The streetlights of Washington D.C. smeared into streaks of amber and white against the tinted windows of the armored SUV. Nick Fury sat in the back, the leather creaking as he shifted, his mind a whirlwind of tactical variables.
"Hill," Fury rumbled into his comms, his voice low. "Pull the personnel file on Sharon Carter. Cross reference her private employment history with the Umbrella Corporation."
"Sir?" Maria Hill's voice crackled through the secure line. "Agent 13? She spent a year at Umbrella as a Senior Legal Liaison before returning to active duty. The connection goes deep, Sir… Aryan's grandfather personally saved her during a botched extraction mission in Vienna years ago. Sharon has considered herself in that man's debt for decades. Why do you ask?"
"Because Stark just told me he has a 'team,'" Fury said, staring at his fried phone lying on the seat next to him. "And I want to know if one of my best agents was standing in the room when that team was built and didn't bother to tell me."
An hour later, Sharon Carter stood in the center of Fury's dimly lit office in the Triskelion. She remained perfectly composed, her spine rigid, the "Soldier's Mask" she had worn since basic training firmly in place. But beneath the ribs, her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm.
"You worked for him, Sharon," Fury began, not bothering with pleasantries. He paced behind his desk, the city skyline a backdrop of artificial stars behind him. "A whole year at Umbrella. You saw the blueprints. You saw the code. Why is it that my satellites are hitting a digital wall every time I try to look at their server facility?"
"With all due respect, Director," Sharon replied, her voice steady, "when I was at Umbrella, it was strictly a high end software firm. Aryan was obsessed with refining operating systems and data architecture. There was no 'digital wall' or 'Google' at the time. If he's built an ecosystem that can blind S.H.I.E.L.D., he must have coded the foundation in secret after I left. Or," she paused, "despite our history, I simply wasn't part of the inner circle when the real architecture was being laid down."
Fury stopped pacing. He looked up, his one eye boring into hers, dissecting her micro expressions. "My data shows you've spent more time at that family estate than at your own apartment. That old man treated you like his own granddaughter. Your relationship with Aryan is friendly, some might even say intimate. And you're telling me that despite all that, he kept you in the foyer while he was building a digital empire? That doesn't add up, Agent."
"I was a legal liaison, Director. I handled contracts, not the core source code," she lied, the fabrication smooth as glass. "Aryan compartmentalizes. It's his nature. If you want to know what's truly happening inside Umbrella, you can't rely on old memories. You need a pair of eyes back on the ground."
Fury leaned back in his chair, the leather groaning. A grim smile touched his lips. "That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm assigning you to Project: Sentinel."
Sharon didn't flinch, though the name of the operation sent a chill through her.
"Re-establish contact," Fury ordered. "I don't want reports on his coffee habits, Agent 13. I want the backdoors to his ecosystem, the encryption keys and the names of every member of this 'team' Stark mentioned."
"Understood, Director," Sharon said, her voice a professional clip. She turned and walked out, her footsteps echoing on the polished floor with a finality that hid the absolute chaos tearing through her heart.
As the elevator doors slid shut, sealing her in the steel box, Sharon finally let the mask slip. She leaned back against the cold metal wall, her breath hitching in her throat. Her hands, usually steady enough to pick a lock in a hurricane or disarm a bomb with seconds to spare, were trembling.
The dilemma was tearing her in two. On one side was S.H.I.E.L.D.… the legacy of her Aunt Peggy, the oath she had taken to protect the world and the only life she had ever known. On the other was Aryan. The man who had looked at her not as an "Agent" or a "Carter," but as Sharon. Her mind flashed back to the moment that had forged her absolute loyalty. Aryan's grandfather pulled her from the wreckage when her own agency had written her off as collateral damage. He had risked everything to save her, binding her to the Spencer bloodline by a debt of life that could never be repaid with betrayal.
She was being asked to betray the legacy of the man who gave her a second chance at life and to destroy the grandson who now held her heart.
If I say no, Fury sends Natasha, she reasoned, her mind racing through the tactical variables. Natasha won't hesitate. She won't care about the history. She'll find the cracks. She'll see the things I've deliberately ignored. She'll leave bodies if she has to.
By accepting, Sharon realized she had become a human shield. She was the filter. Every report she wrote from this moment on would be a work of carefully curated fiction. She would have to sit across from Aryan, look into the sapphire eyes of the man she loved and pretend she wasn't carrying a S.H.I.E.L.D. dagger in her sleeve… all while knowing her true allegiance was to him.
But there was a more primal fear gnawing at her.
Wanda Maximoff.
She had seen that woman around Aryan more and more lately, standing in the spaces she used to occupy. There was something unsettling about her… a stillness that felt like the eye of a storm and a gaze that seemed to peel back the layers of a person's soul to read the secrets written on the bone. Her instincts as a top tier agent were screaming that Wanda Maximoff was the most dangerous thing in that building.
Wanda will know, Sharon realized with a jolt of ice cold dread. She has that raw intuition that sees through every mask I've ever worn and she's protective of him in a way that defies logic. She guards him like a wolf.
Sharon knew that if she walked into Aryan's office with a lie in her heart, Wanda wouldn't need a polygraph or an interrogation room to catch her.
She reached into her pocket, her fingers brushing past her S.H.I.E.L.D. badge and closing around cool metal. She pulled out the matte black pager that Aryan had gifted her. The one that ran on a frequency S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't even detect.
Her thumb hovered over the keys.
I'm coming back. Fury is watching. Be ready.
She stared at the message, the letters glowing faintly in the dim elevator light. She didn't press send. Not yet. If she sent it now, while inside the Triskelion, the signal burst might… just might… trigger a passive sensor she didn't know about. She had to be perfect.
As the elevator hit the ground floor with a soft chime, Sharon Carter pocketed the device, straightened her jacket and wiped the moisture from her eyes. She stepped out into the lobby, her face a mask of determination.