Fury went dead still, and Jay recognized the look.

  Same expression Fury had worn in his apartment when Jay first dropped hints about finding Captain America frozen in the ice. That casual little question that changed everything.

  Fury felt history repeating itself.

  "This some kinda game to you, kid?" Fury's voice carried that particular brand of menace reserved for people who'd pushed him too far. "Or you actually got something worth hearing?"

  Jay's whole demeanor shifted. Gone was the chill guy with the donut obsession, replaced by something more focused. "I mess around about a lot of things, Nick. My friends ain't one of them. Neither are the Morlocks."

  Even Steve caught the change, straightening up like he'd heard a commanding officer enter the room.

  "What... what do you wanna know about Buck?" Steve's voice cracked on the name. Always did. "I'll tell you whatever you need. We were just a coupla punks from Brooklyn. Too dumb to know when we were beat. Bucky was always the one keepin' me outta the morgue. Ninety pounds soaking wet and a mouth that wouldn't quit writin' checks my body couldn't cash."

  The Brooklyn was bleeding through heavy now, like it always did when Steve talked about the old days. "He enlisted right after Pearl Harbor. 107th Infantry. Best man I ever knew. Brave, loyal, funnier than hell when he wanted to be. Could charm any dame into a dance, but he never once left me behind. Not when I was gettin' my ass kicked in alleys, not when Ma died, not when the whole world thought I wasn't worth the trouble..."

  Steve's voice was getting rougher, guilt and grief spilling out. "I couldn't save him, just watched him fall from that goddamn train, and I couldn't..."

  Jay's mouth stopped chewing. "That's... that's a hell of a story, Cap. I can't imagine carrying that kind of pain." His expression softened slightly before he continued. "But what if I told you he didn't die?"

  The half-eaten donut went flying as Steve lunged across the cramped sedan, enhanced reflexes turning him into a blur of muscle and fury. "Don't you fucking dare!" The words came out in pure Brooklyn growl. "I won't let you drag Buck into whatever twisted scheme you're pulling!"

  Steve's hands were shaking bad now, caught between hope and rage. The thought that Bucky might be out there somewhere, suffering while Steve slept his decades away in the ice. It was too much. "If you're lying about this, I swear to God..."

  "Rogers!" Fury's command voice cut through everything else like a knife. "Stand down! This is exactly how he told us about you. The same casual question and knowing look." He gestured at Steve with barely contained exasperation. "And look how that turned out."

  Steve's breathing sounded like a broken engine, hope and fury tearing him apart from the inside. "Where is he?"

  Jay pointed straight at Captain, then at Fury. " First Language Captain! Second, that depends on how fast Nick here agrees to play ball."

  Looking at Steve Rogers, America's golden boy turned living legend, Fury knew he was screwed. How do you tell Captain Fucking America you won't help save his best friend?

  Sometimes doing right and doing smart weren't the same thing.

  "Goddamn it," Fury muttered, sounding like a man accepting his own execution. "Fine. You get it. Everlast fucking thing you asked for. Now talk."

  "Payment up front," Jay said, settling back in his seat. "I don't do business on credit, especially not with spymasters."

  Fury's jaw worked like he was chewing glass, but he gave a sharp nod. "Coulson! Get me a Quinjet prepped for the Fridge. Now."

  Coulson slipped out of the car, already dialing. Jay caught pieces of tactical chatter through the windows. Authorization codes, flight patterns, and the usual SHIELD Logistics.

  "One more thing," Jay said, casual as ordering coffee. "I need you to set up a meeting with Emma Frost. Gotta finalize the Deal."

  "You're really gonna build this mutant sanctuary?"

  "Human and mutant sanctuary," Jay corrected. "I made a promise to the Morlocks, and a man's only worth his word."

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The next few hours blurred together. Armored transport to a secure helipad, then onto a Quinjet flying at speeds that would make the air force jealous.

  Fury spent the flight quietly thinking, while Steve stared out the window like he was watching for ghosts, and Coulson kept shooting worried glances at his idol.

  The Fridge squatted on the coastline like a concrete mountain, all harsh angles and "stay away" architecture. The only way in or out was through the roof, making escaping pretty much impossible and attacking it a suicide mission.

