Nick Fury stood at the head of the table with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the faces of his four most trusted agents, Coulson, Hill, Romanov and Barton.
It was rare for all five of them, including himself, to be gathered like this in the debriefing room. This kind of meeting was only reserved for situations that had gone sideways in ways they hadn't anticipated.
Those situations were rare.
This one had managed to produce two of them simultaneously.
"Alright." He said, beginning the meeting. "Thor."
Coulson straightened slightly. "Confirmed Asgardian. Thor retrieved the hammer and departed via an advanced teleportation system named the Bifrost. The installation is destroyed, the hammer is gone, and we have a crater in New Mexico and about forty pages of incident reports to show for it." A short pause. "The Destroyer was neutralised by Thor prior to departure. Minimal civilian casualties, property damage significant but contained." He kept his tone even. "All things considered, the Thor situation resolved itself."
"All things considered," Fury repeated flatly, noting how Coulson intentionally missed the elephant in the room.
He let silence reign for a moment before turning his eye to Barton, who was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded.
"Barton."
"Sir."He replied with a controlled voice.
"Talk to me about the second anomaly, Varis."
The room shifted almost imperceptibly. Natasha, seated beside Barton, didn't move, but her attention sharpened in a way Fury had learned to recognise over the years. Maria Hill, seated at the far end of the table with a tablet in front of her, looked up from her notes.
Barton was quiet for exactly one second longer than necessary.
"Male. Young, most likely early twenties. Black hair, athletic build." His voice was perfectly level, though if anything, that showed his anger even more. "Entered the compound on foot through the perimeter fence. Immobilised six level four agents and Coulson in the command tent in under three seconds, then took Coulson's earpiece and made direct contact with me."
Barton's report was perfect. Fury had been slightly concerned, but it seemed that the Hawkeye remained keen as ever.
"How'd he disable them?" Fury asked.
Barton and Coulson exchanged a brief look, as if asking who should speak first.
"That's the part we don't have a clean answer for," Coulson said whilst various footage played on screen.
He pointed to one clip showing him entering and being met by a field operative. A field operative who immediately slumped over unconscious after meeting him.
"Same thing happened to the two guys outside the control building; they just fell unconscious in an instant." Coulson then pointed to the final video, showcasing what had happened inside the building.
"Here's the interesting part, when he entered the building of myself and the other higher level agents, none of them were knocked unconscious. They all reported that they felt an immense pressure and sense of dread from him, to the point they struggled to move."
"And, what about yourself?" Fury asked, feeling something was missing.
"That's the thing, I didn't really feel all that much. Nothing more than a slight pressure on my shoulders, at most." He said, seeming a little proud.
"So it scales," Maria Hill said, not looking up from her tablet. "Lower-ranked agents drop immediately. Higher-ranked agents are mostly incapacitated but conscious. And you felt almost nothing." She set the tablet down. "Whatever he's projecting, it responds to the target."
"That's one possibility," Coulson said, nodding his head.
"So, are we dealing with a mutant, then?" Fury asked.
"Human," Coulson replied. "We got his blood, we found no anomalies, nothing special at all that could explain any of what we saw."
"Eyes?"
"No known medical condition. No existing profile in any database we can access." Coulson folded his hands. "The rotating mark within the iris is particularly unusual. We've shown the footage to three separate specialists under classified conditions. None of them had any explanation."
Fury was quiet for a moment.
"New York," he said, making eye contact with Natasha Romanov, who had been sitting still the whole time.
"There are traces," Natasha began."We picked up chatter about raids on several criminal operations, all by a single individual. The men were found unconscious with no explanation, no injuries, and nothing taken except loose cash. She paused. "Nothing concrete enough to build a profile from at the time.
"Until New Mexico put a face to it," Hill added to Natasha's explanation
Natasha nodded before continuing. "We can't say with confidence the total number of incidents. What we can say, though, is that whatever he was doing in New York, he managed to do so consistently without being caught by anyone, at least until the New Mexico incident."
Fury let that land for a moment.
"In other words, he was invisible for as long as he wanted to be."
Nobody disagreed with Fury's analysis.
He turned back to Barton.
"He made contact with you specifically."
"Yes sir."
"Walk me through it."
Fury immediately clocked the slight tightening of Barton's jaw.
"He took Coulson's earpiece and spoke to me directly. Said he just wanted to talk." A brief pause. "...Then, he asked about my family. By name. Wife and kids. Full names."
Hill looked up from her tablet.
Natasha looked at Clint with an imperceivable expression.
"He knew your cover," Fury said flatly.
"He knew more than my cover." Barton's voice remained level in the way that Fury had long since learned to read as the opposite of calm. "The names he used aren't in any file, classified or unclassified. They don't exist on paper anywhere."
Fury waited a moment before asking Barton to continue.
"What happened afterwards?"
"Told me not to follow him. Said if he didn't make it back to his people in time, my kids would meet 'early graves'." Barton's eyes didn't move from the screen. "Then he walked out of the compound with his hands in his pockets."
"He didn't follow through," Coulson interjected, his tone careful. "And it's worth noting that we swept the area around his family's location immediately after the incident. No surveillance, no personnel, nothing that suggested any kind of operation in place." He paused. "As far as we can tell, there were no 'people' to speak of. The threat may have been a bluff."
