The holding cells had fallen. All the dangerous individuals S.H.I.E.L.D. had captured over the years had escaped, adding yet another burden to the already overwhelmed US government. But there was no need for them to panic just yet, because the blows against them were far from over.
Brigadier General Talbot had been ordered to apprehend S.H.I.E.L.D.'s remaining personnel. But when he arrived at the command center, he found that while a large group of low-level agents were huddled there obediently like quails, the most important people—Coulson's team—had already vanished without a trace.
Talbot was no fool. He had long expected that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Senior Agents would not surrender without resistance, so he first tried a soft approach and political persuasion, saying it was no big deal, that they were merely being taken in for routine review, and that there was no need to be nervous.
But Coulson was not an idiot. How could he believe such nonsense? Never mind how credible that explanation was; the mere fact that Talbot was commanding the operation was enough to show that the US government had come with ill intent. Talbot and S.H.I.E.L.D. had old grudges between them!
This had happened a long time ago, back when Evenson had only begun making contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. and had not yet joined them. It started when Evenson and Whitehall used each other to engineer the Felified Human attack on a special military base, whose commanding officer at the time had been Brigadier General Talbot.
The incident had had an extremely bad impact. An important military base on United States soil had been raided by unknown assailants, while the garrison reacted slowly and deployed poorly, dragging the battle out again and again and resulting in heavy casualties among their own forces. No matter whether there had been special