  Going down through security was like descending into the world's secure mine shaft. Biometric scanners every twenty feet, guards who looked like they bench-pressed Buicks for fun, blast doors thick enough to stop a tank round.

  At the bottom level, they hit enhanced containment. The place where SHIELD kept people who made serial killers look like jaywalkers.

  Jay's eyes swept the cells, that comic book knowledge cataloging faces and power sets, until he spotted someone unexpected.

  Marcus Daniels, aka Blackout. Poor bastard sat in his reinforced cell surrounded by specialty lighting designed to remove any shadows in his cell to keep him cut off his powers. His power to manipulate that dark-force made him one of SHIELD's nastiest catches, but Jay could see something else. That same haunted look he'd seen on other mutants whose abilities had scrambled their brains.

  Not exactly what Jay needed for his planned powers, but a darkforce user is potentially useful. Very useful.

  "Open it up," Jay told Coulson.

  Coulson didn't budge. "Information first, Jay."

  Jay held up a hand for quiet, then pointed at Fury. "Kill the recording devices. All of them."

  Fury reluctantly tapped his phone, nodded.

  Jay used his enhanced Danger sense to check again, and hearing all the electric hum die down confirmed it.

  "I'll give you one freebie for Blackout here. Your choice. Bucky's status or the Hydra intel. Pick one."

  Steve stepped forward before Fury could answer, desperation blazing in those blue eyes. "Bucky. Please."

  Fury gave a nod that looked like it hurt.

  Jay's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "James Buchanan Barnes is alive and goes by the Winter Soldier these days."

  Coulson went white as a sheet. "That's impossible. Barnes would be pushing late eighties and Winter Soldier's one of the deadliest assassins on the planet..."

  "Hydra pulled him out of that ravine barely breathing," Jay said, each word hitting them like hammer blows. "Pumped him full of their own bootleg super soldier serum, then spent the next seventy years systematically destroying his mind. Turned him into the perfect weapon with no conscience, just pure lethal efficiency. They keep him on ice between jobs. Keeps the extended warranty on their favorite killer."

  The silence that followed was suffocating.

  Then Steve's fist met concrete with a sound like a gunshot, spider-webbing the wall and painting his knuckles red. "They tortured him," he said, voice barely hearable anymore. "All those years I was sleeping in the ice, and they had him. They were breaking him, using him, turning him into..."

  The words died in his throat.

  "Hydra got wiped out after the war," Fury said, but even he didn't sound convinced. "Peggy saw to that personally."

  Jay just smiled and said nothing at all.

  Fury sighed like a man watching his pension disappear. "Coulson. Open the damn door."

  Marcus Daniels came off the bench swinging the second Jay stepped into his cell just as the lights went out, hands wreathed in shadows. Then Jay's null field kicked in, and the guy stopped like he'd hit a brick wall.

  Marcus stared at his hands like he'd never seen them before, then started crying like a baby.

  "How?" The word came out broken and desperate. "I can't... the voices stopped. The darkness ain't whispering anymore."

  "Your darkforce experiment gave you incredible power, Dr. Daniels," Jay said gently, "but it also messed with your head something fierce. Made you hear things, see things that weren't there. Made everyone look like a threat."

  Marcus dropped to his knees, overwhelmed by the sudden quiet in his skull. "Jesus, how long have I been here? The shadows were always screaming, showing me horrible stuff. Made me think everyone was trying to kill me."

  Jay held out his hand. "You want it gone?"

  Marcus grabbed on with both hands, tears streaming. "Please, God, just make it stop."

  "Keep still," Jay warned, then activated his theft ability. The darkforce power flowed into him like breathing in smoke, settling into his mental landscape, whispers and all.

  Marcus sagged as the last of it left him, and for the first time in years, his eyes were completely clear. "Oh God. I remember now. What I did. All those people I hurt. And Audrey, oh poor Audrey!" Pure horror in his voice.

  When Jay stepped back out and dropped his null field, Marcus was still on his knees but crying with relief now, not torment.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "That's... that actually helps more than you know," Coulson said quietly. "I'm the one who had to bring him in originally. What happened to him, what he became... it's kept me up for nights."

  Jay glanced back at Marcus, still crying. "He's gonna need serious therapy. Years of it, probably. But he's not dangerous anymore."

