The kitchen was immaculate in the way only expensive kitchens ever were with stone counters that had no scratches, brushed steel appliances that had never seen a real spill, and under-cabinet lighting. All that good, expensive stuff. It almost didn't seem lived in even though it was most certainly was. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the dark forest beyond the property. The glass reflected the scene back at itself.
Felicia Hardy sat on the island countertop, one leg crossed over the other, boot heel idly tapping against the marble. She was in full costume: the black skintight catsuit trimmed with white fur around the neck, cuffs, along with a domino mask, choker, and red lipstick.
She was Black Cat, a stunning woman that boggled the mind in every way. From"P-pretty" to "How did she get in here!?" and even "Am I going to die?"
All mind-boggling indeed. That was the Black Cat.
Herman Schultz sat opposite her at the small breakfast table, wrists zip-tied behind the chair. He was slumped, albeit not from pain but from resignation. His expensive shirt was rumpled. His tight cropped hair—graying at the temples—was disheveled. The tanned man looked like someone who had run out of time. He was in his forties though. Plenty of time, really. He was only halfway through his lifespan.
He looked up. He swallowed.
This woman, however, was threatening to take away that other half.
Felicia picked up a crystal tumbler, sniffed it, then set it down untouched. "You know," she said casually, "in my world, your name means something very different."
Schultz followed her, wary. "World…?"
"Oh yeah." She smiled faintly. "You were called the Shocker. Big yellow suit. Concussive gauntlets. Real menace."
"Are you…mad, woman?"
"Mm. Thought you'd say that. But, uh, anyway, I know you're still an engineer. Still self-taught?"
"I am."
"Ever robbed a bank?"
Herman was glaring daggers. "I've designed a plethora of integration frameworks. I've never robbed a bank in my life."
Felicia tilted her head, studying him. "Oh wow, you're really offended—and really a law-abiding citizens."
"Which is why you threatening me—"
"Hush, I'm not here to play nice. Just thought it was funny."
He didn't laugh.
She hopped down from the counter and circled the table slowly, like a cat that had already decided how this would end. "But I mean, come on, this cottage is something, isn't it? There's no way you got from an engineer's salary. I bet you caught a big break," she claimed. Since he didn't answer to it, Felicia just said it straight-up. "How did it happen?"
"..."
"Did Nick Fury just call, you picked it up, and suddenly you're managing an underwater prison?"
Schultz swallowed. The gears were turning in his head. He was starting to understand what she was after. "..."
Rouge lips curved into a lovely smile. "I love loyalty in a man. But are you sure you should be keeping quiet?"
"Look, I…I didn't ask questions I didn't need answers to," Herman said quickly. "You want to know about a project—"
"Yes. Obviously. Duh. Come on, be a pal and flap those lips, please."
"...security's gone, my alarms are dead, and you're in my kitchen. I just…I just want to know if my life has expired."
Felicia stopped behind him and leaned down, resting her forearms on the back of his chair. "Oh, it expired the moment you answered the phone back then. But don't worry—you're doing great tonight."
"Please." He exhaled shakily. "What do you want?"
"The Trench," she said lightly.
His shoulders tensed.
"SHIELD made like twenty names for it. The Trench, the SHIELD Prison Facility, the SHIELD Abyssal Corrections Complex," Felicia went on. "Great diversion, it does get a bit confusing. Buuut doesn't change the fact that you oversaw it."
"I coordinated," he corrected. "I didn't design—"
"I don't care," she cut in pleasantly. "Start with access."
Schultz hesitated, then shook his head. "You can't brute-force it. No keypads, no codes you can steal off a terminal. Everything funnels through physical clearance."
"Which kind?"
"Black card," he said. "Primary access credential. Quantum-encoded, satellite-verified."
Felicia smiled. "Already handled."
That got his attention. "That's impossible."
"A lady was feeling generous, you see."
"That…" He leaned back as far as the chair allowed, stunned. "That card…then why are you here if you already have it?"
"Because I want Levels Twelve and Thirteen."
Herman went very still.
"You don't," he said quietly.
"Try me."
Schultz closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again, defeated. "Those levels require White Card authorization."
Felicia's brows lifted. "White Card?"
"The White Card is what grants Black-level clearance," he said.
"Funny. Sounds like someone didn't have a fun time designing them." His expression said, I didn't. Felicia smiled. "How many of these White Cards are there?"
"Two," he said. "Both split into seven pieces."
Felicia leaned against the counter, arms crossed. "Explain."
