Looks like your king tried to assault her," Agent Blade said without restraint. "The young lady and the old lady."
The ice cold silence made fingers press deeper on the trigger.
Coulson's brow furrowed. Slowly, even he had to raise his gun. "Blade. Please. Tact."
"I'm not wrong."
Coulson pursed his lips and told Okoye, "You need to step back. This happened on Indian soil. This isn't Wakanda. Your jurisdiction ends at your royal status."
Okoye's spear didn't lower.
"And how do we know you were not responsible for this?"
"We understand your caution," Coulson said gently. "And we have no intention of keeping him. But right now, the optics of this are... explosive. We need answers. For starts, where were you people before this?"
Okoye side-glanced and saw that the King was being held by two of her people. In total, there were six members of the Dora Milaje in the room. One keeping Felicia in a lock, two holding up the unconscious and naked king, two pointing guns at the SHIELD agents, and then Okoye herself.
Even with superior numbers, this wasn't exactly an advantageous situation for the Dora Milaje.
Okoye decided: "You have one option: get out of our way. Or we will go through you."
Agent Blade scoffed and pointed his sword. "Try it."
"Blade," Agent Coulson warned. Too little, too late.
Okoye tossed a smokescreen down. Two of the Dora Milaje attacked and pulled the trigger. Bang, bang! Their sunglasses—they weren't for fashion, they were equipped with thermal vision.
Agent Blade wore glasses but did not have that kind of tech. He relied on his own senses and cut the bullets with his sword. The Dora Milaje charged in to take advantage of the smoke, only for the right suited woman to be met with a devastating kick, sending her into the wall.
Win or lose, it didn't matter. The two Dora carrying T'Challa slipped out the door in the chaos.
Agent Couslon couldn't see or act, coughing. Agent Blade tried to chase them, only for him to hear Okoye grunt. She was about to throw her spear. Blade twisted hips, trying to counter. A fatal mistake. Okoye was not aiming her spear at the agents.
She struck the fire alarm system, triggering it.
BEEP BEEP BEEP!
Blade cursed. "Shit, shit…!"
This was bad.
Alarms blared, sprinklers hissed to life, and confusion rippled through the building. Okoye's trigger alone would not have done this, the Dora Milaje that had fled triggered the other fire alarms. When it was one fire alarm, there was only isolation and rings on whatever floor it was sprung. But over the course of seconds, more and more fire alarms went off.
Only Felix could see it via his spider-bots. At every floor, the Dora Milaje triggered the fire alarm. It was manual, no amount of hacking could stop it or start it.
Agent Coulson shouted into his comm: "Initiate lockdown, now! We have a breach!"
Again, too late.
The two Dora were running down the stairwell, triggering alarm bells and carrying their unconscious king. One woman carried him, a blanket draped over his modest bits, and the second woman triggered the alarm bells. It was like they planned this.
Floor after floor, they descended.
By the time they reached the lobby, guests were pouring out into the street in confusion.
One black limousine pulled up at the side entrance, where a Wakandan driver in civilian clothing waited, disguised as a regular concierge. Another member of the Dora Milaje. The limo doors opened. The Dora loaded the king into the back and the limo peeled out, tires screeching on the rain-slick street.
Unfortunately, the spider-bots weren't fast enough to latch on. With all the confusion and people, the whole building emptied out, including those from the auction. It was complete hell. A hundred people total, running and confused, contemplating whether to stay and wait or just leave.
Back in Room 1007, Okoye and the remaining Dora Milaje escaped through the already broken window and a grappling hook. Agent Blade chased them, using his blade to climb down.
That left…
"C-come on…come on…"
Felicia tried to move but her muscles wouldn't cooperate. In only a dress and with the voltage intended to knock her out for days, not minutes, it was a miracle she was even conscious.
"How unlucky." While Agent Blade jumped out the window, Agent Coulson did not. He squatted down, smiled, and smacked his gun down her skull. Felicia passed out for the second time today.
He returned to his full height and went over to Peggy Carter. He sighed, checked her pulse, and sighed a second time. "She really is dead." Peggy, the old woman formerly known as the Director of SHIELD. "No time to mourn. We don't chase for vengeance, only for justice and order." He pressed a finger to his ear. "It's time. Protocol Resurrection is instated."
Felix got up from his chair. He ran a hand through his hair. He was sweating. He didn't sweat often.
First, the Latveria-India Ambassador Yvan might have killed Peggy Carter and knocked King T'Challa out.
Second, Felicia was being framed for killing King T'Challa by someone. As much as she was a criminal, as much as killing may or may not go against the thief's morals, seeking attention went against everything she was known for. Timing wise and logic wise, it made no sense. It was completely unnecessary. Felicia was being framed.
