Fury lounged back with one leg tossed over the arm of the chair, making the posture of a man entirely at ease while he asked hard questions. "You call yourself a wandering mage. If you can bring a corpse back for a conversation, how many in Kamar-Taj can do the same? Who have you resurrected, and how permanent was it?"
Li regarded him for a long moment, eyes like a man diagnosing a problem he'd seen before. "You're angling to get into Kamar-Taj by asking sideways," he said. "Nice try."
He spread his hands, deliberately dismissive. "Last time, slowly: I am not picking a fight with the Sanctum. Anything they care about is a hard no."
Fury's half-smile didn't reach his eye. He switched tactics—direct, practical. He wanted answers about how the Sanctum seemed to know things before S.H.I.E.L.D. did.
Li's grin sharpened, but he didn't give ground. "They monitor. They have methods you don't. Smarter ways of listening than wiretaps. I could tell you, but then I'd lose nothing and you'd gain a lot."
Fury's hand twitched toward his holster—then stilled. He knew better than to make a power play in a room with a mage who could make guns slide harmlessly away.
"So tell me this," Fury said instead. "Who has been brought back?"
Li leaned forward. "You're simplifying it. Resurrection isn't a download. I can pull a soul up for a short time—ask it questions, get it to speak. It's a conjugal visit, not a moving-in. It's temporary."
Fury's expression hardened. "So you borrow somebody's memories, talk to them, and then the soul goes back. What's piloting the meat suit after? Blank slate? Someone else?"
Li waved the question off with a practiced hand. "Your tech-zombies? They don't have souls. They're constructs—imitation life. Hell has nothing to subpoena there."
Fury exhaled, and for a second the mask of the Director slipped, revealing a man who'd sat across too many interrogations and buried too many truths. "If there's a Hell and souls go there, and we're pulling bodies back without their souls… who's inside those bodies? Whatever animates them matters."
Li realized the word had cut too deep the moment it left his mouth. He felt the room's temperature change—an internal check, an instinctive scan—and he closed down the line with Fury the way a stage magician covers the trick. He palmed his green gourd and shifted the tone.
"I didn't come because you sent for me," he said, much lighter. "I need a favor."
Fury glanced at the vessel, at the way the varnished surface picked up the office lights. "You telegraphed that a while ago. Fountain water, resurrection favors. Say it."
Li's voice dropped. "Remember twelve years ago—what we found up there?"
Fury's mouth did a short, ugly twitch. "The cube," he said. "Hydra's plaything. The orbital piece that never made sense."
"You call it a cube," Li replied. "I call it a bottomless power source. That thing isn't charity. It's leverage."
Fury's posture went rigid. "You want to study it."
"Not want," Li corrected. "Need. For research. I'll work from your lab, under your cameras, with your people checking every move. A loan. A few days with the cube, and I give you data."
Fury considered the gourd in Li's hand. "No trade. A loan. Under S.H.I.E.L.D. oversight. You promise you won't walk out with it."
Li shrugged, a small, practiced gesture that meant both confidence and threat. "Under your cameras, Director. You get to see every step. But I need the cube for a few days."
Fury's gaze sharpened. "Why you? Why not hand the cube to R&D?"
Li's smile slit. "Because R&D sees it as a widget. I see the metaphysics. You trust me to keep my word."
Fury's finger tapped the arm of his chair—a metronome. "You say the gourd can drown eight hundred men. You say the cube is a power source. Tell me everything you know about it, and maybe we'll talk laboratory time."
Li set the gourd on the coffee table like a peace offering and recited what he'd already hinted at: fragments from old missions, Hydra's appetite for anomalous tech, the way the cube behaved in zero-g and the way the Sanctum had circled like quiet predators whenever it had been mentioned.
Fury listened. He did not smile. When Li finished, Fury named the inevitable follow-up: formal oversight, strict security, documented results. If Li wanted access, it would be on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s terms.
Li agreed—reluctantly, like a man conceding a chessboard position while plotting the next trap.
They shook on it in the only way men like them could: not with a handshake, but with the exchange of information that would bind both of them. Fury would make channels, secure a lab, and watch like a hawk. Li would bring his skills, his arcane knowledge, and the gourd. And under the fluorescent lights of the Triskelion, they both understood the same thing: an uneasy truce had been struck—one that would rearrange loyalties, re-open old wounds, and pull both of them deeper into a game that had no clean edges.