"One White Card is divided among the World Security Council," Schultz said. "Certain members hold a physical segment. All seven pieces are required for a full authorization handshake."
Felicia let out a whistle. "That's… annoying."
The most powerful people on the planet were apart of the World Security Council. They probably didn't agree on lunch, let alone surrendering access fragments. Seemed like a dead end.
"And the second card?"
He hesitated. Felicia smiled wider.
"The second White Card was fragmented and distributed across SHIELD's card-manufacturing facilities," Herman said.
"So no one site holds the whole thing…." Felicia tapped her comm. "You listening, right?
Felix's voice, filtered through. "Yeah, Herbie's pretty much tracked which facilities they're in."
"Oooh, you and Herbie work fast. And?" Felicia questioned.
"Stealing the physical fragments would take at least a month—what with all the travel and infiltration. And once I get my hands on one, I could probably recreate a piece so that they don't even know that it's stolen. But…"
While Felicia and Felix spoke, Herman Schultz frowned. He had no idea who she was talking to, not that it was unexpected. Obviously, this had been a coordinated effort. He waited and waited…
"Gotcha." Felicia waved a hand. "My friend says that it's too slow."
"W-what? What am I supposed to do about that? The White Cards are in seven pieces, that's just how it is!"
Felicia's smile was slowly losing its kindness. "Try again."
"I…"
"Come up with an idea. You must know something." Her claws unsheathed. "Right?"
"W-wait. Hold on. Hold on." The engineer stammered and glanced about nervously. There was nowhere to run. He could only ball his fists and think. "Uhh…um…"
"Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock."
"O-okay, just…just hang on! Wait!" He moved ever so slightly and Felicia launched at him and slammed him down. He was already tied it, it was a showcase of intimidation. She flexed her claws, scratching it along his jaw.
"Men perform better under pressure, don't they?"
She drew blood. Herman's heart dropped like an anchor.
"Okay! Wait! I think…I think I got it!" Herman panted a little and smiled weakly. "There might…might be another way."
"Thought so."
"T-they wiped all metadata related to White Card usage in the prison and outside. But…not its creation."
Felicia straightened slightly. "Meaning?"
"The card had to be generated somewhere," he said. "The newest facility. United Kingdom. That site would still have the original creation ledger."
Felicia's smile returned and pulled herself away from him. "Now we're talking."
That was when Felix entered the conversation again. "You shouldn't be."
Felicia turned away, putting a finger to her ear. "Aww, now what's wrong?"
"I already have a blueprint of the building." Felicia blinked. Did he already have it or did Herbie work that fast? It couldn't be the latter, could it? "From his estimations, the ledger isn't in an office or a server room," he said. "It's in the power station."
"So…?"
"In a sealed chamber," Felix continued. "Water-filled, rotating, and a mile deep."
She blinked three times. "…A mile?"
"Yes. Not to mention the chamber rotates to prevent stabilization," Felix explained. "There's a strict three-minute oxygen limit. No scuba. No rebreathers. Anyone entering must retrieve the data, scan it, and replace it before the timer expires."
Felicia stared at him.
"Where's the data?" she asked slowly.
"At the bottom."
Silence filled the kitchen.
Felicia let out a short, incredulous laugh. She looked at Herman again. "Hey Shocker, you sure there's no other way?" Because this was not a plan, it was a suicide note."
Schultz met her gaze. "Look, I-I don't know who your boss is or what they think of me or the idea, but that's the only idea I have."
She paced once, twice, boots soft against marble. For her—no. A mile of swimming under a hard oxygen limit wasn't just dangerous, it was impossible.
She stopped behind the engineer again.
"Well," Felicia said lightly, pulling a syringe from her jacket, "you've been very helpful."
He tensed. "What are you—"
She pressed the needle into his neck.
Herman's protest never made it past a startled breath. His body went slack moments later, unconscious before his mind could catch up. Felicia eased him down carefully, almost gently, then slipped a second pill between his lips and tilted his head back until he swallowed.
"Forgetful little cocktail," she murmured. "You'll wake up convinced this was a bad dream."
She straightened, adjusted her jacket, and glanced once more around the pristine kitchen. She went to the fridge and opened it up. "Anything you'd like as a souvenir, Felix?"
"Just come already."
She shrugged. "Your problem. I'm taking a yogurt."
***
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA — HARBORLIGHT COFFEE
It was night. The rendezvous point was at the cafe and everyone had arrived. The portable work light cast hard shadows across the back room, turning the corkboards into looming silhouettes of names, diagrams, and red-threaded connections.
