The silver-tongued Nick Fury fell silent on the spot, and Daisy had no idea how to smooth over the awkwardness. Captain America opposed any research into the Tesseract — that much went without saying; everyone had seen it coming.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s current stance, along with the U.S. government's determination to develop energy weapons, was really no different from Red Skull's back in the day. In both cases the ultimate goal was to conquer the world; at most, the U.S. government would dress it up a little. But it was easy to predict: once the military had mature energy weapons in hand, the next step would surely be war.
Daisy shot Coulson a look that said hurry up and drag your idol out of here. Things would go a lot smoother with just Stark in the room. Captain America, an idealist through and through, was a terrible fit for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Coulson felt a headache coming on. He hesitated, then noticed Nick Fury was giving him the same look. With both Directors ordering him, this was a job he had to take whether he liked it or not.
Flashing his most amiable smile, he used the excuse of showing off the combat suit and shield to coax Captain America away.
Captain America hadn't gotten the answer he wanted, though in truth he already had it. He'd watched this same scene play out many times seventy years ago, and this time was no different from back then.
Knowing his presence here was a little out of place, he managed a faint smile and left the interrogation room with Coulson.
With the saint gone, the two Directors let out a breath. Talking with a selfless man was exhausting; Stark was far more practical.
"Tony, you know what S.H.I.E.L.D. is researching, don't you? A facility that size could be hidden from Captain Rogers, who has no sources of his own — but it can't be hidden from you." Seeing that Nick Fury didn't feel like talking, Daisy was the one to speak up.
"I know you're studying the Tesseract, and that you've left Earth exposed to a pack of ambitious aliens." Stark pointed at Supergiant as he spoke.
"Are you sure it's us? Don't you know Howard Stark studied the Tesseract too? Don't you know where the new element in that arc reactor of yours came from? You know all of it. Humanity only avoids being left behind by moving forward. Pin our hopes on the bad guys never finding us? The only way to handle problems from every direction is to be strong enough ourselves."
Daisy didn't wait for Stark to reply. She turned back to Nick Fury to discuss the Supergiant problem — all this bickering with the heroes had already eaten up too much time. "This woman is dangerous. Her power can rewrite your own will without a sound, without a trace—"
Before she could finish, a loud crash sounded not far off, along with a frenzied shout. The voice was oddly familiar; she was sure she'd heard it before.
Daisy whipped around to find that Supergiant had woken. Her eyes glittered like stars, dazzling in every color, and in under three seconds they turned bloodshot, her forehead beading with sweat as she forced her way through the barriers of the containment cell to strike at Daisy.
I hate telepaths! She could only scream it inside her head, then marshaled every ounce of her psychic strength to hold the line. Beside her, Nick Fury and Stark caught the backwash of the psychic shock, and both were hanging on through sheer willpower.
"You forced my hand!" By now Daisy no longer cared about Thanos. She reached for the red switch on the containment cell — its self-destruct. Trigger it, and Supergiant would be blown to dust along with the cell.
Every step was a struggle, her figure swaying. The two of them weren't remotely on the same level of psychic power; it was only because Supergiant had so little left after breaking out of the cell that they were barely holding an even balance.
Blood began to trickle from the corner of Supergiant's mouth, her muscles twitching all over — the unmistakable sign of psychic power pushed to its absolute limit.
Daisy had fought the White Queen before and had learned a thing or two about being overpowered by a stronger psychic. Now it came down to whose endurance would hold out longer.
"Get out, both of you — something's happening outside!" she said through gritted teeth. Seeing that Daisy could still talk, Supergiant bore down another twenty percent harder, and Nick Fury and Stark scrambled out.
The two of them ran more than a hundred meters (over three hundred feet) before stopping to gasp for air. They barely had time to catch their breath before they saw that outside had indeed dissolved into chaos.
Those loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, those champions of freedom and democracy — Director Pierce and Crossbones — had come storming in aboard three Quinjets, along with a handful of Hydra diehards fiercely devoted to the pair of them.
After much hesitation, Hill still didn't give the order to fire on the jets. Nearly every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Captain America included, backed her call — you shouldn't turn your own guns on your own people.
One side hesitated for ages and held its fire; the other poured a torrent of ordnance onto the carrier.
The Iliad was hit hard, fires breaking out in several places, one engine blown and another shut down.
The situation hung by a thread.
Fortunately, their aim was to rescue Supergiant. Pierce and Crossbones, who spent all their idle hours studying the Helicarrier, knew its layout inside out, and they knocked out ninety percent of the ship's weapons in the first moments before boarding one after another to trade blows with S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Team One, take the power room. Team Two, with me to the detention area — Lady Supergiant needs our help. Director Pierce, go rally your supporters." Crossbones was the one Loki valued more, so Loki had put him in field command, leaving the combat-useless Pierce to go work the crowd.
Pierce, showing up on the monitors, had lost all credibility; most people assumed he'd been mind-controlled by the enemy, so the disorder he stirred up amounted to little. On the other side, though, Crossbones was pushing forward fast.
Mockingbird and Hawkeye took Crossbones on two-on-one, but out of regard for a former comrade, they fought conservatively, reluctant to use their deadliest moves. Crossbones put on a fearsome display: one against two, his military knife locked in a stalemate with Mockingbird's batons, and in the gaps he could still draw a pistol and fire at Hawkeye.
"Not bad at all." It was Crossbones's first time crossing weapons with Mockingbird, and the blonde who was always at Daisy's side turned out to be surprisingly dangerous.
"Rumlow, sir — I'll bring you back to your senses!" Every strike of Mockingbird's twin batons sought out Crossbones's head. As a woman, she was no match for his raw strength, but her background as a gymnast gave her a flexibility far beyond the ordinary, and her batons always attacked from some impossible angle.
Seasoned as Crossbones was, for the moment he genuinely couldn't win.
Not far off, Hawkeye had no idea his own fate had been rewritten — that the steadfast, unbending Crossbones had taken the role that might once have been his. Still rattled, he felt a surge of unaccountable anger too, a hatred for these people who manipulated hearts and twisted beliefs. His arrows never stopped, covering Mockingbird and lending support to the fighting all across the deck.
"Switch to Plan B — find Target Two!" Pinned down by the two of them, Crossbones had no choice but to bellow the order.
His Hydra agents moved fast, pulling up the carrier's records and locating Target Two: none other than that not-so-famous dog lover, Dr. Bruce Banner, whom Black Widow had coaxed aboard — how he'd wound up tangled in all this, no one could say.