Hydra may have only occupied half of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the lower levels, but when it came to the top, their infiltration surpassed 80%. There was simply no avoiding it before Nick Fury took over, even the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D. had been a Hydra operative. How could the rest of the senior leadership remain untouched?
In the upper ranks, positions were often filled one-for-one. If no mistakes were made, even Nick Fury couldn't remove them easily. Unlike the field agents at the bottom who rarely got promoted and could simply retire after signing a confidentiality agreement upper-level staff maintained their positions for years. Hydra had to be more cautious when recruiting from the bottom, so the ratio of Hydra operatives among new recruits had thinned in recent years. But at the top, the rot remained largely unchanged.
Watching Wanda calmly call out Hydra operatives one by one, Fury hoped she was bluffing. But the shocked and angry reactions on the faces of those being named told him the truth. Wanda wasn't lying.
"Found it!" Wanda finally opened her eyes, fatigue evident in her expression. "I've found the secret base where Dr. Connors is imprisoned."
"Well done, Wanda," Shin said with a smile, then casually untied the bindings on the S.H.I.E.L.D. members and Fury. "The rest is your internal issue. We're leaving."
There were around fifty or sixty senior agents within S.H.I.E.L.D., all classified as Level Seven or higher. Of those, roughly thirty had already been checked. Shockingly, only three Coulson and two others were confirmed to be loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. members. Including Fury and Black Widow, there were merely five non-Hydra agents.
There were still a dozen agents left to be reviewed, but at this point, the ratio spoke for itself. At most, maybe two more would be clean. Wanda had already identified thirty Hydra operatives.
S.H.I.E.L.D. was now a true disaster zone, enough to make Fury want to tear his nonexistent hair out. Oh right... he was already bald. Lucky for him.
In a case where 80% of your intelligence agency has been infiltrated by an enemy organization, there's only one logical response, declare it irredeemable and move on.
That's exactly what Black Widow had done in the original timeline expose everything, and take down both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra in a single stroke. With no need for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s protection after joining the Avengers, and carrying guilt over her own unwitting role in Hydra's operations, she had chosen to burn it all down.
But Fury wasn't Natasha. He was the director. As long as there was the faintest hope of saving S.H.I.E.L.D., he couldn't afford to see it fall.
Shin and his group, however, had no such attachment. After Wanda triggered her teleportation ability, they vanished in a flash of crimson light, leaving Fury staring bleakly at the wreckage around him.
How could he possibly purge Hydra from within without destroying the entire agency? The problem wasn't just those still present. Some of the senior agents were currently out in the field on missions and odds were, most of them were also Hydra operatives. How was he supposed to summon them back without tipping them off?
For now, with S.H.I.E.L.D. on the brink of collapse, Fury had neither the strength nor the strategy to confront Shin's group. Even if the agency could be salvaged, the recovery would take years. And by then, who knew what new threats the world would be facing?
Meanwhile, Shin and his team reappeared at the entrance of an underground base, thanks to Wanda's teleportation.
"An executive from S.H.I.E.L.D. had been here, but didn't enter the base," Wanda said softly. "This was the furthest I could trace."
"That's enough," Shin replied, nodding.
He glanced at a large tree nearby. In its bark was a small hole clearly a concealed camera. Shin gave a casual throat-slitting gesture toward the lens. Then he brought his hands together and activated Earth Release.
The ground began to quake.
At his current level, Shin didn't cast traditional elemental jutsu he simply manipulated the core forces of earth, fire, wind, water, and lightning with sheer will. Earth Release wasn't so much a technique anymore as it was elemental dominion.
Under his control, the ground cracked and rose, forming a massive hill over several hundred meters wide. Metal glinted through the soil as layers of reinforced plating, part of the base's buried structure, were torn free.
The entire base was forcibly pulled from beneath the earth, bursting through the surface like a mushroom cloud of soil and metal. Inside, researchers and soldiers staggered in disarray, their defenses rendered meaningless against Shin's godlike might.
"Quicksilver!" Shin shouted.
Pietro immediately responded, streaking through the exposed corridors as a blur of silver light. Within seconds, he reappeared, dragging a dazed but otherwise unharmed Dr. Connors behind him.
Having a speedster on hand was truly convenient. While Pietro was no Flash, his abilities were more than sufficient on Earth.
"Now, let's deal with the rest of the base," Shin muttered as he slowly floated into the air.
But just as he prepared to unleash destruction, a beam of energy shot toward him.
He deflected the laser with a flick of his hand, then frowned. "What the hell is this? A robot? It looks... disgusting."
"Disgusting!? Who are you calling disgusting, you little brat!?" a voice snapped back.
A large robot stomped forward from the debris. It had a humanoid shape but an utterly bizarre design, its head was replaced with a one-eyed camera lens, while its torso a grotesquely oversized belly contained a large screen displaying a sneering human face.
"I am Dr. Zola! And this is my greatest creation! With this, I am Immortal! Behold, perfection!" the robot bellowed as it launched another laser beam.
Shin dodged lazily, unimpressed. The robot looked like a joke, a parody of evil genius gone wrong.
He stared at it with a mix of annoyance and curiosity. "Seriously? This is your final boss for the base? A fat Roomba with a grudge?"
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