Felix sat at the folding table, freshly showered and in black pants and a blue collared shirt. His sleeves were rolled up. His tablet lay dark in front of him, fingers steepled under his chin.
Felicia had claimed the counter again, lounging like this was a planning brunch instead of something that could kill all of them. Yelena was at a desk scrolling through a laptop. M'Baku occupied the couch. He was a heavy dude. There was a huge dip.
"Okay," Felicia said, breaking the silence. "So…what's our conclusion? Yelena? Felix?"
Felix nodded. "Herman Schultz was the project manager and he was the only one to mention the White Cards. He could have been lying but I doubt it."
"Yeah, me neither. I did a great job," Felicia said, chest puffing out.
M'Baku rumbled, "And the info I received from Walter Newell?"
Yelena spun in her chair and away from the laptop toward M'Baku. "Seems right. Only allowing one kind of submarine, an Astute-Class, and viewing all others as a threat is super simple but effective." Behind her on the laptop were the transcripts from the interrogation. It was…a lot.
Felix tried not to look at it. "And Lei Ling?"
"Pretty much confirmed to me what M'Baku got. She designed the launchpads and the receiving stations for the submarines."
Felicia swung her legs and leaned forward. "Which brings us to the fun part. Access. Are we going from the top or bottom?" She glanced at Felix.
Felix drew in a breath. This was the heart of the mater. Level Surface, or Level S, was originally thought to be where everybody went through. No exceptions. Except…that wasn't the case. Level S was for the prisoners. Level S was where they arrived where they went down to Level Zero to get sedated and all that. After that, they were transferred to their cells from Levels Three to Thirteen. Ten whole floors of prison cells for the world's most dangerous criminals.
"According to both Lei Ling and Walter Newell, on Level Five, they developed a launchpad and receiving chamber for submarines. These submarines are not for prisoners but for supplies. They still need a black card but it's the only other way to get in."
"Right, the Black Card. Can you show it?" Felicia asked. "For my sake?"
Felix reached into a case and slid a matte black card onto the table.
"The Black Card," Felix said. "Stolen from Sharon Carter. Fully functional with the satellite handshake intact."
Yelena's eyebrows lifted. "You're sure it's not a different Black Card we need for Level Five?"
Absolutely. Herbie already hacked the SHIELD satellite necessary. It was going to be no issue at all. None. "I copied the authentication pattern and scrubbed the usage anomaly," Felix said. "It won't flag. There's just no way."
M'Baku eyed the card. "So it is confirmed? We will be going through Level Five?"
Felicia snickered a little. "Well, duh. How could we go through the top? Look, obviously, we're going to steal a submarine, right? What are we going to do about the prisoners? Throw them out? And even if we do that, what do we do afterward?"
"...disguise," M'Baku suggested lukewarmly.
"Really? A disguise?" Felicia snickered. "What if they're here to receive Zheng Zu and Kuan-Yin Xorn? You really think they'll believe you or Felix are them?"
"...point taken."
Yelena spun back on her chair to her laptop. "I managed to get the schedule of when the food supply deliveries happen. It's twice a month on a Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. It's easier than stealing a prison submarine since there's no consistency in when they send a prisoner over."
Nods went along the room. It was settled: they were going to steal a food-supply submarine.
"I was warned that the submarine can only stay for thirty minutes," M'Baku said. "Can we confirm?"
Yelena inhaled. "To be honest, we can't confirm but we should probably believe it."
M'Baku was tepid about the information he received, particularly because he went hard on the interrogation.
"Alright, so what about what I learned?" Felicia raised a hand. "The White Card, split into pieces. One set held by the World Security Council and the other set throughout the world. We gonna steal every piece or are we going for the creation metadata?"
Felix and Yelena had been discussing it for a while. Sighing outwardly, Felix brought up a schematic on his tablet and showed it to everyone. A cylindrical structure appeared, annotated and terrifying.
"So this is the UK facility that contains the metadata for the creation of the White Card," he said. "As Felicia learned and we were able to confirm, it is the newest SHIELD card-manufacturing site. The creation ledger for all high-clearance credentials is stored here. Hell, recently, Nick Fury got his new clearance card here."
Felicia stared at the projection. "Says a mile. And it says it will close in three minutes. Are you sure you didn't fuck up your hacking?"
