"We're here to talk business, so why the hell did you tear up my pay stub?!"
In S.H.I.E.L.D.'s underground parking garage, Evenson sat cross-legged on the hood of his car, gloomily smoking a cigarette. "We're all educated people here. How can you go back on something you already agreed to? Hmph."
Evenson snorted, casually flicked away the cigarette butt, flipped down from the hood, and crushed it beneath his foot. Then he drove off. "Strutting around all day in that Zhongshan suit—what are you so proud of? You'll come begging me someday!"
The three ultimately parted on bad terms. Evenson failed to get his money and left cursing, while Captain America got on his motorcycle and headed home. Speaking of which, even with his enhanced body, Washington was nearly four hundred kilometers from New York. Yet he was riding a motorcycle all the way back. He really did not know the meaning of exhaustion.
After Nick Fury showed the two of them around the Insight Hangar, he immediately returned to his office, picked up the USB drive with a heavy heart, and stared at it. Evenson's mockery had been unpleasant, but Fury had taken it to heart.
Fear... Nick Fury suddenly realized that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s way of operating seemed to have drifted further and further from its original purpose. At some point, S.H.I.E.L.D. had begun relying more and more on so-called hardline measures, and Project Insight was the ultimate hardline measure: pointing a gun at every person in the world, using fear and death to force them to live by its rules.
Hydra... That was Hydra and Red Skull's philosophy. Perhaps that was why he had always subconsciously felt uneasy about Project Insight. But how had things developed to this point?
Had he finally become the very thing he hated most?