"May have been," Fury repeated whilst looking at Barton. Coulson's reassurance did nothing to calm the man.
"Regardless," Coulson continued, "we've taken precautionary measures. Agent Barton's family has been relocated to a new safehouse as of seventy-two hours ago. New credentials, new location, full security detail." He glanced briefly at Barton before continuing. "They're secure."
Barton said nothing.
"So he either had people and pulled them back, or he never had them at all," Hill said flatly. "Either way, he achieved exactly what he wanted. We spent three days scrambling to protect an asset instead of tracking him."
The room was quiet, considering Hill's words.
"And what did our Asgardian have to say about him?" Fury continued.
"He was of some use," Coulson responded. "Gave us the name Varis, to begin with. Thor confirmed that the subject was present at his landing site before we arrived, at the time he thought he was a uh, a frost giant. Said he recognised him the following morning at a local diner, which is where they actually spoke." He opened his file. "According to Thor, the subject approached his group unprompted, already knowing who Thor was. Spoke with him for approximately a half hour before they parted ways."
"Spoke about what?" Fury asked, growing more and more intrigued.
"That's where it gets even more interesting." Coulson looked up. "Thor described him as someone who knew things he wasn't supposed to know. Things about Thor personally, about Asgard, about his situation. Things that Thor claimed to have told nobody on Earth." A pause. "He was reluctant to give specifics initially, though."
"Protecting him?" Natasha asked.
"That was what I thought as well," Coulson confirmed. "Though, after we played the audio of him threatening Barton's kids, he opened up. It seemed he thought of him as some kind of friend before that."
Fury summarised the events that had occurred.
"So he spent the morning befriending an Asgardian and the night wrecking our operation."
"And came to New Mexico specifically for Thor," Natasha added. "He knew the hammer would land there before it happened. He knew Thor would be there, which means he has access to information involving extraterrestrial events before they occur." She paused, letting the room understand the magnitude of the issue. "This isn't a small thing."
Fury mulled over her words.
He didn't like them.
"He's not working for any organisation we know of," Hill said slowly, working through it aloud. "He's not a mutant, not enhanced by any method we can identify. He operates alone, targets criminals selectively, and apparently has foreknowledge of events that our most sophisticated early warning systems missed entirely." She looked up from her tablet. "What exactly are we classifying him as?"
A silence settled over the room as Hill waited for Fury's answer.
"He was waiting for all of it," Barton said, smiling, though his smile gave off a vibe miles away from happiness.
Nobody responded to his words.
Fury looked at the image of Varis's face on the screen for a long moment. They had obtained it from various gas station CCTV cameras when he was making his way to New Mexico, with the trail originating from New York, a place that S.H.I.E.L.D. was trying to tear apart to find any trace of him.
"Unknown," he said simply. "For now."
He turned from the screen.
"Agent Romanov. I want you in New York, ASAP." He turned to Barton. "You're with her."
Barton straightened his back, clearly eager to take on the target.
"Eyes only," Fury said directly to the man. "No approach, no form of engagement, nothing that tells him we've found him." He looked around the table one final time. "Dismissed. Agent Hill, you stay back for a moment."
The room emptied quietly. Hill remained seated as the door shut behind Barton.
Fury elected to stay standing.
"Psychological profile."
Hill read from her tablet. "This is all based on very limited observed behaviour, so take it accordingly."
"Go ahead." Fury nodded for her to continue.
"He hasn't killed anyone, at least as far as we know. He incapacitated dozens of criminals across however many New York incidents, but injured none of them. During the New Mexico debacle, he injured six agents by means of gunshots, but he elected to shoot every single one of them in either the hands or forearms. Not a single lethal shot, even when a head or body shot would've been the easy choice."
She set the tablet down, looking at the replaying video on the large screen.
"Most important is his impeccable precision; all of that was enacted in three seconds, which means he made a deliberate decision within seconds of how much damage to cause to incapacitate the agents and then executed it with a level of precision that frankly shouldn't be possible."
Fury was quiet as usual.
"The threat towards Barton follows the same pattern," she continued. "Maximum psychological effect, zero follow-through. He got exactly what he needed from that interaction, which was Barton standing down, and then he did nothing beyond it." She folded her hands. "Everything he does is calculated to the minimum necessary force. He's been remarkably disciplined so far, in my opinion."
"He's not a killer," Fury nodded his head with satisfaction.
"No, not yet at least," Hill spoke carefully. "What's more important is that I don't think he wants to be."
A brief silence followed her last words.
Hill looked at Fury's back carefully. "You're considering him for the initiative."
It wasn't really a question.
Fury didn't answer, which itself acted as an answer.
"Sir," she said, with the measured tone of someone choosing their words carefully, "we have virtually no information on him. We don't know where he's from, what he is, what he actually wants, or what he's capable of beyond what we've already seen. Which is already considerable."
"No," Fury agreed. "We don't."
"Then-"
"We're already looking at a drunkard weapons manufacturer who nearly caused an international incident and has a documented history of reckless action." He clasped his hands behind his back. "A man who turns into a rampaging monster when he gets angry." He paused. "And depending on how the next few months go, potentially an alien Norse god with a hammer that can control the weather."
Hill said nothing.
"So." Fury picked up the folder from the table. "Why not?"
He walked toward the door, leaving Hill sitting with that answer.
"Find him first," he said without turning around. "Then we'll have a real conversation."