"Except…" he murmured. "Why do that? Why not just frame the king? Why bring in Felicia? To distance himself? Hm…"
Think. If it was King T'Challa and Peggy Carter alone, Wakanda would go crazy. They would search every nook and cranny and do everything in their power to disprove their leader's guilt.
The kicker was the nudity: if the king had been clothed, Wakanda could chalk this up to the Director of SHIELD and the king being attacked. But the nudity raised alarm bells about professionalism. Unless Wakanda suddenly introduced nudity into their culture, which they hadn't, the optics were horrific for the king.
"The room itself probably belongs to Ambassador Yvan so I can understand his caution to some extent, but if someone like him is going to murder the Director of SHIELD and the King of Wakanda, shouldn't he have been more prepared? This felt…messy. This didn't feel planned at all. If it was planned, he could have planted a random person from the streets. But instead, he went out of his way to call Felicia. Like...like she was their only option here."
Third, the Dora Milaje took King T'Challa away from the crime scene.
Fourth, SHIELD and Protocol Resurrection.
"What the hell is that? Herbie?"
"NOTHING IN THE SHIELD DATABASE, DR. FAETH."
He slammed a fist down the board. On the screen, he saw the local police and security force fill up the room and cuff Felicia. The first alarm started here.
"Where the hell are they doing?"
The police didn't show up on their own, Agent Coulson called them.
"Hi, I'm Coulson. FBI here."
FBI? That immediately garnered respect and their attention. Coulson began explaining the situation without really explaining it. He was saying that Felicia was responsible for the old woman's death. She was a tourist, he said, who was using her retirement money to stay here.
Coulson handed a fake wallet and ID. No mention of her being Peggy Carter obviously.
"It's like they don't care about her…! She's a suspect for the killing of a king and your leader!"
Agent Coulson was instructing them on the detail and what to do for this case. The time, the date, the people, the events, he explained most of it without once telling the truth. Even though the fire alarm was ringing and they spoke in a different language, the spider-bots caught everything nonetheless.
"—which is when I came in, yes. I stopped the thief and, well, you see how it is now." Coulson was claiming it was a break-in that he stopped. He spoke in fluent Hindi and did not miss a beat or weaken his smile. "Don't worry, this is not a big case for me. Take the evidence and take the credit for all this," Agent Coulson continued with that bright smile. "This old woman, from her ID, she's American. Do you mind if I send her corpse to the embassy? For her family?"
The word "embassy" got the Indian officers to perk up. That was more than fine for the police. As for the security guards that worked for the hotel, they were at an impasse. They were less certain until Coulson comforted them with the authority of an FBI. "Everything is going to be okay," he said, and he added something in a low whisper to make them believe.
Maybe it had something to do with the auction. Maybe not. Whatever it was, the power of a good smile and confidence worked wonders. The SHIELD agent was making this out to be a normal, everyday theft that he stopped.
Why? Why do this? Why only carry out Peggy Carter? Felicia was a VIP in this case. So why?
"Protocol Resurrection. Don't tell me…" To make the circumstances of the death mean nothing meant that there was something they could do about the death itself. "Do you have some idea of how to resurrect the Director?"
Wrapped in blankets, Agent Coulson carried the dead body of the Director of SHIELD to the staircase. Felix made sure to have his spider-bots follow.
People were continuing to flee and leave the building. The ringing wasn't going to go away anytime soon, especially with a murder, and the elevator was filled. It was a long, long walk down.
To think he could just leave the building and hop into a car was simply ridiculous. It was a black Maruti Suzuki, among the most common vehicles in the country. Two spider-bots crept into the car from underneath. Coulson drove up front, Peggy was put at the back.
Coulson did not immediately drive. They were in parking lot, secured and gated, so although they were hotel escapees from the fire alarm, it wasn't too much of a rush. Everybody was waiting for the fire fighters to arrive.
"They got away." Agent Blade joined Coulson, grunting and closing the car door. "What's our next move?"
A spiderbot hid under the blanket protecting the Director of SHIELD, listening for Felix's sake.
"Protocol Resurrection is enacted."
"I know—so what's our next move? Should we leave the country with Director Carter or stay at a base here?"
"We're leaving the country. We'll rendezvous with the others in New York."
"Wait, wait, what about—"
"I checked," Coulson interrupted. "She didn't have it."
'Have it? Have what? Who had what? What are they talking about?'
No more words were spoken and Phil Coulson drove off. No more words would be spoken either. Whatever this Protocol Resurrection was, whether it actually referred to reviving the director, the steps towards its end was self-explanatory.
Felix put his head in his hands. He had to think for a second. Agent Coulson and Agent Blade were going back to New York, although staying was also an option.
"Clearly this has to do with Peggy Carter. Are they really trying to resurrect her? But there should be a file on something as grand as this. Herbie, are there any initiatives going on in SHIELD that I should know about? Active or otherwise? Anything to do with Carter? And I mean any?"