No. Herbie never messed up. "I managed to gather that the gate for it only stays open three minutes at a time. After that, it stays closed for an hour. Meaning—"
"Whoever is in there is fucked." Felicia shook her head and stared at the table, at the cylinder, at the impossible mission. "A mile of water…"
"Yes."
"Rotating."
"Yes."
"And no breathing gear."
"Technically, you can but—"
"Their systems would detect the metal," Felicia finished. "Aren't you a genius? Can't you come up with non-metallic breathing gear?"
Felix gave her a look like, "Really?" Felicia shrugged.
"Had to try."
M'Baku let out a disgruntled breath. "So we're not stealing the White Card. We're copying its creation data. Am I getting this right?" He was a warrior, not a techno-wiz. It was a bit harder for him to follow.
"If we replicate the metadata," Felix said, "we can fabricate a functional equivalent."
Felicia looked between them. "Define 'we.'"
"There is no need to define it. I can do it."
All eyes turned to M'Baku.
He didn't move. "I said I can do it."
Yelena frowned. "That's a mile of swimming. In a rotating chamber. Under time pressure."
"I am stronger than most," M'Baku said simply. "And I am willing."
'Yeah, he's pretty much the only one that can do it. Because of Rash, it's not possible for me to go down there.'
'Yesssss. Make him do it, not ussss.'
Felix sighed in his head while looking nervous for M'Baku. "You don't have to—"
"I do," M'Baku interrupted. "I owe you my life, do I not? This is the only act worthy of it."
Silence settled again. M'Baku met Felix's concerned gaze head-on. He wasn't faking it either, Felix was genuinely worried. Super soldier or not, this was going to be a tough task. 'Especially because he's so huge…'
But was there a choice? He was the only one that could possibly do it. Yelena was no super soldier. Neither was Felicia. They were skilled.
Felicia cleared her throat. "Okay. So while King of the Deep is reenacting a nightmare, what are the rest of us doing? Watching from the Big Ben?"
"Actually…" Felix and Yelena exchanged looks. It was Yelena who told her. "...Felicia, you'll have to join M'Baku."
"I will?"
"Only two people can get out of the food supply submarine. Everyone else has to stay inside." A large submarine specimen like the Astute-Class required a highly skilled, resilient, and disciplined crew of about a hundred people, including specialists in nuclear engineering, sonar, weapons, and navigation.
But among them, only two were aware of the facility. Everyone else was told nothing. Perhaps they suspected, but they served the country. It was in their job description to keep their lips sealed.
"Which will be me and Yelena," Felix explained to her.
"Uh…why not just get the White Card and have all four of us go? We have a thirty-minute time window. We go in, get out, and even though they might think something happened, they won't know it's us."
Yelena stared at Felix. Felicia didn't get it until she realized that she probably told him this. For some reason…
"We…we can't."
Felix looked away. He didn't want to do it later or together. He wanted it now.
Alarm bells were ringing in Felicia's eyes and ears. "Why not?"
"The closest food supply run is on December 16, a Tuesday. That's in two days," Felix said. "You and M'Baku can be in the UK in that time. You can infiltrate, get the data, and I can make the card."
"When!? We went over on how to steal the submarine before, you know how tough it'll be. The only time you'll have on Tuesday to make the White Card is never!"
"There is a time for it," Felix insisted. "I can do it in the submarine."
"What." Felicia looked at him like he was crazy. Everything so far had been crazy but this? "You want me and M'Baku to infiltrate a top-SHIELD facility in two days? A-and not just that but send you the data in the one-hour time gap that you and Yelena are in the submarine? Felix, that is ridiculous. Why not just be patient?"
"We can't. We just…can't." Felix's fist balled. "Please. I need this done ASAP. I don't want to waste another two weeks."
"Why not? It's just two weeks—"
"I said the operation is happening in two days and that's that, Felicia."
She was silenced. Felix's tone left no room for argument. Felicia didn't get it. Yelena didn't get it. M'Baku didn't either. Nobody did. They didn't realize there was a terror in this world and that it was up to him to find him and hunt him down. That it was his burden to carry. For a moment, he regretted raising his voice.
"Look. I'll give you all the money you need. Just help me with this."
Felicia pursed her lips. "...it's not about the money, Felix. What you're asking is..."
It seemed impossible. It did. But Felix believed they could it. Sincerely, he did. He picked the strongest, most capable people he knew to do this.
"If you don't have the confidence," said M'Baku, "then leave. I will do this myself then."
His remark earned a sharp, angry glare from the thief. "You really don't care what he asks of you, do you?"
"No," M'Baku replied. "I don't."