  He said it like he was diagnosing a common cold, then started walking deeper into the facility toward whatever he'd really come here for.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The Fridge was a maze of reinforced corridors and steel doors, each one hiding secrets. When he reached the cell he'd been looking for, he stopped, studying the reinforced containment unit that had been specially modified for its occupant.

  Inside, surrounded by thick layers of plastic lining every surface, Carl "Crusher" Creel was doing push-ups like his life depended on it. Up, down, up, down. Experience born of prison routine and the desperate need to stay occupied. Sweat dripped steadily onto the plastic sheeting beneath him, each drop a small percussion in the otherwise silent cell.

  The plastic was yellowed and scratched from months of use. Jay could see where Creel had tested his power early on. Small indentations where he'd pressed his palms, trying to absorb something, anything, to feel that rush of absorbing materials again. Now he just went through the motions, a junkie cut off from his drug of choice.

  The Absorbing Man. Former boxer turned enhanced individual with the ability to absorb the properties of anything he touches. The same Carl Creel who'd once fought Matt Murdock's father in the ring. Before Battlin' Jack Murdock refused to take a dive and paid for it with his life.

  'Funny thing about searching for answers,' Jay thought. 'You never think to look right under your nose.'

  When Fury, Coulson, and Steve caught up, their footsteps echoing in the sterile corridor, Fury took one look at Creel through the reinforced glass and crossed his arms.

  "Creel stays put," Fury said flat out. "He's too valuable for whatever game you're playing. We've got plans for that absorption ability."

  Jay tilted his head, genuinely interested now. The Tesseract project was still in its infancy, but if SHIELD was thinking that far ahead... "Tell me about him."

  Coulson stepped forward, consulting his tablet with practiced habit. His thumb flicked across the screen a few times. The glow from the device cast strange shadows on his face in the dim corridor lighting.

  Carl 'Crusher' Creel. Used to box middleweight before he discovered armed robbery paid better." He glanced up. "Six months ago, he underwent some unknown experiment which gave him his power. We caught him trying to crush some lawyer's skull in hell's kitchen with his bare hands, but whoever was pulling his strings..." Coulson shook his head. "Gone. They pulled out clean and left us with nothing to trace back."

  "Since then, he hasn't spoken, regardless of our methods. It's unusual for a street thug to display such loyalty."

  Steve leaned against the corridor wall, nursing his knuckles. "What kind of lawyer?"

  "Personal injury. An ambulance chaser named Franklin Nelson. Nothing special about him that we could find." Coulson swiped through more files. "Creel never said why he wanted him dead. Just kept asking when he could 'feel the steel again.'"

  Jay started laughing, low at first, then louder. It echoed off the walls, bouncing back at them from the sterile surfaces. "Funny thing about light, Fury. The brighter it burned, the darker the shadows it cast. And the darkest places were always right underneath the brightest lights."

  He stepped closer to the reinforced glass, noting the single-sided design and voice isolation system. State-of-the-art containment. Triple redundancy on the locks. Pressure sensors in the floor. They'd built this place to hold monsters.

  "The group that experimented on Creel? That was Hydra."

  The name dropped into the conversation like a stone into still water.

  "Hydra died with the war," Coulson said, but he didn't sound convinced. "But if what you say is true about the Winter Soldier, maybe some remnants survived. Small groups, hiding in a bunker somewhere. But what you're suggesting..."

  Fury's eye narrowed. "Even if you gave us every Hydra hideout left on Earth, it wouldn't be worth what you're asking for."

  There was something in Fury's voice, though. A crack in the certainty.

  Jay's face changed. The casual interest was gone, replaced by something colder. "Nick Fury. Master spy. Built SHIELD into the ultimate watchdog. Got eyes and ears in every government, every corporation, every terror cell worth watching."

  His voice got quiet. "But tell me something. While you're watching everyone else, who's watching your own house?"

  Something passed between Fury and Coulson. A look that said they were wondering about the same thing.

  The corridor felt smaller suddenly.

  But Steve got it right away. He pushed off from the wall, his jaw tight. He'd fought Hydra before, seen how they worked. They didn't just kill you and walk away. They got inside your head, your organization, your life. They made you complicit.

  "You're saying they're inside SHIELD."

  The words hung in the air like smoke from a gun.

