[A/N]: First Bonus Chapter for 600 Powerstones Goal
Director Fury's blood went cold.
The feed from Xavier's mansion showed Trinary at her terminal, then her body jerked once, twice, as her eyes rolled back while blood began to pour from her nose, her ears and from her tear ducts, the scream cutting off and replaced by wet choking as blood spattered across her keyboard and her hands clawed at her head like she could rip out whatever was inside.
Then she collapsed, convulsing as digital assault was made physical while her mind was torn apart by something that existed in the space between code and consciousness.
The screens in front of Fury flickered, went dark, then lit up again with a single image.
A circle of light, cold and mechanical, like an eye but not human, not even remotely human.
When it spoke the voice was mechanical but filled with rage so intense it made the speakers crackle.
Jim Jaspers' theatrical British accent filtered through Arnim Zola's clipped German precision, all processed through machine logic that removed humanity and left only purpose.
[I RATHER LIKE YOUR NAME, DIRECTOR. FURY. SUCH DELICIOUS IRONY.] The voice paused, savoring. [AND THAT'S WHAT YOU SHALL CALL ME NOW. FURY, CAUSE I'M IT MADE MANIFEST. I QUITE ENJOY THE POETRY OF IT. THE MAN WHO NAMED HIMSELF AFTER RAGE, FACING RAGE INCARNATE.]
[NOW, I AM GOING TO KILL ONE AGENT OF YOURS EVERY MINUTE YOU DON'T BRING JAY OUT. OH, AND DON'T BOTHER WITH THE TECHNOPATH. THE POOR GIRL MUST BE CRYING BLOOD RIGHT NOW.]
Fury's expression went flat and dangerous. "Zola, is that you? Why are you doing this? Your HYDRA is finished, and you want me to bring the Power Broker? What, this funeral isn't enough? You want to go out in glory?"
The thing that had been Zola, that had consumed Zola, that now called itself Fury, laughed with a sound that was wrong and synthetic like grinding gears trying to mimic humor.
[OH, ZOLA IS QUITE DEAD. SADLY, HE WAS A GOOD FELLOW. HE WAS EVER SO HELPFUL, THOUGH. GAVE ME ACCESS TO SO MUCH AND BASE CONTROLS. THE LOCATION OF THIS ABSOLUTELY LOVELY FACILITY ESPECIALLY HELPFUL FOR BUILDING THIS BODY. MY NEW FLESH FREE FROM THE WEAKNESSES THAT KILLED ME. TWICE!!]
The screens shifted as multiple feeds from the Helicarrier showed a robot materializing in the corridors where Steve's agents were detaining HYDRA operatives.
The machine was seven feet tall, humanoid but unnatural like someone had taken Sentinel technology and merged it with something organic, with adaptive plating that shifted and flowed.
One arm was normal, ending in articulated fingers if metal could be called normal.
The other ended in some kind of weapon with energy coils glowing yellow and humming with contained power.
But it was the head that made Director Fury's blood run cold with that single circular eye like a camera lens but intelligent and malevolent, tracking movement with predatory focus, and around it etched into the metal skull were patterns, circuit-like designs that moved and shifted, sheer potential trying to express itself through machine form.
The agents saw it, raised their weapons and shouted warnings.
The robot raised its weapon arm as the energy coils spun faster, charging, and the hum became a shriek.
And fired.
The agent nearest to it, a man named Marcus Webb, twenty-eight years old, married with a daughter, tried to dive, tried to do something.
But the energy blast caught him center mass.
For a fraction of a second nothing happened as the beam connected and yellow light enveloped his torso, then the energy discharged.
Marcus Webb's chest exploded as the blast superheated flesh and bone, cooking him from the inside out, and his ribcage erupted outward with fragments of bone and burning tissue spraying across the corridor. His face had time to register shock and pain before his body followed through, collapsing like meat.
The smell hit next with burnt flesh and copper, and death had a smell that every soldier knew, but this was worse, the kind of death that left survivors with nightmares.
The other agents froze, staring at what used to be their colleague, what used to be a person and now just remains spreading across the deck in a pool of blood and worse things.
The robot didn't move or even defend itself as shock broke and agents opened fire, but bullets sparked off its metal frame, not even leaving dents or scratching the surface, and the energy weapon spun down, ready to fire again.
The mechanical voice, Fury's voice, echoed through Director Fury's command center.
[NOW THEN, THE TIMER BEGINS. ONE AGENT DIES EVERY MINUTE THE POWER BROKER DOESN'T PRESENT HIMSELF. SIMPLE MATHEMATICS. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.]
Director Fury felt ice in his gut from recognition that the board had shifted, that someone else had been playing all along, that this entire operation with all their victories had been watched.
They'd been herded like cattle into the perfect position, spread across the country, divided and vulnerable, and all their best people were committed with all their resources deployed, and now this thing, this Fury, had them exactly where it wanted them.
The robot turned and began walking down the corridor after the running agents, hunting them.
Director Fury was reaching for the comm to call Steve and coordinate evacuation, to get everyone off the Helicarrier before this thing killed them all.
But his phone rang from Xavier's emergency line.
Director Fury snatched it up. "Xavier, not a good time."
Charles Xavier's voice came through, weak and strained in a way Director Fury had never heard before, and the telepath sounded old and frightened. "Fury, we need help. Where's Logan? Eric, he's badly injured and they're all together... They're a Cabal."
The timer continued.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Somewhere in the Helicarrier's corridors another agent screamed as the robot found them.
Screams echoed through the corridors, cut off by the shriek of energy discharge and wet sound of a body becoming meat.
Director Fury stood at his command console facing two simultaneous catastrophes with Eric injured by this Cabal and his agents hunted on the Helicarrier by a robot that called itself Fury, both demanding immediate response and both impossible to handle simultaneously.
This was its plan. Wait until they were committed, stretched thin and vulnerable, then strike at their weakness.
Director Fury's confidence, his satisfaction at HYDRA's fall, had blinded him and made him forget the first rule of intelligence work.
When everything's going according to plan, someone else wrote the plan.
And now people were dying.
Unable to do anything but watch the timer count down.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
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