People often said that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal discipline was inhumane, but outsiders' guesses were actually based entirely on a misunderstanding, because reality was far more cold-blooded than they imagined.
Think about it: after a group of companions had suffered disaster, risked their lives, and traveled thousands of miles to reach this place, what should come next after treating them to a meal so awful it was practically inedible? For ordinary people, they should at least be settled in somewhere and allowed to relax with a hot shower.
But what was the reality? Dream on! Eat shit! The first thing waiting for them was deception!
"Nick Fury is dead. He didn't make it out of Washington alive." Koenig, the head of Heaven's will's secret base, told this lie to everyone except Coulson, concealing Nick Fury's true condition. It could be said that he deeply distrusted the others and even regarded them as potential enemies.
Though he was merely following orders, this also showed from another angle just how Nick Fury usually trained his agents. So S.H.I.E.L.D.'s rigid hierarchy and the distrust between agents were not entirely Hydra's doing.
Yet everyone actually believed it. Melinda had gone to Washington as well and had been close to Nick Fury, but they had never met. She had mainly been fighting aboard the Insight Carrier outside, and afterward, it was all, Hey, I thought you knew everything! No one filled her in, so she truly had no idea what had happened.
But just as they finished processing that discouraging news, strict interrogation awaited them—the kind involving a lie detector!
And it was no ordinary lie detector. Koenig led everyone into a room and stopped beside a device that looked much like an electric chair. He solemnly introduced it. "This baby can monitor skin conductivity, oxygen consumption,