  Fury went rigid, his eye narrowing like a gun barrel. "That's fucking impossible," he barked, voice raw with disbelief and rage. "I vet every single one of them myself. Every hire. Every promotion. Every transfer. I know what half my agents had for breakfast, who they're screwing, and what skeletons they've got buried."

  He snapped toward Coulson, almost shaking with fury. "Phil. Tell him. Tell him about the protocols. The psych evals. The polygraphs. The background checks that dig three generations deep. Tell him we don't miss traitors. Not in my house."

  Coulson moved closer to Jay. "I've served with these people for years. Bled with some of them. Watched them take bullets for civilians." His voice was rock solid. "If we had traitors in our ranks, I'd know. We'd all know."

  Jay watched them rally around each other, and he almost felt bad for what he was about to do. Almost.

  "Remember Operation Paperclip? After the war, your government brought over Nazi scientists. Rocket experts, they said. Help us beat the Soviets to space. But they didn't just bring the smart ones." He paused, letting that sink in. "They brought the believers too. The ones who truly, thought the Reich would rise again."

  Fury went dead quiet. When he spoke again, his voice could have frozen water. "Give me names."

  Jay counted off on his fingers like he was reading a grocery list. "Alexander Pierce, Secretary of the World Security Council. An old friend of yours, isn't he?

  Jasper Sitwell, Level 6 agent, currently assigned to the Lemurian Star. Nice lad, great with computers. Brock Rumlow, STRIKE team leader. You personally approved him for Steve's security detail. Trusted him with Captain America's life."

  He watched their faces fall with each name. "John Garrett, Level 8 operative, has been with SHIELD since the eighties. Gideon Malick from the World Security Council. Baron Wolfgang von Strucker's son, still running operations in Sokovia. Daniel Whitehall. Though you probably know him better as Dr. Werner Reinhardt, the charming Nazi who likes to cut people open while they're still breathing."

  The corridor was silent except for the hum of the ventilation system.

  Jay's smile was all teeth. "Want me to keep going? Because that's just the ones I know about off the top of my head. Probably about a quarter of your organization, give or take."

  Fury exploded. He started swearing in languages Jay didn't recognize. Russian, probably some Arabic, definitely some words that would make a sailor blush. He paced back and forth like a caged animal, his leather coat making soft scraping sounds against the walls in the narrow space. His eye darted everywhere. Walls, ceiling, floor. Like he might find answers written in the fluorescent lights overhead.

  Coulson just stood there, still holding his tablet loosely.

  Steve stayed calm, but Jay could see the anger in his shoulders, the way his hands had curled into fists at his sides. For Steve, this wasn't a shock. This was just confirmation of what he'd always suspected. Hydra never really died. They just learned to hide better.

  "Pierce," Fury said suddenly, stopping his pacing. "I've known Alexander Pierce for twenty years. He's the one who recommended me for director. He's..."

  "He's Hydra," Jay said simply. "Has been since before you met him."

  When Fury finally stopped cursing, he spun around and grabbed Jay's arm hard enough to leave bruises on normal skin. "Prove it. Right now. Give me something concrete, something I can take action on without sounding like a paranoid lunatic."

  Jay pointed at Creel's cell.

  Fury's brain was working overtime, trying to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. The man didn't get to run SHIELD by rolling over when things went sideways.

  "Hold up." He held up one hand, that calculating look creeping back into his good eye. "You want Creel's power? Let me purpose another deal."

  "Everything we got on Doom. And I mean everything. Surveillance footage going back five years, intercepted communications, financial records, our people inside Latveria who are still breathing." Fury paused, watching Jay's face. "But here's the kicker. Remember that green rage monster that tore up Manhattan back?"

  He waited a beat, letting the question hang.

  "Emil Blonsky. Goes by Abomination now. Took the military hours to crack him, but when they finally did..." Fury's smile was predatory. "Turns out that whole rampage wasn't some roided-up gamma soldier going crazy. Someone was pulling his strings. Feeding him intel, pointing him right at Reed Richards' lab like a guided missile."

  Fury circled closer, sensing weakness. This was what he lived for. The negotiation. The chess match.

  "Same day as your little enhancement party at the Baxter Building. Hell, same hour. You think that's coincidence?" He shook his head slowly. "Doom played us all. Used Blonsky to keep the Fantastic Four busy while he waltzed right in."