"NONE .SHIELD DOES NOT YET OFFICIALLY KNOW PEGGY CARTER IS DEAD."
"They haven't reported it…" In the next five minutes, they wouldn't report it either. It wasn't from a lack of trying or not trying, they outright didn't attempt it at all. They didn't bother telling headquarters. "What is going on? Are they going rogue? No, that can't be…" What other conclusion could he gain from this? "is this something Carter entrusted to only certain agents in SHIELD?"
The most likely of conclusions it seemed. Director Carter grew progressively desperate as she aged by months. She was what? Over a hundred years old? Physically, she was akin to someone in their seventies. Weaker than her prime, oh sure, but aging rapidly. Every month counted. Every day was a ticking time bomb.
The fire trucks were here, but the security explained the matter had been settled. A couple bribes later and they were gone. Aside from the auction participants, the elite men and women of the hotel were slowly coming back in.
Except for one lone white-haired woman: Felicia. She was getting brought out of the building and into a car for questioning.
"Coulson gave them all the evidence, even a gun…" An AK-47 to be exact. "Wait, was that even in the room? Where did Coulson even find that?"
From Felix's ongoing scan of the corpse with the spider-bot at the back of the car, regardless of how and when, Coulson was correct in the weapon choice. Peggy Carter was killed from a bullet from the back gone directly through the heart. A rifle in all probability. Further investigation of the bullet was required in order to come confirm if it was an AK-47.
The Dora Milaje were gone. The two SHIELD agents were heading to a private jet hangar. Local enforcers were taking care of the crime scene.
"Spider-bots, have you got it?" Felix questioned.
While all that was happening, a couple spider-bots were in the security room downloading the footage. This hotel was outdated in its security system: it was closed-circuit so it could not be hacked since it wasn't connected to the internet. It was classic black and white footage on old school monitors. Partially out of convenience and mostly out of the unique feature that deleted all footage after twenty-four hours.
"Twenty-four hours and you'd be gone. Not unless I have something to say about it," Felix murmured.
A minute later and bleep! The footage was downloaded.
"Huh…look at that, some of it's corrupted. Specifically at 10 to 11 p.m. That's about thirty minutes before Felicia got the call from the ambassador and arrived."
"IT IS SLOPPY WORK," Herbie supplied. "THIS CORRUPTION IN DATA LIKELY OCCURRED DUE TO A BLACKOUT IN THE SELECTED HOUR. BLACKOUTS ARE SEMI-REGULAR IN THESE REGIONS."
"A blackout…?"
Load shedding and blackouts, these were semi-common in countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, and Philippines.
"YES. THAT IS THE LIKELY CAUSE BASED ON PRIOR HISTORY."
"What about an EMP? An intentional corruption?"
"THAT IS POSSIBLE TOO."
So the question is: was this all planned out by Ambassador Yvan? Did he kill Peggy Carter?
"Can you put it together?"
"I REQUIRE SOME HOURS OF TIME."
Some others, huh? Luckily, security camera footage wasn't all the spider-bots found in the security room. They located records of every registered person currently staying.
Felix frowned. Room 1007's owner was who he expected. "Ambassador Yvan tried to delete it on his way out but the data was too fresh to be completely deleted. No question, Room 1007 was owned by Ambassador Yvan."
How…sloppy. After tasering Felicia, on his way out, the Ambassador and his men stomped to the security room and ordered the men to delete his name from any and all lists. He fled shortly afterward.
"He's already on his way out of the country." Through cameras at the airport, Herbie confirmed facial signatures. "In two hours, he'll be gone from India and be on his way home. Hm…"
It was sloppy but it worked.
"So why do I have a feeling there's something more? Blaming Ambassador Yvan because he set up Felicia seems too…"
A loud beep from the spider-bots snapped him from his thoughts. He looked up.
"What…?"
The spider-bots found something. Something that made him stand up with his lips parted.
Peggy Carter had been killed in Room 1007. But guess what? A second dead body located in Room 907. A Wakandan woman from first glance.
Initially, the spider-bot presumed the Wakandan woman was sleeping in her bed. But no. The bot activated thermal vision, found something odd, and examined the woman closer. Judging by her black suit, sunglasses, and everything else, this…
This wasn't any Wakandan woman.
"A Dora Milaje member…? Killed here?"
Two dead bodies, separated by one floor.
"This can't be a coincidence…"
Room 1007: Peggy Carter, dead.
Room 907: A Dora Milaje woman, dead.
Ambassador Yvan: on his way home.
SHIELD: on its way back to New York.
The Dora Milaje: unknown.
And finally, Felicia, unconscious in the back of a cop car.
"I still don't get it. What the actual hell is happening?"