  The spymaster in him was fully engaged now, reading Jay's body language, looking for tells. "Now, I'm thinking a man with your obvious... history with the good doctor might find that information worth something. Especially since we know he cost you your friends."

  Jay burst out laughing. The sound bounced off the concrete walls.

  "You serious right now?" Jay shook his head in disbelief. "Nick, Doom waltzed into the Baxter Building, had a nice chat with Reed Richards and the rest, dropped a nuclear bomb on my secret identity, and strolled out like he owned the place. Your entire intelligence network didn't even know he was in the country until he was this close to killing your precious Boy Scout."

  Fury's jaw tightened, but Jay kept going.

  "If Victor Von Doom can slip past every satellite and agent you've got watching the skies, what makes you think your intelligence on him is worth anything?" Jay stepped closer, his voice getting quieter but somehow more cutting. "I've got my own methods for dealing with Doom. Methods that don't rely on an organization that's been compromised from day one."

  Fury's shoulders dropped. The fight went out of him as the full scope of SHIELD's failures hit home.

  Fury stared at him for a long moment. Then he let go and walked to the control panel, his director-level clearance punching through the security protocols with a series of electronic beeps.

  The reinforced door slid open with a hydraulic hiss. Creel looked up from his push-ups, muscles tensing when he saw the visitors. His eyes were the flat, calculating eyes of a man who'd spent months in the worst of cages.

  Jay walked into the cell, casual as you please, raised his hand, and said, "Hail Hydra."

  Just like that, everything changed. Creel's posture shifted from wary prisoner to devoted soldier. The tension melted away, replaced by worship. "Hail Hydra, sir!"

  The transformation was so complete, so instant, that for a moment nobody moved.

  Fury went white as a sheet. Coulson stumbled backward and his tablet hit the floor with a plastic crack. Steve's hands became fists, and Jay could hear his knuckles pop.

  "Outstanding work, soldier," Jay said, his voice carrying the easy authority of someone who'd been giving orders his whole life. "Whitehall sends his personal regards."

  Creel's face lit up like it was Christmas morning. "Sir, permission to absorb something? Anything? This plastic doesn't do it for me anymore. It's like... like drinking warm water when you want whiskey."

  The desperation in his voice was painful to hear. The man was addicted to the pleasure absorbing exotic material gave him, and he'd been cut off from his drug for months.

  Jay nodded, his expression almost paternal. "Don't worry about that anymore, Soldier. We can fix that up right now."

  He reached out and touched Creel's shoulder exposed from his wife beater. Jay's Power Theft kicked in, and power flowed from Creel into Jay like water finding its level.

  Creel blinked, the fanatic gleam fading into confusion. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers, pressing them against the plastic walls, and getting nothing back. "What's happening to me? I feel... empty."

  Jay looked down at him with about as much warmth as a glacier. "Your services are no longer required, soldier. Take some well-deserved rest."

  He walked out of the cell, and the door sealed behind him with Creel pressing his hands frantically against the plastic, trying to absorb something, anything, and getting nothing but the echo of his own desperation.

  "That's not enough," Fury said, but his voice was shaking now. "One sleeper agent doesn't prove there's a conspiracy."

  Jay turned back to them, and his expression was almost gentle. Almost. "One sleeper agent who's been in SHIELD custody for six months, who none of your interrogation specialists could break, who just revealed his true loyalties the moment someone said the right words."

  Jay caught the look of dawning horror on their faces and couldn't help but find it a little amusing. This was exactly what he'd expected. SHIELD thought they were the good guys, the watchers on the wall. They had no idea they'd been compromised from the very beginning.

  He shrugged. "But if you want more proof...Let's head back to New York first."

  As they walked back through the facility, Jay could feel three pairs of eyes boring into his back. Fury's desperate and calculating. Coulson's shattered and searching. Steve's grim and ready for war.

  He'd just torn apart everything they believed in, everything they'd built their lives around. SHIELD wasn't the solution to the world's problems. It was part of the problem. Maybe the biggest part.

  Behind them, growing fainter with each step, Creel's voice echoed through the his cell "What did they do to me? What did they take from me?"

  [A/N]: This one's a big chapter, folks. We're heading back into the Power Broker side of business, but this time, Jay's got a new hunger for powers and the seeds of next arc are starting to take root.

  [A/N]: If you wanna hang out, join my